‘That’s hardly a strategy for business success,’ Foxe agreed. ‘It would be like me filling my bookshop with the same titles, year after year. Customers would soon stop bothering to come. But it was you I wished to see, as it happens, Comiston, not Mrs Belton. I have been making certain enquiries in the city concerning Mr Belton’s efforts to raise money and increase sales. I hope you may be able to add some details which are missing at the present.’
‘I will do my best, Mr Foxe,’ Comiston replied, ‘though Johnson would have been of far greater help to you. Most of what I know I obtained second-hand through him. Mr Belton rarely spoke with me directly, save on detailed accounting matters.’
‘It’s the timing of the mayor’s efforts which have me puzzled,’ Foxe explained. ‘I was able to find evidence of him obtaining the initial mortgage you mentioned and then seeking further loans from various banks in the middle of the year. I assume all of these must have been linked to what you told me last time about his anxiety over the likely continuing expense of holding the office of mayor.’
‘That would probably be the case. I know he also made some efforts to increase sales of our cloth at around that time but met with little success. There were modest extra sales, mainly of bombazine. Even those proved, in many cases, to be illusory. In several cases, the merchants concerned simply brought forward orders they intended to make anyway. Taken over, say, a three-month period, their orders were at the same level as always.’
‘How did Mr Belton react to his lack of success?’
‘He seemed to lose heart, I would say. There were no more visits to bankers or local or London cloth buyers. Indeed, it was almost as if he had given up on trying to improve his business and the income it brought him altogether.’
‘What happened next?’ Foxe asked.
‘Cartwright appeared. Suddenly overseas sales were the answer to all Mr Belton’s business and personal problems. He could sell cloth to other countries that would be new to them, even if it was stale and dated in England.’
‘As we know, that turned into a disaster,’ Foxe said. ‘But you told me that Mr Belton was certain he could find sufficient sales from other sources to make up for the bad debt on the supposed Riga contract.’
‘That’s what he told Johnson and myself when he forced us into agreeing to keep silent about the entire debacle,’ Comiston said. ‘We were to stay silent in order to give him time to make the necessary contacts. If he succeeded, we should forget about the Riga debt and the world would be none the wiser.’
‘That would have been in July?’
‘Around the middle of July, as I recall,’ Comiston agreed.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that, while I did find evidence of a second failed attempt to raise money from the banks at the time, I found little else. Those I spoke with could recall no efforts to grow your sales during July. Whatever the mayor told you and Johnson, he did nothing to turn his words into action. If he had succeeded in getting a further loan, I can’t see how that would have allowed the bad debt to be forgotten, save by forgetting all accepted standards for keeping accounts. I suspect he wanted it for another purpose.’
‘I am deeply saddened to learn that, Mr Foxe,’ Comiston said, shaking his head in disbelief at the duplicity of his master. ‘Mr Belton would have cared nothing for proper accounting standards, of course. However, you are probably correct in assuming any loan would never have shown up in our books. It seems simply that he lied to us, probably to convince us to do as he said and stay silent. Poor Johnson would have been appalled. Being a man of the highest personal integrity, he viewed dishonesty in others with loathing. I am almost glad that he is not here to discover the trick that was played on him.’
‘My informants were certain that the mayor did make almost frantic efforts to raise money on a third occasion, but that was in early September. Not only did he visit several banks to try to raise money on the security of his wife’s jewellery, he made offers of cloth to various merchants to be supplied at a steep discount, provided only that they agreed to pay for it almost at once. What do you know of that?’
‘Nothing whatsoever, I’m afraid. Mr Belton made no mention of his efforts either to Johnson or to me. Nor do I recall any marked increase in sales at that time. No … wait a moment. There was one matter … Please forgive me, Mr Foxe, I see now that I should have mentioned this to you before but there was never more to it than suspicions and guesswork.’
‘Tell me now,’ Foxe said. ‘This could be important.’
