A Measure of Menace (Kat Holloway Mysteries #7.5)

Chapter 2

I sat still while dismay bordering on panic washed through me. Lord Clifford had the habit of getting himself into scrapes, sometimes dangerous ones, and I did not doubt that what he told me was true.

In my dim understanding of our justice system, a lord wasn’t tried at the Old Bailey like the rest of us. He was expected to stand before his peers in the House of Lords and hope he hadn’t made enough enemies among them to be condemned.

Even if he weren’t convicted, the shame of the earl standing trial would be a blow for his wife and daughter, yet another scandal Lady Cynthia would carry for the rest of her life. The Shires family had been through several terrible ones already.

Lord Clifford regarded me piteously. He must be desperate if he’d decided the best help he could find was his daughter’s cook and that cook’s beau.

I told myself to approach the problem in the calm and sensible way I would any troubles below stairs.

“Did you actually see this dead man?” I asked trying to keep my voice steady. “I believe not, as you have no idea how he was killed.”

“It is not that simple.” Lord Clifford regained some of his arrogant impatience. “I did visit Mobley earlier that day—this past Sunday, it was. I’d arranged the meeting with him, even though his shop is shut on Sundays, as though he’s a pious man.” He scoffed. “As I say, I owed him quite a sum, and I asked him to give me longer to fetch it for him. We argued—loudly. I stormed away, and I am afraid a number of people saw me. Hiram Mobley’s place of business is in the Strand. The road is quite busy, even on a Sunday, and the appearance of an earl in his carriage with his coat of arms is noticed.”

“You took your own carriage to meet with this insalubrious person?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

Lord Clifford blinked. “Of course. How else was I to move about Town? My coachman drove me here all the way from St. Albans. I saw no reason for him to put his feet up while I charged about in a hansom.”

“A hansom might have been more discreet, your lordship.”

“I was not trying to hide from anyone.” Lord Clifford shrugged. “I borrowed the money, fair and square, and I meant to pay it back. I thought I’d have plenty to give Mobley, well within the allotted time, but I’ve had rotten luck, is all.”

Lord Clifford often had rotten luck. “Did you lose it on a horse?” I asked.

His eyes widened. “On the gee-gees? No, no. Horses are notoriously unreliable unless one has an informant in the stables or can somehow have a sure winner nobbled. But that’s cruel to the beasts, so I stay away from it.”

My hands tightened in my lap. “Perhaps you should tell me exactly why you borrowed the money, your lordship.”

“I had to prove that I could put up my half, didn’t I?” Lord Clifford’s gaze willed me to tell him he’d been in the right. “He’d never have agreed if I hadn’t shown him the money. Let the dog see the rabbit, eh?”

“ Who wouldn’t have agreed?” I asked in perplexity. “The bookmaker?”

“What bookmaker?” Lord Clifford was as bewildered as I was. “I never saw a bookmaker. I told you, this wasn’t about horses. Or any other sort of wager.”

“Then what on earth was it about?” I commanded in exasperation.

“Steamships, of course,” Lord Clifford answered, as though this was reasonable. “Investing in a company of them, specifically. One a friend owns. It was an excellent dodge, and I could not resist. But it went wrong when old Dougherty refused to commit to the full share. We had him on the hook—oh, so beautifully—and then he said he didn’t think steamships were a good investment after all. We’d doubled his first, smaller stake, but he refused to give us a larger one. He’d decided to put all his money in railroads through the wilds of Canada. Idiot. Someone is fleecing him good and proper.”

My hands tightened further as I sorted through his convoluted tale. “You are saying you borrowed money to convince this Mr. Dougherty to invest in a steamship company?”

Lord Clifford tapped the table with the flat of his fingers. “You have it, Mrs. Holloway. I met old Dougherty at one of my clubs. He is rolling in riches, is the man. A nabob. I wish I could have been a nabob rather than an earl. I’d quite enjoy all that money, and I don’t care much for what people think of me. I truly thought gaining a title would make me filthy rich and give my wife a bit of a lark, but it has not turned out the way I thought at all.” He ended on a sorrowful note.

