Foxe and the Path into Darkness

by William Savage

  ‘And no one would give him a loan?’

  ‘As I told you already, we bankers are extremely prudent when it comes to parting with money,’ Norton explained. ‘Legally, of course, all his wife’s goods became his on marriage. Nevertheless, I suspect most of those to whom he spoke asked for some kind of written agreement from the lady accepting that her jewels could be pledged in this way. It’s not unknown for people to offer their wife’s jewels as security, only for the wife to complain loudly sometime later that the pledge had been made without her knowledge or agreement. It doesn’t affect the legal standing of the agreement but it can cause a good deal of unpleasantness.’

  ‘I imagine that Belton could produce no such document,’ Foxe said.

  ‘Not when I asked that he should bring one. He muttered and prevaricated. Naturally, that made me even more suspicious. He did much the same thing when I said that it would be necessary to have the jewels valued by two competent jewellers. I told him that, without such a valuation, the bank would not be able to make any loan using them as security. With that he went away. I don’t know whether exactly the same thing happened at the other banks, but I expect it did. In fact, the word circulated quickly in the banking world that great care should be taken before advancing him anything at all.’

  ‘That would have put an end to any possibility of him obtaining what he wanted, I suppose?’

  ‘It certainly would. He could have gone to some bank outside the city, of course, but, if he was not known there, they would be even more cautious.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me that,’ Foxe said. ‘I think it could be very important, though at the moment I cannot quite see how. By the way, you might be interested to know that his wife had certainly not given permission for her jewels to be used in this way. She told me only the other day that they had disappeared from her jewellery box and she assumed that her husband had taken them at some time without her knowledge.’

  FOXE RELATED ALL this to Halloran and Lucy later that day. ‘It’s a rather odd sequence of events,’ he said when he had finished. ‘The first attempt to raise money may well be explained by what Comiston told me concerning his master’s anxiety over the cost that proved to be involved in being mayor. The second must be related to the loss of the Riga contract and payments, if only because he was relying on using those payments for some purpose of his own. The third is much harder to explain.’

  ‘All these attempts to raise money via bank loans seems to tie in exactly with what I learned from my conversations with a number of the leading mercers,’ Halloran said. ‘During March and early April, Belton did the rounds of mercers and dressmakers in the city, trying to convince them to order extra amounts of cloth. He even offered them attractive discounts. He may have had a few takers but the information I was given suggested that most turned down his offer. It wasn’t the terms on which he was prepared to sell that put them off. It was the simple fact that they thought Belton’s fabrics were no longer fashionable and would prove difficult to sell on. Some only ever made one or two orders during the course of a year, mostly with an eye on their older customers and those who were less interested in fashion. They certainly weren’t prepared to risk having the cloth lying on their shelves for an unknown period of time.’

  ‘From what you said a moment ago,’ Foxe said, ‘I assume that Belton made a second attempt to sell off some of his stock. Is that correct?’

  ‘It is,’ Halloran agreed. ‘Yet that second attempt came only during the early part of September. In fact, in the two or three weeks before Belton disappeared, so at the same time as he was canvassing the banks for a loan. This time I was told that he offered even larger discounts, especially if payment was made quickly, yet obtained no better results.’

  ‘Nothing during July?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I wonder what happened that last time to make him so desperate,’ Foxe said. ‘Something obviously did. Do you know if he was facing some especially large financial outlay connected with the office of the mayor?’

  ‘I can’t think of one,’ Halloran said. ‘By then, we all assumed that he had more or less given up trying to do more than carry out the most basic of the mayor’s duties. When he tried to organise dinner parties and other social events earlier in the year, few people were willing to attend. Apart from the fact that Belton himself was a terrible bore, his wife either made some excuse not to be present or made her disapproval clear throughout the evening. After one or two unsuccessful occasions, people found excuses not to go. The atmosphere was so unpleasant and the food so meagre that there was no incentive to go along.’

  ‘I wonder why he was so desperate for money in September,’ Foxe said. ‘It’s also odd that he doesn’t seem to have tried to boost sales at around the time that he discovered the default of the merchant in Riga. He assured both Johnson and Comiston that he was going to, yet seems to have done nothing at all. It isn’t even clear that the loan he tried to raise at that time was going to be used in the business. I can’t help thinking there must be some other explanation for his increasing need for money.’

  Foxe could sense that Lucy was about to say something, probably about the possibility of blackmail, so he shook his head very slightly to warn her not to do so. If that topic were raised, Halloran would be bound to want to know what Belton could have done to lay himself open to a large demand for money. She noticed his warning and remained silent.

  ‘What are you going to do next, Foxe?’ Halloran asked.

  ‘Two things I imagine. First of all, I am going to spend some time, hopefully with Miss Lucy’s help, trying to make sense of all of this. Then, because I suspect we are still missing one or two vital pieces of information, I shall go and see Comiston again. He is bound to know exactly how many extra orders were placed and when. He may even be able to suggest something to do with the business which happened in early September and could account for what appears to be near panic on Belton’s part.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Halloran said. ‘Now, unless you have any more to tell us, it’s time I paid some attention to my own business. I’ll leave you here with Lucy and you two can discuss all of this to your hearts’ content.’

