After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

  Mr. Solomon led the way back down the stairs, and into his dark, meticulously organized work room, to a table with scales, small crucibles and pan weights were lined up along the top.

  He lit several lamps before he drew a high stool to the work table, and turned the fob over in his hand. “Tell me what you already know.”

  Tanner glanced at her, and then said, “Gold aureus of Emperor Claudius, minted around the year forty-six, commemorating the conquest of Britain.”

  “Yes.” Mr. Solomon made a considering face, with his mouth turned down at the corners. “Stamped De Britann with the equestrian mounted over the triumphal arch. But you didn’t come to me for a history lesson.”

  “No. Miss Claire has already provided me with one.” Again Tanner’s sharp, conspiratorial gaze found hers. “What can you tell me about the fob itself?”

  “Typical, nothing special. Looks like something from Field and Parker, goldsmiths and gunsmiths they call themselves, on High Holburn. Jumped up tinkers, if you ask me—and you do ask me. This is why you come to me.” He picked up a pair of spectacles, and perched them on the end of his nose. “Who would buy jewelry from such men, who do two things only adequately?”

  Tanner slapped his hand against the flat of the workbench. “Field and Parker,” he repeated, as if he were adding the name to a catalogue in his head—or perhaps just accessing the catalogue that was already there.

  “Their guns are fair enough, but ordinary. So a country man with money but no discernment? Or someone of the Ton, who is canny, who goes for gold work because he knows Field and Parker will do the work quickly and cheaply, since he already buys guns there?”

  Tanner fired off his deductions with rapid-fire surety and conviction. As if it were obvious, and not guesses he had made within a split of a second. “High Holburn is just far enough out of Mayfair to make him feel like he’s got a bargain.”

  It was astonishing how absolutely he could draw such conclusions.

  Mr. Solomon was more amused than amazed. “This is good. A likely story. Now.”

  He examined the coin more closely, turning it over and over in his wiry fingers.

  Tanner’s tone grew sharp with impatience. “What else? What can you tell me about the coin.”

  “Tell you, who sees everything, and knows so much? What do you think I will tell you?”

  “You know things I don’t. You see things I can’t. This is why I come to you first thing in the goddamned morning, when dawn is in the air, and half of London is still abed.”

  “The lazy half. This is true.” The old goldsmith held up a gnarled finger, and then gestured dismissively to the watch fob he set on the table before him. “A trinket for a nobleman. As you say.”

  “A girl has been murdered, Elias. By the man who wore this fob. Look again.”

  The reminder of murder, sharpened the old man’s eye. He took up a small hand magnifying lens to amplify his vision, and examine the watch fob more closely.

  He held the ornament close to the lamp, and squinted down the eyepiece. “I have seen this coin. No.” He held up a finger to correct himself. “No. I have seen a coin made up the same way.”

  Tanner crowded closer to the workbench, as if he would try to see exactly what the old man could see.

  Elias Solomon took the hand lens down from his eye, and turned the fob over in his hand, frowning and turning the corners of his mouth down into his gray beard. “There’s...” He paused, and narrowed his eyes again at the fob. “...something that’s not right. Must the fob be preserved?” He looked to Tanner. “Are you attempting to return it, or may I remove the framework of the fob to release the coin within?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will, of course, repair it and return it to its original state. Neither the owner, nor Field or Parker”—Mr. Solomon said the names with amused contempt—“will know what has been done.”

  Tanner was typically to the point. “Do it.”

  The goldsmith took a small pair of metal snips off his worktable and had the framework of the fob off in a trice.

  And then he did the most astonishing thing—he put the coin up to his nose, and took a long, indecorous, quite audible sniff at the thing. And then he cast it down upon his table, letting it bounce and roll around in ever smaller circles until it dropped.

  “It doesn’t ring true.” He shook his shaggy beard. “I smell a fake.”

  Chapter 12

  “Smell?” Claire did not understand.

