08 | Banking on Secrecy
—
True to his word Thornton eventually told Margaret about his strange moment of revelation in the morning after Richard's birth, when he had realised Foster's pivotal role in the Alban case, admitting in the same breath that he wasn't at all sure what the 'everything' in 'the key to everything' actually meant.
"It doesn't make sense," Margaret said with sudden conviction.
"What doesn't?"
"What Mrs Latimer said the day she came to see us with her confession. It doesn't make sense!"
"Why are you saying this?"
"Because Alban couldn't have afforded to make his history with Mrs Latimer public any more than she could afford it becoming the tittle-tattle of Milton. As someone who makes his living by associating with ladies charities, his reputation would have been sacrosanct to him. The ladies might have swooned over him as much as they liked, but there must never have been even be a speck of suspicion that he would have acted on the temptation."
"You are perfectly right! It doesn't make sense—"
"Also, why would hired thugs watch Mrs Latimer months after Alban's death? So, tell me, Magistrate Thornton, what is really going on, in your opinion?"
"That's what I've been racking my brain about these last few days," he said pensively. "So, for the sake of argument, let's assume that 'everything' really means just that—namely, that everything is connected. What would be the other big thing keeping all of Milton engrossed in the last few months?"
Margaret creased her brow. "Tell me."
"The bogus investment scheme!"
"Of course!"
"We know that Alban collected incriminating information about my fellow manufacturers—and that he roped Mrs Latimer into doing the same. But why would he do this when we know that he didn't profit from any blackmail?" He looked at Margaret triumphantly. "Because he was just a pawn, pressured into the sham just like Mrs Latimer was... He was covering for someone who was keeping in the background; and for what purpose? I'd say Alban was coercing my peers into investing heavily in those dodgy stocks on behalf of a puppet master, in return for the latter's continued silence."
"And that puppet master would be Mr Foster?" Margaret asked, taken aback. "Would he also be instrumental to Alban's death?"
"My subconscious mind seems to think so."
"This is appalling... But is it quite true?" she said in a small voice. "Just imagine! Foster was a friend of the family—well, an acquaintance of the family—for many years. He's an important man in Milton; and, by all means, he is wealthy! Why would he do such a thing?"
"That's the question indeed—"
For a while they were both mutely staring into the fire until a knock at the door announced Jane the nursery maid, who brought baby Richard to be fed.
After Jane had retreated and the baby had settled to feed, Margaret asked quietly, "And now?"
"I need to see Mason and run my deductions past him; to see what he thinks about them."
"Be careful," she said, looking up at him with worry in her eyes.
"No need to remind me; ever since the matter of the dead dog I'm well aware that all of this strikes rather too close to home for comfort. Therefore I shall meet Mason in secret, as usual." He rose to return to his office and to the relative calm and quiet of mundane mill business. "Are you regretting that you've wanted to be taken into my confidence in this matter?" he softly asked.
"No! I'll rather share your worries than be blindsided by another threat out of the blue."
"There's an irony in the fact that, in spite of my avowed goal of keeping you from worrying, I've managed just the opposite... and at a time when your mind should be firmly on other things." His eyes lay on their newborn son. "It's a special kind of male hubris to believe that we can protect our spouses at all times."
"Well, we can't always choose what we have to deal with in life; but—" She arrested his gaze. "—we can choose how to deal with it. Together, remember?"
"Remember when you asked me to find their feet of clay?" he said with wry humour.
Margaret looked at him soberly. "Yes, of course. But who would have thought that you'd uncover a cloven hoof?"
They were to meet at the warehouse again.
While approaching his destination on foot and under cover of darkness, Thornton pondered that he wasn't much cut out for subterfuge, as he was already at a loss to think of new places for his clandestine meetings with Mason.
In the semi-darkness of the warehouse interior, he brought Mason up to date on the subject of Mrs Latimer and her connection with Alban. Out of delicacy he kept the reason for Alban's sway over the lady to himself, although he was certain that the other man, never slow on the uptake, could venture an inspired guess.
Then Thornton told him about his conjecture with regard to Colin Foster.
"You know, sir, that we haven't any proof whatsoever that Foster is our man," the police inspector cautioned. "Therefore I can't act in my official capacity—not against a man like Foster."
"I'm well aware of it, Mason. So, let's take it as a working assumption for the time being."
