CHAPTER 29
It took several hours of talking to an irate Chief Inspector Thoreau, but he eventually cleared us of any wrongdoing. It took another hour to convince him to leave all mention of the buried package and Scott’s particular vendetta against me from his report. Not that I was truly worried. I knew Thoreau understood far more about my secretive work than he wished to, and was far more willing to comply with the necessity to conceal such things than he wanted to believe. But all the same I was grateful, particularly knowing that his superior, the head of CID, was Sir Basil Thomson, who was also the newly appointed Director of Intelligence, and friends with Ardmore.
However, Thoreau proved to be not so compliant when it came to believing this package we spoke of was lost. As I said, he understood me too well. So later that evening I happened to lead a party of six through Littlemote House rather than four.
“Where are we going, Ver?” Sidney asked me as we climbed the stairs. “To the attics?”
“No, somewhere much less austere. It’s been sitting under our noses from the very beginning.”
I turned a corner and then stepped forward to push open a door—one that swung open with the greatest of ease. Sidney and the others stared over my shoulder in incomprehension, and then realization dawned in my husband’s eyes. “The master bedchambers.”
“Yes,” I said, turning to enter the lavish lady’s chamber with its rose silk wallpaper and gilded picture frames. “You’ll recall it was Mr. Green who claimed that the sticking door was an indication of the structure’s warped wood and water damage. Whether there is actually damage or he simply made it up, I’m not qualified to say. But I do believe he chose to use the chambers’ vacancy to his own advantage.”
“Yes, but he told your aunt to hire an expert to better assess the structure,” Sidney countered as he and the others spread out through the room.
“Something he knew my aunt could not afford and so would not do. And with Reg being blind, it was unlikely he would contradict them.” I pushed open the door to the dressing room and then strolled on through to the master chamber, having already decided this was the room where the item was most likely stored.
A quick survey of the forest-green walls showed no water stains or other obvious signs of concern, but once again, I was not well-versed in such things. Ornate walnut furnishings filled the space, just as in the lady’s chamber, and a thick Aubusson carpet stretched from wall to wall.
“What precisely are we looking for?” Thoreau asked gruffly.
“I’m not exactly certain. But something out of place. It may even be hidden.”
“Something like this.”
I turned at the sound of Alec’s voice as he lifted aside a merlot cloth covering a wooden cask about two feet high—wide and squat. My heart leapt at this proof that I had been right. “Yes, remove the cloth.”
He whisked it aside and we all stared down at the barrel.
“Opium?” Thoreau stated perplexedly, for that was what it was labeled.
But I was suspicious. “How do we open it?”
Sergeant Crosswire seemed to have some experience with this, for he stepped forward to handle the task as we all looked on. Once the top was removed, he stepped back to allow the rest of us to peer inside. What met our eyes made the blood drain from my face.
“Is that . . . ?”
“Yes,” Sidney replied hollowly.
It was Max who had enough presence of mind to reach inside and lift one of the metal cylinders from the barrel’s depths. Three of them had been nestled side by side and padded with hay, each about twenty inches in length and eight inches in diameter. When he turned it face up, we could see the telltale white star marking and read the horrifying word, Phosgene.
For a moment, none of us seemed able to speak, too alarming was the discovery. How many of the casks the Zebrina had picked up on the Isle of Wight had been opium, and how many had hidden these more sinister contents? And that crate the men on Wight had mentioned, was it a Livens Projector used to hurl these at enemy lines? Had all the cargo the Zebrina had smuggled out been poison gas, not opium?
It was no wonder Max’s father had felt tormented about what he’d done. But what on earth had he intended the phosgene to be used for in the first place? To gas the Irish rebels? The thought was sickening.
And look what had come of it. Though we suspected the gas cylinders had been intercepted by men in the employ of Ardmore, who then killed most of the Zebrina crew, we still had no proof of it. I’d expected papers of some kind, a trail of evidence leading straight to Ardmore’s door, but all the late Lord Ryde had left us was an even more disturbing puzzle.