‘Around the time you mentioned—late August and early September, or even a few weeks before—Johnson told me he’d noticed a previously unknown mercer in Bury St Edmunds placing small, but regular orders since May. He never bought a large number of rolls at any one time but taken together the cloth supplied to him would amount to a substantial amount. His orders were mostly for bombazine, with a few rolls of our best calamanco. Johnson became suspicious and asked me to check the invoices issued. I found nothing untoward. All had been issued correctly. However, none had been paid, though the earliest were already overdue. Even so, fresh orders were still being accepted and the goods supplied. The other strange thing was that all these orders were accepted by Mr Belton in person, though he usually had no part in dealing with any orders directly. As you can imagine, Johnson was most unhappy about what we had discovered and I believe it was another matter he intended to raise with Mr Belton on that final evening before both of them disappeared.’
‘What do you think was taking place, Comiston?’ Foxe asked. ‘Some fresh trickery—or something worse?’
‘I was as uneasy and puzzled as Johnson. It wouldn’t be unlikely that Mr Belton would take on a new customer personally and then pay no attention to checking that his orders were being paid for. As I told you some time ago, the mayor despised anything that smacked to him of administrative detail. Maybe the Bury St Edmunds mercer delayed payment on the first few orders, then realised no action was being taken and decided to hold back his money for as long as he could.’
‘Is there any other explanation?’
Comiston looked distinctly uneasy.
‘Until a few weeks ago,’ he said, ‘I would have denied that there could have been. But what you have told me recently has completely destroyed my belief in Mr Belton’s integrity. Given that he could be deliberately dishonest, it is at least possible that the mercer concerned did pay his invoices in full and on time but paid them to Mr Belton in person. If that was so, Mr Belton could have diverted the money to his own use, instead of seeing it entered into the firm’s ledgers and paid into the correct bank account.’
‘That had occurred to me too,’ Foxe said. ‘Yet wouldn’t the deception soon have become obvious?’
‘Certainly, but since the amounts were small the bad debts might have been overlooked for some months. There is also the point that I made earlier. Mr Belton took no notice of accounting or administrative matters. He might have simply failed to grasp that every invoice raised was later linked to money received.’
‘Or reckoned he would no longer be here to face any questions by the time they were raised,’ Foxe said. ‘I am beginning to wonder whether our mayor was planning to disappear and then something went wrong, perhaps connected with Johnson’s death. Please say nothing of this to Mrs Belton. I wouldn’t wish to cause her further alarm until I am sure of my facts.’
‘There is more, Mr Foxe,’ Comiston said. ‘The matter of what looked like a minor burglary at the time, I can now see it might have been something far more serious. I confess that Johnson saw it as a matter of greater importance than I did. He was probably right. I should have taken what he told me much more seriously than I did.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Johnson spoke to me about it on the last day I saw him. It concerns what are called “drawn notes” or “checks”. I imagine you know what these are, Mr Foxe.’
‘I do. I use them myself for making payments to the London dealers fr
om whom I buy books. They are forms printed by a bank on special paper and individually numbered. You have to attend at the bank in person to obtain them.’
‘Exactly, then you can fill in the name of the person to be paid and the amount and sign them. Earlier in the year, Johnson had persuaded Mr Belton to obtain some for paying suppliers, rather than constantly asking for banker’s drafts for the purpose. They were kept in the safe and Mr Belton was the only person whose signature the bank would accept.’
‘And some were missing, I imagine,’ Foxe said. He could see where this was going.
‘Ten, according to Johnson. He went to the safe to get one to pay an invoice and said that he had checked the sequence of numbers and ten had been taken. I promised to look at the statements from our bank to see if they had been used, but it was late in the day and I put it off until the next morning. You can imagine the turmoil which resulted from finding that Johnson had not arrived at work, looking for Mr Belton to inform him and being unable to find him either. By the next day, all was chaos and the whole matter went out of my head.’
