The Edge of Desire (Bastion Club 7)

There were seven of them all told. They buckled down to the task with grim determination. They quickly established a rhythm—Christian, Dalziel, and Tristan reaching and lifting the files and books down from the shelves, then handing them to Letitia or Hermione to ferry to one or other of the two main piles. Tony watched over the pile for inventory and all things to do with goods, while Jack stacked and organized the account ledgers.

Within half an hour they realized they had a problem, but forged on until every box, file, and paper had been considered, and either assigned to a pile or set aside as not immediately relevant.

Surrounded by now empty shelves, they slumped into the chairs or propped against the desk or shelves and took stock. Two hours had passed. From the chair behind the desk, presumably the one in which Randall used to sit, Letitia surveyed what they’d discovered about her late husband’s enterprise, glancing from the neatly stacked ledgers, over fifty of them, all fat and plump, surrounding Jack Hendon on one side of the room, to the fourteen thin ledgers by Tony Blake’s feet.

Tony looked down at them and shook his head. “Frankly, this is bizarre. These aren’t inventory.” He picked up one ledger and flicked through it. “It’s coded like everything else, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a property ledger.” He stopped flicking pages to scan one leaf. “There’s furniture, and furnishings.” He turned a few pages. “And what looks like staff rolls and payments, although they don’t seem to go on for very long—several months, but not more than a year.” He flicked through to the end of the book, closed it, and looked down at the pile, then at the other files and papers they’d set aside. “There’s nothing here—no trace at all, either incoming or outgoing, of tradable stock.”

“Conversely,” Jack Hendon said, an account ledger open in his hands, “we have extremely, even obsessively, detailed accounts going back”—he glanced down at the pile—“for twelve years.”

“That’s how long the Orient Trading Company has been in existence,” Christian supplied. “According to Montague, it first appeared twelve years ago, at much the same time as Randall moved to London.”

Tristan pricked up his ears. “Any word on where he came by his money?”

Christian shook his head. “It’s Montague’s considered opinion that Randall opened his London bank accounts with cold, hard cash.”

Eyebrows were raised.

Christian had already reported Montague’s findings to Letitia; she was busy thinking of other things.

“Could he have been renting properties?” She looked around, her gaze coming to rest on Jack Hendon.

He pulled a “could be, might be” face, and stood to start resorting the account ledgers. “Let’s take a look at the last year’s incomings. That might give us a clue.”

Tony forsook his disappointing pile and went to help. Tristan and Christian gravitated in the same direction. Dalziel remained slumped on a straight-backed chair, his hands sunk in his pockets, his long legs stretched before him, his face a mask denoting that he was thinking. Furiously, on many different tracks at once.

They left him to it, crowding around Jack to read over his shoulder as with an “Ah-ha!” he stood, a blue account ledger in his hands, and opened it.

From the chair behind the desk, Letitia, with Hermione perched on the desk beside her, watched.

The four of them scanned the incomings, Jack running his large finger down the relevant column.

“He wasn’t renting properties,” Christian concluded. “These incoming amounts are simply too large, even if he owned half of Mayfair.”

“Not only that,” Tony said, pointing to the dates column of the ledger. “These payments are too frequent, especially given their amount, to be rent.” He shook his head. “This looks like what you’d expect it to be—the lodgings of business takings, the sort any shop or store that sells things would make.”

Dalziel rose and joined the group; picking up another of the account ledgers, he opened it and scanned. “Could it be that the Orient Trading Company has a number of different shops?” He glanced across the room at Tony’s deserted pile. “Fourteen, perhaps? Might that explain the high amounts?”

“Fourteen excellent shops, if that’s the case…” Reading over Jack’s shoulder, Tristan frowned. “But it might be so.” He, too, reached for an account ledger. “If there are only fourteen initials, signifying fourteen different payers into the accounts…perhaps the Orient Trading Company does have fourteen shops.”

“Perhaps,” Tony replied. “But if so, what the devil are they selling?”

“Bizarre is indeed the word for it,” Dalziel murmured, his attention on the ledger he held. “It’s almost as if they’re selling something that’s not real….”

Slowly he lifted his gaze and met Christian’s eyes.

For a moment no one spoke.

Letitia knew what they were thinking, but none of them would say the words “prostitution” or “brothel” in front of her, and even less in front of Hermione, although neither of them would swoon.

Regardless, she felt very real relief when Jack Hendon shook his head. “I don’t think it can be that either. Just look at this amount.” He pointed to a figure, waited while the others looked, then flicked the page. “And then here again, a week later. Establishments of that sort simply cannot clear those sort of sums in that time. It’s simply not physically possible.”

There was a general easing of the tension.

“Not that, then.” Christian sounded relieved, too.

“No—and here’s something else.” Tony had picked up a red ledger, presumably one listing expenses. That was confirmed when he said, “Just look at these outgoings. Compare them to the incomings, and it’s clear that the incomings outweigh the outgoings by a positively massive margin.” He shook his head, poring over more figures. “The Orient Trading Company, whatever the devil it sells, is a cash-generating operation. Whatever they’re trading in, it’s not just profitable, but wildly, hugely so.”

“And,” Christian said, a green ledger in his hands, “it looks as if we have three owners.” There was a note of triumph in his voice. He looked across the room at Letitia. “They’re only identified by their initials—R, T, and S.” He smiled intently. “I wonder who…”