Two Hundred Lost Years Read online

  That she had contrived to get arrested again was the metaphorical icing on the cake at the end of a week of escalating protest; that said, it would have been better to not get arrested stinking of vomit.

  Never mind, at least she was going to get her day in court!

  “MISS COOLIDGE AND MISS DAVENTRY-JONES!”

  “About time,” the two young women chorused under their breaths as they got to their feet.

  Chapter 7

  Wednesday 6th July

  Office of the Chief Magistrate of New York, Albany

  Sixty-three-year-old Lord John Ansty Shilton Murray, 13th Earl of Dunmore and 13th Viscount of Fincastle, KCB, KC, PC, was the descendant of the Governor of Virginia during the brief ‘revolutionary period’, after which his esteemed antecedent and several generations of sons thereafter had roamed the Empire governing here, there and practically everywhere at some time or another before eventually, the 13th Lord Dunmore’s parents had settled again in the New World after a gap of some one hundred and forty years. The 13th Earl’s father had, in fact, been Governor of Massachusetts when he himself had been in England enjoying a long and fulfilling career at the Lower Bar of Lincoln’s Inn only cut short by an, in hindsight, less than stellar sojourn in the world of politics which had, inevitably ended in tears and resulted in his unplanned exile to the land of his birth a dozen years ago. Whereupon, he had resumed his legal practice and basically, lived the good life until unkind fate had called him back to serve the Crown in the post of Chief Magistrate of the Commonwealth of New York.

  Even John Murray’s oldest friends sometimes admitted that he could be, and often was, a combative, querulous man whom it was hard to like. This probably accounted for his three, middlingly unhappy and in the case of the first two, failed marriages and the flight, never to return, of all his adult children from the family home as soon as they gained admission to their father’s old college, Magdalene, at Cambridge.

  However, professionally, he was a man with a coterie of friends numbering among them a host of renowned jurists and advocates on both sides of the Atlantic, many of whom still felt he was wasted in New England not least because he had a well-deserved and widely feared, reputation for razor-sharp, positively didactic judicial exactitude and a rare ability to ruthlessly exploit the slightest chink in an argument and thereafter, a particular talent for tearing its proponent to shreds with merciless, surgical precision.

  Since the reforms of the 1950s and 1960s a colony’s Chief Magistrate was de facto, its Director of Public Prosecutions and in matters pertaining to censorship also its de jure Lord Chancellor. This meant that John Murray was the head of the colony’s legal system, its judges and decided - practically speaking, in most cases his office decided - who should be prosecuted or not prosecuted. Somewhat anachronistically, in this supposedly more liberated age, he was also the guardian of public standards and sensibilities in terms of what was and was not permissible to be printed in newspapers, periodicals and books, and of what was, and was not acceptable on the stages of theatre, although oddly, not on cinema screens – still strictly a County prerogative - of the Crown Colony of New York.

  Nobody had ever tested whether his writ ran over radio or television broadcasting in the colony but since he rarely listened to the radio and hardly ever watched television other than to stand to attention during the King’s Christmas address to the Empire, he had never deigned to respond to the busybodies constantly corresponding with his office demanding that something ‘ought to be done’ about this or that radiophonic or televisual offering which had upset them. The way he looked at it, whereas a man had to read the papers, and books, obviously, to keep oneself abreast of developments in society and the world, and he personally very much enjoyed the occasional night at the theatre or the opera, it was entirely reasonable to him that one could live perfectly well without the ‘white noise’ of the electronic broadcasting industry.

  Brigadier Matthew Harrison had always known that Lord John Ansty Shilton Murray was potentially, the primary obstacle to a quick, clean resolution to the Empire Day Conspiracy of last July. What he had not factored into his calculus was that the man’s pedantry was limitless!

  “I am unhappy,” The Chief Magistrate remarked, viewing the Head of the Colonial Security Service over the top of his steel-rimmed reading glasses.

