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Toby felt foolish. The vicar had told him nothing that Carol couldn’t tell him herself. Vera had been pregnant at her wedding. She had given birth and the baby had been baptized. Lady Sylvia had attended the baptism and shown absolutely no interest in the child. The Earl had given Vera a five-pound note. The vicar had offered to show him the baptismal record. Unlike the records of Lady Sylvia’s child, this record of Vera’s child still existed.
The phone on the desk was ringing. It had been ringing for some time, but the vicar had so far ignored it.
“Would you excuse me?” Farley-Reed asked, indicating the jangling instrument.
“Oh, of course.”
Toby touched Carol’s arm and led her out of the vestry and into the vaulted church.
“Satisfied?” Carol asked, her voice echoing among the dusty timbers.
“I’m sorry.”
“And so you should be.”
“There’s just one thing.”
“What?”
Toby hesitated. She would know soon enough. The whole village would know soon enough, but he thought he should be the one to break the news to her.
“What?” she asked again.
“The Earl, or maybe it was Lady Sylvia, employed an agent to look for Vera.”
“They’ll never find her,” Carol said. “Everyone thinks she went to California. No one is going to look in West Virginia. You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“No,” Toby said, “of course I didn’t, but Lady Sylvia’s father-in-law is not the kind of man who will give up easily.”
“America’s a big country,” Carol replied, “and even if he does find her, she’s never going to let the baby go.”
As Toby hesitated on the verge of telling Carol the truth, the vicar came out of the vestry, hurrying as fast as his arthritic bones would allow.
“Mr. Whitby, you’re needed at the Hall.”
“It can wait,” Toby snapped, still looking at Carol.
“No, it can’t. They’re asking for you to come now. We’ll go up together. We can take your car.”
“I’m talking to Miss Elliot,” Toby protested.
The vicar looked away and called into the gloom of the sanctuary. “Tom, where are you? Tom?”
“He seems very upset,” Carol said. “I had no idea he could raise his voice like that.”
“Tom,” the vicar called again, even more urgently.
A voice called out from the gloom of a side chapel. “What do you want, Vicar?”
“The bell. Toll the bell.”
“What? Now?”
The voice was coming closer. A solid shape was emerging from the shadows.
“How many times?”
“Let me think. Sixty-eight. No, sixty-nine.”
“Sixty-nine? Who died?”
“The Earl,” said the vicar. “Toll the death bell sixty-nine times, once for every year of his life.”
Toby forgot about Carol. He forgot about Mr. Harrigan and Vera, and even the child who was already on her way across the Atlantic. The Earl was dead. An hour ago he had been sitting in the library, begging for cigarettes, and now he was dead, and he, Toby Whitby, was being called to the Hall.
He would have to phone Mr. Champion and see if he could even be allowed to handle the matter himself or if Mr. Champion would be required, but first he should act to protect the Earl’s will. Suppose he had changed it at the last minute. Suppose a new will lay hidden beneath the Earl’s bedcovers. He knew he was being overly dramatic, but as the great bell began to toll and the vicar hurried beside him, his cassock flapping in the wind, he felt the sudden weight of his responsibilities.
“Toby.” Carol reached out to stop him.
“Not now. I have to go.”