Chapter 1.
Breakfast at Thorne Castle was served in a room that had almost certainly seen centuries of very serious meals. The ceiling was high and beamed, the windows were tall, and the table could have seated around one hundred people without anyone needing to rub elbows. There were only four of us at one end, which made the long white tablecloth look a bit like it was waiting for reinforcements.
Bridget had not let the formality of the room get in the way of her theme for the day.
On the big silver tray in the centre of the table sat a sponge cake iced to look like a set of ugly little grey boxes. A smear of pale green icing ran along one side, with a streak of darker blue that I assumed was meant to be a river. She had piped tiny yellow dots along what might have been a road. A miniature wafer stood at one corner with the words Milliner’s Lane written in thin brown icing.
Lined up around the cake were slices of toast cut into umbrella shapes. Bridget had even used tiny triangles of cheese on cocktail sticks as handles.
Mirabella clapped her hands together. “Oh. My. Goodness. Harriet, look at that. It’s so cute.” She took a photo.
Percival lowered his newspaper, took in the cake, and cleared his throat. “Is that intended to be a map?”
“It’s Gideon Poke’s proposed development,” Lord Alistair said. He sat opposite me, in his usual dark jacket, as if breakfast required a level of formality associated with weddings and job interviews.
His gaze met mine across the table, and the severity of his expression eased for the briefest moment. It had begun happening often enough that I no longer thought I had imagined it.
Bridget swept in from the side door carrying a pot of tea and a jug of orange juice. She had pinned an apron over her usual neat dress. The apron fabric was printed with tiny umbrellas in rows, which seemed exactly right for Soggybottom Hollow.
“Morning,” she said. “Mind the cake. I had to guess some of the measurements and it’s all a bit approximate.”
Mirabella leant forward until her nose was almost over the icing. “So the little grey blocks are buildings. And the green is grass. And the blue is the stream.” She pointed with her spoon. “Is this where Vera’s tea room is?”
Bridget nodded. “That’s Vera’s. That one’s Rupert’s shop. Those two are the cottages. That bit there used to be Phyllis’s umbrella workshop. He wants to flatten the lot.”
My stomach, which had been very interested in the umbrella toast, tightened a little. “I thought he was just talking. You know, developers wave plans around all the time.”
Lord Alistair reached for the teapot. “He has lodged a full proposal with the council,” he said. “It isn’t simply talk.”
Bridget placed slices of umbrella toast on our plates. “I tried to make the handles neat,” she said. “They kept breaking. They’re still fine for eating though.”
“They’re perfect,” I said. I picked one up and took a bite. It tasted exactly like toast, but I appreciated the effort. It also felt faintly wrong to eat it handle-first, as if I were disrespecting the art of umbrella making.
Percival folded the newspaper and set it beside his plate. He had brought it down with him as though he were still in his own kitchen in Melbourne instead of a castle in the middle of English umbrella country.
“Let me see if I’ve understood,” he said slowly. “Gideon proposes to demolish Rupert Dane’s hardware shop, Vera Fothergill’s tea room, two cottages, and Phyllis Coggins’ late husband’s workshop?”
“That is correct,” Lord Alistair said. “All along Milliner’s Lane.”
“But why those?” I asked. “There are other buildings along there. Why not start somewhere else?”
“Adjoining land,” Lord Alistair said. “He’s been buying up adjoining parcels through various arrangements. Those properties create a single block on which he can place his charming grey boxes.”
He did not make the word charming sound complimentary.
Mirabella looked from the cake to him. “But The Final Chapter, the bookshop, is safe?”
“Entirely safe,” Lord Alistair said. “I own the building, and Gideon has yet to discover a lawful method of flattening my property without my consent.”
I released a breath I had not realised I was holding.
Lord Alistair’s attention shifted to me. “I told Mary the same thing yesterday,” he said. “The bookshop is secure.”
“I know.”
His gaze remained on mine for another moment.
Percival picked up one of the umbrella toasts, examined it in a way that suggested he was silently correcting its proportions, then bit off the corner. “I find it remarkable that a person should return to his childhood village with the express intention of remodelling it into an office park.”
