Page 18

W hile Sidney and the doctor—another Royal Army Medical Corps man, but one whom Sidney was friendly with and trusted—tended to Nimble upstairs, I ventured belowstairs to speak with the rest of the staff. We gathered in the small servants’ hall off of the kitchen, where I had Mrs. Boyle and Ginny sit at the table. It was clear Ginny had wept even more tears since my departure. Her face was blotchy and her eyes dim. Mrs. Boyle, on the other hand, was quiet and solemn.

I stood before them, undecided about what I should say. In the end, I opted for the unvarnished truth. “I don’t care if you’re an informant for the IRA.” I looked Ginny squarely in the eye, and then Mrs. Boyle. “Though if you are, you should be aware the Castle suspects it. But they’ve been warned to stay away from you. You and Nimble,” I stated in a hard voice.

Ginny blinked wide eyes, as if she couldn’t quite believe what I was saying.

“However, if you get caught red-handed doing something compromising for the republicans, there may be nothing Mr. Kent and I can do. So think carefully before you agree to anything.”

Mrs. Boyle’s somber gaze had shifted to Ginny, telling me she either suspected or knew for certain that Ginny wasn’t quite innocent of the accusations O had flung at her. But that didn’t preclude her from also being culpable.

I turned my head to the side, frowning and tapping my foot as I considered how much to trust them. The truth was, I knew little about them or their backgrounds. Yet, they worked in our household, and I’d just told them I didn’t care if they went on informing about us to the rebels. Which was true, but only because I didn’t believe there was anything they could tell them that was particularly sensitive. Unless they’d discovered that I was sneaking out through the secret passage connecting our townhouse to the one adjacent, or they’d read one of Max’s letters. Otherwise, we were smart enough to take precautions. What I’d told O was true. I’d learned long ago not to write anything down unless absolutely necessary, and to burn those notes I did receive.

Even so, the moment seemed to call for some display of faith. One that perhaps might be reciprocated. This wasn’t the first time I’d found myself wanting to ask both women questions pertaining to local knowledge and opinion, and to offer a perspective different from my own. But as matters had stood, I’d known better than to expect assistance from either of them. Perhaps that could change.

“If you are informing to the IRA,” I began, turning back to them. “I can tell you that we are not here because of the rebellion.” I tilted my head. “Or not directly. Though I can understand why they would suspect it. But we’re not here to foil it or stop it. That is not our purview, and I have no intention of making it such.”

As I said the words, I knew it to be true. I didn’t know exactly how I felt about this rebellion, this revolution, though I was deeply conflicted about it. What I did know was that it was not my fight, and I would not help either side win it. I was solely focused on finding Alec—dead or alive, locating those phosgene cylinders and foiling whatever Ardmore’s intent was for them, and bringing Miss Kavanagh’s attackers to justice, whoever they might be. None of those things required me to take action against either side.

Which was why I hadn’t told the British authorities I’d seen Collins’s right-hand man, Liam Tobin, on a corner near the Castle and entering Kidd’s Back pub. Or relayed my suspicions that someone at the Great Brunswick Street Police Station was supplying information to Collins. Or any of about a dozen other things that had struck me as questionable. They weren’t my task.

I couldn’t tell how this speech had affected either woman, or whether they even believed me, but I knew that waxing on about it would not make it more convincing. Instead, I turned to Ginny. “Nimble told me some of what he heard those Black and Tans say to you.”

Ginny’s face was stricken.

“That more than pestering, they were actually threatening you.” A fact I wished I’d known when I was demanding Nimble’s release. “That they mentioned cutting your hair.”

Her head dipped as if in humiliation, and I stepped closer to the table, shaking my head.

“No, no, no. Don’t let them do that to you,” I declared angrily. “They’re the ones who should be ashamed of themselves, not you. Of all the scurrilous, revolting displays of masculine outrage. How dare they!” I turned away, gathering myself before I destroyed both women’s opinions of me and my stability.

When I turned back, it was to discover them both eyeing me warily, but also with open curiosity. I chose to view that as an encouraging sign.

“I’ve read and heard the reports of the IRA cutting women’s hair in retaliation or as a threat, but I’m beginning to suspect the Crown Forces also do it. Is that true?”

Mrs. Boyle was the first to react, scoffing. “Aye, they do. They just hush up the reports of it.”

By censoring the newspapers.

