Betrayal at Lisson Grove (28 page)

‘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 matters 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, something she thought of that had never happened.

They were eating toast and marmalade when the messenger arrived with a letter for Narraway. He thanked Mrs Hogan, who brought it, then tore it open.

Charlotte watched his face but she could not read anything more than surprise. When he looked up she waited for him to speak.

‘It’s from Cormac,’ he said gently. ‘He wants me to go and see him, at midday. He will tell me what happened, and give me proof.’

She was puzzled, remembering Cormac’s hate, the pain that seemed as sharp as it must have been the day it happened. She leaned forward. ‘Don’t go. You won’t, will you?’

He put the letter down. ‘I came for the truth, Charlotte. He may give it to me, even if it is not what he means to do. I have to go.’

‘He still hates you,’ she argued. ‘He can’t afford to face the truth, Victor. It would place him in the wrong. All he has left is his illusions of what really happened, that Kate was loyal to Ireland and the cause, and that it would all have worked, except for you. He can’t give that up.’

‘I know,’ he assured her, reaching out his lean hand and touching her gently, for an instant, then withdrawing it again. ‘But I can’t afford not to go. I have nothing left to lose either. If it was Cormac who created the whole betrayal of Mulhare, I need to know how he did it, and be able to prove it to Croxdale.’ His face tightened. ‘Rather more than that, I need to find out who is the traitor in Lisson Grove. I can’t let that go.’ He did not offer any rationalisation, taking it for granted that Charlotte understood.

It gave her an odd feeling of being included, even of belonging. It was frightening for the emotional enormity of it, and yet there was a warmth to it she would not willingly have sacrificed.

She did not argue any further, but nodded, and determined to follow after him and stay where she could see him.

He went out of the house quite casually, as if merely to look at the weather. Then, as she came to the door, he turned and walked quickly towards the end of the road.

She followed after him, barely having time to close the door behind her, and needing to run a few steps to keep up. She had a shawl on and her reticule with her, and sufficient money for as long a fare as she would be likely to need.

He disappeared round the corner into the main street. She had to hurry to make sure she saw which way he went. As she had expected, he went straight to the first carriage waiting, spoke to the driver, then climbed in.

She swung round with her back to the road and pretended to look in a shop window. As soon as he had passed she darted out into the street to look for a second carriage. It was long, desperate moments before she found one. She gave the driver the address of Cormac O’Neil’s house and urged him to go as fast as possible. She was already several minutes behind.

‘I’ll pay you an extra shilling if you catch up with the carriage that just left here,’ she promised. ‘Please hurry. I don’t want to lose him.’

She sat forward, peering out as the carriage careered down the street, swung round the corner and then set off again at what felt like a gallop. She was tossed around, bruised and without any sense of where she was, for what felt like ages, but was probably no more than fifteen minutes at most. Then finally they lurched to a stop outside the house where she had been the previous evening.

She stepped out, taking a moment to find her balance after the hectic ride. She paid him more than he had asked for, and then an extra shilling.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Then she walked up the same path she had trodden in the evening light such a short time ago. Somehow, at midday, the path looked longer, the bushes more crowding in, the trees overhead cut out more of the sky.

She had not reached the front door when she heard the dog barking. It was an angry, frightening sound, with a note of hysteria to it, as if the animal were out of control. It had certainly not been like that yesterday evening. It had been calm, resting its head on O’Neil’s feet and barely noticing her.

She was surprised Cormac did not come to see what the fuss was. He could not possibly be unaware of the noise.

She touched the door with her fingers and it opened.

Narraway was standing in the hall. He swung round as the light spread across the floor. For a moment he was startled, then he regained his presence of mind.

‘I should have known,’ he said grimly. ‘Wait here.’

The dog was now throwing itself at whatever barrier it was that held it in check. Its barking was high in its throat, as if it would rip someone to shreds the moment it could reach them.

Charlotte would not leave Narraway alone. She stepped inside and looked for the umbrella stand she had noticed yesterday. She saw it, picked out a sharp-ferruled black umbrella and held it as if it were a swordstick.

The barking was reaching a climax.

Ahead of her Narraway went to the sitting-room door, to the right of where the dog was hurling itself at another door, snarling in a high, singing tone as if it scented prey close at last.

Narraway opened the sitting-room door, then stopped motionless. Charlotte could see over his shoulder that Cormac O’Neil was lying on the floor on his back, a pool of blood spreading on the polished wood around what was left of his head.

Charlotte gulped, trying to stop herself from being sick. Yesterday evening he had been alive, angry, weeping with passion and grief. Now there was nothing left but empty flesh lying waiting to be found by people who might or might not even care about him.

Narraway went over and bent down, touching the skin of Cormac’s face with his fingers.

‘He’s still warm,’ he said, turning back to look at Charlotte. He had to raise his voice above the noise of the dog. ‘We must call the police.’

He had barely finished speaking when there was a bang of the front door swinging open again and hitting the wall, and then footsteps.

There was no time to wonder who it was. A woman screamed with a short, shrill sound, and then seemed to choke. Charlotte swivelled round to stare at Talulla Lawless. She was ashen-faced, her hand to her mouth, black eyes staring wildly past Charlotte and Narraway to the figure of Cormac on the floor.

Behind her a policeman tried to catch his breath as a wave of horror overtook him.

