The Women’s Institute hall smelled of polish. Someone had dusted around the framed former presidents, so each wore a crescent of grey at the nape. Maggie arrived early with her notebook and a pencil already dull from use. She liked the room before voices. It kept its secrets better.
Audrey Crenshaw stood at the trestle table, laying out files, spines aligned in a strict parade: SUBSCRIPTIONS, FUNDRAISING, WINE ORDER, HALL REPAIRS. She relabelled WINE ORDER twice, then put it back.
“We’ll get through it,” Audrey said without looking up.
Maggie set the kettle to boil.
By seven, the others had arrived with cardigans, biscuits, and weather. Netta Flinn brought ginger snaps and a leftover packet of fig bars, declaring them “currency in any crisis.” Reginald Smythe-Harrington stood too straight, hands behind his back. They all sat. They all poured tea. No one drank any.
Audrey squared the ledger, cleared her throat.
“We have a small discrepancy in the community-hall accounts.”
Netta leaned to Maggie. “Small like a stone in your shoe.”
“Nothing material,” Audrey continued. “But the balance won’t match, and I don’t sign off lines that don’t match.”
Reginald nodded once. “Quite right.”
The ledger lay under the lamp, leather soft from years of decisions. Maggie opened it as one might a hymnbook and found the last page written in an unusual ink—blue-green, almost lit from within. The figures were neat, flourished, then corrected in Audrey’s small, exact hand.
The ink gave off the faintest bite—metallic, like air held too long. Maggie did not name any of this. She only noticed, and set the noticing beside the tea.
“We should go line by line,” Audrey said. “Subscriptions first.”
They did. It was all proper. Subscriptions balanced. The summer fête was within a pound of perfect. The biscuit fund was both over and under, depending on whether Dot’s unclaimed custard creams belonged.
The trouble sat where they knew it would: the wine order Leonard had promised, his grand gesture meant to win the supper’s approval. His entry stood proud; the note in Audrey’s hand did not match.
Reginald turned the ledger slightly toward the light.
“Paying the bill,” he said, “is not the same as settling the debt.”
No one replied. The tea cooled.
“It’s not much,” Netta said at last, carefully. “But it’s not nothing.”
Audrey pressed her pearls flat against her collarbone, counting without seeming to count.
“I have the voucher somewhere,” she said. “I’ll find it.”
They adjourned for ten minutes that stretched to twenty. There were biscuits and quiet chewing. Maggie stood by the noticeboard, where posters layered and faded. Reginald joined her, rubbing a thumb along the ledger’s edge.
“He gave me money once,” he said. “For raffle tickets he never collected. Not the amount that mattered. The show of it.”
Maggie nodded. She had seen the parade. She had seen what it left behind.
The next evening, a knock. Audrey stood in the doorway with the ledger clutched like a prayer book.
“I’ve found the voucher,” she said.
Inside, Maggie brewed tea. Neither of them drank it.
Audrey set the receipt on the table between them. The date fell strangely. The signature was Leonard’s, smaller.
Maggie waited.
“You were paying it for him,” she said at last.
Audrey’s hands paused above the folder. “Don’t,” she said. Then, more quietly, “Please.”
“I know,” Maggie said.
Audrey folded the paper, placed it back in the ledger, and straightened a chair on her way out—a reflex, halfway between apology and order.
The following night, the hall again.
The chair at the head table stayed empty, its wood pale under the lamp.
Audrey read out the reconciled totals with brittle cheer. Maggie wrote nothing.
Leonard’s fountain pen lay beside the ledger—polished, refilled, untouched.
When the hall emptied, Maggie lingered.
She closed the ledger. The ink caught the light.
She hesitated, sharpened her pencil, and wrote smaller than habit in the margin:
Settled — not noted.
She pressed the point a little too hard, then eased the pressure.
She turned out the light. The chair’s outline lingered in the window.
On the table, a faint dot of ink marked the varnish. She left it.
At home, Dog lifted his head and thumped his tail once before settling again.
Maggie made tea. She did not drink it.
Opening her notebook to a new page, she waited. When the words came, they were simple. She wrote them and left the corner blank. Then she added the figure and closed the book.
Casefile #38: Balance Carried Forward
Observation: Voucher located. Account reconciled.
Outcome: Totals accepted. Attendance unchanged.
Note: No entry made beyond the ledger.