Page 82 of The Masterful Mr. Montague

The sandwiches came and were consumed in a silence broken only by the occasional rustle of paper.

Just before three o’clock, Gibbons tapped on the door frame and entered, carrying a sheaf of papers in one hand. He raised the papers. “All the investments and every last source of income. Foster and I have been through all the documents. Slocum, Pringle, and Slater have nearly met—they say they need another hour or two, but they will get the entire file re-sorted by day’s end.”

“Excellent.” Montague considered the documents he and Violet had yet to assess. With her helping, the pile had dwindled at literally twice the rate it would have had he had to do it on his own. “Another half hour, and we should be done.” He glanced at Gibbons. “I’ll call you when we are, then you and Foster can read through your list, while Violet and I check to confirm that we’ve got the expected income and expenses.”

Gibbons nodded. “Call when you’re ready. I’ve got a meeting at five o’clock—I’ll be preparing for that, but there’s not much I need to do for it.”

Montague nodded and turned back to his task with renewed mental vigor; reaching the end of his analysis of the Halstead accounts by the close of the day was a very real carrot.

Finally—finally—he slapped the last of the documents back on the pile. “Done!” He looked up at Violet; after finishing with the last document and handing it on to him, she’d risen, stretched, and walked over to look out of the window.

Turning to him, she smiled. “Now what?”

“Now . . .” He looked at the sheaf of papers stacked on her side of the desk and waggled his fingers. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

What she had was a neat list, ranging over several pages, of sources of income with the relevant amounts and dates of payment noted against each. And she’d organized the sources in alphabetical order.

As he’d done the same with the expenses—the original and any subsequent costs for each investment—it was easy to align their lists. “Wonderful.” Standing, he lifted the original pile of copied documents they’d worked through and carried them to a chest nearby. “Let’s get these out of the way.” Returning to his desk, he picked up his listing of expenses and laid the pages out, from A to Z, across his side of the desk. Then he interspersed Violet’s somewhat larger set of pages so that the income derived from each source lay next to the purchase and subsequent expenses for that source.

He surveyed the result with considerable satisfaction. Coming around the desk, Violet joined him. Glancing at her face, he saw much the same emotion reflected there. His lips curved and he looked back at their combined efforts. It was refreshing to discover that her mind was as tidy as his, that she took a similar delight in bringing order to complex matters.

“Now!” Turning, he strode to the door and looked out. “Fred? Phillip, if you’re free. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Gibbons and Foster came in, both eager to assess the results of their labors. At Montague’s suggestion, the two men took the chairs on the client’s side of his desk, while he positioned a deeper armchair for Violet alongside his admiral’s chair.

Gibbons had picked up the lists he and Foster had assembled. “So how do you want to do this?”

“Start at the earliest record we have,” Montague said. “We’ll work forward from there.”

The first investment Sir Hugo had made dated back more than thirty years. Gibbons read out the name, and Montague confirmed the expense, ticked it off, then crossed to Violet’s accompanying list and read out the income. All agreed the income was as expected, and Montague then ticked that off, too.

They proceeded through the years of Sir Hugo’s investment life, steadily ticking off the entries as they verified them. Initially, the investments were modest, and few and far between, but in the latter two decades of his life, Sir Hugo had been very much more active. “That was when he returned from overseas,” Violet said.

They’d accounted for the investments made up to 1823 when Gibbons paused to note, “Actually, this is building into quite a nice portfolio—Runcorn Senior did well by Sir Hugo.”

Montague nodded. “Indeed. Very sound, and with just the right amount of speculation for that style of client.” He saw Phillip Foster taking mental note.

They continued on through more investments, many more in each successive year, in all cases verifying the purchase and the resulting income. They reached the year of Sir Hugo’s death, and the number of new investments dramatically decreased, but Runcorn Senior had clearly continued to wisely advise Lady Halstead, and, each year, she had added a few new items to the portfolio.

“All very solid,” Gibbons murmured. They continued cross-checking and verifying each investment, its purchase price and the income paid. Nothing was out of order; no alarm bells rang.

Until they reached 1833 and Gibbons read, “A parcel of twenty shares in the Grand Junction Railway.”

Violet watched as Montague scanned his sheets. Sir Hugo had made a significant investment in the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1826, and that had been paying quite a nice income since the railway had opened in 1830; it was no great surprise to discover that Lady Halstead had bought shares in a second railway.

Pencil halting over an entry, Montague nodded and read out a sum.

“That’s correct,” Phillip Foster confirmed.

“And . . .” Montague tracked across to Violet’s listing of income. And frowned.

Thinking back, Violet frowned, too. She leaned forward and looked at what she’d listed under the sources starting with G. Frown deepening, she said, “I thought I heard that the Grand Junction Railway opened earlier this year.” She looked at Montague. “Perhaps they haven’t made any payments as yet?”

Montague continued to stare at the sheets. “But they have.” Raising his head, he looked at Gibbons. “And a very nice dividend it was.”

Eyes widening, Gibbons nodded. “August, wasn’t it? Unexpectedly large.”

Montague pushed back his chair and rose. Retrieving the Meredith file he’d recently returned to the shelf, he opened the ledger, flicked through the pages, then, finger on the relevant entry, nodded. “Yes. It paid a very large dividend in late August this year, eight weeks after opening. Those shares should be returning . . . a very large amount.”