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“And Will?”

He looked at her.

“Thank you. You have done well.”

The young man’s expression eased. He put his cap back upon his head and returned towards the stables, leaving Baines and Judith beside the paddock fence.

Baines watched him until he disappeared through the harness room door and only then did he turn towards her.

“Jewellery.”

“Perhaps.”

A broken necklace could leave Blackthorn without attracting suspicion. So could a watch, snuffbox, buckle, brooch or ornamental clasp. Servants handled such things routinely; tradesmen carried them between houses and towns; parcels passed through coaching inns and shops without anyone asking why a lady’s bracelet travelled to Newcastle. A cavity within a clasp required very little space if all one needed to conceal was a tightly rolled strip of paper.

Baines looked back at the sprawling grey house. “Now we know how information leaves Blackthorn.”

She drew her shawl closer against the wind and started towards the house. “We must question the servants at once, to see who is sending the parcels.”

Renforth’s message remained folded inside his coat and Bonnymuir remained where it had been all morning, a dark fact against which every new discovery must now be measured. He needed to respond, but he desperately wanted to have something good to report. “I think we should separate. We have not a moment to lose.”

CHAPTER 16

By luncheon, Judith had established that an astonishing quantity of jewellery had been sent for repair during the previous eight months. “It appears our jeweller may be complicit,” she remarked.

“Perhaps,” Baines replied in an abstracted tone.

The muniment room had once again disappeared beneath sheaves of paper. Repair bills lay in ordered rows across the scarred oak table alongside household accounts, servants’ books and Judith’s lists of guests from the gatherings during which sensitive information had escaped Blackthorn. The morning sun had vanished behind gathering clouds, leaving the room washed in the flat silver light peculiar to northern spring, while a persistent wind worried the old window frames and occasionally sent a draught beneath the door.

Lady Marwood’s necklace had gone to Bellamy and Sons in Newcastle in October.

Lady Dunsmore’s brooch had gone to the same establishment in January.

A watch belonging to Colonel Bosworth had been sent there in February. One of Sir Lionel’s waistcoat buckles had followed in March, along with a small silver vinaigrette case belonging to Mrs. Pembroke and a damaged clasp from Lady Beckenham’s travelling case.

None of this proved anything, but it proved enough to make Judith uncomfortable.

Baines stood beside her chair with one hand braced upon the table, studying the list she had compiled.

“Bellamy and Sons are the jewellers in each case?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know them?”

“Only by reputation. They have been in Newcastle for years.”

“Which means?”

“It means respectable people use them.”

“That is a convenient quality in a criminal enterprise.”

“We do not know that Bellamy is involved.”

“I know. I was hoping you might permit me one satisfying conclusion before destroying it.”

Judith dipped her pen into the ink. “The objects may simply provide an innocent route. A maid sends a necklace to a jeweller, the jeweller sends it elsewhere for specialized work, a porter carries the parcel to an inn, someone collects it, and half the people involved never know anything has been concealed inside it.”