part, on the promise that anyone could walk in and be served. Octavia read every entry, and she thanked Tamsin, and she asked her if she would be willing to sit in the back office that morning when Octavia spoke to Hugh, not to accuse him herself but to be present, because what Octavia was about to show him concerned Tamsin's notes as well as his own notebook, and because Octavia did not want Tamsin to learn what happened secondhand.
Tamsin agreed, though her hands were shaking a little as she put her notebook back in her tote. Octavia told her to take her time, to make herself a fresh coffee, and to come to the office when Hugh arrived, and then Octavia sat down at the desk and laid out her folder: Hugh's green notebook, her own figures for the diverted pieces and the appraisal fees, the appraisal forms with no filings, and Tamsin's notebook, open to the page with the fourteen entries. She arranged them the way she arranged stones on a tray before a setting, in order, with space between them, so that each one could be seen clearly. She did not feel triumph. She felt the weight of what she was about to do, which was to end a man's eleven years at a shop, and to do it on the basis of paper, which was the only basis that would hold. She waited, listening to the shop wake up around her, to the sound of the front door unlocking and the lights coming on, and when Hugh Ashford's footsteps sounded on the carpet, she stood up, and she went to meet him.
Hugh Ashford came into the back office with his usual air of ownership, a man entering a room that has been his for eleven years, and he stopped when he saw Octavia standing by the desk and Tamsin standing near the door with her tote bag clutched in front of her like a shield. His face did a quick, practiced rearrangement, from surprise to wariness to a smooth, professional calm, and he set his briefcase down on the chair by the wall with a care that Octavia noticed, because it was the care of a man buying time.
"Mr. Ashford," Octavia said, "my name is Octavia Thornfield. I bought Aster and Grey from the Carrow family three weeks ago. I have been completing the transition inventory. I was in the shop yesterday morning, in denim and a canvas jacket, and I asked to see the willow-leaf emerald ring. You told me it was by-appointment viewing, and then you opened a case immediately for another customer who had no appointment. I am not here to argue about yesterday. I am here because what I found in the inventory goes well beyond yesterday, and I want you to see it before I decide what to do with it."
She laid out the green notebook first, open to the first page. Hugh looked at it, and his face changed in a way that no amount of practice could hide. The smooth calm broke, and for a second there was something raw underneath it, a flash of fear, and then he recovered, and he reached for the notebook, and Octavia put her hand on it, gently, not to snatch it but to hold it where it was.
"This was in the store safe," she said. "It records twenty-three pieces sold over thirty months, totaling eighty-seven thousand dollars, with payments marked W. I have matched several of these entries to the repair log and the consignment file. A customer's emerald bracelet that came in for a clasp repair and was recorded as uncollected. A limited-edition watch listed as sold with no sale receipt. A pair of diamond earrings consigned and recorded as returned with no return signature. I am not asking you to explain each entry right now. I am asking you to understand that I have read them, and that I have the repair log and the consignment file to set beside them."