Charlotte and Vespasia did not resume the more serious conversation until they had returned to the sitting room and were assured of being uninterrupted.
'Do not forget for a moment that you are in Ireland,' Vespasia warned. 'Or imagine it is the same as England. It is not. They wear their past more closely wound around themselves than we do. Enjoy it while you are there, but don't let your guard down for a second. They say you need a long spoon to sup with the devil. Well, you need a strong head to dine with the Irish. They'll charm the wits out of you, if you let them.'
'I won't forget why I'm there,' Charlotte promised.
'Or that Victor knows Ireland very well, and the Irish also know him?' Vespasia added. 'Do not underestimate his intelligence, Charlotte, or his vulnerability. By the way, you have not mentioned how you intend to carry this off without causing a scandal that might damage Narraway's good name further, but would certainly ruin yours. I assume your sense of fear and injustice did not blind you to that?' There was no criticism in her voice, only concern.
Charlotte felt the blood hot in her face. 'Of course I have. I can't take a maid I don't have one, or the money to pay her fare if I did. I am going to say I am Mr Narraway's sister half-sister. That will make it decent enough.'
A tiny smile touched the corners of Vespasia's lips. 'Then you had better stop calling him "Mr Narraway" and learn to use his given name, or you will certainly raise eyebrows.' She hesitated. 'Or perhaps you already do.'
Charlotte looked into Vespasia's steady silver-grey eyes, and chose not to elaborate.
Narraway came early the following morning in a hansom cab. When Charlotte answered the door he hesitated only momentarily. He did not ask her if she were certain of the decision. Perhaps he did not want to give her the chance to waver. He called the cab driver to put her case on the luggage rack.
'Do you wish to go and say goodbye?' he asked her. His face looked bleak, with shadows under his eyes as if he had not slept in many nights. 'There is time.'
'No thank you,' she answered. 'I have already done so. And I hate long goodbyes. I am quite ready to go.'
He nodded and walked behind her across the footpath. Then he handed her up onto the seat, going round to the other side to sit next to her. The cabby apparently knew the destination.
She had already decided not to tell him that she had visited Vespasia. He might prefer to think Vespasia did not know of his dismissal. She also chose not to let him know of Mrs Waterman's suspicions. It could prove embarrassing, even as if she herself had considered the journey as something beyond business. The very thought of that made the heat rise up her face.
'Perhaps you would tell me something about Dublin,' she requested. 'I have never been there, and I realise that beyond the fact that it is the capital of Ireland, I know very little.'
The idea seemed to amuse him. 'We have a long train journey ahead of us, even on the fast train, and then a crossing of the Irish Sea. I hear that the weather will be pleasant. I hope so, because if it is rough, then it can be very violent indeed. There will be time for me to tell you all I know, from 7,500 BC until the present day.'
She was amazed at the age of the city, but she would not allow him to see that he had impressed her so easily. It might look as if she were being deliberately gentle with the grief she knew he must be feeling.
'Really? Is that because our journey is enormously long after all, or because you know less than I had supposed?'
'Actually there is something of a gap between 7,500 BC and the Celts arriving in 700 BC,' he said with a smile. 'And after that not a great deal until the arrival of St Patrick in AD 432.'
'So we can leap eight thousand years without further comment,' she concluded. 'After that surely there must be something a little more detailed?'
'The founding of St Patrick's Cathedral in AD 119?' he suggested. 'Unless you want to know about the Vikings, in which case I would have to look it up myself. Anyway, they weren't Irish, so they don't count.'
'Are you Irish, Mr Narraway?' Charlotte asked suddenly. Perhaps it was an intrusive question, and when he was Pitt's superior she would not have done it, but now the relationship was far more equal, and she might need to know. With his intensely dark looks he easily could be.
He winced slightly. 'How formal you are. It makes you sound like your mother. No, I am not Irish, I am as English as you are, except for one great-grandmother. Why do you ask?'
'Your precise knowledge of Irish history,' she answered. That was not the real reason. She asked because she needed to know more about his loyalties, even his nature and, emotionally, the truth about what had happened in the O'Neil case twenty years ago.
'It is my job to know,' he said quietly. 'As it was. Would you like to hear about the feud that made the King of Leinster ask Henry II of England to send over an army to assist him?'
'Is it interesting?'
'The army was led by Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow. He married the king's daughter and became king himself in 1171, and the Anglo-Normans took control. In 1205 they began to build Dublin Castle. "Silken" Thomas led a revolt against Henry VIII in 1534, and lost. Do you begin to see a pattern?'