  “And taste.” The old goldsmith put the coin in his mouth, and kept it there as he the reached across the workbench to take up a heavier pair of metal snips. He spat the coin from his mouth into this hand, before he plied the tool to snip a small wedge out of the coin.

  “Mala fide,” the old man muttered into his beard, and passed the split coin to Tanner, who bristled with barely contained energy at the sight.

  “What does that mean?” Claire looked from Mr. Solomon to Tanner.

  “Made in bad faith,” Tanner explained. “A forgery. Fake.”

  The goldsmith turned his mouth down in distaste. “A thin layer of gold fused over a core of lead, and then struck. Worthless.”

  “Only worthless,” Tanner countered, “if discovered.”

  “Ah. True.” Mr. Solomon chuckled into his beard. “They’re good, whoever made this.” He looked at the tiny cut he’d made into the body of the coin again through his hand lens. “Damned good. Proportions correct. Attention to the detail. The formation of the equine pose, the depth of the lettering. Whoever they are, they’re skilled.”

  “Whoever?”

  The old goldmsith shrugged, and took a long pull at his beard.

  Tanner helped him along. “Who could make such a thing, in London, Elias? It’s not like making flimsies—forged banknotes.” he added for Claire’s benefit. “It takes a different kind of skill. And space. Lead, you said, and gold fused together. Working hot? A lead smelting isn’t something that can be hidden in a garret room like paper notes. Whoever did this has materiel, space and skills.”

  “A skilled hand to forge the molds, but then—” Mr. Solomon made a disparaging sound. “Half of Rotherhithe is heavy with the sulfurous stink of lead.”

  “But I’ll venture not half of Rotherhithe has the skill for this kind of gold work. Who could have had the skills to cast the molds to strike something that could so easily pass for the real antique? And what have you heard of goldsmiths who were down on their luck, or not keeping their custom, who had suddenly seemed to have bounced back?”

  The relentless questions poured out of him, as if from an open tap.

  “What lead manufacturers were badly operated, or on their last legs and have had a sudden resurgence? Who could be bribed into taking on this kind of work? Who was vulnerable or in debt? Walkers and Maltby on Red Bull Wharf? Or Reynolds and Wilkins in the Barbican? Who?”

  “Got your ear to the ground, haven’t you?” the old man chuckled, but he was serious enough. “There are goldsmiths enough with skill, including myself, and making a cast for a replica is not a crime—maybe even Parker and Fields can make a replica for a client who wants to wear such a coin as a fob, and wants to preserve his original.”

  The old man took another long moment, as if he were considering how much to say, before he made a little moue of decision.

  “But no reputable goldsmith makes a replica out of lead. And the lead—passing the lead coin off as gold is where the crime occurs. Now that I put together a little of this, and a little of that, I’d point at Walkers’s son.” Mr. Solomon said the name as if the word itself might be poisoned with the fumes of lead. “Fell out with the old man. Went into business on his own just recently. Set up down St. Catherine’s Dock.”

  Tanner was watching the old man’s face, reading his expression. All but quivering in his excitement—like one of her father’s gun dogs who knows exactly where to find the fallen grouse. “What else do you hear?”

  “I hear young Walker was back telli
ng his old man he didn’t need him, or his ways—that he had plenty of business. But I hear the old man doesn’t believe it, and says the yard he took at Parson’s Stairs is decrepit, the shot tower falling down. And for myself?” Here Mr. Solomon made an ironic little shrug. “Since the peace, lead yards are not doing the custom they did during the war. Not such a demand for bullets. The peace is bad for business. So, what is he doing in his decrepit yard in St. Catherine’s Dock? Perhaps Walker’s boy is pouring something other than bullets. Perhaps.”

  “I’ll find out. St. Catherine’s dock.” Tanner drew the name out, thinking and looking up at the low ceiling meditatively, his expression a sort of agonized ecstasy of a Renaissance saint. “Where the traffic of the Goodwyn, Skinner and Thornton brewery might mask an havey-cavey business they’ve got going on. Ingenious. Yes, I’ll find out.”

  “But what about the real coins?” Claire asked.

