The Inkwell Murders – Chapter 24
Justice, Imperfect
Bryn took her out for dinner when the trial ended. This was their custom: after a major case, dinner. They had established it early in their partnership, at a point when they had both understood that the cases did not leave them alone simply because they had been solved, and that eating something good in a warm room was one of the most effective mechanisms for remembering that the world continued.
They went to a place in the east quarter that had been there for forty years and which smelled of garlic and woodsmoke and the general contentment of a restaurant that did not need to try hard. They ordered things that were more elaborate than what they usually ate and drank wine that cost more than fourteen dollars and did not talk about the case for the first forty minutes.
Then Bryn said: “Do you think it was worth it? The Reckoning. What came out.”
Nadia ate a piece of bread. “Four men’s names are on the record,” she said. “In a public document. After a hundred and fifty years.”
“But a fifth man is also dead.”
“Yes.”
They sat with that for a moment. It was not a comfortable silence, but it was an honest one.
“Edmund Castor would have read the Reckoning,” Bryn said. “And then reported to Vera Crome. And then Vera Crome would have done what she does, which is publish. Would have been the same outcome.”
“Probably.”
“So Kieran Hartwell killed a man and achieved nothing that couldn’t have been achieved without his involvement.”
“That’s usually how it goes,” Nadia said. “The thing people are afraid of happens anyway. The violence is beside the point.”
They ate for a while. The restaurant filled and warmed. A group at a nearby table was celebrating something — birthday, anniversary, some occasion that warranted candles on a table and laughter that was louder than polite. Nadia watched them.
“Hilde Roos,” she said eventually. “She applied to be permanent staff at the Archive.”
“I know.”
“Dr. Sands accepted her.”
Bryn smiled. It was a small smile, the smile of a man who did not smile easily and therefore smiled precisely. “Good,” he said.
They ordered dessert. They talked about other things — Bryn’s daughter was having a birthday the following week, Nadia’s plant had died and she was debating whether to get another, there was a new case coming in that looked straightforward and probably wasn’t. The ordinary future, arriving as it always did, regardless.
Justice was imperfect. It was always imperfect. It was what happened when the truth finally got out of the room it had been locked in and into the air, and some people were harmed by the air and some people could finally breathe it, and the city went on either way. Nadia had made her peace with this over eleven years — not fully, because she was not certain full peace with it was possible, or even healthy. But enough. Enough to order dessert and sit in a warm room and let the evening be what it was.