‘Of course not.’ He was clearly trying to keep a straight face, and not entirely succeeding. ‘I will tell you as much as I can. You understand there are aspects of it that are still sensitive. . I mean politically.’
She studied his face, and knew that he also meant they were personally painful to him. He was aware that she saw it in him and there was self-mockery in his smile.
‘Perhaps you could tell me something of the political situation?’ she suggested. ‘As much as is public knowledge — to those who were interested,’ she added, now it was her turn to mock herself very slightly. ‘I’m afraid I was more concerned with dresses and gossip at the time of the O’Neil case.’ She would have been about fifteen. ‘And thinking who I might marry, of course.’ ‘Of course,’ he nodded. ‘A subject that engages most of us, from time to time. All you need to know of the political background is that Ireland, as always, was agitating for Home Rule. Various British prime ministers had attempted to put it through Parliament, and it proved their heartbreak and, for some, their downfall. This is the time of the spectacular rise of Charles Stewart Parnell. He was to become leader of the Home Rule Party in’seventy-seven.’
‘I remember that name,’ Charlotte agreed.
‘Naturally, but this was long before the scandal that ruined him.’
‘Did he have anything to do with what happened with the O’Neil family?’
‘Nothing at all, at least not directly. But the fire and hope of a new leader was in the air, and Irish independence at last, and everything was different because of it.’ He looked out of the window at the passing countryside, and she knew he was seeing another time and place.
‘But we had to prevent it?’ she assumed.
‘I suppose it came to that, yes. We saw it as the necessity to keep the peace. Things change all the time; it is how they do it that must be controlled. There is no point in leaving a trail of death behind you in order merely to exchange one form of tyranny for another.’
‘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 are guilty of a crime you did not commit. 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, first to Ireland above all, then to his family. He and his brother, Sean, were very close.’ He smiled. ‘Quarrelled 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, picturing them in her imagination.
‘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, but Narraway would only ever tell her what he had to.
She must remind herself that he had lost all he valued — not in material goods; she agreed with Vespasia that that to him was trivial — it was the loss of purpose, the fire and energy that drove him and defined who he was that most wounded him.
‘Were they from an old family?’ she pursued. ‘Where did they live, and how?’
He looked out of 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?’
It was a mild evasion, and she was aware of it.
‘He doesn’t seem to have bequeathed the heritage to us equally,’ she answered.
‘I’m sorry. Am I being evasive?’
‘Yes.’
‘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 dare say you know the waters of the Liffey River are famous for their softness. You can make ale anywhere, but nothing else has quite the flavour of that made with Liffey water. But you want to know what they were like.’ He made that a statement.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte replied. ‘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 probably that taking it instead of paying it as it was supposed to be paid, would cost Mulhare his life.’
She was not going to keep on saying she was sorry for the pain, the loss, the dishonesty of it. There was nothing to add.
‘And he must also have been able to persuade someone in Lisson Grove to help him,’ she pointed out.
Narraway winced. ‘Yes. I’ve thought about that a lot.’ Now his face was very sombre indeed. ‘I’ve been piecing together all I know: Mulhare’s connections; what I did with the money to try and make certain it would never be traced back to Special Branch, or to me personally, which in the knowledge of some would be the same thing; 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?’ Charlotte 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.’
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. We were all mistaken as to the entire nature of it. But in the course of the investigation we learned a great deal about each other that it would have been far more comfortable not to have known. But we cannot unlearn such things.’ She remembered it with pain now, even though it was fourteen years ago. She had absolutely no intention whatever of telling him what those discoveries were, most especially the things she had realised about herself.
She looked up at him and saw his surprise, and a gentleness that made her acutely self-conscious. 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. Both pity and disillusionment can be much more painful than one has any idea, until you taste them.’
He moved his head very slightly in assent; 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 Charlotte found herself drifting into a daze, and woke with a start. Please heaven she had not been lolling there with her mouth open!
She did not yet know anything like enough about what she could do to help.
‘Do you know who it was at Lisson Grove who betrayed you?’ she said aloud.
