Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
What the Ships Brought Back
Stevens’ Rooms occupied a handsome building on King Street, a few minutes’ walk from Covent Garden.
The auction house had built its reputation on the sale of natural curiosities—fossils, taxidermy, ethnographic objects, and the sundry treasures of empire that flowed into London from every corner of the globe.
It was not Christie’s. It did not aspire to be.
What it offered instead was discretion and a clientele that asked few questions about provenance.
Rosalynd and I arrived shortly after ten o’clock the morning after the masquerade.
I had sent a note ahead, identifying myself and requesting a meeting with the senior partner.
The response had been prompt and accommodating.
A duke’s custom was not to be refused, even when the duke in question had come to ask uncomfortable questions.
A clerk met us in the entrance hall—a young man with ink-stained fingers and the anxious deference of someone who had been instructed to make a favorable impression.
He led us through a corridor lined with glass cases displaying African carvings, mineral specimens, and a stuffed bird of paradise that regarded us with glassy reproach.
“Mr. Hargrove will see you directly, Your Grace. And—” He glanced at Rosalynd, uncertain how to address her.
“Lady Rosalynd,” she supplied, with the crisp authority that tended to resolve such hesitations.
“Of course, my lady. This way, please.”
Hargrove’s office was on the first floor, a cluttered room that smelled of old paper and beeswax.
The man himself rose from behind a desk buried in catalogues and correspondence.
He was perhaps sixty, with the weathered complexion of someone who had spent time in hotter climates and the sharp, assessing eyes of a man who had spent his career placing values on things.
“Your Grace. Lady Rosalynd. An honor.” He gestured to two chairs. “How may I be of service?”
I did not waste time with pleasantries. “I am investigating the financial affairs of the late Sir Edmund Hale. Your auction house appears in his accounts as a regular source of revenue. I should like to know what was being sold.”
Hargrove’s expression shifted. Not alarm, precisely, but the guarded wariness of a man who understood that certain questions carried weight. He sat back in his chair and folded his hands.
“Sir Edmund was a valued consignor,” he said carefully. “We handled several lots on his behalf over the past eighteen months or so.”
“What sort of lots?”
A pause. Hargrove glanced at the door, as if assuring himself it was closed.
“Ivory, Your Grace. Primarily raw tusks, though some carved pieces as well. East African in origin. The quality was—exceptional, I should say. We had no difficulty placing them. The demand for ivory in London is considerable, and Sir Edmund’s supply was regular and reliable. ”
Ivory. The word settled into the room with a quiet finality.
I had suspected something of the sort. The auction house revenues in Davenport’s ledgers had been too large for ordinary trade goods and too consistent for speculative dealings.
Ivory explained both—a commodity in constant demand, easily transported, and sold through legitimate channels that asked nothing about the circumstances of its acquisition.
“How were the consignments delivered?” Rosalynd asked. Her voice was steady, but I could see her mind working—assembling the pieces, connecting the ivory to the weapons, the weapons to the ships, the ships to the dead man at the opera.
“By cart, from the docks. Wapping, usually. Sir Edmund’s shipping agent arranged the transport.
We received the goods, catalogued them, and offered them at auction in the ordinary way.
” Hargrove spread his hands. “There was nothing irregular about the process, Your Grace. Ivory is a lawful commodity. We verified the consignment papers, which were always in order.”
“The consignment papers,” I said. “Who signed them?”
“Sir Edmund himself, in the early days. More recently, a representative. A Mr.—” Hargrove reached for a ledger on his desk and turned several pages. “Jessop. A Mr. Jessop, of Hale Shipping.”
Jessop. The nervous clerk Finch was hunting across Yorkshire. A man who had signed his name to the shipments and knew what was on those manifests—what was declared and what was not.
“Do you still have the consignment records?” I asked.
“We retain records for seven years, Your Grace. I can have copies prepared.”
“Please do. Every record pertaining to Sir Edmund Hale or Hale Shipping. I will send a man to collect them.”
Hargrove nodded, though his expression suggested he was calculating the implications of this request and not enjoying the arithmetic. “If I might ask, Your Grace, is there some concern about the provenance of the goods? Our house has always operated within the strictest bounds of—”
“No criticism of your house is intended, Mr. Hargrove.” I held his gaze. “I am concerned with Sir Edmund’s affairs, not yours. Your cooperation will be noted.”
The reassurance was calculated. Hargrove would cooperate more freely if he believed his own reputation was not at risk. Whether that belief was warranted remained to be seen.
“One further question,” Rosalynd said. “The ivory that came through Sir Edmund’s ships, was it always from the same region?”
“Always East Africa, my lady. Zanzibar, principally. The tusks bore the markings consistent with that region—our assessors are experienced in these matters. The carved pieces were of coastal workmanship.” He paused.
“May I say, the quality was among the finest we have handled. Whoever was acquiring the ivory at the African end had excellent contacts.”
Excellent contacts. Men with rifles to trade and an appetite for the profits that followed.
The picture was now complete—or as complete as it could be without Jessop’s testimony.
