Ashworth Hall (39 page)

“I’m saying nothing,” Finn replied, then stood still, his head lifted, his eyes straight ahead.

Tellman came up behind him and slipped on the handcuffs. The groom looked aghast. He opened his mouth to speak and then found he had nothing to say.

Pitt turned and left to go and search Hennessey’s room. He took the butler, Dlikes, with him, in case he should find something and later require a witness to the fact.

Dlikes stood in the doorway somberly, deeply unhappy at the whole affair. Pitt went into the room and began methodically to go through cupboards and drawers. He found the candles and the one stick of dynamite inside a tall boot at the back of the wardrobe. It was out of sight, but hardly hidden. Hennessey had either been sure enough of Gracie or had thought it not worth trying to hide in some other place less obviously his. Maybe his type of loyalty extended to not attempting to lay the blame on anyone else. He was a passionate believer in his cause, not a murderer for hire or for personal satisfaction.

There was paper ash in the bowl. It could have been anything, possibly the letter Gracie saw on the table. He had taken care at least to destroy everything to link him to someone else. That was worth a kind of oblique respect.

Pitt showed the dynamite to Dlikes, then replaced it and requested the butler to lock the door and give him the key. If there was another key, he was to find that and give it to Pitt also. There was a storeroom with a grille window and a stout door where Hennessey could remain until the local police took him away, perhaps tomorrow or the day after.

Pitt went back to Finn again, with Tellman, and told him about finding the dynamite.

“I’m not saying anything,” Finn repeated, looking directly at Pitt. “I know my cause is just. I’ve lived for Irish freedom. I’ll die for it if I have to. I love my country and its people. I’ll just be one more martyr in the cause.”

“Being hanged for a murder you committed is not martyrdom,” Pitt replied tartly. “Most people would regard murdering your employer, a man who trusted you, another Irishman fighting for the same cause, as a pretty shabby and cowardly betrayal. And not only that, but pointless as well. What did killing McGinley achieve? He wanted exactly the same as you did.”

“I didn’t kill McGinley,” Finn said stubbornly. “I didn’t put the dynamite there.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Pitt said with disdain.

“I don’t care a damn what you believe!” Finn spat back. “You’re just another English oppressor forcing your will on a defenseless people.”

“You’re the one with the dynamite,” Pitt retaliated. “You’re the one who blew up McGinley, not me.”

“I didn’t put the dynamite there! Anyway, it wasn’t meant for McGinley, you fool,” Finn said contemptuously. “It was for Radley! I’d have thought you’d realize that—” He stopped.

Pitt smiled. “If you didn’t put it there, how do you know who it was meant for?”

“I’m saying nothing,” Finn repeated angrily. “I don’t betray my friends. I’ll die first.”

“Probably,” Pitt agreed. But he also knew that he would get little more from him, and grudgingly he respected his courage, if little else. “You are being used,” he added from the door.

Finn smiled. His face was very pale, and there was a sweat of fear on his lip. “But I know by whom, and what for, and I’m willing. Can you say as much?”

“I believe so,” Pitt replied. “Are you as sure that those you’ve used feel as certain?”

Finn’s jaw tightened. “You use who you have to. The cause justifies it.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Pitt replied, this time with absolute certainty. “If it destroys what is good in you, then it is a bad cause, or you have misunderstood it. Everything you do becomes part of it and part of you. You can’t take it off, like old clothes, when you get there. It’s not clothes, Finn, it’s your flesh.”

“No, it isn’t!” Finn shouted after him, but Pitt shut the door and walked slowly back towards the kitchens and then into the main part of the house. He was miserable, and inside him there was a deep, hard anger. Finn had been gullible, like thousands of others. The worst in him had been wooed and won, then used by more cynical people. Certainly he had been willing to choose violence to right the wrongs he perceived. He had not cared who was hurt by it. But he had had the courage of his beliefs. He had taken at least some of the risks himself. Behind him were other men, hidden, who had prompted him to his acts, who had perpetuated the old legends and lies and used them to motivate the repeating violence.

He would dearly like to have known who wrote the letter Finn had burned. That was the man he wanted. And it was probably someone in this house. He feared it was Padraig Doyle.