Where were the rest of these phosgene cylinders now? And what were they intended for? I briefly considered the possibility that they’d already been utilized, except I’d heard nothing about any gas attacks since the end of the war, and none on British soil.
My gaze lifted to Max’s face first, my heart squeezing at the confusion and anguish I saw stamped across his features. Discovering what his father had really been mixed up in could not be easy. Even more so, the realization of what his father had been willing to do. Max had been at the front. He had likely seen what phosgene did to a man—drowning him in the liquid discharged from his own lungs. I’d never witnessed it myself, but I’d read the reports. It was a ghastly way to die.
I turned to Sidney next, seeing the anger flashing in his eyes as he tried to push aside his shock. Easier to be furious than give in to the memories of his time in the trenches. After the first gas attack at Ypres in April 1915, he and his men had faced every day knowing they might be smothered by the enemy with poisonous gas. “Put it back carefully,” he told Max unnecessarily, but someone had to break the tense silence.
I studied Alec, whose expression I could not read. “Did you have any suspicions about this?”
He shook his head. “No, if there were ever missing cylinders of phosgene, I was never told about it.”
Given the fact that they would have disappeared during the autumn of 1917, in the midst of a brutal war, as smuggled cargo for the Zebrina’s doomed voyage, I suspected the fact had been hushed up or brushed aside as faulty accounting.
“Forget that. What in blazes do you intend to do with them?” Thoreau demanded, clearly more unsettled than he wished to appear. I began to wonder how he’d spent his war serving.
* * *
After the trouble he’d given us over the incident with Scott and my failure to confide in him earlier, I expected Chief Inspector Thoreau to put up a fight about the disposition of the gas cylinders. I wasn’t sure if his ready capitulation was an indication of his trust in me, or an acknowledgment that the matter had taken on a complexity that surpassed his means and would draw the unwanted attention of his glory-hound superior—Sir Basil Thomson. Whatever the case, he gamely allowed us to take the cylinders back with us to London. Where I passed them into Alec’s care, relying on him to deliver them to C without incident and explain the matter to him.
Given the alarming nature of our report, I’d hoped C might arrange to meet with me in person, despite the complications that could arise should the discovery of our direct communication be revealed. But it was Alec who I once again met in St. James’s Park four days later. The afternoon was blustery and threatened rain, so we and a few other brave souls had the paths all to ourselves.
“C offers his compliments,” Alec began as we strolled side by side, hands tucked in our pockets, around the lake speckled with the leaves from the trees ringing it.
I made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a rumble of ascent. The truth was, I was growing distinctly annoyed with C, with all of the Secret Service, even though I had known this was the way it would be. After all, I had been the one to contact C for his unofficial help some three months past.
“Major Scott’s men are refusing to talk, of course,” Alec said, debriefing me on the dramatis personae from the incident at Littlemote. “And they’ve secured a rather influential barrister. One who is decidedly beyond their means.”
“Hmm, yes. I wonder who is footing the bill,” I remarked dryly.
“No trail, of course,” Alec added. “Ardmore’s too clever for that. But all indications are Scott’s men shall get off with little more than a slap to the wrist. Particularly as we were unable to press charges for their more serious crimes without revealing secrets the state would rather we not.”
I huddled deeper into my coat. “And let me guess, Captain Willoughby and Lieutenant Smith have both been reassigned. Posts unknown.”
“No, one better.” His voice was deep with reluctant admiration. “The records show they were never posted to Froxfield at all.”
I turned to him in shock. “How on earth . . . ?” I broke off, frustration simmering in my veins. “Aliases?” I guessed.
“Maybe. Though they may not have been necessary.”
“Because we never actually saw them at the airfield.” It was always in adjacent properties that could have been accessed by other means, or the sky. “But I saw Captain Willoughby flying one of the light bombers.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it took off from an adjacent property.”
I closed my eyes briefly, unable to believe the deception that had played out right under our noses.
“Though I was able to find out that, as you expected, Lieutenant Smith was never assigned to the RAF. He was a Fusilier. A sniper.”