  The moment her uncle had left the room, Lucy wanted to know why Foxe had prevented her from suggesting blackmail as the reason for Belton’s sudden need for money.

  ‘It seems to me to be the most obvious suggestion,’ she said. ‘Some criminals were demanding a large sum of money to keep silent about the mayor’s disgusting night time activities and threatening him if he failed to pay them.’

  ‘I stopped you from speaking,’ Foxe said, ‘not because it’s a poor suggestion but because your uncle would have immediately wanted to know what possible grounds for blackmail you had in mind. What would you have said then?’

  ‘I never thought of that,’ Lucy admitted. ‘You were quite right to shake your head at me, for I would have got myself into the most dreadful muddle. Still, between the two of us, blackmail seems to me to be the most obvious answer to why Belton suddenly needed more and more money. Yet I sense that you don’t altogether agree with me.’

  ‘You’ve put that very well,’ Foxe replied. ‘I don’t exactly disagree but I’ve been feeling less and less convinced about the blackmail theory. There are a number of reasons. To begin with, I think Belton’s taste for coupling with extremely young girls is immoral and barbaric, but it isn’t illegal. Maybe one day it will be. I very much hope so, but it isn’t at the present time. You only have to consider the number of young streetwalkers in this city to come to the conclusion that there are plenty of other men with similar tastes. From all that we’ve heard, he’d hardly care about his wife knowing what he was up to either. That hadn’t been a real marriage virtually from the start. Of course, being mayor at the time it became clear what he was up to would be embarrassing, but would he have paid a great deal of money to prevent this happening? Again, such evidence as we have, which I admit is not much, suggests that by September h
e had more or less abandoned any interest in the office of mayor. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had resigned his position halfway through his term. It would certainly have been possible to do so and much better than simply disappearing and leaving the city to solve the problem of his absence by itself.’

  Lucy frowned, but admitted reluctantly that Foxe could well be right.

  ‘How do you explain this sequence of events then?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can. However, I’ll tell you my present theory and you can pick holes in it. Basically, the first attempt to raise money is almost certainly best explained by the man’s continuing fear that he would not have enough financial resources to be the kind of mayor that he wanted to be; and that the other aldermen would look down on him because of it. The second attempt was for the same reason, since he had probably spent the first loan already. He set out full of energy to try to raise another suitable loan but found it far more difficult than I expect he had anticipated. At that point he gave up. That pattern of behaviour seems to have been typical of the man; an initial burst of energy followed by abandoning whatever he was doing when he encountered significant difficulties. It might have been an attempt to raise funds at the time when he discovered how he had been tricked over the Baltic contract but, somehow, I doubt it. That loss existed only on paper. I think by then he may have given up any idea of improving the performance of his business. Being victim of that confidence trick destroyed any belief he had in the business and in himself as a competent manager. If he wanted money, it was for some other purpose. Your uncle told us Belton faced no obvious increase in the demands on his finances due to being mayor. I can’t quite credit the notion of blackmail either. Maybe he was simply almost out of day-to-day funds.

  ‘The final, seemingly panic-stricken attempt to raise money in September, I simply cannot account for. I don’t have enough information about what he was doing at the time to be able even to venture a guess.’

  ‘You know, Ash, you have a most extraordinary mind,’ Lucy said. ‘You never seem to accept anything at face value and you’re constantly looking for unseen patterns and relationships. A lot of the time, I struggle to keep up with you. Far from picking holes in your theory, I am in awe of the way you have put it together so logically and completely. Have you ever thought of writing novels?’

  Foxe laughed. ‘It is more than enough for me just to sell books without trying to write them as well. You’ve been really valuable to me in this investigation, Lucy. You’re quick and bright and you help keep my feet on the ground.’

  Lucy’s blushes were eloquent of the extent to which she was pleased by Foxe’s praise of her contribution, but she made no reply for several moments. When she did, it was not what Foxe had expected.

  ‘I’m not sure that I should say this, Ash,’ she began, ‘but I’m going to be terribly bored when this investigation is over and you stop coming to see me. I took it on because I thought I ought to, if only to help my uncle. Now I’m completely wrapped up in trying to assist you, and your visits are the high points of my week.’

  ‘Why on earth should I stop coming to see you?’ Fox protested. ‘I have every intention of continuing to come to talk with you on a regular basis, provided you will allow it.’

  ‘Do you really mean that?’ Lucy said. ‘You’ll come even when there isn’t any investigation for us to work on together?’

  ‘Of course I will. I give you my promise, and I always do my best to keep all my promises. I’ll call on you as frequently as you will permit it. I cannot imagine being able to do without your company. I would miss you so much, so very, very much.’

  Now it was Foxe who was blushing, his breathing coming in short gasps and his hands trembling with the effort of staying in the chair where he was sitting.

  ‘You’ve no idea how pleased that makes me,’ Lucy said. ‘You may come and visit me at any time that you wish, especially if you bring another mystery that I can assist you with.’ At that point, she must have remembered that she had made Foxe promise to talk only about the investigation when they were alone together, for she abruptly changed the subject.

