Chapter 33 #3
Three days later, a reply arrived from Sir Geoffrey Ashworth-Pierce, proposing a meeting at his offices in Whitehall on the morning of the fifteenth of May.
I accepted. I dressed with care, choosing the suit that I wore for court appearances, the dark wool with the minimal piping, the polished boots, the watch chain that my father had left me.
I was aware, as I dressed, of the significance of the meeting, and I was aware that my awareness was itself a form of preparation, the mental equivalent of choosing the right suit, and I was aware, too, that the preparation was, in its own way, a form of hope, the hope that the meeting would produce something — evidence, authority, a path forward — that would resolve the investigation and allow me to stop thinking about Cecilia Blackwood, which was, I was beginning to understand, the thing I wanted most of all, not because I wanted to forget her but because wanting to think about her was the most exhausting and the most rewarding and the most destructive activity of my life, and I was tired of all three adjectives.
I walked to Whitehall. The morning was clear and cool, the kind of morning that makes London look almost beautiful, the stone of the government buildings warm in the early light, the river gleaming in the distance.
I passed through the gates and into the courtyard and presented myself at the reception desk, where a clerk with the expression of a person who has seen too many visitors to be impressed by any of them directed me to a waiting room on the second floor.
I waited. The waiting room was furnished in the institutional style of government buildings everywhere: dark wood, leather chairs, portraits of former officials on the walls, the portraits arranged in a hierarchy of importance that communicated, without words, the pecking order of the British civil service.
After twenty minutes, the door opened and a clerk ushered me into a private office.
The office was large, well-lit, and immaculately organised, the desk clear of papers, the shelves arranged with the precision of a museum display.
The man behind the desk rose as I entered, and I saw, in the single gesture of rising, the quality that defined him: the effortless authority of a person who has spent a career in institutional power and who has absorbed, through osmosis, the particular confidence that such a career produces.
He was tall, silver-haired, clean-shaven, with blue-grey eyes that assessed me in the manner of a person accustomed to evaluating the utility of other people.
His suit was expensive and perfectly fitted, the suit of a man who does not need to think about his clothes because his position makes the clothes irrelevant.
"Inspector Aldric." He extended his hand, and I took it, and his grip was firm and brief and communicated nothing, which was itself a communication. "Please, sit down. I trust you found the offices without difficulty."
"I did, sir. Thank you for agreeing to see me."
"I have been following your work with considerable interest, Inspector.
" He settled into his chair and regarded me with an expression that was not friendly and not hostile but was professionally attentive, the expression of a person who is about to conduct a meeting and who wants the other party to understand that the meeting will proceed on his terms. "The Ashworth matter is one of some complexity. I am sure you are aware of this."
"I am."
"Then you will also be aware that the matter extends beyond the question of individual guilt.
Three men are dead. One woman stands at the centre of each death.
And a dozen institutions — medical, legal, social — enabled those deaths through negligence, complicity, or simple failure to observe what was, in retrospect, clearly observable.
" He paused, and the pause was not the tactical silence that Cecilia deployed but a different kind of pause, the pause of a person who is about to say something important and who wishes to ensure that the listener is ready to receive it.
"I am not here to discuss justice, Inspector. I am here to discuss what is possible."
The sentence landed in the room with the weight of a stone dropped into still water.
I sat in the leather chair and looked at Sir Geoffrey Ashworth-Pierce and understood, with a clarity that was both illuminating and devastating, that the meeting was not going to produce the outcome I had hoped for.
The Home Office was not going to provide the institutional hammer that would shatter Cecilia's defences and deliver the justice I sought.
The Home Office was going to do something else, something that Sir Geoffrey had not yet specified but that the word "possible" had already begun to define, and the definition was not the definition I wanted.
"What is possible, sir?"
"That, Inspector, is what I should like to discuss with you.
" He leaned forward, and the blue-grey eyes held mine, and in the eyes I saw something that I recognised from my own experience: the particular quality of a person who is looking at a problem that has no good solution and who is preparing to choose among a range of bad ones.
"Tell me what you know. Everything. Leave nothing out. "
I began to speak. I spoke for nearly two hours, and as I spoke, I watched Sir Geoffrey's face, and the face told me nothing, which was itself the most informative thing it could have told me, because a face that tells nothing is a face that is processing information, and the processing was, I could tell from the stillness of his hands and the steadiness of his gaze, thorough and meticulous and utterly without sentiment.
I told him about the three marriages. I told him about the evidence.
I told him about the apothecary in Seven Dials and the groom in Edinburgh and the locked cabinet in the kitchen.
I told him about Hartwell's documents and Hartwell's death.
I told him about the false leads and the witness intimidation and the systematic destruction of my professional position.
And I told him, because I could not not tell him, about the afternoon on Davies Street, about Edmund's accident, about Cecilia on her knees with shaking hands, about the words she had spoken in the drawing room.
When I finished, Sir Geoffrey was silent for a long time.
