Page 94 of A Debt Inherited

He looked down at the page. Elizabeth’s hand stood among the figures, neat, decided, and impatient of waste. She had copied two rents from the steward’s memorandum and drawn a small line beneath the total, as if figures, properly chastened, might be made to behave.

Bennet touched the edge of the page.

“Very severe, Lizzy,” he said softly.

No answer came.

He returned to the calculation. The sum should have been plain. Three tenants, two arrears, one credit against timber cartage. He followed the first line, then the second, then returned to the first again. The numbers offered no clarity.

A board sounded in the passage.

Bennet lifted his head.

“Lizzy?”

The passage kept its silence.

So did the house.

Bennet looked towards the mantel clock.

The hands stood nearer five than four.

He sat still a moment. Elizabeth had gone out after noon. She had often walked farther than she intended and returned with dust upon her hem, colour in her cheeks, and some account of a tenant’s child, a broken stile, or the absurdity of mankind at large.

There was nothing in the hour to alarm a sensible man.

Bennet laid the pen across the ledger.

Nothing, except that he had begun to count it.

He rose, crossed to the bell-pull, and gave it one measured tug. The sound travelled somewhere behind the wall, faint and businesslike. He returned to the desk, but did not sit.

A minute passed. A door opened somewhere below.

He looked again at the clock. The ticking had grown impertinent.

Bennet went to the open door.

“Mrs Hill?”

“Sir?” Mrs Hill appeared, wiping her hands upon her apron.

“Has Miss Elizabeth come in?”

“Not by the kitchen, sir.”

Hill appeared behind his wife.

“Sir?”

Bennet looked from one to the other. “I was expecting my daughter by this time.”

Mrs Hill’s hands stilled upon her apron.

“I have not heard the front door, sir,” Hill said. “She went out by the garden after noon.”

“Alone?”