Treason at Lisson Grove: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel Read online

  “If you can,” Croxdale said gently. “Do you doubt it? You have no idea who it was here in London?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “But you used the word betrayed,” Croxdale persisted. “I think advisedly so. Does that not concern you urgently, Narraway? Whom can you trust, in any Irish issue?—of which, God knows, there are more than enough.”

  “The European socialist revolutionaries are our most urgent concern now, sir.” Narraway also leaned forward. “There is a high degree of violence threatened. Men like Linsky, Meister, la Pointe, Corazath, are all quick to use guns and dynamite. Their philosophy is that a few deaths are the price they have to pay for the greater freedom and equality of the people. As long, of course, as the deaths are not their own,” he added drily.

  “Does that take precedence over treachery among your own people?” He left it hanging in the air between them, a question that demanded answering.

  Narraway had seen the death of Mulhare as tragic, but less urgent than the threat of the broader socialist plot that loomed. He knew how he had guarded the provenance of the money, and did not know how someone had made the funds appear to return to Narraway’s own personal account. Above all he did not know who was responsible, or whether it was done through incompetence—or deliberately in order to make him look a thief.

  “I’m not yet certain it was betrayal, sir. Perhaps I used the word hastily.” He kept his voice as level as he could; still, there was a certain roughness to it. He hoped Croxdale’s less sensitive ear did not catch it.

  Croxdale was staring at him. “As opposed to what?”

  “Incompetence,” Narraway replied. “And this time we covered the tracks of the transfers very carefully, so no one in Ireland would be able to trace it back to us. We made it seem like legitimate purchases all the way.”

  “Or at least you thought so,” Croxdale amended. “But Mulhare was still killed. Where is the money now?”

  Narraway had hoped to avoid telling him, but perhaps it had always been inevitable that Croxdale would have to know. Maybe he did, and this was a trap. “Austwick told me it was back in an account I had ceased using,” he replied. “I don’t know who moved it, but I shall find out.”

  Croxdale was silent for several moments. “Yes, please do, and with indisputable proof, of course. Quickly, Narraway. We need your skills on this wretched socialist business. It seems the threat is real.”

  “I’ll look into the money as soon as we have learned what West’s killers are planning,” Narraway answered. “With a little luck, we’ll even catch some of them and be able to put them away.”

  Croxdale looked up, his eyes bright and sharp. Suddenly he was no longer an amiable, rather bearlike man but tigerish, the passion in him like a coiled spring, masked only by superficial ease. “Do you imagine that a few martyrs to the cause will stop anything, Narraway? If so, I’m disappointed in you. Idealists thrive on sacrifice, the more public and the more dramatic the better.”

  “I know that.” Narraway was stung by the misjudgment. “I have no intention of giving them martyrs. Indeed, I have no intention of denying them social reform and a good deal of change, but in pace with the will of the majority of the people in the country, not ahead of it, and not forced on them by a few fanatics. We’ve always changed, but slowly. Look at the history of the revolutions of 1848. We were about the only major country in Europe that didn’t have an uprising. And by 1850, where were all the idealists from the barricades? Where were all the new freedoms so bloodily won? Every damn one of them gone, and all the old regimes back in power.”

  Croxdale was looking at him intensely, his expression unreadable.

  “We had no uprising,” Narraway went on, his voice dropped a level but the heat still there. “No deaths, no grand speeches, just quiet progress, a step at a time. Boring, perhaps unheroic, but also bloodless—and more to the point, sustainable. We aren’t back under the old tyrannies. As governments go, ours is not bad.”

  “Thank you,” Croxdale said drily.

  Narraway gave one of his rare, beautiful smiles. “My pleasure, sir.”

  Croxdale sighed. “I wish it were so simple. I’m sorry, Narraway, but you will solve this miserable business of the money that should have gone to Mulhare immediately. Austwick will take over the socialist affair until you have it dealt with, which includes inarguable proof that someone else placed it in your account, and you were unaware of it until Austwick told you. It will also include the name of whoever is responsible for this, because they have jeopardized the effectiveness of one of the best heads of Special Branch that we have had in the last quarter century, and that is treason against the country, and against the queen.”

