LIX On Paper
LIX
On Paper
Pemberton arrived at four in the afternoon with Sterling’s petition in his hand, looking professionally insulted.
He was a spare, elegant person with a barrister’s gift for looking simultaneously expensive and tired. His habitual calm — trained into him by years of other people’s disasters laid in neat bundles on polished desks — had today acquired an edge.
The earl took the folded document, glanced at the superscription, and laid it flat on the table.
“You have read it?”
“I have read it, my lord. The argument is unsound, the language is filthy, and the filing of it has cost Sterling considerably less than it will cost us to answer.”
“How long does it consume?”
“Of my senior attention, perhaps a month, in the worst case, six weeks. I have a junior in chambers who can carry the procedural weight, with my supervision in matters of substance. We shall not lose the petition. We shall lose time. That is the point of it.”
“Quite so. Then let us turn to the case that matters.”
Pemberton set down a second folder beside the first. This one was thicker. He opened it and laid out the pages he had brought.
“Your Lordship has been good enough to approach the Solicitor-General privately.
We are awaiting his reply. If it is favourable, I shall be in a position to offer Foss terms within the week — not Crown immunity alone, which he has already rejected, but Crown immunity supported by a guarantee from Lord Matlock that will hold whether the prosecution chooses to honour its undertakings or does not.
Foss has not yet been told this is on the table.
He will be told only when I can put the guarantee in his hand.
If the Solicitor-General refuses, we must construct an alternative, and the alternative is considerably more uncertain.
“I have drafted subpoenas to be served the moment either MacNeil and Harker’s ship reaches harbour.
The earl has men at Lloyd’s monitoring vessel arrivals.
Neither can be expected before mid-March at earliest, and on the present winds, mid-April is the more likely estimate for MacNeil.
Harker may be earlier. I have made arrangements for a man to be at Plymouth and another at the Pool the moment either is sighted.
“Colonel Fitzwilliam’s last report placed the clerk in Liverpool, possibly Glasgow. I am not optimistic he can be recovered before trial. His testimony is our strongest piece on the board, but the one most exposed.
“The documentary case is complete. Customs records, manifests for three voyages of the Mary Rose, the schedule of MacNeil’s debts, and the timing of Sterling’s payments through them.
The case may be put into court the moment we have a captain willing to swear to it.
Without a captain, the documents are paper.
With a captain, they are conviction. Of Sterling, not of your nephew.
“As to the timing, the Crown is pressing for arraignment within the fortnight. I can delay perhaps two months on procedural grounds. Beyond that, the Crown will move, whether we are ready or not.”
The earl had been writing as he spoke. He set down the pen.
“And so, Foss is the present hinge.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then we spend on Foss what we cannot afford to spend on the petition.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The earl turned to Elizabeth. “Mrs Darcy, the petition is not the worst of what Sterling has done. It is, however, what he intends us to spend ourselves answering. You have heard what we require for the principal case. I have asked you here because you are now in a position to assist with two pieces of it. I shall name both, and you may tell me whether you will undertake them.”
“I shall undertake both, my lord.”
“Hear me first. The first is a piece of documentary work. Mr Hodges has been retrieving such papers from Grosvenor Square as your husband marked for retrieval and such as Hodges knows of independently. Hodges has been ten years in your husband’s service.
He knows where Mr Darcy kept his private correspondence, including correspondence not lodged in the obvious places.
There are papers in that house that Pemberton’s clerks have not been able to identify because they did not know what to look for.
I want you to work with Hodges. I want every paper out of that house and onto a desk in this one, and I want you sitting at it.
Pemberton will tell you what he requires. ”
“Yes, my lord.”
“The second piece is more difficult. We need a public for the case we shall put on at trial. The jury, when it is empanelled, will be drawn from the freeholders of London — merchants, bankers, men of the City. Not gentry. Not the ton. The men who will sit in judgment on my nephew will be the men whose ships ply the Mediterranean, whose money is at risk through Lloyd’s, whose papers are the Times and the Morning Chronicle, and not the gossip-sheets.
