The Courtesy Arch chimed once at half-past six, a dry, metal note that signaled the opening of the scheduled ten-minute financial sky-slit. Sister Merrow sat before the brass top door beam on a low ash stool, an antique brass balance scale resting across her knees, its twin horn pans suspended by braided green silk cords. Beside her on the wash trough sat the stone floor box, containing eleven heavy silver coins. A faint film of pipe lime crusted the corners of the box, carried in by the river damp.
Through the sky-slit, the modern accounting office of Drew & Sons Hardware in Harrowby materialized in sharp, gray-tinted relief. Tamsin Drew sat behind a metal desk covered in receipt ledgers, carbon-copy invoice pads, and an electric adding machine with round green keys. She wore a knitted wool cardigan over a tweed skirt, a ballpoint pen tucked into her graying hair. The buzzing white tube above her desk hummed with a flat sixty-cycle buzz that sounded like an angry hornet to Lowbank ears.
“Evening, Merrow,” Tamsin said, not looking up as her fingers danced across the adding machine. Clack-clack-chunk. The paper tape curled off the roller like dried apple peel. “I have the bank bullion sheets from Bradford. The precious metal dealers in Leeds are taking four percent off the top for crucible refining on those river silver coins because of the antimony content. If you send raw silver coins through the post, Ada loses forty pence on every silver coin before…