  This time last year the CSS had been in the middle of a very gradual five-year expansion and reorganisation program mainly designed to counter the perceived intensification of the activities of the Nacional de Inteligencia de Nuevo España – the Intelligence Service of New Spain – in the South West, Alta California and along the Gulf Coast. Normally, the CSS had only a skeleton presence in the northern First Thirteen, not least because it had always enjoyed a prickly relationship with many of the colonial police forces and with the judiciaries of them all; mainly because it answered solely to the Office of the Governor of New England, a thing bitterly resented in many quarters.

  However, because of the participation of the King and Queen in last year’s Empire Day celebrations – coincidentally, marking the two hundredth anniversary of the crushing of the revolution of 1776 – the CSS had been unusually active in New Jersey, New York and particularly on Long island in the months leading up to the Royal visit and therefore, had played rather more than its customary walk-on role in the subsequent manhunt.

  On the plus side of the equation, since last July the Colonial Security Service had been awarded funding sufficient to recruit over five hundred new officers.

  Set against this, by its meddling in New York’s police investigation, it had inadvertently utterly soured – to the point of irreconcilable embitterment – the entire law enforcement community of the colony, parts of which had, illegally, withdrawn all cooperation with the interlopers from out of colony in recent months.

  The latest fallout from last year’s outrages concerned fears confidential information shared by one colonial police force with another might willy-nilly, without judicial oversight, find its way into the hands of the CSS, and this was now threatening a virtual shut down of all cross-colony criminal investigations.

  In former times the occupants of Government House in Philadelphia would have simply written this sort of thing off to the colonies’ rights ‘syndrome’ which had always plagued the administration of New England. In the normal run of things, the Governor would remain aloof from the fray, turning a dignified blind eye to the inter-colony ‘byplay’.

  It was no accident that many New Englanders who had spent significant time abroad, in the Old Country or elsewhere, or particularly in the other ‘white dominions’, returning home to the First Thirteen tended to be struck by the dogged disunity of constituent parts of their own Commonwealth. One might debate the question: ‘Am I English before I am a New Englander, or vice versa?’ But most people actually considered themselves to be a Virginian, or a New Yorker (or even a Long Islander) or a Georgian ahead of being a New Englander, in the First Thirteen a man or a woman was a colonist first, a New Englander second and pulled a face at one if you suggested they were a citizen of the Americas. All of which was a state of mind hardly understood at all back in the British Isles.

  It was always very hard to tell if the disunity was real or imagined, or a mask for something deeper, more troublesome so when cause celebres like that over the importation of Two Hundred Lost Years arose, the authorities in any given colony – let alone the incumbent in Philadelphia – could never be sure if he stood on firm ground.

  The Chief Magistrate, essentially a quintessentially anglophile New Englander, strongly suspected that it was the rising tide of, mainly irrational, bad feeling between colonial legislators and the Governor’s Office in Philadelphia, rather than moral or philosophical scruples, or any deeper underlying disloyalty to the Old Country, which had been instrumental in five colonies thus far – Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island - effectively ‘waiving through’ the importation of that damned book!<
br />
  How the Devil was he supposed to ban Two Hundred Lost Years in New York when it was so freely available on the black market?

  This said, that damned book was only the tip of the iceberg; a symptom not a systemic cause of the larger malaise he sensed bubbling beneath the surface of the twin colony’s body politic.

  “There are respectable citizens demonstrating outside this building today,” he complained to Harrison.

  The Head of the CSS was a large, moustachioed, impassive Virginian in his sixtieth year. Like many Virginians of his background and upbringing – his family still owned several large plantations and he had been educated in-colony – he exuded unspoken superiority, a cast-iron certainty that was of itself, the answer to anything which gainsaid his word. Virginians after all, proudly claimed that they lived and died by their word.

