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“It’s all in your writing.” He felt as if he were apologizing. “He can say it was not accurate, that you have transposed numbers and there is no error in the books. I’m sorry.”
“Of course it is in my writing,” she replied. “So is the original. I am the bookkeeper. All the ledgers are in my writing. But in the original, Mr. Doyle has signed off on each page. He checks them all, but of course he does not do all the writing. That takes hours, copying from one sheet of paper, receipts, count of money, and all the tasks that go into keeping an exact accounting. This is not meant as proof, Commander Monk; it is a means for you to find the pieces yourself and see how the money is where it should not be, with no explanation.”
He looked down at the sheets again. Without her marking specific lines, he doubted he ever would have seen the pattern. “Have you shown this to the regular police? Or anyone else in the bank?”
“No. I…” She did not need to tell Monk that she was frightened. It was written in her face, the stiffness of her body beneath the black coat, and the white knuckles of her left hand clenched in her lap, while her right hand pushed more papers toward him.
He had no need to tell her she was endangering herself by bringing him this information. He wished he could tell her that she was protected, that he would see to it that she was safe, but he was filled with the dark weight of broken promises. He had promised Exeter they would follow the plan exactly and get Kate back, and he had lost both her and the money. He had found Lister, against remarkable odds. They had gone to arrest him and found his dead body. It was only because Celia Darwin had identified him that they knew for certain he was the kidnapper. But did they really know that? Would her evidence have stood up in court? She had seen him only for a few moments on the riverbank. She had been a startled and frightened woman. Later, she had been asked to look at a mutilated corpse, with a gaping wound where his throat should have been. She had said yes, that was the man, but would she have said yes whomever it had been, so wanting it to be him?
And Hooper had wanted it to be. How far had he influenced her? Usually Monk would not have doubted Hooper, but he thought Hooper wanted so badly to achieve something, as much to discover who had betrayed them as to punish Kate’s killer, perhaps he saw progress where there was none. And Monk was so keen to solve this, for exactly the same reasons, that he was slow to accept it.
“Miss Franken, have you seen or heard more than this? Any meetings you are aware of?”
“I have seen Mr. Exeter come in three or four times in the last few weeks. I have tried to remember which days exactly, but I can’t. I’m sorry. I imagine Mr. Doyle could tell you but I do not have access to his diary. I am very seldom in his office. Sometimes I take him ledgers, if he asks for them.”
“Have you worked for him a long time?”
“It seems like it. Eight years; as head bookkeeper for only three.”
“There is another bookkeeper?” He wondered if that was where the errors had crept in.
“There used to be. Mr. Ernshaw left just over two years ago. We have not found a replacement for him yet. I can manage.”
“It must stretch you considerably to do two jobs,” Monk observed.
She smiled, charming and full of wry amusement. “I am not overtaxed, Mr. Monk. I do not sit up by candlelight straining my eyes over columns of figures. If I organize myself properly, I can quite easily manage. And do you think that had I made an error, it would result in exactly these figures? I have a feeling, to judge by your expression, that they may mean more to you than they do to me.”
“You’re very observant, Miss Franken. What was your impression of Mr. Exeter and his trust in Mr. Doyle?”
She was uncomfortable; she looked down. “It is hardly my place to have impressions of Mr. Doyle or his clients. I am desperately sorry for Mr. Exeter. Of course, I know only what is in the newspapers, but it is one of the most dreadful stories I have heard.”
“Has Mr. Exeter visited the bank since then?”
“Yes, once. He looked like a ghost, poor man.”
“You think he obtained the ransom money with the assistance of Mr. Doyle?”
“Yes.”
“It would be natural, if Nicholson’s is where Mr. Exeter banks. Why did you fear it might be breaking your confidentiality to bring this to me?” Monk felt hesitant to ask her, but she did not seem flighty or foolish. She clearly believed that there was some information here that was not as straightforward as a ransom being paid. She was very afraid of something. If it was just the breaking of a trust, she could have avoided that very easily by doing nothing.
“I love numbers, Mr. Monk.” She was looking at him again. “That may seem to be a strange thing in a woman, but they have a beauty, when you understand them. They are utterly without emotion, and yet they have music in them, and reason, and occasionally humor. I…” She stopped, embarrassed by her own enthusiasm in front of a stranger.
“And they reveal something to you,” he finished for her. He glimpsed what she meant and for a moment he saw something of it, too: a world where reason and beauty were the same, and quirks of pattern had wit. He liked a woman who would make a lonely adventure of the mind and find pleasure in it.
“Yes,” she agreed, referring again to the papers in front of them. “The sums are nearly always right at the end of the calculation, though there have been some strange movements, things hidden. There is less money than there should be in some places, more in others. There may be an expl
anation I do not understand, but…”
“You think there is embezzlement?”
“Yes. There is something wrong. Movement that is wrong!”
“Whom do you suspect?”
She bit her lip. “It can only be Mr. Latham or…or Mr. Doyle.”
“Which do you suspect?”
