Page 164 of Faceless

She kept her eyes on her own hands. “Naturally.”

“And did it answer?”

At that, despite everything, she looked up.

“Not in the least.”

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.”