‘Nothing? I have believed either my uncle or my cousin capable of murder. I have shared that slander with four other people. I left this country and my duties and responsibilities for years because of it. And you say I have done nothing?’
‘You acted to save your life on the information you had. And it did save your life. You were getting weaker and weaker. None of your caring relatives recognised what was happening or troubled to investigate. Sooner or later your well-meaning household would have dosed you with enough of that water to kill you. And what about the accidents?’ Sophie wanted to shake him. Cal torn by doubt and wracked by guilt was not the man she knew, the man she loved.
‘If I eliminate the times when I was sick from the water, or weak and probably clumsy as a result, then what is left is no doubt the same tally of mishaps and injuries that befall any adolescent boy.’
‘But the circumstantial evidence pointed to foul play. It might still be, for all we know. Perhaps they did know about the water and let nature take its course. I don’t know – and I like your aunt and uncle and I contemplated marrying your cousin, for heaven’s sake.’
‘We still have to prove it is the spring water,’ Hunt pointed out.
‘Which means tracing the source.’ Cal was focused again, to Sophie’s vast relief. ‘It must lie on the other side of the ridge in a stream that goes underground there and did so only after my father’s death. And, equally, the source of the old spring must be there, blocked up at the same time.’ He scrubbed his hand over his face. ‘How to prove which water runs where?’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Bluing from the laundry. Sophie, can you go and ask Mrs Fairfax for all the bluing in the house?’
‘And what will I tell her I want it for?’
‘An experiment in land drainage,’ Cal offered, already bent over the maps again.
Sophie returned with the information that for once the admirable Mrs Fairfax was having trouble concealing her irritation with the queer starts of the Quality and was, even as she spoke, scribbling a frantic order for new supplies before laundry day arrived. She found the men had drawn lines over the older map that showed the hills beyond the old castle and Flynn had a sheet of paper and was making copies of two sections of the land nearest the crest, drawing in waterways in blue ink.
‘We need more than one colour as a marker,’ Cal muttered.
‘The yellow ochre they are using to paint the farm buildings?’ Hunt suggested. ‘I noticed yesterday they have just started and there are a lot of buildings. The stuff is pretty concentrated.’
‘We know it takes two days from source to the spring because of the delay when the old spring died and the new one began.’ Cal sat back and studied the sketch plans. ‘I will take blue, you take yellow and we’ll each dose all the possible swallow-holes in our section, then put a watch on the spring. Once we’ve got the area narrowed down we can repeat it until there is only one source possible.’ He turned to look at Sophie. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘Of course.’
‘I will just go and talk to Isobel for a few minutes. She’ll sense something is wrong, however careful everyone is around her.’
‘I will ask the ladies to include her in their activities today, shall I?’ Sophie suggested. ‘That will give them something to think about other than Jonathan and they are all sensible enough not to start gossiping in front of her. I won’t be long.’
Sophie changed into her riding habit and begged the female guests help with Isobel, explaining that Cal was very much occupied and that she felt she must support him. If they were left with the impression that he was making arrangements for the funeral and contacting Jonathan’s family, then so much the better. Prescott was, he told her, already working on the arrangements.
They rode out, heading in the direction of the old castle, then split a mile from it, Flynn and Hunt cantering northwards, she and Cal taking a winding lane that led from the park boundary up into the hills, following the contour until they had worked their way around to the north-facing slopes.
Almost immediately she noticed the difference. ‘I can smell coal smoke.’
Cal nodded, gesturing to the track they were now following, mired in mud and churned by wagon wheels. ‘Small scattered industries all over the area.’
They dipped down into little dry valleys that Cal marked on his map, occasionally dismounting to check the size of trees growing at their bottom, or to look for water-weathering on the stones. Gradually the sound of industry, of hammer on metal, grew louder and the smells worsened and they climbed another valley that, by Sophie’s calculation rose on one side to the crest of the hill above the castle.
Plumes of black smoke hung above the trees and they passed deep scores in the rocks, some raw and new, others overgrown. ‘Rakes,’ Cal said. ‘They are where seams of minerals come to the surface – silver, although there’s not much of that, zinc, lead, some iron. They mine coal over to the east.’ As he spoke an empty wagon appeared, coal dust coating its side and base. The driver stared at them but did not stop.