Aldrich was carefully reviewing the paperwork regarding Dane's coffee and pastry. Dane was the name of Marl's grandfather who first started the business.
The circumstances that made Marl unable to keep paying the debt was his own rising cost of life style, he hired private tutors for his sons and sold his family's ancestral house to live in too big an apartment, in a too expensive street.
He bought useless art pieces that lost their value the moment he bought them, he bought slaves and gave them away as gifts.
He was basically indulging in greedy consumption without any reservations, eventually while money was good, the debt increased exponentially.
Of course if Marl was quick on his feet he might have been able to avert this fate and get back on track. But he was too drunk to notice, while almost everyone around him knew it was coming he must have thought that hit came from a left field.
