Chapter Thirteen #2
“I will write to Fletcher today,” Mr. Darcy said.
“He will know who ought to examine the books — a solicitor for the legal question, and someone who understands accounts properly for the financial one. I want the matter looked at by eyes that are better qualified than mine.” He closed the register with a deliberateness that was not quite controlled.
“And I want it done quietly. I do not want Slater to know that anyone is looking.”
“Of course.” His wife rose and then paused at the door. "Fitzwilliam."
He looked up.
“You were right to notice it. Whatever it turns out to be.”
He did not answer immediately. “I hope,” he said at last, “that I am wrong.”
Mrs. Darcy left him to the ledgers.
***
Mr. Darcy wrote to Mr. Fletcher that afternoon, at the desk in his study with the door closed and the fire burning low.
The letter was brief and precise, as his letters always were.
He did not speculate, and he did not accuse.
He described only what he had observed: that the revenues of the estate had declined in a manner that he could not fully account for by reference to the known effects of the post-war markets, that his own examination of the accounts had produced no clear explanation, and that he wished, before taking any further step, to have the matter examined by someone with the appropriate professional knowledge.
He required, he said, both a legal opinion and a thorough examination of the accounts by a competent person.
He asked Fletcher to advise him on the proper course of action and, if he thought it warranted, to send someone capable of reading the books with the kind of attention the situation appeared to require.
Mr. Darcy did not mention Slater by name. He was not yet prepared to do that.
He sealed the letter, addressed it, and set it with the outgoing correspondence.
Then he sat for a moment longer at the desk, his hands resting flat upon the surface, looking at nothing in particular.
Eleven years. The man had served the estate for eleven years and, to all appearances, had served it well.
The letter went to London by the morning post.
***
Mr. Fletcher read Darcy’s letter twice, which was his habit with letters that required thought rather than merely action, and then set it on the desk and looked at it for a moment in the way of a man who is deciding which of several possible responses is the most useful.
“Pemberley,” he said, to no one in particular.
Elias Bennet, who was at the adjacent table sorting correspondence, looked up. “Sir?”
Fletcher handed him the letter without comment. Elias read it and set it down with the careful attention of a man who has just encountered a problem he recognises.
“The revenues have fallen,” Fletcher said, “and Mr Darcy cannot find the cause in the books. He wants a solicitor and an accountant, and he wants it done quietly.” The solicitor paused.
“I can recommend an accountant in Derby who is competent and discreet. The question is, who goes from this office?”
There was a brief silence. Elias said, “I could go.”
Fletcher looked at him. “You are a solicitor’s clerk, not an accountant.”
“But I am quite good at figures, sir,” Elias agreed.
“Also, I have some experience with estate accounts. My father never had a steward at Longbourn. I spent a good deal of time going through the Longbourn registers with him, and more recently with my brother James, who has partially taken on the management of the estate. I know what a set of agricultural accounts ought to look like, and I know some of how they can be made to look correct when they are not.” He paused.
“I cannot replace a trained accountant. But I can examine the books, identify where the difficulty lies, and give Mr. Darcy a clear account of what he is dealing with before any further professional is engaged. It would save time, and it would keep the number of people who know about the matter to a minimum, which seems to be what he wants.”
Mr. Fletcher considered this for a moment. He was not a man who made decisions quickly, but he was a man who, once he had made them, did not revisit them. “I need you here, but I cannot Mr. Darcy’s request.”
“I would break the journey at Derby. One night, and then on to Pemberley in the morning. I can send you a report within the week.”
Another pause. Fletcher picked up the letter, looked at it once more, and set it down again.
“Very well. I will write to Mr. Darcy today and tell him to expect you. You are to look at the books and report back to me before any action is taken. You are not to question the steward, and you are not to conclude aloud until you have something worth drawing.” He looked at Elias with the directness of a man who has learned, over many years, to be precise about the limits of a commission.
“You are there to look, and to record, and to say nothing until you have something worth saying. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“Good.” Fletcher reached for his pen. “You may go to Pemberley, Mr. Bennet.”
***
The journey north was long but not disagreeable.
Elias had travelled the road to Derbyshire once before, on a different errand and in different company, and he found that the country improved with familiarity — the hills opening out as the miles accumulated, the air sharpening, the particular quality of the northern light settling over the landscape with a clarity that the south, for all its advantages, did not quite replicate.
He arrived in Derby late in the evening, took a room at the White Hart, and called for supper with the straightforward appetite of a man who has been in a coach for most of the day and has not yet had the opportunity to think about anything except the road.
The White Hart was not the sort of establishment that attracted the notice of those who required quiet.
It was a coaching inn of the prosperous middle sort, its yard perpetually busy with arrivals and departures, its taproom loud with the particular energy of men who have concluded their business for the day and have not yet concluded their opinions about it.
Elias wanted nothing from it but a clean room, a reasonable supper, and the opportunity to review his notes before presenting himself at Pemberley in the morning.
He was not, by temperament, a man who sought out company in public rooms, and he had every intention of eating quickly and retiring early.
Elias Bennet had been given a small table near the fire in the dining room, which was separated from the taproom by a passage and a door that stood, in the manner of doors in busy inns, perpetually ajar.
The supper was adequate — a decent piece of beef, bread that was fresh enough, a glass of ordinary claret — and he ate it with his memorandum book open beside his plate, reviewing what he knew and what he did not.
Revenues have been declining over the past three years.
Accounts in apparent order—a steward with eleven years of service and no obvious complaint against him.
The pattern, if there were one, would be in the comparison of figures across different registers — the kind of lateral reading that a single column of numbers, examined in isolation, could not reveal.
He had found it before, at Longbourn, where the discrepancy between the hay purchased and the cattle actually on the farm had taken him three afternoons to locate.
He had turned out to be the work of a farmhand rather than the steward, and had been, in the end, a matter of petty pilfering rather than systematic fraud.
This might be the same. It might be nothing at all.
Elias finished his supper, folded his notes, and called for his candle.
The taproom, as he passed the open door on his way to the stairs, was in full voice.
He did not stop. He had no interest in the taproom, and the noise of it — a dozen conversations layered over one another, punctuated by the periodic crash of a tankard set down with more enthusiasm than care — was not the kind of noise that invited attention.
He was halfway up the first flight of stairs when he heard the name of Pemberley.
He stopped.
It was not the name itself that arrested him — Pemberley was a large estate, well known in the county, and its name might appear in any conversation about Derbyshire property or society.
It was the tone. The word had been spoken with a particular emphasis, the emphasis of a man who is about to say something he considers worth hearing, and the brief silence that followed it suggested that the others in the group agreed.
Elias stood on the landing and listened.
The speaker was not visible from where he stood.
Still, the voice was clear: a heavy, deliberate voice, the voice of a man accustomed to being listened to in commercial matters, with the flat vowels of the north and the measured cadence of someone who has learned to make a point without appearing to rush toward it.
“The best colts on the turf this season,” the voice said, “and where do you think they came from? Derbyshire, every one of them. You want Pemberley blood, you want Darcy’s stock — there’s nothing in the county to touch it for bone and pace both. ”
A second voice, lighter and more amused, with the edge of a man who enjoys the role of sceptic: “Darcy doesn’t sell his best animals. Everyone knows that.”
“No,” the first voice agreed, with an almost genial satisfaction. “He doesn’t. But Slater does.”
There was laughter at this — easy, familiar laughter, the laughter of men who share a joke they have shared before, who have arrived at the comfortable stage of an evening where the best stories are told for the second or third time and are none the worse for it. Elias did not move.