I glanced at Ginny, who still seemed to be struggling to overcome her sense of shame over the incident with the Tans. “I suspect women who have been attacked by someone from the Crown Forces are also less likely to report the crime when it’s doubtful anything will be done about it.”

Mrs. Boyle agreed. “Aye. More likely to blame the poor girl than do anythin’ to punish them that harmed her.”

“When does it most often happen?” I had my suspicions, but I wanted to hear it from them.

“Durin’ raids.” Ginny finally spoke, her eyes trained on the table before her. “They separate ye from the others, in another corner or room, and hold the others back with guns or cudgels while ’tis done.”

My heart constricted inside my chest, for Ginny spoke as if she had experience with this. Even Mrs. Boyle sensed it, for she reached across the table to clasp her hand.

I had experienced the raid at the Wicklow Hotel, or at least part of one, but the Crown Forces rarely conducted raids in the homes around Fitzwilliam Square, as most were owned by loyalists. Men like those we’d met at Lord French’s dinner party—Tommy O’Shaughnessy, the city recorder; and Frank Brooke, the railway director; and their like. It was one of the reasons we’d rented this house.

But if the Crown Forces did decide to raid your home, you had no choice in the matter. If they knocked on your door—even in the middle of the night—they expected you to answer it immediately or else they’d simply ram it open. There wasn’t even time to dress. And then you were supposed to follow every directive to the letter as they searched your home and your person, even rifling and overturning and sometimes destroying property. I’d heard complaints about Tans stealing things, as well. For there was no one to stop them, not even the commanding officers who should have done so. They simply looked the other way.

It reminded me uncomfortably of the raids I’d witnessed in Belgium. When the Germans came through to check that only the people denoted on the list that was required to be posted on each domicile’s door were in residence. Or when they confiscated yet another round of supplies, be it food, livestock, blankets, metal, or mattresses—essentially looting the Belgians of almost all their worldly goods. By the end of the war, most of the citizens of Belgium and northeastern France were more than half starved and possessed but one or two sets of threadbare clothing, a blanket for every two to three people, and a bedstead but no mattress.

While the British Crown Forces’ raids on the Irish were not to that extreme, that didn’t mean the fear and intimidation were not real. Or that the Irish people weren’t being deprived of valuables—both materially and intangibly.

“I take it you both know people who have been raided or assaulted?” I asked them both.

They nodded.

“And none of them have gotten justice.”

They shook their heads.

I frowned. I knew this was war, and essentially civil war, at that. Yet, the government and Crown Forces seemed to all but strike out blindly much of the time. Whether intentionally or not, their policy appeared to mostly be all stick and no carrot. But I couldn’t help but think that the carrot would go over much better and be far more restorative in the long run.

I looked at Ginny, thinking of how she walked home late in the evening and returned early the next morning. When she’d accepted the position, she’d seemed fine with the terms, but we hadn’t really given her a choice. “Would you like for us to add board to your wages?” I asked, regretting the fact I’d never thought to ask her before.

She shook her head. “Nay. Mam needs me at home.”

Needed her wages, I suspected, as much as her. But perhaps her mam was sick. Though I was curious, Ginny didn’t offer more information, so I didn’t pry. Still, it bothered me to think of her walking alone. It might be light in the summer, but come autumn and winter when it grew dark well before dinner and light after breakfast, I would have to come up with a solution. If we were here that long.

I pushed the worry from my head and returned upstairs to discover the RAMC surgeon was just leaving. Sidney closed the door behind him and then turned to find me watching him. He seemed tired and discouraged, but he held out his hand to me and drew me up two flights of stairs, past the parlor where Nimble had been examined and was now resting on the chaise longue—Sidney’s orders—to the private sitting room adjoining our bedchamber.

We sat together on the Sheraton sofa, and he draped his arm around me, pulling me close to his side. He’d yet to change out of his riding attire, and I could smell the scent of horse clinging to him beneath that of his cologne and hair pomade as I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“I wish I’d been here,” he said.

“Then you could have bearded the snake in his den,” I quipped rather more sharply than I’d intended.

“The snake?”

“Ormonde de l’épée Winter.”

“Ah,” he replied, not requiring any further explanation. More’s the pity. “Well, whatever you said must have worked, because Nimble told me he heard someone upbraiding the men in the other room while he was being cleaned up.”

“That must have been Inspector General Smith. He was rather more sensitive and sensible.” Though still susceptible to puppet-strings, it seemed.

“Well, either way, I trust they’ve been warned away.”

