The Connicle Curse (26 page)

“Something amiss?” Lord Somersby asked as he glanced over at me.

“I must confess,” I said as I looked from him to Colin, “that I never expected to be looking through these.”

“Oh”—Lord Somersby waved me off with a flick of his hand—“you aren't. This isn't happening. Wouldn't be proper. Wouldn't be proper at all.”

“Of course,” I said at once, taking note of Colin's single raised eyebrow as he peered at me from over the edge of the book he was studying.

And so the three of us remained, flipping through one ledger after another until well after Mr. Chiswell had knocked on the door and called out the return of him and Mr. Newcastle, which had earned him a rather gruff
“Not now”
from Lord Somersby. I continued to thumb through the Hutton accounts, noting a trail of poor decisions, ineffective investments, soaring medical costs for their unfortunate son, and, ultimately, initial paperwork to sell their West Hampton home. It was a sorrowful fall of fortunes that could only have aggravated the loss to Mrs. Hutton of her husband and son. It made me realize that I might not have found her name on any of the ship manifests because I'd been concentrating only on the first-class passengers when, in fact, she and Anna might have been forced to travel more frugally.

Colin tossed the ledger he'd been studying aside and snatched up one of the files. “What are these?”

“The most recent transactions,” Lord Somersby replied. “They haven't been entered into the ledgers yet. Such a tedious task. Our poor bookkeepers remain eternally two or three weeks behind.”

Colin shuffled through several of the folders, scribbling a few notes, before settling on a pile of papers in one particular file. Lord Somersby snatched up a folder as well, leaving me the only one who continued to flip through the book I had been handed. Given the state of the Huttons' affairs, there didn't seem much reason to check the latest accountings. The Hutton accounts were emaciated, with the only sizeable withdrawal having been made for the single night's stay Mrs. Hutton and Anna had made at Claridge's before heading to Paris. There were no further entries.

“Here's something a bit peculiar,” Colin spoke up as he reached out and grabbed one of the ledgers he'd just laid aside.

“Hmm?” Lord Somersby glanced over from above the rim of his reading glasses.

“Mr. Connicle has been making steady and substantial transfers on a biweekly basis for just over a year. One week before his supposed murder, the amount quintupled. It did the same again three days ago.”

“Let me see . . .” Lord Somersby said as he leaned over and peered at the ledger Colin was holding. “Automatic transfers. Most clients use those for retirement savings, but that wouldn't have been a concern for Mr. Connicle.” He chuckled.

“How would the amount have gotten increased?”

“A written request.”

“But he truly was dead when this one was completed three days ago.”

Lord Somersby scowled. “If his wife or a business partner was listed on the account they could have requested the alteration. I'd have to check the initial account records, which I'm afraid we keep off-site.”

“And what of this account the funds have been transferred to? A curious number:
47-381936225
. It strikes me as oddly familiar, but I'll be damned if I know why.”

“Well, I don't know why it would,” Lord Somersby sniffed. “They're usually random, though we do let our bigger investors choose their own numbers as long as they're at least eight digits and have a hyphen separating two or more of the numbers. Security, you know. They like to ascribe them to their best dog's KC number or their mistress's birth date,” he snorted before quickly sobering. “Don't you
dare
tell Martha I said that.”

Colin cracked a wry smile. “Perish the thought.”

“I, however, may really have found something,” Lord Somersby announced as he pushed himself to his feet, taking the file folder he'd been holding with him. “There are several unusual codes here. I shall have Mr. Chiswell check them out.” He pushed through the door, shutting it carefully behind himself.

“I'm not having much luck,” I sighed as I dropped the folder I'd been pawing through onto the table.

“Well . . .” Colin leveled a sigh himself. “About the only thing I can tell you is that Edmond Connicle was an exceedingly savvy and wealthy man. His widow will live an opulent life if we can get her out of that bloody awful place.”

