“And if Vinculus had profited so much from his father’s crime,” added Childermass, “why did he hate his father? Why did he rejoice when his father was hanged? Robert Findhelm was quite sure that the book was destroyed – that is plain. Nan told me Clegg had been hanged for stealing a book, but the charge Robert Findhelm brought against him was not theft. The charge Findhelm brought against him was book-murder. Clegg was the last man in England to be hanged for book-murder.”3

“So why does Vinculus claim to have this book if his father ate it?’ said Lascelles in a wondering tone. “The thing is not possible.”

“Somehow Robert Findhelm’s inheritance has passed to Vinculus, but how it happened I do not pretend to understand,” said Childermass.

“What of the man in Derbyshire?” asked Mr Norrell, suddenly. “You said that Findhelm was sending the book to a man in Derbyshire.”

Childermass sighed. “I passed through Derbyshire on my way back to London. I went to the village of Bretton. Three houses and an inn high on a bleak hill. Whoever the man was that Clegg was sent to seek out, he is long dead. I could discover nothing there.”

Stephen Black and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair were seated in the upper room of Mr Wharton’s coffee-house in Oxford-street where the Peep-O’Day-Boys met.

The gentleman was speaking, as he often did, of his great affection for Stephen. “Which reminds me,” he said; “I have been meaning for many months to offer you an apology and an explanation.”

“An apology to me, sir?”

“Yes, Stephen. You and I wish for nothing in the world so much as Lady Pole’s happiness, yet I am bound by the terms of the magician’s wicked agreement to return her to her husband’s house each morning where she must while away the long day until evening. But, clever as you are, you must surely have observed that there are no such constraints upon you and I dare say you are wondering why I do not take you away to Lost-hope House to be happy for ever and for ever.”

“I have wondered about that, sir,” agreed Stephen. He paused because his whole future seemed to depend upon the next question. “Is there something which prevents you?”

“Yes, Stephen. In a way there is.”

“I see,” said Stephen. “Well, that is most unfortunate.”

“Would not you like to know what it is?” asked the gentleman.

“Oh yes, sir! Indeed, sir!”