"And do what?"
"Ascertain a cause, for a start, if we possibly can. Why would Foster wish to extract money from half of Milton?" When he saw Mason's sceptical look, he clarified, "Well, from half the manufacturers, anyway."
"There are the usual reasons... And they are generally not that far off the mark—"
"Such as?"
"I'd say either monetary gain or a personal grudge. What do you think more likely?"
Thornton laughed mirthlessly. "On the surface neither seems probable. The Fosters come from money; and not being one of the cotton manufacturers, he has little reason to ruin any of us for his own increased profits."
"What about a personal cause?"
"None that I could think of. They spend little enough time in Milton these days; so, when should anyone here have recently made an enemy of Foster? But then, I'm not abreast of the times when it comes to Milton networks—or animosities, for that matter. Not since my arrest and trial." He shrugged. "Though, perhaps it's an old grudge—"
"The wife? Siblings?"
"I wouldn't know, Mason... I haven't been moving in their circles until some seven or eight years ago. I'd have to tap someone else for information—I might try my brother-in-law, or Hamper."
"How about means and opportunity, then?" Mason asked, answering his own question in the same breath. "As the silent partner in a private bank, he would be in a position to set up an investment fraud—and an anonymous account."
"Something quite impossible to proof outside a police investigation! Isn't there anything else more tangible we could look into?" Thornton exclaimed, thumping a bale of cloth in frustration.
"The money transferred to pay for Alban's room at The White Hart, then?" Mason suggested. "Someone at the London bank may remember Foster... if only we could get our hands on a picture of him—"
"Remember him after all these months?" Thornton asked, incredulous. "How likely is this, picture or not? The best we could do is ascertain that Foster was in London at the time in question—for what it's worth."
"Nevertheless, I shall inquire to that effect... It's what we call a chain of evidence, sir," he said earnestly, seemingly oblivious of the fact—in the heat of the moment, at least—that Thornton, as a former magistrate, would be well aware of it. "Shame that, in all probability, we'll never link Foster directly with Alban's abduction—if that's what happened to the deceased."
"You're probably right. He would have had his henchmen for that—" Thornton stopped dead. "Those thugs watching the Latimers' house! How likely is it that they're the same men that abducted Alban?"
"Not unlikely at all, sir. There's every chance that Foster—if it was him—would want to keep the circle of people in the know as small as possible."
"Yet there would nothing be gained by interrogating them—"
"At present we'd have little enough to put pressure on them," Mason agreed. "The most we could charge them with was loitering."
"You'd even be hard pushed to make 'with intent' stick—not unless Mr Latimer came forward that he or his clients felt intimidated by their presence," Thornton said.
"He may not even be aware of their existence—"
"Mrs Latimer wouldn't want to draw attention to them, and Mr Latimer may not be in the habit of chatting with his servants."
"So, if we summoned those men to the police station for interrogation, we would likely achieve nothing except warn them—and whoever pays them."
"And yet they're our best way forward," Thornton mused. "Let me mull over it—"
"If you come up with some kind of plan, I'll be happy to hear it, sir," Mason said, ready to take his leave, "and in the meantime I shall look into Mr Foster's whereabouts at the time of Alban's disappearance and death."
Margaret was up and about again, but for the present she was remaining in a bubble of breastfeeding, sleep deprivation, and sibling jealousy—and, by her own admission, her brain was in a mush.
"I'm inclined to think that it is a trick by Mother Nature to prevent new mothers from finding the task of caring for their young too tedious," she said with an apologetic smile when, after the second time of her husband's careful explanations, she still failed to grasp the details of what he was telling her.
On the bright side, an inkling of a family routine was beginning to emerge; and that evening was the first time since Richard's birth that they managed to have some time to themselves to sit in the study after supper.
"For the time being, just don't count on me to contribute anything quick-witted, or even marginally useful, to our conversations," she added.
"I wouldn't want to exclude you again—"
"I'm afraid you'll have to, at least when it comes to the fine detail," she said, heaving a sigh. "The good thing is that it will pass eventually—however, for now you must content yourself with being married to a simpleton."
"I'd say, being marginally less brilliant than your usual self, still leaves you a cut above the rest." He smiled when he saw her lips form a silent 'Thank you'. "Anyway, have the ladies visiting you during your lying-in provided you with any salacious gossip you haven't passed on to me yet?"
