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Hunger led her to gather her cutlery, slice the bacon and pop a piece into herher food, she said, “And so our main objective must be to find the person responsible for Mr Cribb’s murder”

“I visited Cribb’s last known address, spoke to the other tenants No one recalls anything unusual about the gentleman”

“And what of the other members of the order? Do you trust them?”

“With my life Only Proctor knew of your father’s most recent cases”

“Cases? You mentioned there was more than one”

Mr Daventry pushed out of his chair and moved to the sideboard He opened the top drawer, delved under napkins and removed one of her father’s journals “Read this while you eat your meal, and then ill discuss my plan”

So told her Mr Daventry was keen to exclude her frohts on the matter, she took the journal and read the neat script while Mr Daventry ate a second helping of bacon and eggs

Judging by the date recorded, it see a collapsed an that had killed almost thirty people The co es and sold the land From what Sybil could ascertain, there was a suspicion the collapse had been deliberate

“It states all records relating to the owner of the coalto the sale of the land have either been lost or were destroyed in a fire”

Mr Daventry exhaled deeply “Atticus discovered that three h your father was still waiting for a reply to his correspondence The second, Lord Talbot, has since died The third man remains a mystery”

“And there is no connection between the two cases?”

“None”

Sybil heaved a weary sigh With every new piece of information, the plot thickened

“Someone betrayed your father For years, we have kept our work secret, dealing only with a handful of professional ations Though I received numerous bids from men eren’t at the auction, Sir Melrose, Lord Newberry and the soleer dressed in black are at the top of my suspect list”

“And so what is our next course of action?”