Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Council of War
I’d dismissed Whitfield at midnight. The man needed his rest. But I had not sought my own bed until three in the morning.
What sleep I managed was shallow and restless, broken by dreams I could not afterward recall.
By six, I had abandoned the effort entirely, bathed and dressed without ringing for my valet, and returned to the library where Davenport’s ledgers waited like patient accusers.
By the time Milford brought coffee at half seven, I had been through the Dorado Trust correspondence for the third time.
The pattern had not changed. Money flowing out through Marseilles.
Transfers to Constantinople and Trieste.
Revenue returning through London auction houses at figures that defied explanation.
And the most recent six months—the period that would have shown the operation at its height—reduced to ash.
I drank the coffee. It helped marginally.
At a quarter to eight, I left the library and crossed to my study, where the morning’s council would assemble.
Finch arrived at eight, precisely on time, which was unusual enough to suggest he had understood the urgency.
Milford showed him in with the warmth he reserved for the select few who had earned his approval.
Finch, who had been invaluable to me in more investigations than either of us cared to count, had long since earned it.
Milford glanced at Finch’s hair, which appeared to have been subjected to pomade with more enthusiasm than skill. “I see you have made an effort, Mr. Finch.”
“Bought pomade special, Mr. Milford.”
“How enterprising. Shall I bring breakfast, or have you already eaten your way through Hatton Garden?”
“Now, Mr. Milford. You know I save my appetite for your kitchen.”
“Flattery,” Milford said, turning for the door, “will get you an extra sausage.”
Within minutes, he returned with a tray stacked with eggs, sausages, toast, a rack of bacon, and a pot of strong coffee. No doubt Cook had been forewarned about our visitor and had prepared accordingly. Finch fell upon the feast with unbridled enthusiasm.
“Help yourself,” I said drily, after he already had.
“Always do, Your Grace.” Once he had taken the edge off his appetite, he pulled the battered notebook from his coat pocket and balanced it on his knee. “Right then. The Hale shipping offices. You’re not going to like what I found.”
I held up a hand. “Not just yet. We’re expecting company. Lady Rosalynd. And my brother Nicky.”
Whatever Finch had expected, it was not that. His expression sharpened. “You’re assembling a war council.”
“Something like that.”
He nodded slowly, set the notebook aside, and returned his attention to what remained of the eggs and toast.
We did not have to wait long. Barely five minutes later, Milford appeared in the doorway.
“Lady Rosalynd, Your Grace.”
She entered with quiet purposefulness, wearing a simple morning dress, her copper hair drawn back without the usual elaborate arrangement. No jewelry. She had come to work.
“Coffee, please, Milford,” she said as she settled into the chair I pulled out for her. Her blue eyes swept over me.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“When did you last sleep?”
“I am adequately rested.”
“You are lying.” She turned to Finch, her expression warming. “Mr. Finch. It’s good to see you again.”
“And you, my lady.” Finch rose from his chair, wiping his hands on his napkin with belated propriety. “Though I’ll confess, the three of us in one room generally means trouble for someone.”
“It generally does,” Rosalynd agreed. She accepted the coffee Milford brought and was about to say more when the study door opened once more.
Nicky strode in looking—I noted with the irrational irritation of a man who had gotten very little sleep—magnificent. Fresh and vibrant, his dark hair with its white streak neatly combed, his color high from what had evidently been a brisk walk across the square.
Everything, in short, that I was not.
He took in the room at a glance—Rosalynd with her coffee, Finch with his notebook—and stopped.
“Lady Rosalynd. Mr. Finch.” His gaze moved between them, then settled on me with the dawning expression of a man whose cryptic summons had just explained itself. “A financial matter requiring my particular expertise. That is what your note said.”
“It is.”
“And yet I find Lady Rosalynd and your enquiry agent already assembled in your study at eight in the morning, and you appearing rather haggard.”
His last remark garnered a cough from Finch, a repressed laugh from Rosalynd. And a raised brow from me.
“It rather appears to be an investigation, Warwick,” my brother said.
“It is.”
“You might have simply said so.”
“I might have. Sit down, Nicky.”
He took the remaining chair. “What kind of investigation requires a diplomat, a detective, and a lady who is considerably more dangerous than she appears?”
“The kind that does not leave this room.” I held his gaze. “I need your word, Nicholas. Before another syllable is spoken. Nothing you hear today—nothing—is to be discussed outside this study. Not with Mother. Not with your friends at the club. Not with anyone.”
The amusement faded from his face. He studied me for a long moment—reading, I suspected, the exhaustion I could not quite conceal, the tension in the set of my jaw, the gravity that had settled over the room like weather.
“You have it,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Nicholas glanced toward the side table where Finch’s breakfast had been laid. The tray was a wasteland of crumbs and empty serving dishes.
“I don’t suppose,” Nicholas said, “there is any possibility of coffee and something to eat, or has Mr. Finch left nothing but the pattern on the china?”
“I was hungry, my lord. It was a long ride from Hatton Garden.”
“I’m sure it was.” Nicholas turned to me.
I rang for Milford.
Once Nicholas had been furnished with coffee and a tray of breakfast food, I laid the matter before them plainly.