"Gossip?" She chuckled, well aware that he was pulling her leg. "I think I can do that... although the latest one is rather disconcerting and may badly affect the mill," she said with a deadpan face. "Mary Higgins has a beau!"
"Who is it?" he exclaimed in the same spirit. "Did one of the workers have a roving eye across the stew pots?"
Mary Higgins and her famed budget stews had proved to be one of the assets when it came to hiring new workers. The canteen scheme, drawn up on a whim between Thornton and Nicholas Higgins in the early days of—what Thornton now called—master-and-workers-cooperation, had proved supremely successful. And Higgins's shy and quiet daughter Mary had no small part in that success.
"The proprietor of the Golden Dragon in Princeton; he's a widower—"
"—and probably has a bunch of small children to care for!—as if the Higginses didn't have plenty of their own with all the young Bouchers living with them."
"Well, Mary told me that he's quite a young man—no more than eight or nine years her senior—and with no children. However, she turned him down, telling him that she had no time for a man, because her responsibilities and her career were coming first."
Thornton laughed. "For all her quiet ways she is a true Higgins!"
"Most certainly!" Margaret agreed, smiling at his mirth. "And quite a catch—The young man said he would wait for her, no matter how long it took; it seems he is quite smitten with her."
"So, the good news is that, for the time being, we shall keep our cook—"
"It may not be for long, mind," Margaret cautioned, "because what woman could resist a man for weeks and months on end who was prepared to wait for her forever?"
For a moment he felt inclined to say, 'You were!', but quickly thought better of it than to touch upon that particular subject. Instead he asked, "And what fount of information has Mrs Hamper turned out to be?"
"Nothing much, except that the Browns have postponed Daphne's season for another year... and rumour has it that she may not be coming out in Town at all. Yet no-one seems to have made the connection with the bogus investment scheme." Several years ago, upon cutting themselves off from trade, the Browns had altered their name into Brown-Smythe, thanks to Mrs Brown's tenuous connections with gentry; and only two years ago their new genteel situation had paid off in the form of a knighthood. Sir Thomas and Lady Brown-Smythe.
It was the same honours Colin Foster was yet aspiring to.
"The Hendersons haven't been mentioned at all lately," Margaret added. "Talking of the investment scheme... Fanny told me that they're starting to hire new servants again, so that they will be fully staffed by Christmas. She's already planning their dinner on the occasion, and we'll all be invited."
"Oh dear," he sighed, but his heart wasn't quite in it. "Are we going?"
"I'm afraid we must. Besides, it'll be our only family engagement this Christmas... and, truth be told, by the end of December I'll be craving some change of scene and society!"
"Sorry, my love. I keep forgetting how cooped up you must feel at present. We should think about taking your cousin Edith up on her offer and visit. At Easter, perhaps?"
"I'd like that very much!—but will you have the time?"
"I daresay, if I can't take off a single week every once in a while I'd be doing a poor job at managing the mill and planning ahead. Also, it might serve as a rehearsal for our three weeks' vacation in August."
"So, Easter it is! I shall write to Edith immediately—" She considered her current lack of spare time and smiled wistfully. "—or, rather, at my earliest convenience; which may not be so very soon, after all."
Retracing to an earlier part of their conversation, Thornton remarked, "It seems that my brother-in-law has managed to offset his losses, and rather earlier than he originally thought. I think I should pay Robert a visit one of these days. Now that he is back in the game, he may be inclined to speak about matters." Mentally checking his upcoming engagements, he added, "I may go and see him tomorrow; so, don't count me in for dinner. Will you tell Mother?"
"I shall try to keep it in mind," Margaret said indistinctly, stifling a yawn. "Sorry, but I'm tired. I'm going upstairs to feed Richard, and then I'll be heading straight to bed." She rose and stretched her weary limbs.
"I'll be a while yet," he said, kissing her softly. "Don't wait up for me."
"I don't think I could, even if I wanted to," she said, leaning against his shoulder for a moment.
"It will get better soon. Remember, we've been through this before—"
When he arrived at York Street, the Watsons were about to sit down to an early dinner, and he was pressed to join them and try a new dish, a marinated pot roast served with potato dumplings. Their cook had somehow got hold of a recipe for the latter from the Rhineland region, and had asked permission to give it a try. The pale shiny globes looked intriguing enough, piled high on their serving plate; and Fanny was obviously eager to share the experience with any guest that might drop by—in this case, her brother.
