The Map of What He Did Not Know
XI
He had been in the chamber for most of the daylight hours for six weeks. He had developed a comprehensive knowledge of every irregularity in the ceiling stones.
He was not a man given to self-pity, which was fortunate, because self-pity in a space of this size had nowhere to go.
He had stopped walking at night three weeks ago.
The cliff path was visible from the village, and June in Aberdeenshire was not dark until nearly eleven; a man walking the headland at that hour could be remembered and mentioned at the inn.
So, the nights had become what the days already were — the mural chamber, the table, the documents, the insufficient candle.
Angus brought the Aberdeen packet on a Tuesday morning in the second week of June. Darcy read Webb’s letter at the table, the candle burning, his notes spread before him; read it twice; then sat for a long time with his eye on the wall.
The letter was dated the fifth of June and had taken six days to reach him, which was within the expected range.
Webb wrote in the coded shorthand they had established in London — abbreviated, dry, stripped of anything legible to a third party — and Darcy had long since memorised the key and no longer needed to work at it. He translated as he read.
GC,
The matter of the warrant is closed. The Home Office has registered the death and closed the instrument.
I must tell you, however, that the broader investigation into the southern routes continues.
You are no longer its object, but the investigation itself has not been wound up.
The routes were real. The gold was real, and the treason was real.
Someone moved it, and the Home Office has not yet decided to stop caring who.
You are certainly ruined posthumously, when this is settled.
Sterling has presented himself throughout as a man betrayed, a business associate whose shipping connections were used without his knowledge by the deceased. He has been cooperative with investigators in a way I find instructive. A cooperative Sterling has had time to prepare his ground.
I have a man in Bristol answering the description of the clerk, Thomas Marsh, lodging in Redcliffe under the name Joseph Benson.
I cannot confirm it is the same man without closer investigation, and closer investigation risks alerting Sterling that someone is looking.
I have not moved. Awaiting your instruction.
Pemberley has not been touched. The warrant’s death before conviction means the Crown has no instrument for seizure.
The frozen accounts and the timing of your death have attracted some attention, read, I think, as the action of one who knew the warrant was coming and moved quickly.
This is not exculpatory. It is also not prosecutable.
The family’s solicitors are handling it.
The following is from Hodges, relayed through me.
Lrd Matlock is holding himself together by force of habit and has publicly said that his nephew was innocent of all charges and that the investigation was politically motivated.
This is useful to us whether he believes it or not.
He has been in contact with Hodges regarding the final disposal of personal effects at Grosvenor Square.
Hodges reports that Lord Matlock wept once, briefly, when he believed himself unobserved, in the library.
Colonel Fitzwilliam has asked Hodges three separate questions about your reasons for leaving Kent and the subsequent journey.
Hodges has answered consistently and within the agreed account.
The Colonel does not believe the account.
He has not said so directly. He has asked whether you seemed well, whether you seemed frightened, whether anything struck Hodges as unusual in your manner or your instructions.
Hodges says he told the Colonel you seemed entirely yourself, save for the pressing business matter to which he was not privy.
Colonel Fitzwilliam has visited the Dover road. He has not found anything. There is nothing to find. But he went, which you should know. And Hodges reports that the colonel regularly stops at Darcy House, but does not often come in.
Mr Bingley was expected to make an offer to Miss Harrington in late April.
He has delayed, reportedly out of respect for the period of mourning.
He told Hodges he is not sure you would have wanted him to rush the thing.
Hodges says he was drinking when he said this and did not appear to be enjoying the drink.
The investigation will continue as a matter of legality, but at present, no one else is being pursued for treason. Sterling is safe as long as the clerk is beyond reach. The clerk is beyond my reach until you tell me otherwise.
One further matter, briefly noted. The Home Office has begun reviewing the vessel records for the southern routes.
Three ships have been identified as carrying the relevant manifests.
The masters’ names are now in the case papers.
I do not know yet what the investigators intend to do with this information. I am watching it.
W.
