*Confidential*
Note: Exploration of a question many of us must have wondered about. What would the Admiralty do if they did suspect Lt Kennedy wasn’t dead?
***************
There is always an indefinable difference between a study in a private home, and an office inhabited solely for business, even where all furnishings and appointments are the same. There is a less evident, but still certain, quality that distinguishes a senior representative of governing power.
Names are not important. The man behind the room’s desk was the man of government, specifically in this case the man of the Admiralty. The man opposite him a lesser figure; deferential but assured and certain.
“I could not be mistaken, sir. It was most certainly Kennedy.”
“Singular, but not impossible. A death in the Indies cannot be considered the same matter as a death at Deptford.”
“Others must have connived at his escape.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“May I enquire what should be done?”
“Nothing should, or shall, be done.”
“Nothing, sir? A convicted mutineer?”
“An officially dead convicted mutineer. To stir up the Renown business once again would be undesirable in the extreme. A man with nothing to lose may make any accusation that he chooses, and this time he would be in the heart of the capital, not some thankfully distant outpost. We cannot risk embarrassing disclosures.”
“He will be let alone then?”
“He will be observed, but no more than before. We must hope that he will return to wherever he has been skulking these past few years.”
“I would not have thought he will chose to remain where he is evidently in danger.”
“By that argument he should not have come at all, but he did. The handling of the Renown affair was botched from beginning to end, I regret to say. We were extremely fortunate that young man had no friends or family who wished to argue his case. However much Pellew bungled it, however, it seems his tribunal did at least rid the Navy of a dangerous troublemaker.”
“And the ones who assisted him to escape justice?”
“I doubt they are of any significance. Petty rogues, most likely. We have no doubt at least of the loyalties of the presently more significant individuals who were concerned.”
“No, sir. That has been most clearly demonstrated.”
“No, it would be a great piece of foolishness to drag up an affair we were fortunate to brush through so well. As for Kennedy, or Ayre if you prefer, he is not in a position to damage us without running his head into a noose. With reasonable fortune this affair is the last we will hear of him.”
“Yes, sir.”