Two Hundred Lost Years

by James Philip

  She had been transferred without warning or explanation to Brooklyn about a month after last year’s atrocities. Much to her volubly expressed vexation the investigations of the sabotaging of the launch of HMS Polyphemus at the Admiralty Shipyard at Wallabout Bay; and the airborne and seaborne attacks on the ships of the 5th Battle Squadron had by then already been assigned to a task force under the direct command of the colony’s Chief Constable. It had been no consolation to discover that a slew of other ‘locals’ had also been shut out of the investigation last autumn on grounds of, she assumed, wholly specious ‘security considerations’, and that she had not been the first or the last Long Island detective to be ordered, in writing, to focus on her ‘normal’ duties and to ‘not, repeat not, meddle in or sniff around the Empire Day inquiry’.

  Not that she had been in any way under-employed in the last year. Given that the Brooklyn Division of the Long Island Constabulary was chronically understaffed – partly because so many of its most able officers had been, and still were, seconded to the Empire Day Task Force – she had been kept busy enough.

  To be excluded from the Empire Day inquiry had niggled at first; after a while she had got used to the idea – although not come to terms with it - that, for whatever reason, she had been locked out of the biggest game in town. In any event when all was said and done there was not an awful lot she could do about it except to make the best of a bad job.

  If nothing else it had confirmed to her that career-wise she was treading water and it was not as if she did not have other options. She had joined the Force as a post-graduate a decade ago – the first woman to be admitted to the then Governor’s ‘fast track’ initiative – having already qualified as a barrister and been called to the bar in Virginia; an accreditation universally accepted throughout the Empire. The World was no less her oyster than it had been a year ago and she had always wanted to travel. So, perhaps, now was the time to do something about that…

  However, the moment she stepped through her Superintendent’s office door she had realised that all those half-formed plans had flown, for the time at least, out of the window to crash, broken and forgotten on the pavement far below. This was because, as improbable as it sounded it seemed that the Governor of the Crown Colonies of the Commonwealth of New England, Edward Philip Cornwallis Sidney, 7th Viscount De L'Isle, urgently requested her immediate attendance at Fort Hamilton, the official residence of the Lieutenant-Governor of the four counties of Long Island.

  There had been a car waiting for her – a nondescript three or four-year-old Austin saloon driven by a politely uncommunicative man with a severe, military haircut - to carry her through the darkened streets south along the coast road through the plush sea-side suburb of Bay Side skirting up-market Dyker Heights before swinging through the tall gilded gates of the Fort Hamilton Estate.

  Her driver pulled up before the neo-Georgian official residence.

  In the modern era, the lieutenancies of New York and Long Island were purely ceremonial rather than administrative hangovers from the coming and froing which had eventually confirmed the ‘united’ status of the old ‘twin colony’ of New York-Long Island early in the twentieth century, honourable sinecures for great men of the Empire well-past their prime. To Melody’s consternation her driver had jumped out and run around the car to hold her door open as she clambered out into the warm gloom of the night.

  The young woman who tripped down the steps to greet her was immediately familiar from television news and current affairs programmes.

  The Governor’s daughter…

  “Welcome to Fort Hamilton,” smiled the attractive twentysomething holding out her right hand in welcome beneath the classically-styled columns of the marble portico.

  Behind her a soldier in the customary antique red coat came to attention and presented arms; in this case not with the normal ‘for show’ nineteenth century carbine but with a wickedly functional-looking modern black .303-calibre Birmingham Military Arsenal assault rifle.

  Melody did her best not to start with alarm.

  She grimaced uncertainly at the younger woman – whom she knew to be either on the cusp of or a few weeks beyond her twenty-sixth birthday – the youngest daughter of the Governor of New England, the Honourable Henrietta De L’Isle.

  Melody opened her mouth to speak but was beaten to the verbal punch.

  “I’m so pleased to meet you at last,” Henrietta declared enthusiastically, almost but not quite gushingly exited, albeit in a very ladylike way. “I’ve heard so much about you!”

  “Really…”

  That was an astonishingly dumb blond thing to say…

  “Yes! Really! The first woman to be appointed Detective Inspector in the First Thirteen,” Henrietta De L’Isle continued, trying and failing not to gush. “And only the third woman ever to be admitted to the Virginia Bar. You are an example to us all!”

  “Oh, well, thank you for saying so…”

  The women had shaken hands.

  The evening turned even more surreal as Melody followed Henrietta De L’Isle, who, unlike her was wearing a tailored grey dress which suited her girlishly pert figure a lot better than it did the stick thin models on the catwalks of either the Old or the New Worlds. Melody almost felt dowdy in her slacks and jacket; consoling herself with the thought that she had dressed that morning for police work, not an official reception.

  All sartorial considerations were swiftly banished to the back of her mind when she was ushered into a glittering room laid out and furnished in the opulent colonial splendour so frowned upon in recent times, to be greeted by the still lithe, handsomely distinguished visage of the Lord De L'Isle, Dudley and Northampton, by the grace of God and the hand of His King George V, Governor of the Crown Colonies of the Commonwealth of New England, Edward Philip Cornwallis Sidney, 7th Viscount De L'Isle, who rose stiffly to his feet and extended his right hand to her in welcome with the masterful formal-informality of a man born to be Viceroy of the glittering rough diamond in the crown of empire.

