THE HARGROVE INVITATION

THE ARGUMENT

Chapter Four

Dorothy came back inside at half past eight.

Her coat was dry.

Clara didn't notice. She was standing at the kitchen window watching the rain come down and thinking about her father's empty bed and the blackmail letter upstairs in her bag and the way Dominic Crane had looked at the ornamental pond through the drawing room window like he was waiting for it to tell him something.

"He's not out there," Dorothy said. She hung her coat on the hook. "I checked everywhere. The outbuildings. The south garden. The lane as far as the gate."

"Then where is he?" Clara turned from the window.

"I don't know." Dorothy sat down at the table. "But I think we need to call someone."

"The police," Clara said immediately.

"Yes. Eventually." Dorothy folded her hands. "But first — I think we should call Margaret."

Clara looked at her. "Why Margaret first?"

"Because Margaret knows this family's affairs better than anyone alive. If something has happened — if this is connected to the will, to the estate, to any of Roland's business — she will know what questions to ask and what to protect." Dorothy looked at her steadily. "The police will come in and see a missing person. Margaret will come in and see the full picture."

Clara thought about this. It made sense. It always made sense when Dorothy said things — that was one of the things about her, the way she could take a complicated situation and find the logical path through it without appearing to try.

"All right," Clara said. "Call her."

"I already have," Dorothy said. "She's on her way."

---

Dominic appeared in the kitchen doorway at that moment — how long he had been standing there Clara didn't know, which was a thought she filed away immediately — and looked at Dorothy.

"You called someone," he said. It was not a question.

"The family lawyer," Dorothy said. "Yes."

Something shifted in Dominic's face. Not dramatically — not the way most people's faces shifted when they were unhappy about something. Just a slight reconfiguration, a tightening around the eyes, a quality of stillness that was different from his usual stillness.

"That's premature," he said.

Clara looked at him. "Premature? My father is missing."

"Your father has been missing for a few hours." He came into the kitchen. Stood near the window, not at the table — keeping his distance, Clara noted, keeping the geometry of the room in his favour. "Calling in a lawyer before you've even called the police is — it sends a message."

"What message?"

"That this family has something to manage." He looked at her. "Rather than something to report."

The kitchen was very quiet for a moment.

"My father is missing," Clara said again, more slowly. "From his own house. The night before his will is read. And you think we should — what? Wait? Handle it ourselves?"

"I think we should be careful," Dominic said, "about who we bring into this before we understand what we're dealing with."

"We're dealing with a missing person."

"We're dealing with a situation we don't fully understand yet." His voice was even. Controlled. The voice of someone accustomed to managing their own reactions and slightly impatient with people who weren't. "Bringing in a lawyer before you have any facts creates a narrative. It tells whoever comes after — police, press, whoever — that the family's first instinct was to protect its interests rather than find the truth."

Clara stared at him. "The press."

"These things get out."

"My father is missing and you're worried about the press."

"I'm worried about doing this correctly." He met her gaze. "Which means not making moves before we understand the board."

"The board." Clara felt something rise in her chest — not quite anger, something hotter and less controlled than anger. "This isn't a game, Dominic. This isn't — whatever you came here for, whatever your questions and your files and your midnight walks are about — this is my father. He is a real person who is not where he should be and I am not going to sit here and play it low key while — "

"I'm not asking you to play anything." His voice sharpened very slightly. The first crack in the composure, small but definite. "I'm asking you to think before you act. There's a difference."

"Don't tell me to think — "

"Someone has to."

The words landed flat. Not cruel — worse than cruel. Precise. The tone of a man who had calculated that this was the most efficient thing to say and had said it without apparent consideration of how it would land.

Clara looked at him.

"Get out of my kitchen," she said quietly.

"It's not your — "

"Get out."

"Clara." Dorothy's voice. Quiet. Not loud, not sharp, simply present — the particular quality of Dorothy's voice when she wanted a room to stop. Both of them looked at her. She was sitting at the table with her hands folded and her expression entirely composed and she looked, Clara thought, like someone who had been expecting this and had been patient about waiting for it.

"Sit down," Dorothy said. To both of them.

Neither of them sat.

"Dominic." Dorothy looked at him. "Margaret Elliot has been handling this family's affairs for thirty years. She is not a liability. She is the person best equipped to help Clara navigate whatever this is." A pause. "And she is already on her way. So the conversation about whether to call her is finished."

Dominic looked at Dorothy. Something passed between them — Clara felt it again, that current she couldn't name, the frequency she couldn't tune into.

He said nothing.

"Clara." Dorothy turned to her. "He isn't wrong that we need to be careful. The way this is handled in the next few hours will matter. Margaret will know that. That's why I called her." She looked at them both. "We are not opponents in this room. We are three people in a house where something has gone wrong, and we will manage it better together than separately."

A silence.

Clara looked at Dominic. He was looking at the window. The muscle in his jaw was working slightly — the only physical sign, she realised, that he was anything other than completely composed.

"Fine," he said finally. Without looking at her.

"Fine," Clara said. To Dorothy, not to him.

Dorothy nodded once. She stood up. "I'll make more tea," she said, as if the matter were entirely settled, which somehow — impossibly — it was.

She moved to the kettle.

Dominic went back to the drawing room.

Clara sat at the table and looked at Dorothy's back and thought about what had just happened — the argument, Dorothy stopping it, Dorothy having called Margaret before she even suggested it, Dorothy being three steps ahead of everyone in the room at all times.

She thought: *she is so calm.*

She thought: *she is always so calm.*

She thought: *why is she always so calm?*

Dorothy filled the kettle.

Outside the rain came down harder.

---