Darkbank Tunnel - Part 5

The evening at the inn began with a tense debate among the party about the true nature of Grift's schemes — whether his machinations were rooted in simple greed or something far darker and more sinister. Their speculation was cut short when the door swung open and Longthorpe stumbled in, feverish and visibly unwell, his eyes haunted by something he could no longer keep to himself. The innkeeper Trubshaw moved quickly to intercept him, insisting the man was too ill to be trusted and ought to go home, but Longthorpe pushed past him with desperate determination. When he finally sat down and opened his mouth, the confession that poured out was damning: he had sent James Carter into the tunnel to rig a boat with explosives, all on Grift's orders, with the intention of killing the party and making it look like an accident. Carter was dead, the plan had failed, and Longthorpe could no longer carry the weight of it alone. He went further still, revealing that Grift had been blackmailing him — and not just him. Grift, he said, was like a spider with webs running through every corner of the town, with secrets on nearly everyone of consequence. He had been coerced into sabotaging the canal tunnel to help Grift drive the rival quarry out of business, and the guilt of what that had cost James Carter had broken him. The party listened in grim silence, and when Longthorpe mentioned that Grift likely kept a record of everyone's secrets somewhere at his estate, the wheels of a plan began to turn. Before long, the clerk Simon Jones appeared at the door to escort the trembling Longthorpe home, and the party quietly resolved to follow them through the darkened streets to ensure their safety. The pursuit through town did not go entirely smoothly. John twisted his ankle badly during the chase and was forced to hobble back to the hotel, leaving Alfie Quinn and Reverend William Grainger to continue the surveillance alone. The two watched from a distance as Longthorpe and Jones entered a modest terraced house, and after a time they approached the door themselves. Jones answered their knock, and the Reverend wasted no time in warning him plainly: Longthorpe had implicated Grift in a murder, and that made him a dangerous man to have crossed. They urged Jones to lock every door and window, to keep a fire poker close at hand, and to trust no one — not even the police — until the party had a chance to investigate further. Jones agreed, and the sound of bolts sliding home was the last thing they heard as they turned back toward the hotel. Back at the inn, John found himself approached by a desperate man named Gavin Hall, the owner of the rival quarry that Grift had been working so hard to destroy. Hall pulled him into a quiet corner, away from Trubshaw's watchful eyes, and explained that Grift was aggressively buying up his debts from banks in nearby towns, positioning himself to seize the business entirely. John, without much hesitation, agreed to cover the debts — several hundred pounds in total — and the two men made plans to travel to Shrewsbury the following morning to settle the loans before Grift could act. It was a generous gesture, and Hall was visibly relieved, though the shadow of Grift's reach made even that small victory feel precarious. The following morning, while John rode out to Shrewsbury with Hall to handle the banking, Reverend Grainger and Alfie set off on foot toward Shutford Grange, Grift's grand estate a couple of miles outside of town. They walked the perimeter of the low boundary wall, taking in the manicured lawns, the long driveway, and the greenhouse and kitchen garden tucked around the far side of the house. It was agreed that the Reverend would approach the front door with a fabricated story about establishing a new multi-village parish, while Alfie would circle around and find a way in through the rear. They separated, and Alfie slipped over the wall and made his way toward the greenhouse, using it as cover to approach the back of the house unseen. What followed at the front door was a masterclass in stubborn persistence. Reverend Grainger spun an elaborate tale for the butler, Meadows, about a grand new 'Three Villages' parish amalgamation and the urgent spiritual needs of the household, insisting on speaking to every servant and even to Grift himself. Meadows, professional but increasingly strained, attempted every polite means of removal at his disposal before finally losing his composure entirely and shoving the Reverend bodily off the doorstep. Rather than leave, the Reverend collapsed dramatically onto the lawn, clutching his ankle and groaning as though gravely injured. A young maid named Edith rushed out to help, bringing ice and a garden chair, and the Reverend milked the situation for every minute it was worth — questioning her about the household, learning there were only three staff members, and even attempting to have Grift's wife Lavinia brought outside, a request that was met with a furious shake of her head from behind an upstairs curtain. After nearly an hour of this performance, the Reverend finally accepted a crutch from the staff and limped away down the drive, leaving Alfie alone inside the house. Meanwhile, Alfie had found a basement window and slipped inside, hiding near the cold boiler and coal stores while the sounds of the household drifted down from above. He listened to the servants finish their evening chores, heard the clatter of dishes being washed, and then waited in the growing silence as the house settled into sleep. When he was satisfied that the time was right, he crept up the basement stairs, eased open the door, and moved silently through the kitchen and into the main corridor of the house. He found the study on the right side of the hall — a room lined with bookshelves and vertical files, dominated by a large desk bearing a blotter, an inkwell, and a day calendar with a cryptic note about a dinner engagement the following evening. A closer inspection of the room revealed something more significant: one of the portraits on the wall hung at a slight angle, and behind it was a heavy safe. Alfie worked at the combination with painstaking care, drawing on every ounce of skill and fortune he possessed, until at last the mechanism gave way and the door swung open. Inside, alongside a cache of money he chose to leave untouched, was a collection of manila folders — one for each of Grift's victims. The folder for Longthorpe contained photographs and letters proving his secret romantic relationship with Jones. Trubshaw's folder held receipts and copied accounts documenting years of embezzlement. And tucked among the rest were love letters from Inspector Morris to Grift's own wife, Lavinia — passionate, incriminating, and utterly devastating. Alfie gathered the folders carefully and made his way out through the back of the house, slipping into the night with Grift's entire web of blackmail tucked under his arm. While Alfie had been conducting his midnight heist, John and the Reverend had been piecing together another troubling mystery back in town. John had overheard Inspector Morris at the pub, quietly questioning Trubshaw about the whereabouts of Old Tom, the town's night soil man, who had not been seen since Wednesday night. When the party pressed Trubshaw for details, he confirmed that Tom's horse and cart had been found abandoned near the canal towpath — horse still hitched, driver nowhere to be found — and described the scene with grim humor as "the Marie Celeste of shit wagons." The party walked down to the towpath themselves and found something that made the disappearance feel far less like an accident: clear signs in the grass that someone had been dragged into the water. They followed the canal downstream to the town lock, hoping to find something caught in the gates or paddles, but the lockkeeper had seen and heard nothing unusual. The mystery of Old Tom remained unsolved, another dark thread in the already tangled web surrounding Grift and the canal. The party returned to the hotel with more questions than answers, though the knowledge that Alfie was still somewhere inside Shutford Grange weighed heavily on the Reverend in particular. They could only wait and hope that the young man's considerable resourcefulness would see him through. When Alfie finally slipped back into town under cover of darkness, the blackmail folders safely in hand, the pieces of Grift's empire of secrets were at last within the party's grasp. The confessions of Longthorpe, the financial rescue of Gavin Hall, the Reverend's absurd and heroic performance on the lawn of Shutford Grange, and Alfie's nerve-shredding heist had all come together to bring them to this moment. Grift's hold over the town — over Longthorpe, over Trubshaw, over Inspector Morris, over all of them — now rested in a stack of manila folders carried by a young man who had spent the better part of a day hiding in a coal cellar. The question of what to do with that power, and how to bring Grift himself to account, was a problem that would have to wait until morning.