Betrayal at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [29]
The ashes settled even further in the fire.
Several seconds passed before he answered. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, his voice hesitant for the first time in her knowledge. ‘I am not even certain who is at the root of it, although I have at least an idea. It is all . . . ugly.’
She had to press onward, for Pitt’s sake. ‘Is that a reason not to look at it?’ she said quietly. ‘It will not mend itself, will it?’
He gave the briefest smile. ‘No. I am not certain that it can be mended at all.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.
He was startled. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You look uncomfortable standing there in front of the fire. Wouldn’t sitting down be better?’
He turned slightly to look behind him at the hearth and the mantel, and took a step sideways. ‘You mean I am blocking the heat,’ he said ruefully.
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘Actually I meant that I am getting a crick in my neck staring up and sideways at you.’
For a moment the pain in his face softened. ‘Thank you, but I would prefer not to disturb Mrs . . . whatever her name is. I can sit down without tea, unnatural as that may seem.’
‘Waterman,’ she supplied.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I was going to make it myself, provided, of course, that she will allow me into the kitchen. She doesn’t approve. Ladies of the social order she is accustomed to working for do not even know where the kitchen is. Although how I could lose it in a house this size, I have no idea.’
‘She has come down in the world,’ Narraway observed. ‘It can happen to the best of us.’
Charlotte watched as he sat down, elegantly as always, crossing his legs and leaning back as if he were comfortable.
‘I think it may concern an old case in Ireland,’ he began, at first meeting her eyes, then looking down awkwardly. ‘At the moment it is to do with the death of a present-day informant there, because the money I paid did not reach him in time for him to flee those he had . . . betrayed.’ He said the word crisply and clearly, as if deliberately exploring a wound: his own, not someone else’s. ‘I did it obliquely, so it could not be traced back to Special Branch. If it had been, it would have cost him his life immediately.’
Watching his face, Charlotte had no impression that he was being deliberately obscure. She waited. There was silence beyond the room, no sound of the children asleep upstairs, or of Mrs Waterman, who was presumably still in the kitchen. She would not retire to her room with a visitor still in the house.
‘My attempts to hide its source make it impossible to trace what actually happened to it,’ Narraway continued. ‘To the superficial investigation, it looks as if I took it myself.’
He was watching her now, but not openly. She saw the apprehension in his eyes; it was there just for a moment, then gone again. She tried to keep all expression from her face. What did she believe of him? She did not know, but for Pitt’s sake she could not afford to allow doubt.
‘You have enemies,’ she said.
His body eased so minutely it was barely visible, just an alteration in the way the fabric of his suit stretched across his shoulders. He was not a large man: average height, slender, wiry. The bones of his hands resting on his knee were lean. In fact his hands were beautiful. She had not noticed them before.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I have. No doubt many. I thought I had guarded against the possibility of their injuring me. It seems I overlooked something of importance.’
‘Or someone is an enemy whom you did not suspect,’ she amended.
‘That is possible,’ he agreed. ‘I think it is more likely that an old enemy has gained a power that I did not foresee.’
‘You have someone in mind?’ She leaned forward a little. The question was intrusive, but she had to know. Pitt was in France, relying on Narraway to back him up. He would have no idea Narraway no longer held any office.
‘Yes.’ The answer seemed to be difficult for him.
Again she waited.
‘It’s an old case. It all happened more than twenty years ago.’ There was a roughness in his voice and he had to clear his throat before he went on. ‘They’re all dead now, except