There seemed no reason to dally. “I’ll leave you, then.” He made the comment general; with a single nod for everyone, he headed for the door.
What he learned at the club drove all other thoughts temporarily from his mind.
“We’ve narrowed the field to three possibilities.” As he’d suggested, Christian had acted as a central contact, compiling and disseminating information as the others brought it in. They’d all been involved, but in order to keep things moving, they’d simply reported, then got on with the next task, and left Christian to make sense of the whole. This was the first time they’d all gathered since the meeting in Tony’s library—the first time they’d heard the results to date.
“Between them, Jack”—Christian nodded at Jack Warnefleet—“and Tristan came up with a list of tea and coffee merchants they’ve since verified as exhaustive.”
“Can one ask how?” Charles asked.
Jack Warnefleet grinned. “Not if you want details. But I’m sure those merchants would be amazed at how much their wives, especially their competitors’ wives, know.”
“Ah!” Charles turned a limpid glance on Tristan.
Who smiled. “I left that endeavor to Jack. My contribution was verifying the information via the appropriate guilds. By a sleight of argument, I convinced the guild secretaries that I needed to examine their registers for cases of accidental cross-listings, where coffee merchants had been listed as tea merchants, and vice versa.”
“Which naturally left you with a list of those who were both. Very nice.” Charles looked back up the table.
“The list comprised twenty-three companies,” Christian continued. “We eliminated those we know lost cargoes, assuming no merchant is going to send a precious cargo to France just to cover his tracks. That took twelve names out—some of the sixteen ships carried cargoes for the same merchant.”
“Poor beggars,” Jack Hendon said. “Knowing how close some of them sail to the wind, I’d be surprised if none have gone bankrupt.”
“Some have,” Gervase answered. “Yet more damage to add to A. C.’s account.”
Tony stirred. “So that left us with eleven companies.”
Christian nodded. “Courtesy of you all and your chameleon like talents, passing yourselves off as potential coffee-shop proprietors and the like, not to mention your ability to tell barefaced lies, by focusing on who had stock after the last A. C.-induced shortage, we’ve ended with three names—three merchants. All had stock to sell
when the price last soared, and even though that incident was nearly a year ago, we have enough corroboration to conclude that only those three had stock to sell at that time.”
A general hubbub ensued, centering on whether there was any easy way to narrow the list further.
Tony didn’t contribute; reaching out, he took the sheet lying in front of Christian and read the names. “So,” his voice fell into the lull as the prospect of a simple next step faded, “A. C. is associated with one of these three.”
“Yes, but,” Christian stressed, “two of the three are not involved. Given what we’ll need to do to ferret out a hidden partner, we need to be absolutely certain which of the three it is before we move in.”
Tony nodded. “If we get it wrong, we’ll alert A. C., and given his record in covering his tracks, all we’ll find is another corpse.”
Jack Warnefleet sat forward. “So how do we pinpoint the right merchant?”
“The right merchant landed cargoes before each prize was taken.” Tony looked across the table at Jack Hendon.
“You said once we had a merchant’s shipping line, we could verify the safe landing of A. C.’s cargo via the records at Lloyd’s. We have three merchants—if we learn which shipping lines they use, could we check all three lines for safe landings in the relevant weeks preceding each prize-taking, and check the cargoes landed?”
Jack held his gaze for a long moment, then asked, “How much time do we have?”
“By my calculation, not a lot. A. C.’s been quiet for nearly a week, but he must know we haven’t given up. He’ll try something else to deflect the investigation—he won’t succeed, but the faster we can conclude it, the better.” Tony paused, then added, “Who knows what he might do next?”
It was a point on which he tried not to speculate, yet it hovered in his mind, a constant threat. To Alicia, to him, to their future.
Jack was thinking, calculating—glancing around the table, he nodded. “Given our number, it’s possible. And it might be the best way. The first thing we need to learn is which shipping lines those three companies use, but to do that without alerting the companies, you’ll need to ask the shipping lines.”
“Can you do that?” Christian asked.
“Not me. As the owner of Hendon Shipping, the instant I start asking questions like that, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“No matter.” Charles shrugged. “You tell us what answers we need, and what questions will best elicit them, and leave it to us.”
“Right.”