Was Cormac O’Neil still alive? There was no reason why he should not be. He would barely be sixty, perhaps less. If he were, he could be the one behind this. God knew, after the failed uprising and Sean’s and Kate’s deaths, he had cause enough to hate Narraway, more than any other man on earth.
But why wait twenty years to do it? Narraway could have died of an accident or of natural causes anytime between then and now, and robbed the man of his revenge.
Could something have prevented him in the meantime? A debilitating illness? Not twenty years long. Time in prison? Surely Narraway would have heard of anything serious enough for such a term. And even from prison there was communication.
Perhaps this case had nothing to do with the past. Or perhaps it was simply that this was the time when Special Branch would be most vulnerable if Narraway was taken from it and his work discredited?
He closed the papers and put them back in the envelope Stoker had brought, then sat quietly in the dark and thought about it.
The old memories returned easily to his mind. He was walking again with Kate in the autumn stillness, fallen leaves red and yellow, frozen and crunching under their feet. She had no gloves, and he had lent her his. He could feel his hands ache with the cold at the memory. She had laughed at him for it, smiling, eyes bright, all the while making bitter jokes about warming the hands of Ireland with English wool.
When they had returned to the tavern Sean and Cormac had been there, and they had drunk rye whiskey by the fire. He could recall the smell of the peat, and Kate saying it was a good thing he didn’t want vodka because potatoes were too scarce to waste on making it.
There were other memories as well, all sharp with emotion, torn loyalties, and regret. Wasn’t it Wellington who had said that there was nothing worse than a battle won—except a battle lost? Or something like that.
Was the record accurate, as far as he had told anyone? Sanitized, of course, robbed of its passion and its humanity, but the elements that mattered to Special Branch were correct and sufficient.
Then something occurred to him, maybe an anomaly. He stood up, turned the gaslight higher again, and took the papers back out of the envelope. He reread them from beginning to end, including the marginal notes from Buckleigh, his superior then.
Narraway found what he feared. Something had been added. It was only a word or two, and to anyone who did not know Buckleigh’s turn of phrase, his pedantic grammar, it would be undetectable. The hand looked exactly the same. But the new words added altered the meaning. Once it was only the addition of a question mark that had not been there originally, another time it was a few words that were not grammatically exact, a phrase ending with a preposition. Buckleigh would have included it in the main sentence.
Who had done that, and when? The why was not obscure to him at all: It was to raise the question of his role in this again, to cause the old ghosts to be awakened. Perhaps this was the deciding factor that had forced Croxdale to remove him from office.
He read through the papers one more time, just to be certain, then replaced them in the envelope and went upstairs to waken Stoker so he could leave well before dawn.
By the time he had opened the door Stoker was standing beside the bed. In the light from the landing it was clear that the quilt was barely ruffled. One swift movement of the hand and it was as if he had never been there.
Stoker looked at Narraway questioningly.
“Thank you,” Narraway said quietly, the emotion in his voice more naked than he had meant it to be.
“It told you something,” Stoker observed.
“Several things,” Narraway admitted. “Someone else has been judiciously editing it since Buckleigh wrote his marginal notes, altering the meaning very slightly, but enough to make a difference.”
Stoker came out of the room, and Narraway handed him the envelope. Stoker put it under his jacket where it could not be seen, but he did not fold it, or tuck it into his belt so the edges could be damaged. It was a reminder of the risk he was taking in having it at all. He looked very directly at Narraway.
“Austwick has taken your place, sir.”
“Already?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Pitt’s over the channel, and you’ve no friends at Lisson Grove anymore. At least not who’ll risk anything for you. It’s every man for himself,” Stoker said grimly. “I’m afraid there’s no one for sure who’ll help Mr. Pitt either, if he gets cut off or in any kind of trouble.”
“I know that,” Narraway said with deep unhappiness.
Stoker hesitated as if he would say something else, then changed his mind. He nodded silently and went down the stairs to the sitting room. He felt his way across the floor without lighting the gas lamps. He opened the French doors and slipped out into the wind and the darkness.
Narraway locked the door behind him and went back upstairs. He undressed and went to bed but lay awake staring up at the ceiling. He had left the curtains open, and gradually the faintest softening of the spring night made a break in the shadows across the ceiling. The glimmer was almost invisible, just enough to tell him there was movement, light beyond.
Only a matter of hours had passed since Austwick had come into Narraway’s office. Narraway had thought little enough of it: a nuisance, no more. Then Croxdale had sent for him, and everything had changed. It was like going down a steep flight of stairs, only to find that the last one was not there.
He lay until daylight, realizing with a pain that amazed him how much of himself he had lost. He was used to getting up whether he had slept or not. Duty was a relentless mistress, but suddenly he knew also that she was a constant companion, loyal, appreciative, and above all, never meaningless.
Without her he was naked, even to himself. Narraway was accustomed to not particularly being liked. He’d had too much power for that, and he knew too many secrets. But never before had he not been needed.
