Page 51 of A Debt Inherited

H. Armitage

Kerr ran his thumb along the edge of the pages. Margins were crowded with small writing—dates, observations, initials. Between the leaves lay folded papers: certified copies of depositions, an unsigned report to the Crown solicitor, and one sheet marked Private—For Counsel Only.

The first entries were methodical, written in a hand that pressed too hard on the nib:

Nov. 14, 1781. Received notice from the night constable of a carriage found overturned on the north road between Stamford and Greatford. Proceeded to the scene with Mr Shale and Surgeon Linton. Victims identified as Lord Julian Ashby and Miss Arabella Pember, daughter to the Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge. Both deceased upon discovery. The gentleman had suffered a mortal blow to the head, likely by blunt instrument; the lady, removed some yards from the vehicle, bore marks of outrage and was strangled thereafter. Robbery suspected—the strongbox rifled and post-boy fled. Witness accounts from the Swan and Trumpet and the Greatford toll vary as to the hour. Circumstances do not suggest foreknowledge on the part of the deceased.

Jan. 15, 1782. Received correspondence from the Assizes at Huntingdon, requesting cooperation with the Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College concerning documents implicating the dishonourable actions of one Thomas Robert Bennet, undergraduate. The packet contained (1) a fraudulent day-pass bearing counterfeit seal and (2) a route for carriage travel between Cambridge and Stamford, the hand acknowledged by Bennet himself. Statement taken by the University court under Vice-Chancellor Maunsell: Bennet confessed authorship of the itinerary but denied complicity. Expelled from the College forthwith, no civil charge preferred.

The names meant nothing to him. He read on.

Feb. 10. Further correspondence from the Vice-Chancellor. Reports that inquiry has established two companions of Bennet—Mr David Fitzwilliam and Mr Edmund Darcy—though not formally implicated, had probable knowledge of the intended elopement of Lord Julian Ashby and Miss Pember prior to their departure. No warrants issued. Recommendation that the matter rest with the University and the borough.

He let the page fall back. Ink bled where the pen had lingered. Kerr closed the book, then opened it again at once. He slipped the sheet marked Private—For Counsel Only from between the leaves and held it a moment. Then he folded it smaller and tucked it inside his coat.

Rain pressed against the glass; the chimney whispered soot. When the clock struck nine, he closed the book and drew the clasp shut. The book was not proof—proof belonged to courts and men who still believed in them, and Kerr no longer counted himself among them. But names endured.

Fitzwilliam. Darcy. Bennet.

They had been young men then. Scholars. Gentlemen’s sons. The distinction did not soften the matter.

Chapter 21

The Strand, April 1811

The Bell and Crown called itself a club, though no man with a title ever passed its door. The lamps were brass, the curtains red, the air thick with men pretending to be better company than they were. Kerr came late, his coat damp from the rain, and found his circle already gathered at the back table near the fire.

Griggs, who clerked for a solicitor in the Strand, held forth on the state of the navy and his own digestion. Beside him sat Pye, a watchmaker with ink-stained thumbs, and Dimmock, who bought and sold horses and reputations in equal measure. They greeted Kerr with the half-laughter of men who had begun drinking early.

“Gower Street’s scholar joins us,” Dimmock said. “Come to remind us what a clean conscience looks like?”

Kerr poured himself a glass from their jug. “Only if it can be bought by the pint.”

That earned him a laugh, and the talk turned to politics, the theatres, and a scandal about an actress who had mistaken a bishop for a baronet in her boudoir. The ale grew flatter as the night deepened. A man at the next table laughed too loudly and leant back, his chair scraping the boards. When their jokes began to repeat themselves, Kerr leant forward.

“Tell me,” he said, “what do you know of a family called Fitzwilliam?”

Griggs’s eyebrows rose. “Matlock’s people. Old as chalk. Lords, boroughs, cousins in office—the usual fortress.”

“Money?”

Dimmock snorted. “Enough to make virtue unnecessary.”

“More than that,” Griggs said. “Land, borough interest, cousins in every proper room. The sort of name that makes a clerk sharpen his pen before he writes it.”

Pye lifted his glass. “And an officer among them. Colonel Fitzwilliam. Wellington’s man, they say, and not one for mercy.”

Dimmock lowered his drink. “Be careful of that branch of Matlock.”

Kerr let the warning pass. “And Darcy?”

“Pemberley,” Pye said at once. “Derbyshire land. Coal, wool, and a line as straight as the churchyard path. The present master’s a cold one, by report—lives like a monk and spends less than one.”

Dimmock tapped his pipe against the hearth. “Married into the Fitzwilliams, didn’t they? Lady Anne Fitzwilliam—she’s the one who took Darcy. Brought him half the county for dowry.”

Kerr kept the names in order. Fitzwilliam. Matlock. Darcy. Pemberley. The journal had given him Fitzwilliam and Darcy without price or place. Wickham had offered him Pemberley.

Now he saw the first line drawn between a dead scandal and a living fortune.