Page 187 of Faceless

“Sir. I will tell the court the truth as I understand it. Mr Darcy gave me his opinion. I accepted it. I was, at the time, less in possession of the lady’s true sentiments than I should have been, and I took my friend’s account in preference to the work of forming my own. I have come to believe, in the months since, that my friend was mistaken, but not maliciously so. He may have misled me. He may have permitted me to make a grave mistake. I do not seek to excuse him of it.”

A murmur went through the room. Counsel waited for it to settle.

“Then, sir, you concede —”

“I have not finished, sir.”

Counsel stopped.

“My friend gave me his opinion. He did not compel my conduct. I left Netherfield because I had business, a perfectly legitimate cause for a short absence. I did not return because I chose not to. The attachment I had formed, I might have pursued in defiance of any opinion he or any other man offered me, had I been confident enough in my own judgement to do so. I was not. The fault for that, sir, is mine and not his. A man, in the end, must be accountable for his own conduct. I shall not stand in this court and permit the prosecution to make my friend responsible for an act of cowardice that belonged to me.”

The murmur began again. The judge did not, at once, suppress it.

The Crown’s counsel attempted a recovery. “Yet you have admitted, sir, that Mr Darcy gave you the opinion that resulted in your withdrawal.”

“I have admitted it. I do not retract it. I have also told you that the withdrawal was mine. If the court wishes to malign a man’s character on the strength of his having given me bad counsel, the court should be putting every man in this room in the dock for some wrong or other.”

The prosecution’s counsel sat.

He did not redirect. He had got the murmur. He had got the admission. He had not got what he had been working towards, which was Bingley conceding that Darcy was a man whose private conduct towards those closest to him was at variance with the gentlemanly character the defence had been working to establish.

Pemberton rose. He asked Bingley one question. “Mr Bingley, did Mr Darcy, at any time, ever lie to you?”

Bingley's face undertook an expression of horror. “Never once.”

“And did he ever ask you to lie on his behalf?”

“He did not. Darcy has always been excruciatingly honest.”

“Thank you.” Pemberton sat.

Bingley stepped down.

He did not look at the gallery as he passed it on the way back to the witnesses’ bench. Darcy understood why. If Bingley had looked at Jane Bennet again before sitting down, he would not have been able to sit down.

LXIX

The Case Comes Alive

The next witness was Captain Foss.

Darcy stiffened in surprise.

Foss had been clear. In writing in March, and in person to Pemberton during the preparation, and again to Pemberton in the days before trial. He would testify, but only on condition that he not be the sole direct witness against Mr Sterling. He would not be the lone captain in the box. He had been required to commit too much to the undertaking already, and he had watched what had happened to men who had stood alone in such cases before. That the search for corroboration had failed.

So, how was it that he was now walking into the box?

Darcy did not, in the first instant, know what to make of it. Perhaps Richard had been persuasive. Perhaps Pemberton had reasoned with him in some final session Darcy had not been told of. Perhaps the captain had simply come, in the end, to the determination that he would do the work because the work needed doing, regardless of who else stood beside him.

But he was, at this hour, too tired and too grateful to question it.

Foss gave his name, his command, his years in the trade. He confirmed his service as master of the Mary Rose on three voyages in the period in question. Pemberton walked him through the cargo of each voyage in the order they had sailed. Foss answered each in turn. He named the ports of lading, the ports of discharge, the manifests as he had been required to sign them, and the cargoes as they had actually been carried. The discrepancies were, in his testimony, plain.

Pemberton produced the manifests. The signatures on each of the three were laid before Foss. He confirmed his own at the bottom of each. Pemberton then produced a second set of documents from a portfolio at his elbow — the originals of Darcy’s correspondence with the shipping office over the same period, signed in Darcy’s own hand. Foss was asked to compare them with the signatures appearing as Mr Darcy’s authorisation on each of the manifests.

Foss took both sets in his hands and held them for some seconds. Then he said, in the steady voice of a sailor who had seen forgery in the trade for thirty years and was not particularly impressed by this example of it, that the signatures on the manifests were not the same hand as the signatures on the correspondence. He named the differences he had noted. The forger had imitated the broad shape of the signature without troubling to imitate the pressure of the down-stroke, the particular tail of the final letter, or the small habitual flourish at the end. He laid the two sets on the rail of the box and indicated each point in turn for the jury.

The manifests and the correspondence were passed up to the bench. The bench inspected each. The bench passed them to the jury.