  “In past times Governors of Long Island would rise at dawn and look out of the windows of this building across Hell’s Gate towards the New Jersey shore in fear of a new rebellion, or the sight of French or Spanish galleons – a raiding or an invasion fleet - riding the tide into the Upper Bay,” the great man half-smiled, well accustomed to having to deftly put dazzled and tremulous visitors at their ease. “These days, the threats to New England are more complex and often decidedly opaque. Don’t you think, Chief Inspector?”

  Melody Danson shook the great man’s hand desperately attempting to rally her scattered wits.

  “That might almost be the motto of the Colonial Security Service, sir,” she replied before she had coordinated her brain and her mouth.

  Oh, God! Did I really just say that?

  And to the Governor!

  And shouldn’t I have addressed him as ‘your excellency’?

  Melody smiled unhappily.

  “Forgive me, this is all a little unreal. I can’t even remember how I should address you…sir?”

  An involuntary smile twisted, ever so fleetingly at De L’Isle’s lips.

  “We are meeting informally. There’s no need for all that ‘your excellency’ nonsense. ‘Sir’ suffices, Chief Inspector.” The Governor moved on. “You’ve already met my daughter, my confidential private secretary, Henrietta,” he said, nodding to the younger woman.

  His charm was of the effortless, noblesse oblige kind and despite herself Melody relaxed a fraction.

  My hair is a mess, I’ve got hardly any make-up on and I’m dressed like an absolute frump!

  But that might not be a problem…

  Her brain, having threatened to stall, was rapidly spooling up to speed again.

  If these people cared a damn about any of that I would not be standing here shaking hands with them!

  She was recovering her poise, studying her surroundings.

  The meeting was taking place in a long, high-c
eilinged room which was part office, with a big desk by the windows; and part-morning come reception room with a surfeit of upright, comfortable chairs arranged around several low tea-coffee tables.

  “Please, take a seat Detective Inspector,” De L’Isle invited, and soon he, his daughter and the detective had settled around a small, low tea table. “This must all seem highly irregular,” he apologised. “But I had to stay on in New York on Empire Day business anyway, interviews with the Governor of the Colony and so forth, confidence building exercises in the wake of what happened last year, and frankly,” he smiled tight-lipped, “there are some things best attended to personally, and very, very discreetly. You and I may not meet again until this thing is over. After today Henrietta will be your contact with the Governor’s Office. Discretion is very much the word.”

  Melody said nothing, her thoughts racing at thousands of miles an hour, colliding, sparking, tumbling head over heels jostling for attention. She squeezed her eyes shut, forced herself to focus.

  The great man clearly planned to explain all.

  However, only in his own good time.

  “You will no doubt be aware that serious questions have been raised about the competence of the original inquiry into the tragic events surrounding the Empire Day celebrations of last year. I believe that detectives speak of a golden period or hours or days after a major crime, which when over often sees the trail go…dead. Something similar may have happened in the confusion and alarms of Empire Day week last year. Please, I infer no criticism of the CSS or of your own professional colleagues, Chief Inspector. We are beyond recriminations which will help nobody except our enemies. Nevertheless, we find ourselves in a most unsatisfactory place. Questions remain. To date, those questions have led to delays in the setting of trial dates and in the release of a number of persons who were, probably, unjustly implicated in the…affair. Although, I am extremely reluctant to be seen to interfere in the domestic, in-house judicial affairs of an individual colony, I would be remiss in my duty if I allowed things to…drift. Therefore, while I have concluded that a full-scale public inquest into the failings of New York’s investigation into the Empire Day atrocity would be in nobody’s interest; that I must, for my own peace of mind establish, that when eventually those responsible come to trial justice will not only be done but be seen to be done.”

  Melody realised that the Governor’s daughter was frowning, scrunching up her fading childhood freckles.

  People unfairly remarked that Henrietta- who insisted only on the title ‘Honourable’ rather than ‘Lady’ which she was still entitled to as the unmarried daughter of such a senior member of the British aristocracy, was the plainest of the De L’Isle girls; which was horribly unfair because any woman would suffer, superficially at least with extraordinarily dazzling elder sisters who had, to the delight of the popular press, both made fairy tale marriages, the one to a playboy French aristocrat, the other to a movie star. Her sisters were tall, willowy beauties with no pretensions or ambitions other than to play the role of society hostesses stepping in and out of the limelight. Not that Henrietta did herself any favours. Typically, this evening she had her long auburn hair pinned up in an old-fashioned bun despite wearing an expensive French designer frock which had probably cost the equivalent of two or three months of Melody’s salary, and she seemed a little…buttoned up.

  Nonetheless, everybody said she did a marvellous job standing in for her mother, acting like a woman twice her age. It was also said that in her role as her father’s some-time ‘road manager’ she was not afraid to put noses ‘out of joint’!

  Henrietta looked to Melody and to the father and back again, her grey blue eyes impatient.

  “Father,” she murmured, prompting him to get to the point.

