Page 146 of The Love Letter

Joanna shrugged and watched as Simon headed to the bar, then came back with another round. She sipped her gin and stared at him.

‘I know what it was all about, Simon.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. Not that it matters any more. The letter I discovered is presumably at the bottom of the sea with Ian. And if it isn’t, then it’s gone to a place where I’ll never be able to find it.’

‘I retrieved the letter, actually, for what use it was. A soggy, pulpy mess.’

‘Is this Simon, Jo’s oldest friend, speaking, or Simon, crack secret-service agent?’ Joanna eyed him.

‘Both.’ Simon fished in his pocket and drew out a plastic envelope. ‘I knew you’d ask, so I brought the remains for you to see.’

Joanna took the envelope and glanced inside at the pieces of disintegrated, watermarked paper it contained.

‘Take a closer look,’ Simon urged her. ‘It’s important you believe me.’

‘What’s the point? It would be easy to fake.’ She waved the envelope at Simon. ‘So all the fuss, Marcus’s life . . . for this?’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said quietly. ‘To be fair, it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had a crazed renegade agent on the rampage. At least it’s made those above me sit up and take notice. They forget the psychological toll a career like this can take. Agents can’t simply be spat out at the other end and told their services are no longer required. I know you won’t want to hear it, but when I joined the service, I looked up to Ian. He was a brilliant agent in his time – one of the best.’

‘I know that. Even in his crazed state, standing in a choppy sea, he managed to take perfect shots. And took Marcus’s life with it,’ Joanna muttered. ‘So, will you end up like that?’

‘Christ, I hope not. This whole episode has made me think very hard about my future, I can tell you.’

‘Good. At least that’s one positive out of all of this.’

‘I’m just glad that you’re alive at least, and that it’s over. Now, let’s get you something to eat, you’re skin and bones.’

He ordered them both a lamb hotpot. Simon devoured his while Joanna hardly touched hers.

‘Not hungry?’

‘No.’ Joanna stood up, wincing at the still nagging pain in her ribs. ‘Let’s get out of here. I want to know once and for all if I’ve got my facts right, and I’m so paranoid, I want to do it somewhere I’m positive no one is listening in. Then, maybe, I can start putting my life back on track.’

They walked slowly up the hill, Joanna hanging on to Simon for support, past Haworth church and up onto the moors behind the village.

‘I have to sit down,’ she panted, lowering herself gingerly onto the coarse grass. She lay back and tried to relax and still her breathing. ‘There’s a lot that doesn’t fit,’ she said after some time, ‘but I reckon I’ve got most of the gist.’ Joanna took a deep breath. ‘My little old lady with the tea chests was in the employ of the royal household. She was a lady-in-waiting called Rose Fitzgerald, who had met and fallen in love with an Irish actor called Michael O’Connell. Or as we know him now, Sir James Harrison. Their relationship was clandestine, because of her high birth. The letter she sent to me was from her to him, but if I’m right, that was the “red herring”, because it certainly wasn’t the letter you lot were after, was it?’

‘No. Go on.’

‘What if Michael – when he visited his relatives in Ireland – heard that there was an English gentleman staying at the coastguard’s house nearby and having an affair with a local girl, and had recognised him?’

‘And who was the gentleman, Joanna?’

‘Ciara Deasy told me. She’d seen his photograph on the front of theIrish Times, the day of his coronation ten years later.’ Joanna glanced into the distance. ‘It was the Duke of York. The man who would, when his brother abdicated, become the King of England.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Well done.’

‘Michael then finds out the girl is pregnant. And that is really as far as I’ve managed to get. Could you . . . would you fill in the details? How you knew about the letter Niamh Deasy had written, which must have spilt the beans on the Duke’s affair with her. And of course, her pregnancy. I can only presume Michael O’Connell knew of its existence and used it as blackmail to safeguard himself and his family until he died? It would have caused an unbelievable scandal if it had got out, especially after the Duke became the King.’

‘Yes. The deal was, the letter was to be returned to us on Michael/James’s death. When that didn’t happen, mass panic broke out.’

‘So, why didn’t you lot look in the coastguard’s house where Niamh had died? Surely it was the most obvious place?’

‘Sometimes people don’t see the things that are right under their noses, Jo. Everyone assumed that Michael would have kept it close, in his immediate possession.’ Simon regarded her with pride. ‘Well done! Do you want my job?’

‘Not in a million years.’ Joanna gave Simon a weak smile. ‘Ciara told me the baby died. Can you imagine if it had lived? After all, it was the child of the future King of England. Half-sibling to our Queen!’