I supposed that explained his ability to shoot Major Scott through the heart at such a distance, even through the body of another human. I scowled. And perhaps that strange intuition of danger Sidney and I had both experienced in the west park the morning we first met Captain Willoughby. Had Lieutenant Smith been perched in one of the trees? Would he have shot us? I guessed we might never know.
I exhaled, rolling my head to relieve some of the tension in my neck. “Then we have nothing but a suspicion that Ardmore possesses an unknown quantity of phosgene he intends to use in some unspecified manner at some unidentified location, and yet no way to prove it,” I snapped beneath my breath.
“Yes, but it could be worse. At least we know.”
I glared at Alec, finding the fact that he was trying to cheer me both decidedly unhelpful and annoying. “Yes, and he knows we know. I received a note from him just yesterday expressing his appreciation for finding the gas cylinders, and conveying how fortunate it was they didn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
He shook his head in astonishment. “That man certainly enjoys goading you.” Alec grinned. “But then again, so do I.”
I cast him a black look, one that, absurdly, I knew would only please him.
However, the chief problem with Ardmore’s missive hadn’t been his provoking comments, but the acknowledgment that perhaps I should have been the one expressing my gratitude to him for stopping Scott from killing me, as well as possibly Sidney, Max, and Alec. If not for Willoughby’s aerial daring and Smith’s sharp-shooting, I held no illusions the confrontation could have turned out quite differently.
Pushing these uncomfortable thoughts to the back of my mind, I turned the conversation to another disturbing topic. “What of the bomb that killed General Bishop and his staff? Were there any survivors?”
“C assured me the matter would be investigated.” He kicked a stray acorn fallen into the path from one of the trees overhead. “I gather there was an investigation of some sort at the time of the incident, but it stalled due to lack of or conflicting evidence.”
I assumed that conflicting evidence was my and Scott’s contradictory reports. The fact that shells had fallen in the area soon after, and then the army had been forced to retreat farther from the Germans’ continued advance had muddied any physical evidence that might have been available.
Though I knew it was useless to blame myself for neglecting to recognize that shelter had been blown up by a bomb and not a shell, that I’d been fortunate enough just to survive and escape any severe injuries, I still couldn’t help but mentally castigate myself. I prided myself on my observation skills, and yet in a moment when I’d needed them most, I’d failed to utilize them sufficiently, too distracted by my own grief and self-pity over Sidney’s reported death. Though C didn’t say so, or perhaps Alec simply hadn’t repeated it, I knew the chances now of uncovering the culprit who’d planted and detonated that explosive were slim to none. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. After all, C and Alec weren’t my only sources of information.
As if recognizing this, Alec tipped his head toward me. “Have a care who you send Ryde to ask information from at the War Office,” he advised me. “If your bomber is the same man as that traitor you were warning Bishop of, then he might still be haunting the halls of Whitehall.”
I repressed a scowl at his having already anticipated my intentions to ask Max to do just that, perfectly aware of the risks. “Haven’t you been cleared for active duty yet?” I groused. From what I could tell his shoulder seemed perfectly healed.
Far from insulted, Alec’s expression turned arrogant. “Eager to get rid of me, are you?”
“Like a bad haircut.”
He chuckled. “Say what you like, Ver, but I know you’ll miss me when I’m gone.”
And dash it all, if he wasn’t right. I would miss him. And worry for him. For he’d always been too brash for his own good. Given the state of affairs, he was most likely to be sent to Ireland, and who knew what trouble he might get himself into there?
Almost as if to illustrate this point, his attention shifted to the trio of men striding toward us from Downing Street. We had turned onto a side path to stroll toward Horse Guards Road, passing beneath the shade of the trees lining the rim of the park. “Well, I’ll be damned. It can’t be?” He narrowed his eyes. “But so it is. Now what are they about? It can’t be anything good.”
“Who?” I asked, trying to tell whether I recognized any of the men, whether I should recognize them. But to my eyes they appeared like rather ordinary gentlemen in three-piece suits and dark overcoats. The only thing about them that stood out to me was the fact that the other two seemed to subtly defer to the tall, broad-shouldered man on the right.
