4 January

I write this as I wait for the carriage to return and collect us once more. By us, I mean simply Lord DeCourt and myself. There is a failing of trust between myself and the others we have been forced to involve in this whole sorry affair. Even as I sit and reflect on the last hour or so, I don't know that the maids who work at this sorry excuse for a church can be expected to keep our visit to themselves. Who even knows how many of them are under the command of the doctor, especially given his fondness for torturing the poor rector?

Convinced to return to the church after the dramatic departure of yesterday, I argued my case to the Lord and found in him, at least, a steady partner. He agreed heartily that if the doctor had spent a significant time caring (as debatably as the term may apply) for the rector and indulging in his boasts, then there had to be some evidence of his claims at the church. It was a slim hope, but we refused to return to Cambridge empty-handed. Threatening to keep us indoors permanently, the snow and cold made for a difficult night, the sting of the low temperatures proving much too painful for the Lord to sleep comfortably. My own health suffered somewhat, but I could hardly complain while the Lord creaked with every step. After only an hour of attempting to sleep, he reemerged from his room with dark eyes and a grim countenance. Fortunately, pie was waiting for us, and we winced the night away with happy stomachs. 

The morning (that is, today) was even worse. Our driver cursed, swore, and spat the entire brutal drive to St. Peter's, and every one of his horses made such fearsome noises that I was convinced we would topple over and be left to mark the path where only foolish adventurers roamed. 

Am I not allowed to be a tad dramatic?

By the time we reached the church, my fingers had frozen into a furled shape, even though I kept them well-wrapped in my sleeves, and the Lord's nose had turned such a bright red that I feared it would start bleeding with a ferocity. Even once we departed the carriage and entered the church (thankfully opened as though the maid behind the door knew we would be arriving), we still required nearly ten minutes to shake the snow off our arms and breathe into our hands. 

"I suspect you'll want to talk to him again?" The maid was the one who'd introduced us to the rector the day before, but the expression on her face said all too clearly how much she disapproved of our speaking with the man. Let him die in peace, her eyes seemed to say. Only when the Lord assured her through his chattering teeth that he didn't know what good that would do did the maid's eyes relent. 

"Records," was all I could stutter out myself, my lips frozen in a mushy mess (I will write here to remind myself to bring a handkerchief next time I venture out in such harsh conditions - the incessant dripping from my nose coupled with the cold is one of the worst, most irritating sensations I have ever experienced!). 

The maid was sympathetic. She looked at us a moment before nodding her head, leading us into one of the rooms behind the main chapel. Moving aside piles of spare blankets, emptied bottles like the one the rector had nursed so desperately the day before, and dozens of nightshifts bearing curious red stains. I wanted to ask what the origins of the stains were, but before I could open my mouth, the maid revealed a heavy box filled to the brim with aging records and crumbling papers. "Well," she sighed, wiping the dirt from her hands on the front of her apron-like top, "here you are. Whatever it is you want, it'll be in these. Reverend Barnes has, historically, been charged with the upkeep and filing of various official dealings in the county, so you'll forgive him if it's a mess in here. Not much time to organise, now is there?" 

"And marriage records?" The Lord sneezed and wrung his hands together. "I cannot stress the importance of finding previous records for the doctor who's been torturing your poor rector." 

The maid frowned. "I've told you, it's a mess. There's no use in asking him, but I'd suspect so. Have a look." With a final grumble, she departed, closing the door behind us as if to remind us to stay away from the dying old man. The Lord and I looked at the massive piles of paper and heaved a few sighs ourselves. Our efforts would need to be preceded by some comfort, so I spent a while shuffling the sheets around into makeshift seats (avoiding the stained ones as carefully as I could) for the Lord, as his joints were far too compromised for helping much at all. 

Once the sheets were wrapped around the spare boxes and altars with too many defects to be used in the chapel, we settled down and shivered at the papers. "I'll start here," I said, rubbing my nose vigorously before I reached for a box. 

"And I, here," Lord DeCourt said. He gave me a pat on the shoulder and an encouraging smile before pulling a box as close as he could and reaching within. 

There really is no need to bore this account with details of our tiresome investigations into the contents of the ancient boxes of papers. The rector had no doubt been a diligent man in his youth, but age, illness, and the constricting hand of the doctor had long ao stifled any sense of organisation. For nearly an hour, I must have looked a thousand copies of a farm being sold, a horse being transferred to a different church, or a member of the clergy being elevated or promoted. The Lord was built for this sort of gruesome research, especially given his inclination towards studying his own ancestry (how large his collection of books in any given room, much less the library he was so proud of!), but even he began to feel the sting of the monotony. The maid, feeling some sense of concern, entered the room once or twice to ensure we had something to drink and something warm to eat for lunch, but we were otherwise left with only our sense of duty to keep us moving forward. 

Through the small, dirty windows we could see the daylight sinking rapidly. A sense of desperation settled in the room; the flipping of pages increased tenfold, the scanning of eyes over another poorly transcribed page moving too fast to comprehend more than the general topic of the record. 

