Chapter Fifteen
Solomon, having givenup the search for Darrow’s music school, changed tack and decided to visit instead his own valued associate, Thomas Halliwell, who had been out of town when he had last looked for him. The two men had done lucrative business together in the past, and Halliwell, like Montague, had considerable interests in tea.
“Grey, my dear fellow, an unexpected pleasure!” Halliwell greeted him, coming out of his impressive office to shake hands. “Come in, tell me what I can do for you. My man told me you called on Friday when I was away.”
“I did.”
“A brandy to celebrate?” Halliwell asked, walking to the cut-glass decanter on the mahogany cabinet.
“What are we celebrating?”
“Whatever you like,” Halliwell said, chuckling as he poured.
They took their brandies to the comfortable chairs by the fireplace, and Solomon said, “I’m interested in a tea merchant called Digby Montague of Montague and Son.”
“Old and respected firm,” Halliwell said.
“Do you do business with them?”
“Don’t need to, so I never have.”
“Do you hear credible rumors about his solvency?”
“For years, now, but he always bounces back. Sails a little close to the wind with selling his cargo and paying his creditors. Pity, because they have a couple of highly lucrative plantations in India.”
“You spent some time in India, didn’t you?” Solomon said casually.
“I did. Still do, from time to time.”
“Did you ever encounter Montague there?”
“No…” Halliwell hesitated, then added, “The first time I went was with my father about fifteen years ago, and I believe we just missed Montague. Though it’s a huge country, a continent really, there’s a network of British residents who make London gossips look like amateurs. I have no evidence that Montague ever did anything wrong, but he certainly earned their anger and contempt with some sort of scandal.”
“How?” Solomon asked. “I don’t suppose it involved a young lady who died suddenly?”
Halliwell raised his eyebrows. “Oh, no, she wasn’t dead from what I heard. Just a lot poorer. She was a young widow, I believe. Some kind of swindle that involved her paying for tea Montague had already sold elsewhere. By the time the fraud was discovered, he had already sailed. I don’t know the details, or even if these unsavory rumors are true, but I do know Montague had difficulty shipping his tea after that. As if the ship owners had turned against him. When they do ship it, they probably overcharge.”
“Which would explain why his profits keep going down,” Solomon said thoughtfully. “And why he can’t weather the loss of a single cargo.”
“It might,” Halliwell said cautiously. “But it would be unkind to spread rumors I certainly can’t substantiate. I never heard anything against the man since then.”
“No, neither has anyone else.”And yet…“Do you have a name for this widow?” Solomon asked.
*
Inspector Harris ofScotland Yard was not best pleased to receivethe summons of his superior. In his view, Superintendent Galsworth existed only to get in the way of police work. Therefore he only grunted in response and dismissed the messenger without lifting his eyes from the report he was writing about a particularly nasty murder in Whitechapel.
“Shouldn’t you go now, sir?” said Sergeant Flynn, who was working at the other desk.
Harris spared him a glare.
“Get it over with,” Flynn explained. “Then you’d have the rest of the afternoon for real work.”
Harris threw down his pen—fortunately nowhere near his report, since the ink spattered for several inches across his desk. “Damn it, do you always have to be right?”
“He might have a more interesting case for us,” Flynn pointed out.
Harris made a derisive noise, but all the same, he stood up. “You’re right. Get it over with.”