He went to the library, where what was left of the conference was still proceeding. He knocked and went in. Moynihan and O’Day were sitting at one side of the table, Jack and Doyle on the other. They all looked up as Pitt came in.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he apologized. “But I must speak with Mr. Radley. I am sorry, but it cannot wait.”

Moynihan glanced at O’Day, who was watching Pitt.

“Of course,” Doyle said quickly. “I hope nothing further unpleasant has happened? No one is hurt?”

“Were you expecting something?” O’Day demanded.

Doyle merely smiled and waved his hand in dismissal.

Outside in the hall, Pitt told Jack about finding the dynamite and arresting Finn Hennessey.

Jack looked deeply unhappy. “What does it prove?” he said with a frown. “Who is behind him?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted.

Jack was puzzled. “But we have O’Day’s word that neither McGinley nor Hennessey could have killed Greville!”

“I know. That was Justine—”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “What? Oh come, Thomas! You’ve made a mistake there. You must have. You’re not saying she’s behind this? She’s Irish?”

“No—no, that had nothing to do with politics.” Pitt sighed. “I don’t know the answer to that yet, only the evidence. She was seen by Gracie ….” He saw Jack’s face. “Her shoes were,” he tried to explain. “She was dressed as a maid. Gracie saw her back, but today remembered seeing her shoes as well ….” He stopped again. Jack’s expression made continuing unnecessary.

“I must tell Iona and Mrs. Greville that I have arrested Hennessey,” he said quietly. “If you can keep the men talking a little longer it would be very helpful.”

“Doyle?” Jack asked, his voice hard and sad.

“Probably,” Pitt agreed. He did not add that he wished it were not. He could see it in Jack’s face as well. But being likable and having a sense of humor and imagination were not mitigating factors in murder, simply coincidences, just added hurt after the difficulty and the ugliness and the waste of it.

Pitt found Iona alone in the long gallery staring out into the wind and the gathering dusk. She did not turn, and for several moments he stood watching her. Her face was completely immobile, her expression impossible to read. He wondered what was occupying her mind so intensely she was apparently unaware of anyone else having come into the room, let alone of being observed.

At first he thought it was a calmness in her. She seemed almost relaxed, the lines and tension somewhat gone from her features. There was no sense of pain in her, no torment, no violence of emotions, certainly not the anger which so often accompanied loss. There was no struggle to deny the reality, to go back and recapture the past before the bereavement.

Did she really not care, feel no pain or grief at the heroic death of her husband? For all her romantic songs, her poetry and music, was she essentially quite cold inside, a lover of the beauty of art, but dead to reality? It was a peculiarly repellent thought. He found himself shivering although the gallery was not cold.

“Mrs. McGinley …” He wanted to break the moment.

She turned towards him, not startled, simply mildly surprised.

“Yes, Mr. Pitt?”

He saw sadness and confusion in her eyes. She was lost, uncertain what she felt, only that it hurt. There was no excitement, no relief that she was free to go to Moynihan, or even resolution that she wanted to. Perhaps her emotion in seeking him had not been love so much as loneliness?

“I am sorry, Mrs. McGinley, but I have had to arrest your manservant, Finn Hennessey. He was in possession of dynamite.”

Her eyes widened. “Dynamite? Finn was?”

“Yes. It was in his room. He has not denied it, simply refused to give any explanation or say where he got it, though he denies making the bomb or placing it in the study.”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know, yet, but it is only a matter of time now.” That was a lie, he felt no such certainty, but he wanted her to believe he did. She might even have been the one behind Finn, although he doubted it. He knew she had not placed the bomb herself; her time was accounted for by Moynihan and by Doyle. “I am telling you simply so you know why he is no longer available to you. I’m sorry.”

She turned away from him, looking out again towards the dusk beyond the window where rain now spattered the panes.

“He was always passionate about Ireland, about our freedom. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. But I really never thought he would hurt Lorcan. He loved Ireland as much as anyone.”

