Page 36 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
Orion glared. ‘You’ve engaged a barrister? That is your idea of help? Let the newspaper print the opportunity and drag me to trial? And then what? Just throw up your hands and hope for the best? How am I supposed to be vindicated when they’ve got the cheque and the financial records?’
‘We can make arguments of causation. If we can show that the money was for repairs in general, that it wasn’t specifically for funding only the waste pit, we can argue you weren’t directly culpable. If we can show that there were other problems with the dam that contributed to the accident, we can mitigate the role of the waste pit. We can show it to be one of many flaws in the dam’s engineering. Those arguments stand a good chance of being successful since they’ve already been made and the original findings conclude there were a variety of factors. I do think the burden of proof is on paper.’
Orion shot him a sardonic look. ‘And if you’re wrong? This is my life you’re playing with. It’s bad enough you are willing to trot me out into the public eye and let the Griffiths news syndicate attempt to pin this on me.’
Jasper answered with a solemn stare. ‘All right then, let’s back up. Did you do it? Did you take the money? Did you place the work order and not see it carried out?’
‘Yes. No.’ Orion shook his head. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘That’s not an answer. Try again. First, have a sandwich. There is no rush. We have all night.’ He couldn’t save Orion if Orion was not willing to save himself.
Orion sat and Jasper waited patiently while his brother ate. At last Orion was ready to talk and the eating had done its job in settling his emotions.
‘I sent in the work order requesting repairs on the waste pit,’ Orion began. ‘It was a request that came from all three of us assigned to oversee the Bilberry reservoir. My name is on the order only because I drew the short straw and had to fill out the paperwork. It just happened to be my turn. When the money was awarded, it went into the commission’s account first. Then, William Hendricks, who was the current drawer and who was also on my subcommittee for Bilberry, asked if the money could be transferred to my account so that the money could be easily accessed by us to oversee our repairs. He said he was concerned that the money would get used by other reservoirs or eaten up by other expenses. He wanted it separate, given the commission’s history of insolvency.’ Orion gave a tell-tale fidget and Jasper interrupted.
‘The ledger shows evenly quarterly distributions over the course of the year that total up to the deposit amount. Did those go to repairs?’ Even if that money hadn’t gone to the waste pit repair, it would definitely eradicate charges of embezzlement. It would be a start.
Orion shook his head. ‘The money went to Hendricks. He volunteered to be in charge of hiring engineers for the repairs.’
‘Did he ever hire anyone?’ This would also be helpful. If someone had been hired, they could find a contract. It would show that Orion had not wilfully ignored the need for repairs.
‘I don’t know. Hendricks rotated off the subcommittee at the end of his term. By then, the money had all been transferred to his account.’ Orion was nervous. He was bouncing his leg. There was something amiss here.
‘Let me understand. You transferred the repair funds to Hendricks once a quarter and yet no repairs were made and no one was hired. Did you question him about that? Make him accountable?’
Orion fiddled with a sandwich. ‘No. But neither did our third member.’ He let out a sigh. ‘What do you want me to say? That I didn’t follow up? That I didn’t hold another committee member accountable for his actions? That I was lazy? That I didn’t take my position on the commission as seriously as you would have? A position, by the way, that I didn’t want and you foisted it on me not for just one term, but two.’
‘I was trying to give you purpose,’ Jasper explained. ‘I thought after the engineering corps, that dam work would put some of those skills to use. I thought it was a good fit.’
Orion took a savage bite of his sandwich. ‘Except that Ihatedthe engineering corps. I was a horrid engineer.’
‘It was better thanyouroption, which was do nothing,’ Jasper shot back, remembering how difficult Orion had been after university—which he hadn’t quite finished. The don had felt academics weren’t Orion’s calling.
Orion gave him a baleful stare. ‘I’m not you, Jasper. I don’t have answers for everything. I don’t have a sense of purpose. I just move from disaster to disaster, or perhaps I am the disaster. I suppose every family has to have one.’
‘None of that is true, not even the part about me.’ Jasper blew out a breath. If it was, he might not have lost Fleur. They were getting sidetracked now.
‘Being incompetent is unfortunate, but it is not a crime,’ Orion drawled.
Jasper nodded. ‘Where is William Hendricks these days?’ He could hunt down Hendricks, make him accountable. Orion had not acted alone.
Orion took a swallow of brandy. ‘He’s dead. Died last year in April in a hunting accident on the moors, although some say it was suicide because April isn’t exactly hunting season, is it?’ There’d certainly be no hunting down Hendricks, but Jasper could still get his hands on Hendricks’s accounts. Hendricks’s accounts could clear Orion while still giving Fleur a story. Jasper made a note of the date of Hendricks’s death. Just two months after the flood.
Jasper swirled the remainder of the brandy in his snifter. ‘Why did you do it, Orion? Surely, something must have seemed off to you after that first disbursement and no one had been hired to start repairs?’
Orion was silent for a long time and Jasper felt that he’d at last come to the crux of the matter. Orion met his gaze, regret etched in his face. ‘Because I owed him money and he offered to wipe the debt clean if I’d just let him park the reservoir funds in my account.’ Orion sighed. ‘I couldn’t really say no. I didn’t have the funds to pay him back. It seemed like a good option at the time. It was true that there was concern the funds would be used for other expenses. His argument wasn’t illogical. It did make sense to have access to the funds.’ Orion shook his head. ‘But when he didn’t actually disburse those funds for repairs, I couldn’t call him out on it.’
‘That was a better option than coming to me?’ Jasper put in, hurt.
‘Yes, given that I had just so recently disappointed you with my little run-in with the moneylenders.’ Orion closed his eyes, struggling for control. ‘That was eight years ago. I haven’t gambled over my means since. You know that.’ He opened his eyes and Jasper saw real regret there. ‘I told myself it wouldn’t matter. The reservoir waste pit was fine as long as the water didn’t exceed a certain level. Chances were the waste pit would never reach excess. I took a gamble on that. Who would have thought the whole dam would go?’
‘Hendricks was using extortion in order to launder money through your account.’ Jasper drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘It would be harder to trace that way. It would have been too obvious if the whole sum had just shown up in his account all at once and then no work materialised.’ A hypothesis was forming. Perhaps Hendricks’s death had been a suicide after all. Riddled with guilt over the dam deaths, fear of being found out for extortion or connected to the dam accident, and whatever other problems the man had—it would be interesting to find out—Hendricks had taken his own life before he could be discovered.
As the clock chimed one, Jasper came to certain conclusions. Yes, Orion had put himself in trouble’s way, yet again. Yes, he’d need to bear responsibility for his part in it. But his part was no longer the role of the perpetrator. He was guilty of negligent oversight, for not calling for accountability, but he was also the victim of extortion. Orion was guilty of many things, but not the failure of the dam, at least not any more so than of the other commission members.
‘What are we going to do?’ Orion asked.
‘We are going to get some sleep. Tomorrow, we are going to London to stop the presses. There’s an afternoon train and with luck we’ll make it.’