“Do you see the trust for Mrs. Connicle's care that Mr. Tessler spoke of?”

“It's here.” He shook his head. “A tidy sum that will allow for whatever needs she may have within the confines of that horrid asylum. Nothing for her household or staff. They're to be released and the whole of the estate liquidated.”

The door to the office swung wide again and Lord Somersby returned with the same file still clenched in his hands. “Mr. Chiswell is doing a touch of research,” he announced as he came back to the table and sat down, “but there are some curious anomalies here that you'll likely wish to pursue.”

Colin closed the file he'd been studying and leaned in toward Lord Somersby. “What have you found?”

“It would seem,” His Lordship began, scowling at the pages through the window of his spectacles perched at the edge of his nose, “that your Mr. Tessler has been rather busy of late moving quite a sum of money through his accounts. A far larger sum, I might add, than what he himself is capable of covering on his own.”

“What?!” I could not stop myself. “How is he moving money through his accounts that isn't his? Where is it coming from . . . ?”

“Where is it going to?” Colin asked with a good deal more perception.

Lord Somersby peeled the glasses off his nose and leaned back in his chair. “All exceptional questions, lads, but questions I cannot answer until Mr. Chiswell returns. But what of the two of you?” He glanced between us with something of a twinkle behind his eyes. “Am I to be the only one who finds anything of interest in our clandestine little venture?”

“You've outdone me,” I said with a shrug. “Mr. Hutton had no head for money and I'm afraid he's left his poor widow in rather a sorry state.”

“Well, I can report more than that.” Colin sat up and spread the contents of the folder he'd been sorting through across the table in front of him. “The Connicle fortune is vast and, as we have seen in the accounting books at Columbia Financial, a very knotty bit of business indeed.”

“Knotty?” Lord Somersby rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “I should think you won't find anything unusual in that. The more money these chaps have the more ways they find to secrete it from our dear monarch's Inland Revenue. Your own father has something of a knack for that himself,” he added with a wink.

“I only wish my esteemed father had the assets to make such machinations worthwhile. I should think Ethan and I would be lounging somewhere high above the Amalfi coast right now were that the case.”

Lord Somersby laughed. “I'll not feel sorry for you, boy. It's enough that you've inherited your father's favor at court. Neither of you will ever want for what you need.”

“And yet it's so seldom about need.” Colin snickered as another knock rattled the door.

“Oh. . . .” His Lordship chuckled as he ambled over. “Such sentiment does chill my Tory heart.” He opened the door just enough to wedge himself into the gap. I heard a rash of clipped whispering before Lord Somersby waved his visitor off with a
tsk
and a
tut,
stepping back and sending the door gliding shut without another word. “Chiswell is as fretful as a nursemaid. You would think I was his charge rather than his employer.”

“All forgivable,” Colin said as he craned to get a look at the sheaf of papers Lord Somersby returned with, “if he has brought us something of use.”

“I should think you will find it so.” Lord Somersby smiled as he began to systematically lay the pages onto the table. “Do you know what you're looking at?” he asked with a sly grin.

I looked down at the raft of papers hand scribed with figures, calculations, and the names of several banking institutions but could otherwise make no sense of it. As I glanced over at Colin I could almost guess what he was going to say.

“It's banker's folly with no greater purpose than to mystify the rest of us.”

“Perhaps . . .” Lord Somersby nodded with a laugh. “But this bit of folly has something intriguing to tell us. It states that Mr. Tessler's personal accounts are guaranteed by the full faith and credit of Columbia Financial Services. Which explains how he has been able to move such vast sums through them over the past dozen days.”

I turned to Colin with amazement and found a deep knit in his brow. It was evident he was already whirling through some permutation I had not yet come to, so I looked back at Lord Somersby and asked, “Are you saying that no matter how much money Mr. Tessler withdraws from his accounts, even if he keeps no more than a farthing in the lot of them together, his debts will be covered through the assets of Columbia Financial?”

