And at last… all the mysteries are revealed. This is the last chapter of the story, and we will FINALLY know exactly what's going on. 😉
"Every solution to every problem is simple. It's the distance between the two where the mystery lies." ― Derek Landy, Skulduggery Pleasant
Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: eyeon
According to the delicate gradations of status and style, there were few appropriate places in Evelyn Napier's club for him to receive the guest who sat across the table from him now. The rooms in the inner sanctum of this aristocratic preserve simply wouldn't do, no more than they could have held a visiting lady. A man of his present guest's status was in such a delicate situation, after all. He was the head of Scotland Yard, a most respectable position. Yet no-one so closely connected to the class of city functionaries represented by the police force as was William Melville could possibly be a member of the Marlborough club, or any of the other exclusive clubs on the Pall Mall or along St. James' in London. It was an immutable law of the universe, as surely as any man connected to trade would be barred, no matter how wealthy he might be, or one of those tiresome suffragette ladies who operated under the silly misconception that the fair sex ought to be admitted to the clubs as anything more than the ornamental guests of men.
Yet Melville was also a cousin to the Branksomes, the third son of a fourth son of an impoverished baronet. Forced to make his own way and earn his own living, he was nonetheless connected to the aristocracy who held neither obligation. It was a difficult question, best solved by admitting him to one of the private, impersonal rooms reserved for visitors, where he and Napier had dined.
The cigars and port had come out a few minutes earlier, and a bit more desultory conversation exchanged. Then Melville drained the last of the port, set his glass on the table, and gave the other man a very direct look from his piercing eyes that had cowed many a criminal. Napier had the distinct feeling that they were getting down to business at last.
"So," said Melville. "I've been given to understand that the outcome of your… assignment….was a successful one."
"Yes, er…" Napier was not quite sure how to address his cousin now. He'd never spent more than a few moments with him in a setting that was not purely social; in the last few months, ever since he'd accepted this assignment, they had nearly always communicated through intermediaries. He couldn't very well call the man Cousin William, as he would at a country house dinner. No, he decided, not here, and not under these circumstances. Yet he couldn't very well avoid any specific form of address. And I'll be damned if I'm going to call him 'sir,' he decided. "Yes, Mr. Melville," he finally said.
Melville nodded, as if he understood Napier's dilemma but would not waste his time in any comments about it. "You made a rather interesting choice in Downton Abbey as the setting for the solution of the problems represented by Mr. Pamuk."
Napier tensed briefly, wondering if the other man were about to scold him for drawing unnecessary attention to the death.
"It was very well done," Melville went on. "A most clever choice." A rare hint of a smile creased his impassive face. "The small bit of resulting commotion, such as it was, simply centered around the fact that he had died in the house. You knew that the Crawleys would do everything necessary to hush up the slightest breath of scandal, and so they did. The story is, and will be, minimized rather than amplified."
Evelyn nodded, hoping that his face gave nothing away. What Melville had said made sense, of course. The code of his own class was to avoid scandal touching the family at all costs, down to the slightest whisper. The Crawleys had every reason to keep the story quiet, even though he was sure that the Earl of Grantham knew no more than that a prominent diplomat had died in his house.
"And what of your informant at Downton?" asked Melville.
Napier stared into the ruby red depths of the port remaining in his own glass. "I led him to believe that I poisoned Mr. Pamuk out of a fit of jealousy over Mary Crawley's affections."
William Melville raised an eyebrow skeptically.
"I'm not sure if he entirely believes that was all there was to it, or if he has some suspicion of the truth," said Evelyn. "But it doesn't matter. Either way, he isn't the sort to tell anyone else about any of it. John Bates is a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut."
"Very well." The other man gave a short, sharp nod. "The final result was all that we could have wished for, and that is the important point."
But he does not look especially happy about it, thought Napier. I wonder why? "Er- I do realize that this assassination was of great political importance," he said a bit awkwardly.