Talulla glared at Narraway. ‘I warned him,’ she gasped. ‘I knew you’d kill him, after yesterday. But he wouldn’t listen. I told him! I told him!’ Her voice was getting higher and higher and her body was shaking.

The policeman regained control of himself and stepped forward, looking at Charlotte, then at Narraway. ‘What happened here?’ he asked.

‘He murdered my uncle, can’t you see that?’ Talulla shouted at him. ‘Listen to the dog, dammit! For God’s sake, don’t let him out, he’ll tear that murderer apart! That’s what brought me here. I heard him, poor creature.’

‘He was dead when we got here!’ Charlotte shouted back at her. ‘We don’t know what happened any more than you do!’

Narraway stepped forward to the policeman. ‘I came in first,’ he said to the policeman. ‘Mrs Pitt waited outside. She has nothing to do with this. She never met Mr O’Neil until very recently. I’ve known him for twenty years. Please allow her to leave.’

Talulla thrust out her hand, finger pointing. ‘There’s the gun! Look, its lying right there on the floor. He hasn’t even had time to take it away.’

‘Of course he hasn’t,’ Charlotte retorted. ‘We only just got here! If you ask the—’

‘Charlotte, be quiet,’ Narraway said with such force that she stopped speaking. He faced the policeman. ‘I came into the house first. Please allow Mrs Pitt to leave. As I said before, she had no acquaintance with Mr O’Neil, beyond a casual introduction. I have known him for years. We have an old enmity, which has finally caught up with us. Is that not true, Miss Lawless?’

‘Yes!’ she said vehemently. ‘The dog just started to bark. I can hear it from my house. I live only a few yards away, over there. If there’d been anybody else, he’d have raised this row before. Ask anyone.’

The policeman looked at Cormac on the floor, at Narraway, and the blood on his shoes, then at Charlotte, white-faced by the door. The dog was still barking and trying to break down the barrier that held it in check.

‘Sir, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come with me. It’ll be best for you if you don’t give me any trouble.’

‘I have no intention of giving you trouble,’ Narraway told him. ‘None of this is your fault. Will you permit me to make certain that Mrs Pitt has sufficient funds to pay a cab driver? She has had a very ugly shock.’

The policeman looked confused. ‘She was with you, sir,’ he pointed out.

‘No,’ Narraway corrected him. ‘She came after me. She was not here when I arrived. I went in and O’Neil and I quarrelled. He attacked me, and I had no choice but to defend myself.’

‘You came deliberately to kill him,’ Talulla accused him. ‘He showed you for the liar and the cheat you are. He got you dismissed from your position and you wanted your revenge. You came here and shot him.’ She looked at Charlotte. ‘Can you deny that?’

‘Yes, I can,’ Charlotte responded heatedly. ‘I did arrive after Mr Narraway was already here, but only seconds behind him. He had not gone further than the hallway. The sitting-room door was closed. We discovered Mr O’Neil’s body at the same moment.’

‘Liar!’ Talulla shouted. ‘You’re his mistress. You’d say anything.’

Charlotte gasped.

A look at once of humour and pain flickered in Narraway’s eyes. He turned to the policeman. ‘That is not true. Please allow her to go. If you can find the cabby who brought her, he will affirm that Mrs Pitt arrived after I did, and he must have seen her come into the house. O’Neil was shot, as you observe. Ask the driver if he heard the shot.’

The policeman nodded. ‘You’re right, sir. Don’t take the lady down with you.’ He turned to Talulla. ‘And if you’d go back home, ma’am, I’ll take care o’ this. An’ you, ma’am,’ he looked at Charlotte, ‘you’d better go an’ find a cab back to your lodgings. But don’t leave Dublin, if you please. We’ll be wishing to talk to you. Where are you staying?’

‘Number seven, Molesworth Street.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. That’ll be all. Now don’t stop me doing my duty, or it’ll be the worse for you.’

Charlotte could do nothing but watch helplessly as another policeman arrived. Narraway was manacled and led away, to Talulla’s intense delight.

Charlotte walked back down the pathway and along the road, dazed and alone.

Pitt ceased to struggle. At first, in the heat of the moment, there was no point. He was in the grasp of two burly constables, both convinced they had apprehended a violent lunatic who had just hurled two men, possibly strangers to him, off a fast-moving train.

The irate and terrified passengers who had witnessed half the events had seen Pitt on the platform with the first man who had gone over, and then alone with Gower just before he had been pitched over as well.

‘I know what I saw!’ one of them stated. He stood as far away from Pitt as he could, his face a mask of horror in the railway platform gaslight. ‘He threw them both over. You want to watch yourselves or he’ll have you too! He’s insane! He has to be. Threw them over, one after the other.’

‘We were fighting!’ Pitt protested. ‘He attacked me, but I won!’

‘Which one of them would that be, sir?’ one of the constables asked him. ‘The first one, or the second one?’

‘The second one,’ Pitt answered, but he heard the note of desperation in his own voice. It sounded ridiculous, even to him.

‘Maybe he didn’t like it that you’d thrown the first man off the train,’ the constable said reasonably. ‘’E was tryin’ to arrest you. Good citizen doin’ ’is duty.’

‘He attacked me the first time,’ Pitt tried to explain. ‘The other man was trying to rescue me, and he lost the fight!’

‘But when this second man attacked you, you won, right?’ the constable said with open disbelief.