Betrayal At Lisson Grove Part 9

'Touche,' she said quietly.

They did not speak again for quite some time, and when they did it was about the difference between society in London and in Dublin. Narraway described quite a lot of the city itself and some of the surrounding countryside with such vividness she began to look forward to seeing it herself. He even spoke of the festivals, saints' days, and other occasions that people celebrated.

When the train drew into Holyhead they went straight to the boat. After a brief meal, they returned to their cabins for the crossing. They would arrive in Dublin before morning, but were not required to disembark until well after daylight.

Dublin was utterly different from London, but at least to begin with Charlotte was too occupied with getting ash.o.r.e at Dun Laoghaire, and seeing that she did not lose sight of the porter with her luggage, or of Narraway, to have time to stare about her. Then there was the ride into the city itself, which was just waking up to the new day, the rain-washed streets clean and filling with people about their business. She saw plenty of horse traffic mostly trade at this hour; the carriages and broughams would come later. The few women were laundresses, maids going shopping, or factory workers wearing thick skirts and with heavy shawls wrapped around them, much as they would have been at home.

Narraway hailed a cab and they set out to look for accommodation. He seemed to know exactly where he was going and gave very precise directions to the driver, but he did not explain them to her. They rode in silence. He stared out of the window and she watched his face, the harsh early morning light showing even the smallest lines around his eyes and mouth. It made him seem older, far less sure of himself.

She wondered what he was remembering as he watched streets that must be familiar to him. How much of the pa.s.sion or the grief of his life had been here? She was glad she did not know, and it seemed intrusive even to think about it. She hoped that she never had to learn.

She thought of Daniel and Jemima, and hoped Minnie Maude was settling in. They had seemed to like her, and surely anyone Gracie vouched for would be good. She could not resent Gracie's happiness, but she missed her painfully at times like this.

That was absurd: there had never been another time like this. All the past cases and adventures had been in London, or very near it. Here she was in a foreign country, with Victor Narraway, riding around the streets looking for lodgings. Little wonder Mrs Waterman was scandalised. Perhaps she was right to be. Charlotte had no idea where she was, and not much more as to what possible use she could be, to Narraway or to Pitt.

And Pitt was in France, pursuing someone who thought nothing of slitting a man's throat in the street and leaving him to die as if he were no more than a sack of rubbish. Pitt didn't even have a clean s.h.i.+rt, socks or personal linen. Narraway had sent him money, but he would need more. He would need help, information, probably the a.s.sistance of the French police. Would Narraway's replacement provide all this? Was he loyal? Was he even competent?

And worse than any of that, if he was Narraway's enemy, then he was almost certainly Pitt's enemy as well, only Pitt would not know that. He would go on communicating as if it were Narraway at the other end.

She turned away and looked out of the window on her own side. They were pa.s.sing handsome Georgian houses and, every now and then, public buildings and churches of cla.s.sical elegance. There were glimpses of the river, which she thought did not seem to curve and wind as much as the Thames.

She saw several horse-drawn trams, not unlike those in London, and in the quieter streets children playing with spinning tops or jumping ropes.

Twice she drew in breath to ask Narraway where they were going, but each time she looked at the tense concentration on his face, she changed her mind.

Finally they stopped outside a house in Molesworth Street in the south-eastern part of the city.

'Stay here.' Narraway came suddenly to attention. 'I shall be back in a few moments.' Without waiting for her acknowledgement he got out, strode across the footpath and rapped sharply on the door of the nearest house. After less than a minute it was opened by a middle-aged woman in a white ap.r.o.n, her hair tied in a knot on top of her head. Narraway spoke to her and she invited him in, closing the door again behind him.

Charlotte sat and waited, suddenly cold now and aware of how tired she was. She had slept poorly last night, aware of the rather cramped cabin and the constant movement of the boat. But far more than anything physical, it was the rashness of what she was doing that kept her awake. Now, alone, waiting, she wished she were anywhere but here. Pitt would be furious. What if he had returned home to find the children alone with a maid he had never seen before? They would tell him Charlotte had gone off to Ireland with Narraway, and of course they would not even be able to tell him why!

She was s.h.i.+vering when Narraway came out again and spoke to the driver, then at last to her.