“Why was it important for you to have cash?” I steered him back to the point. “If Mr. Dougherty was the one investing in the company, why did you need money?”

“Well, he didn’t know my friend Jacoby had set up the scheme, did he?” Lord Clifford’s expression softened into a self-satisfied one. “I didn’t let on I knew Jacoby at all. I suggested that both Dougherty and I begin with a small investment, as it was a good venture I’d heard about. An equal amount from both of us. I had to produce my share and show it to Dougherty, or he wouldn’t have gone through with the preliminary investment.”

I steeled myself. “What was the amount?”

“Ten thousand guineas.” Lord Clifford winced. “I owed fifteen on it by the time Mobley turned up his toes. Would have been even more, had he lived.”

“Fifteen thousand … ”

My dismay returned. The dead Mr. Mobley must have been an unscrupulous moneylender who charged exorbitant rates of interest. These sorts of men would lend to anyone, but they expected to be paid back on time and turned dangerous if they were not.

When I was a girl, a moneylender had set up shop around the corner from Bow Lane where I’d grown up. My mother had never let me walk past his place, as various ruffians the moneylender employed would lurk outside it. I reasoned that they’d not be interested in a skinny lass rushing by, as I could never possibly owe them money, but I’d heeded my mother’s warning.

“It would have been worth it and easy to repay,” Lord Clifford said mournfully. “ If Dougherty hadn’t pulled out. He cheated us out of that money, blast the man.”

Or, Dougherty had tumbled to the fact that Lord Clifford and his friend were trying to swindle him and had prudently walked away.

“You said you’d doubled Mr. Dougherty’s investment,” I continued. “Which means your stake would have doubled as well, would it not? Couldn’t you have used that to pay back the moneylender?”

Lord Clifford regarded me with exaggerated patience. “No, Mrs. Holloway. We gave the money I borrowed to Dougherty. We had to. To convince him that a larger investment would be sound.”

“I see.” I wanted to shake the man. “You were tricking him into thinking that his investment had doubled, when you hadn’t invested the money at all.”

Lord Clifford tapped the side of his nose. “Now, you understand.”

Oh, good heavens. “Is your friend’s steamship company even real?”

“Of course it is. Jacoby’s offices are in Wellclose Square, near the London Docks. He’s got stake in a ship and everything. Only, the income is not what he’d wish. We thought we’d spark it a bit.”

By cheating an honest man out of ten thousand pounds. But the scheme had failed, putting Lord Clifford deeply in debt to a moneylender who was no better than a swindler himself.

I drew a deep breath. “If this false dividend had persuaded Mr. Dougherty to give you still more money, what would you have done with it?”

“Jacoby was going to put it into his shipping company, of course. The investment would have been bound to pay off eventually, and Dougherty would see some return for it. Maybe not the riches Jacoby had claimed, but something. We could have strung him along for a while.”

I briefly wondered how Cynthia, who could be so wise, had sprung from such a gullible parent.

“Would Dougherty ever have seen any money, your lordship?” I pinned him with my no-nonsense gaze.

“Why not? He and I both stood to gain from the larger investment, and Jacoby promised my money would come back to me five-fold, if not in the vast sums we’d promised Dougherty …”

As I continued to stare at him, Lord Clifford frowned, and his fingers began to twitch.

Then his face crumpled entirely, and he fell back against his chair. “Oh, bloody hell. Mrs. Holloway,” he said limply. “What have I done?”

He’d provided himself a motive for murdering the moneylender, was what he’d done. Mr. Jacoby obviously had planned to cheat Lord Clifford as well as Mr. Dougherty, roping Lord Clifford in by pretending to be such a good friend. Lord Clifford might have borrowed still more money and been in a tight spot indeed. Mobley’s death had possibly relieved him of this.

“I’m not certain what you believe I can do, your lordship,” I said after a time. “Catching whoever murdered the moneylender is the business of the police.”

