“How do you know about Guyana?” James demanded.
“I read about it in one of Admiral’s Smythe’s file,” Ursula said. “It provided an account of the death of a woman, Bernice Baldeo.”
“How the hell did you get your hands on that?!”
“Chief Inspector Harrison showed it me,” Ursula said after a pause. “He told me it was important that I know just the kind of man Lord Wrotham is…”
“Why because he covered up the mess McTiernay left behind?” James said, drumming his fingers along the sill of the open window. “I’ve seen the same file myself but at least I had the benefit of asking Admiral Smythe for a few more details. He and Lord Wrotham may not have been sure whether it was McTiernay or the Count who swindled the Imperial Gold and Diamond Mining Company, but they were convinced of one thing—McTiernay murdered Bernice Baldeo, by poisoning her with cyanide.”
“What else did the Admiral tell you?”
James sighed. “Not a lot. Just that one of the aims of the company was to buy up the small holdings on the gold fields to help entrench British colonial influence in the region. Of course, thanks to the Count and McTiernay, the company ended up losing money. There were allegations of false accounts as well as fictitious gold and diamond claims, though nothing was ever proved.”
“I read the legal case brought by the investors—If Lord Wrotham suspected McTiernay and the Count of fraud, why did he defend the company in the law suit?”
“Neither Lord Wrotham nor Admiral Smythe could risk exposing the government’s original involvement in it all,” James explained. “Apparently there was already a great deal of worker unrest and the government feared that airing the company’s ‘dirty laundry’ could inflame the situation. It was the same reason why they covered up Bernice Baldeo’s death. Smythe told me that at the time there were ongoing threats of worker unrest by Indians working on the large sugar plantations in Guyana. They had to ensure that Bernice Baldeo’s death didn’t ignite further violence. Apparently, she was significant enough that any rumor of her being murdered could have destabilized the whole country. As it was, her death was regarded as a tragic accident even though as far as Smythe and Wrotham were concerned, McTiernay was the main suspect.”
“Yes,” Ursula answered. “I read that in the file too.”
“McTiernay was supposedly with her the night before her body was found. He’s a passionate man, Miss Marlow, but he was also a married man. Who knows whether it was a lover’s quarrel over him returning to his wife in Ireland or whether, as Admiral Smythe suspected, she had found out what was really happening with The Imperial Gold and Diamond Mining Company…”
“Do you think someone involved in the Baldeo case may be trying to punish Lord Wrotham and the others for what happened in the past?” Ursula asked. “Could someone have used information about Guyana to blackmail Count von Bernstorff-Hollweg into testifying against Lord Wrotham?”
The information Christopher Dobbs had provided her loomed large in her mind, even as she tried to push aside the unpleasant memories of her visit to his office.
“This isn’t about Guyana,” James responded emphatically. “This is about Ireland and McTiernay’s passionate belief in an Irish Free State. The Count was nothing but an opportunist. This is not about the past, Miss Marlow, this is about the sins of the present.”
“How can you be so sure?” Ursula replied.
She pulled out the list that Christopher Dobbs had given her. “Here’s proof that the Count and McTiernay defrauded investors in the Imperial Gold and Diamond Mining Company. I believe someone used this information to compel the Count to testify against Lord Wrotham. You may insist all you like that this is nothing but present day politics, but I think this is much more personal. I think this has roots going all the way back to the past—to Balliol. To Guyana. I don’t know what it is or how deep those roots go but this is not just about armaments, Home Rule or the threat of a war of Germany. This is about betrayal.”
