Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
A Visit to an Enquiry Agent
Caleb Finch’s office occupied the ground floor of a narrow building in Hatton Garden, wedged between a diamond merchant and a watch repairer.
The air carried the mingled scents of pipe tobacco, ink, and the faintly metallic tang of the jewelers’ quarters.
It was not the sort of address a duke frequented.
Which was, of course, precisely why I valued it.
I knocked twice on his door. Barely a few moments passed before the lock turned and the door swung open.
“Your Grace.” He betrayed no surprise at my visit, though I had sent no word ahead. But his sharp-eyed gaze showed a faint amusement.
“Finch.” I entered and surveyed the familiar chaos.
The office was small—a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet of indeterminate age, and every available surface buried under newspapers, directories, and the accumulated paperwork of a man who made his living knowing things other people wished to keep hidden.
Maps of London covered one wall. A small unlit stove resided in one corner.
A teapot sat on the windowsill, perpetually warm.
Beside it, a bottle of whiskey—my whiskey, I noted, from the private reserve I kept at Steele House.
Milford sent it over periodically, along with whatever provisions Cook had prepared in excess.
Finch accepted both with the quiet pleasure of a man who appreciated good things without expecting them.
He dressed neatly but without distinction: a clean collar, a serviceable coat, boots polished but not new. A man designed by temperament and necessity to move through the world without leaving a trace. His chestnut hair was brushed back carelessly from a lined but intelligent face.
“Tea?” Finch asked. “Or something stronger? It’s gone noon, which I believe is the hour at which dukes permit themselves a drink.”
“Dukes permit themselves a drink at whatever hour suits them. It is one of the few advantages of the rank.” I took the chair opposite his desk—a wooden affair that creaked under my weight but had, against all odds, survived several years of such abuse. “Tea will do.”
Finch poured from the perpetual teapot, producing a cup that was strong enough to stand a spoon in. He set it before me, cleared a stack of newspapers from his own chair, and sat. “I take it this isn’t a social call.”
“When have I ever paid you a social call?”
“Never. Which is a source of lasting disappointment.” His mouth twitched—the closest Finch came to a grin. “But I live in hope.”
I took a sip of the tea. It was dreadful.
It was always dreadful. I drank it anyway, because refusing Finch’s tea would have been a breach of the unspoken compact between us—the one in which I pretended not to notice that his office smelled of pipe smoke and old paper, and he pretended not to notice that I was a duke sitting in a chair that belonged in a bonfire.
“Sir Edmund Hale,” I said.
Finch’s expression did not change, but something sharpened behind his eyes. “The opera murder. I’ve been reading about it. Nasty business.” He reached for his own cup. “Stiletto. Italian make, the papers say. Professional job.”
“The papers are not wrong. For once.”
“And you were in the next box.” It was not a question. Finch read every newspaper printed in London, and several that were not. “With Lady Rosalynd.”
“Yes.”
He waited. Finch was exceptionally good at waiting. It was a quality we shared—the understanding that silence, properly deployed, could extract more than any question.
“I have taken an interest in the matter,” I said. “For reasons I would prefer not to elaborate upon.”
“Understood.” No curiosity. No probing. This was the foundation of our working relationship—Finch did not ask why.
He asked what, where, who, and when. The why was my concern.
He trusted me to have one, and I trusted him not to inquire further.
In several investigations spanning many years, the arrangement had never faltered.
“What do you know about Hale?” I asked.
Finch leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head.
“Self-made man. Shipping originally— started with two cargo vessels and a willingness to undercut his competitors on the Thames routes. Built it up over twenty years into something respectable. The kind of fortune that buys you a house in Mayfair and a box at the opera.” He paused.
“But the word on the street—and I mean the actual street, Your Grace, not the gentleman’s club version—is that Hale had gotten himself involved in something shady. ”
This was precisely the kind of intelligence Marchmont’s network could never have produced. The baron moved in a world of whispered rumors over whiskey. Finch moved in a world where men loaded cargo and cursed their employers over cheap ale.
“For how long?”
“A year at least.”
“That predates the murder by some margin.”
“It does.” Finch pulled a battered notebook from his desk drawer and a pencil. He always thought better with something in his hands. “What else have you got?”
I laid out what I knew, with the care of a man placing cards on a table.