“Good Lord, I can’t have the police mucking about in my business. You have no need to solve the murder entirely, Mrs. Holloway. Only to prove that I didn’t kill the man.”

I decided not to point out that both tasks would perforce be one and the same. “I understand.” I ran through various ways I could help at all, then emitted a sigh. “Very well. I will see what I can do.”

The utter gratitude with which Lord Clifford beheld me almost made me soften to him. Almost.

“And please, please, whatever you do, do not tell my wife,” Lord Clifford begged. “Or Cynthia. She’d rake me over hot coals. Promise me you’ll keep them out of this.”

I had no intention of distressing Lady Clifford or Lady Cynthia with this mess. “I will do my best.”

“Thank you.” Lord Clifford rested his elbows on the table, his face in his hands. “Thank you, Mrs. Holloway. You are an angel of mercy.”

I left Lord Clifford stewing in his realization that he had borrowed a large sum from a crooked moneylender to give to his equally crooked friend. It was clear to me that Mr. Jacoby had planned to fleece Lord Clifford not only out of the ten thousand, but out of whatever Mr. Dougherty had come up with for the full investment. Lord Clifford ought to bless Mr. Dougherty for turning away before Mr. Jacoby pulled the two men deeper into his schemes.

I wondered if Lord Clifford could be forgiven the debt to the moneylender, since the moneylender was now deceased. Mobley’s heirs might want to be repaid, of course, but once the nature of Mobley’s business was exposed to the police, the heirs perhaps wouldn’t be able to collect. But there was no telling.

I descended to the kitchen before Mr. Davis decided to come hunt for me. As far as he was concerned, I’d only gone to the dining room to receive praise for my meal, but I’d been some time about it.

Tess, still exuberant from her unexpected holiday, started to clean up supper and prepare breakfast, refusing my offer of sending her to bed early. She was too keyed up, she said, and would never sleep.

“Hard work helps a body rest, don’t it?” Tess asked as she scraped food scraps into a basket. She ruined this virtuous statement by adding, “Dancing with your chap at a knees-up don’t hurt either. It was glorious.”

“Where was this knees-up?” I asked curiously. It had been an age since I’d danced, or at least, it felt like it.

“You wouldn’t approve, Mrs. H. It were a gin house, but Caleb and I didn’t take no gin. We was there for the piano and the fiddle, and we danced until we nearly dropped.”

Taverns and gin houses often offered music and dancing to entice customers in to purchase spirits. Tess was correct that I did not approve of gin, which led too many to their ruin, but I could not admonish her for enjoying herself.

I was tempted, as we worked, to ask Tess to bid Caleb—Constable Greene of Scotland Yard—to tell me everything he could find out about the death of one Hiram Mobley of the Strand. However, when I’d turned to Caleb for assistance in the past, he’d nearly landed himself in a good deal of trouble, so I resisted. Inspector McGregor, his superior, had not taken kindly to me using the constable to gain information.

I hesitated to question Inspector McGregor as well, understanding why Lord Clifford wanted his own name kept out of this situation. My concern was more for Cynthia than her father, but I knew Inspector McGregor could fix upon a suspect and squeeze him until he was a pathetic pulp of a human being.

“Angel of mercy, indeed,” I muttered.

“What’s that, Mrs. H.?” Tess looked up at me.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m off to scatter largesse.”

I took up my basket and a shawl and went up the outside stairs. It was my habit to distribute the food scraps to the hungry who would gather near the house at this hour, knowing of my generosity. The food would be thrown away if not eaten, so why let it go to waste?

I did not see James, Daniel’s son, who sometimes lingered, both to make certain I was unharmed by those who swarmed to me or to offer his services as an errand runner. The fact that James was nowhere in sight did not mean he wasn’t lurking. I sent the shadows a significant glance, hoping James, if there, would understand my silent message.

Whether James had been present or not, once the rest of the staff and Lord Clifford had gone to bed later that night, a quiet knock sounded on the back door. I opened it to find Daniel McAdam on the doorstep.