Chapter Three

T he agent was a solicitor by the name of Thatcher, and he took a bit of finding. The address on his letterhead—the address to which Jowan had been sending correspondence—proved to be the office of somebody else—someone called Beckleston. The clerk there was not disposed to give them any information, and Beckleston was away at present. Or so the clerk said. He was a young man—still a boy, Jowan would have said, short and slender, except that the stubble on his cheeks and something about his eyes suggested he was older than he looked, as did the way his brown hair was already thinning away from his forehead.

When the clerk deliberately turned back to his work after making the last claim, Jowan leaned over the desk, resting both hands on the documents scattered across the surface. "Bran," he said. "Fetch a constable. It is clear that Thatcher is a fraudster, and this man, or his employer, or both, is Thatcher's accomplice. I'll stay here and make sure this man does not escape."

After that, the clerk had a change of heart. Mr. Thatcher was merely a client of Mr. Beckleston's. They allowed him to use the address for correspondence out of kindness, for Mr. Thatcher had experienced some bad luck. The clerk did not know where Mr. Thatcher lived or work—he always called for his correspondence once a week, on a Thursday.

"Not good enough," Jowan decided. "Fetch a constable, Bran. We shall let them find Thatcher, and the courts can decide who is guilty and who is not."

"Who are you, bullying my poor clerk?" said a voice from the doorway.

"Beckleston, I presume," Jowan commented.

The man nodded. "I am. State your business."

Jowan straightened. "Excellent. I am Sir Jowan Trethewey. This is my colleague, Mr. Hughes. I was given this address as the place of business of Mr. Silas Thatcher."

From the corner of his eye, Jowan could see the clerk open his mouth and Bran put a finger in front of it.

Beckleston eyed Bran's move and then turned his attention back to Jowan. "I suppose my man has told you that Thatcher is a client who uses my address because he currently is between premises."

"I need to see him as a matter of urgency. Where might I find him?"

Beckleston shrugged. "I am afraid I cannot help you," he said, jutting out his chin.

Jowan resisted the urge to bop him on it. "I take it, then, that you are a party to his fraud and embezzlement. Bran, you had better fetch those constables."

Beckleston put up a hand. "Wait! Those are serious charges. Thatcher is a gentleman I will have you know."

Jowan laughed. "In Cornwall, we find that gentlemen thieves, when shot, are just as dead as those from lower levels of Society. I daresay the same applies to hanging. I have other matters to attend to while I am in London. If I cannot meet with Thatcher and find out what he has done with my money, I shall let the constables sort it out."

Beckleston paced to and fro, saying, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute." He stopped, having clearly made a decision. "I might be able to get a message to him. Might. I can guarantee nothing."

"Not good enough," Jowan replied. He nodded to Bran, who began to move towards the door.

"Wait," Beckleston begged, again, and went back to pacing. "I know where he is boarding," he admitted after a few seconds. "If he is home, I can have him here in under an hour."

"We shall save you the trouble," Bran said sweetly. "The address, and we shall be out of your hair. Unless Thatcher implicates you in his schemes."

"I am certain you are mistaken," said Beckleston, drawing himself upright. "Mr. Thatcher is a respected member of London's legal community, and the trusted London agent of a number of country gentlemen."

"I am aware of how Thatcher presents himself to country gentlemen," Jowan commented, dryly. "Being myself one of those country gentlemen. At the very least, Thatcher is guilty of gross incompetence. Given his repeated failure to respond to my increasingly urgent missives, I strongly suspect that his sole goal from the beginning has been to separate me and my investors from our money. You must decide, Mr. Beckleston. Are you confident of his innocence? Then give me his address and allow me to investigate. Or are you his co-conspirator?"

"You are possibly being unfair to Mr. Beckleston," Bran suggested. "He might have been as taken in by Thatcher as we were. Perhaps Mr. Beckleston is in this up to his neck, and perhaps he is just a poor naive fool."

