“Who made it?”
“A man who works without talking.”
Daniel looked past him at a pile of packing straw. On the floor beside the bracket was a shallow diamond-shaped heel print with one broken corner.
The same boot had visited his workshop and the drying house.
“Your new man knows nothing about timber under strain,” Daniel said quietly.
Pike smiled. “Then perhaps you should be grateful you have two days to instruct him.”
Daniel studied the cable. The counterweight had been made twice as large as necessary. If its restraining pin slipped, the sliding frame would travel farther than designed and slam through the row of louver arms. The mechanism could snap, sending wood through the inspection platform where committee members would stand.
Or it might do something more deliberate.
Alden had insisted that his guests watch from a narrow gallery directly beside the frame, because a nearby view made for an impressive demonstration. Pike could put anyone he wanted on that gallery. Daniel found himself wondering whose death would be blamed on a carpenter already accused of theft and violence.
“Bring me my measuring rule,” he told Pike.
Pike did not move. “You will use what I provide.”
“Then you will be measuring the wreckage.”
The overseer hesitated. At last he ordered a guard to fetch Daniel’s rule. Daniel had bought thirty seconds in which to think, and half a day in which to work.
3. THE OTHER PRINT
By noon, word of Daniel’s accusation had traveled through the quarters. Some believed Catherine had manufactured it; others believed it but knew that belief would change nothing. Daniel’s sister Ruth came with the midday meal, a small pot of beans and a piece of bread she had kept warm under her shawl.
Ruth was three years younger than Daniel and worked on the estate’s sewing crew. She noticed the guard standing six paces away. She did not ask questions until Daniel took the first bite.
“They have sent for a trader,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you still fixing their contraption?”
“Because it may kill somebody.”
Ruth held his gaze. “That somebody could be you.”
“There are others on the gallery.”
“That is always how they get you,” she whispered. “They put everybody else in danger and leave you to choose who pays.”
Daniel glanced toward the carriage house door. “You saw who went by the woodshop last night?”
“Not last night. Before dawn, yes. A man carrying a wrapped object in both arms.”
“Did you see his face?”
“He was wearing the overseer’s canvas coat, but he moved differently.”
“Lame?”
“Not quite. One shoe clicked and the other did not.”
The diamond heel had a missing corner. Daniel nodded. “Where did he go?”
“Toward the orchard gate. There was another man waiting with a wagon.”
Ruth leaned closer. “Do not follow them. Pike wants an excuse to shoot at somebody.”
Daniel looked at the guard, who was pretending not to listen. “I need to find out who adjusted the carriage. You need to find out who brought that coat back.”
Ruth pursed her lips. Then she set down his pot and rose. “I am not your messenger because you have a dangerous idea.”
“No.”
“I am your sister. That is worse.”
She walked away before the guard could object.
Daniel spent the afternoon inspecting the frame while Pike watched from a stool. There was an extra hole in the crossbeam, too large for the present bolts. He traced its edge with a fingertip and recognized a round gouge made by an auger with a nicked cutting lip. Somebody had moved the counterweight anchor once already, then concealed the first hole beneath a strip of fresh pine.
A sawdust stain marked that strip. It was pale, almost white, and carried a faint sweet smell. Daniel recognized the wood: yellow poplar taken from a stack outside the orchard carpentry shed. He had refused to use it in the main frame because it split badly at knots. Pike or his hired workman had used it anyway.
“If this bracket shifts, it will pull the beam sideways,” Daniel said.
Pike stood. “Then brace it.”
“With oak. Not this.”
“Use whatever lies nearby.”
“You cannot command wood to be stronger than it is.”
Pike walked close enough that Daniel could smell whiskey. “A man can command another man to keep quiet.”
Daniel stared back. “Until the timber answers for him.”
For a moment he thought Pike might strike him. Instead the overseer stepped away, furious at an object he did not understand and a man who understood too much.
Just before sunset, a new worker arrived with a box of iron nails and a coil of rope. He was about fifty, with narrow shoulders and a stiff right ankle. His coat had fresh mud at the cuff; his shoes had diamond soles. Daniel watched him pause at the doorway, recognize Daniel’s stare, and look away.
“Who are you?” Daniel asked.
The man said, “Silas Crowe.”
“Where did you learn to work a counterweight?”
Silas’s lips tightened. “Where men paid for my labor.”
Pike entered behind him. “He does not need conversation.”
Daniel looked down as Silas passed. The right heel left a diamond print with one corner missing. Silas carried the proof on his feet. But Daniel did not know whether Crowe was a conspirator, a frightened laborer, or a man paid to commit one small act without understanding the larger purpose.
That night Daniel slept on a cot outside the forge, a chain attached to one ankle. The guard set his lantern on an overturned barrel and snored. Through the open shutters Daniel could see the drying house dark against the sky. He imagined the counterweight falling; he imagined the gallery crowded; he imagined the noise afterward and Pike pointing at him.
Then he remembered Catherine’s expression in the breakfast room. She had demanded his removal, but she had looked surprised when Pike mentioned the trader. She had said nothing about the new bracket. An accusation could be hers and a murder plot somebody else’s. The two did not have to be the same lie.
Daniel slept little, because each possibility threatened a different person and required a different response.
4. A WOMAN WHO HAD MADE HERSELF A WEAPON
Mercy Bell came to the forge at first light carrying a bundle of stained rags. The guard had been called away to inspect a broken fence, leaving Daniel with a boy named Aaron who was meant to watch the path rather than the prisoner. Aaron stood outside listening for footsteps.
Mercy knelt to wipe grease from the equipment. “Your sister says you need a wheel tooth.”
“It is a phrase. I need to know where Lady Catherine was after she left the shop.”
Mercy’s hand stopped. “I cannot tell you everything.”
“Tell me one thing you know.”
Mercy pressed the rag against the floor. “She came upstairs crying angry tears. Not frightened. She went into her room and locked the door. The bracelet was on her wrist when she entered.”
Daniel closed his eyes for half a second. “You are sure?”
“I unfastened the cloak. I saw it scrape the door.”
“Did she leave again?”
“No. I stayed in the hall until two because she kept asking me to bring hot water, then sending it back.”
“Who had access to the room?”
“Her maid, me, Mr. Pike. And anybody holding the duplicate key he keeps because he says the lady loses things.”
Daniel looked up. “Pike had her bracelet?”
“Maybe. But I heard a conversation through the adjoining room. She said, ‘I will say what you ask. I will not have blood on my hands.’ He said, ‘Then keep them clean.’”
Daniel felt suddenly colder than the morning. Catherine might have threatened him on her own, and Pike might have turned the threat into a trap she could no longer control. Or they might have arranged the whole thing together and quarreled over how far it should go.
“What did they mean?” he asked.
Mercy shook her head. “I do not know. But I found this.”
She opened her palm. A small bent brass pin lay inside, flattened at its tip. It was identical to the hinge pin Daniel had been fitting the night before.
“Where?”
“In her dressing room, beside the window.”
Daniel understood that someone had carried an object from his shop back to Catherine’s quarters, perhaps to make a false trail run both ways. He also noticed that the pin had been driven hard against a sharp edge. It might have served as an improvised tool to open a latch.
“Keep it,” he said. “If anybody searches you, throw it away. Do not put yourself in danger for a scrap of brass.”
Mercy closed her fist. “You would not say that if you believed it was only a scrap.”
She stood before he could answer.
At midmorning, Alden visited the drying house with a county committee member, Mr. Fiske, who had come early to approve seating arrangements. Fiske was a broad man in a faded red vest. He smelled of tobacco and horses and glanced impatiently at every surface Daniel tried to show him.
