Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

First it struck me as strange that Scroope should be supplying tableware for the Navy Office, until I remembered that many smiths loyally manufactured all kinds of things for our army in Flanders, and that doubtless they had as much need of plates and tankards with which to carry their victuals as they had need of cannon and shot.

I was starting to leave the workshop when my eye caught sight of some empty Mint money bags lying on the cobbled ground. When full of silver coin, these bags were sold at the Mint and their dissemination among the people at large left to chance, for there was no public expenditure available for the money’s distribution — which was, as every Englishman knew, a great fault of the recoinage. Rather it was the contiguity of these various items at the forge — the empty money bags and the pewter — that caused me to suspect that there was some bad business here; and examining one of the pewter plates more closely, I scratched the surface with the point of my sword, which prompted the discovery that the pewter was only a patina. For this tableware was not pewter at all, but solid silver, made of the melted coin that all those in the Mint laboured so hard to produce. What Scroope was evidently doing did not only undermine that recoinage, to the great disadvantage of the realm — to say nothing of King William’s campaign in Flanders, for if there was no good coin, his troops could not be paid — but he was also making a profit by melting the coin and smuggling it across the Channel to France, where silver fetched a higher price than in England. What was more, the face value of the new coins was less than the value of the silver they contained. So that the mathematics of Scroope’s scheme were obvious: Scroope bought a pound’s weight of silve for sixty shillings to sell it in France for seventy-five.

It was a profit of twenty-five per cent. Not a great sum, perhaps, but if the main purpose of the scheme were not the profit but the advantage of the King of France, then it was clear to me how this treasonous act of economic impedition could easily pay for itself.

I returned to the clerk’s office and found Newton still questioning Scroope most attentively, so that my brief absence had not, it seemed, been noticed; and after a while I was able to indicate to my master with a nod of my head that my task was accomplished. Upon which Newton pronounced himself easily satisfied with Scroope’s books and, with a great effusion of continuing gratitude for Scroope’s gift of silver for their old school, he bade him farewell; and eventually we took our leave.

As soon as we were gone, we went to The Grecian in nearby Devereux Court, where, over a dish of coffee, Newton made some enquiry as to what I had discovered; and I told him everything I had seen, which left him mighty pleased.

“Well done, Ellis,” he declared handsomely. “You have excelled yourself. But did you see no signs of coining? No press? No guinea dies?”

“No,” I said. “Although the book-binding press in the library was the largest I have seen outside a bookshop.”

“A binding press, eh?” remarked Newton. “Can you describe it?”

“It was mounted on some small wheels so that it might be moved easily without lifting. Only I do not think it was used very much. I saw no loose quires of pages about. Nor any books that were new-bound. And the press itself was covered in dust.”

Newton considered what I had said, and then asked me if the books in Scroope’s library had been dusty, too.

“Not at all,” I said.

“And this dust? What colour was it?”

“Now that I come to think of it,” said I, “the dust was a strange colour, being dark green.”

Newton nodded firmly. “Then I believe that you have solved this case. Half of it anyway.”

“Me?” I said.

“Certainly. For that was not dust you saw, but Fuller’s earth, a most absorptive and fine-grained substance and perfect for a d’orure moulu process of manufacturing false golden guineas. Which means there can be no doubt as to the true nature of that binding press.”

“I understand,” said I. “Scroope would not keep a coining press, for the Plate Act compelled anyone to surrender such a thing to the Mint.”

“Just as you say,” said Newton. “I have before heard of these rogues using a cider press to make coin; but a binding press would turn out guineas just as well.”

Too excited to even drink his coffee, Newton’s eyes were ablaze as he made his thoughts in the matter plain to me.

“Much is clear to me now,” he declared. “Scroope is a most ingenious forger and smuggler and kept poor George Macey close to him, so that he might know who was being investigated by the Mint. Macey thought Scroope a good friend and an educated one, too, so that he confided in him. And Macey must have brought Scroope the ciphered letter and the book by Trithemius in the hope that Scroope might help him to understand it. And yet Scroope did not, or could not, devise the solution — it matters little, for it was certainly clear to Scroope that the cipher which had occasioned Macey’s interest had no bearing on his own wrongdoings. Subsequent to this, Macey disappeared and Scroope continued to think himself safe. At least until I appeared in his life again. And grew close to uncovering Mister and Mrs. Berningham, and Daniel Mercer, whom I will hazard were Scroope’s confederates in this crime.

“So Scroope, who knew my own rigorous reputation from Trinity, sought to be rid of those as might be able to testify against him. Doubtless Mrs. Berningham was ordered to take her own husband’s life or to forfeit her own. For all I know, she may be dead, too. Killed by Scroope. Like Mercer and anyone else who stood in his way, such as Mister Kennedy. And by the manner of their deaths — the hermetic clues he fabricated and the enciphered message of which he had no understanding — he intended to divert me from my proper course of action. Until now.”

“So Scroope killed Mercer and Kennedy,” I repeated, so that it was clear in my own mind. “To cover his own tracks and to put you off the scent. But did Scroope kill Macey, too? And what of Major Mornay?”

“No, for it was not in his interest so to do. He enjoyed Macey’s complete confidence, being sometimes an informer for him.”

“Then only the murders of Kennedy and Mercer are solved,” said I. “Who killed Macey and Major Mornay?”

“I think I will have to solve the code to know that,” said Newton. “But before then we must decide what to do about Mister Scroope.”

“Surely we must obtain a warrant for his arrest,” I said. “The Navy Office will confirm the export licences for pewter tableware; and we shall arrest him in possession of illegal bullion for export to an enemy power. For all that we know, he is a French spy besides. In which case he may have intended to subvert the recoinage as well.”

“You may be right,” said Newton, in a voice that demonstrated some continuing source of concern in the matter of St. Leger Scroope. Usually he was most keen to see a man arrested as soon as he had sufficient evidence to obtain the warrant against him. But now he sounded strangely reluctant to proceed. And seeing my puzzlement moved him to explain himself to me:

“I hold myself partly responsible for Scroope’s fall from grace. I paid him very little heed while he was at Cambridge. I failed him, Ellis, and I can see no excuse for it.”

“No sir, not failed. From what you have told me earlier, Scroope failed himself. Even then he had perhaps the want of character that made him choose the wide and not the strait gate.”

I also spoke some other things to assuage my master’s sense of guilt; but it was to little or no avail, and while he sat in The Grecian, he drew up and signed a warrant for Scroope’s arrest — which power he had as Justice of the Peace — with a heavy heart.