  For a moment Narraway did not grasp what Croxdale was saying. He sat motionless in the chair, his hands cold, gripping the arms as if to keep his balance. He drew in his breath to protest but saw in Croxdale’s face that it would be pointless. The decision was made, and final.

  “I’m sorry, Narraway,” Croxdale said quietly. “You no longer have the confidence of Her Majesty’s government, or of Her Majesty herself. I have no alternative but to remove you from office until such time as you can prove your innocence. I appreciate that that will be more difficult for you without access to your office or the papers in it, but you will appreciate the delicacy of my position. If you have access to the papers, you also have the power to alter them, destroy them, or add to them.”

  Narraway was stunned. It was as if he had been dealt a physical blow. Suddenly he could barely breathe. It was preposterous. He was head of Special Branch, and here was this government minister telling him he was dismissed, with no warning, no preparation: just his decision, a word and it was all over.

  “I’m sorry,” Croxdale repeated. “This is a somewhat unfortunate way of having to deal with it, but it can’t be helped. You will not go back to Lisson Grove, of course.”

  “What?”

  “You cannot go back to your office,” Croxdale said patiently. “Don’t oblige me to make an issue of it.”

  Narraway rose to his feet, horrified to find that he was a trifle unsteady, as if he had been drinking. He wanted to think of something dignified to say, and above all to make absolutely certain that his voice was level, completely without emotion. He drew in his breath and let it out slowly.

  “I will find out who betrayed Mulhare,” he said a little hoarsely. “And also who betrayed me.” He thought of adding something about keeping this as a Special Branch fit to come back to, but it sounded so petty he let it go. “Good day.”

  Outside in the street everything looked just as it had when he went in: a hansom cab drawn up at the curb, half a dozen men here and there dressed in striped trousers.

  He started to walk without a clear idea of where he intended to go. His lack of direction was immediate, but he thought with a sense of utter emptiness that perhaps it was eternal as well. He was fifty-eight. Half an hour ago he had been one of the most powerful men in Britain. He was trusted absolutely; he held other men’s lives in his hands, he knew the nation’s secrets; the safety of ordinary men and women depended on his skill, his judgment.

  Now he was a man without a purpose, without an income—although that was not an immediate concern. The land inherited from his father supported him, not perhaps in luxury, but at least adequately. He had no family alive now, and he realized with a gathering sense of isolation that he had acquaintances, but no close friends. His profession had made it impossible during the years of his increasing power. Too many secrets, too much need for caution.

  It would be pathetic and pointless to indulge in self-pity. If he sank to that, what better would he deserve? He must fight back. Someone had done this to him. The only person he would have trusted to help was Pitt, and Pitt was in France.

  He was walking quickly up Whitehall, looking neither right nor left, probably passing people he knew and ignoring them. No one would care. In time to come, when it was known he was no longer in power, they w
ould probably be relieved. He was not a comfortable man to be with. Even the most innocent tended to attribute ulterior motive to him, imagining secrets that did not exist.

  Whitehall became Parliament Street, then he turned left and continued walking until he was on Westminster Bridge, staring eastward across the wind-ruffled water.

  He could not even return to his office. He could not properly investigate who had betrayed Mulhare. Then another thought occurred to him, which was far uglier. Was Mulhare the one who was incidental damage, and Narraway himself the target of the treachery?

  As that thought took sharper focus in his mind he wondered bitterly if he really wanted to know the answer. Who was it that he had trusted, and been so horribly mistaken about?

  He turned and walked on over the bridge to the far side, and then hailed a hansom, giving the driver his home address.

