Chapter Thirteen #3
“Slater,” a third voice said — older, rougher, with the authority of a man who has been in the trade a long time and wishes it to be known — “is a man who understands the value of an arrangement. You go to him at the right time, you make yourself known as a serious buyer, and he’ll let you have a colt out of Pemberley for half what it’s worth on the open market.
Less, sometimes, if the animal is particularly good.
” A pause, and then, with a satisfaction that had a faint edge of contempt in it: “He records them as sold for next to nothing. Inferior stock, not worth keeping, unsuitable for estate purposes. The books show a modest sale, the buyer pays the real price privately, and the difference goes into Slater’s pocket. Darcy hasn’t the faintest notion.”
“And the colts?” the second voice asked. “Where do they go?”
“Anywhere they’re wanted. I had two out of Pemberley last spring — beautiful animals, both of them, whatever the register said about their quality.
One of them ran at Newmarket in September.
” The third voice paused, and when it continued, there was something in it that was neither quite boasting nor quite warning.
“He’s been at it three years, at least. Maybe longer.
The estate is large enough that the feed bills don’t draw attention, and Darcy spends half the year in London.
It’s the easiest thing in the world, if you have the position and the patience. ”
“And the calves?” the second voice said. “I heard something about cattle as well.”
“Same principle. A calf is recorded as sold in poor condition, for a few shillings, and the buyer pays the real price elsewhere. The home farm accounts show the sale, the money goes to Slater, and the estate pays to feed animals it no longer officially owns.” A short, dry laugh.
“It’s not complicated. It never is, when a man has been trusted long enough to know that no one is watching. ”
The first voice spoke again, lower now, with the comfortable finality of a man concluding: “And none of us is going to say a word about it to anyone who matters, because we’ve all had the benefit of it one way or another. That’s how these things work.”
A murmur of agreement. The conversation shifted — a race at Newmarket, a dispute over a wager, the merits of a trainer in Nottinghamshire — and Elias stood on the landing for a moment longer, the candle burning steadily in his hand, before continuing up the stairs to his room.
***
Elias did not write anything down. He did not need to.
The conversation had arranged itself in his memory with the same orderly precision that he applied to documents and figures.
The young man turned it over as he undressed and lay in the dark, waiting for sleep, examining it from every angle as he would have examined a clause in a contract — testing its implications, noting its gaps, considering what it confirmed and what it left open.
Of course, Elias Bennet had no proof of anything.
He had heard a boast in a taproom, made by men whose names he did not know, about a steward he had never met, on an estate he had not yet visited.
It was not evidence. It was not even, properly speaking, information.
It was the kind of thing that could not be repeated in a court of law, or in a letter to a client, or in any professional context whatsoever.
Fletcher would not thank him for arriving at Pemberley with a taproom story as his primary finding.
But it was a direction. The feed bills, the sales register, the cattle accounts — he knew now what to look for, and where to look for it.
He had found smaller versions of the same thing at Longbourn, and he had found them by doing exactly what he intended to do tomorrow: setting two sets of figures side by side that had never been set side by side before, and reading what the comparison said.
In the morning, he would have the ledgers.
He lay for some time in the dark, listening to the inn settle around him — the last voices in the yard, the creak of the staircase as the final guests retired, the distant sound of horses in the stable — and found his thoughts moving, with a persistence he had not invited, to Pemberley itself.
He had never seen it. Elias Bennet knew it only by reputation, which in Derbyshire was considerable, and by the brief, careful account that.
He had thought of Miss Darcy more than he had expected to, in the months since that afternoon.
He had thought of the way she had laughed — unexpectedly, fully, without the careful management that characterised her usual manner — at his remark about the basket of apples.
Elias had thought of the steadiness she had shown in the water, and the composure she had recovered afterwards, and the particular quality of her gratitude, which had been entirely without performance.
He had thought, on more than one occasion, of the expression on her face when she had said I happen to like apples very much.
Therefore, I forgive you — an expression that was at once amused and entirely serious, the expression of a young woman who was accustomed to saying less than she felt and had, in that moment, said exactly what she meant.
He had sent the basket through Fletcher with a deliberateness that he had not examined too closely at the time, and had received no reply, which was entirely proper and which he had told himself, with moderate success, was entirely satisfactory.
Tomorrow, he would be at Pemberley. He should buy another basket of apples. Or not?
Elias Bennet was aware that this was not, strictly speaking, relevant to the matter of the ledgers. He was also aware that he would not stop thinking about it, and that the most practical course of action was to acknowledge it and go to sleep.
He slept, eventually, and was up before the yard had properly woken, and on the road to Pemberley before the first coaches of the day had begun to move.
The morning was cold and clear, the hills dark against a pale sky, and the road north ran straight through country that grew more open and more beautiful with every mile, until the gates of Pemberley appeared ahead of him.
The park opened on either side with the unhurried magnificence of a landscape that has had a very long time to arrange itself.
Elias Bennet had not expected it to be quite so fine.
He rode through the park at a walk, which was partly courtesy and partly the simple fact that he was not in a hurry, and allowed himself, for the length of the avenue, to look at it properly.
The trees were in their late-autumn colour, the lake visible through them at intervals, the house appearing gradually at the end of the drive, with the particular authority of a building that has stood in the same place for several centuries and has no intention of moving.
It was, he thought, exactly the kind of place that a person might describe with a careful restraint that did not quite conceal how much she loved it.
He arrived at the door, dismounted, and presented himself to the footman with the composed professionalism of a man who is here on business and intends to conduct it properly.
Whatever else he might be thinking was, for the present, entirely beside the point.
***
Mr. Darcy received him in the study — a room of considerable size and considerable order, the kind of room that reflected its owner’s character so precisely that a stranger might have read the man from the furniture before he entered.
The desk was clear except for a single folder of papers.
The bookshelves were arranged without ostentation.
There was no clutter, no excess, nothing that was present without a purpose.
Darcy himself came in promptly, shook hands with the directness of a man who has been waiting for something and is glad it has arrived, and gestured toward the chairs by the fire.
“Mr. Bennet. I am obliged to Mr. Fletcher for sending you so promptly.” He paused, with the slight hesitation of a man who is about to say something that does not come naturally to him. “I trust the journey was not disagreeable.”
“Not at all, sir. I broke it at Derby, which gave me a comfortable night and an early start.”
“Good.” Mr. Darcy sat, and folded his hands, and looked at Elias with the directness that was, Elias had been told, characteristic of him — not rudeness, but the manner of a man who has no particular interest in the preliminary courtesies when there is a substantive matter to be addressed.
“Mr. Fletcher will have explained the situation in his letter.”
“He has, sir. However, I should be glad to hear it in your own words, if you are willing. It is often the case that the person closest to a set of accounts notices things that do not appear in a written description of them.”
Darcy regarded him for a moment with an expression that was not quite surprise — more the slight recalibration of a man who had expected a younger and less direct interlocutor.
“Very well,” he said, and described the difficulty as he had described it in his letter, but with more detail now that he was speaking rather than writing: the stable accounts, the sales register, the disproportion between the two that he could feel but not precisely articulate, the three separate occasions on which he had gone back to the figures hoping to find the innocent explanation that continued to elude him.
Elias listened without interruption, noting the care with which the gentleman spoke.
No exaggeration, no accusation, only the plain statement of what he had observed and what he had been unable to determine.
It was the account of a man who was genuinely uncertain, and who was uncomfortable being so, already half-convinced of something he was not yet willing to name.
“How long has Mr. Slater been with the estate?” Elias asked when Darcy had finished.