Thornton wasn't a picky eater. After a youth spent in near poverty, he was grateful for any decent meal he was given; and after skipping lunch and hardly eating anything during his tea break—he had been too engaged in one of his wild games with his daughter—he was actually quite hungry.
"Not bad at all," he commented in between forkfuls. The meal was well cooked by any standards; Fanny had obviously managed to keep their cook throughout their financial difficulties.
"Isn't it just," Fanny agreed. "The dumplings go really well with the pot roast and sprouts. By the way, has Margaret told you about our Christmas dinner plans yet? I'm thinking about a three bird roast of turkey, duck, and chicken—or, perhaps, pheasant rather than chicken?"
"You might want to discuss this with Cook and surprise us," Watson rumbled, cutting short her musings. "How's the finished goods business at the dyeing works coming along?" he asked Thornton. Watson didn't bother with keeping off business talk during meals, not at his own dinner table.
"The order books are filling—slowly—but that's not surprising, considering the time of year; I'm confident business will pick up come January."
"Well, better you than me, John. Can't say I'm much inclined to diversify and embark on new ventures, not at my time in life."
"You've got two sons... wouldn't you want to leave them a sound and modern production?" Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fanny nod vigorously.
"See, that's the thing," Watson said, putting aside his cutlery and suppressing a belch. "I'm employing a manager to free up my time to pursue other interests—and, on the whole, very profitable interests—, but a mill manager can only ever do as much; in order to push things forward I'd have to return to the mill and take matters back in hand... and I'm just not inclined to do so! There's better and easier money to be made elsewhere these days."
"More risky money, too. Wouldn't you say so?"
"There's ways and means to deal with the risk and even the odds—unless you are a fool like Slickson or Harkness!" He scoffed. "Brandy, John?"
"I'll leave you to it," Fanny said brightly, rising from her chair as the maid came in to clear the table.
When both Fanny and the girl had left, and Watson had selected and lit his obligatory after-dinner cigar, Thornton said, "I'd like to ask you some questions about that failed investment back in summer that broke both Slickson and Harkness's neck."
"Go ahead, if you must," Watson said gruffly. "Though I don't care to be reminded of that disaster—"
"How came you got involved in the first place?"
"Got tipped off by my broker. He told me that all of Milton was investing serious money in Australian mining stocks. Cobalt mining. I don't know how exactly he came by his information, but the man has connections that served me well in the past. Anyway, it was all very hush-hush, early bird, and all that... Well, for once I got greedy; the odds were just too good to let it pass me by. More fool me!" He took a sip of brandy. "Turned out there's no cobalt in Australia; not now, not ever."
"Did you follow up the money transfer?"
"I asked my broker for information, such as it was... The paper trail ended pretty quickly with an anonymous account at a private London bank."
"Wessingham & Byrne?"
Watson's deep-set eyes widened in surprise. "How did you know?"
"Just a hunch—"
Suddenly, things started to move.
This time it was Mason who sent Thornton an urgent summons. They were to meet at a place hitherto unknown to the latter, a run-down jumble of sheds behind a high fence and brick wall. Getting there, Thornton realised that it was just around the corner from Mill Lane, and no more than two hundred yards from the bridge of the same name.
The alley lay dark and deserted, giving Thornton a bad feeling in his guts. The derelict area was not a place he would have marched into by his own volition, especially alone and at night. Fortunately he didn't have to wait; after a quick perfunctory rattle at the rickety gate in the fence, which proved to him that it was locked, the police inspector appeared from the deep shadows of one of the sheds and let him in.
"What are we doing here, Mason?" Thornton whispered impatiently. While he trusted the policeman explicitly, he didn't appreciate the other man's penchant for secret-mongering.
Mason hushed him into silence and lead the way to one of the sheds; once inside and with the door shut behind them, he lit a shuttered lamp.
"There is something I must show you, sir." Mason's eyes sparkled with suppressed excitement in the dim light. "I believe I've found the place where Alban was held prisoner!"
"He was held here, you mean? How did you come across this place?"
"I called in a favour from a bloodhound handler of my acquaintance."