"I can't focus," I said at last, jumping to my feet, eyes watering from the effort of keeping them open and strained so much. "There is hardly anything in here worth looking at! Who needs so many records of farm animals and lard profits for the decade?" My sudden outburst startled the Lord into dropping the page he'd been labouring over, and he took the opportunity to stretch his swollen joints. 

"It is rather unfortunate," he said with a wearied expression and a pop of the back, "just how much the man had to read this. To think, he had to suffer Dr. Radcliffe after it all!" 

"A terrible reward for his hard work." We exchanged places, Lord DeCourt moving closer to the window to peer out at the snow. I picked up the page he'd dropped and gave it my best glare. If I wanted inspiration for a tale of horror to rival the monsters of doomed castles and scientists, this was surely it! In one look, I counted the word land no less than six times. How very grateful I was not to be the Reverend William Barnes!

Roving around with the paper in one hand, I picked up a plate with now-stale biscuits from the maid and shimmied one towards my mouth. Crunching on the hard flour, I wondered what use there was in reading any further. I held the page aloft in the final dregs of sunlight and began to read aloud the nonsense about landed sales on the outskirts of the city and beyond, more so to amuse the Lord and distract him from the pain he was wincing his way through. 

"Let the Lord bear witness to this transaction of home and land in the year eighteen sixty-one, on this day in March. The ownership of all house and property shall pass from Andrews, Cartier to the Dr. Radcliffe, Igor..." I paused my jesting to stare in horror at the Lord, who had stared at me as I read with a slack mouth. 

"Ownership of a house?" 

"Just twenty years past... my Lord," I stuttered, dropping the plate and looking at the paper with my hands shaking. How very much in keeping with my luck! All of the hours spent reading, and the one moment I waste on a laugh turns to contain a stroke of relevant information! Hours upon hours I read past names of animals, streets, and land - why now, should I find something of use? It wasn't a marriage application or a divorce paper, but how very intriguing, to find a date of actual importance for the doctor. "My Lord, you said once that you didn't often leave your house, but you couldn't remember having heard of the doctor. Is this perhaps the answer to your ignorance of his person?"

"Ms. Peterson," he exclaimed with wide eyes and trembling lips, "you have no idea the implications... the information... Does it say anything further?" He held his hands to his chest, and I feared for a moment his heart would fail him. Even my own beat far too hard for comfort in the confines of my chest! 

"More of the same," I read aloud, scanning the following sentences for anything more revealing. "There is a note that the house wasn't obtained under any coercion... This mentions a child!" I held the page out and pointed at the cramped wording. "Here, a boy! Cartier Andrews was the last Andrews, and then he had a child, but look!" Lord DeCourt read over my shoulder and gasped. 

"Atticus! Winnifred Peterson, your friend... he owns the house that the doctor possesses!" We stopped reading to stare at one another. 

"Surely... surely not. He's only a cook's son..."

"Ms. Peterson, he's the heir of the house. Your friend Evelyn has been married to a thief!"

"This says he now owns the house, though."

"And do we trust the doctor to tell any truths about his sudden ownership of a family home?"

The room felt much colder, all of a sudden. The entire mission of finding Evelyn freedom from her murderous husband had changed and grown far more sinister than I could have ever suspected. The doctor did have previous wives, if the rector could be believed in his old age, and Atticus was the remaining member of a family no doubt swindled out of their inheritance. It was preposterous! In truth, my mind could not understand what we'd learned and the day was essentially over for us. 

Making our way to the inn of Mr. Bakersfield, our hearts were heavy with the weight of the horrid knowledge we'd learned. Each of us retired to our respective rooms to reflect, and I settled down to write a shaking letter to Atticus, coded as best as I could remember. How many times did my nerves force me to rewrite what I had accidentally written in simple English! As I wrote, I recalled one last meeting with the Reverend Barnes, a meeting I did not reveal to the Lord, who had gone outside before myself. After we discovered the sale of the house, I pressed into the old man's room and presented it (he was awake, and shivering in a bed of his own sickly sweat). What he told me upon my questioning about the doctor makes me quiver in fear for the sort of man my friend is married to! 

"This man wants to be a proper gentleman, Miss. He will stop at nothing to be seen as proud and regal as he feels in his heart."

"How do we stop him?" I had asked in a whisper. I was so desperate for answers beyond the puzzles I had found so frequently that I cared not for the panicked cries of the rector, nor the noises of the bottles he knocked on the ground in his flailing. "Please, if you ever cared about peace and truth at all, tell me - how do we convince this vile man to stop his madness?" 

"His desire to be a respectable leader in society is never-ending, never-ending!" The maid had rushed in, of course, and pulled me free from the rector, banishing me into the cold with nothing but questions and plots and fears swirling me out into the snow with the Lord DeCourt. 

There is only one thing left to clear up before I can return to Evelyn and Atticus, and that is to visit my home on the cliffs of Dorset. I shudder to think of what I will find waiting for me, what lurks in the garden I once loved. 

Winn