  “That is their right, sir,” Harrison said complacently. It was an act, of course. It was unlikely that any man in New England felt such an acute sense of having failed his colony and his Commonwealth as the head of the Colonial Security Service. He had played a dangerous cat and mouse game to expose a conspiracy which, until the Empire Day outrages, had been like a malevolent shadow occasionally glimpsed but never substantial enough to grasp by the throat. He and the CSS had been out-thought, out-manouevered and ultimately been left hapless witnesses to the disaster as it unfolded, excruciatingly painful step by step.

  “Ah, yes. Rights. Not a thing the Colonial Security Service has shown much respect for in my jurisdiction in the last year!”

  “It is hardly surprising some of my people have been a little over-enthusiastic in the performance of their duties given the monstrosity of the acts perpetrated against the Commonwealth last July, sir.”

  The Chief Magistrate was silent for several seconds as he marshalled his outrage to hear such a casual reply to his observation.

  “Nobody is above the law Brigadier Harrison.”

  “Whatever you say, sir.” The Virginian folded his arms. “What was it you wanted to discuss with me?”

  Thus far the Chief Magistrate had not touched the Manila folder on his blotter. Now, he opened the front cover and scanned the notes on the first of several tightly scripted, India tag connected, pages.

  “It is a basic tenet of British and Colonial law that no man, or woman, may be tried or convicted of any offence in the presence of reasonable doubt. Whilst in the normal course of events this may be established in a duly summoned court of law to the satisfaction or otherwise of a jury; it is my responsibility that no case is put before a court which may later rebound to my Office’s discredit.”

  Matthew Harrison was looking at him with an insouciance which suggested he did not see what the problem was and this further infuriated John Murray. However, even in his ire he did not allow himself to be distracted.

  “The Office of the Governor of New England has made representations to me that the putative cases in New York in respect of wrongful imprisonment against both the Colonial Security Service and named agents of that service be struck off the record.”

  Harrison sighed, hating to have to defend the indefensible but accepting that sometimes, that was what public service came down to. Besides, he doubted if the Chief Magistrate had the least notion of what he was actually dealing with. Dammit, he was not one of the man’s clerks he was New England’s ‘master of spies’, the man who advised the Governor-General which secrets had to be guarded unto death!

  “Those are spurious complaints designed to obstruct the pursuance of the cases against the primary conspirators…”

  “They may or may not be, Brigadier Harrison. That is immaterial. Where there are complaints to be answered they will go before the courts of New York.”

  “The colony will be viewed by right-thinking people across New England to be the friend of terrorists…”

  “How dare you interrupt me, sir!”

  Matthew Harrison shrugged, methodically re-ordered his mask of impassivity.

  The Chief Magistrate continued: “You have obtained additional warrants to extend the detention of Isaac Fielding, his eldest son Alexander and his second son, William on charges of attempted regicide and high treason. Furthermore, you have issued a warrant in absentia in respect of a third son, Abraham Lincoln Fielding whom the CSS wishes to question in respect of the Empire Day attacks?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will be aware that the police believe Abraham Fielding is dead?”

  “We have reason to believe he survived the atrocity and is in hiding in Indian country, sir.”

  “Why is that not in the case files?”

  “It is strictly ‘need to know’, sir.”

  “I need to know everything.”

  “That is a matter you must refer to the Governor’s Office in Philadelphia, sir.”

  “I disagree. Perhaps, I ought to put you in Fort Crailo for a few days with the other conspirators to let you consider your position, Brigadier?”

  Harrison raised an eyebrow.

  The sanctimonious bastard had been away in England too long!

  He said nothing.

  This was not the time to attempt to explain the complexities of the situation confronting both the Colony of New York and the Office of the Governor in Philadelphia.

  Besides, the over-mighty Chief Magistrate’s name did not appear on the ‘need to know’ list. Nor was it likely to if Matthew Harrison had anything to do with it.

