Treason at Lisson Grove: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel

by Anne Perry

  As it transpired, it was shortly after dusk when she saw Cormac O’Neil climb out of a carriage a hundred yards down the street. He made his way a trifle unsteadily along the footpath toward his front door.

  She moved out of the shadows. “Mr. O’Neil?”

  He stopped, blinking momentarily.

  “Mr. O’Neil,” she repeated. “I wonder if I may speak with you, please? It is very important.”

  “Another time,” he said indistinctly. “It’s late.” He started forward to go past her to the door, but she took a step in front of him.

  “No, it’s not late, it’s barely supper time, and this is urgent. Please?”

  He looked at her. “You’re a handsome enough girl,” he said gently. “But I’m not interested.”

  Suddenly she realized that he assumed her to be a prostitute. It was too absurd for her to take offense. But if she laughed she might sound too close to hysteria. She swallowed hard, trying to control the nervous tension all but closing her throat.

  “Mr. O’Neil.” She had prepared the lie. It was the only way she could think of that might make him tell her the truth. “I want to ask you about Victor Narraway …”

  O’Neil jerked to a stop and swung around to stare at her.

  “I know what he did to your family,” she went on a little desperately. “At least I think I do. I was at the recital this afternoon. I heard what you said, and what Miss Lawless said too.”

  “Why did you come here?” he demanded. “You’re as English as he is. It’s in your voice, so don’t try to sympathize with me.” Now his tone was stinging with contempt.

  She matched his expression just as harshly. “And you think the Irish are the only people who are ever victims?” she said with amazement. “My husband suffered too. I might be able to do something about it, if I know the truth.”

  “Something?” he said contemptuously. “What kind of something?”

  She knew she must make this passionate, believable; a wound deep enough that he would see her as a victim like himself. Mentally she apologized to Narraway. “Narraway’s already been dismissed from Special Branch,” she said aloud. “Because of the money that was supposed to go to Mulhare. But he has everything else: his home, his friends, his life in London. My family has nothing, except a few friends who know him as I do, and perhaps you? But I need to know the truth …”

  He hesitated a moment, then wearily, as if surrendering to something, he fished in his pocket for a key. Fumbling a little, he inserted it in the lock and opened the door for her.

  They were greeted immediately by a large dog—a wolfhound of some sort, who gave her no more than a cursory glance before going to O’Neil, wagging its tail and pushing against him, demanding attention.

  O’Neil patted its head, talking gently. Then he led the way into the parlor and lit the gas lamps, the dog on his heels. The flames burned up to show a clean, comfortable room with a window onto the area way and then the street. He pulled the curtain across, more for privacy than to keep out the cold, and invited her to sit down.

  She did so, soberly thanking him, then waiting for him to compose himself before she began her questions. She was acutely aware that if she made even one ill-judged remark, one clumsy reaction, she could lose him completely, and there would be no opportunity ever to try again.

  “It was all over twenty years ago,” he said, looking at her gravely. He sat opposite her, the dog at his feet. In the gaslight it was easy to see that he was laboring to keep some control of his feelings, as if seeing Narraway again had stirred emotions he had struggled hard to bury. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face haggard. His hair stood up on end, crookedly at one side, as though he had run his fingers through it repeatedly. She could not fail to be aware that he had been drinking; these sorrows were not of the kind that drown easily.

  “Yes, I know, Mr. O’Neil.” She spoke quietly. “But do you find that time heals? I would like to think so, but I see no evidence of it.”

  She settled herself a little more comfortably in the chair and waited for his reply.

  “Heals?” he said thoughtfully. “No. Grows a seal over, maybe, but it’s still bleeding underneath.” He looked at her curiously. “What did he do to you?”

  She leapt to the future she feared, creating in her mind the worst of it.

  “My husband worked in Special Branch too,” she replied. “Nothing to do with Ireland. Anarchists in England, people who set off bombs that killed ordinary women and children, old people, most of them poor.”