'There are rooms here. It is clean and quiet and we shall not be noticed, but it is perfectly respectable. As soon as we are settled I shall go to make contact with the people I can still trust.' He looked at her face carefully. She was aware that she must look rumpled and tired, and probably ill-tempered into the bargain. She had not a very flattering picture of herself in her mind. A smile would help: it normally did. But in the circ.u.mstances it would also be idiotic.

'Please wait for me,' he went on. 'Rest, if you like. We may be busy this evening. Unfortunately we have no time to waste.'

He held out his arm to a.s.sist her down, meeting her eyes earnestly, questioning, before letting go. He was clearly concerned for her, but she was glad that he did not say anything more. It had all been discussed. It was inevitable there would be times of terrible doubt, perhaps even times when she was quite sure they would fail, and the whole undertaking was completely irresponsible. They must be endured with as much fort.i.tude and as little complaint as possible. She should not forget that it was his career that was ruined, not hers, and it was he who would in the end have to bear it alone. He was the one accused of theft and betrayal. No one would blame her for any of this.

But of course there was every likelihood that they would blame Pitt.

'Thank you,' she said with a quick smile, then turned away to look at the house. 'It seems very pleasant.'

He hesitated, then with more confidence he went ahead of her to the front door. When the landlady opened it for them, he introduced Charlotte as Mrs Pitt, his half-sister, who had come to Ireland to meet with relatives on her mother's side.

'How do you do, ma'am?' Mrs Hogan said cheerfully. 'Welcome to Dublin, then. A fine city it is.'

'Thank you, Mrs Hogan. I look forward to seeing it very much,' Charlotte replied.

Narraway went out almost immediately. Charlotte began by unpacking her case and shaking the creases out of the few clothes she had brought. There was only one dress suitable for any sort of formal occasion, but she had some time ago decided to copy the noted actress, Lillie Langtry, and add different effects to it each time: two lace shawls, one white, one black; special gloves; a necklace of haemat.i.te and rock crystals; earrings; anything that would draw the attention from the fact that it was the same gown. At least it fitted remarkably well. Women might be perfectly aware that it was the same one each time, but with luck, men would notice only that it became her.

As she hung it up in the wardrobe along with a good costume with two skirts, and a lighter-weight dress, she remembered the days when Pitt had still been in the police, and she and Emily had tried their own hands at helping the detection.

Of course, at that time Pitt's cases had been rooted in human pa.s.sions, and occasionally social ills, but never secrets of state. There had been no reason why he would not discuss them with her, and benefit from her greater insight into society's rules and structures, and especially the subtler ways of women whose lives were so different from his own he could not guess what lay behind their manners and their words.

At times it had been dangerous; almost always it had involved tragedy, and afterwards a greater anger at injustice, and compa.s.sion for confusion or grief. But she had loved the adventure of both heart and mind, the cause for which to fight. She had never for an instant been bored, or suffered that greater dullness of soul that comes when one does not have a purpose one believes in pa.s.sionately. What does one value, if one cannot imagine losing it?

She laid out her toiletries, both on the dressing table and in the very pleasant bathroom, which she shared with another female guest. Then she took off her travelling skirt and blouse, and the pins out of her hair, and lay down on the bed in her petticoat.

She must have fallen asleep because she woke to hear a tap on the door. She sat up, for a moment completely at a loss as to where she was. The furniture, the lamps on the walls, the windows were all unfamiliar. Then it came back to her and she rose so quickly she was dragging the coverlet with her.

'Who is it?' she asked.

'Victor,' he replied quietly, perhaps remembering he was supposed to be her brother, and Mrs Hogan might have excellent hearing.

'Oh.' She looked down at herself in her underclothes, hair all over the place. 'A moment, please,' she requested. There was no chance in the world of redoing her hair, but she must make herself decent. She was suddenly self-conscious of her appearance. She seized her skirt and jacket and pulled them on, misb.u.t.toning the latter in her haste and having then to undo it all and start anew. He must be standing in the corridor, wondering what on earth was the matter with her.

'I'm coming,' she repeated. There was no time to do more than put the brush through her hair, then pull the door open.

