annoy you,’ he answered. ‘But your heart is engaged only where you care. Which suggests your family … even if slightly extended.’ There was a flicker of something in his face that she could not identify, except as a kind of sadness, there and then gone again. Narraway had never married, and he had no family left. She had never thought it appropriate, or even kind, to enquire further. That there had been lovers come and then gone again, she knew perfectly well. It was not something one discussed.
They had been seated and ordered their meal before she answered his question.
‘Thomas is in something of a cleft stick,’ she said, sipping her wine, which had been brought just before the hors d’oeuvres. ‘The evidence seems to indicate that Dudley Kynaston is involved in this poor servant’s death, and yet they have no definite proof that the body is hers, even though they cannot find her alive. Kynaston admits to having an affair, but with someone of his own social rank, and Pitt does not believe he would kill anyone to conceal that.’
‘And you?’ Narraway asked, watching her reaction.
‘It seems a little … excessive,’ she replied. ‘And I agree, I had not thought Kynaston a man of such …’
‘Stupidity?’
‘I was going to say “passion”.’
‘Sometimes people have far more passion than they appear to,’ he said quietly, his eyes on her face, tracing the outlines of it as if to make it indelible in his mind. ‘Everyone else thinks them cerebral and a trifle cold because they keep their feelings hidden.’
She looked back at him. She wanted to press for his precise meaning, and was afraid to. It would leave her exposed as caring too much for the answer.
‘Do you think Kynaston is one of them?’ she asked, taking another sip of the wine. ‘I find I know less about him than I thought. I remember his brother, Bennett. He died young … well under forty. He had great promise, so it was particularly upsetting. Dudley took it very hard.’
‘I remember,’ Narraway said thoughtfully. ‘But that was several years ago — eight or nine, I think. They were very close, I believe.’
They were interrupted by the arrival of the main course of a delicate white fish, dense-fleshed and tender. It was dessert before that particular conversation resumed. In the meantime they spoke of the kind of art, theatre, music they both enjoyed, and laughed at current political jokes.
‘You did not ask to see me as an excuse to dine,’ Narraway said at last, the gravity back in his face. ‘
‘I can though,’ she admitted. ‘I think there are strong currents beneath the surface of this. I feel them, but I don’t know what they are. In fact, the more details I discover, the less can I make sense of it. It seems an absurd mixture of trivia and tragedy.’
He watched her without interrupting. His eyes looked almost black in the candlelight from the chandeliers.
‘A maid running off with a suitor is very inconvenient, but it happens quite often,’ she continued. ‘I think I have lost at least three that way, perhaps four, if you count a scullery maid. But a woman beaten to death and her body left in a public but deserted place, to be scavenged by animals, is both grotesque and tragic.’
He nodded. ‘And they appear to be connected. I presume Pitt was called in because the missing maid worked for a man of great importance to the navy, and thus to the safety of the country. What else?’
‘Kynaston, by his own admission, is having an affair, which is grubby, but far from unique …’
‘By his own admission?’ Narraway interrupted.
‘Yes. When Thomas taxed him with it, he did not try to evade it.’
‘Which does not mean it is necessarily true,’ he pointed out.
She was startled, and about to argue when she suddenly realised what he meant. ‘Oh! You think it is something worse? That an affair would be preferable to the truth?’
He gave a small, slight smile. ‘I don’t know, only that we should not assume anything for which we have no proof.’
‘Of course not. You are quite right,’ she agreed. ‘So that is another strange contrast, an admitted affair, which may conceal something worse, or at least something he has a greater desire to keep secret. Victor, what do you know of this man Talbot? Why does he so desire to be rid of Thomas? Is it something as simple as prejudice because Thomas has no family background or military experience? That too is grubby, and completely irrelevant, but it is not uncommon, and it is certainly not a crime. Or is there something of which he is afraid?’
‘He has the Government’s confidence,’ Narraway said thoughtfully. ‘But the Government has no experience of criminal deviousness as opposed to moral or political.’ He sighed. ‘You may be right, Talbot dines at the right clubs and Pitt doesn’t. He will never be one of them; you have to be born to it, and of course go to the right schools.’
‘Pitt is better as he is, right schools and clubs or not,’ she said sharply. Then she felt the colour hot in her cheeks as she saw the laughter in his face.
He leaned forward across the table. ‘I know that, my dear. I am as aware of Pitt’s worth as you are, professionally even more so. And in my own way, I am also fond of him.’
She looked down, avoiding his eyes. ‘I apologise. Of course you are. I did not mean to doubt you. This conflict has me … wrong-footed.’
He touched her hand where it lay on the table, gently, and only for a moment.
‘How charmingly you understate it. You make confusion about violence and murder sound like a missed step in a dance. I fear we shall run out of music before we reach that point. May I say what I think is really troubling you?’
‘Could I prevent you?’ she asked. Her voice was soft, but the words were a trifle defensive.
‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Just tell me that you are not yet ready to trust me with it — or perhaps that you do not wish to.’
‘Victor, I’m sorry. I am behaving with a discourtesy you do not deserve. I am evading the issue because I am afraid of it.’
‘I know,’ he said so quietly she barely heard him above the murmur of conversation around them. ‘It is Somerset Carlisle, isn’t it?’ he continued.
‘Yes …’
‘Would Pitt have let it go had Carlisle not asked the question about Kynaston in the House?’
‘I think so. That made it impossible,’ she agreed.
‘And what are you afraid of — exactly?’ he pressed.
She must now either answer him honestly, or deliberately refuse to.
He moved very slightly back again, no more than an inch, but she saw the shadow in his eyes. It was a moment of decision about far more than the admission as to what she feared regarding Carlisle: it was a moving closer, or apart, between Narraway and herself.
It seemed to stretch endlessly, isolated as if it were unreal, an island in time. She was afraid because where it led to might be painful. The chance to prevaricate was slipping out of her hands.
He moved back an inch further.
‘I am afraid that Somerset might have engineered the whole thing,’ she said huskily. ‘I don’t mean that he killed anyone,’ she amended. ‘I can’t believe that any cause, however intense, would make him do that …’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I think he may have used the police finding that tragic corpse; the continued disappearance of Kitty Ryder; the whole absurd episode of the hat with the red feather, which could have been hers and wasn’t; and the man who supposedly put it there, and found it, and so opened up the whole case again.’
‘And then blew it apart, and rescued Pitt?’ he asked curiously, but the shadow had gone from his face and his eyes were grave, and gentle. ‘For heaven’s sake, why?’
‘That is what troubles me,’ she confessed. ‘It is the mountain that is filling the sky, too big to see its boundaries, and yet too far away to touch. He is manoeuvring Pitt, Victor. That is what I am afraid of. And I have no idea why, so I can’t help.’
‘Have you warned him?’ he asked.