They will come into court with whatever opinion the City has formed of the case by the day of arraignment.
That opinion is presently uninformed and will be formed by Sterling’s papers if we leave the field to him. ”
“You wish me to fight him on that ground?”
“No, I wish you to construct the ground we shall fight him on. I cannot put you into Mayfair. You are the worst candidate to be paraded in Berkeley Square, for reasons of which we are all aware and which I shall not insult you by reciting. You are, by some accident of providence, very nearly the best candidate to be received in the City. Your uncle Gardiner is a merchant of standing. He has recently taken a larger flat near his warehouses in Coleman Street, which is, I am told, an improvement on his former situation and which puts him in the precise neighbourhood from which our jury will be drawn. His acquaintance is the acquaintance whose talk fills the coffeehouses around the Exchange. His wife, your aunt, has been quietly informed by your sister that you are in town. She is, I gather, more puzzled than offended by your not having yet called, and I would wish you to call on her tomorrow.”
“I have not been permitted to leave the house, my lord, save to visit the Tower under the colonel’s guard.”
“You shall be permitted now. I shall send you in my own carriage, which will do no harm to your standing at the Coleman Street end. You shall sit with your aunt long enough to satisfy her that you are in good health and on good terms with Darcy’s family.
You shall convey, with such delicacy as you possess in considerable measure, what we shall require of her and of her husband in the next six weeks.
And you shall arrange to attend her at home on the third Tuesday of this month, which is, I believe, ten days hence, when she receives.
I would wish the City to find Mrs Darcy at her aunt’s table on that Tuesday. ”
“I am sure my aunt would be pleased that her table can be of service.”
“Good. Once you have been seen at Mrs Gardiner’s, the rest follows.
You will be invited to dine with the families your aunt introduces to you, and you will, if I have read you correctly, leave each of those dinners with the woman of the house better disposed towards Mr Darcy than she was when you arrived.
You will attend a church the Gardiners attend.
If your aunt has a charitable subscription she would care to have the Darcy name attached to, you will attach it, with a contribution from my house if your own is not yet equal to it.
You will be visible. You will visit your husband openly.
You will be reported on, with our cooperation, in such papers as Pemberton can reach, and the reports will be truthful and unembellished, because the truth in this case is sufficient.
You shall be the answer in the City to whatever Sterling puts in the gossip-sheets in Mayfair. ”
He paused.
“You will also be exhausted. I will not pretend otherwise. Particularly for a woman in… an interesting condition… what is being asked of you will be demanding. You have a month — perhaps six weeks — to construct in the City a settled view of yourself and Darcy as your husband. After that, the case will be heard, and the view will be the view we have given them.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I understand.”
The earl’s face softened. “You are not faint of heart, Mrs Darcy, but the scope of the thing may yet be beyond your measure. Lady Matlock will give what assistance is in her power, though that assistance, as you may have observed, runs more usefully in chambers than in drawing rooms. Your uncle Gardiner has been kept informed, and your sister shall come to you as often as can be arranged. You shall not be alone in any of it.”
Her hands had been clenched on the chair beside her. She made them ease and let herself blink. “Thank you, my lord.”
“Do not thank me. I have just laid a six-week campaign of social labour on a woman who is nearly three months gone and visiting the Tower of London on a weekly basis. I shall thank you in six weeks, if the man we are working for is sitting at dinner with you in Derbyshire by then. Until then, we have no time for sentiment of any kind.”
He blotted the last line of what he had been writing. He sanded it. He shook the excess into the tray.
“There is one more thing, Mrs Darcy. Sterling will attempt, with every drawing room he can reach, to take the shape of your marriage out of your hands and hand it back to you as a thing of shame. I should prefer you to remember the distinction. The marriage may have been irregular. It may have been contracted under conditions that would give any uncle in Christendom apoplexy. It was not dishonourable on your side. I should prefer you to remember the distinction.”
She rose.
“I shall remember it, my lord.”