  When he reached his house he poured himself a quick shot of single-malt whiskey, his favorite Macallan. Then went to the safe and took out the few papers he had kept there referring to the Mulhare case. He read them from beginning to end and learned nothing he did not already know, except that the money for Mulhare had been returned to the account within two weeks. He had not known because he had assumed the account closed. There was no notification from the bank.

  It was close to midnight and he was still sitting staring at the far wall without seeing it when there came a sharp double tap on the window of the French doors opening onto the garden. It startled him out of his reverie, and he froze for an instant then got to his feet.

  The tap came again, and he looked at the shadow outside. He could just see the features of a man’s face beyond, unmoving, as if he wished to be recognized. Narraway thought for a moment of Pitt, but he knew it was not him. He was in France, and this man was not as tall.

  It was Stoker. He should have known that straightaway. It was ridiculous to be standing here in the shadows as if he were afraid. He went forward, unlocked the French doors, and opened them wide.

  Stoker came in, holding a bundle of papers in a large envelope, half hidden under his jacket. His hair was damp from the slight drizzle outside, as if he had walked some distance. Narraway hoped he had, and taken more than one cab, to make following or tracing him difficult.

  “What are you doing here, Stoker?” he said quietly, for the first time this evening drawing the curtains closed. It had not mattered before, and he liked the presence of the garden at twilight, the birds, the fading of the sky, the occasional movement of leaves.

  “Brought some papers that might be useful, sir,” Stoker replied. His voice and his eyes were perfectly steady, but the tension in his body, in the way he held his hands, betrayed to Narraway that he knew perfectly well the risk he was taking.

  Narraway took the envelope from him, pulled out the papers, and glanced down at them, riffling through the pages swiftly to see what they were. Then he felt the breath tighten in his chest. They referred to an old case in Ireland, twenty years ago. The memory of it was powerful, for many reasons, and he was surprised how very sharply it returned.

  It was as if he had last seen the people only a few days ago. He could remember the smell of the peat fire in the room where he and Kate had talked long into the night about the planned uprising. He could almost bring back the words he had used to persuade her it could only fail, and bring more death and more bitterness with it.

  Even with his eyes open in his mind he could see Cormac O’Neil’s fury, and then his grief. He understood it. But for all its vividness, it had been twenty years ago.

  He looked up at Stoker. “Why these?” he asked. “This case is old, it’s finished.”

  “The Irish troubles are never finished,” Stoker said simply.

  “Our more urgent problem is here now,” Narraway replied. “And possibly in Europe.”

  “Socialists?” Stoker said drily. “They’re always grumbling on.”

  “It’s a lot more than that,” Narraway told him. “They’re fanatic. It’s the new religion, with all the fire and evangelism of a holy cause. And just like Christianity in its infancy, it has its apostles and its dogma—and its splinter groups, quarrels over what is the true faith.”

  Stoker looked puzzled, as if this were all true but irrelevant.

  “The point,” Narraway said sharply, “is that they each consider the others to be heretics. They fight one another as much as they fight anyone else.”

  “Thank God,” Stoker said with feeling.

  “So when we see disciples of different factions meeting in secret, working together, then we know it is something damn big that has patched the rifts, temporarily.” Narraway heard the edge in his own voice, and saw the sudden understanding in Stoker’s eyes.

  Stoker let out his breath slowly.

  “How close are we to knowing what they’re planning, sir?”

  “I don’t know,” Narraway admitted. “It all rests on Pitt now.”

  “And you,” Stoker said softly. “We’ve got to sort this money thing out, sir, and get you back.”

  Narraway drew in his breath to answer, and felt a sudden wave of conviction, a helplessness, a loss, an awareness of fear so profound that no words were adequate.

  Stoker held out the papers he had brought. “We can’t afford to wait,” he said urgently. “I looked through everything I could that had to do with informants, money, and Ireland, trying to work out who’s behind this. This case seemed the most likely. Also, I’m pretty sure someone else has had these papers out recently.”

  “Why?”

  “Just the way they were put back,” Stoker answered.

