The Masterful Mr. Montague (12 page)

At a curt nod from the manager, the clerk cleared his throat. “The money was withdrawn by a lady—because of the amount, I was summoned and attended to her myself.”

“Please describe her,” Stokes said.

The clerk hesitated, then said, “She was of average height, neither fat nor thin, but as to her face, she was wearing a hat with a fine veil. I could see her face, but not clearly.”

“What color was her hair?” Penelope asked.

“Brown—not dark.” The clerk’s gaze had risen to Penelope’s lustrous locks. “More a mid-brown. Ordinary brown.”

“And,” Penelope continued, “how old would you say this lady was?”

The clerk clearly thought back, then wiggled his head. “Not old—not middle-aged. But she wasn’t a young lady, either.”

“Lady.” Penelope arched a brow. “Why did you think she was a lady?”

“Well, she was well dressed and well spoken, ma’am. Easy to deal with and . . . well, confident, if you know what I mean.”

Penelope nodded. “Thank you.” She sat back.

“Do you have the withdrawal authority?” Montague asked. “I would like to examine it.”

The clerk exchanged a look with the manager, then, receiving another terse nod, reached for the ledger still lying open before Montague and turned the page, revealing a handwritten letter. “This only happened an hour or so ago, so I haven’t had a chance to put it in the file.”

Montague nodded as he picked up the letter. He read it, then handed it to Stokes, seated beside him. “It’s supposedly from Lady Halstead, authorizing the withdrawal, the bearer of the letter to be given the full sum of the monies in the account.”

While Stokes scanned the letter, Montague again took out the letter of authority Lady Halstead had written for him. When Stokes reached the end of the withdrawal authority, Montague held out his letter. Stokes took it and held the two side by side.

Montague leaned closer; Penelope, on Stokes’s other side, did the same. All three of them looked from one letter to the other, comparing.

Eventually, Stokes sighed. Handing Montague back his letter, Stokes lowered the withdrawal authority and, across the bank manager’s desk, met the man’s eyes. “I’ll be keeping this, and I’ll also have to take the ledger. Both are now evidence of a crime.”

The manager looked a trifle ill. “The letter?”

“Is a forgery,” Penelope said. “But a very, very good one. Without having, as we have, a letter known to have been written by Lady Halstead to compare, I seriously doubt anyone could have spotted it.”

“I don’t believe there will be any repercussions with respect to the bank or its employees,” Montague said. He glanced at Stokes.

Stokes nodded. He slipped the withdrawal authority back into the ledger, then closed the book, picked it up, and rose. “Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll see ourselves out.”

They halted on the pavement outside the bank and looked at each other.

“What now?” Montague asked.

“Now . . .” Stokes glanced at Adair, then Penelope, then looked back at Montague. “If you all have the time, I believe we should take an hour or so to revisit everything we’ve seen, heard, and learned this morning.”

Penelope nodded decisively. “If we don’t, something vital might slip past us.” She looked at Stokes. “Speaking of which, might I suggest that we adjourn to Greenbury Street?” She glanced at Montague. “Stokes’s house. Griselda will be there, and as she’s the only one of us who hasn’t been through all the events of the morning, she’s the only one of us who is likely to have a truly detached view.” Penelope looked at all three men’s faces. “I vote we go to Greenbury Street and tell Griselda all.”

Stokes met Adair’s eyes, then sighed and nodded. “Very well. Greenbury Street it is.”

T
hey took two hackneys and arrived in Greenbury Street as Griselda was pushing Megan’s perambulator up the front path, having just returned from taking her daughter for an airing in the nearby park.

Griselda was delighted to see them. Grinning, Penelope touched cheeks, then bent to coo at Megan, who waved her chubby fists and chortled in reply. Barnaby greeted Griselda, then joined Penelope in admiring Megan.

Stokes kissed his wife’s cheek, then considered the sight of his friends paying their dues to his daughter with a proud, paternal air.

Montague hung back, watching the interaction between the two couples, noting the warmth and the strong friendship so openly on display. Then Stokes turned to him and drew him forward, introducing him to Mrs. Stokes—Griselda, as she, like Penelope, insisted he call her—and then to the small girl-child, who looked up at him with wide, curious eyes.

“Careful,” Stokes murmured. “They wind you about their tiny fingers with looks like that.”