'Of course I do. Do they burn the King of Leinster in effigy?'
He laughed, a brief, sharp sound. 'I haven't seen it done, but it sounds like a good idea. We are at the station. Let me get a porter. We will continue when we are seated on the train.'
The hansom pulled up as he spoke and he alighted easily. There was an air of command in him that attracted attention within seconds, and the luggage was unloaded into a wagon, the driver paid, and Charlotte walked across the pavement into the vast Paddington railway station for the Great Western rail to Holyhead.
It had great arches, as if it were some half-finished cathedral, and a roof so high it dwarfed the massed people all talking and clattering their way to the platform. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and a good deal of noise and steam and grit.
Narraway took her arm. For a moment his grasp felt strange and she was about to object, then she realised how foolish that would be. If they were parted in the crowd they might not find each other again until after the train had pulled out. He had the tickets, and he must know which platform they were seeking.
They passed groups of people, some greeting each other, some clearly stretching out a reluctant parting. Every so often the sound of belching steam and the clang of doors drowned out everything else. Then a whistle would blast shrilly, and one of the great engines would come to life, beginning the long pull away from the platform.
It was not until they had found their train and were comfortably seated that they resumed any kind of conversation. Charlotte found Narraway courteous, even considerate, but she could not help being aware of the inner tensions in him, the quick glances as if he memorised the faces of those around them, the concern, the way his hands were hardly ever completely still.
It would be a long journey to Holyhead, on the west coast. It was up to her to make it as agreeable as possible, and also to learn a good deal more about exactly what he wanted her to do.
Sitting on the rather uncomfortable seat, upright, with her hands folded in her lap, she must look very prim. It was not an image she liked, and yet now that they were embarked on this adventure together, each for his or her own reasons, she must be certain that she did not make any irretrievable mistakes, first of all in the nature of her feelings. She liked Victor Narraway. He was highly intelligent, individual, he could be very amusing at rare times, but she knew only one part of his life: the professional part, which Pitt also knew, and knew better than she ever would. Perhaps that was most of Narraway. Vespasia had hinted as much.
But Charlotte knew that there must be more, the private man. Somewhere beneath the pragmatism there had been dreams; she had seen the knowledge of their loss in his eyes.
'Thank you for the lesson on ancient Irish history,' she began, feeling clumsy. 'But I need to know far more than I do about the specific matter that we are going to investigate, otherwise I will not recognise something important if I hear it. I cannot possibly remember everything to report it accurately to you.'
'Of course not.' He was clearly trying to keep a straight face, and not entirely succeeding. 'I will tell you as much as I can. You understand there are aspects of it that are still sensitive . . . I mean politically.'
She studied his face, and knew that he also meant they were personally painful to him. He was aware that she saw it in him and there was self-mockery in his smile.
'Perhaps you could tell me something of the political situation?' she suggested. 'As much as is public knowledge to those who were interested,' she added, now it was her turn to mock herself very slightly. 'I'm afraid I was more concerned with dresses and gossip at the time of the O'Neil case.' She would have been about fifteen. 'And thinking who I might marry, of course.' 'Of course,' he nodded. 'A subject that engages most of us, from time to time. All you need to know of the political background is that Ireland, as always, was agitating for Home Rule. Various British prime ministers had attempted to put it through Parliament, and it proved their heartbreak and, for some, their downfall. This is the time of the spectacular rise of Charles Stewart Parnell. He was to become leader of the Home Rule Party in'seventy-seven.'
'I remember that name,' Charlotte agreed.
'Naturally, but this was long before the scandal that ruined him.'
'Did he have anything to do with what happened with the O'Neil family?'
'Nothing at all, at least not directly. But the fire and hope of a new leader was in the air, and Irish independence at last, and everything was different because of it.' He looked out of the window at the passing countryside, and she knew he was seeing another time and place.
'But we had to prevent it?' she assumed.
'I suppose it came to that, yes. We saw it as the necessity to keep the peace. Things change all the time; it is how they do it that must be controlled. There is no point in leaving a trail of death behind you in order merely to exchange one form of tyranny for another.'
'You don't have to justify it to me,' she told him. 'I am aware enough of the feeling. I only wish to understand something of the O'Neil family, and why one of them should hate you personally so much that twenty years later you believe he would stoop to manufacturing evidence that you are guilty of a crime you did not commit. What sort of a man was he then? Why has he waited so long to do this?'