‘Could you look at the statements now?’ Foxe asked. ‘Will they tell you the name of the person or firm to whom these drawn notes were issued and the amounts paid?’
‘Certainly. If you are content to wait here for a moment, I will go upstairs to the general office and find the statements.’
Comiston returned after some ten minutes, looking confused.
‘I found them,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure I can make sense of what they were used for. Each one was made payable to the bearer and all were made out for relatively small amounts.’
‘How much?’ Foxe asked.
‘Between ten pounds for the lowest and eighteen pounds for the highest. I added all the amounts together and the sum came to one hundred and forty-eight pounds and ten shillings.’
‘A goodly haul and all in amounts which would be easy to carry,’ Foxe said.
‘Do you think Mr Belton himself was taking the forms and using them to obtain cash?’ Comiston asked.
‘I am almost sure of it,’ Foxe replied. ‘He probably imagined that small, irregular amounts like that would not draw much attention in the bank statements. You told me yourself that he had little or no grasp of accounting. Even so, I’m surprised no one noticed the payments before.’
‘If you had been here in those final weeks, Mr Foxe,’ Comiston said sadly, ‘it would not seem so strange. Mr Belton had always been dreadfully careless of proper procedures. It was far from unusual for him to tell Johnson or myself that he had paid this or that supplier for small amounts of goods without bothering to ask for an invoice or a receipt for payment. If we questioned this, he dismissed our concerns as “more administrative flim-flam” and claimed he could not be bothered with such nonsense. If we pressed him, he would become angry and tell us it was all his own money anyway and he could do as he liked with it.’
‘Was anything else missing during that period?’ Foxe asked.
‘Not to my knowledge,’ Comiston said, ‘but you know how confused and muddled the accounting for stocks in the warehouse had become. So much so that those thieves could remove who knows how much cloth time and time again and nobody noticed.’
‘Could Mr Belton have sold cloth and received payment without your knowledge?’
‘I must admit that he could, though he would somehow need to arrange for the actual cloth to be taken from the warehouse and loaded onto wagons or pack-horses. A roll of cloth is very heavy.’
‘Of course. But if he had gone to the warehouse and told the men there to make up such-and-such a load to be collected, say, the next day, they would have done it?’
‘Without question. They were supposed to keep records of everything leaving the warehouse but you will know very well that such records were kept only irregularly at best.’
FOXE DECIDED to take a chance and call on Halloran on the way home. What he had just learned from Comiston seemed to him to throw a completely different light on the mayor’s disappearance and Johnson’s death. He therefore told Henry to drive via Colegate and wait for him outside.
Perkins answered the door and asked him to wait for a moment in the hall. His master was not at home, he said, but Mrs Halloran had asked to be told if Mr Foxe arrived as she wanted to speak with him.
‘Mr Foxe,’ she said when she arrived. ‘Perkins will have told you my husband is not at home. However, he has become used to your frequent visits to us and left instructions that Lucy should speak with you if you came during his absence. She will then tell him whatever new information you have brought. I will get a maid to summon her shortly, but I wished to speak with you in private first. Please come through into the drawing room.’
Foxe followed her, feeling rather apprehensive about what she wished to say to him. Was she going to tell him not to spend so much time with her youngest niece? Was she going to ask him whether his intentions towards Lucy were honourable?
It proved to be neither of these.
‘I want to thank you for taking so much time to talk with my niece, Lucy,’ Mrs Halloran began. ‘When she first arrived home from France, she was so glum and miserable that I scarcely recognised her as the same child who had left us seven months before. Then, when you first came to visit, I was mortified by the rude way she spoke to you. I tried to remonstrate with her but she flew into a rage and told me to mind my own business. Can you credit it, Mr Foxe? To speak to me like that. She has always been wilful and obstinate, but I had never known her to be so rude before. I thought she would drive you away, but then I noticed that you persisted in speaking with her and did it so gently and with such tolerance that she could do nothing else other than soften her own attitude. Now, in the past week or so, she is back to being her old self, thanks to you. I cannot thank you enough.’