Montague realized he was grinning in the same faintly besotted way Stokes was.

Somewhat to his surprise, Montague found himself swept up in the camaraderie, in the wave of relaxed enthusiasm that carried them all inside to settle in a neat sitting room. They sank onto chairs and the sofa. After handing little Megan into her nurse’s care, Griselda joined them.

Settling on the sofa alongside Penelope, Griselda commanded, “So! Tell me all.”

They proceeded to do so, and in the telling consolidated and refined their collective understanding.

By unvoiced agreement, they held to the facts as they knew them until they’d told the story to the end, to the moment when they’d left the bank, the forged letter of withdrawal in Stokes’s keeping.

Only then did they turn their minds to the questions those facts raised, to speculation, to the possibilities.

“The woman who presented the letter of withdrawal,” Stokes murmured. “Where did she get it? And what does that tell us about who she is?”

Penelope straightened; as if taking up the challenge, she replied, “The letter is such a good forgery that it could only have been created by someone familiar with Lady Halstead’s hand.”

“Or someone with access to letters her ladyship wrote,” Adair put in.

Penelope inclined her head. “True. Which puts the companion, Miss Matcham, at the top of the list of possible suspects.” She held up her hand. “However, I have severe doubts that it was in fact her.”

“Why?” Stokes asked, before Montague could.

“Well, I haven’t yet met Miss Matcham, so I can only go by what you’ve said of her, but it strikes me that, if she was behind the withdrawal of the money, she’s intelligent enough to ensure no one would associate the withdrawal with her. The letter gave the money to ‘The Bearer,’ not to any named individual, so she could have dressed however she wished. She could have enlisted male assistance. Or—and this is what I would have done—she could have pretended to be male. It’s not that hard, especially for only a short time, with only a bank clerk to fool.” Penelope frowned. “Regardless, I have a strong suspicion that we’re intended to think it is Miss Matcham, to leap to that as the obvious conclusion—which, of course, means it’s untrue.”

“There’s also the fact,” Montague said, “that Miss Matcham was, and still is, sincerely devoted to Lady Halstead. I really cannot see her condoning, much less doing, something that is, in effect, stealing from her late employer.”

“And,” Stokes said, “the same can be said of the maid, Tilly Westcott. At a pinch, she could have been the woman who presented the letter at the bank, but she, too, is devoted to her ladyship.” He looked at Montague. “I take it there’s no suggestion that Lady Halstead was in arrears with their wages?”

Montague took a second to bring the appropriate payments to mind, then shook his head. “No. We’re in the middle of a quarter, and all the staff were paid as expected to this point.”

“Right, then.” Stokes stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. “I believe we can discount the notion that either Miss Matcham or Miss Westcott was the woman behind the veil—”

“But we should perhaps accept that someone intended us to suspect them.” Adair glanced about the company. “Because whoever wrote the forged letter was almost certainly a family member.”

“Indeed.” Stokes nodded. “And what’s more, I’ll lay odds the family will want to use the vague but suggestive description of the mystery woman to point the finger at Miss Matcham, or if not her, the maid.”

“They’ve already tried that once,” Montague reminded the gathering.

“And I’m quite sure they’ll do it again,” Penelope said, “if only because it’s easier than accepting the alternative—that the murderer is one of them.”

“Which,” Stokes said, “brings us neatly back to the murderer, the gentleman seen by several people entering and later leaving Runcorn’s office. The description would fit, and certainly suggests one of the Halstead men, but which one?”

Stokes, Adair, and Montague exchanged glances.

Viewing their uncertainty, Penelope helpfully recited the description, concluding, “Neither Griselda nor I have seen the Halstead gentlemen, but surely those side-whiskers give you some clue.”

Barnaby grimaced. “So one might think, but, sadly, that isn’t the case. They all have them, more or less to the same degree.” He hesitated, then continued, “For me, at least, that description doesn’t distinguish between the five males of Halstead blood—Mortimer, his son Hayden, Maurice, William, and Cynthia’s son Walter.” He glanced at the others. “In fact, if I encountered any of the Halstead men in the street at night, in poor light, I seriously doubt I would be able to tell one from the other. In good light, they are easy to distinguish, but in shadows . . .” Barnaby looked at Stokes. “Similar build, similar height, similar coloring, with key features, including the round cheeks, all similar, too. Even their dress is not wildly dissimilar.”