Narraway turned his head away from the sunlight coming through the carriage window. He spoke reluctantly. 'Cormac? He was a good-looking man, very strong, quick to laugh, and quick to anger but it was usually only on the surface, and gone before he would dwell on it. But he was intensely loyal, first to Ireland above all, then to his family. He and his brother, Sean, were very close.' He smiled. 'Quarrelled like Kilkenny cats, as they say, but let anyone else step in and they'd turn on them like furies.'
'How old was he then?' she asked, picturing them in her imagination.
'Close to forty,' he replied without hesitation.
She wondered if he knew that from records, or if he had been close enough to Cormac O'Neil that such things were open between them. She had the increasing feeling that this was far more than a Special Branch operation. There was deep, many-layered personal emotion as well, but Narraway would only ever tell her what he had to.
She must remind herself that he had lost all he valued not in material goods; she agreed with Vespasia that that to him was trivial it was the loss of purpose, the fire and energy that drove him and defined who he was that most wounded him.
'Were they from an old family?' she pursued. 'Where did they live, and how?'
He looked out of the window again. 'Cormac had land to the south of Dublin Slane. Interesting place. Old family? Aren't we all supposed to go back to Adam?'
It was a mild evasion, and she was aware of it.
'He doesn't seem to have bequeathed the heritage to us equally,' she answered.
'I'm sorry. Am I being evasive?'
'Yes.'
'Cormac had enough means not to have to work more than in an occasional overseeing capacity. He and Sean between them owned a brewery as well. I dare say you know the waters of the Liffey River are famous for their softness. You can make ale anywhere, but nothing else has quite the flavour of that made with Liffey water. But you want to know what they were like.' He made that a statement.
'Yes,' Charlotte replied. 'Don't you need me to seek him out? Because if he hates you as deeply as you think, he will tell you nothing that could help.'
The light vanished from his face. 'If it's Cormac, he's thought this out very carefully. He must have known all about Mulhare and the whole operation: the money, the reason for paying it as I did, and probably that taking it instead of paying it as it was supposed to be paid, would cost Mulhare his life.'
She was not going to keep on saying she was sorry for the pain, the loss, the dishonesty of it. There was nothing to add.
'And he must also have been able to persuade someone in Lisson Grove to help him,' she pointed out.
Narraway winced. 'Yes. I've thought about that a lot.' Now his face was very sombre indeed. 'I've been piecing together all I know: Mulhare's connections; what I did with the money to try and make certain it would never be traced back to Special Branch, or to me personally, which in the knowledge of some would be the same thing; all the past friends and enemies I've made; where it happened. It always comes back to O'Neil.'
'Why would anyone at Lisson Grove be willing to help O'Neil?' Charlotte asked. It was like trying to take gravel out of a wound, only far deeper than a scraped knee or elbow. She thought of Daniel's face as he sat on one of the hard-backed kitchen chairs, dirt and blood on his legs, while she tried to clean where he had torn the skin off, and pick out the tiny stones. There had been tears in his eyes and he had stared resolutely at the ceiling, trying to stop them from spilling over and giving him away.
'Many reasons,' Narraway replied. 'You cannot do a job like mine without making enemies. You hear things about people you might very much prefer not to know, but that is a luxury you sacrifice when you accept the responsibility.'
'I know that.'
His eyes wandered a little. 'Really? How do you know that, Charlotte?'
She saw the trap and slipped around it. 'Not from Thomas. He doesn't discuss his cases since he joined Special Branch. And anyway, I don't think you can explain to someone else such a complicated thing.'
He was watching her intently now. His eyes were so dark it was hard to read the expression in them. The lines in his face showed all the emotions that had passed over them through the years: the anxiety, the laughter and the grief.
'My eldest sister was murdered, many years ago now,' she explained. 'But perhaps you know that already. Several young women were at that time. We had no idea who was responsible. We were all mistaken as to the entire nature of it. But in the course of the investigation we learned a great deal about each other that it would have been far more comfortable not to have known. But we cannot unlearn such things.' She remembered it with pain now, even though it was fourteen years ago. She had absolutely no intention whatever of telling him what those discoveries were, most especially the things she had realised about herself.
She looked up at him and saw his surprise, and a gentleness that made her acutely self-conscious. The only way to cover the discomfort was to continue talking.