He looked tired, but it did not stop the amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes when he saw her, or a flash of appreciation she would have preferred not to be aware of. Perhaps she was not beautiful certainly not in a conventional sense but she was a remarkably handsome woman with a fair, warm-toned skin and rich hair. And she had never, since turning sixteen, lacked the shape or allure of womanhood.

'You are invited to dinner this evening,' he said as soon as he was inside the room and the door closed. 'It is at the home of John and Bridget Tyrone, whom I dare not meet yet. My friend Fiachra McDaid will escort you. I've known him a long time and he will treat you with courtesy. Will you go . . . please?'

'Of course I will,' she said instantly, as much to commit herself before she could let her caution prevent her as to a.s.sure Narraway. 'Tell me something about Mr McDaid, and about Mr and Mrs Tyrone. Any advantage I can have, so much the better. And what do they know of you? Will they be startled that you suddenly produce a half-sister?' She smiled slightly. 'And how well do you and I know each other? Do I know you work with Special Branch? We had better have grown up quite separately, because we know too little of each other. Even one mistake would arouse suspicion.'

He leaned against the doorjamb, hands in his pockets. He looked completely casual, nothing like the man she knew professionally. She had a momentary vision of how he must have been twenty years ago: intelligent, elusive, emotionally unattainable but to some women that in itself was an irresistible temptation. Before her marriage, and occasionally since, she had known women for whom that was an excitement far greater than the thought of a suitable marriage, even than a t.i.tle or money.

She stood still, waiting for his reply, conscious of her travelling costume and extremely untidy hair.

'My father married your mother, after my mother died,' he began.

She was about to express sympathy, then realised she had no idea whether his mother was dead, or if he were making it up for the story they must tell. Perhaps better she was not confused with the truth, whatever that was.

'By the time you were born,' he continued, 'I was already at university Cambridge you should know that. That is why we know each other so little. My father is from Buckinghams.h.i.+re, but he could perfectly well have moved to London, so you may have grown up wherever you did. Always better to stay with the truth where you can. I know London. I would have visited.'

'What did he do our father?' she asked. This all had an air of unreality about it, even ridiculousness, but she knew it mattered, perhaps vitally.

'He had land in Buckinghams.h.i.+re,' he replied. 'He served in the Indian Army.You don't need to have known him well. I didn't.'

She heard the sharpness of regret in his voice, anger at loss, then it was gone. 'He died some time ago. Keep the mother you have. You and I have become close only recently. This trip is in part for that purpose.' An unreadable expression flickered through his eyes and vanished again.

'Why Ireland?' she asked. 'Someone is bound to ask me.'

'My grandmother was Irish,' he replied.

'Really?' she was surprised, but perhaps she should have known it.

'No.' This time he smiled fully, with both sweetness and humour. 'But she's dead too. She won't mind.'

'I see,' she said quietly. 'And this relative that I am looking for? How is it that I remain here without finding them? In fact, why do I think to find them anyway?'

'Perhaps it is best if you don't,' he answered. 'You merely want to see Dublin. I have told you stories about it and we have seized the excuse to visit. That will flatter our hosts and be easy enough to believe. It's a beautiful city and has a character that is unique.'

She did not argue, but she felt that nothing very much would happen if she did not ask questions. Polite interest could be very easily brushed aside and met with polite and uninformative answers.

Charlotte collected her cape and they left Molesworth Street, and in the pleasant spring evening walked in companionable silence the half a mile to the house of Fiachra McDaid.

Narraway knocked on the carved mahogany door and after a few moments it was opened by an elegant man wearing a casual, velvet jacket of dark green. He was quite tall, but even under the drape of the fabric, Charlotte could see that he was a little plump around the middle. In the lamplight by the front door his features were melancholy, but as soon as he recognised Narraway, his expression lit with a vitality that made him startlingly attractive. It was difficult to know his age from his face, but he had white wings to his black hair, so Charlotte judged him to be close to fifty.

'Victor!' he said cheerfully, holding out his hand and grasping Narraway's fiercely. 'Wonderful invention, the telephone, but there's nothing like seeing someone.' He turned to Charlotte. 'And you must be Mrs Pitt, come to our queen of cities for the first time. Welcome. It will be my pleasure to show you some of it. I'll pick the best bits, and the best people, there'll be time only to taste it and no more. Your whole life wouldn't be long enough for all of it. Come in, and have a drink before we start out.' He held the door wide and after a glance at Narraway, Charlotte accepted.

