He should have known. Luke had been knocked off-kilter when his first major business deal imploded. It was an attempt to partner with the Magruders, combining the Delacroix reputation for quality with the Magruders’ ability to mass-produce food. Jedidiah Magruder had suggested a plan in which their companies would cooperate to capitalize on the American obsession with coffee. He proposed a line of pricey coffee, using the Magruder packaging facilities but branded with the Delacroix name and reputation for gourmet quality. Both companies stood to gain.

Everything began well, with the Magruders investing heavily in canisters with snug-fitting lids to preserve freshness, and elegant embossed labels with custom artwork. Luke worked with their father to import coffee beans from Kenya, the best in the world. They tested the market in Philadelphia, a city famous for its coffeehouses. Luke selected the coffeehouses and chefs with connections to the best restaurants in the city. The plan was to release the gourmet coffee in the venues Luke selected, then gauge the response before distributing it to a national market.

Nothing on the canisters coming out of the Magruder production facility indicated there was anything besides top-quality ground coffee inside. What they didn’t know was that Clyde Magruder had always intended to adulterate the full-bodied Kenyan coffee beans with cheap ground chicory. To mask the chicory aftertaste, he used chemical flavoring and colored the mix with indigo dye, lead chromate, and coal tar. The coffee was excellent, with a smooth flavor and enticing aroma. In hindsight, the Magruders were paying close attention to see if their cheap mixture would fool the market.

The combination proved fatal to three people within a week of the coffee going on sale. While most people could easily digest the brew, who knew why some people had sensitivities to chicory root that proved deadly? When those three individuals all suffered swelling in the throat, wheezing, and seizures, the adulterated coffee was quickly identified as the source of their illness. There was no law against what the Magruders had done. Such techniques had been used for decades, but Gray was furious. The Delacroixs had never used adulterants or chemical flavorings in any of their products, but by partnering with the Magruders, they had lost control of the production.

Luke was devastated, feeling as though he had personally administered a cup of poison to each of those three people.

Caroline continued with the story. “The daughter of one of the men is getting married next month, and Luke didn’t want her to scrimp. Her father was a factory shop foreman, and times have been hard since he died.”

“I gave each family twenty thousand dollars after it happened,” Gray said. “That’s more than the foreman would have earned in a decade.”

Caroline shrugged. “You know how Luke is.”