  “In the meantime,” John Murray continued, “I have requested the Chief Constable of New York to conduct a rigorous forensic re-examination of all the prosecution papers and supporting material submitted to my department pertinent to this case. I must tell you now, without equivocation, that I am not prepared to allow matters to go to court at the present time. Furthermore, it goes without saying that I expect the full co-operation of the Colonial Security Service. At this time, I have deferred consideration of appeals made to me by the defendants’ representatives that they should be released from prison on conditional bail pending the setting of a date for their trial.”

  Matthew Harrison was looking at him as if he was a madman.

  Good, I’ve got his attention!

  “In that respect at least, I am convinced that their release even on the most restrictive of terms would pose a risk to their safety, and to members of the public wherever they might reside.”

  The Head of the CSS had recovered his insouciance.

  Who says you can lead a Virginian to the well of humility but you can’t make him drink thereof?

  John Murray had discovered early in his career as a barrister that the only sure way to find out if a man had red blood was to prick him deep. He had come across a lot of men like Harrison when he had been a junior minister at the War Office in London; it had been precisely because he made the mistake of trusting one such ‘operator’ that he had found himself at the periphery of the scandal which had brought down the then Secretary of War, seen him banished to the back benches of the House of Lords, and soon thereafter, compelled to scuttle, like a whipped dog with his tail between his legs, back to the very land he had hoped never to set foot upon again.

  He had no doubt that Matthew Harrison would have every dirty little detail of that affair squirreled away somewhere in his files. People like Harrison kept files on everybody; their personal freedoms were sacrosanct in exactly the same way nobody else’s rights were worth a proverbial ‘mess of beans’.

  Well, we’ll see about that!

  John Murray’s brilliant career in the Old Country had imploded around him over a decade ago. Everything since then had been little more than ‘allowing time to pass’. He had honestly believed there was nothing worth fighting for any more, that it was his fate to drift along in obscurity until he was put out to pasture to fade away.

  But now the over-mighty secret policeman sitting before him in arrogant mock supplication had finally succeeded, as nobody else, as nothing else could have in convincing him that justice could not s
imply be permitted to be whatever the servants of the colonial administration deemed appropriate or convenient.

  The Chief Magistrate had no idea if the Fielding family – leastways, its adult male members – were wholly or partly responsible for or even involved in the carnage of Wallabout Bay on the eve of Empire Day, let alone in the attacks on the fleet in New York’s Upper Bay – but while a scintilla of reasonable doubt remained he was determined that they would receive a fair trial.

  That said, if he was acting for the prosecution they would all hang: and as for the defence well, only a fool would undertake a foolhardy gamble like that…

  Only a benighted fool…

  “Was that what you called me in to be told, sir?” Matthew Harrison asked blandly.

  John Murray realised it was probably the second or third time the Virginian had spoken to him.

  He blinked back to reality.

  He must have smiled because the head of the CSS gave him an odd, somewhat thoughtful look.

  “Yes, I think that is all for now, Brigadier.” He rose to his feet signalling that the interview was, conclusively, over. “Thank you for attending at such short notice. It may be,” he observed, dryly, “inadvertently, that you have done me a greater service than you know.”

  Chapter 8

  Thursday 7th July

  Fort Hamilton, Long Island

  Thirty-seven-year-old Detective Inspector Melody Danson’s almond-brown eyes widened momentarily as she read the note her boss handed her that evening at Brooklyn Heights Police Station. A gust of wind buffeted the third-floor office’s windows; a thing she used as an excuse to veil her surprise, and her curiosity, by sweeping the mane of red hair out of her face. It was Empire Day Week; therefore, the station was like a morgue, half her colleagues were on leave and the majority of the criminally inclined on Long Island were on holiday too. That was a quirky tradition that had only recently begun to break down. She had no family to speak of – or none she cared to travel back to Vermont to visit without good cause – so, as usual, she had drawn the short straw and was covering both her own plain-clothes Criminal Investigation Department and uniform branch also during the holiday week.