“He always was like that,” Bridget said. She placed a plate of scrambled eggs in the centre of the table. “Even when he was young. Always planning. Always wanting to move fences and paths.”
“But this isn’t just moving a fence,” I said. “He’s talking about Vera’s tea room. People go there every day.”
Mirabella nodded. “Vera matches teas to outfits. You can’t get that service in a strip of grey boxes.”
Lord Alistair’s mouth twitched, though I could not tell if he was amused or trying hard not to be. “Unfortunately the planning committee doesn’t consider bespoke tea pairings an official category.”
Percival reached across and helped himself to eggs. “What precisely is Gideon proposing to construct?” he asked. “Those blocks aren’t very descriptive.”
“Retail and serviced offices,” Lord Alistair said. “Plus some rather optimistic parking. He has a fancy set of drawings. Bridget’s cake is, I suspect, more charming than the real thing.”
Bridget put a rack of more toast on the table. I added one normal slice to my plate as well so she would not think her efforts too strange.
“So Rupert’s being pushed out of his building,” I said. “And Vera. And the people in the cottages. And Phyllis’ old workshop is part of it too.”
“Rupert signed an option,” Lord Alistair said. “Under some pressure. Gideon has a very flexible approach to contracts. Vera’s lease is short and he’s counting on her not having the resources to fight.”
Percival frowned.
“You said he was under some pressure?”
“Gideon has a solicitor, Crispin Vale,” Lord Alistair said. “Crispin isn’t known for his restraint.”
He picked up his knife and fork and cut into his eggs with deliberate care. “There is, however, a more immediate concern for me. His proposed access road runs here.”
He set his cutlery down again and reached for the cake. For a brief moment I wondered if he was about to pick it up and use it as an actual map. Instead he pointed with the back of his fork at the smear of green icing and the thin yellow line.
“Here?” Mirabella repeated. “Through this bit of green.”
“Through Thorne land,” he said. “He has drawn his access road as if he already has an easement.”
Percival sat up a little straighter. “But does he?”
“No,” Lord Alistair said. “He doesn’t. Which is why this interests me.”
Bridget made a small, annoyed sound. “He’s been talking in the village as if it’s all decided,” she said. “He’s been telling people he’s putting a road through and there’s nothing anyone can do. Poor Vera has hardly slept.”
I reached for the orange juice. “Surely he can’t just draw a road across someone else’s property.”
“In principle, no,” Lord Alistair said. “In practice, developers employ people to make awkward facts less visible. Surveyors, solicitors, people who understand how to label lines on diagrams in ways that confuse committees.”
“That sounds very familiar,” Percival said. “In a different context, but the principle is much the same. It reminds me of small adjustments in ancient Athenian voting divisions.”
“Have you seen his actual plan?” I asked Lord Alistair. “Not just the cake version.”
“I have a copy in the study,” he said. “The council sends me anything that involves my land. That’s how I learnt how far his optimism extends.”
Mirabella put her fork down. “Can we see?”
Bridget poured more tea. “Before you all dash off, you might want to know that everyone along Milliner’s Lane is planning a fundraising fete tomorrow. They’re going to put up stalls and have games. The money’s for legal advice and printing and that sort of thing,” she said.
“A fete,” Mirabella said. “Oh, that sounds lovely. We should help.”
“We will certainly attend,” Percival said. “Legal fights require considerable resources.”
“Mary said they’ll have a secondhand book stall,” Bridget said. “She’s been sorting through boxes out the back. Vera will handle refreshments. Rupert is donating prizes from the shop. Betty is bringing some of her chickens.”
“Of course she is,” I said. Betty never missed an opportunity for her chickens to perform.
Bridget gathered eggshells from a side dish. “You should take the cake with you when you go,” she said. “If you’re looking at the plan, you can compare it with the sponge.”
“It’s simply a matter of reading a document,” Percival said. “It’s not a mystery.”
“It can still be fun,” Mirabella said. “You can be the documents person and Harriet and I can be the cake comparison people.”
Lord Alistair set down his fork. “If you accompany me to the main library, I can show you the plans.”