Darcy read it twice more. Then he set it down and turned his eye to the ceiling.
Sterling had been cooperative. Of course, he had been.
A man who had spent three years constructing a frame with sufficient care to survive a Home Office investigation would not begin to behave evasively when the named suspect conveniently died.
He would grieve. He would offer assistance.
He would do it with the confidence of having already removed the one witness who could contradict him.
If the clerk in Bristol was the clerk — the man who had sat in Sterling’s offices and prepared the forged manifests and then vanished — then Sterling had not killed him.
A dead clerk was a loose end eliminated.
A clerk living under a false name in Bristol was a loose end that could be found, and if Sterling had allowed him to live, it was because Sterling was confident he could not be reached without first knowing about it.
The clerk was alive because Sterling held him.
Which meant the thread existed.
Which meant Darcy could not touch it.
He pulled out a fresh sheet and began his reply.
W.
Do not move on the clerk. No approach that could be reported; observation only, and at a distance. I need to know whether he is there of his own will, what Sterling holds over him, and whether he has family who might be used against him.
What I can do from here is think, and I have done.
Get me the whole picture of the forged manifests; every shipment, every date, every discrepancy between the forged records and what the ships in fact carried.
If Sterling used my vessels, the true manifests exist, filed at the customs houses and logged at the ports.
Somewhere, the paper trail breaks. Find where it breaks.
The rest may stand. Tell Hodges the account does not change. Keep me informed and do nothing else.
GC
The Gardiners’ faces said it before anything else did.
Mrs Gardiner opened the door herself, and the expression on her face when she saw the cart — the bags, the six of them, the whole of it arriving without warning on her doorstep — was not surprise. It was something that had been waiting to be confirmed. She held the door wide.
“Come in,” she said. “All of you. Come in.”
Her voice did not waver, and her eyes were not dry.
Mr Gardiner was behind her in the hallway. He took in the cart, the bags, his sister’s red eyes; then came out himself and began lifting bags down from the cart without being asked.
The sitting room was arranged for them within the hour.
The children were moved. Beds were found.
Mrs Gardiner went through the house with brisk purpose, calculating which numbers changed when six more people arrived, making space where there was not much space to make.
When Mrs Bennet said she could not possibly share a room with Mary, Mrs Gardiner only said, “Of course not,” and made other arrangements.
Tea was brought. Mrs Bennet began, almost immediately, to talk about how cruel Mr Collins had been, Sir William Lucas and what he had said, Mrs Philips choosing her mother-in-law over her sister.
She lamented the loss of the good china, because she was sure the good china had been part of her settlement, but it was found not to be.
Elizabeth’s eye was on her aunt as she poured the tea.
Mrs Gardiner’s hands were careful and unhurried. Her face gave nothing away. She passed the cups around and smiled at each of them. “How was the journey?” she asked, and then, “You are all very welcome. You know that.”
The smile did not reach her eyes. Elizabeth had known her aunt for seventeen years. She had seen her tired, stretched, worried, bereaved. She had never seen this — the bearing up that did not seem to reach for hope, but only endurance.
Mr Gardiner’s attention kept returning to his wife, a long, careful attention that came back to her every few minutes like a man testing ground he does not trust. Once, when Mrs Bennet had said something more about the good china, he reached across and laid his hand briefly over his wife’s where it rested on the arm of her chair.
Mrs Gardiner turned her hand beneath his, answered him once with her fingers, and let him go.
Neither of them turned towards the other while they did it.
Elizabeth set her cup down.
“Aunt,” she said, quietly enough that her mother did not hear. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing that cannot—” Mrs Gardiner set the teapot down carefully on the tray, closed her mouth hard upon the rest of the sentence, and turned her face towards her husband.
“Nothing is wrong,” Mrs Bennet said, loudly and serenely, having heard enough to feel addressed. “Lizzy is always imagining things. I have said so for years. There is nothing wrong that a good night’s sleep will not—”
“Fanny,” Mr Gardiner said.
Mrs Bennet stopped as though he had caught her arm.