Lord Somersby clouted my nearer shoulder. “There you are, Ethan. Every bit as bright as your companion.”

“Are you quite certain?” Colin asked.

Lord Somersby sniffed as he turned a stolid glare at him. “You did not just ask me that.”

“Now, Rufus.” Colin offered a patient smile. “You know I don't mean anything by it. These are delicate matters. Lives have been taken. An innocent boy of six among them. I cannot be bandying about such accusations without absolute certainty.”

“You cannot bandy a word of this to anyone, dear boy, because you have not seen these records. I would never allow such a thing.”

“Of course, of course,” he answered too readily, and I suspected he was already trying to wheedle some way around that conundrum. “And where is all this money being moved to?”

Lord Somersby adjusted his reading glasses again as he flipped through several more pages. “It looks like a portion of it has been funneled over to Banque de Candolle Mallet and Cie in Geneva.” He lifted his gaze without raising his chin. “You'll not get so much as a ‘piss off' from those people. They're a private firm and those Swiss don't give a fig about playing by anyone else's rules.”

“And the rest of it?”

He dropped his eyes back to the loose-leaf papers. “The vast majority of funds have been wired off to Deutsche Bank in Berlin. I'd say some million-plus pounds' worth.”

My jaw unhinged. Even the Queen herself would be hard-pressed to quantify her liquid worth at so high a figure.

“Are you telling me that Columbia Financial has that depth of reserves?” Colin prodded as he yanked the papers out of Lord Somersby's hands.

His Lordship flipped through several other pages repeatedly before looking back at Colin with a bit of a shrug. “Hard to say. Some of the money is most certainly coming directly from Columbia Financial, but there is another amount, a greater amount, that appears to be funneling through from somewhere else. I'm afraid Mr. Chiswell would need to do a great deal more research to discern the source of those funds. And even so, if they were being fed through shell corporations, foreign accounts, or both together. . . .” He removed his spectacles and flipped them onto the table. “Well”—he rubbed at the bridge of his nose again—“we might never really know for certain.”

Colin bolted up so suddenly that he sent two ledgers and a sheaf of papers skittering onto the floor. “I've been a fool,” he announced with utter conviction, clutching one particular page in his hand.

“We all have our moments,” Lord Somersby snorted.

“What are you talking about?” I asked as I too stood up.

Colin jotted something down from the paper he held and then dropped it back onto the table. “We've not a moment to lose,” he announced, snatching his jacket from the back of a chair and quickly shrugging into it. “We've a train to catch and shall need to fetch the inspector straightaway.”

“Varcoe?!” I said with astonishment.

“I cannot thank you enough, Rufus.” Colin hurried back and hugged Lord Somersby.

“You know Martha and I can refuse you nothing,” he said as he followed us to the door. “Shall I have Mr. Chiswell continue to do a spot of research?”

“That would be too much to ask.”

“You didn't ask.” He smiled. “Just remember, you cannot use a word of this unless it is ordered by the courts. You have seen nothing from me.”

“Everything will be good and proper when the need comes,” Colin assured him. “We are in thick with the Yard on this one.”

“I find that oddly discomforting,” Lord Somersby mused. “Good luck to you then.”

Colin whisked the door open and bounded through as I turned back to Lord Somersby and shook his hand with my customary bemused grin. “I'm not sure if it's luck we need, as I haven't a notion as to what he's suddenly off about.”

To my surprise, Colin heard me and tossed back over his shoulder, “Come now, Ethan, did you learn nothing from Sundha Guitnu's Irish bloke? What was his name?”

“Cillian,” I answered, offering little more than a shrug to Lord Somersby as I followed Colin out. Mr. Chiswell and Mr. Newcastle glared at me as I made my way past them, most certainly aware that we'd been up to mischief in their employer's office. But I hardly cared, for I was rushing off to catch a train to an unknown destination for I knew not what, with Inspector Varcoe along for the ride.