Percival took one more mouthful of eggs, dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, and stood. Mirabella swallowed the last of her tea and rose from the table.
We followed Lord Alistair out of the breakfast room, along the corridor, and into the main library.
He went straight to a side table, picked up a rolled document, and brought it to the big oak desk. “This is the copy of Gideon’s proposal,” he said. “At least the part that concerns the land.”
Up close, the official plan was a tangle of lines and little numbers. Some of the figures had decimal points. Others did not. There were angles and notes along the edges.
Percival moved around the desk until he could look at it from the top.
“Here we are,” he said. “Milliner’s Lane. Rupert’s building. Vera’s. The cottages. Phyllis’s old workshop.”
He traced with one finger along the row of rectangles, then along a heavier line that ran behind them.
“This boundary,” he said. “That is the edge of your land, Lord Alistair.”
“According to that document,” Lord Alistair said. “According to the title deeds and the estate map, it’s a few metres further in.”
Mirabella peered from the plan to the sponge cake and back again. “On the cake, the green strip is quite wide,” she said. “On the paper, it’s very narrow.”
“Bridget allowed extra icing,” I said.
“Even allowing for that, the distances are wrong,” Lord Alistair said.
He walked to the framed map on the wall and tapped the lower corner. “This is the original estate survey. Every few decades it’s updated. When the council sent me Gideon’s proposal, I laid his plan over this one. The boundary line along the lane didn’t match.”
Percival looked very pleased. “This is where units become interesting,” he said. “May I?”
Lord Alistair gestured to the desk. “Please. Try to contain yourself,” he added. “The boundary is already under enough strain.”
Percival bent over the plan. “These are metres,” he said, pointing to a column of numbers along one edge. “And these here are feet. Or rather, they’re written as if they were feet. Except that some of the figures have been copied as if they were the same unit.”
I stared at the numbers. They might as well have been Greek to me. “So someone looked at a measurement in feet and just wrote the number down in the metres column?”
“Exactly,” Percival said. “For most of the lines, the conversion is correct. For this one here, it isn’t.”
He tapped a number, then another further along.
“See. They have taken, say, fifty feet and written fifty metres. Which is almost three times as long. It shifts the line.”
Lord Alistair came back to the desk. “That’s why the boundary line on his plan encroaches on my land by several metres.”
Percival nodded. “If you apply the correct conversion, the line moves back to where your map has it. The difference is enough to make space for his road.”
“Exactly,” Lord Alistair said. “With the line where he’s drawn it, he can argue that the access road fits between the back of Milliner’s Lane and the river without crossing my land. With the correct line, there isn’t enough room.”
“Do you think it’s a mistake or did someone do it on purpose?” I asked.
Percival pressed his lips together. “It’s always possible for errors to occur. However, they often favour one party. Repeatedly.”
“Particularly when the numbers that affect the other boundaries are all neatly converted,” Lord Alistair said. “It stretches belief to think that only this one was done by accident.”
Mirabella tilted her head. “Did the person who drew this have access to your estate map?”
“No,” Lord Alistair said. “At least not officially. The estate records are here. The council has a copy of older surveys, but not the internal updates.”
“So they’d have started with their own version,” I said. “And then someone adjusted it.”
Percival nodded. “I’d be very interested to see the older council map. If their base plan is correct and the error appears only on Gideon’s proposal, the question becomes who made that change.”
“His surveyor,” Lord Alistair said. “Theo Bell. He’s the name on the drawing.”
Mirabella traced a careful circle around the suspicious line with her finger without actually touching the paper. “Then it’s clear. This Theo person either made a mistake when he converted units or he helped Gideon shift the boundary.”
Lord Alistair gave a small, noncommittal sound. “Theo works for several developers. I’ve never dealt with him directly.”
“So what can be done about it?” Mirabella asked.
“First I’ll write to the council and point out the discrepancy,” Lord Alistair said. “Then I’ll ask for a meeting with their planning officer. They must compare this plan with their title records.”
Bridget appeared in the doorway with a cloth over her arm. “Is it as bad as you thought?” she asked.
“It’s inaccurate,” Lord Alistair said. “In a very convenient way.”
