Chapter 6: The Auditor's First Night

Evander Quist opened the first of the Marquis's ledgers at the dower house kitchen table, by one lamp, at nine o'clock at night.

The Hall had sent them down on a cart that afternoon, forty-one bound volumes under a tarpaulin.

The steward had sent no note.

Evander had learned long ago that a man who sends no note has something in the books he hopes you will find slowly.

He had a tin of biscuits, two pairs of spectacles and a pot of ink.

He had, as well, a rule he had never once broken in eleven years at the Treasury.

An auditor takes no side.

He reads the columns, writes down what is true, and goes home.

The kitchen was warm.

The women had gone to bed an hour ago, after an evening of the most careful politeness he had ever witnessed.

They had passed each other the salt with both hands.

He had noticed, and said nothing, because nobody had asked him.

The first ledger was the household accounts.

It was a fair copy in the steward's good hand.

It was wrong in the way a lie is wrong when it was told by somebody who has told it often.

The wine bills were too round.

The candle bills rose by a third in the same quarter every year, and fell again after the Marquis's birthday.

He wrote, in the margin of his own book, steward, wine, candles, and went on.

The second ledger was the mill's.

He had expected to dislike it.

The Marquis's wife had kept it for three years, and in his experience a nobleman's wife kept books for show.

He found a clear hand with no ornaments.

Every entry had a date and a source and a column for what was owed.

Every bale of wool was weighed in and weighed out.

The wages for two hundred and ten people were written down to the penny, with a note beside any week they were late.

There had been four late weeks in three years.

Each one had been the week the Hall drew money out of the mill account for something the Marquis wanted.

She had written, in the margin, each time, Taken by H.V. for the Hall.

Not angry.

Not even bitter.

Only the facts, in a clean line.

Evander read the whole book through twice.

It was honest to the penny.

It was the best ledger he had seen in years, and he had read ledgers kept by the Treasury's own clerks.

Behind him the stove ticked.

A board creaked, and he looked up.

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