“Étaín!” he called softly. “‘tis Torin. Let me in.” And he lowered his head to listen.
Then he rapped again. “Étaín O’Doyle, open t’e bloody door, will ye, man?”
Heavy steps sounded. A key was turned, then the door opened a crack. Through the few inches revealed, Adele saw a man’s shirt, and a single eye peering at them. The eye was red and the flesh around it also inflamed.
The red-rimmed gaze shifted to Adele. “Cé hí?”
“An Englisher, so mind your tongue. Let us in, for the love of God. I’ve no intention of discussing Eilish upon the bloody doorstep.” Torin pushed against the door and it eased open.
The man behind it, Étaín, stepped back. Torin opened the door all the way, revealing a simple room with a bed and a round table by the window, newspapers scattered across a sofa by the fireplace, and a worn rug.
Étaín moved over to the bed and snatched up a shirt hanging on the end of it, and tucked the shirt into the nearest cupboard. Then he tried to sweep up the newspapers and dropped them. He was a large man in both height and girth, his big hands clumsy. But Adele didn’t think it was simple clumsiness making him so awkward. Both eyes were very red and as she stepped through the doorway, ducking so her hat did not catch on the top of it, the man’s face worked, as if he was fighting great emotion.
He dropped the newspapers a third time, and simply stood there, his head hanging.
“I can get those for you,” Adele told him. She put her parasol and reticule on the low bookcase beside the door, moved over to the sofa, picked up the newspapers, swiftly straightened them and folded them. One of them was today’s Irish Times.
“Come and sit down, man,” Torin said, his own voice gruff. He held out one of the two chairs for the man and patted it. “Come along.”
Adele put the folded newspapers on the mantelshelf and moved across the room to sit upon the second chair, which Slane had also pulled out from the table.
Étaín dropped into the other chair, put both elbows on the table and rested his forehead against both hands.
Slane patted the big man’s shoulder.
Étaín shook his head.
“This here be Étaín O’Doyle,” Slane told Adele. “For many years, he and my brother were the greatest of friends.”
O’Doyle sighed.
“Étaín, this is the Lady Adelaide…um Becket.” He glanced at her, with a hint of apology in his eyes.
“That will do,” Adele assured him. “You knew Eilish Slane very well, Mr. O’Doyle?”
A single nod of the man’s head.
Slane crouched by the table, looking up at O’Doyle. “It might not have been simple robbery, Étaín. Not like the newspapers say. Lady Adelaide is…looking into it. Whoever did this, they left five hundred pounds behind.”
The effect upon O’Doyle was astonishing. He jerked upright, his red-rimmed eyes wide, and looked from Slane to Adele and back. He gripped the edge of the table. “Five hundred pounds…” he breathed. “Jesus, Mary, Mother of Christ…” He closed his eyes. “Not again.”
“Again?” Adele said sharply.
Slane straightened. “Aye, again. T’ing is…well…my brother was a very private man.”
Adele peered at him. “Are you…blushing, Mr. Slane?”
Slane sighed and scrubbed at his hair.
“I loved him,” O’Doyle said, his voice deep with emotion.
Adele drew in a startled breath.
Slane sighed.
She studied O’Doyle, as he sat up in the chair and wiped at his damp eyes. “You and Eilish Slane were…” She wasn’t even sure what the right word was. She had only heard of such things in whispered conversations and rumors. “Together?” she finished delicately.
“For twenty years,” O’Doyle said. There was a proud grace in his voice and the simple answer.
“I…see.”
“Then Eilish was forced to marry,” Slane added.
“Someone found out,” O’Doyle said. “And Eilish bein’ elected and all, he had to…to…”
“Refute the claim,” Slane finished.
“By marrying,” Adele concluded.
“That was merely the public side of it,” Slane said.
“Bastard was going to tell the world,” O’Doyle added, his voice rumbling. “We’d’ve ended in jail. Both of us. I said I’d go away. Australia. Eilish would have none of it. He paid the man, instead.”
Adele sat back. “He paid five hundred pounds.”
Slane nodded.
“Who was it?” she demanded of O’Doyle.
“Doesn’t matter. The man’s dead.”
“You killed him?”
O’Doyle’s smile was grim. “Don’t think the t’ought didn’t cross my mind, more than once. The bastard got himself blown to bits in Paris.”
Adele stared at him blankly. Then, “Oh…anarchists?”
Slane smiled. “Yes, indeed.”
“That’s sounds like a fitting end to a man who could stoop to extortion,” she declared.
O’Doyle sniffed mightily. “I like her,” he declared.
Slane crouched down once more. “Eilish was seeing someone, wasn’t he?” His voice was very gentle.
O’Doyle’s smile faded. He nodded.
“Who?” Slane said, his tone urgent. “Where can we find him?”
O’Doyle looked at the sofa. “He came to tell me about him. He was…he said he thought he might be in love again. And I was happy for him.”
“What was his name, Étaín?”
Étaín looked up at Slane. “Adrian. Adrian Cranston. He lives in a rooming house on Rutland Street in Mountjoy.” He got to his great feet. “I’ll come with you.”
Slane’s mouth opened, but he didn’t speak.
“You cannot, Étaín,” Adele said quickly, instead. “If Eilish’s murder is related to this Cranston man, you cannot be seen anywhere near him. It would make the wrong people recall the wrong things. You see that, do you not?” She rose to her feet. “We will take care of it,” she added firmly.
“You?” Étaín looked her up and down.
“The two of us will, for no one else cares to,” Slane said. “What is the number of the rooming house, Étaín?”
SRÁID RUTLAND WAS A NARROW, dirty street with the same blank façade of conjoined houses running the length of it. But these houses were much smaller, and most of the doors looked as though they had not been painted for many years.
“This one,” Torin Slane said, nodding at the next door along. “Stay here. Let