Melville raised his eyebrows. "It was indeed, but I do not think it particularly wise to refer to it as such."
"Sorry," Napier muttered.
"It's quite all right here, I suppose. But all too often, the walls have ears. You will forgive the suspicions of a spymaster." Melville gave another spare, small smile. "They never quite leave me. At any rate, yes. It was a success. The vote has taken place, the son of the Turkish ambassador was not present through most unfortunate circumstances, and the result went in the direction that we wished."
Napier breathed a sigh of relief. "I wasn't entirely sure it would."
"The matter was extremely close. Mr. Pamuk may well have swayed the argument in favor of what he wanted—which was certainly not Albanian independence. But because Kemal Pamuk was not there, and did not cast his vote, Turkey has renounced all rights over Albania," said Melville. He did not sound happy when he said it, but then William Melville never looked happy, per se. What struck Evelyn was that he did not seem particularly satisfied, either.
"But that's what we wanted, isn't it? I mean, it's a good outcome, I should think," he said a bit awkwardly.
"Yes. And yet, even the very wise cannot see all ends," said Melville. "The Balkans war should wrap up now, at least. After that… no man can say."
Napier looked at his cousin, and he had a sudden flash of intuition. "You didn't think that this was a particularly good idea, did you?"
William Melville's face remained impassive, but Napier knew that he had hit the mark. Head of Scotland Yard or not, Melville had to answer to others who possessed even higher authority than himself. Napier suddenly understood that whomever these people in the upper echelons of government might be, they were the ones who had orchestrated Pamuk's assassination, against his cousin's better judgement. Prime Minister Asquith, perhaps? Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff? Napier knew these smooth-faced men only from house parties and social events, and he vastly preferred to keep it that way. It all represented a wasps' nest that he had no desire to stir up. He hurried on.
"Then you think that there may be another conflict in the offing?"
Melville poured himself some more port and took a long sip before answering. "If you strike at a tiger, you had best kill it. If you only wound and corner such a dangerous beast, then it just may strike back with renewed fury. That is what we may learn about the Ottoman Empire."
"But…"
"Consider the complications, Mr. Napier. Their treaties with Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm and the deposed Sultan Mehmed the Fifth. Together, with their wounded pride, and their ambitions. What might they do?"
"Surely you don't mean another war?" exclaimed Napier.
Melville simply looked back at him. A chill seemed to eddy through the room.
"Well—" Melville sighed at last. "We can do more than to play the hand we are given. By the way, will you see Robert Crawley anytime soon, do you think?"
"Oh—I see him all the time at the odd thing," said Napier. "So I'm sure I shall. I'll have enough opportunities to make sure that he doesn't have any remaining doubts about what happened with Pamuk, but I really don't believe that he does."
"Good." Melville gave him another glance from shrewd grey eyes. "Will you visit Downton again soon? Or have you spent sufficient time there?"
Napier squirmed just slightly. He wondered if Melville knew that he'd spent the morning there, when he really should not have done so and ought instead to have left immediately. e wouldn't He wouldn't put it past the man. As Melville himself had put it, he was a spymaster, and it was his business to know everything.
"I really couldn't say," he finally said.
"Ah." Melville glanced at his watch. "I must take my leave of you now, I fear. Goodbye, Mr. Napier. Do give my compliments to your father."
Evelyn Napier sat silently for a few minutes after Melville had left the room, swirling the remainder of the port round in his glass. He supposed that it wasn't wise for them to be seen together on the street, for all that they were known to be cousins and might have been meeting for nothing more than a social drink and dinner. At any rate, Melville would know whether it was or not, and Napier would defer to his judgment. The problem was that he could not keep his own mind from running over thoughts he would have preferred to avoid.
Did Melville know about his own feelings for Mary? The man knew everything, he supposed. And he was sure that from Melville's point of view, his hopeless love for Mary Crawley meant nothing one way or the other. If his feelings had led him to contain the murder mystery among the aristocracy, then so much the better, but beyond that, it did not signify.
