Betrayal at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [46]
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