Page 74 of Speculations in Sin

“You’ve given me fascinating reading,” Mr. Thanos said, as though I’d bestowed a great gift upon him. He swept his arm over the papers laid across the table in unkempt piles. “We’ve been untangling the puzzle.” His eyes had lit, Mr. Thanos never happier than when working through numbers.

“Have you discovered who the embezzler is?” I asked eagerly.

“Well—” Mr. Thanos began, but Sam cut him off.

“Not as such,” Sam said. “We’ve figured out how they did it, but I don’t have a name of someone to arrest.”

I understood why Sam had interrupted. Mr. Thanos could launch into a long and mostly unintelligible explanation if he wasn’t stopped.

“What have you learned?” Daniel asked. “Explain in sentences a layman will understand, please.”

“Finish your cruller first,” I said kindly.

Sam took another grateful bite, then laid the half-eaten cruller on a napkin I’d brought. He was saving it instead of devouring it in one go. Extending the joy, I realized. I’d brought enough to supplement his meager meals for a week, but perhaps he did not believe he’d leave this place so soon—of his own volition, that is.

“The embezzler has set up many accounts in banks across the City,” Sam began. “Small amounts are paid into these accounts, all to different people. No amount very extravagant. Nothing more than most dividends would be. Those who live on the payouts of their investments mostly receive a moderate income. No sudden, vast fortunes. A fortune is what people hope for when they invest, but much of the time, they simply make a steady stream of income that lets them live well but not grandly. None of these payments would raise an eyebrow.”

“Taken together, however,” Mr. Thanos put in, “a person could live very well indeed. Upward of ten thousand pounds a year.”

I stilled in shock. Ten thousand was a princely sum. “Surely, with that sort of money, the embezzler could retire to the seaside and not labor in the bank every day.”

“True,” Sam said. “But he’d draw attention to himself leaving abruptly. And why go when he can stay and take still more?”

“Your arrest for embezzlement might have cut off his opportunity,” I said. “If the trickling of funds continues, Daalman’s will have to find a new suspect. Your arrest for murder has drawn the attention away from the embezzlement.”

“Are you thinking that is why Mr. Stockley was murdered?” Daniel asked me. “A plausible theory. The embezzler worriedabout his income drying up and decided to obfuscate things.” He turned to Sam. “You said Mr. Stockley had an idea who was the culprit?”

“I think so,” Sam said. “He did not give me a name, unfortunately.”

“Do these documents give names?” I indicated the piles on the table. “The same character names from Dickens?”

“No.” Sam shook his head. “I think the character names were only for the contracts. I found the initials of those to be paid, but they don’t match the contracted names. I copied out logbooks of checks made to those initials—here.” He pulled out a long list of numbers and letters written in his careful hand. “Whoever wrote the checks knew what names the initials stood for, but that is not unusual. He’d have a key to the names plus the directions on the investment documents as to how much to pay. He’d simply write out the checks or send the deposits to the correct bank.”

“Who makes out the checks?” I asked, certain that this person would be involved.

“Most of the senior clerks do—whoever of them has been given that level of trust. And the bankers can, though they usually leave that job to the clerks. The clerks are simply writing names and numbers on checks and putting them into envelopes, or sending them by locked courier bag to banks for deposit. It’s a fairly tedious job, and those writing the checks don’t necessarily have access to the money itself. They only know who is owed what, and they pay it accordingly.”

I deflated. We were back to almost anyone in the bank being able to siphon off the funds.

“The investment document tells the banker who the check goes to and how much?” I asked, trying to make certain I understood. “How does it?”

Sam selected a paper and turned it to me. “These are the stocks in question and the percentage of return on them, and here is whether those stocks made a profit or loss.” He ran a finger across each column. “Then the initials of each investor, how much of the stock they own, what percentage they are paid, and how much that is in pounds, shillings, and pence. What puzzled me was that some of the larger earnings had been broken up into many smaller payments to different investors. That is not unusual if, say, a firm has invested on behalf of employees or clients—they break down the dividends for each person. But those group investors are known to us, and we pay them a lump sum. They take care of dividing the spoils on their end.”

“So, Mr. Millburn wondered very much what these payments were,” Mr. Thanos broke in, unable to contain himself. “We sorted through it all and came up with a list of initials that occur over and over again. They seem to have invested in quite a number of diverse ventures, all of which have paid handsomely. But no one set of initials gets all the money from each investment. Sometimes one set does get a small payout, and then the next quarter they receive nothing, even if the investment earned money. All very irregular.”

“Trying to hide exactly what is going on,” Daniel speculated, and Mr. Thanos nodded, as though pleased a pupil had understood his lesson.

“Who did these documents come from?” I asked Sam. “Surely, you’d know who handed them to you to copy. Or whose handwriting this is.”

Sam shook his head. “I copy out things for all the bankers, and the papers are brought down to our room by a senior clerk. Then Chandler, the head of our room, doles them out. I usually get documents from the same bankers, but not always. I don’trecognize whose hand is what, because I don’t necessarily see handwriting other than what’s thrust at me. Over time, I’ve grown to recognize the patterns of certain bankers, but none oftheirpapers have ever had irregularities. When I noted the oddities, I started keeping these documents back, a little at a time, after I’d copied them out. I once tried to bring them to the attention of Chandler, and then Mr. Zachary, but I was turned away quite rudely by both of them. Told my job was copying and not troubling myself about the details.”

“Hmm.” Either Mr. Chandler or Mr. Zachary had something to do with this, or they were simply arrogant men not wanting to bother with a junior clerk’s concerns. “Why would the embezzler even risk having these documents copied?” I asked. “I’d think he’d hide them or at least carry them to the check writers himself. Or make certainhewas the check writer.”

“Daalman’s keeps painstaking records,” Sam explained with some weariness. “Have for centuries, which is why they have rooms upstairs packed with papers. They need to be able to answer to any inquiries, so they have two copies of every piece, sometimes three for very important documents. It would be more noticeable if records were missing than if they were doctored.”

“These are originals?” I asked, touching ones that I knew hadn’t been written by Sam. I’d seen enough of Sam’s penned short greetings in Joanna’s letters to me over the years to recognize his writing.

“They are. If it was known I had them, I’d be sacked for not filing them in the appropriate cubbyhole in the appropriate file room.” His tone was dry. “Such is the meticulousness of Daalman’s.”

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