“I agree,” Toby said. “Our mastermind wouldn’t have overlooked such a massive and predictable risk. The notes will have been disguised in some fashion—secreted in some other cargo or made to look like something else.” His brows rising, Toby looked at Ellen and Christopher. “But what? Accepting that it’s almost certainly not a nice, neat package of banknotes, what are we actually looking for here?”
“It would have to be an item that smugglers—who aren’t the most trusting individuals—would find plausible as contraband in this day and age.” Christopher frowned. “Tobacco?”
“Not from France,” Toby stated. “And not via this coast.”
Christopher pulled a face. “Finest brandy? Extra special port?”
Toby tipped his head. “That might fool the smugglers, but how would you safely hide banknotes in barrels of liquid?”
After a long moment, Christopher said, “In the middle of last century, there was a time when they smuggled silk, but now…”
“What about lace?”
Ellen’s question had both men looking her way. Christopher realized she’d been silent for several minutes, rather unlike her, but clearly, she’d been thinking… He frowned. “I’m not sure, but that might work. What made you think of lace?”
“Remember I went to that haberdashery in Hastings to check the price of something?” When he nodded, she went on, “It was lace. The reason I’d been wondering about lace prices in Kent was because Aunt Emma had insisted on buying new lace for the gown I wore on Monday night—you must have noticed it.”
Christopher recalled the copious flounces all too well. He nodded.
“Well,” Ellen went on, “that lace is nothing short of exquisite. Trust me. When it comes to ribbons, feathers, lace, and so on”—she gestured to the feathers and ribbons adorning her carriage dress—“I know all there is to know. And I would be prepared to swear that, in London, there’s no chance whatsoever of getting such lace at the price the village milliner is selling it—not in any warehouse, not even on the docks direct from the ship.”
“The lace is foreign?” Toby asked.
She nodded. “Belgian, almost certainly. They make some of the best.”
Toby looked at Christopher. “The counterfeiter was Belgian.”
Christopher nodded. “If he wanted to disguise notes he’d produced to pass muster with smugglers, he could well have chosen a product he was familiar with—one that was good enough, highly priced enough, to be a plausible item for smuggling.”
“The counterfeiter didn’t mention that to Drake’s men,” Toby pointed out.
Christopher tipped his head consideringly. “It’s possible the specific point—how the notes were concealed for transport—never came up. Alternatively, the counterfeiter might simply have handed on the notes, and someone else disguised them for transport.”
Ellen put in, “The haberdashery in Hastings was selling lesser-quality lace at a price higher than Emma and I paid in Benenden for lace of exceptional quality, and as I had expected, the price in Hastings was significantly higher than the price we would have paid for that lower-quality lace in London.” She looked from Toby to Christopher. “London prices should be the cheapest for legitimately imported lace. Therefore, I suspect that the lace Mrs. Rollins, the milliner in Benenden, is selling isn’t, as she truly seems to think, bought by her husband from a warehouse in London.”
Christopher looked at Toby. “There were several ladies with fine lace on their gowns at the party on Monday evening.” He glanced at Ellen.
She nodded. “I noticed that, too. Mrs. Rollins had several patterns of high-quality lace available, all at that very low price.”
Toby leaned forward, focusing on Ellen. “Do you know how lace is transported?”
“In packets.” With her hands, she outlined a rectangular shape with a length of two feet and a width of six to nine inches. “The lace is wound around boards about that size.”
Christopher narrowed his eyes, imagining it. “How thick is the lace on a full board?”
“Two inches?” Ellen arched her brows. “It might be more.”
“That would work.” Toby’s tone suggested they’d hit on their answer. “The counterfeiter or his immediate contact could have packed the banknotes against both sides of a board, then wound the lace over it, securing the notes and hiding them completely. Four stacks of notes on each board.”
“How many boards might that result in?” Christopher asked.
Toby shrugged, but his eyes were alight. “No idea, but at least enough to make up what would appear to be a reasonable cargo of contraband lace.”
“But not too large or heavy a cargo, either,” Christopher said. “This is sounding like exactly the sort of plan our mastermind would have put into place. He would want the smuggling run to look normal, yet the fewer people involved, the better.”
“If the notes were concealed in, say, twelve packets of lace, which seems reasonable, that would explain the need to use both of the tombs in Lydd.” Toby looked increasingly excited. “We know they retrieved the packets from Lydd last night. There’s no reason they wouldn’t have transported it to somewhere near here—not to Goffard Hall but somewhere close. It’s only thirty miles or so by the most deserted lanes. Ponies would do that in an easy night.”
Christopher agreed. He looked from Toby’s eager face to Ellen’s. “Clearly, we need to have a quiet word with Mr. Rollins.”
Christopher was not all that surprised to find himself tooling his curricle down to the village the following morning with Ellen perched beside him.
He, she, and Toby had spent an hour discussing possible ways of approaching Rollins with a view to learning what they wanted to know, namely if he’d received another shipment of lace over the past twenty-four hours and, if so, from whom. Whether Rollins knew about the counterfeit notes—whether he presently held them—was an open question.
Given Ellen was the only one of them with experience of the shop and Mrs. Rollins, let alone any real knowledge of lace, it was inevitable that it was her plan he and Toby had eventually, reluctantly, agreed to. With Drake’s injunction against unnecessarily showing their hand high in their minds, he and Toby had been forced to step back and let Ellen lead.
Resigned to his role as supporter, he slowed his pair as they reached the village lane, opposite the Bull Inn, then he turned the chestnuts right, setting them trotting into the village proper.
As they passed the inn, Ellen looked into the trees that clustered alongside, bordering the opening to the lane leading to the church, and glimpsed Toby hanging back in the shadows.
From that position, he had a good view of the front of the millinery-cum-haberdashery and the mouth of the alley that ran down the nearer side of the shop. The Rollinses lived above the shop, and beyond a narrow strip of garden at the rear, the land was heavily wooded; if Rollins left, he would use the front door or the side door that gave onto the alley, which in turn led only to the village lane.
Toby would see and follow Rollins if he shot off to warn anyone while she and Christopher were in the shop.