She wanted him silenced, controlled, and close enough to summon when necessary.
When Finch returned, Daniel went back to tightening the hinge.
The steward noticed his expression and asked whether the door had proved difficult.
Daniel said the frame had swollen with humidity.
That answer was true, but it was not the reason his hands had turned cold.
Later he told Rose what he remembered.
She repeated the entry back to him until both could recite it without hesitation.
Thomas pointed out that a paid agreement might be used against Catherine if they ever reached somebody who could examine her accounts.
Daniel answered that a document was only useful if someone with power was willing to hear what it proved.
The next morning Finch ordered the ledger moved to a locked cabinet.
Daniel wondered whether the steward had noticed the open page.
He watched Finch’s habits and discovered that the man kept duplicates of unusual transactions in a small traveling notebook.
Finch was careful with his employer’s money and careless with the people whose lives the money controlled.
That carelessness could become evidence.
Thomas urged patience.
They needed the notebook itself or somebody willing to testify about its contents.
Five days after Graves departed, a second visitor arrived at Red Creek.
His name was Nathaniel Blackwood, the Colonel’s younger cousin, and he wore his resemblance to Richard like an unwanted inheritance.
Nathaniel came without soldiers and asked to speak to Pike in private.
He had served as a clerk in Richmond and possessed enough legal training to understand the difference between a household rumor and a sworn declaration.
He had also seen the infant before she disappeared.
Daniel learned this from a conversation overheard through the open window of Pike’s dining room.
Nathaniel said Richard intended to tell the county court that Catherine’s baby had died shortly after birth.
He had already arranged a certificate from a physician who never entered the nursery.
Nathaniel objected because the child had been alive when he visited the house.
Pike asked why he cared.
Nathaniel answered that false records had a way of becoming tools for other lies.
Pike did not appreciate moral advice from a visitor who could offer no immediate payment.
He told Nathaniel that Daniel was a valuable worker, and he had no intention of releasing him without compensation.
Nathaniel said he had come to warn, not purchase.
He mentioned that another messenger might arrive bearing orders to remove Daniel by force.
