Saul grinned. “Game pie, which isn’t half bad if I say so myself.”
Sophy nodded. “I’ll have a small slice.” She looked inquiringly at Martin.
He caught Saul’s eye. “A not-so-small slice.”
His grin widening, the barman tipped him a salute. “I’ll have Gemma bring that out right away.” He glanced at Sophy. “Your usual?”
She nodded, and when Saul arched a brow at Martin, he asked for a pint of the local ale.
As soon as Saul withdrew, Sophy said, “Hector refuses to eat with me. He’ll be settled in the main room.”
Martin nodded his understanding. “About these accidents.” Immediately, he had her full attention. “There has to be a reason that someone is targeting the Carmichael works. Have any other steelworks suffered odd accidents?”
She paused, clearly pondering, and a bright-cheeked woman bearing two plates appeared in the doorway.
“Good day to you, miss,” she cheerily announced, “and here are your game pies.”
She served them and pulled cutlery from a capacious apron pocket, then stepped back as Saul appeared with their drinks and set them down. “Anything else you need, Miss C, you just ask.”
With nods to Sophy and more reserved ones to Martin, Saul and Gemma withdrew.
Martin and Sophy picked up their glasses. From the color of the liquid in hers, Martin guessed Sophy’s “usual” was the local cider.
She sipped, then set the glass down and started on her meal. After swallowing her first mouthful, she looked at Martin and shook her head. “I’m sure I would have heard if any other works was having this sort of trouble. Or if not me directly, then Hinckley or one of the other older men. They have friends at all the other steelworks around town.” Her lips twisted wryly, and she met his eyes. “And they’re the biggest gossips you’ll ever meet. They put Aunt Julia to shame.”
“Hmm.” He swallowed a mouthful of what was, indeed, an excellent game pie. “All right. Let’s take it that it’s purely the Carmichael works being targeted.” He trapped her gaze. “Why? If we can establish the why, that will likely suggest the who, and vice versa.”
Her expression turned frustrated, and she waved her fork in a helpless gesture. “I have no idea on either count. There really is nothing that I’m aware of that would explain someone taking such action against the business.”
He tipped his head in acceptance, and they ate and thought. The atmosphere, he realized, felt much the same as the times he’d sat in a pub somewhere, discussing some issue with one of his cousins. Or often, some investigation with his cousin Toby.
The observation underscored that they were, indeed, embarking on an investigation.
Eventually, he asked, “What about competitors?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Theoretically, that’s possible, I suppose, but not in this town.”
“Why do you say that?”
She proceeded to explain that the steelworks in Sheffield weren’t truly in competition with each other. “The demand is so high that there’s always a market for whatever any of us produce.” She pushed away her empty plate and folded her hands on the table. “And in Carmichael’s case, the alloys we produce are most often custom runs. What we make is specific to an order, and the reason we get that order is that larger steelworks find it uneconomical to make the adjustments to produce a relatively small run of such alloys.”
“So the works’ size plus your facility in switching to different alloys sets Carmichael’s apart?”
She nodded. “And between such jobs, we fill in by subcontracting to the larger steelworks, like Atlas and Naylor and Vickers, to help fill their larger orders of more routine steels.”
“I see.” He thought, then said, “If this was some other sort of business, I might have wondered if the sabotage was due to someone wishing to buy the works and wanting to drive the value down before making a rock-bottom offer, but as I pointed out earlier, when a business relies so heavily on reputation and standing—”
“And our ability to meet orders on time.”
He nodded. “That, too. Your reliability as well as your reputation is a critical plank of the business, so destroying those things prior to buying doesn’t make sense.”
“So,” she said, “if it’s not a competitor or a potential buyer, who does that leave?”
They fell silent—a companionable moment in which both thought over the possibilities—then Martin stirred. “Let’s leave that angle for now and concentrate on the accidents themselves.” He met her gaze. “How is someone sneaking into the steelworks at night to engineer these accidents? I take it the place is locked?”
She nodded. “All the gates and the doors are securely locked every night. Hinckley always checks before he leaves.”
“No reports of damage to the locks or the gates and doors?”