  Lord De L’Isle grimaced an apology.

  “My hand in this has been forced because I have learned that there is going to be a scandal,” the Governor of New England sighed. “Specifically, John Murray, the Chief Magistrate of New York has resigned his post and his Deputy, whose automatic assumption of the powers of Director of Public Prosecutions of this Colony I cannot be seen to be impeding, in any way, is a man cut from a no-nonsense cloth who will almost certainly wish to hurry the case of ‘the Fielding family’ to a swift and brutal denouement. Time, therefore, is short. I blame myself, I should have intervened earlier. However, things are what they are.”

  “Forgive my impertinence, sir,” Melody Danson put to the man who was constitutionally the final arbiter of practically everything in New England, “but I’m a little unclear where I come in…”

  “I want you to audit the investigative process which has brought us to this pass, Detective Inspector.”

  No, that was far too good to be true.

  And bad…

  Surely, the most powerful man in New England was not suborning a police officer to pick holes in the prosecution papers of a capital trial? If she accepted that sort of poisoned chalice she was going to be on her own if anything went wrong…

  “Without embarrassing the Governor’s Office,” she retorted mildly, thinking out aloud.

  “I was not going to put it in such crass terms,” Lord De L’Isle conceded, in no way offended. “But yes, that’s about the size of it. I wanted to put the situation to you face to face because frankly, what I am asking you to do is far and beyond the normal call of a police officer’s duty. Moreover, in the nature of things I may, at some stage, have no choice but to disown you.”

  That was refreshingly honest!

  “What if I say ‘thank you’ but ‘no thank you’ sir?”

  The Governor smiled.

  Melody shook her head.

  “No, forget I said that, sir. You’d move on to the second name on your list. You have a list, yes?”

  “Yes,” Henrietta de L’Isle confirmed. “But unfortunately, we’re running out of time.”

  “In any event, I am reliably informed that you are the best person for the job, Detective Inspector,” her father re-joined.

  Melody tried and failed not to blush as red as a beetroot. Accepting compliments had never been her strong suit.

  “I must be back in Philadelphia, I have meetings early tomorrow morning,” the Governor declared, preparing to rise to his feet.

  Melody was perfectly calm now.

  “I still don’t really understand why you are unwilling to allow the judicial process to take its course, sir?”

  Lord De L’Isle thought about this.

  “I represent the King and the majesty of the law in New England; if I ever allow either institution to fall into disrepute I should deserve to have my right hand cut off. The Empire is the law and the law, is the Empire; we live in an inherently unequal world but every citizen of the Empire is entitled to be treated alike, and fairly on their day in court under that law. Injustice has been the death of Empires in past eras; it will not be the death of the British Empire. Not while I live!”

  Melody felt bound to point out the flaw in everything she had heard to date.

  “I have absolutely no authority to go around looking under stones and re-examining witnesses, sir?”

  Again, Henrietta looked to her father. This time seeking some kind of cue, as to what to do next.

  De L’Isle hesitated, choosing his words with infinite care.

  “I took the liberty of filing papers transferring you to the Compliance Department of the Attorney General of New England, Sir Cedric Harding’s office. Those papers will be on Sir Cedric’s desk by now.”

  Okay, I ought to be feeling a little taken for granted by now.

  Every police officer – well, the ones who were paying attention – knew that under an Act of Parliament ratified by eleven of the First Thirteen Colonial Legislatures in the latter 1960s – North and South Carolina had never placed the Act before its Legislative Council – had agreed to move towards operating under a common legal framework. Over the decades the First Thirteen had fallen out of alignment with each other and e
ven the most egregiously ‘independent’ of them had recognised that this was bad news, inhibiting trade and business and generally making their citizens’ lives more complicated than they had any need to be. The ‘fix’ which had been submitted to and accepted by Parliament in Westminster was that while each colony retained the right to enact new legislation in traditionally appropriate spheres, each to their own circumstances as established by custom, practice and local exigencies, etcetera, and would gain new ‘colonial prerogatives’ as a quid pro quo, the colonial signatories to the Act had solemnly agreed to the implementation of specific ‘inspection and assessment’ protocols to guarantee the ‘general conformity’ of their systems of jurisprudence.

  This meant that the Foreign and Colonial Office and the Governor of New England had the authority, very rarely exercised, to test and inspect – audit was in this respect something of a weasel word for public consumption invoking notions of harmless, unobtrusive accounting checks and balances - in extraordinary circumstances, all aspects of a given colony’s justice system.

  To Melody Danson’s certain knowledge, the jurisprudence of the Crown Colony of New York had never previously been subjected to such scrutiny.

  “It is my feeling that the Governor of the colony will not wish it to be widely-known that the performance of his police service and judiciary is under the spotlight,” Lord De L’Isle remarked. “Besides, it is standard procedure to issue a colony-wide ‘D’ Notice on Compliance Department investigations, reporting of which prior to their conclusion is considered a contempt of court punishable by up to three years penal servitude.”

  This sounded Draconian but Melody could recollect no instance of any editor or journalist actually going to prison for disregarding such a secrecy notice in the last twenty years.