Marchmont’s suspicions. The whispered consortium—significant capital, unusual secrecy, details kept close even from men who made it their business to know such things.
Nigel Davenport, who handled Hale’s financial affairs, had vanished from his usual haunts since the murder.
The stiletto—Italian, professional, the work of a hired killer, not a crime of passion.
Finch listened without interruption, the pencil turning slowly between his fingers. When I had finished, he was quiet for a moment.
“A consortium no one will talk about,” he said. “That’s interesting. The City loves to talk. Half the money in London is moved on gossip and the other half on spite. When men stop talking, it’s because someone has given them a reason to keep their mouths shut.”
“Fear.”
“Or profit. Often both.” He set the pencil down. “What do you need from me?”
“Hale’s shipping offices. His warehouses. The men who worked for him—clerks, foremen, anyone who handled the books or saw the money move. Davenport can tell me what he knows if I can get him to talk. I need the view from below.”
Finch smiled—properly this time, with a warmth that softened his sharp features. “That is what I do best, Your Grace.”
“I know. It’s why I’m here.”
“Anything else?”
“Cast your net wide. Start with the shipping offices and then talk to the men who sailed on his ships. They might know what Hale was moving.”
"I'll need blunt to loosen their tongues.
Fear and profit, like I said. Whoever put that stiletto in Hale has already supplied the fear—free of charge.
If we want them talking, we'll have to match it with profit.
And after an opera-house murder, the going rate for a sailor's memory has gone up considerably. "
I withdrew a leather pouch from my coat and slid it across the desk. The clink of coin was unmistakable. "If you need more, just ask."
"Appreciate that, Your Grace." He palmed the pouch and made it disappear into his coat with the same fluid motion he used for his notebook—the practiced ease of a man who kept his tools close. “What’s your timeline?”
“As quickly as you can manage without drawing attention. I do not want anyone to know I am asking these questions.”
“Your Grace.” Finch placed a hand over his heart with mock solemnity. “Have I ever drawn attention?”
“No. Which is why I continue to employ you.”
“And here I thought it was for my pretty face.”
I allowed myself a grin.
He glanced at the bottle of whiskey on the windowsill. “Please thank Milford for the latest delivery. Exceptional service, as always.”
“I shall pass along your compliments.”
“And the game pie.”
“Milford will be gratified.”
Finch closed his notebook and tucked the pencil behind his ear. The humor faded, replaced by the focused stillness of a man turning a problem over in his mind.
“There’s one thing,” he said. “Hale’s shipping offices are on the Wapping waterfront.
I know a man there—a clerk named Jessop who’s been with the company eight years.
Reliable sort. Nervous, but reliable. He came into my local last week, three sheets to the wind, muttering about how the whole enterprise was rotten from the keel up. His words, not mine.”
I set down my teacup. “Rotten in what way?”
“He didn’t elaborate. He was too deep in his cups by that point to make much sense.
But a man who’s been steady for eight years doesn’t drink himself into a stupor for no reason.
” Finch met my gaze. “I’ll start with Jessop.
Gently. The man’s frightened, and frightened men are either the most useful witnesses or the most dangerous. Depends on who reaches them first.”
“Reach him first.”
“I intend to.”
Our chairs creaked in apparent relief as we both stood.
“Finch.” I paused at the door. “Be careful. Whatever Hale stumbled into was serious enough to get him killed in a crowded opera house. The people behind it are not amateurs.”
“Neither am I, Your Grace.” Said without bravado. Simply fact.
“No,” I agreed. “You are not.”
I stepped into the bustle of Hatton Garden.
Diamond merchants and watch repairers went about their business in the grey afternoon light, oblivious to the quiet transaction that had just taken place next to them.
A duke commissioning an enquiry agent. The Crown’s business conducted in a room that smelled of pipe smoke and bad tea.
There was, I reflected, a certain symmetry to it.
The investigation required two worlds—the one Rosalynd and I inhabited, with its drawing rooms and opera boxes and whispered confidences over fine wine, and the one Finch moved through, with its docks and public houses and men who noticed everything their betters assumed they were too simple to see.
Between the two, very little would remain hidden for long.
I hailed a cab and turned my thoughts toward Davenport. He’d been avoiding society since the murder. It was time to discover whether he was hiding from danger—or from the truth.