I lifted my head. “By Smith, but O might countermand that order.” I pressed my finger to the center of his chest. “You need to speak with General Tudor and get this all sorted out.” He was the man really in charge of the RIC. “And while you’re at it, someone needs to take him to task for his men’s deplorable behavior in assaulting women and forcibly cutting their hair. I don’t care if it’s in retaliation for what the IRA have done. It’s brutish and cowardly.”

Sidney grasped hold of my hand where I had been repeatedly stabbing him in emphasis, I was so riled. “I’ll speak with him,” he promised.

Though that didn’t mean it would do any good. I’d met General Hugh Tudor at a dinner party. He’d been brought in to overhaul the fumbling RIC and their crumbling morale. He was a crony of the war secretary and a decided hawk. As such, he was more likely to advocate browbeating all the women in Ireland if it would bring the rebels to heel.

“Was he at Phoenix Park having a good gallop with you and Dicky, or is he back in London, chumming it up with Churchill and the others?”

Sidney’s eyebrows arched at the snide tone of my voice, but he didn’t comment on it. “I don’t know where he is at the moment. But I’ll make a point of seeking him out to speak with him. It will only further our ruse that I might be working covertly for him.”

“And is the ruse working?” I struggled to keep my voice even. He hadn’t been very forthcoming with any intelligence he’d learned in the past few weeks, making me wonder if there’d been any. I’d been content to overlook it, trusting he would share anything pertinent when he could, but after the day’s events, I was more than a little impatient.

“Well enough that Winter tried to recruit me,” he muttered dryly.

I sat up in surprise and alarm. “Outright?”

He clasped my elbows. “Is anything with him outright? But yes. Outright enough.” His mouth twisted in distaste. “And in case you’re wondering, I declined.”

I settled back beside him, relieved but also a little confounded. I’d not known Sidney had spoken with O, and I wished he’d told me before now. “When did all this happen?”

“About a week ago.” He grimaced. “About the same time I got a lead on where those phosgene cylinders might be.”

“What?” I demanded, sitting upright again. Judging by his sheepish expression, I hadn’t misheard. “Sidney!”

“I know, I know.” He lifted his hands to my upper arms, but I shook them off. “I should have told you right away, but I wasn’t certain the tip was any good. And you’ve been so consumed with finding Alec and getting justice for Miss Kavanagh, and well . . . I’ve been fairly useless in both endeavors.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I suppose I wanted to figure this one out on my own.”

I scowled. “This isn’t a contest. We’re supposed to be a team, remember. Even if we are separated more than usual.”

“I know,” he repeated with a deep sigh. “It was rather illogical, I suppose.”

Which wasn’t like Sidney. But from the few comments he had made, I had been able to glean that the past few weeks hadn’t been all fun and games. He might have been spending much of his time in pleasurable pursuits, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been forced to stomach the company and opinions of people he would normally have eschewed if not outright scorned. It had turned his temperament a trifle bitter.

Relenting, I reached out to clasp his hand. “What was the lead?”

His fingers squeezed mine. “A letter uncovered during a raid from someone in the leadership of the Volunteers. It was unsigned. This person suggested that since we used poison gas during the war, we might not hesitate to use it against them. And that they should be prepared to retaliate in kind.”

I couldn’t fault the IRA leaders’ logic. The British Army had developed and used poisoned gas on our enemies during the war, albeit not first. So if we’d been able to find a way to legitimize our using it then, what was to stop us from coming up with an excuse to use it now on the rebels? But the idea of poisonous gas being in the hands of these rebels, especially something as awful as phosgene—which essentially caused people to drown in their own beds as their lungs filled up with fluid—was still horrifying.

“The letter went on to suggest they start developing biological weapons.” His eyebrows arched meaningfully. “And it also hinted at an unexpected benefactor who had a gift for them.”

“Ardmore,” I deduced.

He nodded. “My thought exactly.”

“So if the letter is to be believed, and the benefactor is Ardmore, then he intended for those phosgene cylinders that were smuggled out of England off the Isle of Wight on the Zebrina and intercepted by that Irish crew off the coast of the island of Alderney to go to the republicans. But where has he been storing them the past three years? And where are they now?” I straightened to attention. “Or did you find them?”

“No. They thought they’d traced them to a bicycle shop in Great Britain Street, but it ended up being a bust.”

“They?”

Sidney hesitated, telling me I wasn’t going to like his answer. “Lieutenants Bennett and Ames.”

