The Ledger Stone – Paperback

SOME PLACES KEEP THEIR OWN ACCOUNTS

Hester Rudd finds heirs for a living. Old registers, dead men’s papers and the families they never mentioned are her trade.

A probate job brings her to Mallowcombe, a village on the edge of Exmoor with one road in, and the road is under water. Walter Ley, the last farmer at Hurl, has drowned in the lane. He has left no will that anyone can find, a standing stone with nine marks cut into its face, and a barn full of ledgers going back two hundred years.

Every household has paid its dues. And every so often, beside a flood, there is a name, and one word: Settled.

The newest entry was written after Walter died. The name in it is Hester’s.

As the rain sets in and the lane goes under again, the village is kind to her. It brings her soup. It asks when she is going home. And it waits for the tenth flood.