Page 33 of Undercover with the Heiress
Phineas slid his hand from her grasp, withdrew his pen from his pocket, unscrewed the lid, and leant over the papers.
Rosanna cleared her throat and shuffled her notes with both hands.
The meeting followed the regular pattern. Phineas sifted through the words as Iris, and occasionally Elise, reported on the standard agenda. Profits. Losses. Opportunities. Failures. When the meeting ended, Phineas stood and swiped his notes from the table. He needed to get across town, to the bank. Taylor could only make excuses for him for so long.
Rosanna followed, but at the door, she turned back. ‘Excuse me, Iris.’ She moved to the table where Iris and Elise were gathering up their papers and the company books. ‘I’d like to learn more about ledgers and bookkeeping. I’ve seen the ones we keep at the hotel and for Spencer and Co., but I’d like to see something different that’s not related to travel. Do you have the latest report to shareholders for Abberton & Co.?’
‘It’s the Argonauts Trading Company now,’ Iris said, her tone sharp with bitterness. ‘They renamed the company last year. Erased Papa in less than a month.’
‘But you remained shareholders, didn’t you?’ Rosanna asked.
‘I sold our interests back to them before they launched to the public. I held them for a while, naïvely hoping that after I’d married, they might think differently and reinstate us on the board. But after a time, I couldn’t bear it.’ Iris tidied her papers and tapped them against the table to level their edges, then tucked them into a folder. ‘Watching reports come in, wondering what they were doing, and why… It became too much. If profits were up, was it because they were exploiting the workers? If they were down, were they making rash decisions? And Papa no longer knows what he created. Once they collected all the paperwork, I saw nothing but a short report again. Mr Sanders keeps the books to his own liking now.’
‘He doesn’t keep the books.’ Phineas sidled closer, trying to follow the thread that his wife had picked up. ‘They send them to Empire Savings and Loans. A senior clerk looks them over before they come into the office.’
‘That is unfortunate,’ Iris replied.
‘Why?’ Rosanna asked. ‘I thought such a tedious task would be the first thing one would want to be rid of.’
Iris shook her head. ‘Ignoring tedium is a certain way to disaster. That’s what Papa always said. I mean, really…’ She gestured at the perfectly maintained opulence of the dining room that had been converted into a board room. ‘Do you think we lacked the funds to pay a clerk to tally the books? Papa always insisted on knowing his own numbers. That’s how he taught me how to run a company. It’s the only way to understand what is happening—really happening—in a business. The ledgers are a company’s heartbeat. If the workers are being paid too little and become careless or if the warehouse is lax on security, you’llsee it in the columns. Even here, now, for Spencer and Co.’ Iris tugged a heavy volume from Elise’s arms, thumped it onto the table, and flipped the cover open. ‘Everyone loves chocolate. Why not a week with a Belgian chocolatier? Our first tour sold out within a week. Tour two almost as fast. Yet our third is selling poorly. No one has complained, so when the guests return to London, they feel happy. But when they have time to think, they are not recommending us. Is it the hotel? The guide? The chef? You must coax the truth from the ledgers, but it’s always there.’ Iris’s eyes narrowed as she scanned the columns. ‘The world is full of fraudsters, but the ledgers never lie.’
Rosanna held her skirt aloft in one hand as she half skipped down the stairs. Outside, on the pavement, Phineas made to cross back to Number 1 to fetch his umbrella. Rosanna tugged at his arm and pulled him back. ‘Where are you going? I thought you’d want to investigate.’
‘Investigate what? The chocolatier? The problem is obvious. It’s summer. The chocolate melts, then resets. It tastes horrible once they are home, so they don’t tell their friends out of embarrassment.’
‘Not the chocolate. The ledger. You said it was too perfect, didn’t you?’ Rosanna waited, her eyes bright with discovery. He shrugged. ‘It’sobvious. The ledger at your bank is a lie. There must be a duplicate. We need to find it. If we can find the original, we’ll learn everything.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘It’s been a while. I’ll get it.’
Rosanna shoved Phineas’s arm. ‘Will you just let me try?’
With a reluctant sigh, he passed the thin steel lock-pick up to her. Rosanna scrunched the grey tartan skirt of her walking dress around her knees and crouched beside him.
‘Skirts are so awkward. I should have ignored you and dressed in trousers.’
‘Rule number one,’ he repeated his words from the house with a sullen frown. ‘Blend in.’
Rosanna angled the pick until the mechanism inside the lock clicked. With an easy twist, the door to the upstairs office of the Argonauts Trading Company swung open.
She handed his kit back to him. ‘Rule number two. Don’t allow important skills to atrophy.’
‘That is not rule number two.’ He folded the tools into a cloth and tucked them into his coat pocket. ‘How’d you learn?’
‘Father taught me when I was little. He taught Johannes, too. He said it was prudent to learn, in case there was a problem with keys at the hotel, but I sometimes wonder if he was struggling toadjust to a life on the straight and narrow, and passing on some wayward skills to his children made it easier to change his ways.’
Phineas nearly always kept the same impassive face, even when she deliberately provoked him, but as she said the wordshis children, he looked away, head bowed. As if he were studying the floor for clues.
It wasn’t a surprise that he knew her secret. How her mother had found herself abandoned, unemployed and with child, and Lawrence had helped her and claimed Rosanna as his own. Phineas seemed to know everything.
‘Save your discomfort,’ she snapped. ‘Maybe not by blood, but he’s my father in every other way. He’s never treated me any different from the others.’
‘He saved you from a terrible life. My mother was unwed when I was born. We lived in a poorhouse for a time. He’s a good man.’
‘If you think he’s such a good man, why are you always so horrible to him? He’d make friends with anyone on the street. He loves that place.’
‘Friendship brings hesitation. It’s easier to act when you don’t have to think of others.’ With a determined turn of his back, Phineas pushed the door open and slipped into the office. ‘Let’s find these ledgers.’
