Chapter 11
T hey had to have a clear and provable motive if they were ever going to charge any of the Fitzhughs with attempting to poison the earl.
With that purpose driving them and convinced that there had to be some clue in the earldom’s financial affairs, Barnaby, Penelope, and Stokes made their way without delay to Montague’s office in Chapel Court, behind the looming bulk of the Bank of England.
Barnaby opened the door to the outer office, and Penelope swept past. He followed at her heels, with Stokes bringing up the rear.
Montague’s outer office comprised a large open area, most of which was cordoned off from the entrance by a polished wooden railing.
Behind the railing, a lectern-like raised desk was placed beside a gate and faced the door, while the rest of the workspace played host to six desks at which junior clerks sat hunched over open ledgers.
An air of concerted industry hovered over all.
As usual, Montague’s senior clerk, Mr. Slocum, stood behind the raised desk.
He looked up, saw them, and beamed. “Mr. and Mrs. Adair. And Inspector Stokes.” Slocum half bowed.
“If you will wait a moment, ma’am, sirs, I will confirm that Mr. Montague is free to see you.
” With a twinkle in his eyes, as he turned away, Slocum added, “Although I suspect he will be.”
The thin clerk hurried down a corridor that led from the rear of the main office.
Barnaby stood beside a toe-tapping Penelope on the outer side of the wooden railing. Luckily for Penelope’s burgeoning impatience, Slocum returned in less than a minute, his beaming countenance making his “Mr. Montague will see you immediately” entirely redundant.
Slocum opened the gate, and with a gracious nod and a “thank you,” Penelope led the way through and on down the corridor. Montague’s office lay at the end, and the man himself was standing at the open door.
“Welcome, my dear.” Montague stooped to kiss Penelope’s cheek, then held out his hand to Barnaby.
“Well met, gentlemen.” After shaking Stokes’s hand and waving them all inside, Montague shut the door, as he did, continuing, “As you can see, Thomas is here, and I must say, we’re very glad to see you. ”
On beholding the man seated in a chair beside the desk, Penelope’s eyes widened. “Thomas! The other person we were hoping to meet.”
“Indeed.” Thomas rose. “And having delved somewhat into the Earl of Moran’s finances, I can understand why.”
He, too, kissed Penelope’s cheek and shook Barnaby’s and Stokes’s hands.
Once the courtesies had been observed, they sorted out the seating, with Penelope, Barnaby, and Stokes pulling up three chairs before Montague’s large desk.
Montague returned to his admiral’s chair behind the desk, his back to the windows beyond, while Thomas resumed his preferred position seated at the desk’s end.
Penelope observed, “You seem to have been expecting us.”
“More like hoping you would turn up and help us tease out what we’re looking at.” Montague waved at a collection of papers covered with neat figures that were spread over the desk.
Stokes eyed Montague’s and Thomas’s expressions. “The pair of you don’t seem all that certain of what you’ve found.”
“That’s because we’re not.” Thomas nodded at Montague. “You start.”
Leaning his forearms on the desk’s edge, Montague reported, “I spoke with Cliffe—he’s Moran’s man of business.
Initially, he maintained that all was above board and completely as one would expect of the accounts of a long-established landowner family such as the Fitzhughs.
But when I mentioned the earl’s murder and the consequent investigation and pressed him, Cliffe agreed to take another look at the accounts, just to be sure.
He invited me to review them with him. I did, and he was correct in stating that nothing was amiss.
But as for normal?” Lips setting, Montague shook his head.
“I handle the accounts for several noble families, the Cynsters, the Chillingworths, and the Ashfords among others. I know what the allowances for various levels of family members and the amounts for the upkeep of households and so on within the haut ton should be.”
When he paused, Penelope prompted, “And?”
“And what I was looking at was nothing like that.” Montague met Barnaby’s gaze.
“The long and the short of it is that the Moran accounts are simply not in keeping with a family of that size and, especially, that social rank. Not today. Fifteen or twenty years ago, possibly. I pointed out the oddity to Cliffe, and he looked more closely and admitted I was correct. He, too, has other families of note as clients, and all would spend more than Moran. Significantly more.”