  O’Neil winced, but he did not interrupt her.

  “Narraway sent him on a dangerous job, and then when it turned ugly, and my husband was far from home, Narraway realized that he had made a mistake, a misjudgment, and he let my husband take the blame for it. My husband was dismissed of course, but that’s not all. He was accused of theft as well, so he can’t get any other position at all. He’s reduced to laboring, if he can even find that. He’s not used to it. He has no skills, and it’s hard to learn in your forties. He’s not built for it.” She heard the thickening in her own voice, as if she were fighting tears. It was fear, but it sounded like distress, grief, perhaps outrage at injustice.

  “How is my story going to help?” O’Neil asked her.

  “Narraway denies it, of course,” she replied. “But if he betrayed you as well, that makes a lot of difference. Please—tell me what happened?”

  “Narraway came here twenty years ago,” he began slowly. “He pretended to have sympathy with us, and he fooled some people. He looked Irish, and he used that. He knows our culture, and our dreams, our history. But we weren’t fooled. You’re born Irish, or you’re not. But we pretended to go along with it—Sean and Kate and I.” He stopped, his eyes misty, as if he were seeing something far from this quiet, sparse room in 1895. The past was alive for him, the dead faces, the unhealed wounds.

  She was uncertain if she should acknowledge that she was listening, or if it would distract him. She ended up saying nothing.

  “We found out who he was, exactly,” Cormac went on. “We were planning a big rebellion then. We thought we could use him, give him a lot of false information, turn the tables. We had all sorts of dreams. Sean was the leader, but Kate was the fire. She was beautiful, like sunlight on autumn leaves, wind and shadow, the sort of loveliness you can’t hold on to. She was alive the way other women never are.” He stopped again, lost in memory, and the pain of it was naked in his face.

  “You loved her,” she said gently.

  “Every man did,” he agreed, his eyes meeting hers for an instant, as if he had only just remembered that she was there. “You remind me of her, a little. Her hair was about the same color as yours. But you’re more natural, like the earth. Steady.”

  Charlotte was not sure if she should be insulted. There was no time now, but she would think of it later, and wonder.

  “Go on,” she prompted. He had not told her anything yet, except that he had been in love with his brother’s wife. Was that really why he hated Narraway?

  As if he had seen her thought in her eyes, he continued. “Of course Narraway saw the fire in her too. He was fascinated, like any man, so we decided to use that. God knows, we had few enough weapons against him. He was clever. Some people think the English are stupid, and surely some of them are, but not Narraway, never him.”

  “So you decided to use his feelings for Kate?”

  “Yes. Why not?” he demanded, his eyes angry, defending that decision so many years ago. “We were fighting for our land, our right to govern ourselves. And Kate agreed. She would have done anything for Ireland.” His voice caught and for a moment he could not go on.

  She waited. There was no sound outside, no wind or rain on the glass, no footsteps, no horses in the road. Even the dog at Cormac’s feet did not stir. The house could have been anywhere—out in the countryside, miles from any other habitation. The present had dissolved and gone away.

  “They became lovers, Kate and Narraway,” C
ormac said bitterly. “She told us what he was planning, he and the English. At least that’s what she said.” His voice was thick with grief.

  “Wasn’t it true?” she said when he did not continue.

  “He lied to her,” Cormac answered. “He knew what she was doing, what we all were. Somewhere she made a mistake.” The tears were running down his face and he made no effort to check them. “He fed us all lies, but we believed him. The uprising was betrayed. Stupid, stupid, stupid! They blamed Kate!” He gulped, staring at the wall as if he could see all the players in that tragedy parading in front of him.

  “They saw she had led us astray,” he went on. “Narraway did that to her, used her against her own people. That’s why I’d see him in hell. But I want him to suffer further, here on earth, where I know it for certain. Can you make that happen, Mrs. Pitt? For Kate?”

  She was appalled by the rage in him. It shook his body like a disease. His skin was blotchy, the flesh of his face wasted. He must once have been handsome.