Belgian weapons flowed south to East Africa through Hale’s shipping lines.
Ivory flowed north in return. The arms were sold to fuel a war.
The ivory was sold at London auction houses to men who displayed it in their drawing rooms without a thought for how it had been obtained.
And the money—the staggering, inexplicable money in Davenport’s ledgers—came from both ends of the trade.
Rosalynd caught my eye. A brief look, held for no more than a second, but it carried everything—confirmation, resolve, and something cold and steady underneath. She understood. We both did.
Hargrove, eager to demonstrate his good faith, offered to show us the current exhibition rooms. “We have several fine pieces on display ahead of next week’s sale, if Your Grace would care to see them.”
I would not ordinarily have accepted. But Rosalynd gave the faintest nod. There might be more to learn from seeing how the operation worked, so we followed Hargrove through a set of double doors into the main salesroom.
It was a long, well-lit gallery with display cases arranged along both walls and down the center. The upcoming sale appeared to be a mixed lot—African carvings, Indian bronzes, Ottoman textiles, and the usual assortment of colonial trophies that kept London’s collectors supplied.
Rosalynd moved along the cases with the observant calm of a woman accustomed to evaluating what she saw.
She asked Hargrove intelligent questions about the cataloguing process, the commission structure, the typical buyers.
He answered with increasing confidence, relieved, perhaps, that the conversation had moved away from difficult territory.
I was half listening. Hargrove’s voice had become background as I studied the room, reading it the way I read any space—exits, sight lines, the arrangement of objects and people.
The gallery was well organized. Each case bore a numbered card corresponding to the auction catalogue.
Provenance notes were attached where available.
Everything looked orderly and above reproach.
And then I stopped.
The case at the far end of the gallery was smaller than the others. It held jewelry—estate pieces, by the look of them—consigned for private sale rather than auction. Rings, brooches, a rope of pearls. I would have passed it without a second glance.
Except for the sapphires.
They occupied the center of the display, arranged on a cushion of dark velvet—a full parure in a setting of white gold.
Necklace, earrings, bracelet, brooch. The stones were a deep, vivid blue, the color shifting as the light struck them, and every one of them was the exact shade of Rosalynd’s eyes.
I stood very still.
I had seen sapphires before. The usual conventional ones. These were nothing of the kind. The craftsmanship was French—the settings were delicate, precise, designed to hold the light inside the stone rather than scatter it.
Rosalynd was at the other end of the gallery, still speaking with Hargrove, her back to me.
The light from the high windows caught her profile—the line of her jaw, the copper hair, the intelligence in every movement of her hands.
She wore a simple cameo at her throat, as she often did.
Her jewelry was tasteful and well chosen, appropriate to her station, and none of it did justice to her.
This parure would. These sapphires, against her skin, at her throat, at her ears—they would be right in a way that defied practical explanation.
But if I bought them for her, she could never wear them.
A gift of this nature, from a man in my position to a woman in hers, would be a declaration.
It would confirm every whispered speculation, every knowing glance, every piece of gossip that the drawing rooms of Mayfair had been circulating since the night I first danced with her.
She would become, in the public estimation, a woman who had accepted a duke’s jewels and everything that implied.
I looked at the sapphires. I looked at Rosalynd. The distance between them—six paces, perhaps seven—contained everything I could not yet say and she could not yet hear.
I turned away.
“Steele?” She was beside me, Hargrove having been called away by his clerk. “You look as though something has caught your attention.”
“Nothing of consequence,” I said.
Her gaze moved past me to the case. The sapphires. She studied them for a moment—the brief, assessing look she gave to anything beautiful and well-made—and then returned her attention to me.
“They’re very fine,” she said.
“They are.”
A pause. Something shifted in her expression—not quite awareness, not quite a question, but something near both.
“Shall we go?” she said. “I believe we have what we came for.”
“Yes,” I said. “We do.”
We left Stevens’ Rooms and stepped into the bustle of King Street.
“About that other matter we discussed,” I said, as we walked. "I have arranged your shooting lesson. My Richmond estate has a range that would serve admirably. Would tomorrow suit, or would the day after be more convenient?"
She glanced at me. "Tomorrow. The sooner I stop flinching at the sound of a pistol, the better."
"You do not flinch."
"I do. I simply hide it well."
"Then we are alike in that regard." I held her gaze a moment longer than the remark required. "I will bring my carriage around at quarter past seven. We want to catch the early train to Richmond.”
“Very well.”
The afternoon sun had broken through the clouds, and Covent Garden was loud with the calls of flower sellers and the rattle of carts. We didn’t have far to walk. My coachman awaited us near the auction house.
“Ivory for weapons,” she said quietly, as we strolled side by side. “Weapons for ivory. And Hale at the center of it all.”
“With Jessop’s signature on the consignment papers.”
“Finding Jessop just became considerably more urgent.”
“Finch is on it.”
She nodded. The investigation had given us its answer—the missing piece that legitimized the revenue and explained the secrecy and the fear. It should have been a moment of satisfaction.
But what I was thinking about, as I handed her into the carriage and watched the light fall across her face, was sapphires.