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“No, I’m just wondering how they got together. Was there ensnaring involved?”
“Mutual ensnaring.”
“His title for her dowry?”
“Yes, and while I hate to pity my sister, I must say he got the better end of the bargain. Being shortsighted, he cared only for the dowry and the debts it would pay, but what truly saved him financially was Annis herself. We Grays all have a talent. Hers is business.”
I bring over several more pouches. “I heard she was in London conducting business for her husband when he got sick. I figured he was otherwise engaged?”
She snorts. “Otherwise engaged with his hunts and his women. Gordon was not a fool. Once he realized my sister’s talents, he employed them. She has been his proxy for over a decade now. At first, he made excuses. Eventually, he stopped bothering. She was the face of his financial interests, while he was presumed to make the decisions.”
“Which he did not.”
“Were they living in the poorhouse? No? Then he did not.”
I set down the pouches. “Sarah said that Annis didn’t care about inheriting the estate. That she’d be glad to be rid of it. That suggested she expected to inherit money instead. But Annis didn’t seem worried about the will being changed. Has anyone seen it yet?”
“No, and Annis seems in no rush to do so. Hugh says the officer in charge of the investigation has requested it. Annis is also apparently unconcerned with that.”
I have an idea why, but I’ll wait to see the will.
“So how did they meet?” I ask. “Annis and Lord Leslie?”
“Through our father. Lord Leslie was a business associate. I do not recall who introducedthem,but Lord Leslie—being forever short of ready money—was eager to speculate, and my father had the touch there. He helped Gordon make a bit of money through burial societies… and then Gordon saw a quicker source of capital.”
“Annis’s dowry.”
“It was a match made in… well, someplace.”
I chuckle. “Someplace warm.” I stop, pages in hand. “Wait.”
“Burial societies,” she blurts, before I can speak. “Was not one of our victims a gravedigger?”
I’m at the desk, digging through the stacks. “Young was, which might not be significant in itself—one gravedigger and one burial-society investor—but then there’s this.”
I hand her four client files. All show Ware representing clients involved in the funerary business—one owning a cemetery, one investing in cemeteries, and two managing burial societies.
“That didn’t immediately seem significant,” I say. “Ware handled all kinds of clients, like you said. But I haven’t found four clients in any other shared area of business.”
“And I have two more,” she says. “Mr. Ware assisting them in various areas of the funerary trade.”
“Did Lord Leslie still invest in it?” I ask.
“He did. That is one reason Annis is particularly suited to handle his business affairs. She may turn up her nose at our family trade, but growing up, she knew more about it than any of us.” She pauses. “I think, at one time, she had hoped to inherit it.”
“Damn.”
Isla plucks out two client files from her own stack. “I do not like my sister, Mallory. That may be obvious. I love her, but I do not like her, if that makes sense.”
“It does.”
“I do not like the way she has treated Sarah and our mother, and I will never forgive her for how she has treated Duncan. She was not always like that toward him, and somehow, that makes it worse.”
She scans pages as she continues, “When Duncan came to live with us, Annis delighted in him. He was so solemn and so quick-witted. Some girls would like a giggling baby to play with. Annis was different. She longed for a younger sibling to teach. Lachlan and I had quite enough of that from her, but then along came Duncan, who wanted nothing more than to learn. Headoredher.”
“What happened?”
Isla checks a cabinet, yanking open another drawer. “She grew up. She developed aspirations, and she learned that Duncan stood in the way of those. I will never forgive her for rejecting him as she did, but if I am to give her even the barest iota of sympathy, I will admit that, at the time she turned her back on him, she had also suffered a disappointment, one that made her…” She sucks in a breath. “It made her hard, and it made her cold.”