  “What happened to her?” It was cruel of Charlotte to ask, but she knew it was not the end of the story yet, and she needed to hear it from him, not just from Narraway.

  “She was murdered,” he replied. “Strangled. Beautiful Kate.”

  “I’m sorry.” She meant it. She tried to imagine the woman, all passion and dreams, as Cormac had painted her, but that vision was of a man in love with an image.

  “They said it was Sean who killed her,” he went on. “But it couldn’t have been. He knew better than to believe she would have betrayed the cause. That was Narraway again. He killed her, because she would have told them what he had done. He would never have left Ireland alive.” He stared at Charlotte, his eyes brimming with tears, waiting for her to respond.

  She forced herself to speak. “Why would he? Can you prove that?” she asked. “I mean, can you give me anything I can take back to London that would make them listen to me?” She was cold now too, dreading what he might say. What if he could? What would she do then? Narraway would excuse himself, of course. He would say he had had to kill her, or she would have exposed him and the uprising might have succeeded. Perhaps that was even true? But it was still ugly and terrible. It was still murder.

  “He killed her because she wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know. But if I could prove it do you think he’d be alive?” Cormac asked harshly. “They’d have hanged him, not poor Sean, and Talulla’d not be an orphan, God help her.”

  Charlotte gasped. “Talulla?”

  “She’s Kate’s daughter,” he said simply. “Kate and Sean’s. Did you not know that? After Sean and Kate died she was cared for by a cousin, so she could be protected as much as possible from the hatred against her mother. Poor child.”

  The dreadful, useless tragedy of it overwhelmed Charlotte. She wanted to say something that would redeem any part of the loss, but everything that came to her mind was banal.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m …”

  He looked up at her. “So are you going back to London to tell someone?”

  “Yes … yes I am.”

  “Be careful,” he warned. “Narraway won’t go down easily. He’ll kill you too, if he thinks he has to, to survive.”

  “I will be careful,” she promised him. “I think I have a little more to learn yet, but I promise I’ll be … careful.” She stood up, feeling awkward. There was nothing to say that completed their conversation. They moved from the desperate to the mundane as if it were completely natural, but what words were there that could be adequate for what either of them felt? “Thank you, Mr. O’Neil,” she said gravely.

  He took her to the door and opened it for her, but he did not offer to find her any transport, as if for him she ceased to be real the moment she stepped out onto the pavement.

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Narraway demanded as soon as she came into Mrs. Hogan’s sitting room. He had been standing by the window, or perhaps pacing. He looked exhausted and tense, as if his imagination had plagued him with fear. His eyes were hollow, and the lines in his face were deeper than she had ever seen them before. “Are you all right? Who’s with you? Where is he?”

  “Nobody is with me,” she answered. “But I am perfectly all right—”

  “Alone?” His voice shook. “You were out on the street alone, in the dark? For God’s sake, Charlotte, what’s the matter with you? Anything could have happened. I wouldn’t even have known!” He put out his hand and gripped her arm. She could feel the strength of him, as if he were quite unaware how tightly he held her.

  “Nothing happened to me, Victor. I wasn’t very far away. And it isn’t late. There are plenty of people about,” she assured him.

  “You could have been lost …”

  “Then I would have asked for directions,” she said. “Please … there is no need to be concerned. If I’d had to walk a little out of my way to get here it wouldn’t have hurt me.”

  “You could have …,” he began, then stopped, perhaps realizing that his fear was disproportionate. He let go of her. “I’m sorry. I …”

  She looked at him. It was a mistake. For an instant his emotion was too plain in his eyes. She did not want to know that he cared so much. Now it would be impossible for either of them to pretend he did not love her, and she could not pretend she did not know.

  She turned away, feeling the color burning on her skin. All words would be belittling the truth.

  He stood still.

  “I went to see Cormac O’Neil,” she said after a moment or two.

  “What?”