I nearly cursed at his mention of my former Secret Service colleague. The one who I’d led to believe I was expecting a child, in order to escape his suspicion.

“They’re good contacts, Ver. Especially if we want to locate this phosgene before the rebels use it.”

“I’m not sure that I trust it in the hands of Bennett and Ames and their like either,” I retorted.

“Yes, well, we Brits already have plenty of the stuff in storage,” he countered drolly. “They hardly need Ardmore’s stash. Let’s just hope that even if compassion and human decency don’t reign, that at least cooler heads will see how irreparably damaged our reputation would be across the world if we used the stuff on our own citizens.”

We could never take the high moral ground with any nation ever again if we did.

But the question remained . . . “What do the rebels intend to do with it? Or are they truly only eager to have it to counteract an attack by us?” And what was to stop them from changing their minds?

Sidney shrugged.

I swiped a hand across my forehead, settling back beside Sidney so that our shoulders brushed. “I really wish you weren’t becoming chummy with Bennett.” I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t trust the IRA not to leap to the wrong conclusion because of their association.

“I never said we were becoming chummy. Simply that he and Ames have their uses.”

I eyed him askance, failing to see the difference if he was drinking with them at Kidd’s Back and exchanging information.

“Take your pal Delagrange.”

“Pal?” I repeated incredulously.

“Bennett told me he was a bit of a wash-out in the army. That he’s been chucking his weight about. But they all know why he’s here and how he ended up in the intelligence unit.”

“Then he’s not well-liked?”

“Not by anyone with sense or seniority. At least, according to Bennett.”

Who, I suspected, possessed the opinions and level of intellect of the average intelligence officer, so it was perhaps a fair assessment.

“He also said Delagrange had recently filed a malicious-injury claim.” From the look in Sidney’s eyes, I could tell he’d been saving this juicy morsel of information for last, on purpose.

“When?”

“Approximately two and a half months ago. He was awarded one thousand pounds. Or so he told everyone. Though he’s been uncharacteristically silent as to the details of those injuries.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” I exclaimed, gesturing with my hands as I laid out my points, as if somehow that might make things clearer. “Mr. Kavanagh serves on the committee who reviews malicious injury and damage claims. His daughter is supposedly assaulted by members of the IRA because of it, and because she’s stepping out with a British soldier. A soldier who we now know had recently been awarded compensation for one of these claims. Yet, no one mentions this despite the fact that, on the surface, it would appear to be even more evidence against the IRA. Instead, Kavanagh is wary of Delagrange, and Delagrange warns me away from the family, against investigating. Why?”

I thought about what Wick had said about their being evidence of collusion between the Crown Forces and Castle authorities in making false claims, but I didn’t know how or if that fit here.

Sidney echoed my confusion. “I don’t know. Though—”

I looked up at him as he broke off, waiting for him to continue.

He smiled regretfully. “When I first heard what happened today, I wondered . . .”

“If Delagrange sent those Tans to pester our staff,” I finished for him. “I did, too.” He’d been warned to stay away from me, but that didn’t preclude him finding other ways to retaliate. “We need to know the details of that malicious-injury claim.”

“That’s why I arranged a meeting for tomorrow with Mr. O’Shaughnessy. You’re welcome to come, too,” he added when I turned to him in approval.

I considered, but then declined, trusting him. “No, in this instance, I suspect you’ll get more from O’Shaughnessy without me. I’m going to try to speak with the Kavanaghs again and then track down some of Miss Kavanagh’s friends.”

“Something Wickham said?” he guessed.

“Yes.” I told him the points Wick had made about the timing and location of the assault as well.

He eyed me carefully. “What about the claims that fellow made at the Wicklow Hotel?”

I met his gaze levelly. “He hadn’t heard even a whisper about it.”

“Really?” I could tell Sidney was as much struck by this as I had been.

“Not about a body in a bog, or a spy being executed.” The final word stuck in my throat, coming out a bit mangled. “But he’s going to ask around.”

Sidney nodded somewhat reticently. Perhaps because he knew how much I wanted the rumors to be untrue. But then that raised questions about why Tom had lied, and I had no good answers. No reassuring ones anyway.

We lapsed into silence, both occupied by our own solemn thoughts.

After a few minutes, I allowed my head to tip sideways onto Sidney’s shoulder. “Should we check on Nimble?”

Sidney stirred enough to drape his arm around me. “Let him rest. He’s not in any danger.”

Danger. I ruminated on that word. On the concept. And wondered whether we would know if we were in danger before it was too late.