Pell sat alone with the receipt after the others had gone, at the long table under the high window, with the lamp turned up as far as the wick would stand and the Kitchen silent around her except for the tick of the cooling stove. The bread had been put away. The pots had been scoured and set on their hooks, the smaller one in its place and the larger one gone down the Undercroft steps on a sling, and the flagstones had been swept by the scullion, who had swept them crooked. Pell did not mind the crooked flags. She had walked over worse in her time, in worse shoes, on worse nights.
She took the paper out of the drawer again. She did not unlock the box this time. She had put the key in her apron pocket and let the string hang loose at her throat, and she had taken the receipt out of the drawer on its own, from the top of the pile, which was the forgery, and then from beneath it. She had put the forgery to one side, lily-down, the way she had put it away that morning, and she had kept the receipt. It sat now under the lamp on the scrubbed boards, folded in four, its edges soft and yellow in the light.