  “I was perfectly safe. I wanted to hear from him exactly what happened, or at least what he believes.”

  “And what did he say?” he asked quickly, his voice cracking with tension.

  She did not want to look at him, to intrude into old grief that was still obviously so sharp, but evasion was cowardly. She met his eyes and repeated to him what Cormac had said, including the fact that Talulla was Kate’s daughter.

  “That’s probably how he sees it,” Narraway answered when she had finished. “I daresay he couldn’t live with the truth. Kate was beautiful.” He smiled briefly. In that moment she could imagine the man he had been twenty years earlier: younger, more virile, perhaps less wise.

  “Few men could resist her,” he went on. “I didn’t try. I knew they were using her to trap me. She was brave, passionate …” He smiled wryly. “Perhaps a little short on humor, but far more intelligent than they realized. It sometimes happens when women are beautiful. People don’t see any further than that, especially men. It’s uncomfortable. We see what we want to see.”

  Charlotte frowned, suddenly thinking of Kate, a pawn to others, an object of both schemes and desires. “Why do you say intelligent?” she asked.

  “We talked,” he replied. “About the cause, what they planned to do. I persuaded her it would rebound against them, and it would have. The deaths would have been violent and widespread. Attacks like that don’t crush people and make them surrender. They have exactly the opposite effect. They would have united England against the rebels, who could have lost all sympathy from everyone in Europe, even from some of their own. Kate told me what they were going to do, the details, so I could have it stopped.”

  Charlotte tried to imagine it, the grief, the cost.

  “Who killed her?” she asked. She felt the loss touch her, as if she had known Kate more deeply than simply as a name, an imagined face.

  “Sean,” he replied. “I don’t know whether it was for betraying Ireland, as he saw it, or betraying him.”

  “With you?”

  Narraway colored, but he did not look away from her. “Yes.”

  “Do you know that, beyond doubt?”

  “Yes.” His throat was so tight his voice sounded half strangled. “I found her body. I think he meant me to.”

  She could not afford pity now. “Why are you sure it was Sean who killed her?” She had to be certain so she could get rid of the doubt forever.
If Narraway himself had killed her it might, by some twisted logic of politics and terror, be what he had to do to save even greater bloodshed. She looked at him now with a mixture of new understanding of the weight he carried, and sorrow for what it had cost him: whether that was now shame, or a lack of it—which would be worse.

  “Why are you sure it was Sean?” she repeated.

  He looked at her steadily. “What you really mean is, how can I prove I didn’t kill her myself.”

  She felt a heat of shame in her own face. “Yes.”

  He did not question her.

  “She was cold when I found her,” he replied. “Sean tried to blame me. The police would have been happy to agree, but I was with the viceroy in the residence in Phoenix Park at the time. Half a dozen staff saw me there, apart from the viceroy himself, and the police on guard duty. They didn’t know who I was, but they would have recognized me in court, if it had been necessary. The briefest investigation showed them that I couldn’t have been anywhere near where Kate was killed. It also proved that Sean lied when he said he saw me, and that by his own admission he was there.” He hesitated. “If you need to, you can check it.” His smile was there for a moment, then gone. “Don’t you think they’d have loved to hang me for it, if they’d had the ghost of a chance?”

  “Yes,” she agreed, feeling the weight ease from her. Grief was one thing, but without guilt it was a passing wound, something that would heal. “I’m … I’m sorry I needed to ask. Perhaps I should have known you wouldn’t have done it.”

  “I would like you to think well of me, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “But I would rather you saw me as a real person, capable of good and ill, and of pity, and shame …”

  “Victor … don’t …”

  He turned away slowly, staring at the fire. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  She left quietly, going up to her room. She needed to be alone, and there was nothing either of them could say that would do anything but make it worse.

  THEY WERE AT BREAKFAST the following morning: she with a slight headache after sleeping badly; he weary, but with the mark of professionalism so graciously back in place that yesterday could have been a dream.