The silence was not tactical. It was the silence of a man who is calculating, and the calculation was complex, because it involved not only the facts I had presented but the institutional implications of those facts, the political ramifications of pursuing a case against a countess, the systemic damage that would result from exposing the institutions that had enabled three murders, and the cost-benefit analysis that the Home Office, like all institutions, performed when deciding whether the pursuit of justice was worth the price of disruption.
"I am going to be candid with you, Inspector," he said at last. "Candour is, in my experience, the most efficient form of communication, and the current situation does not afford us the luxury of inefficiency.
" He folded his hands on the desk, and the gesture was precise and controlled and communicated a degree of authority that I, even after eleven years in institutions, found impressive.
"The evidence you have assembled is persuasive.
It is not, however, conclusive. To obtain a conviction, we would need the cooperation of foreign authorities, the exhumation of an earl's body, and the testimony of medical experts whose willingness to participate in a case of this political sensitivity cannot be guaranteed.
The cost of pursuing the case would be enormous.
The probability of success is difficult to estimate but is, I think, significantly less than certain.
And the consequences of failure — a failed prosecution of a countess, the public exposure of institutional complicity, the political scandal that would follow — would be severe and lasting. "
He paused. I said nothing. I had expected this, and the expectation did not make the hearing of it any easier.
"There is, however, another path." He looked at me, and the blue-grey eyes were direct and unblinking.
"A path that does not involve the courts, or the press, or the public exposure of the institutions that failed.
A path that achieves a measure of justice without the cost of a trial.
A path that, I believe, may be more effective than any prosecution in ensuring that the pattern does not continue. "
"What path is that?"
Sir Geoffrey smiled. The smile was thin and professional and communicated nothing that I could interpret as either warmth or satisfaction.
It was the smile of a man who has been in government long enough to understand that most problems do not have solutions, only resolutions, and that the art of governance consists in distinguishing between the two.
"That, Inspector," he said, "is what I should like to discuss with you next.
But first, I need to understand something about your position.
" He leaned forward, and the eyes held mine with an intensity that was almost physical.
"You have spent five months pursuing this woman.
You have sacrificed your professional credibility, compromised your personal integrity, and exposed yourself to risks that no detective should be required to face.
I need to know: are you still capable of pursuing this case objectively?
Or has your involvement with the Countess Dowager of Ashworth compromised you beyond recovery? "
The question was fair, and the fairness of it was itself a kind of indictment, because a fair question about one's objectivity is only asked when the asker has reason to believe that the objectivity has been lost. I sat in the leather chair in the Home Office and looked at Sir Geoffrey Ashworth-Pierce and thought about Cecilia, and about Edmund, and about the words she had spoken in the drawing room, and about the question she could not answer, the question of what she felt for the one creature she had chosen to protect, and I understood, with the slow, terrible clarity that had become the defining quality of my engagement with this case, that the answer to Sir Geoffrey's question was both yes and no, and that the yes and the no could not be reconciled, and that the irreconcilability was itself the answer.
"I am capable of pursuing the case," I said. "But I am no longer capable of believing that the case has a just conclusion."
Sir Geoffrey regarded me for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, a small, precise movement of the head that communicated, perhaps, understanding, and perhaps, merely, acknowledgment.
"Good," he said. "That is, I think, the most honest answer you could have given.
And it is, I believe, the answer I needed to hear.
" He stood, and the standing was a signal that the meeting was approaching its conclusion, though the most important part of it — the part about the other path, the path that did not involve courts or public exposure — had not yet been discussed.
"I shall be in touch, Inspector. In the meantime, I would ask you to continue your observations.
Discreetly. And to be prepared for a development that may, in the near future, require your presence at an engagement of some social consequence. "
"A social engagement?"
"A dinner party, Inspector. At Blackwood House.
To which you will, I believe, be invited.
" He opened the office door and gestured toward the hallway, and the gesture was the gesture of a man who has concluded a meeting and who is ready to move on to the next item on his agenda, and the readiness communicated, without words, the message that I had been assessed, weighed, and found either useful or not, and that the determination of which would depend on developments that were not yet within my control.
I walked out of the Home Office and into the London morning, and the morning was bright and the air was clean and the city was going about its business with the same efficient indifference it had displayed the day before and the day before that and every day since the city had been built, and I understood, with a certainty that was itself a form of clarity, that the investigation was not over.
It had merely entered a new phase, a phase in which the players were not only Cecilia and myself but the full machinery of the British government, and the stakes were not only justice and truth but the stability of institutions and the preservation of systems, and the outcome would be determined not by evidence or morality or the force of my conviction but by the calculations of men like Sir Geoffrey Ashworth-Pierce, who understood, better than I ever would, the difference between what was just and what was possible.
And somewhere, in a house in Mayfair, Cecilia Blackwood was sitting beside her brother's bed, holding his hand, and she was planning, because she was always planning, and the thing she was planning was, I suspected, the dinner party that Sir Geoffrey had mentioned, and the dinner party would be, in its way, the most important battle of the war, and I would be there, and she would be there, and the machinery of the state would be there, and the outcome would determine everything.