Chapter 16 — The Archive Room
The archive room at Bell House had no windows and three different clocks.
Kit sat beneath it with the independent investigator, a digital-forensics specialist and two sealed laptops. He had no password for either machine. The restriction was explicit: he could identify people, projects and decisions, but he could not search the company record himself.
“The access system records a full export from Mrs Harcourt’s private directory six months before fashion week,” the investigator said. “The user account belongs to Saskia Reed.”
The specialist displayed a log. Nine hundred and twelve files copied in forty-three minutes. Source scans, photographs, notebook indexes and low-resolution images of physical silk.
“Could she access it ordinarily?” Kit asked.
“Not before that date. Her permissions changed at 09:14.”
At 08:52 that morning, Saskia had emailed Kit asking for “full visual reference” before the campaign meeting. At 09:03, the archive manager replied that Ottilie’s private directory was excluded. At 09:11, Kit’s assistant placed the thirty-six-second call.
Kit remembered taking it in a car outside Heathrow. Saskia said the restricted folder contained family material already used by the house. He asked whether she needed it for the buyer. She said yes. He told his assistant to remove the block.
“Did you ask Mrs Harcourt?” the investigator said.
“No.”
“Why was the request routed to you?”
“Because the archive sat in the family house and the system treated me as owner administrator.”
“Were you the owner of the files?”
“No.”
The permissions log made the contradiction visible without emotion. Control of the lock had allowed Kit to behave as if it proved control of what lay behind it.
“Who changed them?”
“Archive administrator, following an executive ticket.”
The ticket opened on the second screen. Requestor: Office of the Chief Executive. Approver: Christopher Harcourt.
Kit read the line he had already remembered.
Allow full creative access. We will regularise ownership later.
The message continued. Do not let rights administration delay collection development.
He had written it from an airport lounge after Saskia complained that the archive team supplied only watermarked samples. Ottilie was in Como that week. Kit had intended to telephone her and had instead sent a message asking whether the mill tests went well.
“Was Mrs Harcourt notified?” the investigator asked.
“I didn’t notify her.”
“Did anyone else?”
The specialist searched notification fields. “The archive administrator raised a rights flag. It was closed from the same executive ticket.”
Kit looked at the approval time. 09:17. Three minutes after access changed.
“Who in my office closed it?”
“The activity token is yours.”
Kit had used single sign-on from his telephone. No assistant. No misrouted approval. He remembered a red banner asking whether permissions should override rights restrictions. He had tapped confirm while the airline announced boarding.
“Me,” he said.
The investigator wrote the answer.
They moved to Saskia’s activity. She searched by Ottilie’s creator code, then removed the creator field from twenty-nine copied files before transferring them into the collection workspace.
The system preserved older metadata in backups.
Three days before fashion week, she registered derivative production files under her own name.
After Ottilie challenged the credit backstage, Saskia deleted a folder called SOURCE REVIEW and cleared her email trash. The deletions happened at 08:21, nine minutes after the first press-line confrontation.
“Can the files be recovered?” Kit asked.
“Most already have been.”
The screen displayed an email from Saskia to her campaign lead.
Keep the public origin story personal and non-technical. The archive question will be regularised through CH after closing.
Another went to Tom.
OV attribution remains unresolved. For main materials use creative-direction hierarchy; extended credits can follow once rights signs off.
Tom replied: Proceed. Kit needs the screens final tonight.
The investigator asked, “Did you instruct Mr Arlen to finalise screens regardless of attribution?”
“I instructed him to ensure delivery. I didn’t review that email.”
“Did you know attribution remained unresolved?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you tell him to ensure delivery?”
Kit looked at the frozen clock. “Because I treated delay as the greater risk.”
The answer sounded inadequate because it was exact.
At midday, they broke for food. Kit took a sandwich into the corridor and found Jean Morel’s office door sealed. The pattern cutter’s name had been removed from the daily rota but remained on the brass plate.
The factory vote had stopped discretionary production the night before.
Finance estimated twelve days until the company breached a lending covenant if the stoppage and acquisition freeze continued.
Board members called every hour with routes: emergency debt, family capital, partial asset sale.
Each route required someone to believe Kit still controlled the rights problem.
He no longer did.
His telephone showed a message from the Holland Park property manager. The independent custodian had completed removal of Ottilie’s archive. Did Mr Harcourt want the changed lock restored?
Kit wrote yes, then stopped before sending.
The lock belonged to a room Ottilie no longer used. Restoring it without asking would convert another correction into a decision about her property. He forwarded the question to Felicity Marr through the approved channel and authorised the company to pay restoration costs if Ottilie chose it.
The response came from Felicity’s assistant: Decision reserved. No further action.
Kit ate half the sandwich.
In the afternoon, the investigator reviewed approval emails around the acquisition warranty. General counsel had advised that the unsigned assignment be disclosed as an exception. Kit’s office asked for it to remain off the schedule because the company expected execution before closing.
“Who made that decision?”