Later that night, as the journey ground on and the carriage fell silent as the passengers slept, Ursula stared out at the blackness of the night, unable to sleep. Her mind kept trying to make sense of all she knew, and all she thought she knew, about Lord Wrotham, about James—even about Harrison. She glanced across to Lady Winterton, who sat opposite her leaning against the window, her face twitching as she slept. Ursula watched as her eyelids flickered but remained closed and Ursula felt a twinge of jealousy, for Lady Winterton’s grief lay years behind her. How had she managed to move on? To cast that loss aside? The hot, heavy stillness of the carriage seemed to bear down on her as Ursula squeezed her eyes shut, praying that sleep would finally take her and numb her pain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CALAIS, FRANCE
By the time Ursula and Lady Winterton reached Calais, they were feeling the absence of their maids and their usual first class accommodations acutely. The small pension that James had arranged for them to stay in overnight had little in the way of luxury. It was a clean, whitewashed cottage with a view of the channel but was without private bathrooms or running hot water. Ursula, having finished a very unsatisfactory (and cold) bath in the shared facilities was trying desperately to brush the knots from her hair, when she overheard Lady Winterton speaking with James on the stairs. Lady Winterton was on her way down to the dining room for dinner when she must have encounter James coming up the stairs.
“Archibald James,” Ursula heard Lady Winterton’s arch tone and edged her way to the bathroom door. She opened it till it was slightly ajar and peered through.
James was obscured from view by the banister but the back of Lady Winterton, in her pale blue dinner dress, was clearly visible.
“Lady Winterton,’ James replied. His tone was cool. Since Prague, Ursula had noticed how the thin veil masking the animosity between them had started to tear.
“What brings you upstairs?” There was no mistaking the undercurrent beneath Lady Winterton’s words—his place was downstairs with the servants.
“I have a letter for Miss Marlow,” James replied.
Ursula felt a surge of excitement—perhaps Lord Wrotham had finally seen fit to reply to the innumerable letters she had sent him. Until now, despite all her missives, she had received nothing from him, only two telegrams from Pemberton—the first advising of a trial date and the second indicating that, as Lord Wrotham continued to suffer harassment, Pemberton had petitioned his removal from Brixton to another prison while on remand.
“Who is the letter from?” Lady Winterton demanded.
James gave no reply and Ursula’s hopes faded. She felt sure even James would have told Lady Winterton if the letter had been from Lord Wrotham.
“I see your manners have not improved over time,” Lady Winterton replied. “But your chivalry towards Miss Marlow is certainly admirable. Grace always said you had a weakness for damsels in distress.”
Another silence.
“Though you certainly treat women like Grace, women of your own class, as though they were little more than dirt beneath your shoes…”
“Have a care, Lady Winterton,” James replied, his voice sinking to a low-throated warning. “For I might have to explain to Miss Marlow just how hard you really tried to come between her and Lord Wrotham. She has no idea how many times you visited or how many calling cards were left.”
Ursula gripped the edge of the door.
This time it was Lady Winterton who remained silent.
The letter for Ursula was from Gerard Anderson. It had been sent two days ago in anticipation of her arrival—at least James had allowed Ursula to tell him that, if nothing else regarding her travels. The letter provided a brief summary of the findings of his latest investigation into Christopher Dobbs’ links to the Wrotham family and its creditors. It also outlined the names of the investors that Anderson had managed to locate which had been involved in the legal case of El Dorado Investments v. The Imperial Gold and Diamond Mining Company. Ursula’s relief was
tinged with disappointment. Dobbs, it appeared, had no connections to any of Lord Wrotham’s creditors. There was a small part of her (certainly not one of her finer parts) that had wished there had something tangible, evil even, that she could accuse Dobbs of publically. Now all she had were lingering private concerns that were insufficient to air.
The list of investors in El Dorado Investments was a tangled web of trusts and companies, individuals and partnerships, none of which sounded in the least bit familiar. Not surprisingly, a large number of investors came from both Germany and Ireland. After reading the list of companies with fanciful names such as Tir Tairngire and Gründewelt, Ursula felt even more frustrated—she began to despair of finding any leads at all in the case.