"C'mon, Mason! Not even the best of sniffer dogs can follow a trail five months old."
"It didn't have to... Hear me out, sir," Mason said quickly. "I sussed out Foster's various properties in and around Milton, and this one deemed me promising. You must have noticed how close it is to Mill Lane Bridge." When he saw Thornton's nod, he went on, "The place has been abandoned for quite a while, and Foster has been trying to sell it for almost a year now. Unsuccessfully as yet. This is hardly prime property."
"True enough. With the ascent of the railways and steam engine, this part of town has become virtually worthless," Thornton acknowledged.
"With the place in such a derelict state and my not being here in an official capacity, I decided to do some stealthy trespassing—and it paid out! Follow me, please."
They went through a warren of rooms and passages, some empty, some filled with the kind of junk too broken to steal.
"Remember that I retrieved Alban's suitcase from lost property at Euston station, sir? This meant that I had items at hand with the right scent for the bloodhound to pick up a possible trail. I asked my acquaintance to come here and we methodically went through all the rooms, and this here is where the hound gave mouth."
Walking along a dark passage and passing through a sturdy door, they had arrived at a windowless room in the basement. It was musty, with bare solid brick walls, and virtually empty.
"See that one chair over there?" Mason said. "There's even the rags that bound him still hanging from it... And that rag heap over there? Some of them are definitely bloodstained—and amongst them I found this!" He pulled a paper bag out of his coat pocket and opened it. "A neckstock with a floral pattern! The hound definitely identified the scent as Alban's."
"Well done, Mason!" Thornton said, only to quell the other man's enthusiasm immediately. "The trouble is that the hound can't testify in court... We'll need someone else to identify this as Alban's." He had a closer look at the piece of fabric. "This looks custom-made, so his tailor comes to mind... or, perhaps, Mrs Latimer may recognise it."
"There's something else," Mason said. "I made discreet inquiries with the servants into the whereabouts of Mr Foster at the time of Benedict Alban's disappearance and death."
Thornton knew well enough this meant that Mason had bribed one of them into blabbing. Unfortunately, this also meant that their testimony might be compromised for use in court.
"Turns out he left Milton for London on the twelfth of July; the very day Alban was believed to have disappeared," Mason continued. "Foster then returned to Milton three days later with the morning train and returned to London with the night train on the same day. The servant said, he left the house early that night because he had business to attend prior to catching the train. The servant didn't know what kind of business—but he was certain that there was nothing in Foster's regular schedule for that day... Alban was found dead on the following morning. Sixteenth of July."
"In other words, Foster was in Milton both at the time of Alban's abduction and his death; and in between he was in London and in a position to arrange paying the hotel bill by money transfer and have Alban's luggage sent to London... But why didn't he retrieve it and get rid of it?"
"Because you'd either need your baggage claim ticket or a form of identification. So, he may simply have found it easier to wait for the unclaimed suitcase to be removed from short term storage within a few days. He probably thought that it would be gone for good after that point."
"Add to that the fact that Foster is, basically, living in Town these days and that his wife is likely to have known both the present Mrs Latimer and Mr Alban through the Kensington ladies charity," Thornton remarked, "I'd say that the circumstantial evidence against Foster is piling up."
"Not yet enough to confront the man himself; but enough to push on with the inquiry into Alban's death. From this moment on, I shall have to treat this strictly as official police business—"
"—and I'm but a civilian, alas," Thornton intercepted with a wry smile. "Thank you for the courtesy of informing me beforehand."
"Even as a police inspector, my cooperation with you may not have come quite to an end yet, sir."
"I see," Thornton said, and yet he didn't.
"Listen, sir. I've been thinking a lot about the best way of getting actual proof; and, time and again, I came back to what you said about Foster's presumed henchman—that they may be our best way forward. I agree with you; we need them to spill the beans on Foster."
"And how are you going to achieve this feat? Surely not on a charge of loitering—and as of yet, your bloodhound may be the only one to connect those thugs with this place. Unless you have found witnesses in the meantime—"
"I haven't," Mason admitted. "Therefore, we need to set a trap—and we need a decoy."
"And who would that be, pray tell?" Thornton asked, suspicion dawning.
"Why? Mrs Latimer, of course!—and I'd much rather have you convince her to play along than my forcing her by threatening to expose her as an accessory to a fraud."