McKinsey studied them, then murmured, “The choice of the magistrate as the victim of the burglary is, I suspect, revealing. Had it been anyone else, the constables would have been much less likely to leap into action as they did. In terms of getting you two out of the way — I am, of course, assuming that that was the purpose of the candlesticks, to remove you both so that the package you were holding for me could be spirited away — the ploy was carefully and very cleverly thought out. So. . who knew about the girl and was clever enough to devise and effect such a scheme?”

A moment passed, then Cobbins looked at Fletcher. “Timms?”

McKinsey’s brows rose. “Who is Timms?”

Fletcher was frowning. “An unemployed solicitor’s clerk. Said he was on his way to Glasgow and stopped at the inn — he came in a few hours after us, I think.”

“And he stayed?”

Fletcher nodded. “Seems he had a wound — war wound possibly — that was playing up.”

“He said because of driving so far in his rattly old pony trap,” Cobbins said. “And that was true enough. His trap was ancient.”

“So he arrived after you, and was still at the inn when you were arrested?” McKinsey asked.

“Not sure if he was still there.” Fletcher exchanged a glance with Cobbins. “He said he was getting ready to leave and drive on to Glasgow in easy stages. He’d waited around long enough.”

“What does this man look like?”

“Not as tall as you,” Fletcher said. “Not as big. A bit slighter all around. Brown eyes.”

“Hazel,” Cobbins corrected. “And dark hair — very dark brown. Dressed like a clerk, dark clothes, ordinary stuff. Always appeared a bit scruffy — like he needed a new razor and had lost his hairbrush.”

Fletcher nodded agreement.

“How did he speak?” McKinsey asked.

Fletcher shrugged. “Well spoken enough, like you’d expect a London solicitor’s clerk to speak.” He frowned, and looked at McKinsey. “No real accent, now I think on it. A bit like. .”

McKinsey smiled chillingly. “A bit like me?” After a moment, he murmured, softly, to himself, “I sincerely hope not.” More loudly he asked, “Did Timms get to know the girl?”

Fletcher pulled a face, shook his head. “Not that I saw. He nodded to her — knew she was with us — but he swallowed our story and kept his distance.” He glanced at Cobbins.

“Saw him stop beside her and speak with her. .” Cobbins screwed up his face in thought. “Day before yesterday, it’d be — when she and Martha went for a short walk. We kept watch — one of us — from the inn. Timms was out walking. He stopped beside the girl and sat down — not close — to look at his map. But Martha was right there, next to them, the whole time.”

“What about at night?”

“Martha’s good at what she does,” Fletcher said. “She always took all their clothes, hers and the girl’s, and slept on them, so if the girl tried to escape, she’d have to do so all but naked. And they always shared a room.”

“Hmm.” After a moment, McKinsey nodded. “All right. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll speak to the magistrate and explain that you’d been south to collect a package for me, that you had it at the inn, but then someone — we have no idea who — stole his candlesticks, put them in your room, and alerted the constables. Once you were taken up, my package disappeared.” His wintry eyes met Fletcher’s. “I’m confident the magistrate will understand — especially as he has his candlesticks back, and no real evidence to say you two actually took them and it didn’t instead happen as I’ll claim. Indeed, my missing package can be taken as proof of your innocence of the theft.”

Fletcher and Cobbins both nodded. Neither ventured any comment.

McKinsey smiled coldly. “Indeed. In return for my assistance in gaining your release, gentlemen, and for the payment I’ll leave waiting for you at the inn — not, sadly, the payment you would have received had you handed over my package as arranged, but enough to satisfy you in the circumstances — in return for both those things, you will oblige me by leaving Gretna and heading back over the border, and forgetting all you ever knew about this episode. Forgetfulness would definitely be in your best interests. I don’t care which town you make for, but I do ask that you remain out of Scotland for. . shall we say the next year?”

There was enough refined menace in McKinsey’s eyes to have both Fletcher and Cobbins nodding. Fletcher cleared his throat. “Seems fair.”

“Indeed — it is. Eminently fair.”

“But what about the package — the girl?”

McKinsey’s icy gaze fixed on Fletcher. A heartbeat ticked past, then McKinsey softly said, “I will hunt down my package. I don’t believe I will require any help.”

Fletcher swallowed, nodded. “Right. Of course.”

McKinsey held his gaze for an instant more, then turned away. “I bid you farewell, gentlemen. I’ll arrange for your freedom, but it won’t happen immediately. Sit quiet, say nothing, and you’ll be free by this evening.”

Fletcher and Cobbins listened to his footsteps retreat, heard the door to the cells groan open, then shut again.

When silence returned, Fletcher glanced at Cobbins. “That’s one scary bugger.”

Cobbins nodded and sank back on the bunk. “Don’t know about you, but I’m glad we won’t be meeting him again.”

The man who Fletcher and Cobbins knew as McKinsey was very glad he’d decided to use an alias.

After speaking with the magistrate, who, while he might not be able to place him, had recognized his true station well enough to readily acquiesce to his request that his hirelings be released without charge, McKinsey returned to “reward” the constables, then recruit them in searching for his missing package, and arrange for Fletcher and Cobbins to be held until evening before being released.

By then he would be on his way, whichever way that was.

Mounted on his favorite chestnut gelding, he rode back up the highway to Gretna Green, and the Nutberry Moss Inn. The constables, vocal cords loosened by the largesse he’d distributed, had volunteered that the older woman they’d assumed to be one of Fletcher and Cobbins’s accomplices had fled back over the border into England the previous evening; they hadn’t bothered giving further chase. Of the girl, however, they’d had no sign.