“Lady Rosalynd, Finch, and I are investigating the murder of Sir Edmund Hale. The reasons we were asked to do so are not important. Our assignments were as follows: Finch was to look into Hale’s shipping offices, his warehouses, the docks, and the men who work there; Rosalynd was to gather intelligence from the wives and widows of Hale’s fellow investors; and I was to look into Hale’s finances. ”
Nicholas, to his credit, asked no questions. He simply nodded and listened. The diplomatic instinct, it seemed, was already well honed.
“Finch,” I said. “Why don’t you start us off?”
After a brief glance at his notebook, Finch began. "Before I get to the shipping offices, one bit of housekeeping. You'll want this off the board."
I gestured for him to continue.
"Sir Victor Creighton. New money—shipping, speculation. Ruthless sort. Crossed Hale three years ago over some venture out of Hamburg. Cost Creighton the better part of forty thousand pounds, and word in the City was he swore he'd see Hale ruined for it."
Rosalynd set down her cup. "I am not certain I have heard that name."
"You wouldn't have, my lady. Not your circles. He's been clawing his way into society this past year—got into Angelo's last month. White's still won't have him." Finch flipped a page. "His Grace asked me to look into him."
I had not, in fact, said any such thing. Finch had turned the name up on his own—and was now, with characteristic discretion, lending me credit for the foresight.
"And?"
"Solid alibi. The night of the opera, Creighton was in Liverpool.
Two business meetings, a dinner with the underwriter for a new ship he's commissioning, and a hotel registry that puts him there until the following morning.
Six witnesses, written records, the lot.
Whatever he might have wished on Hale, he didn't do it himself—and there's no sign he hired it done.
The man's a vulture, Your Grace, but a patient one.
Murder isn't his way. He prefers to let his enemies bleed out slowly in the ledgers. "
"A reasonable distinction." I filed the matter away. One thread accounted for; whatever had taken Hale's life, it had not come at the hand of an aggrieved competitor. "Continue."
"Right. Hale's Wapping shipping offices were ransacked before I got there. Someone had gone through the place like a storm. Filing cabinets emptied, desk drawers pulled out, the safe forced open, and cleaned. The harbor master’s clerk told me the lock on the front door wasn’t even broken—whoever did it had a key. ”
“An inside job.”
“Or someone who knew where to find a key. Either way, anything useful in those offices is long gone. But here’s where it gets interesting. The clerk I told you about—Jessop. The one who’d been drinking and muttering about the whole enterprise being rotten from the keel up.”
“You found him?”
“No. And that’s the problem.” Finch set down his fork. “Jessop hasn’t been seen since the day after Hale was killed. His landlady says he came home that evening in a terrible state, packed a bag, and left. Told her he was visiting family in the north.”
Another man who had run. Whether Jessop had fled of his own accord or been helped along the way, I did not know. But the pattern was unmistakable. Anyone connected to the truth about Hale’s shipping operations was vanishing—by choice, by flight, or by stiletto.
“There’s more,” Finch continued, reaching for his coffee.
“I tracked down a couple of Hale’s sailors—men who’d crewed his ships on the Continental runs.
Bought a few pints, loosened a few tongues.
They told me the ships would put in at Antwerp, sometimes Liège by river, and take on cargo.
Crates marked as machine parts. Agricultural equipment bound for the African coast.”
He flipped a page in his notebook.
“But the loading was wrong. Done at night, under armed guard—not harbor security, mind you. Men in civilian clothes who didn’t talk and didn’t answer questions.
And the sailors said the crates were too heavy for what was listed on the manifests.
One of them told me he’d shifted enough cargo in his life to know the difference between a crate of plough blades and a crate of something else entirely.
Said when they were stacked in the hold, you could hear metal shifting inside.
Not loose parts. Something packed tight and uniform. ”
“Rifles,” Nicholas said quietly.
The word settled over the room. Rosalynd’s cup paused halfway to her lips. Finch glanced at Nicholas with the expression of a man who had arrived at the same conclusion.
“That’s what I reckon, my lord,” Finch said.
“Liège is the arms capital of Europe—every second workshop in the city turns out rifles and revolvers. Cheap copies of military-grade weapons, sold with almost no paperwork. A man with ready cash and the right intermediary could fill a ship’s hold, and no one in Belgium would so much as raise an eyebrow. ”
“Where were they delivered?” I asked, though the shape of the answer was already forming.
Finch consulted his notes. “East Africa. Zanzibar, mainly. One sailor mentioned Dar es Salaam. The ships would unload at night—same procedure as the loading. Armed escort, no questions, cargo off the books by morning. Then they’d take on spices for the return voyage.
Legitimate goods, proper manifests, everything above board on the way home. Supposedly.”
Nicholas leaned forward. “Zanzibar is the gateway to the interior. The coastal uprising in German East Africa—the Abushiri Revolt—has been raging since last year. The demand for weapons along that coast would be enormous.”
I said nothing for a moment. The pattern that had been forming in the margins of Davenport’s ledgers—the unexplained transfers, the payments routed through Marseilles and Constantinople, the revenue that defied explanation—had just acquired a shape.
Not financial fraud. Not a failed development scheme.
Arms smuggling run through Hale’s legitimate shipping routes, with Belgian weapons flowing south to a war zone.
“The wives I spoke with were quite clear on one point,” Rosalynd said. “Their husbands’ returns from the enterprise were extraordinary. Far beyond what any of them had seen from other investments.” She frowned. “But would spices alone account for that?”
Nicholas shook his head. “No. Something else was coming back on those ships. Something considerably more valuable than cinnamon and cloves.”