Page 13 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

“The same. But this is not the other work. It runs beside it, and it must never once be seen to touch it. Two enquiries, Finch. The man in the mask is one. Crane is the other. They do not meet on paper, they do not meet in conversation, and no soul living is to know that I commissioned both.”

“Because if a man can be shown to be hunting your river ghost and the Kew murder together,” Finch said, “then your river ghost and the Kew murder are admitted to be one thing. And the whole shape of it stands revealed.”

He rarely needed a thing explained twice. “Just so.”

“I’ll need more men.”

“Before we add to your burdens, tell me where the first enquiry stands.”

He turned a few pages back in the notebook, though I doubted he needed to. “When we uncovered the drug operation during the Trinity Lane murder inquiry, we both knew arresting one man would not end the trade. There was too much money changing hands. Whoever financed the operation would simply find another source.”

He glanced down at the open page.

“That is precisely what happened. Within a fortnight the sellers were back in the courts off Ratcliff Highway. Same customers. Same prices. Fresh supply.”

“So you started with the sellers.”

Finch nodded. “We watched them for several days before one of the runners replenished their stock. Rather than have him arrested, we let him lead us to where he obtained his supply. He took us to a warehouse along the river.”

He tapped the notebook with one finger.

“The shipments arrive aboard merchant vessels, whether from the Continent or America we cannot yet say. Hidden among legitimate cargo, I'd wager. Once they're unloaded, they're carted to a warehouse. That is where Pyke comes in. He receives the shipments, checks the quantities, signs the ledger, and keeps account of what leaves the warehouse. From there the runners collect the packets for the sellers working the courts off Ratcliff Highway and for the Limehouse house where the drug is served.”

“And Pyke?”

Finch closed the notebook.

“Pyke is frightened of something above him. We have offered money. Others have tried drink. He will not speak, which tells me whatever stands over him inspires more fear than either.”

“Then whoever stands above him has no name yet,” I said.

Finch nodded. “The trail goes black. Whoever controls the warehouse never meets the street sellers, and whoever commands him has been careful never to set foot near the trade at all.”

“And the Thames business?”

“The woman's found. She goes by Mother Lync. She's the one who procured the girls for the Floralia. Working girls, servants, the occasional runaway—young women she believed no one would miss. She'll talk, for a price, though I'd not trust a word beyond what we can prove. But she's the lowest rung on the whole ladder, Your Grace. She took her orders through a go-between and never once laid eyes on the man who paid her. One rung above her was another creature very much like herself.”

“The mastermind is too clever to dirty his own hands. He has others do the work, and each knows only the one rung above. We climb the ladder one rung at a time.” I let a breath go. “Which brings us to Crane. How do you mean to handle him?”

“Easier than the other, Your Grace, and quicker.” Finch’s pencil moved. “Since he was a baronet, he would have left the ordinary tracks a baronet leaves. Accounts with a tailor, a bootmaker, a wine merchant. He belonged to a club, and very likely to more than one. I can have the tradesmen inside a week. An unpaid bill loosens a clerk’s tongue faster than a settled one. A man who lived as you describe will have left bills standing unpaid all over Town.”

“He lived beyond his means according to Graves.”

“Which means he did not stop at his tailor.” A thin smile from Finch. “A man in those straits sits down to cards. Baccarat, if he ran with the fast set; whist or piquet if he had any care for himself. Crane does not sound to me like a careful man. So somewhere there is a club with his name in the book and men in its passages who carried his coat, brought him his brandy, and know to the shilling how deep he went and who he went to. Hall porters. Waiters. The night men who lock up after the play. They see everything and they are paid as though they see nothing. For a coin and a sympathetic ear, they’ll tell me which tables he favored, whether he settled his losses across the cloth or wrote his vowels, and into whose hand those vowels passed.”

“And the man who holds his vowels⁠—”

“—holds a rope, and may pull it as he pleases.” Finch set the pencil down. “A debt at the tailor’s ends in a summons. A debt of honor ends wherever the man who’s owed cares to take it, for it cannot be sued for in any court. If Crane owed past what he could meet, he could be made to do a great deal of work to keep the owing quiet. That is a thread worth the pulling.”

“There will be moneylenders as well,” I said.

“There always are. Whitfield can start there. Banks, discounters, post-obit bonds—anything that leaves a paper trail. He's better at following money than I am. If Crane found money where he shouldn't have, Whitfield will tell us how." He tipped his head toward the window and the diamond houses beyond it. “And sitting where I sit, I’ll know inside a day whether Crane ever carried a jewel into this street that he’d have done better to leave at his wife’s throat, if he, in fact, had a wife.”

“A man who lives past his means and goes on living past them is finding money from somewhere. That task will belong to Whitfield.”

Finch wrote it all down. “I’ll find his valet as well. That one I’ll keep for myself. If his master is dead, the man is out of a place, with a quarter’s wages owing and no character to show for it—the most talkative creature in all of London. He’ll know secrets a banker never sees.”

“Good.” I had what I came for, or the better part of it. “What else?”