No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [105]
“What about other nationalist groups?” Matthew asked, not sure in which direction he was driving, but thinking primarily of the Serbians because of their recent resort to assassination as a weapon.
“Probably,” Winters answered, his cadaverous face furrowed in thought. “Trouble is, he’s very difficult to trace because he’s so unremarkable to look at. I don’t know that he deliberately disguises himself. Nothing so melodramatic as wigs or false mustaches, but a change of clothes, parting the hair on the other side, a different walk, and suddenly you have a different person. No one remembers him or can describe him afterward.”
A young man in a Guard’s uniform walked past them whistling cheerfully, a smile on his face.
“So he has a sense of proportion, no theatrics,” Matthew observed, referring to Hannassey. “Clever.”
“He’s in it to win,” Winters affirmed. “He never loses sight of the main purpose.”
“And the main purpose is?”
“Independence for Ireland—first, last, and always. Catholics and Protestants together, willing or not.”
“Obsessive?”
Winters thought for a moment. “Not so as to lose balance, no. Why are you asking?”
“I’ve heard rumors of a plot,” Matthew said with studied casualness, adding, “Wondered if Hannassey could be involved.”
Winters stiffened slightly. “If it’s an Irish plot, you’d better tell me,” he said, keeping up his steady, easy pace as they passed an elderly gentleman stopping to light his cigar, cupping his hands around the flame of his match. The breeze was only a whisper, but it was sufficient to blow out the match.
The hurdy-gurdy man changed to a love song, and some of the young people started to sing with him.
“I don’t know that it is.” Matthew was sorely tempted to tell Winters all he knew. He desperately needed an ally. The loneliness of confusion and responsibility weighed on him almost suffocatingly. “It could be any of several things,” he said aloud.
Winters’s face was bleak. He was still looking straight ahead and avoiding Matthew’s eyes. “How much do you really know what you’re talking about, Reavley?”
It was the moment of decision. Matthew took the plunge. “Only that someone uncovered a document outlining a conspiracy that was profoundly serious, and he was killed before he could show it to me,” he answered. “The document disappeared. I’m trying to prevent a disaster without knowing what it is. But it seems to me that with the Curragh mutiny, the failure to get any Anglo-Irish agreement, and now the king coming out on the side of the Loyalists, a plot against him fills the outline too well to ignore.”
Winters walked in silence for at least fifty yards, which took them around the end of the Serpentine. The sun was hot, baking the ground. The air was still, carrying the sounds of laughter from the distance, and a thread of music again.
“I don’t think so,” he said at last. “It wouldn’t serve Irish purposes. It’s too violent.”
“Too violent!” Matthew said in amazement. “Since when has that stopped the Irish Nationalists? Have you forgotten the Phoenix Park murders? Not to mention a score of other acts of terror since! Half the dynamiters in London have been Fenians.” He barely refrained from telling Winters he was talking nonsense.
Winters seemed unperturbed. “The Catholic Irish want self-government, independence from Britain,” he said patiently, as if it were something he had been obliged to explain too many times, and to men who did not wish to understand. “They want to set up their own nation with its parliament, foreign office, and economy.”
“That’s impossible without violence. In 1912 over two hundred thousand Ulstermen, and even more women, signed the Solemn League and Covenant to use all means necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule parliament in Ireland! If anyone thinks they’re going to suppress Ulster without violence, they’ve never been within a hundred miles of Ireland!”
“Very much my point,” Winters said grimly.