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By Root 567 0

shouted after him, but Pitt shut the door and walked slowly back towards the kitchens and then into the main part of the house. He was miserable, and inside him there was a deep, hard anger. Finn had been gullible, like thousands of others. The worst in him had been wooed and won, then used by more cynical people. Certainly he had been willing to choose violence to right the wrongs he perceived. He had not cared who was hurt by it. But he had had the courage of his beliefs. He had taken at least some of the risks himself. Behind him were other men, hidden, who had prompted him to his acts, who had perpetuated the old legends and lies and used them to motivate the repeating violence.

He would dearly like to have known who wrote the letter Finn had burned. That was the man he wanted. And it was probably someone in this house. He feared it was Padraig Doyle.

He went to the library, where what was left of the conference was still proceeding. He knocked and went in. Moynihan and O’Day were sitting at one side of the table, Jack and Doyle on the other. They all looked up as Pitt came in.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he apologized. “But I must speak with Mr. Radley. I am sorry, but it cannot wait.”

Moynihan glanced at O’Day, who was watching Pitt.

“Of course,” Doyle said quickly. “I hope nothing further unpleasant has happened? No one is hurt?”

“Were you expecting something?” O’Day demanded.

Doyle merely smiled and waved his hand in dismissal.

Outside in the hall, Pitt told Jack about finding the dynamite and arresting Finn Hennessey.

Jack looked deeply unhappy. “What does it prove?” he said with a frown. “Who is behind him?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted.

Jack was puzzled. “But we have O’Day’s word that neither McGinley nor Hennessey could have killed Greville!”

“I know. That was Justine—”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “What? Oh come, Thomas! You’ve made a mistake there. You must have. You’re not saying she’s behind this? She’s Irish?”

“No—no, that had nothing to do with politics.” Pitt sighed. “I don’t know the answer to that yet, only the evidence. She was seen by Gracie ….” He saw Jack’s face. “Her shoes were,” he tried to explain. “She was dressed as a maid. Gracie saw her back, but today remembered seeing her shoes as well ….” He stopped again. Jack’s expression made continuing unnecessary.

“I must tell Iona and Mrs. Greville that I have arrested Hennessey,” he said quietly. “If you can keep the men talking a little longer it would be very helpful.”

“Doyle?” Jack asked, his voice hard and sad.

“Probably,” Pitt agreed. He did not add that he wished it were not. He could see it in Jack’s face as well. But being likable and having a sense of humor and imagination were not mitigating factors in murder, simply coincidences, just added hurt after the difficulty and the ugliness and the waste of it.

Pitt found Iona alone in the long gallery staring out into the wind and the gathering dusk. She did not turn, and for several moments he stood watching her. Her face was completely immobile, her expression impossible to read. He wondered what was occupying her mind so intensely she was apparently unaware of anyone else having come into the room, let alone of being observed.

At first he thought it was a calmness in her. She seemed almost relaxed, the lines and tension somewhat gone from her features. There was no sense of pain in her, no torment, no violence of emotions, certainly not the anger which so often accompanied loss. There was no struggle to deny the reality, to go back and recapture the past before the bereavement.

Did she really not care, feel no pain or grief at the heroic death of her husband? For all her romantic songs, her poetry and music, was she essentially quite cold inside, a lover of the beauty of art, but dead to reality? It was a peculiarly repellent thought. He found himself shivering although the gallery was not cold.

“Mrs. McGinley …” He wanted to break the moment.

She turned towards him, not startled, simply mildly surprised.

“Yes, Mr. Pitt?”

He saw sadness and confusion in her eyes. She was lost,