Inside the rooms were elegant, very Georgian in appearance. They could easily have been in any good area of London, except perhaps for some of the pictures on the walls, and a certain character to the silver goblets on the mantel. She was interested in the subtle differences, but it would be discourteous to stare. He would not know she admired it rather than criticised. And they had no time for such indulgence anyway.

'You'll be wanting to go to the theatre,' Fiachra McDaid went on, looking at Charlotte. It was a discreet regard, pa.s.sing as no more than courteous interest, but she noticed that he was studying her quite carefully.

He offered her sherry, which she merely sipped. She needed a very clear head and she had eaten little.

'Naturally,' she answered with a smile. 'I could hardly hold my head up in society at home if I came to Dublin and did not visit the theatre.' With a touch of satisfaction she saw an instant of puzzlement in his eyes. It had been a trivial remark, such as a woman might make who cares what others thought of her rather than who she was to herself not a person Narraway would befriend by choice. What had he told this man of her? For that matter, what did Fiachra McDaid know of Narraway? She had asked, but he had not answered.

The look in McDaid's eyes, quickly masked, told her that it was quite a lot. She smiled, not to charm but in her own amus.e.m.e.nt.

He saw it, and understood.Yes, most certainly he knew quite a lot about Narraway.

'I imagine everybody of interest is at the theatre, at one time or another,' she said aloud.

'Indeed,' McDaid nodded his head. 'And many will be there at dinner tonight at the home of John and Bridget Tyrone. It will be my pleasure to introduce you to them. It is a short carriage ride from here, but certainly too far to return you to Molesworth Street on foot, at what may well be a very late hour.'

'It sounds an excellent arrangement,' she accepted. She turned to Narraway. 'I shall see you at breakfast tomorrow? Shall we say eight o'clock?'

Narraway smiled. 'I think you might prefer we say nine,' he replied.

Charlotte and Fiachra McDaid spoke of trivial things on the carriage ride, which was, as he had said, quite short. Mostly he named the streets through which they were pa.s.sing, and mentioned a few of the famous people who had lived there at some time in their lives. Many she had not heard of, but she did not say so, although she thought he guessed. Sometimes he prefaced the facts with 'as you will know', and then told her what indeed she had not known.

The home of John and Bridget Tyrone was larger than McDaid's. It had a splendid entrance hall with staircases rising on both sides, which curved around the walls and met in a gallery arched above the doorway into the first reception room. The dining room was to the left beyond that, with a table set for above twenty people.

Charlotte was suddenly aware of being an outsider privileged to be included by some means of favour owed or returned.There were already more than a dozen people present, men in formal black and white, women in exactly the same variety of colours one might have found at any fas.h.i.+onable London party. What was different was the vitality in the air, the energy of emotion in the gestures, and now and then the lilt of a voice that had not been schooled out of its native music.

She was introduced to the hostess, Bridget Tyrone, a handsome woman with very white teeth and the most magnificent auburn hair, which she had hardly bothered to dress. It seemed to have escaped her attempts like autumn leaves in a gust of wind.

'Mrs Pitt has come to see Dublin,' McDaid told her. 'Where better to begin than here?'

'Is it curiosity that brings you, then?' John Tyrone asked, standing at his wife's elbow, a dark man with bright blue eyes.

Sensing rebuke in the question, Charlotte seized the chance to begin her mission. 'Interest,' she corrected him with a smile she hoped was warmer than she felt it. 'Some of my grandmother's family were from this area, and spoke of it with such vividness I wanted to see it for myself. I regret it has taken me so long to do so.'

'I should have known it!' Bridget said instantly. 'Look at her hair, John! That's an Irish colour, if you like, now isn't it? What were their names?'

Charlotte thought rapidly. She had to invent, but let it be as close to the truth as possible, so she wouldn't forget what she had said, or contradict herself. And it must be useful. There was no point in any of this if she learned nothing of the past. Bridget Tyrone was waiting, eyes wide.

