Chapter 5
Con’s Warehouse
Mercer Street, Seven Dials
Warrick paced the length of Con's "war room" at his Mercer Street warehouse hideaway at the edge of Seven Dials. The Four Horsemen gathered together there whenever mayhem loomed on the horizon.
And this time the mayhem was as bad as Warrick could remember.
In fact, the more inside information the Widow Rowe had supplied him, the worse the situation looked.
When he'd studied her books he'd seen for himself that the thefts from her business were indeed climbing as high as a quarter of her shipping firm's income.
The times, and the places, where she'd been robbed seemed to be imitating locations and shipments that they'd robbed in the not-so-distant past. Someone familiar with their movements was trying to make it look like the Horsemen were at the bottom of the additional thefts.
Everyone began to talk at once. Con and Ban were giving Fam good natured ribbing over his recent setting up housekeeping with his lover, Ethan, now his chosen life-long partner.
But they knew the limits of just how far they could push each other.
In that way they were very much like blood brothers.
They constantly teased and pushed the limits with each other.
Warrick finally had to give out a shrill whistle to get everyone to shut up so that he could fill them in on what was happening.
"I'm here tonight to tell you what I've learned from the Widow Rowe.
I've shown her our records to prove that we weren't where she thought we were stealing from her, but when she shared her records with me, I saw that someone is following in our tracks and trying to make it look like these robberies are ours. "
Con interrupted him. "Are you sure you're thinking straight now that you're that close to the Widow Rowe?"
Warwick froze. In the next words he spoke, there was a tone of danger and threat.
Anyone who had known him for any amount of time, especially his brothers, would be worried.
"What are you getting at? I did what you asked.
I tried to turn her up sweet, but she's not the kind of woman that turns easily. "
His tone became even harder. "You have to appeal to her as a fellow business owner and talk to her about her actual records. I had to show her mine and she showed me hers." Ban stifled a chortle, and Con had to hold Warrick back from wading in on him with his fists.
"She wouldn't let me question her warehouse crews, because they're the ones who alerted her to what they thought were the Horsemen's crews using children to haul stolen goods out of her warehouses.
She did tell me the imposters followed the route from Dunbar Dock west out of Limehouse and seemed to be transferring the cargo to lightermen waiting at Galley Dock.
Fam gave him an odd look. "Since when do The Horsemen have a rule about widow women getting a pass on bad behavior?"
"She was, um, afraid I might use unnecessary force to get to the truth."
"Wait a minute," Ban interjected. "They're using the old western run we abandoned two months ago.
That explains the rumors our men on the street have been hearing.
" He paused for a moment and stared down at his feet, as if the answers to all their problems were written on the toes of his expertly polished Hoby boots.
Con interrupted the pending debate. "The real question is who is blending knowledge of our world with obvious inside information on Rowe shipment off-loading schedules, as well as advance notice of the manifests of cargoes coming into port?"
"And just so we're clear..." Con threw pointed looks at both Fam and Warrick.
"Missus Rowe is doing what any other upstanding merchant shipper would do.
She's protecting her business and her workers.
If she doesn't want us interrogating her men, then we'll have to find out what's happening on our own. "
Ban scratched his head. "I don't get it. Why is someone going to so much trouble?"
"And putting themselves in the crosshairs of our men who keep order on the docks?" Fam stood as if he meant to pace along with Warrick, but sat back down at a stormy look from Con.
Warrick shook his head hard. The ringing in his ears ratcheted up a notch. Multiple voices raised in argument made his condition worse, but he was damned if he'd change who he was to cave in to the physical impairment that would never let him forget the horrors of war at sea.
September 5, 1827
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Beatrice leaned over her desk for at least the hundredth time and compared her ledgers on each of her ship's dockings and departures, side-by-side with notes of dates and times her warehouse and dock workers claimed they'd seen The Horsemen's crew in action.
Something wouldn't stop niggling at the back of her mind.
What was she missing? There was a pattern, a familiar pattern, but she couldn't figure out what it was.