  ‘I do have some new information to contribute,’ she said, trying to sound serious and purposeful. ‘I’ve been able to discover something—though not much—about the woman who is said to be Belton’s mistress. According to two people I’ve spoken with, she’s a woman of around twenty-five years of age, a widow, who keeps a shop, which I’m told she inherited from her grandmother. Where that shop is, and what it sells, no one could tell me.’

  ‘That’s really helpful, Lucy,’ Foxe said. ‘Well done! We now at least know what she does and how old she is. Thanks to you, we also know that she inherited this shop from her grandmother. That should be more than enough information for the street children to be able to track her down for me. I’ll get them onto it right away.’

  ‘There is one potential problem in what I was told though,’ Lucy continued. ‘It appears that Belton has only been visiting this lady regularly since August.’

  ‘That time again!’ Foxe exclaimed. ‘Of course, he may have had other mistresses before. Still, it looks very much as if there was some critical event in the man’s life which began in August and continued until his disappearance. That extra piece of information makes it even more vital to try to track this woman down. As soon as the street children find her, we’ll talk about what would be best to do next. Meanwhile, I’ll go to Belton’s warehouse tomorrow morning and try to talk with Comiston again.’

  ‘I’ll talk with my aunt and see if there are any other ladies we can visit who might have useful information. But, Ash, I can’t help wondering whether news of the failure of the supposed Riga contract had also leaked out at around that time. I mean in late July and early August. We know Belton was terribly touchy about anyone laughing at him. Even the false story of the unpaid invoice would cause many to deride him. If there was any awareness that it had all been a trick anyway, and he had been taken in, things would be even worse. I know we agreed it was unlikely, but ought we to look at the possibility of suicide again?’

  ‘It’s a reasonable suggestion,’ Foxe said, ‘and I’ve been considering it on and off myself. It was the story about Belton talking to the trees in the pleasure grounds which put me on the alert. What he was doing put me in mind of those who suffer from severe melancholia. There were plenty of reasons for him to be so afflicted. The wretched state of his business and the failure of his attempt to be a mayor people would look up to, even the continuing misery of his marriage. If he also got a whiff of the plot we know his wife and father-in-law were engaged in, it might all have proved enough to make him feel life was no longer worth living.’

  ‘Yet something tells me you still aren’t convinced,’ Lucy said.

  ‘I can’t get past the fact that there is no body. Suicides don’t tidy their corpses away out of sight. I suppose he could have gone to one of the Broads, taken a boat and jumped into the water with heavy weights tied about him, but that stretches my credulity too far. So does throwing himself down a mineshaft. I know of no deep mines in Norfolk. Jumping down a well is equally problematic. It would need to be a disused well or his body would have made its presence known long ago.’

  ‘What about those caves and tunnels in the chalk under the city you mentioned?’

  ‘Again possible. But if he went to all the trouble to crawl into some subterranean passage to kill himself, we’ll never find him and know whether he committed suicide or not. No, Lucy, I can’t rule it out, but it still seems to me to be the least likely explanation for his disappearance.’

  19

  Comiston clearly assumed that Foxe had come to the offices to see Mrs Belton. He was therefore full of apologies for her absence, which he said would last for the rest of the day. She had arrived early, checked one or two minor matters and then departed again, saying she intended to visit all the principal mercers and dressmakers in the city to seek out which fresh designs and types
of cloth they would be most interested in buying. She also wanted to gauge their reactions to a new idea for a luxury bombazine that was in her mind.

  ‘Black bombazine has long been one of our most popular cloths,’ Comiston explained. ‘It’s nearly always used for mourning dresses, as well as being the typical fabric for clerical, legal and academic gowns. Our version is based on a worsted of the best quality, dyed a specifically intense black by one of our dyers. They will tell no one the recipe for the dye which means cloth dyed using it is always in short supply.’

  ‘I wouldn’t imagine you could do much that was new with plain, black cloth,’ Foxe said.

  ‘Then you would be wrong, Mr Foxe. Mrs Belton has told me that she believes that those ladies accustomed to dressing in materials that make clear their wealth and status would like to continue to do so, even if polite custom requires them to wear mourning dress for up to a year. Her notion is to have the base cloth woven with a damask pattern, using the dye I told you about, and finally hot rolled. Hot rolling gives a fabric a silky sheen, as you probably know. A lady dressed in mourning clothes made of such a material would indeed be a striking sight, while conforming to society’s norms at the same time. Furthermore, since such cloth would be far more expensive than typical bombazine, it would have the advantage of proving their wealth to everyone who saw them.’

  ‘I can see I was wrong,’ Foxe admitted. ‘Naturally, clergymen and lawyers and the like would not wish to wear such cloth, but I can well imagine the great ladies amongst us being eager to obtain it.’

  ‘Mrs Belton is most enterprising and active,’ Comiston said. ‘Quite unlike her husband. Do you know that some of our fabrics have been woven and embroidered in the same way for ten years or more? People like a change from time to time, Mr Foxe, but Mr Belton claimed that so long as someone bought our cloth, however few they might be, it was not worth the time, trouble and expense involved in producing something new.’