That the girl must have fled, either alone or, more likely and very possibly worse, in the company of some bounder passing himself off as a solicitor’s clerk, preyed on his mind. That definitely wasn’t how his plan was supposed to have played out.

But he’d long ago learned the need to flow with fate, to take whatever clouts she sent him and survive. Manage and make the best of things had long been his creed.

In this case, that meant learning where the girl had gone, then following her and rescuing her. Getting his plan back on track and making restitution in whatever way he could, to her at least. Her family would be something else again, but that was too far in the future for him to worry about now.

First, find the girl. Second, get rid of the bounder.

Drawing rein in the Nutberry Moss forecourt, he smiled easily at the young lad who came running to take his horse. He dismounted and handed over the reins. “I’ll be maybe an hour, no more. Just walk him a little, then rest him.”

Eyes round with awe, the lad tugged his forelock, and reverently led Hercules away. The big gelding had come by the name through having to carry the weight of him on his back.

He walked into the inn. Fletcher and Cobbins would have been surprised to witness the persona he deployed with the innkeeper. He didn’t need to frighten the man, so he didn’t.

“Timms?” The innkeeper consulted his register. “Aye, m’ lord. He came in later on the day your men arrived.”

“And when did he leave?”

The innkeeper scratched his ear. “Can’t rightly say that he has left, m’lord. His bags and clothes are gone, the girls tell me — all his personal things — but his writing desk is still there, and his trap and his horse are still in the stable. He didn’t say anything to me about moving on just yet — said his wound was still playing up. He’s paid up for another two nights.”

“I see.” He thought, then said, “Fletcher and Cobbins will be released later today — they’ll be back to claim their luggage.” He withdrew a sealed packet from his inside pocket. “I told them I’d leave this for them — if you could make sure they receive it?” The innkeeper nodded and took the packet, stowing it under the counter. “In the meantime, however, if I could see their rooms — the two Fletcher hired, and if I could just look into Timms’s room. No harm if there’s nothing personal in there.”

“Indeed not, m’lord. The room the women used was number one, at the end of the corridor to the left. Fletcher and Cobbins were in room five, that’s just by the top of the stairs, and Timms was in room eight — end of the corridor to the right.”

He smiled. “Thank you. I’ll just have a look around — I won’t trouble you further.”

“No trouble at all, m’lord. Just call if you want anything.”

He climbed the stairs and checked the women’s room first. There was nothing left, no belongings of any kind, not even hairpins on the dressing table. Presumably the girl had at least had time to pack, then.

Moving to Fletcher and Cobbins’s room, he noted their bags had been left in the wardrobe. Passing on to Timms’s room, he stuck his head in, saw, as he’d been told, that the wardrobe, gaping open, was empty. Other than an ancient traveling writing desk on the side table by the bed, there was no sign of any belongings anywhere.

Crossing to the writing desk, he raised the lid. A few sheets of yellowing parchment, an assortment of old nibs and pens, and a small bottle of ink nestled inside. None of the sheets bore any helpful name or address, or, indeed, any mark at all. There was nothing to suggest any of the implements had been used in years; even the piece of blotting paper was blank. Releasing the lid, he raked the room one last time, then walked out.

Stepping into the corridor, he pulled the door shut — and looked consideringly at the narrow servants’ stair in the shadows at the corridor’s end. When he’d called at the inn earlier, the innkeeper had related the sequence of events that had culminated in Fletcher and Cobbins’s arrests. The two women had remained in the parlor, as far as anyone had known. Only much later, when one of the serving girls had thought to look in, surprised that the women hadn’t rung for afternoon tea, had their absence been discovered.

The parlor door had been open when he’d come in. Assuming the two women had been inside when the constables had arrived, they would have heard, quite possibly seen, all that had transpired. Martha, certainly, had seen the implications. That explained her rapid and effective flight. And, of course, Martha had left the girl to fend for herself. But if Timms was behind the scheme of the candlesticks, then where had he been? Neither the innkeeper nor his staff had sighted him after breakfast that day.

Looking back down the corridor all the way to the women’s room, he felt sure Timms had been there, in his room, playing least in sight while the constables had removed Fletcher and Cobbins. Then. . he looked again at the stair. If it led to where he thought it did. .

He went silently down it.

As he’d suspected, the stair debouched into a tiny hall between the kitchen and the inn’s back door. He wasn’t easily overlooked, yet even he managed to slip past the open doorway of the kitchen and slide out of the back door without being seen.

“So that’s how Timms got in and out without being seen by the innkeeper or anyone else.”

Stepping off the single step outside the back door, he looked across the inn’s stable yard, which was at the side of the inn, on the west, rather than at the rear. If Timms had taken the girl and come out this way. . why hadn’t he taken his trap and driven off?

He walked across the yard and into the stable. The young lad, the stableman, and two helpers were all gathered about a stall admiring Hercules. The lad saw him and jumped to attention. “Do you want him, then, m’lord?”

He smiled. “No, not just yet.” He let his smile flow on to the stableman. “I wanted to take a look at Mr. Timms’s trap.”

The stableman was happy to oblige.

While answering eager questions about Hercules’ pedigree, he examined the trap; it was indeed as rickety as Cobbins had made out. As for the nag that went with it. . if Timms and the girl had taken to the road in the trap, they would have been caught by the constables, who, he’d been told, had ridden out along all the roads in an attempt to capture Fletcher and Cobbins’s accomplices.