“You don’t have to justify it to me,” she told him. “I am aware enough of the feeling. I only wish to understand something of the O’Neil family, and why one of them should hate you personally so much that twenty years later you believe he would stoop to manufacturing evidence that you committed a crime. What sort of a man was he then? Why has he waited so long to do this?”
Narraway turned his head away from the sunlight coming through the carriage window. He spoke reluctantly. “Cormac? He was a good-looking man, very strong, quick to laugh, and quick to anger—but it was usually only on the surface, and gone before he would dwell on it. But he was intensely loyal, to Ireland above all, then to his family. He and his brother Sean were very close.” He smiled. “Quarreled like Kilkenny cats, as they say, but let anyone else step in and they’d turn on them like furies.”
“How old was he then?” she asked.
“Close to forty,” he replied without hesitation.
She wondered if he knew that from records, or if he had been close enough to Cormac O’Neil that such things were open between them. She had the increasing feeling that this was far more than a Special Branch operation. There was deep, many-layered personal emotion as well, and Narraway would only ever tell her what he had to.
“Were they from an old family?” she pursued. “Where did they live, and how?”
He looked out the window again. “Cormac had land to the south of Dublin—Slane. Interesting place. Old family? Aren’t we all supposed to go back to Adam?”
“He doesn’t seem to have bequeathed the heritage to us equally,” she answered.
“I’m sorry. Am I being evasive?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Cormac had enough means not to have to work more than in an occasional overseeing capacity. He and Sean between them owned a brewery as well. I daresay you know the waters of the Liffey River are famous for their softness. You can make ale anywhere, but nothing else has quite the flavor of that made with Liffey water. But you want to know what they were like.”
“Yes,” she answered. “Don’t you need me to seek him out? Because if he hates you as deeply as you think, he will tell you nothing that could help.”
The light vanished from his face. “If it’s Cormac, he’s thought this out very carefully. He must have known all about Mulhare and the whole operation: the money, the reason for paying it as I did, and how any interference would cost Mulhare his life.”
“And he must also have been able to persuade someone in Lisson Grove to help him,” she pointed out.
He winced. “Yes. I’ve thought about that a lot.” Now his face was very somber indeed. “I’ve been piecing together all I know: Mulhare’s connections; what I did with the money to try to make certain it would never be traced back to Special Branch, or to me personally, all the past friends and enemies I’ve made, where it happened. It always comes back to O’Neil.”
“Why would anyone at Lisson Grove be willing to help O’Neil?” she asked. It was like trying to take gravel out of a wound, only far deeper than a scraped knee or elbow. She thought of Daniel’s face as he sat on one of the hard- backed kitchen chairs, dirt and blood on his legs, while she tried to clean where he had torn the skin off, and pick out the tiny stones. There had been tears in his eyes and he had stared resolutely at the ceiling, trying to stop them from spilling over and giving him away.
“Many reasons,” Narraway replied. “You cannot do a job like mine without making enemies. You hear things about people you might very much prefer not to know, but that is a luxury you sacrifice when you accept the responsibility.”
“I know that,” she told him.
His eyes wandered a little. “Really? How do you know that, Charlotte?”
She saw the trap and slipped around it. “Not from Thomas. He doesn’t discuss his cases since he joined Special Branch. And anyway, I don’t think you can explain to someone else such a complicated thing.”
He was watching her intently now. His eyes were so dark it was hard to read the expression in them. The lines in his face showed all the emotions that had passed over them through the years: the anxiety, the laughter, and the grief.
“My eldest sister was murdered, many years ago now,” she explained. “But perhaps you know that already. Several young women were at that time. We had no idea who was responsible. In the course of the investigation we learned a great deal about each other that would have been far more comfortable not to have known, and we cannot unlearn such things.” She remembered it with pain now, even though it was fourteen years ago.
She looked up at him and saw his surprise. The only way to cover the discomfort was to continue talking.
“After that, when Thomas and I were married, I am afraid I meddled a good deal in many of his cases, particularly those where Society people were involved. I had an advantage in being able to meet them socially, and observe things he never could. One listens to gossip as a matter of course. It is largely what Society is about. But when you do it intelligently, actually trying to learn things, comparing what one person says with what another does, asking questions obliquely, weighing answers, you cannot help but learn much that is private to other people, painful, vulnerable, and absolutely none of your affair.”
He moved his head very slightly in assent, but he knew it was not necessary to speak.
For a little while they rode in silence. The rhythmic clatter of the wheels over the railway ties was comfortable, almost somnolent. It had been a difficult and tiring few days and she found herself drifting into a daze, then woke with a start. She hoped she had not been lolling there with her mouth open!
Still, she did not yet know enough about what she could do to help and asked, “Do you know who it was at Lisson Grove who betrayed you?”
“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “I have considered several possibilities. In fact the only people I am certain it is not are Thomas and a man called Stoker. It makes me realize how incompetent I have been that I suspected nothing. I was always looking outward, at the enemies I knew. In this profession I should have looked behind me as well.”