Kit had discussed it with counsel and Tom. The final instruction came from him.
“I did.”
The investigator placed the email beside the access ticket. The sequence required no missing villain. Kit opened the archive. Saskia used it. Tom drove the deadline. Kit signed the warranty and then approved a statement blaming the only person who had withheld legal permission.
Saskia’s deletions mattered. They didn’t reverse the first permission.
At four, the specialist found a second version of Kit’s access instruction. Somebody had exported it to the acquisition data room with his name removed from the header. The visible line began Executive approval confirmed.
“Who created the redaction?” the investigator asked.
The file history pointed to acquisition counsel’s paralegal account. The covering message came from Tom: Keep internal approver names outside standard diligence unless requested.
Tom was called into a separate interview.
Kit remained with the unredacted instruction on screen. The investigator asked whether he wished to assert legal privilege over any part of the chain.
Company counsel, sitting behind him, said approval discussions might be protected and requested time to review.
Kit read his own words again.
Full creative access.
Regularise ownership later.
If counsel withheld the email, the investigation might still recover it through system logs. Delay would serve the same purpose it had served before: preserve room for Kit’s authority while somebody else carried uncertainty.
“No privilege claim over my instruction,” he said.
Company counsel leant forward. “You should not waive on behalf of the company without committee approval.”
“Then send it to the committee for immediate decision. Record that I support disclosure in full.”
The investigator asked him to authenticate the email.
Kit gave the date, device and circumstance. Airport lounge. Boarding call. Rights warning closed from his telephone.
“Did Ms Reed pressure you to approve access?”
“She requested it. I decided.”
“Did Mr Arlen misstate the scope?”
“No. I could read the request.”
“Did you believe Mrs Harcourt would consent?”
“I believed I could obtain consent later. That is not the same thing.”
The investigator saved the statement.
She then asked Kit to reconstruct the day of the access approval without relying on memory alone. His calendar showed a car from Holland Park at 05:40, a flight to Milan, two acquisition calls and a mill dinner. Telephone logs showed a four-minute call from Saskia before the archive request.
“What did she say?”
Kit remembered frustration, watermarked images and a claim that Ottilie’s limited permissions were delaying the campaign. He didn’t remember Saskia asking to remove creator records.
“She said the team could not work from low-resolution files and that the buyer expected a complete archive story.”
“Did she say Mrs Harcourt had refused full access?”
“She said Ottilie was in Como and unavailable.”
The call log showed Kit telephoned Ottilie twelve minutes later. The call lasted thirty-six seconds.
He remembered the station noise around her. They had discussed the weather and whether she reached the mill. He had not mentioned the archive request sitting on his screen.
“Why not?” the investigator asked.
“Because I expected she would ask for the purpose, scope and safeguards. I was boarding and wanted the access open before the design meeting.”
The answer removed even the excuse of forgetting. Kit had anticipated the questions and treated their absence as efficiency.
The specialist recovered the rights-warning text he had closed. It stated that full access exceeded recorded permission and required creator approval or legal override. Kit selected legal override without consulting legal.
“Did the system allow an expiry?”
“Yes,” the specialist said. “No expiry was entered.”
Kit had not only opened the archive. He had left the door open because returning later to close it was another delay assigned to the future.
The investigator added the warning and his thirty-six-second call to the disclosure timeline. Kit authenticated both.
At six, the special committee approved disclosure. Kit received a final chance to propose redactions for personal or privileged material. The email contained no private message from Ottilie, no marital detail and no advice. Only his instruction and the permissions it created.
The chair asked Kit to remain while the board considered interim consequences.
Tom claimed the access request had been an ordinary campaign need and that Kit’s override proved senior approval.
Saskia’s solicitor reserved her position.
The archive manager supplied the email in which she had warned that the folder was private.
Kit could have distinguished his permission from Saskia’s later use and stopped. The committee needed both facts.
“I didn’t direct the registration,” he said. “I did create access after being told permission was absent. I left it open and didn’t review what was copied.”
The chair asked why he had not closed it after the buyer meeting.
“I didn’t consider closing it important enough to remember.”
The committee removed Kit from all archive decisions before the meeting ended. The investigator, not the family office, would answer access requests. Kit surrendered his administrator token and watched the specialist seal it in a clear bag.
At Holland Park that night, he walked to the empty archive-room door. He didn’t enter. Independent custody had taken the boxes, and whatever marital permission once allowed him to cross the threshold had ended before a court recorded it.
He marked none.
The investigator exported the complete chain to the court disclosure set with Christopher Harcourt visible on every approval line.
Kit’s solicitor advised a statement explaining that he had not seen the copied images or directed Saskia’s registration. Both facts were true. Neither belonged ahead of the permission he had given.
“Disclose first,” Kit said. “No press statement until Ottilie’s counsel receives the material.”
The production reached Felicity at 6:42. Kit watched the transmission receipt appear and understood that the most useful evidence against him had required no search beyond his own authority.