Contents (57)
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Sharon Gosling
Twenty-Nine
‘It’s occurred to me that what you might want to do,’ Alan Crosswick told Toby, via telephone from his office in Aberdeen, ‘is have a look through the firm’s archives.’
Crosswick had called Toby after Rachel had let him know about what she had uncovered about Eveline MacDonald.
‘You have an archive?’
‘Yes,’ said the solicitor. ‘Well, technically no, we don’t – at least not any more. A few years ago we decided that holding onto a forest’s worth of paper about estates and clients stretching back to the start of the company – a span of more than two centuries, would you believe – was doing no one any good. We contacted various local museums to see if they wanted to take on the responsibility of housing a multitude of ephemera and documents from bygone eras. A few had the facilities, and that included the Historical Society in Great Dunbar. They have probably what amounts to a metric tonne of paper pertaining to the Braecoille estate – which at the time, of course, included the lighthouse.’
‘Right,’ said Toby, scribbling on a notepad as he wondered why the solicitor hadn’t mentioned this before.
‘You’re probably wondering,’ added Crosswick, ‘why I didn’t mention this before. Two reasons: firstly, to be honest it completely slipped my mind that it exists. I’ve never had cause to need anything that goes back that far. We’re talking about paperwork that, this far removed, can have absolutely no legal relevance to the present day, hence us letting it go in the first place. Secondly – and this is where I have to apologize, because you’ll be the one wading through it should you choose to do so – we’re talking about material that is, frankly, deeply uninteresting. It’s mostly the estate accounts. Purchase orders, receipts for estate equipment, groceries, furnishings… deathly dull to the average person. I can tell you now that I think all you’ll find about the tower are the barest accounting details. There’ll be nothing about the camera obscura, unless it’s incidental – that would have been noticed by the clerks back then, so if the MacDonalds really were so set on keeping it a secret, they’d have kept it off the books.’
‘That’s interesting in itself, isn’t it?’ Toby asked. ‘It must have cost a reasonable amount of money to construct and install. What did they say the money was being spent on?’
‘That’s a good question,’ Crosswick admitted. ‘But I’m sure there would have been a way to lose a decent amount in a new dress or chaise longue imported from France that ended up not surviving the journey. Who knows, Mr Hollingwood, perhaps you’ll uncover evidence of creative accounting two hundred years after the fact. However,’ the solicitor added, ‘don’t feel you need to go there at all. I’m not at all sure that it will prove useful to your enquiries, which are, after all, not strictly necessary in the first place.’
‘It’s an unfinished story, Mr Crosswick,’ Toby said as he scribbled another note on his pad. ‘That’s extremely necessary, at least for me.’