Alec glanced at me, and I could tell he was debating whether to speak. “Mark the one on the right well,” he finally said. “That’s Michael Collins.”
I struggled not to react. “You mean, the Irish revolutionary?”
He nodded. “And their Director of Intelligence, from what I hear.”
“But I thought no one knew what he looked like?”
“Some of us do,” he answered obliquely.
I could only wonder what that meant. “But isn’t he wanted by the authorities?” And yet he was here, in the heart of London, walking by the prime minister’s lodgings. “Should we follow them?”
“I will.”
I arched my eyebrows in silent challenge.
“You’re too conspicuous, Ver,” he replied unrepentantly. “I know in Belgium during the war you ground dirt into your hair and made yourself dowdy to pass by unnoticed, but in your normal garb you’re much too arresting. There’s no way they wouldn’t mark a lovely woman following them about. They’ve already marked you.”
I didn’t turn my head to see if this was true, having already recognized the truth in what he said. There were times when attractiveness worked to one’s advantage and times when it did not.
We turned left down Horse Guards Road, shadowing them on the opposite side of the street, and I knew he would expect us to separate at the intersection with The Mall if not sooner.
“What of the other two men? Do you know who they are?” I asked, curious how much he knew.
“Liam Tobin and Desmond Fitzgerald.”
“Intelligence officers?”
“Of a sort.”
I recognized that answer for what it was. I wouldn’t hear any more from him about it. The fact he’d revealed what he had was purely because he thought I might need to identify them in the future, and recognize them for what they were. This, more than anything, confirmed to me he was already preparing to go to Ireland, and that he thought I might be headed there as well before the end. It wasn’t a possibility I was yet willing to face, still hoping we might foil Ardmore by other means. That his maneuverings didn’t involve the Irish rebellion. But what else could it be?
“Sidney and I are going away for a time,” I told him as we neared the point of our separation. “At least until after the anniversary of the armistice and all the memorials they’ve scheduled are passed.”
Neither of us wanted to face that milestone in the public spotlight. Some might find meaning and relief in marking the day in the ways that were planned, but for others it was too much. Too raw. Too painful. Too haunting.
Alec understood this without words. “Then I’ll wish you safe journeys until we meet again.” That he would be gone from London when we returned went unstated, but I inferred it anyway.
I lifted my hand to touch his cheek briefly as we came to a stop near the corner. “Be safe,” I told him earnestly, wondering if he had anyone else to tell him so. If he had anyone who worried when he didn’t.
His dark eyes burned with an intensity that left me feeling guilty for somehow inspiring it. I walked away swiftly, refusing to look back.
* * *
I found Sadie and Nimble in the midst of flurried preparations for our removal to our cottage in Sussex. Though Sadie would remain behind to mind our flat and whatever secrets she was hiding, Nimble would be accompanying us and all our sundry baggage. I had no intention of traveling light this trip. Sadie claimed that Lord Ardmore had not approached her again, and I hoped that our absence from London would convince him blackmailing her for information was a nonstarter.
I retreated to our bedchamber, intending to change into my traveling clothes, and discovered Sidney standing in the middle of the room, staring up at the painting of the bluebell wood he’d bought me two days after our wedding. His gaze flicked to me and then back to the artwork, as if there was something he was trying to puzzle out. I moved to stand beside him, wondering what it was he was analyzing so intently, and if it was even related to the painting.
“You told me once,” he began softly, “that you considered getting rid of this after you received the telegram informing you that I was missing and presumed dead. That it was too painful to look at because it constantly reminded you of me.” His gaze when it shifted to meet mine was searching. “Why didn’t you?”
I tilted my head, studying the bright blue flecks of paint, the play of light and shadow. “I suppose because, at first, it was beyond my ability to remove it. I simply didn’t have the will.” I swallowed the lump forming in my throat at the memory of the dark, fathomless pit of those early days. “And then . . . then the idea of not having it there was as painful as the memories it awoke.” My voice grew hoarse. “I knew if I moved it, even if I hung something in its place, I would always know what should have been there. And that would hurt more than the initial reminder.”
