The Inkwell Murders – Chapter 13
The Forger’s Son
Kieran Hartwell was found on the Friday, in a rented room above a chandler’s shop in the estuary town of Dune Cray, forty-three miles from Veldmoor. He had been there for four days, living on sandwiches and the contents of a flask, reading and rereading the document he had taken from the Concordance — not the Reckoning itself but a letter, a single page, written in 1891 by Aldiss, another of the Society’s founders, to Crome. In it: the confirmation that Frederick Hartwell had been confronted with Crome’s confession. The Society had read it. They had decided, in their wisdom, to keep it sealed. They had accepted Hartwell’s continued patronage. They had, in short, chosen their comfort over four dead men.
Kieran Hartwell was thirty-one years old, thin, with the dark eyes of someone who had not slept properly in a week. He sat across from Nadia in the local constables’ interview room and looked at his hands and said: “I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“Edmund Castor.”
“I didn’t know what dose — I’d read about aconitine, I knew it was untraceable if the dose was right—” He stopped. “I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him to sleep. I wanted enough time to search — to find the Reckoning before he could. Before he could take it to Vera Crome or whoever was paying him and make it go away.”
“Why did you think it would go away?”
“Because my family has been making things go away for a hundred and fifty years.” His voice held a specific bitterness — not anger, exactly, but the exhaustion of a person who has been carrying something heavy and has finally put it down, regardless of the consequences. “I found a reference to the Reckoning in a family archive. A private archive my uncle keeps. A letter from my grandfather to his solicitor — saying that if the Reckoning ever surfaced, it was to be acquired, by any means available, and destroyed.”
“By any means.”
“He meant money. Buy it, bribe whoever had it. He didn’t mean—” He stopped. “I used the trust account because I was stupid. I thought it couldn’t be traced to a person. I was wrong about a lot of things.”
Nadia looked at him for a moment. “You went to Sable Harmon’s shop.”
“I thought she had a copy of something. A catalogue, a provenance document. I just wanted to know if she knew where the Reckoning was.” He looked at his hands. “The tea was already there. I put — I put some in it. She was in the back room. I didn’t give her enough. I know it was wrong. I know.”
“A man is dead, Mr. Hartwell.”
He said nothing. He had known, since Dune Cray, what was coming. He had the look of a man who had run as far as he was going to run and had stopped, not because he was caught but because the running itself had become impossible.
“Why?” Nadia said. “What did you want? The Reckoning — did you want to destroy it, like your grandfather?”
He looked up. “No,” he said, with a forcefulness that surprised her. “I wanted to publish it. I wanted the world to know what Frederick Hartwell did. What the Society covered up. What four men’s lives were worth to the people who ran this city.”
He looked back at his hands. “Instead I became what they were.”