She decided to take each date of the accusations one-by-one and figure out what had happened on that particular day: Weather, phases of the moon, both legal and illegal activities throughout the East Side docks that had been publicized in the news sheets, and her own movements, both business-related and personal.
After more than an hour of intense study and piles of notes, she sat down hard on the chair behind her desk. A wave of nausea overtook her, and she nearly cast up her accounts.
The dates of alleged criminal activities of The Horsemen reported by her workers coincided almost perfectly with the dates her brother-in-law Silas had appeared without warning to accuse her of mismanagement of the business and neglect of her son.
Once the initial shock and nausea had passed, she realized she had a horrible decision to make.
She couldn't fight Silas Rowe on her own.
Beatrice was strong and determined, but she was nobody's fool.
She hated to admit the fact to anyone but herself, but the only man she knew she could trust in all of London, but especially the waterfront, was Warrick Dyer.
She was grateful he hadn't forced her to allow him to interrogate her employees, but she knew he was well positioned to do so.
All he would have had to do to overcome her resistance would have been to show up in force with the men of the rookeries under his command.
She and her workers would have made for a puny army in the face of the resources The Horsemen could bring to bear.
She'd have to swallow her pride and go to Warrick for help to stand against the machinations of her brother-in-law.
But beyond that, he and his brothers did not deserve the blame for whatever dark deeds Silas Rowe was plotting.
What in Hera's name was she thinking? She'd even begun to think of him as "Warrick. " When had that happened?
Overall, she thought it was bit ironic that Silas was going to such lengths to steal a company that twelve years earlier would have failed if she hadn't taken over management from her useless husband and his even less helpful brother.
In the midst of her dark, brooding thoughts, there was a tentative tap at the door. Without looking up, she said, "Come."
Childers spilled into the room followed closely by the last person she needed in her life at that precarious moment.
Her ancient butler announced, "Miss Anneke Van Dijk." He'd barely mouthed the words when her sister rudely pushed past him, the better to intimidate Beatrice. "Thank God I'm not too late."
"Too late for what?" Beatrice inquired reasonably.
"You haven't succumbed to another unsuitable man now that your husband's cocked up his toes."
Beatrice refused to allow her older sister even a wedge of an upper hand over her. "Since when does a grown, thirty-year-old woman need her sister to watch over her?"
"A woman past her bloom and without a husband is the worst sort of rattle pate. She'll grasp at any last chance of a man to watch over her."
Anneke was barely a year older than Beatrice, but that had never stopped her unpleasant sibling from poking her nose into Beatrice's affairs.
She was the bitter spinster sister who'd made it her mission to remain at home with their poor father, Captain Sebastiaan Van Dijk, and attempt to rule over him.
Since their mother had died less than a year earlier, Beatrice suspected both Anneke and their father had soured on that situation. That would explain why her controlling sister was looming over her in her own study.
At another tap at the study door, Beatrice nearly sank to the floor for a good cry, but instead said again, "Come."
Childers re-entered the study with a simple white card on a silver tray. He said nothing, but the conspiratorial look in his rheumy eyes revealed everything. She picked up the card and read the name - Warrick Dyer.
"Bring the gentleman on back, please, Childers," she said, trying to keep the tone of her voice as normal as possible. This visitor was most welcome, but probably the worst thing she could parade in front of the ever-spying eyes of her sister.
Anneke reacted even before her visitor appeared. "Him?" She repeated again even louder, "Him?" Pouting, she retreated to a chair in the corner of Beatrice's office. Her sister sat down with an exaggerated flounce and added, "Hmmpf...it appears I am too late."
"Papa sent you here to get rid of you, didn't he?" Beatrice gave her sister a triumphant smile when the sour look on Anneke's face gave her away.
Warrick had spent most of the morning gathering his thoughts about what he was about to propose to Beatrice, er, the Widow Rowe.
Where had that unbidden thought come from?
The last thing he needed was to become too familiar with a woman who'd proved to be a near nemesis in his quest to find out who was trying to discredit The Horsemen with their false attempts to frame a series of Banbury tales about his men.