Page 41 of My One and Only Duke
While Quinn had been trying to talk Jane into an annulment. He’d never go back on his word, but neither would he hold a woman to a marriage she resented. His father had made that mistake, and Mama had paid with her life.
“Quinn, was your hearing damaged in Newgate?”
“Perhaps. Wretched place is noisy. What were you saying?”
“That we might want to let some of these accounts”—Joshua waved the stack of papers—“move elsewhere. Detwiler was among the first to give notice, and he’s teetering on the brink of ruin.”
“He’s been teetering on the brink of ruin for two years.” Ever since his oldest daughter had left the schoolroom. She or her ambitious mama had beggared Detwiler with millinery, dancing slippers—
Jane would need a cobbler’s services. Her boots would disgrace a muck heap.
“So let’s push his lordship over the edge,” Joshua said, propping a hip on the edge of the table. “He’s arrogant and stupid. All we need do is lose today’s letter from him and prepare him a bank draft.”
“We do not engage in sharp practice,” Quinn retorted, closing the bible. “We have a fiduciary relationship with our customers, meaning their best interests must come before all else. I have an appointment. You will excuse me.”
“We do occasionally cull the herd, Quinn. Detwiler is perilously close to overdrawn in all regards.”
“Then we ask him for a meeting and call upon him at his convenience. Not his man of business, him. I’ll threaten to close his account, you’ll console him with a prepared budget, and he’ll bumble into better finances over the next few years.”
Quinn retrieved his hat and cane from their customary places by the door. Two private offices opened on to this room—his and Joshua’s—and both also had entrances on to the mezzanine above the bank’s main lobby.
The bank’s public area might have been any fashionable set of assembly rooms, complete with potted palms in various corners, fine wool carpets over an oak parquet floor, and cloudy Low Country landscapes on the walls.
Quinn liked the lobby, liked to look down on the people coming and going, liked the feel of commerce in the air, but now was not the time to linger here. He had put in an appearance, greeted his tellers and a few customers by name, smiled at all and sundry despite the stares and whispers.
Business as usual, while I hunt a killer.
“Where are you off to?” Joshua asked, joining Quinn at the mezzanine’s railing.
“To hire a grave robber.”
“You didn’t kill Robert Pike? Didn’t knock him arse over appetite in that alley?” The questions could not have been more casual.
“Mr. Pike and I spoke for a few minutes. He wanted money—a fellow Yorkshireman, down on his luck—I obliged with a pair of sovereigns. When I left the alley he was still muttering about life’s many injustices and them as gets above theirselves.” Quinn had dropped into street patois to imitate his supposed victim. Pike was an acquaintance from the old days who’d learned that not all of Quinn’s transactions were made through the bank.
“That’s what you told the jury.”
“They did not believe me. Now I’m off to find a body.”
Joshua smiled down at a young couple in expectation of an interesting event. They smiled back up at him. Did they know that the lady’s feet would swell? That she’d become exhausted from her burden in a few months?
“I should have thought of that,” Joshua said. “No body, no crime. The court had a coroner’s report.”
“I’ll talk to the coroner too. His demeanor on the witness stand was less than scientific.”
An errand boy sidled up to one of the assistant tellers. Children were safer conduits of information on London’s streets. They were more reliable than running footmen, less conspicuous, and cost less to feed and house. Pickpockets left them alone, though half of Quinn’s messengers had been pickpockets themselves.
The Wentworth and Penrose errand boys also slept on the premises, adding to the bank’s security—and their own.
The teller nodded, and the child wafted away. The assistant teller made a leisurely path to the head teller on duty, who occupied a windowed corner office. Another conversation ensued.
“Something’s afoot,” Quinn said.
“You cannot be twice put in jeopardy of losing your life for the same crime, Quinn. Even if Pike is dead, you cannot be again convicted of his murder.”
“I know the law, Joshua. I also know my neck will bear a scar for the rest of my life.”
That silenced Joshua—a feat for the history books—or possibly the head teller’s ascent of the side stairs did.
