The Salt Ledger

The case file

Sunday cold case. Ten years ago this month, the night before payday, the Merrow Salt Works lost its wages: $1,200 in an iron safe in the counting house. The safe was opened with its own key, and the lock was not scratched. The works closed by Christmas and forty men were out of work.

This week Cass Rendle bought the works' last ledger at a Saltholm auction and left it on the desk with a note: page 40. In the back the clerk had copied out the old statements. Five people were on the works that night, one each in the counting house, the boiling house, the salt store, the canteen and down at the wharf. Each had one thing in hand: the safe key, a salt sack, a handcart, a coal shovel or a pair of oars. The one who opened the safe lied then and lies now.

Who was there

• Josiah Trudgeon, manager of the salt works. Gray at the temples now, with a good coat and a handshake that lasts too long.
• Captain Morwenna Hext, skipper of the salt barge Gannet. Weathered, unhurried, a pipe she never lights clamped in her teeth.
• Mrs. Effie Carne, cook at the works canteen. Round, rosy and still angry, ten years on.
• Walter Nance, pan foreman. Burn scars on both forearms and the patience of a man who boiled brine for a living.
• Ivy Treen, clerk at the works, then nineteen. Neat handwriting, a librarian now, and she remembers everything.