Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [166]
“Hardly a surprise,” Cornwallis replied with disappointment. “That only really tells us what we had already assumed. We can’t keep those people there much longer—in fact, not more than tomorrow, or the next day at the very latest, and that may be more than I can manage. We can’t keep this secret, Pitt. The conference report is due tomorrow. I can’t delay beyond another twenty-four hours at the outside.”
“Yes, I know,” Pitt said slowly. “I do know more of what happened, but it doesn’t yet prove who was responsible.” He told Cornwallis about Finn Hennessey and the dynamite.
“Can’t you get anything from him?” Cornwallis said, but with a downward inflection in his voice as though he took for granted a negative answer.
“Not yet,” Pitt replied, but there was the faintest glimmer of hope in the back of his mind, too small to grasp.
“What are you going to do now?” Cornwallis pressed. “Surely from what you’ve told me it has to be Doyle or Moynihan. And Hennessey would hardly collaborate with Moynihan. Their views and aims are directly opposing! If they weren’t, we wouldn’t have an Irish Problem to begin with.”
“I know all that,” Pitt conceded. “But I can’t prove it, even to myself, let alone to a court. But we’ll go back to the bomb in Jack’s study and see if we can’t trace McGinley’s movements better and see how he knew it was there. We may be able to deduce what he learned, and it might be enough.”
“Please let me know this evening,” Cornwallis instructed. “Even if you have nothing.”
“Anything more on poor Denbigh?” Pitt asked him. He had not forgotten about the beginning of the case, or the anger and disgust he had felt then.
“A little, although I don’t think it will help much.” Cornwallis sounded very far away on the other end of the line, even as if his thoughts were distant. “We’ve been working on it with every man we could spare. We know a great deal more about the Fenians here in London than we did even a couple of weeks ago. But this man seen following Denbigh, and who we are sure is responsible for his death, is not among them.”
“You mean he went back to Ireland?”
“No … that’s the point. He infiltrated the Fenians as well. But he isn’t one of them. He learned a few bits of information about their plans, membership and so on, and then went. I think they’d like to get him almost as much as we would.”
Pitt was puzzled. “Then who is he, and why did he kill Denbigh?”
“I think that may be the point,” Cornwallis answered. “Maybe Denbigh discovered who he was, and that’s why he killed him, not to protect the Fenians at all. But it doesn’t help you, because he certainly isn’t at Ashworth Hall or you would have seen him. He’s unmistakable in appearance. Your man is either Doyle or just possibly Moynihan.”
“Yes,” Pitt agreed. “Yes, I know. Thank you, sir.”
Pitt bade him good-bye and replaced the receiver. He went to look for Tellman and found him in the servants’ hall looking glum.
“Any tea?” Pitt asked.
“None that’s fresh,” Tellman answered dourly. After a moment’s hesitation he straightened up from the table where he had been leaning. “I’ll get some.”
Pitt was about to stop him and to say they had important things to do, then he changed his mind. All they could do to begin with was think, and that could be done as well with a fresh, hot cup of tea as without.
Tellman returned ten minutes later with a teapot on a tray, with milk jug, cups, sugar, and Suffolk rusks. He put down the tray with a grunt of satisfaction.
Pitt poured and stood with the steaming cup clasped in his hands, the saucer ignored.
“Go back over everything we know about what McGinley did the morning he died,” he said thoughtfully. “How did he know the dynamite was there? Hennessey didn’t tell him … which means Hennessey and his master were essentially on different sides … I suppose.”
“Doyle,” Tellman answered. “Hennessey was working for Doyle. He must have been.”
“Denbigh wasn’t killed by the Fenians,” Pitt said slowly. “Cornwallis just told me.”