Montague paused, then went on, “From all we could see, Cliffe and I concluded that, somehow, the earl had kept a very tight rein on all expenditures—personal, familial, and household. However, that only raised another question. Given we could see that the earldom’s coffers were constantly being drawn down and then steadily replenished, and the inflows are, indeed, what one would expect for a landholding of that size in the here and now—indeed, the income is impressively healthy—then where are the funds going?
The funds withdrawn were not deposited into any account over which Cliffe has oversight.
Moreover, the earl could not possibly personally spend such amounts, and indeed, he hasn’t.
Eventually, Cliffe and I traced the withdrawn funds—which add up to a very significant amount—to an account at Rothschild’s Bank.
The account appears to be in the earl’s name, but Cliffe has no records pertaining to that account. ”
Tipping his head Thomas’s way, Montague concluded, “I immediately passed on all the information I’d gathered to Thomas.”
Thomas inclined his head. “Indeed. But I should backtrack a trifle. While Montague was dealing with Cliffe, I decided to approach the Moran issue from a different direction. I’d heard the name bandied about in the context of several rather risky ventures.
I thought it was odd at the time I heard it, because those ventures are not the sort even I would contemplate dabbling in, being far too uncertain for my taste. ”
Thomas had a long history of successfully investing in risky ventures.
“So I followed up the rumors,” he went on, “and confirmed that, yes, Moran was, indeed, an investor in several of those schemes. It seems he cut his eyeteeth years ago on some of the more extreme companies floated on the promise of steam engines and railroads. Investments in such wildly speculative ventures are truly little more than bets, but to Moran’s credit, those wagers of his paid off.
And, as is the nature of such ventures, those wagers paid handsomely. ”
Thomas linked his fingers and leaned back in the chair.
“In the short time we’ve had, I’ve delved as far into the past as I could—covering about ten years—and it seems that, throughout that time, Moran had been actively seeking out and investing—very privately—in that particular type of enterprise.
I dropped in on Randolph Cavanaugh, and he knew of Moran’s name and, like me, had heard Moran mentioned as an investor in risky enterprises that Cavanaugh also views as too extreme to consider financing.
However, he, too, knew of several Moran-backed ventures that had paid off over the years. ”
Thomas sat up, reached for one of the papers littering Montague’s desk, waved it, then dropped it back on the desk.
“I did some juggling of figures, then made my way here. If one puts together the amounts withdrawn from the estate with the probable returns from his risky investments, then by any even highly conservative estimation, Moran had to have been sitting on a massive fortune.”
“That’s what we were trying to work out when you arrived,” Montague said. “Because from what Cliffe showed me of the earl’s accounts, that massive fortune doesn’t feature in any of the accounts Cliffe keeps.”
Thomas put in, “It might be in the Rothschild’s account or even some other account we’ve yet to stumble across.”
Stokes was frowning. Carefully, he asked, “In terms of Moran’s financial situation, what does all that mean?”
“In summary?” When Stokes nodded, Thomas replied, “It appears that over a period of more than a decade, the late earl has habitually used all available excess funds generated by the Moran estate to privately, and I would have to say rather secretively, invest in extremely risky enterprises. He’s played the odds of failure versus success, and we believe that, in large part, he’s won.
However, where he’s stashed the proceeds, we don’t yet know.
” Thomas held up a finger. “But leave that with me. I will find out.”
Barnaby regarded Thomas. “I believe you’re saying that there’s a very large pile of funds somewhere, and we know nothing about who else might know of it.”
“Or have access to it.” Thomas inclined his head.
“Alternatively, and this might well be the case, he’s providing finance to other risky ventures currently in development, and the money is in those companies’ hands.
” Thomas looked at Stokes. “It’s possible that the motive for Moran’s murder might lie either in access to those funds or in Moran’s involvement with some as-yet-unknown risky scheme. ”
Stokes swore beneath his breath. “That’s all this case needs—financial shenanigans.”
“As of yet,” Montague mildly stated, “we have no evidence of any misdeeds. Even once we learn what Moran was doing investing-wise at the time of his death, it’s perfectly possible that there’s no legal issue in it. Nothing illegal about anything at all.”
Stokes grumbled some more.
“That said,” Thomas put in, “an excessively large sum of money tends to engender covetousness, which often leads to crime.”