  “Untidy?”

  “No, the opposite. Very neat indeed.”

  Now Narraway was afraid for Stoker. He would lose his job for this; indeed, if he were caught, he could even be charged with treason himself. Regardless, he wanted to read the pages, but not with Stoker present. If this were the act of personal loyalty it seemed, or even loyalty to the truth, he did not want Stoker to take such a risk. It would be better for both of them not to be caught.

  “Where did you get them?” he asked.

  Stoker looked at him with a very slight smile. “Better you don’t know, sir.”

  Narraway smiled back. “Then I can’t tell,” he agreed wryly.

  Stoker nodded. “That too, sir.”

  There was something about Stoker calling him sir that was stupidly pleasing, as if he were still who he had been this morning. Did he value such respect so much? How pathetic!

  He swallowed hard and drew in his breath. “Leave them with me. Go home, where everyone expects you to be. Come back for them when it’s safe.”

  “Sorry, sir, but they have to be back by dawn,” Stoker replied. “In fact, the sooner the better.”

  “It will take me all night to read these and make my own notes,” Narraway argued, knowing even as he said it that Stoker was right. To have them absent from Lisson Grove, even for one day, was too dangerous. Then they could never be returned. Anyone with two wits to rub together would look to Narraway for them, and then to whoever had brought them to him. He had no right to jeopardize Stoker’s life with such stupidity.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll have them read before dawn. Three o’clock. You can return then and I’ll give them to you. You can be at the Grove before light, and away again. Or you can go and sleep in my spare room, if you prefer. It would be wiser. No chance then of being caught in the street.”

  Stoker did not move.

  “I’ll stay here, sir. I’m pretty good at not being seen, but no risk at all is better. Wouldn’t do if I couldn’t get back.”

  Narraway nodded. “Up the stairs, across the landing to the left,” he said aloud. “Help yourself to anything you need.”

  Stoker thanked him and left, closing the door softly.

  Narraway turned up the gas a little more brightly, then sat down in the big armchair by the fireplace and began to read.

  The first few pages were about the Mulhare
case: the fact that a large sum of money had been promised to Mulhare if he cooperated. It was paid not as reward so much as a means for him to leave Ireland and go—not as might be expected, to America, but to Southern France, a less likely place for his enemies to seek him.

  As Narraway was painfully aware, Mulhare had not received the money. Instead he had remained in Ireland and been killed. Narraway still did not know exactly what had gone wrong. He had arranged the money, passed it through one of his own accounts. It had been kept in a different name so that it could not be traced back to him, and thus to Special Branch.

  But now, inexplicably, it had reappeared.

  The papers Stoker had brought referred to a twenty-year-old case that Narraway would like to have forgotten. It was at a time when the passion and the violence were even higher than usual.

  Charles Stewart Parnell had just been elected to Parliament. He was a man of fire and eloquence, a highly active member in the council of the Irish Home Rule League, and everything in his life was dedicated to that cause. Indeed, if he’d had his way, Ireland might at last throw off the yoke of domination and govern itself again. The horrors of the great potato famine could be put behind them. Freedom beckoned.

  Of course 1875 was before Narraway had become head of Special Branch. He was simply an agent in the field at that time, in his mid-thirties; wiry, strong, quick thinking, and with considerable charm. With his black hair and eyes, and his dry wit, he could easily have passed for an Irishman himself. When that assumption was made, as it often was, he did not deny it.

  One of the leaders of the Irish cause then had been a man called Cormac O’Neil. He had a dark, brooding nature, like an autumn landscape, full of sudden shadows, storms on the horizon. He loved history, especially that handed down by word of mouth or immortalized in old songs. He was a man built to yearn for what he could not have.

  Narraway thought of that wryly, remembering still with regret and guilt Cormac’s brother Sean, and more vividly Kate. Beautiful Kate, so fiercely alive, so brave, so quick to see reason, so blind to the wounded and dangerous emotions of others.