"I do not think so," Jowan argued with Bran. "Mr. Beckleston would be as keen to find out the truth as we are if he was innocent. I think Mr. Beckleston is in this with Thatcher."

"I am not," Beckleston protested. "I am sure you are mistaken. Let me give you the address. Paper and pen, Oliver!" The last was addressed to the clerk, who hurriedly provided the required items.

"There." Beckleston handed a sheet of paper to Jowan. "I will thank you to leave my office, Sir Jowan. If that is who you are."

"I will leave for the moment," Jowan replied. "If you are implicated, I will be back."

They strolled out of the room and down the stairs and then, with no more than an exchange of looks and a nod, separated to cover the doors, Jowan to the front and Bran to race around the row of buildings to the rear.

After ten or so minutes, Bran returned, dragging the clerk, Oliver, by the upper arm. "Sent with a message to Thatcher," he reported to Jowan.

Oliver was white and shaking. "I know nothing," he kept repeating.

Jowan pulled out his purse and abstracted a guinea. "This is for showing us to Thatcher's place, then going to a coffee house for a while before returning to your employment. Though, if you are wise, you might start looking for another position."

"Unless he is part of it, too," Bran growled.

Oliver must have decided that his own skin was more valuable to him than that of his employer. "I am guilty of looking the other way," he admitted. "But what was I to do? Who would have believed me if I said anything? Beckleston is the master mind. Thatcher is the man who sells the idea. Beckleston gives references to Thatcher, and forges references from some of his clients. Were you taken in by the find-an-investor scheme? Or one of the canal schemes?"

"Investors," Bran replied, though Jowan was still wondering whether the man's change of sides was genuine.

"Ah. That's a clever one. They do a good and genuine job for around half of the projects. Then they use those projects as references for other opportunities." He sounded impressed. Jowan was more convinced than ever that Oliver was in deeper than he admitted. Still. The man could be useful.

"If you are prepared to be a witness to what the others have done, we will put in a word for you," he offered.

Oliver shook his head. "If you can keep me out of it, I am your man," he countered.

He was still pale and trembly, but his jaw was set. There'd be no shifting him today, and in any case, Jowan was interested in bigger fish.

"Show us to Thatcher's address," he said, without committing himself.

"It isn't the one Beckleston wrote down," Oliver confided. "This way."

Jowan stayed alert. His instincts told him that Oliver couldn't be trusted. But he proved reliable in this instance, at least. He led them to a street of run-down but still solid townhouses. When they knocked on the door he pointed out and asked for Thatcher, the woman who answered the door directed them up four flights of stairs and to the room at the back of the house.

The door to the room was open. Jowan stepped inside and stopped. Either someone had ransacked the room, or Thatcher had been warned and had packed in a hurry and escaped. Bran pushed him out of the way and rushed to the window. "He's getting away," he said.

Sure enough, a man was clambering over the back fence. He dropped to the other side and took off along the mews, pausing to look back over his shoulder at the window where they stood. They couldn't see his expression, but they could see the rude gesture he made with his free hand.

"I'll get after him," Bran said.

"Too late," Jowan told him. "Look."

The miscreant had a horse. How he'd managed to have it ready in time to escape, Jowan couldn't guess, but he swung aboard, and kicked it into a trot, balancing the bag he had been carrying in front of him.

"Damn," Bran commented.

*

They had a stroke of luck after that. They were just trying to persuade the landlady to give them permission to search the room when several other men arrived, two of them obviously constables, and two of the men were familiar. The gentleman who led the way took one look at Jowan and Bran and greeted them.

"Trethewey and Hughes! I take it you are on the same mission as we are. Where is Thatcher?" It was Lord Andrew Winderfield, who had been tutoring in Central Asian History at Oxford when they were students. Lord Andrew had been the first to see Bran's potential as a scholar.

"Thatcher is on a fast horse to somewhere else," Bran said. "We arrived just in time to see him mount up and ride."