Charlotte's mother's mother had been Christine Owen. 'Christina O'Neil,' she said with the same sense of abandon she might have had were she jumping into a raging river.

There was a moment's silence. She had an awful thought that there might really be such a person. How on earth would she get out of it, if there were?

'O'Neil,' Bridget repeated. 'Sure enough there are O'Neils around here. Plenty of them.You'll find someone who knew her, no doubt. Unless, of course, they left in the famine. Only G.o.d Himself knows how many that'd be. Come now, let me introduce you to our other guests, because you'll not be knowing them.'

Charlotte accompanied her obediently and was presented to one couple after another. She struggled to remember unfamiliar names, trying hard to say something reasonably intelligent, and at the same time gain some sense of the gathering, and whom she should seek to know better. She must tell Narraway something more useful than that she had gained an entry to Dublin society. At that rate it could take half a year before she acquired any information that led to finding who had betrayed him into the wilderness.

She introduced her fict.i.tious grandmother again.

'Really?' Talulla Lawless said with surprise, raising her thin, black eyebrows as soon as Charlotte mentioned the name, now as determined to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. She would gain nothing by timidity, and time was short. 'You sound fond of her,' Talulla continued. She was a slender woman, almost bony, but with marvellous eyes, wide and bright, and of a shade neither blue nor green.

Charlotte thought of the only grandmother she knew, and found impossibly cantankerous. 'She told me wonderful stories of Dublin society, of the intrigue,' she lied confidently. 'I dare say they were a little exaggerated, but there was a truth in them of the heart, even if events were a trifle inaccurate in the retelling.'

Talulla exchanged a brief glance with a fair-haired man called Phelim O'Conor, but it was so quick that Charlotte barely saw it.

'Am I mistaken?' Charlotte asked apologetically.

'Oh, no,' Talulla a.s.sured her. 'That would be long ago, no doubt?'

Charlotte swallowed. 'Yes, about twenty years, I think. There was a cousin she wrote to often, or it maybe it was her cousin's wife. A very beautiful woman, so my grandmama said.' She tried rapidly to calculate the age Kate O'Neil would be were she still alive. 'Perhaps a second cousin,' she amended. That would allow for a considerable variation.

'Twenty years ago,' Phelim O'Connor said slowly. 'A lot of trouble then. But you wouldn't be knowing that in London. Might have seemed romantic to your grandmother, Charles Stewart Parnell, and all that. G.o.d rest his soul. Other people's griefs can be like that.' His face was smooth, almost innocent, but there was a darkness in his voice.

'I'm sorry,' Charlotte said quietly. 'I didn't mean to touch on something painful. Do you think perhaps I shouldn't ask?' She looked from Phelim to Talulla, and back again.

He gave a very slight shrug. 'No doubt you'll hear anyway. If your cousin's wife was Kate O'Neil, she's dead now, G.o.d forgive her . . .'

'How can you say that?' Talulla spat the words between her teeth, the muscles in her thin jaw clenched tight. 'Twenty years is nothing! The blink of an eye in the history of Ireland's sorrows.'

Charlotte tried to look totally puzzled, and guilty. Actually she was beginning to be a little afraid. The rage in Talulla was like the touch on an exposed nerve.

'Because there's been new blood, and new tears since then,' Phelim answered, speaking to Talulla, not Charlotte. 'And new issues to address.' He left the sentence hanging as if there were more to say.

Good manners might have dictated that Charlotte apologise again and withdraw, leaving them to deal with the memories in their own way, but she thought of Pitt in France, alone, trusting in Narraway to back him up. She feared there were only Narraway's enemies in Lisson Grove now, people who might so easily be Pitt's enemies too. Good manners were a luxury for another time.

'Is there some tragedy my grandmother knew nothing of?' she asked innocently. 'I'm sorry if I have woken an old bereavement, or injustice. I certainly did not mean to. I'm so sorry.'

Talulla looked at her with undisguised harshness, a slight flush in her sallow cheeks. 'If your grandmother's cousin was Kate O'Neil, she trusted an Englishman, an agent of the Queen's government who courted her, flattered her into telling him her own people's secrets, then betrayed her to be murdered by those whose trust she gave away.'

O'Conor winced. 'I dare say she loved him. We can all be fools for love,' he said wryly.