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
‘Perhaps because of who he stole from?’
‘Maybe. Maybe there’s something more to it, though. Especially if we are going with the idea that Edward McCreedy is E.A.M.’
Rachel got up from Ron’s chair and came to look over his shoulder. ‘Can you show me the ledger page again?’
Toby brought up the scan and they both looked at it. ‘Edward McCreedy’s name comes a long way down the list, doesn’t it?’ Rachel observed. ‘As if he joined the workforce quite late on?’
‘That’s true,’ Toby agreed. ‘Which is strange if he is E.A.M.’
Rachel straightened up. ‘Hold that thought,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back.’
She vanished up the stairs. It was ten minutes before she returned, carrying the actual ledger itself, and Toby realized she’d gone right up into the tower’s hidden room.
‘It’s a long shot,’ Rachel said, as she reached the armchairs again and rested the large book on the chess table as she opened it, ‘but I wonder if…’ she trailed off, scanning through earlier pages, towards the beginning of the ledger.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Evidence that Edward McCreedy had been listed as a worker earlier. I thought that maybe…’ She stopped, leaned forward and then tapped a finger on the ledger, right near the beginning of the list. ‘Look.’
Toby did, and saw that one line of writing had been heavily crossed out. Whatever was underneath was now largely illegible, but the first letter was still just visible as an ‘E’. Rachel looked back at the scanned page on Toby’s screen.
‘Whoever scrubbed it out used the same colour ink to write in McCreedy’s name much later,’ she observed.
Toby looked at the ledger. ‘If you’re right, and that’s McCreedy’s name that’s been scrubbed out, he would have been one of the first employees on the project, not one of the last.’
They were quiet for a few minutes, digesting the meaning of this possible discovery.
‘Maybe he knew too much,’ Toby said. ‘If he was E.A.M., he knew about the camera obscura. If James MacDonald really didn’t want anyone to know about it, he was probably a man with the sort of standing to get a worker convicted of stealing, and given the harshest sentence for it.’
Rachel looked unhappy.
‘What’s the matter?’ Toby asked.
‘I don’t know why, but I’ve always thought of MacDonald as a decent person,’ she said. ‘Finding out he might have been the opposite… it’s unsettling, somehow.’
‘We don’t know that’s what happened. This Edward McCreedy might actually have stolen a fortune’s worth of bricks, for all we know.’
‘No, but—’ Rachel looked at the ledger again. ‘We’ve found no indication that there’s any other candidate for E.A.M., have we? I think it has to be him. And if that’s the case, knowing how apparently crucial it was to keep the secret of the camera obscura, it seems too much of a coincidence that he ended up being knocked out of the picture.’
‘I still don’t understand the need for secrecy,’ Toby said, tipping his head back against the chair and looking up at the bookshop’s ceiling, imagining that domed room far above them. ‘What was so damaging about it being up there? I would have thought it was the kind of scientific wonder that a gentleman would have wanted to boast about back in 1815.’