'After that, when Thomas and I were married, I am afraid I meddled a good deal in many of his cases, particularly those where society people were involved. I had an advantage in being able to meet them socially, and observe things he never could. One listens to gossip as a matter of course. It is largely what society is about. But when you do it intelligently, actually trying to learn things, comparing what one person says with what another does, asking questions obliquely, weighing answers, you cannot help but learn much that is private to other people, painful, vulnerable, and absolutely none of your affair. Both pity and disillusionment can be much more painful than one has any idea, until you taste them.'
He moved his head very slightly in assent; he knew it was not necessary to speak.
For a little while they rode in silence. The rhythmic clatter of the wheels over the railway ties was comfortable, almost somnolent. It had been a difficult and tiring few days and Charlotte found herself drifting into a daze, and woke with a start. Please heaven she had not been lolling there with her mouth open!
She did not yet know anything like enough about what she could do to help.
'Do you know who it was at Lisson Grove who betrayed you?' she said aloud.
He answered immediately, as if he had been waiting for her to speak. Had he been sitting there watching her? It was an extraordinarily uncomfortable thought.
'No, I don't,' he admitted. 'I have considered several possibilities. In fact, the only people I am certain it is not are Thomas, and a man called Stoker. It makes me realise how incompetent I have been that I suspected nothing. I was always looking outward, at the enemies I knew. In this profession I should have looked behind me as well.'
She did not argue. It would have been a transparent and perhaps rather patronising attempt at giving comfort.
'So we can trust no one in Special Branch, apart from Stoker,' she concluded. 'Then I suppose we need to concentrate on Ireland. Why does Cormac O'Neil hate you so much? If I am to learn anything, I need to know what to build upon.'
This time Narraway did not look away from her, but she could hear the reluctance in his voice. He told her only because he had to. 'When he was planning an uprising I was the one who learned about it, and prevented it. I did it by turning his sister-in-law, Sean's wife, and using the information she gave me to have his men arrested and imprisoned.'
'I see.'
'No, you don't,' he said quickly, his voice tight. 'And I have no intention of telling you any further. But because of it Sean killed her, and was hanged for her murder. It is that which Cormac cannot forgive. If it had simply been a battle he would have considered it the fortunes of war. He might have hated me at the time, but it would have been forgotten, as old battles are. But Sean and Kate are still dead, still tarred as a betrayer and a wife murderer. I don't know why he waited so long. That is the one piece of it I don't understand.'
'Perhaps it doesn't matter,' she said sombrely. It was a tragic story, even ugly, and she was certain he had edited it very heavily in the telling. It might be to hide a Special Branch secret, but she was sure that he was also ashamed of his part in it.
'What do you want me to do?' she asked.
'I still have friends in Dublin, I think,' he answered. 'I cannot approach Cormac myself. I need someone I can trust, who looks totally innocent and unconnected with me. I . . . I can't even go anywhere with you, or he would suspect you immediately. Bring me the facts. I can put them together.' He seemed about to add something more, then changed his mind.
'Are you worried that I won't know what is important?' she asked. 'Or that I won't remember and tell you accurately?'
'No. I know perfectly well that you can do both.'
'Do you?' She was surprised.
He smiled, briefly. 'You tell me about helping Pitt, when he was in the police, as if you imagined I didn't know.'
'You said you didn't know about my sister Sarah,' she pointed out. 'Or was that discretion rather than truth?'
There was a look of hurt in his face, instantly covered. 'It was the truth. But perhaps I deserved the remark. I learned about you mostly from Vespasia. She did not mention Sarah, perhaps out of delicacy. And I had no need to know.'
'You had some need to know the rest?' she said with disbelief.
'Of course. You are part of Pitt's life. I had to know exactly how far I could trust you. Although given my present situation, you cannot be blamed for doubting my ability in that.'
'That sounds like self-pity,' she said tartly. 'I have not criticised you, and that is not out of either good manners or sympathy neither of which we can afford just at the moment, if they disguise the truth. We can't live without trusting someone. It is an offence to betray, not to be betrayed.'
'It is a good thing you did not marry into society,' he retorted. 'You would not have survived. Or, on the other hand, perhaps society would not have, and that might not have been so bad. A little shake-up now and then is good for the constitution.'
Now she was not sure if he were laughing at her, or defending himself. Or possibly it was both.
'So you accepted my assistance because you believe I can do what you require?' she concluded.
'Not at all. I accepted it because you gave me no alternative. Also, since Stoker is the only other person I trust, and he did not offer, nor has he the ability, I had no alternative anyway.'