Chapter 24 #2
"And now I do not know what to do." Hartwell's voice broke on the last word. "I went to Aldric because I believed—I believed that if I gave him the evidence, I could atone for my silence. I believed that the truth, once spoken, would set things right. I believed that the system—"
"The system." I allowed a faint note of something to enter my voice.
Not mockery, precisely. Something milder, more regretful, the tone of a woman who has heard this kind of naivety before and who pities it without respecting it.
"Sir William. You have been a solicitor for thirty years.
You have practised law in this city for longer than I have been alive.
And you believed that the system would set things right? "
He flinched. The flinch was involuntary, and it was followed by a silence that was longer and deeper than any of the silences that had preceded it, a silence in which Hartwell stared at his desk, and I stared at Hartwell and the afternoon light moved across the floor in a slow, golden progression that seemed, in the context of the conversation, almost obscenely peaceful.
"The system," I continued, "is designed to protect people like me.
It protects people with titles and money and social standing.
It protects people who understand how to use it.
You know this, Sir William. You have used it yourself, on my behalf, for six years.
Every document you prepared, every legal instrument you drafted, every transaction you managed was an act of participation in the system you now claim to believe in.
You did not believe in the system when you were profiting from it.
You believe in it now only because you are frightened, and you want it to save you from the consequences of your own weakness. "
"That is not fair," Hartwell whispered. But the whisper was not a defence. It was an acknowledgement, and we both knew it.
"No," I agreed. "It is not fair. But fairness, Sir William, is a luxury that neither of us can afford at present.
What we can afford is practicality. What we can afford is a clear-eyed assessment of our respective positions and a rational determination of the best course of action given the constraints under which we are both operating.
" I settled more comfortably in my chair.
"Shall I tell you what your position is? "
He said nothing. His silence was assent.
"Your position, Sir William, is this. You have provided documents to a police detective that, if made public, would implicate you in the deaths of three men.
Not as the perpetrator, no. But as the accomplice after the fact, the man who knew, or strongly suspected, what was happening and chose to remain silent.
The documents you gave Aldric are copies, but they bear the letterhead of your firm, and they were prepared under your direction, and any competent prosecutor would argue that their preparation constituted participation in a conspiracy to conceal the true cause of death.
You are, in the eyes of the law, no longer an innocent bystander.
You are a participant. The moment you handed those documents to Aldric, you transformed yourself from a man who did nothing into a man who did something, and the something you did was to assist in the building of a case that, if successful, would not only destroy me but would destroy you as well. "
The words landed, each one a stone dropped into still water, and I watched the ripples spread across Hartwell's face, the widening circles of comprehension and dread that moved outward from the centre of his understanding and reached the edges of his expression in the form of a trembling that began in his hands and spread to his jaw and then to his shoulders, until his entire body was vibrating with a frequency that was nearly sub-audible, the physical manifestation of a terror so complete that it had become a kind of stasis, a suspension of all voluntary function in the face of an overwhelming involuntary response.
"I did not intend—" he began.
"You did not intend to be caught. No. No one ever intends to be caught.
But intention, Sir William, is not the same as consequence, and the consequences of your actions are now beyond your control.
" I paused, allowing the silence to do its work.
"However. There is still a path forward. If you are willing to take it."
He looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the moisture had advanced from preliminary to actual, two thin tracks of tears running down his lined cheeks and disappearing into the collar of his shirt.
He wiped them away with the back of his hand, a gesture that was childlike in its lack of dignity, and I felt nothing.
Not pity, not contempt, not satisfaction.
Nothing. Hartwell was a problem to be solved, and the tears were irrelevant to the solution.
"What path?" he asked.
"You will go back to Inspector Aldric. You will tell him that you have reconsidered your position, and that the documents you provided were based on misunderstandings and incomplete information.
You will say that the physician's letters were expressions of routine concern rather than alarm, that the insurance policy was a standard instrument that you prepare for all your clients, and that the correspondence with Dr. Hale was part of the normal management of a complex estate.
You will recant your testimony, in other words.
You will tell Aldric that you were mistaken, and that the conclusions he has drawn from the documents are not conclusions that you yourself draw, and that you regret any confusion your earlier statements may have caused. "
Hartwell stared at me. "You want me to lie."
"I want you to correct a misunderstanding. There is a considerable difference."
"There is no difference. I know what I saw in those documents. I know what they mean. I cannot un-know what I know, and I cannot pretend to un-know it, and asking me to do so is asking me to betray the only act of conscience I have performed in thirty years of practice."
"An act of conscience." I tasted the phrase, turning it over in my mind as one might examine a curious object found on a walk. "You describe the betrayal of your client as an act of conscience. I see. And what do you call the thirty years of silence that preceded it? An act of prudence?"
The question struck home. I saw it land, saw the impact register in the widening of Hartwell's eyes and the parting of his lips, and I pressed the advantage.
"You have been my solicitor for six years, Sir William.
Before that, you were Lord Ashworth's solicitor for three.
In that time, you have prepared documents, managed transactions, and offered legal advice that was predicated on the assumption that everything was in order, that the deaths were natural, and that the estates were being handled in accordance with the law.
Every invoice you sent, every contract you reviewed, every piece of correspondence you signed bore your name and your professional seal, and every one of those documents is, in the eyes of the law, an assertion that the affairs you were managing were legitimate.
If I am guilty of murder, then every document you prepared in the service of my guilty enterprise is evidence of your complicity, and your complicity is not mitigated by the fact that you waited six years to develop a conscience. "
The silence that followed was the longest yet.
It stretched across the room like a physical barrier, separating us into our respective positions, Hartwell behind his desk with his tears and his terror and his crumbling convictions, and I in my chair with my calm and my precision and my understanding that this conversation had only one possible outcome, because the outcome had been determined before I entered the room, and the conversation itself was merely the mechanism by which the inevitable would be achieved.
"I am an old man," Hartwell said, and his voice was very small, the voice of a man speaking from the bottom of a well.
"I am sixty-one years old. I have practised law in this city for thirty years.
I have a wife. I have a daughter in Wiltshire.
I have a reputation, such as it is, that I have spent a lifetime building.
" He paused. "If what you are suggesting comes to light, if anyone discovers that I provided documents to the police and then recanted, I will be finished. Professionally. Socially. Completely."
"Yes," I said. "You will."
"And if I do not recant? If I maintain my position and allow Aldric to build his case?"
"Then the case will be built, and when it comes to trial, you will be called as a witness, and your testimony will be devastating to me, and I will be arrested and tried and, in all probability, convicted and executed.
And you, Sir William, will be revealed as the man who knew and said nothing for six years, and then spoke only when you believed the police could protect you, and then recanted when you realised they could not.
The court will not admire you. The public will not admire you.
Your daughter in Wiltshire will not admire you.
And your reputation, such as it is, will be destroyed not by my actions but by your own. "
Hartwell put his face in his hands. The gesture was one of total surrender, the physical expression of a mind that had exhausted every alternative and arrived, at last, at the conclusion that it had been trying to avoid since the beginning.
I watched him and waited. I had all the time in the world, and he had none, and the asymmetry of our positions was, at that moment, the only thing in the room that was truly real.