"His landlady was just considering whether to let us search his room," Jowan added.

"Madam," said Lord Andrew. "These gentlemen have a warrant. Please show it to the good lady," he added, to one of the constables. The man produced the warrant, and then two constables followed the landlady up the stairs, followed by two of the other men. Central Asian servants of Lord Andrew's by the look of them.

He had had several of them following him around Oxford, too, one of whom was sometime valet, sometime partner, always friend. Jamir was as close to Lord Andrew as Bran was to Jowan and was even now at Lord Andrew's shoulder. Jowan nodded to him in recognition.

"We think a man called Beckleston is in it, too," Jowan said.

"He should be under arrest by now," Lord Andrew told them. "Unless he, too, got nervous and ran. I wonder what tipped Thatcher off." His eyes fixed on Oliver. "You are Beckleston's clerk," he commented.

"It wasn't me, sir," Oliver assured him. "Mr. Beckleston sent me to Mr. Thatcher after these two gentlemen called, but I agreed to help them after I left the building."

"I stopped him in the back lane, and he switched sides," Bran explained, "but I would not trust him as far as I can throw him."

Oliver cast him a hurt look.

"We frightened them," Jowan realized. "I am sorry, my lord. We spoiled your arrests."

"Call me ‘Drew'," said Lord Andrew. "Not to worry. We had men watching them both. They won't get away, and they may lead us to others involved in the schemes they were running." He paused before adding, "I hope they didn't take you for much."

Jowan groaned. "Only the future of the new mine that means security for my people, plus whatever it is going to take to pay off the investors they trapped," he admitted. It was an impossibility. If he'd had the money to fund the venture, he'd not have sought investors in the first place.

Bran clasped his shoulder. "We'll work it out."

Drew was grinning. "It might not be as bad as you think," he said. "The group of investors I belong to became suspicious of this pair a while ago, and have been gathering evidence to arrest them. Can I ask if the mine you're talking about is the Wheal St Tetha?"

Jowan nodded.

"We agreed to invest to draw them out. We were to hand the money over today," Drew told him. He shook his head. "It would have been the last nail in their coffin, but we have enough evidence without it. And it does mean you still have 90% of your investors, Trethewey. You'll have to meet my group, of course, and convince them of the value of the proposition. We did our due diligence on what Thatcher had to say, but the vote was a foregone conclusion since we never intended Thatcher and his colleagues to still be in business to steal our money."

From despair to elation in a moment. Jowan's head was spinning. "Call me ‘Jowan', Drew," he managed.

"Bran," his brother offered, even as he shot out a hand to stop Oliver, who was edging towards the door.

"Jowan and Bran, then. Do you have plans for Beckleston's clerk?"

With one eye on the clerk, Jowan said, "He is, at the very least, a witness. Possibly a co-conspirator. He has, though, been very helpful since he agreed to abandon his employer. Not an arrest, I think. Is there a way to detain him without actually arresting him?"

"You could trust me to come when you ask?" Oliver sounded hopeful. "I only did what my employer told me. I am not a criminal, Sir Jowan, my lord."

He sounded sincere, but Jowan was not such a fool as to believe him without proof.

"Good idea, Jowan," Drew said. "We can manage a detainment, can we not, Jamir?"

Jamir bared his teeth in a shark's smile. "Come along, Beckleston's clerk."

"I would rather not," Oliver replied, but Jamir's smile only broadened, and Oliver, his shoulders slumped, walked in the direction Jamir indicated, Jamir at his shoulder in case he changed his mind. One of the other men fell into step behind them.

"Shall we see what Thatcher's room can tell us?" Drew asked. "Then, if you are not otherwise occupied, perhaps you would care to come with me to meet my two colleagues. Between them, they have been supervising the search of Beckleston's premises—one at his office and one at his home."

The brothers exchanged a glance and confirmed they were of one mind. Jowan spoke for them both. "We would love to."