‘It is nothing, Mrs Halloran,’ Foxe said. ‘At her age, as I recall, I was myself prone to moods of great awkwardness. Miss Lucy was a sweet child and has grown into a woman of great beauty and elegance. There were bound to be some periods of turbulence along the way.’
‘You put it so well, Mr Foxe, though you omit to mention that she has always been too quick and intelligent for her own good. There are times when I despair of her finding a husband. Most young men avoid intelligent, outspoken women like the plague.’
‘Most young men are fools,’ Foxe said. ‘For myself, that is exactly the type of woman I enjoy being with most.’
‘Then please continue to visit Lucy, even after this investigation is over. She needs intelligent conversation as a plant needs water. Deprive her of it and she droops and wilts.’
‘You may be sure I will do so, Mrs Halloran,’ Foxe said warmly. ‘I have grown very fond of Miss Lucy and greatly enjoy our conversations.’
‘Dear Mr Foxe. If I were not already married to the best of men, I would set my cap at you myself, for I can see you will make a wonderful husband. Now, please wait here and I will send Lucy to you, together with some refreshments. She will want to change her dress and the like first but I will tell her you must take her as she is, for I am sure you have seen ladies in their working domestic garb before.’
When Lucy came in, she was blushing more fiercely than Foxe had ever seen before.
‘You must be disgusted to have me come to you in such miserable attire,’ she said angrily, ‘but my aunt would not allow me to make myself look more presentable. When she came to me, I was with my sister in the garden playing at shuttlecock.’
Foxe looked at the neat, tight-fitting jacket she was wearing over a full skirt and thought it both practical for dashing about with the shuttlecock and wholly delightful.
‘You look as beautiful and delightful as always,’ Foxe said. ‘I would be pleased to see you even if you arrived wearing nothing but your shift.’
‘Mr Foxe!’ Lucy seemed genuinely shocked. ‘That is a most indelicate thing to say.’
‘It is true, however. Did you think I did not know ladies wore shifts?’
‘Hardly,’ Lucy replied, showing her old devilment. ‘I imagine you have a great deal of close personal experience of such garments.’
Now it was Foxe’s turn to blush. He cleared his throat and tried hard to bring his thoughts away from the picture which had formed in his mind.
‘Be that as it may,’ he said, ‘I did not come here to offer you compliments, even indelicate ones, but to tell you and your uncle what I have just learned from talking with Comiston a second time. I think it most important. Indeed, it has altered my entire opinion of what may be the cause for the mayor’s disappearance and Johnson’s death.’
‘I can hear one of the maids tapping at the door,’ Lucy said, ‘so please take some refreshment first. I guess that this will be a lengthy tale and you will not care to be interrupted.’
Foxe was grateful for the tea provided for it was the finest Bohea and he had been talking to one person or another since soon after breakfast. He also gladly ate several of the small cakes on the tray. He had eaten nothing since morning and was quite hungry. After that, Lucy called the maid to take the tray away and Foxe launched into explaining all that Comiston had told him.
One of the myriad of things Foxe found admirable in Lucy Halloran was her ability to listen. You could tell from her face, and the occasional question she asked to clarify some point, that she had her whole attention on what you were saying and was taking it all in.
When his story reached its end, she came at once to the principal point.
‘Do you think Mr Belton murdered Johnson?’ she asked. ‘If he thought Johnson had discovered his thefts from the firm and would tell the world, it would be an obvious way to prevent him from doing so.’
‘I cannot see any other solution,’ Foxe said. ‘Of course, he could have claimed that it was all his money anyway and you cannot steal from yourself. Yet that would not have explained the covert way he was doing it. For some reason, it must have been vital to Belton that no one find out that he was gathering money together in secret. I don’t know what that reason was, but I shall endeavour to find out.’
Foxe and the Path into Darkness Page 21