He didn’t look at me, and something in his posture told me my touch would not be welcomed at the moment. I understood why when he next spoke.
“Do you think it cowardly of me not to remain in London? To not stand on Whitehall with all the dignitaries for the anniversary commemorations?”
“No, I don’t,” I told him firmly. “Who made you feel so?”
“Your mother telephoned.”
Of course.
“And my uncle Oswald.” The Marquess of Treborough. “They don’t understand why we don’t intend to remain. Why I’m not grateful for the honor.” He sank down on the bench at the end of our bed.
“You upheld your honor by fighting for your family and this country for four bloody years,” I snapped in fury as I sat beside him. “No one has any right to ask more of you.”
“Yes, but it’s not as if I can ignore the moment is passing. I’ll mark it all the same wherever I am, whether I’m on a stage in front of thousands or sitting on our terrace.”
I gazed into his eyes, seeing the despair and bewilderment marked there, and reached for his hand. “It takes just as much courage to mark the moment alone as it does to mark it in front of thousands,” I told him, knowing how he both longed for and dreaded it in equal measure. “The only difference is that in front of a crowd you are doing it for them. Alone you are doing it for yourself.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “But I won’t be alone?”
I smiled tenderly. “No, wild horses couldn’t drag me from your side.” My smile slipped away, remembering the hundreds of friends, family, acquaintances, and colleagues I’d lost. Remembering my brother Rob. “I’ll need you, too.”
He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me to his side. We sat that way for some time, leaning on each other, listening to the sounds of Nimble moving about in the next room. When Sidney finally spoke, it was in a voice that almost sounded normal.
“Your mother wanted to remind us we promised to come for the holidays.”
I sighed. “As if I could forget.”
“And she wanted to wish us a happy anniversary.”
I looked up in surprise. “That was nice of her. Though it’s not until tomorrow.”
His lips quirked. “I didn’t correct her. Especially not when she began thanking us for handling your aunt Ernestine’s difficulties. Apparently she’s been singing our praises and is traveling to Yorkshire to visit your parents next week.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “You mean thanking you. My mother would never give me that much credit. Nor would my aunt.”
“Yes, well, I told her it was all your doing.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Which she didn’t believe. Probably called you an adorably doting husband.”
He didn’t contradict this. “At least your cousin fully appreciated the truth.”
“That’s true,” I replied, softening. It had been difficult leaving Reg. Though I swore I would never let so much time pass between visits again, and I’d already honored my promise to him by sending two boxes filled with books written in Braille.
“I know you worry about him out there in Wiltshire with only his mother for company,” Sidney said, correctly interpreting my expression. “So I hope you won’t mind that I invited him to join us in Sussex.”
I turned to him in pleased surprise. “You did?”
“Ryde, as well. We’ve still got that key of his we found out at Burgh Castle to puzzle out. And your George and Daphne.”
I hardly knew what to say.
“It will be a lopsided party, but I don’t think they’ll mind.”
I grasped his face between my hands. “Sidney, I think that’s the most wonderful thing!”
“Yes, well, it didn’t seem right to let any of them spend the anniversary of the armistice alone. And I knew it would please you.”
I pressed a kiss to his lips. “Oh, you are the dearest.”
“I suppose you’ll want to invite Xavier, too.”
“No,” I said, trying not to let my worry for him show. “I’m sure he has other plans.”
He searched my eyes for a moment. “Does he?”
But I could not, would not say any more.
“Well, in any case, I’ve warned your friends not to appear on our doorstep until at least All Saints’ Day.” He pulled me closer, speaking a hair’s breadth from my lips. “I’ve waited five years to spend a wedding anniversary with you, and I will not be rushed or interrupted.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, I’m selfish. I want you all to myself. So turn that delightful mind of yours away from all things mysterious and macabre, and focus your thoughts solely on me, for I will not be sidetracked by mayhem or murder.”
I laughed. “These things are hardly under my control.”
“So you say.”
“Well, then I suppose you’ll simply have to keep me sufficiently diverted.”
A roguish glint lit his eyes at this gauntlet being thrown down, and he set about reminding me of how very diverting he could be.