“My dear, would you?” Vespasia’s fine brows arched even higher. “Apparently when Captain and Mrs. O’Shea took a house in Brighton, within two or three days a Mr. Charles Stewart appeared, wearing a cloth cap over his eyes.” She kept her face straight with difficulty. “He called quite often, but almost always when Captain O’Shea was out. He always came up via the beach way and took Mrs. O’Shea out driving, never in daylight, always after dark.”
“In a cloth cap,” Charlotte said incredulously, forgetting her soup. “You said he had no sense of humor. Mrs. O’Shea cannot have had either!” Her voice rose in disbelief. “How could you possibly make love with a man who crept up to your door at night when your husband was out—disguised in a cloth cap, using a false name that would fool nobody? I should be hysterical with laughter.”
“That isn’t all,” Vespasia went on, her eyes light. “Five years ago—this affair has persisted for some very considerable time—he went to an auctioneer in Deptford who was acting as agent for a landlord in Kent.” She held up her hands as she spoke. “Parnell went calling himself Mr. Fox. He was told the house in question belonged to a Mr. Preston. Parnell then said he was Clement Preston. The agent replied that he had thought he said he was a Mr. Fox. Parnell then said he was staying with a Mr. Fox, but his own name was Preston, and he would take the house for twelve months, but refused to give any references”—her eyebrows rose—“on the grounds that a man who owned horses should not be required to do so.”
“Horses?” Charlotte nearly choked on her soup. “What have horses to do with it?” she demanded. “You can sell horses, or they can fall ill, or be injured, or even die.”
“Nothing whatever. The music halls are going to have a wonderful time with it,” Vespasia said with a smile. “Along with the cloth cap and the business of the fire escape. It is all so unbelievably grubby and incompetent.” Her face became serious again. “But it is sad for Ireland. Parnell may not have realized it yet, and his immediate supporters may give him a vote of confidence, out of loyalty and not to be seen to desert him, but the people at large will never follow him now.” She sighed and permitted the butler, who had returned, to remove the last of her soup and to serve the salmon and vegetables.
When he was gone she looked at Charlotte again, her eyes grave.
“Since Ainsley Greville is dead, I presume the political issues for which he worked are now sacrificed, which will have been the reason for his murder.”
“No, Jack has taken his place, at least temporarily,” Charlotte replied. “It was almost certainly to kill Jack that the dynamite was placed in the study this morning. Poor Emily is terrified, but Jack has no honorable choice but to continue in Greville’s place and do the best he can.”
“How very dreadful,” Vespasia said with considerable alarm. “You must all be most distressed. I wish there were some way in which I could help, but the Irish Problem is centuries old, and bedeviled by ignorance, myth and hatred on all sides. The tragedies it has caused are legion.”
“I know.” Charlotte looked down at her plate, thinking of the tale Gracie had told her. “We have Padraig Doyle and Carson O’Day with us.”
Vespasia shook her head and a flicker of anger crossed her face.
“That miserable business,” she said grimly. “That was one of the worst, typifying everything that is wrong with the whole sordid, treacherous affair.”
“But we betrayed them,” Charlotte pointed out. “Some soldier called Chinnery raped Neassa Doyle and then fled to England.” She did not try to keep the rage and disgust out of her voice. “And Drystan O’Day was his friend! No wonder the Irish don’t trust us. When I hear something like that, I’m ashamed to be English.”
Vespasia leaned back in her chair, her face weary, her salmon forgotten.
“Don’t be, Charlotte. We have certainly done some dreadful things in our history, things that sicken the heart and darken the soul, but this was not one of them.”
Charlotte waited. If Vespasia did not know the truth of the matter, perhaps she did not need to. She was an old lady. It would serve no purpose to harrow her with it.
“You have no need to be gentle with me,” Vespasia said with the ghost of a smile. “I have seen more to haunt one’s dreams than you have, my dear. Neassa Doyle was not raped. She was followed by her own brothers, and it was they who cut off her hair because they thought she was a whore, and with a Protestant man at that ….”
Charlotte was appalled. It was so horrible, so utterly unlike the story she had heard and accepted, instinctively she drew breath to deny it.
“It was they who killed her and left her for Drystan O’Day to find,” Vespasia went on. “In their eyes she had betrayed them, their family in front of its peers, and their faith before God. She deserved not only death but shame as well.”
“For falling in love?” Charlotte was confused, full of anger, darkness and quarreling emotions in this calmly elegant room with the sunlight slanting across the polished floor, the flowered curtains at the windows with their Georgian panes and the honeysuckle tangled beyond, and the white linen on the table, the silver and the trail of dark leaves in the cut glass vase.
“For being prepared to elope with a Protestant,” Vespasia answered. “She had let down her tribe, if you like. Love is no excuse when honor is at stake.”
“Whose honor?” Charlotte demanded. “Hasn’t she the right to choose for herself whom she will marry, and if she is prepared to pay the price of leaving her own people to do it? I know there is a cost, we all know that, but if you love someone enough, you pay it. Perhaps she didn’t believe their faith? Did they ever think of that?”
Vespasia smiled, but her eyes were tired, pale silver.
“Of course not, Charlotte. You know better than to ask. If you belong to a clan, you pay the price of that too. The freedom not to be answerable to your family, your tribe, is a very great loneliness.
“You were more fortunate than most women. I think sometimes you don’t fully appreciate that. You chose to marry outside your class, and your family’s choice for you, but they did not blame you for it or cut you off. Your social ostracism was a natural result of your marriage, not the act of your family. They remained close to you, never criticizing your choice or seeking to change your mind.” Her expression was sad and tired, her eyes far away. “Neassa had the courage to make her choice too, but her family did not understand. To them, to her brothers, it was a shame they would not live with.”
“But what about Alexander Chinnery?” Charlotte had forgotten him for a moment. “What did he do? How did you know it was not he who killed her, as they said?”
“Because by June eighth, Alexander Chinnery was already dead,” Vespasia said softly. “He was drowned in Liverpool Harbour trying to save a boy who had caught his leg in a rope and been pulled into the water.”
“Then why did both the Catholics and the Protestants believe it was he who killed Neassa Doyle?” Charlotte pressed. “And why did they think she was raped if she wasn’t?”
“Why do stories grow around anything?” Vespasia picked up her fork and began to eat again, slowly. “Because someone leaps to a conclusion … a conclusion that suits the emotions they feel and wish to arouse in the others. After a while everyone believes it, and then even if the truth is known, it is too late to tell it. Everyone has too much invested in the myth, and the truth would destroy what they have built and make liars of them.”
“They aren’t lying, they really believe it.” Charlotte picked up her wineglass, full of clean, cold water. “I suppose it was thirty years ago, and there’s no one about now who was involved, at least not in present-day politics. And they aren’t going to tell people they lied then.”