The Elizabeth Papers Read Online Free PDF Page A

he was married.”
    “Do you know anything else about him or his wife?”
    “No, that is why I have come to you.”
    She looked suddenly aggressive, and Charlie reflected that she didn’t have much of a “middle gear” when it came to being aggravated.
    “And do you know whether or not Victoria Darcy has any living female descendants? People who are alive and receiving money from the trust?”
    “Yes. Well, Aunt Mary actually told me that. She said that the only people left in Victoria’s line were the “Pemberton girls.” I didn’t know that I had any relations called Pemberton, but there you are. Anyway, these people, whoever they are, are getting money that they shouldn’t be getting.”
    “Have you seen a lawyer about this, Miss Carter?”
    “Cressida, please.”
    She leaned further towards him and fiddled with her watch. He noticed that she was too thin and wondered how hard she worked at it.
    “Have you seen a lawyer about this, Cressida?”
    “Yes, I have. I went straight to our family solicitor in Shropshire. He has been great actually. He dug out the trust document, and we looked at it together. He advised me that if Victoria Darcy were not really the daughter of Fitzwilliam Darcy then she and her descendants definitely should not be getting any money. He said that we would be able to challenge it and get them excluded. More buns for the rest of us. Only problem he said was that we need to prove it, and that is why I’ve come to you.”
    Charlie took a deep breath and put the lid back on his fountain pen without writing anything down. He considered noting “Victoria Darcy, born 1821” on his pad but couldn’t see the point. He had been sent on some wild goose chases in his time. More often than not, he had to listen to a crazy story or two from his clients. He had been through people’s bins and hidden behind moss-cloaked garden walls. He had hacked into people’s voice mails and followed their cars to their lovers’ houses down country lanes and sodium-lit streets. He had dredged through the contents of stolen laptops, dragging his tired eyes over file upon file of holiday snaps and letters and nonsense. He had read through thousands of pages of bank statements, telephone transcripts, and court documents. He was good—really good. If a secret was there, Charlie Haywood would find it. But he had never been asked to bust somebody for adultery nearly two hundred years after it had occurred.
    “Right. Thanks. That is an amazing story, Cressida. You probably don’t need me to tell you that it is rather unusual. I am going to need to go away and do a bit of background research because, well, I’m sure you realise that what you are asking me to look at is a long way in the past. Paternity disputes are a different thing these days, of course. We have DNA testing and so on. And when people are still alive, somebody always knows, somebody will always talk. Do you know what I mean?”
    She nodded, but he was not at all sure she was following him.
    “But when it comes to this Victoria Darcy—well you are talking about a woman who was born nearly two hundred years ago. I am going to need to do some serious rooting around just to work out the basics of who she was and who her family were. I am going to want to see that trust document and learn all about this Fitzwilliam Darcy and his family. Once I have done that, we can think about how we might go about uncovering the truth of Victoria’s paternity. I’m afraid there aren’t any guarantees here. This is a tricky one. The plain hard truth is that it might be impossible to prove that Victoria wasn’t his daughter. You might spend a lot of money and get nowhere. Do you understand that, Cressida?”
    “Yes, I understand.”
    “And you will take the risk?”
    “Yeah, I’ll take the risk.” She tilted her head and smiled. “I reckon it’s going to pay off.”
    Later, when Cressida Carter left the office, Charlie closed the heavy door behind her