She was silent for a moment and when she continued there was a different kind of pain in her voice. “As long as I knew Lorcan, it was what he cared about most … more, I think, than he ever loved me. Freedom for Ireland was what he talked about, planned for, worked for all his life. No sacrifice of time or money was too much. I know it was meant for Mr. Radley, but if Finn knew it was there, you would think he would have stopped Lorcan going to try to …” She shook her head. “No, I suppose not. Perhaps they quarreled. He may have tried to stop him, and Lorcan was determined to defuse it anyway. I don’t know. I don’t even know why.” She blinked. “I seem to find there is so much confuses me now … things I thought I was certain of.”

He did not know what to say. He wished there was something comforting, an assurance that it would pass, but there was none. It would not necessarily resolve.

She looked at him and suddenly smiled very slightly. “I thought you were going to say something trite. Thank you for not doing so.”

He found himself coloring, immensely relieved he had not spoken. He looked at her for a moment longer, then turned and went.

In the evening, after dinner, Pitt was obliged to face the necessity of looking more closely at the body of Ainsley Greville. If Tellman were correct and he had lain in the bath at the angle described, then his neck had been broken. Perhaps it was possible the blow to the back of his skull had accomplished that, but he found it hard to believe, and he would not accept it without detailed examination. The blow, as he had seen it, would have been enough to concuss but not to cause death—unless it were a great deal harder than it had appeared to him. It did not seem at the right angle. If Greville’s neck were broken, then he had not drowned. Pitt needed to resolve it. Perhaps it made no difference to the charge, or to Justine’s guilt, but it was unexplained, and he would not leave it so.

He needed Piers’s help. And if it were necessary to do more than examine from the surface, then it would have to be Piers who did so. He should have Eudora’s permission. That was something he dreaded, but there was no alternative.

Charlotte saw him as he was starting up the stairs.

“Where are you going?” she asked, catching up with him, searching his face anxiously.

“To ask Piers to help me look at the body again,” he answered. “He’s upstairs with his mother. Anyway, I need her permission, or more properly, I would rather not take the time and trouble to apply for a legal writ.”

Her face tightened. “An autopsy?” she said huskily. “Thomas, you can’t ask Piers to do an autopsy on his own father! And … and when are you going to tell him it was Justine? What are you going to do about her?”

“Nothing yet,” he answered, meeting her gaze. She looked frightened and worried, and still her composure was complete. If she wanted or needed comfort there was no sign of it.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she offered. “In case Eudora is very distressed? Some people find the invasion of an autopsy very dreadful … as if in some way the person they loved could know about the … the intimacy of it.”

Instinct told him to decline.

“No, thank you. I think this is something better done with as few people involved as possible. I won’t even take Tellman.” He changed the subject. “How is Gracie? She’s taken this matter of Hennessey very bad.”

“I know,” she said softly, her face bleak with sadness and anger. “It will be hard for her for a while. I think the best thing we can do is say as little as possible. It will just take time.”

“By the way, Charlotte.” He looked very directly at her. “Where did you get the newspaper cuttings that Gracie showed to Hennessey?”

“Oh …” She colored uncomfortably. “I think … all things considered … you might prefer not to know that. Please don’t ask, then I shall not have to tell you.”

“Charlotte …”

She smiled at him dazzlingly, and before he could argue, she touched his hand, then turned and went downstairs.

Charlotte turned in the hall and watched him disappear around the newel at the top. Her momentary happiness vanished. She felt so alone she could have cried, which was ridiculous. She was tired. She seemed to have spent weeks trying to make things run smoothly, to prevent quarrels from becoming permanent rifts, trying to make light conversation when all any of them wanted to do was scream at each other, or weep with grief and fear, and now confusion and anxiety as well, and the dark pain of disillusion as things they thought they had known fell apart.

Emily was still terrified for Jack, and she had good cause. She was looking paler and more tired with each day. It was all pointless anyway; nobody was going to solve the Irish Problem. They would probably still be hating each other in fifty years. Was it worth one more life lost or broken?

And what about Eudora? How was she going to find the strength to comfort Piers when he heard the truth about Justine … whatever that truth was? Could he ever find peace within himself once he knew the woman he loved so much now had been his own father’s mistress—and then murdered him? His world was about to end.