Stokes slowly nodded. “It’s their eyes that are different—Hayden’s and Walter’s, and also Maurice’s, are all lighter—and there’s also a slight difference in the set of their lips, and possibly the prominence, although not the shape, of their noses. But unless you can see all those details”—he tipped his head to Barnaby—“I agree. Telling those five apart isn’t easy.”

They pondered that fact, and its implications, in silence.

Griselda broke it; slapping her palms on her thighs, she rose. “No, don’t get up. I’m going to organize some sandwiches for luncheon. You could all do with some food to fuel all this cogitating.”

“I’ll help.” Penelope rose, too.

When the ladies had disappeared deeper into the house, Stokes looked at Barnaby and Montague. “We need to very carefully think through how we’re to press forward with this. Especially with the complication of Camberly’s position—even if he isn’t a suspect, his son is—and we’ve also got Mortimer Halstead to contend with. My reading of him is that he will prove difficult over one of the family’s being our prime suspect.”

“Oh, yes.” Barnaby nodded. “He’s exactly that sort. And given the astounding lack of loyalty to Lady Halstead—or rather their devotion to their own interests over seeking justice for her, which they’ve already amply demonstrated—dealing with this family while ferreting out the murderer in their midst is not going to be a simple matter.”

Montague sighed. “One assumes that, in investigating a crime of any sort, those involved who are not the criminal will hold justice being served to have the highest priority, but, sadly, that’s often not the case.”

A disaffected silence fell. It was broken by Penelope, who appeared in the open doorway to announce, “If you will come to the dining room, gentlemen, luncheon awaits.”

The three men rose and followed Penelope into the dining room, where they took seats about the oval table. They passed around platters of sandwiches and cold meats. A young maid poured ale for the gentlemen and lemonade for the ladies.

While they ate, they exchanged only the most minor comments.

Stokes waited until the sandwiches were gone and, replete, they sat back, the men sipping their ale, before returning to what he saw as his dilemma. “We have to investigate the Halstead family, thoroughly and exhaustively. Whoever this murderer is—and l think we all agree that it’s one of the five males, with only Camberly thus far excluded—he isn’t stupid. He acted swiftly to, as he saw it, put a stop to Lady Halstead looking into her affairs, presumably because he knew she would notice the odd payments. He wasn’t to know she already had. And then, just to ensure the matter went no further, he eliminated Runcorn—again, in his eyes, the only other person who might have been in a position to raise a question about those odd payments. The murderer wasn’t to know—and still doesn’t know—that Montague already knows about the payments.”

“Hmm.” Sitting forward, her elbows on the table, Penelope narrowed her eyes on Montague. “If all was as the murderer believes, and you didn’t know about those odd payments, how would this situation—her ladyship’s death, followed by Runcorn’s, followed by the withdrawal of the money by some mysterious lady apparently with her ladyship’s approval—be expected to play out?”

Montague took a moment to think before saying, “If I didn’t know that there was anything odd about those payments . . . with both her ladyship and Runcorn removed, as well as the money, then barring the theft of the extra funds from the account this morning, everything should balance up nicely enough, at least as far as a cursory examination of the estate’s books would go. If we
didn’t
know about all the rest, this morning’s theft would be put down as a regrettable loss, and there would, therefore, be no reason the estate wouldn’t simply pass through probate without further question.”

“So no further ripples or ructions from the murderer’s point of view.” Penelope nodded. “So at this point, he should be satisfied that he’s done all that’s necessary to obliterate his tracks.”

“But,” Stokes said, “he might see Montague as a threat.” Slate gray eyes met Montague’s gaze. “He might come after you.”

Montague arched his brows, then raised a shoulder. “I can’t see why he would—at least not over what we’ve let fall to this point. All he knows regarding me is that Lady Halstead recently gave me a letter of authority to oversee her financial affairs. He doesn’t know she specifically engaged me to look into the odd payments. He also doesn’t know that I have all the Halstead papers and am analyzing them for the police. If we don’t mention those things, there’s no reason for him to believe I or my office pose any active threat. For all he knows, my involvement in this is, and will remain, purely superficial.”