Betrayal at Lisson Grove (Treason at Lisson Grove)

“Yes,” she admitted. “I’m afraid you look dreadful. Can I get you something? Tea, or whiskey? That is, if we have any. Now that I’ve offered it, I’m not sure we do. The best of it might have gone at Gracie’s wedding.”

“Oh yes, Gracie.” This time he did smile, and there was real warmth in it, changing his face. “I shall miss seeing her here. She was magnificent, all five feet of her.”

“Four feet eleven, if we are honest,” Charlotte corrected him with answering warmth. “Believe me, you could not possibly miss her as much as I do.”

“You do not care for Mrs.… Lemon?”

“Waterman,” she corrected him. “But Lemon would suit her. I don’t think she approves of me. Perhaps we shall become accustomed to each other one day. She does cook well, and you could eat off the floors when she has scrubbed them.”

“Thank you, but the table will do well enough,” Narraway observed.

She sat down on the sofa. Standing so close to him in front of the fire was becoming uncomfortable. “You did not come to inquire after my domestic arrangements. And even if you had known Mrs. Waterman, she is not sufficient to cause the gravity I see in your face. What has happened?” She was holding her hands in her lap, and realized that she was gripping them together hard enough to hurt. She forced herself to let go.

There was a moment or two with no sound in the room but the flickering of the fire.

Narraway drew in his breath, then changed his mind.

“I have been relieved of my position in Special Branch. They say that it is temporary, but they will make it permanent if they can.” He swallowed as if his throat hurt, and turned his head to look at her. “The thing concerning you is that I have no more access to my office at Lisson Grove, or any of the papers that are there. I will no longer know what is happening in France, or anywhere else. My place has been taken by Charles Austwick, who neither likes nor trusts Pitt. The former is a matter of jealousy because Pitt was recruited after him, and has received preferment in fact, if not in rank, that has more than equaled his. The latter is because they have little in common. Austwick comes from the army, Pitt from the police. Pitt has instincts Austwick will never understand, and Pitt’s untidiness irritates Austwick’s orderly, military soul.” He sighed. “And of course Pitt is my protégé … was.”

Charlotte was so stunned her brain did not absorb what he had said, and yet looking at his face she could not doubt it.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

She understood what he was apologizing for. He had made Pitt unpopular by singling him out, preferring him, confiding in him. Now, without Narraway, he would be vulnerable. He had never had any other profession but the police, and then Special Branch. He had been forced out of the police and could not go back there. It was Narraway who had given him a job when he had so desperately needed it. If Special Branch dismissed him, where was there for him to go? There was no other place where he could exercise his very particular skills, and certainly nowhere he could earn a comparable salary.

They would lose this house in Keppel Street and all the comforts that went with it. Mrs. Waterman would certainly no longer be a problem. Charlotte might well be scrubbing her own floors; indeed, it might even come to scrubbing someone else’s as well. She could imagine it already, see the shame in Thomas’s face for his own failure to provide for her, not the near luxury she had grown up in, nor even the amenities of a working-class domesticity.

She looked up at Narraway, wondering now about him. She had never considered before if he was dependent upon his salary or not. His speech and his manner, the almost careless elegance of his dress, said that he was born to a certain degree of position, but that did not necessarily mean wealth. Younger sons of even the most aristocratic families did not always inherit a great deal.

“What will you do?” she asked.

“How like you,” he replied. “Both to be concerned for me, and to assume that there is something to be done.”

Now she felt foolish.

“What are you going to do?” she asked again.

“To help Pitt? There’s nothing I can do,” he replied. “I don’t know the circumstances, and to interfere blindly might do far more harm.”

“Not about Thomas, about yourself.” She had not asked him what the charge was, or if he was wholly or partially guilty.

The ashes settled even further in the fire.

Several seconds passed before he answered. “I don’t know,” he admitted, his voice hesitant for the first time in her knowledge. “I am not even certain who is at the root of it, although I have at least an idea. It is all … ugly.”

She had to press onward, for Pitt’s sake. “Is that a reason not to look at it?” she said quietly. “It will not mend itself, will it?”

He gave the briefest smile. “No. I am not certain that it can be mended at all.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

He was startled. “I beg your pardon?”