  Both men turned to her, as if they had forgotten she was there. But only one of them smiled—Tanner. “Go on,” he said.

  Thus encouraged, she said, “Does it stand to reason that someone has to have the real coin in order to make a copy? Could it have come from someplace like the Royal Academy, or Sir John Soane’s house, where of the artifacts from Pompeii have been displayed, and someone could see it, and then make his own copy?”

  “I see why you like her,” Mr. Solomon offered Tanner his own sharp, conspiratorial smile. “But I have seen the original coin from which this”—he tossed the fake upon the table—“was copied.”

  “You’re sure?” Tanner was still bluntly inquisitive.

  “Oh, yes. Gold the color of Damascus honey, soft and buttery, and as ancient as time. Only a few legitimate dealers in London would have such a coin. So I ask a question or two, but Goadly and Berry, up on Cornhill—who are the ones who would know—say they’ve never dealt that coin. So it wasn’t bought in London.”

  “But it was genuine?” Claire was still trying to follow. “Something from which someone might strike—is that the right word?—strike these replicas?”

  “Fakes,” Tanner insisted. “Made of lead to deceive.”

  “It was genuine. As genuine as this one is not.” Mr. Solomon was emphatic. “This I know.”

  “But the question is who brought you the coin?” Claire was thinking out loud, trying hard to understand. “And if that is the same person who is striking these fakes?”

  “Oh, oh.” Mr. Solomon clapped his gnarled hands together. “I see exactly why you like this one, Tanner. Very clever. She’s like you. She’s special.”

  She was special.

  She was clever.

  And she was his.

  “Yes.” He answered, but met Elias’s eyes, willing his attention back to the pressing question which he had not yet answered. “Who brought you the real aureus, Elias?”

  “Customers.” His friend’s answer was vague and evasive. “Discerning gentlemen who know better than to take their custom to tinkers on the High Holborn.”

  It wasn’t like Elias Solomon to be so cagey. “Elias?”

  The old man looked at Tanner, and then let his eyes travel very carefully to Lady Claire, before they came back. “If I might have a private word, about my fee?”

  The telling glance would have been enough without the additional mention of the fee—Elias knew damn well Tanner would compensate him for his trouble. He always had.

  So something else was afoot.

  Tanner gestured toward the doorway. “If you’ll give me a moment, Claire?”

  “Of course.” She smiled, nodded and curtsied politely to Elias Solomon, and then moved just outside the doorway of the workroom, so Tanner might turn his back and speak to the goldsmith privately.

  “And?”

  “The names.” Elias lowered his voice to something just heavier than a whisper.

  Tanner’s impatience was about to crawl out of his body. “Yes?”

  “Be careful, Tanner. These are powerful men.”

  The warning was out of character for Elias, whom he had known for so many years, he had lost count. “I always am.”

  His brusque assurance wasn’t enough. “Be more careful. Especially with her.” Elias’s eyes cut to the figure in the doorway. “I don’t like to think I have to worry about you.”

  “With her? You don’t.” Was this meant to be some sort of fatherly advice to act the gentleman? “What is it you’re tying to tell me?”

  Elias Solomon gave him another long look over the top of his spectacles, his eyes old and sad and tired. “Tanner. Several men have come to see me about this gold coin of yours. Each more powerful than the next. First was Mr. Edward Laytham, a monied squire from Suffolk.”

  That it was Laytham satisfied his brain. The pieces of the puzzle were finally beginning to fit together.

  “Not a regular customer,” Elias Solomon went on. “It’s real, I tell him. Then next comes Sir James Kersey, a baronet who has never darkened my door before. Asks the same question. Gets the same answer.”

  This was news of a different sort. Sir James Kersey was known to him. Amiable, social, a man who liked his cards for recreation, but was not a gambler. The kind of man who did not lead, but followed.

  But Elias was not done. “And?”

  “And the last, my dear boy, was the Earl Sanderson.”

  The name fell on him like a cold dousing from a bucket—Tanner’s skin went cold and clammy, his palms damp.