No. It really didn't. Not to anyone. And to himself, least of all. He would do best to put thoughts of Mary out of his head entirely, and he knew it. I'll manage to do it this time, he thought. I really shall.
Yet he could not stop remembering her walking by the stream, her face alight when she looked up at Matthew Crawley, a look that he himself had never received and never would. Mary laughing in the candlelight at dinner, that lovely face of hers turned towards the doomed Pamuk. Mary looking wearily at Patrick Crawley over the table at that last Christmas at Downton, when Patrick had been a dead man walking, only a few months from a watery grave in the North Atlantic. That was the look that Napier knew he himself would have received if he'd been in Patrick's position, the Downton heir expected to marry Mary and sire a string of sons. Perhaps I will never really be able to rid myself of this longing for her, he thought. I suppose my cousin Melville would say that a man cannot afford the unwise luxury of personal affections that will never be returned, but there it is.
That turned his thoughts in a slightly different direction. But then, I already know I'm not cut out for this spy business, not really, Napier though. He had followed his father's footsteps in the upper echelons of the foreign office, and he had agreed to his part in Pamuk's removal once the importance was explained to him months earlier. He supposed he had already known that the senior Lord Branksome had always acted as a spy when necessary. His father hid a keen intelligence and a ruthless will behind the façade of a dull country squire, interested in nothing but hunting and horse racing. The family duty had been passed down to Napier himself, and he could see that in this case, it had been necessary. No-one could spy on the aristocracy but a member of its own, after all. But this, Napier vowed, was the first and last time he would agree to help William Melville.
He left the room, heading towards the front vestibule for his hat and then walking out into the street. The air was soft and warm with the faint acrid tinge of coal smoke that London always had, even on the balmiest and clearest evenings, the clatter of carriage-wheels mingling with the purr of an occasional car engine, a backdrop to the sounds of his footsteps on the cobblestones. He was trying his hardest to concentrate only on the sights and sounds and sensations of the night, to keep his mind clear of thought. But he could not erase the image of Mary Crawley's face, as surely as if her dark eyes and red lips hung in the air before him. Perhaps he would always love Mary without hope, he knew that; perhaps there would always be anger mixed with his love; most likely of all, the guilt of his failure would always haunt him. He had not stopped Pamuk in time. He would always know that he had not saved her from whatever had happened next, and the constant threat of ruin that would hang over her head from then on.
Strangely, he remembered Edith's face too, her awkward jealousy of her sister written as clearly across her features as if etched in flaming letters. He understood Edith as well, and felt for her. He disliked her venom towards her sister, but he felt her conflict, bone-deep. In her own way, Edith wanted Mary's affection, but as a sister, and knew she would never get it no matter what she did. Napier himself wanted Mary's love, and he knew that she would never think of him as more than an acquaintance. But perhaps she really could not help it. Mary was a magnet, drawing men to her by nature, as she had drawn him. He could even feel a touch of emotion for Matthew Crawley. He ought to have resented the other man, but strangely he did not. If the other man could offer Mary happiness, that he found that he could not resent that.
"Take your chance, Matthew Crawley," Evelyn Napier whispered. "Love her, and she may love you." Slowly, softly, he walked through the warm spring night.
And in a bedroom very far away, Mary slept as peacefully as a child, as if his words had set her free.
- the end-
A/N: So that's it—FINALLY, the end of CCoMP! Thanks to everyone who stuck with this fic through its ridiculously long journey, especially ! That's what happens when you start writing a new fic right before a pandemic starts…. 😉 But there is one more chapter. In it, I want to explain some things about what I was trying to do with CCoMP and answer any questions that readers might have. (So the reviews for this chapter are the place to ask them!) I'll also include a cookie from the next fic, We Will Always Live At Downton Abbey.