Chapter 8 - The Confrontation at the River Gate
MacIntyre didn't offer me tea. He didn't ask me to sit down.
With a speed that seemed impossible for a man whose spine was curved like an iron hoop, he rose from his leather chair, pulled three massive leather binders from the iron safe behind him, and swept a clear space on the desk with his elbow, sending two bundles of probate notices cascading to the floor.
"Let me see the assays," he snapped, his parchment-skinned fingers twitching with impatience.
I opened the zinc box and laid Eleanor’s journal and the laboratory photographs before him.
The old solicitor pulled a heavy magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket and leaned down until his nose was an inch from the micro-photographs. He studied the notes, the chemical formulas, the molecular weights, and the red-stamped certification seal of the Royal Institute of Chemistry.
A long, dry whistle escaped his teeth.
"Richard Sterling is an idiot," MacIntyre murmured, almost to himself. "A vulgar, industrial idiot. He thought that because he had bought the county coroner, he had bought the Crown's forensic jurisdiction. He didn't know your mother had these samples duplicated and lodged with the Lord Advocate’s laboratory in Edinburgh."
"Is it enough?" I asked, my voice cracking with exhaustion.
"Enough?" MacIntyre looked up, his magnified eyes blazing with a terrifying, judicial glee. "My dear child, this isn't an inheritance dispute. This is high criminal malfeasance, environmental conspiracy, and second-degree murder. The only problem is the clock."
He checked an ancient silver pocket watch that hung from his waistcoat by a black silk ribbon.
"Nine-fifteen," he said. "The Land Registry opens at ten. Under the emergency provisions of the Northern Shires Conveyancing Act, Victoria’s solicitors have filed for an *Accelerated Decree of Adverse Consolidation*. If the registrar signs the Red Book at ten, the title of the Thorne marsh is merged into the Vance estate. Once it is merged, Richard Sterling’s mortgages attach to it automatically, like leeches to a dead horse. We can overturn it later, of course, but it would take three years in the Court of Session, and in three years, Richard Sterling will have paved that marsh with two million tons of toxic shale."
"Then what do we do?"
"We don't go to the Registry," MacIntyre said, snatching a black bowler hat from the hat-stand and jamming it onto his silver head. "We go to the Sheriff's Court."
"Tobias said the Sheriff—"
"—The *High* Sheriff, Clara," the old man interrupted, grabbing a silver-topped malacca cane from the umbrella stand. "Not the county police magistrate. The High Sheriff is Sir Archibald Campbell. He was your grandfather’s wing commander in the RAF, he owns twelve thousand acres of grouse moor that Richard Sterling’s chemical trucks have to drive past every Tuesday, and he has despised Victoria’s family since 1974."
He grabbed the green ledger, shoved it into a leather courier bag, and pointed his cane at the door.
"Move, young woman. If we are late, I shall personally deduct the filing fee from your Scottish trust."
We descended the stairs at a breakneck pace.
St. Jude’s Lane was filled with the low rumble of rain. As we stepped out of the archway onto the main thoroughfare of the High Street, the black Daimler was already there.
It sat idling outside the entrance to the County Registry—a long, sleek predator with tinted rear windows and the personalized registration plate *VS-1*.
Julian was standing on the pavement beside the open passenger door.
He had changed out of his loafers; he was wearing green Barbour jacket, tweed trousers, and heavy shooting boots. He looked tired, his eyes red-rimmed from driving the valley roads all night, but when his gaze swung across the square and caught me—standing on the corner of St. Jude’s Lane beside an eighty-four-year-old solicitor with a bowler hat—his jaw went slack.
"Mother," he yelled, leaning into the rear window. "She’s here! She’s with MacIntyre!"
The rear door of the Daimler swung open.
Victoria stepped out onto the wet asphalt.
She had not changed her coat. It was the same oatmeal-colored cashmere, the same black lambskin gloves, the same architectural knot of hair. But her face—which had been so serene, so languidly cruel on the porch of Vance Hall yesterday afternoon—was now white as skimmed milk, the skin around her mouth pulled tight as wire.
In her right hand, she carried a heavy, red-morocco portfolio with gilded brass clasps: the consolidation deeds.
She didn't speak to Julian. She didn't look at the rain that was beginning to ruin her expensive cashmere collar. She walked directly across the street, her heels clicking with furious precision on the wet stones, heading straight for MacIntyre.
"Mr. MacIntyre," she said, her voice shaking slightly, though she tried to keep it within the register of cool, aristocratic contempt. "This is an administrative filing. The Vance estate was settled yesterday at three o'clock. This girl has no legal standing in this parish."
MacIntyre didn't stop walking. He didn't even raise his eyes to her face; he simply flicked his cane toward her knees as if shooing a stray chicken off the path.
"Out of the way, Victoria," the old man said, his voice cutting through the damp air like a whip. "You're twenty-four hours too late, and your brother’s driver is currently being arrested at the High Falls tollgate by two officers from the Environmental Protection Branch."
Victoria stopped dead on the cobbles.
Her gloved fingers tightened on the red portfolio until the morocco leather groaned.
"You're bluffing," she whispered, her eyes shifting to me for the first time. "Arthur had nothing. The accounts were empty. The land was mortgaged."
"The Vance land was mortgaged, Victoria," I said, stepping forward until I was standing two feet from her, looking directly into those cold, pale eyes that had watched me scrape my mother's ashes from the rain. "The Thorne land was never yours. And neither was the key."
I reached into my pocket.
I didn't bring out the brass key. I brought out the silk handkerchief.
I opened the four corners. There, resting on the sodden white silk, were the three tiny grains of calcium—the chips of bone Julian had swept into the ditch with the plastic broom.
Julian stepped up behind his mother, his face dark with rage. "You little bitch—" he began, reaching for my shoulder with a gloved hand.
A heavy, wet hand caught him by the throat from behind.
Julian was jerked backward so violently that his heels left the cobbles, slamming against the limestone wall of the registry office with a dull *thud*.
Tobias Finch stood there.
He had not stayed in the punt. He had tied the boat to the bridge pier, walked up the fishmongers' steps, and now stood in the middle of the High Street in his soaking oilskin coat, smelling of river mud and dead sedge, his thumb resting casually on the top lever of his double-barreled shotgun, which was tucked beneath his left arm inside a wet canvas sack.
"Keep your hands off the trustee, boy," Tobias said softly, his pale blue eyes staring into Julian’s throat. "Your father tried that forty years ago, and we had to drag him out of the canal with a gaff-hook."
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The clock in the courthouse tower began to strike ten.
***