The following morning they were to due to take the ferry across the English Channel to Dover. James met Ursula outside the pension dressed once more in his chauffeur’s uniform. As she and Lady Winterton boarded the first class deck, Ursula sensed the lingering mistrust between James and Lady Winterton. Ursula for her part had always known, if she admitted it to herself that Lady Winterton had hoped at one time to win Lord Wrotham from her. It was not something she now resented and only occasionally did her own jealousy surface. Since Lord Wrotham’s arrest it seemed petty to fall back on such old uncertainties. Lady Winterton always appeared, in that cool unruffled way of hers, to have accepted the situation with good grace. Clearly she also felt a good deal of loyalty to her maid Grace (who had been, Ursula could only infer, jilted by James at one time). Ursula could well understand such fidelity—she would feel the same way towards her own maid, Julia. She was only thankful that Lady Wrotham’s loyalties now extended to her for there were few among London society willing to help her after the humiliation of Lord Wrotham’s arrest.
It was James’ behavior that both surprised and irked her—his chivalric need to look out for her on Lord Wrotham’s behalf seemed unduly paternalistic and she was not entirely sure how to respond as a result.
Having endured enough hardship for one trip, Lady Winterton left them soon after they disembarked from the channel ferry in Dover. She had decided to make her way to her family’s summer home in Sussex to recuperate for a few days before returning to her Kensington home. She left Ursula with a vow to continue to help as best she could, promising to contact her late husband’s family in Dublin to see what inquiries could be made as to McTiernay’s current whereabouts. Ursula was only too grateful for her help—though James remained as taciturn as ever in Lady Winterton’s presence.
“You could at least be polite to Lady Winterton,” Ursula admonished James after Lady Winterton had left them at the station.
“Giving advice on etiquette and decorum are we now, Miss Marlow?” James responded. Ursula felt her indignation rise. James never failed to make her feel as though she was standing on shifting sand—unsure what to believe, unsure whom to trust, and unsure why he continued to treat her with such a strange combination of affection and resentment.
“The last thing I need is to alienate one of the few allies I have,” Ursula replied. “Lady Winterton’s connections in Ireland may prove very useful in our search for McTiernay.”
“I know,” James admitted reluctantly before lapsing into a pensive silence that continued even as they walked along the train platform.
As the train for London was not due for another twenty minutes, Ursula excused herself. She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror of the railway station’s Ladies room and, even she had to admit, no one was likely to recognize her the way she looked at the moment. Ursula returned to the platform just as the train drew into the station. She hugged her coat in tight as she hurried to join James who stood on the platform, head bent, stomping a cigarette butt out beneath his boots. His blond hair dusty with coal and his coat worn thin at the elbow, he looked like a disgruntled laborer on his way home from work. But as he raised his head, she could see the military bearing—the rifleman he once was—and James seemed now, to her, to be a much sadder man than she had noticed before. He looked like a man tired of carrying the burdens of the past.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“You still haven’t told me why Lord Wrotham got with McTiernay and the Count in December 1911,” Ursula said, once she and James had seated themselves in the second class train carriage. The morning train was almost deserted and they had the carriage to themselves. It was, Ursula reflected, the first time since that day at the Hotel Pariz in Prague that they had been alone.
“No,” James answered. “I haven’t.”
“Now Lady Winterton is no longer traveling with us, are you going to?” Ursula asked. She felt sure James had been holding back from answering her questions in Lady Winterton’s presence. He had certainly insisted that she say nothing about the discovery of Lord Wrotham’s field book or the nature of his missions to Germany and, until now, Ursula had complied with all his demands for secrecy and silence. Now she wanted answers.
James seemed to consider the question. The minutes passed before he stood up abruptly, locked the carriage door, and returned to sit beside Ursula. Only then did he begin to talk.
“My role,” he said, “has always been to assist Lord Wrotham with whatever inquiries he needed to undertake abroad. We were charged with finding out as much as we could about German military capabilities using Lord Wrotham’s business clients, particularly those in the shipping industry. I would also help undertake any necessary observations—on ship building, naval exercises and the like. All very gentlemanly on his account I must say, with me as the eyes and ears of ‘downstairs’ as well as his chauffeur. You’d be amazed at the things I was able to see and hear in other people’s homes, all because I was considered well nigh invisible as a servant.” James paused.
