Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [117]
“That isn’t all,” Vespasia went on, her eyes light. “Five years ago—this affair has persisted for some very considerable time—he went to an auctioneer in Deptford who was acting as agent for a landlord in Kent.” She held up her hands as she spoke. “Parnell went calling himself Mr. Fox. He was told the house in question belonged to a Mr. Preston. Parnell then said he was Clement Preston. The agent replied that he had thought he said he was a Mr. Fox. Parnell then said he was staying with a Mr. Fox, but his own name was Preston, and he would take the house for twelve months, but refused to give any references”—her eyebrows rose—“on the grounds that a man who owned horses should not be required to do so.”
“Horses?” Charlotte nearly choked on her soup. “What have horses to do with it?” she demanded. “You can sell horses, or they can fall ill, or be injured, or even die.”
“Nothing whatever. The music halls are going to have a wonderful time with it,” Vespasia said with a smile. “Along with the cloth cap and the business of the fire escape. It is all so unbelievably grubby and incompetent.” Her face became serious again. “But it is sad for Ireland. Parnell may not have realized it yet, and his immediate supporters may give him a vote of confidence, out of loyalty and not to be seen to desert him, but the people at large will never follow him now.” She sighed and permitted the butler, who had returned, to remove the last of her soup and to serve the salmon and vegetables.
When he was gone she looked at Charlotte again, her eyes grave.
“Since Ainsley Greville is dead, I presume the political issues for which he worked are now sacrificed, which will have been the reason for his murder.”
“No, Jack has taken his place, at least temporarily,” Charlotte replied. “It was almost certainly to kill Jack that the dynamite was placed in the study this morning. Poor Emily is terrified, but Jack has no honorable choice but to continue in Greville’s place and do the best he can.”
“How very dreadful,” Vespasia said with considerable alarm. “You must all be most distressed. I wish there were some way in which I could help, but the Irish Problem is centuries old, and bedeviled by ignorance, myth and hatred on all sides. The tragedies it has caused are legion.”
“I know.” Charlotte looked down at her plate, thinking of the tale Gracie had told her. “We have Padraig Doyle and Carson O’Day with us.”
Vespasia shook her head and a flicker of anger crossed her face.
“That miserable business,” she said grimly. “That was one of the worst, typifying everything that is wrong with the whole sordid, treacherous affair.”
“But we betrayed them,” Charlotte pointed out. “Some soldier called Chinnery raped Neassa Doyle and then fled to England.” She did not try to keep the rage and disgust out of her voice. “And Drystan O’Day was his friend! No wonder the Irish don’t trust us. When I hear something like that, I’m ashamed to be English.”
Vespasia leaned back in her chair, her face weary, her salmon forgotten.
“Don’t be, Charlotte. We have certainly done some dreadful things in our history, things that sicken the heart and darken the soul, but this was not one of them.”
Charlotte waited. If Vespasia did not know the truth of the matter, perhaps she did not need to. She was an old lady. It would serve no purpose to harrow her with it.
“You have no need to be gentle with me,” Vespasia said with the ghost of a smile. “I have seen more to haunt one’s dreams than you have, my dear. Neassa Doyle was not raped. She was followed by her own brothers, and it was they who cut off her hair because they thought she was a whore, and with a Protestant man at that ….”
Charlotte was appalled. It was so horrible, so utterly unlike the story she had heard and accepted, instinctively she drew breath to deny it.
“It was they who killed her and left her for Drystan O’Day to find,” Vespasia went on. “In their eyes she had betrayed them,