  And while his brain’s reaction was more controlled than his body’s, the result was the same—every fiber of his being was alert.

  “The Earl Sanderson.” He repeated Elias Solomon’s words, trying them on for size, giving his brain time to sort out this particularly unwelcome piece of evidence, and make the connection backward, from the coin to the fob, and from the fob to Maisy Carter’s dead body.

  He could find none.

  But he understood one thing very clearly—things had just got complicated.

  Very complicated.

  “I will proceed with all due caution,” he assured Elias Solomon. Caution in some areas, and greater speed in others. “I need a ring.”

  “A ring?” Elias Solomon echoed his words as if he did not understand.

  “A ring. Gold. Beautiful. Delicate. Fitting.”

  “Fitting?” Elias took another meaningful glance toward the doorway. “I see. May I be the first to wish you happy.”

  Tanner didn’t bother to read the man’s tone—warning or disapproval, it made no difference. His course had been set since the moment he followed Lady Claire Jellicoe out the doors of his grandmother’s house.

  “You may.”

  “I do wish you happy.” Elias took out an iron ring full of keys, and began to select one out. “But will I be reading about you in the tittle-tattle of the scandal sheets, or will there be a formal announcement from her father, the earl, in The Times?”

  His old friend’s tone was still quiet and careful. As if Elias Solomon were the one who was unsure of him.

  “I honestly don’t know.” Indeed, he no longer knew exactly how he was going to achieve his object, only that he must do it rather sooner than he had planned. And perhaps differently. “How did you know who she was?”

  “Come now, Tanner. I may be an old man who rarely leaves my quarter of the city, but I read the newspapers. I see the drawings in the print shop windows. She is one of the beauties of the age—one of the Swans of Society they call her. And her father, the earl, is a discerning, regular, private customer. I would have to be blind and deaf not to recognize her. Even in her present state.” With another glance at the doorway, Elias Solomon tapped a careful finger laid across his hollow cheek. “Are you going to tell me how that happened, or am I going to have to be vulgar, and insist?”

  As the Earl Sanderson was a respected client of Elias Solomon, it behooved Tanner to make one thing perfectly clear. “A man named Lord Peter Rosing thought to try to rape her. I stopped him.”

  Even as he said it,
Tanner could hear the pride, the savage satisfaction in his voice. He made an effort to tamp it down. He needed to think—if Elias Solomon had recognized her, who else did? Was he exposing her scandal even as he planned to protect her from it?

  “God blight him. Although I’m sure you already have.” Elias Solomon leaned down and unlocked a drawer. “In that case...”

  Elias Solomon retrieved a sueded pouch from his drawer, and from it handed Tanner an exquisitely wrought band of gold scrolls and petals. It was a creation of precious metal and air and stunning, delicate beauty.

  “It’s perfect.”

  Elias Solomon smiled. “Of course it is. I know you—I have since you were eight years old. At eight and twenty you haven’t changed all that much. You have good taste. You always have. You still like the things beyond your reach.”

  It was fatherly advice, after all. Fatherly advice no one else would give him.

  Tanner’s mouth felt dry and tight, but he made himself ask. “Are you saying she is beyond my reach, truly?”

  “No.” Elias leaned forward again, and looked into his eyes. “I am telling you to reach very, very carefully, and for the love of God, boy, don’t get caught.”

  “Ah.” Tanner let air back into his lungs, and felt some of his confidence swagger back. “I won’t. I never have.”

  “Then take it with my blessing, and go. Leave and old man to break his fast in peace.”

  “Thank you.” Tanner hid the ring in the pouch he wore from a string around his neck under his clothing, safe next to his skin—old habits died hardest. “Keep your ears open. Send word if you hear anything I should know.”

  “Chances are you’ll hear it before I will, but you have my word. Now go. Take that girl home where she belongs.”

  He couldn’t.

  And as he couldn’t agree to something he knew he would not do, Tanner only nodded and took his leave.

  He found his breath, and his wits again once they were outside, in the open air of the close confines of Angel Alley.