Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [51]
“I have him there already,” Narraway answered. “What can you tell me about the less obvious aspects of the Cape-to-Cairo railway?”
Carlisle was surprised. “You think it has to do with that? Isn’t it just some…some private insanity?”
“I don’t know. It seems an odd time and place for it.”
“Decidedly. But I imagine real madness does not cater to convenience.”
They were walking under the trees now, the smell of cut grass heavy in the air, the path easy and smooth. There was barely a soft crunch of grit under their feet and the sound of birdsong in the distance. A child was throwing sticks for a happy spaniel pup.
“That sort of madness doesn’t explode without some event as a catalyst,” Narraway answered him. “Some old passion woken by mockery, rejection, a compulsion exploding in the mind, a sudden surge of rage out of control.”
“I know very little about any of those men,” Carlisle said apologetically. “Not much that is more than common knowledge.”
“Or it could be a colder and saner motive,” Narraway said. “A sabotage to the talks. A long and bitter enmity. Who else could build this railway, if not these men? Who would want it stopped, and why? National pride? Political power? Tell me something I can’t read in the newspaper.”
Carlisle thought for several minutes. They passed from the shade of the trees and emerged into the sun again.
“I don’t know of anyone else in particular who would be as good as this group, if they work together,” he said at last. “Marquand is a superb financier with all the best connections. Sorokine is a better diplomat than he has so far shown. He’s lazy. I don’t mean he isn’t good; he could be brilliant if he cared enough to stir himself. Quase is an engineer with flashes of genius, and he knows Africa. And Dunkeld is a driving force with intelligence, imagination, and a relentless will. If any man can draw it all together, he can.”
“Ruthless?”
Carlisle smiled. “Unquestionably. But what use would a man be at a task like this if he were not? And you say he is accounted for?”
“Yes. Who else might achieve it?”
Carlisle thought for a moment. “A few years ago I would have said Watson Forbes,” he answered. “Cleverer than Dunkeld, but perhaps less magnetic. Better knowledge of Africa. Explored a lot of it himself, all the way up from Cape Town north to Mashonaland, and Matabeleland. Knows Cecil Rhodes personally. Walked the Veldt, saw the great Rift Valley, took a boat up the Zambezi, looked at the falls there, maybe the biggest in the world. And he knows Egypt and the Sudan too. Been up the Nile beyond Karnak and the Valley of the Kings, and then on by camel as far as Khartoum. But he’s returned to England now. Had enough. The man’s tired. He was actually offered this project and declined it, which is how Dunkeld came to the fore.”
“Why, do you know?”
“I don’t, really. Lost the energy. Perhaps the climate got to him.”
Narraway considered for a hundred yards or so, then turned to Carlisle again. “Any serious political enemies to the project?”
“What difference would that make?” Carlisle asked with a slight shrug. “Sorry, but I think you’re looking for a man who is sane and highly intelligent almost all the time, but has a germ of madness in him that burst through a couple of nights ago. I don’t see how it can have anything whatever to do with the railway. Of course, there’s vast money to be made in it, eventually, and, far more than all the financial fortunes, there’s honor, immense personal power, certainly peerages, fame for a lifetime and beyond. Your name would be on the maps and in the history books. For some men that’s the prize above all others. Never underestimate the love of power.”
They walked a few more yards in silence, Narraway turning over in his mind what Carlisle had said. The music of a hurdy-gurdy drifted faintly on the breeze.
“You might find a personal hatred among these men, although I still can’t see how murdering a prostitute is going to profit