“Go on,” Ursula said.
“Two years ago Admiral Smythe asked Lord Wrotham about re-establishing ties with Fergus McTiernay. I knew a bit about his past at Balliol and in Guyana from the Admiral’s files but Smythe insisted he needed Lord Wrotham to put all that aside. He’d heard rumors that the Ulster Unionists had established a secret committee to buy arms and to plan a campaign of armed resistance should the Home Rule bill pass. They even had a man, Major Frederick Hugh Crawford, who was charged with importing arms and drilling volunteers.”
Ursula blinked rapidly.
“I see his name is not unknown to you,” James observed.
It was the name McTiernay had supplied to use against Christopher Dobbs.
Ursula nodded, her face tightening. “I have heard of him,” was all she would admit.
“Admiral Smythe’s concern was how the nationalists in Ireland were likely to react and what they were likely to do in response to this,” James continued. “So he asked Lord Wrotham to use his old college ties. Naval Intelligence wanted to know about any possible armament shipments and the like. But as you can imagine it took a great deal of effort for Lord Wrotham to convince McTiernay that he was the same man he knew at Balliol—they needed to work together to get to the point where both of them trusted one another once more. In December 1911, McTiernay asked Wrotham to help secure arms for the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He wanted to try to broker a deal with Germany to support an Irish Free State in the event of war with Britain.”
“By then McTiernay was convinced of Lord Wrotham’s loyalty?”
“Yes, though, you know, I never suspected that was in question—I think what happened in Guyana tested Lord Wrotham’s trust in McTiernay and the Count—not the other way round. At least that was my observation after having spent time with them all.”
“Tell me more about the meeting,” Ursula prompted further.
“The meeting at the Count’s castle was served multiple purposes—to try and assess whether such a deal was likely to occur, to identify who the major parties were, and to secure Lord Wrotham’s bona fides with McTiernay.”
“So what went wrong?’ Ursula asked.
“There was always a risk that someone would find out about Lord Wrotha
m’s ties with Naval Intelligence and that he and I would be exposed as spies. The British Government had made it quite clear that they would disavow all knowledge of our mission if Lord Wrotham was compromised. No one wants to admit that British agents are sullying their hands in the sordid world of espionage or that there is a risk of German agitation in Ireland—the Home Rule issue is fraught enough without the public fearing German involvement in a possible civil war.”
“Was there any indication at the meeting that the Count was going to betray them? Is that how Scotland Yard and the War Office found out? Clearly they believe Lord Wrotham was actually selling British military secrets and trying to stir up German involvement in Ireland—not to mention planning to assassinate members of the royal family.”
“That was just the Serbians’ idea of a joke,” James said.
“The Serbians?” Ursula queried.
“Don’t ask…” James replied. “Their presence was somewhat of a mystery—but it was certainly unrelated to anything McTiernay was hoping to plan with the Count.”
“But I still don’t understand why members of Naval Intelligence won’t explain Lord Wrotham’s real mission to Scotland Yard—”
“As I said they warned Admiral Smythe and Lord Wrotham that they would wash their hands of the whole affair…”
Ursula bit her lip—surely there must be more to it than that? Would the British government really disavow all knowledge of such a mission?
“You still haven’t said how you think they found out about the meeting,” she reminded him.
“I don’t know how anyone found out—the other main witness in the case, Padraig O’Shaunessy, was with McTiernay at the meeting, but I don’t know why he turned informer—he was little more than a paid minion.”
“Do you think Lord Wrotham suspected the Count or this man O’Shaunessy even then—is that why he buried his field book?”
“Whatever the reason, he didn’t want anyone to find it. That’s why I retrieved it—I was worried there was the always the possibility of scavengers finding it after the fire and turning it over to the highest bidder.”
Unlikely Traitors Page 18
