Page 177 of Faceless

Webb looked at his hat for a moment before he answered.

“Mrs Darcy, I am not used to being spoken to in that way. I should be obliged if you would consider it heard and not require me to answer it.”

“I shall.”

“Thank you.”

Richard cleared his throat. He had been waiting through the exchange with the patience of having decided some weeks ago that his cousin’s wife was permitted to begin meetings in her own manner.

“Mrs Darcy, we have come to give you the state of the case on the eve of trial, because Pemberton is at his chambers and we do not wish to send you into Monday with only such information as he has had time to convey through letters. You have read the brief. I shall not rehearse the brief. I shall tell you what stands and what does not.”

“Please do, Colonel.”

“Foss is at the Surrey house under guard. He shall be brought to court on Monday morning before the doors open. He has signed the undertaking, and his nerve has not yet failed him. He has still, however, refused to be the only witness in the box, and he means it. Pemberton spent two hours with him on the question only yesterday and was not able to move him. Foss will testify, but he will not testify alone.”

“You have no second captain?”

“No. Harker has flatly refused. He has been seen, twice, in the company of Sterling’s solicitor’s clerk, and he has declined to answer any letter we have sent to his lodgings. We are not subpoenaing him; if we put him on the stand against his will, he will damage us, and Sterling’s counsel will use him to do it.”

“Are there others? Other captains? Other masters? Mates? Surely, we cannot have spent all these months to only now have so little to our credit!”

“There are two other masters whose ships sailed on relevant voyages. Webb has spoken with both.”

He looked at Webb.

Webb turned his hat once on his knee.

“Both refused, Mrs Darcy. One civilly. One was not civil. Neither of them is in danger of being persuaded. The second one’s wife told me, at the door, that her husband had been visited the previous Tuesday by a gentleman whose description matched Sterling’s solicitor’s clerk to the half-inch. I did not press her further. I did not wish to be the cause of any consequence to her.”

“So, we have Foss alone.”

“We have Foss alone, which means we do not have him at all.”

Elizabeth let her hands lie still in her lap. They had begun, in the last quarter, to tremble at the small moments she had not predicted.

“Even if Foss would testify alone, if his nerve holds, it is sufficient to raise doubt as to the manifests, which is sufficient for the Crown to fail to meet its burden on the treason charge. Pemberton can walk Mr Darcy out on reasonable doubt with Foss alone. He cannot put Sterling in the dock. Sterling is still at liberty. But it hardly matters unless another man will stand beside Foss and swear a statement that concurs with his.”

Hodges had been silent through this. He spoke now without lifting his eyes from the folio in his lap.

“My lady. We have the documentary case. The manifests are sound. The customs records are sound. The schedule of MacNeil’s debts is sound. The Foss-brother delay of the Constant is documented. Webb’s deposition is sworn. None of that vanishes if Foss is broken. The jury will see the papers.”

“They will see the papers, Hodges, and they will say to themselves that the papers are very interesting and that they do not, on their own, prove that the gentleman in the dock is innocent.”

Hodges looked down and did not dispute her.

Elizabeth drew breath. The new gown sat heavier than the old ones at the bodice, and she had been finding, by Friday, that breathing required attention and that her ribs ached as though something were prying her open with each movement. She hid her grimace and turned her face towards Webb.

“The colonel has told me that you have completed your work, and that there is nothing further you can do for us. Is that the case?”

“It is, ma’am. The subpoena of my papers was filed three days since. My name is now in three of the prosecution’s filings. I have been useful to your husband — and to my other clients — only insofar as I could move quietly, and I cannot move quietly any longer. I shall be in court on Monday because I am required to be. I shall give the evidence I have already given to magistrate. I shall not be of any further use after that.”

“You have left nothing on the table? There is no further intelligence that another could not pursue in your place?”

He looked at his hat.

“There is one thing, Mrs Darcy. I should not call it intelligence, but rather the last piece of information I gathered before my hands were tied. It has not been useful, and I do not see how it could be made useful, but the colonel asked me, when we discussed coming to you, whether I had communicated everything I had to communicate, and I had not. I had not bothered Pemberton with it because Pemberton had not had the time, and I had not the heart to add to his work a piece of information that produced no further action.”

“Go on.”