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her the details of Lister, everything that was known of him, and the police surgeon’s report of his death. There were a few marks on his body, as if he had very recently been involved in several fights. None of them had been serious, but they had left deep bruises, some of them very shortly before his death. His actual death looked to have been quick. A single knife stroke had severed his throat almost to the spine. There were no obvious wounds of self-defense.
Probably two men took him by surprise, Monk deduced. It fitted in with what both Hooper and Laker had told him. Then Hooper had brought in Kate Exeter’s cousin, Celia Darwin, and she had identified Lister as the man who had taken Kate from the riverbank in the beginning. Monk was still weighing all the new evidence and trying to work out what it meant, if it added anything to what they already knew.
He felt a strong burst of cold air as the outside door opened and a young woman came in. She wore a long black coat and had the collar turned up to protect her face from the wind. She stopped just inside the door and stared at Monk.
“Can I help you?” he asked, getting up and walking slowly toward her.
She stopped and gulped. She was quite small, slender, and dressed almost entirely in black. She looked fragile, and at this moment, almost rigid with tension.
“Who are you?” Monk asked. “This is the Wapping station of the Thames River Police. I’m Commander Monk. Is this where you wish to be?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” She took a deep breath. “I’m Bella Franken. I’m a bookkeeper at Nicholson’s Bank. I…think I might know about some money that was used for the ransom. I think…” She stopped and bit her lip, waiting for Monk’s reaction.
Nicholson’s was the name of the bank to which Hooper had followed Roger Doyle. Did this mean anything? Was the money the key to what had happened?
“Tell me about it, Miss Franken. Come into my office and sit down. It’s warmer in there, and I’ll make fresh tea.”
She followed him obediently. When she had sat down in the chair opposite his desk, she pulled onto her lap a soft-sided bag and opened it. She took out a sheaf of papers and handed them across to him. At a glance, they looked to be dozens of loose sheets crowded with figures in columns, hundreds of them, all neatly set out in the same hand, and all in ink.
She pushed them across the table toward him. “I have made copies of the ledgers over the last several months. You may want to see all the numbers, but I have made small marks beside the ones that are of importance.”
“This is your writing?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He glanced down at them and, after a moment’s study of the ones she had marked, he could see what appeared to be discrepancies. But they could easily have been accidental transpositions in the copying.
He looked up at her and saw her solemn expression awaiting his response.
“What are these numbers, Miss Franken? What do they represent?”
“Movements of money in and out of Mrs. Exeter’s accounts,” she answered.
“Mrs. Exeter?” he asked. “Mrs. Exeter has an account of her own?”
Bella Franken’s expression was bleak. “It was a trust, Mr. Monk. She has no access to it, nor does Mr. Exeter. She will come into it on her thirty-third birthday, which is more than a year in the future. Until that time, it is in the stewardship of Mr. Doyle, the manager of the bank, and Mrs. Exeter’s cousin, Mr. Maurice Latham. He is a civil lawyer.” Her face was carefully empty of expression, and Monk imagined she did not like Maurice Latham.
Bella drew in her breath and continued, “At the time of her birthday, Mrs. Exeter was to have inherited the entire sum. If she should die before that time, it does not pass to her husband. The bequest is very specific. It is equally divided between the other two cousins, the sole children of Mrs. Exeter’s mother’s widowed sisters.”
“Who are?”
“Mr. Maurice Latham and Miss Celia Darwin.”
“And they are aware of this?”
“Of course.”
“Is there…?”
“No ill feeling,” she answered before he could struggle for words to frame the question with delicacy. “And Mr. Exeter has no access to it at all.”
“What are these figures, and why have you brought them to us?”
“Because someone has been very carefully removing small amounts, over three or four years, and concealing it with clever bookkeeping. I had to spend several hours going over and over the pages to find it.”
“And the only people with access to it are Maurice Latham and your manager, Mr. Doyle? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation in her voice at all.
