None of that made any sense at all.
Neither could Gaines see Latimer cutting Dudley Nichol’s throat. He remained as convinced as Inskip that O’Rourke had been the one to have done it, but unless new evidence ever came to light, he didn’t see how the murder as it stood could ever be pinned on him. Sheldyke had wavered about positively identifying the passenger who had entered his cab on that fateful night as either Latimer or O’Rourke and wouldn’t now commit himself to anything further than saying it might have been. He knew he had seen the three men standing together under the gas lamp, had noticed one of them had a striking birthmark on his face, and he had thought O’Rourke was the one he had left standing there, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain. He would certainly never swear to it in a court of law. All of which was, of course, academic. How could there ever be a trial, when both victim and suspected murderer were dead?
‘He’s guilty as sin,’ Inskip said, ‘and he’s going to get away with it.’
‘Not quite.’
O’Rourke wouldn’t go scot free. He had coughed up more about the guns and the means of obtaining and disseminating them than was good for him. His friends across the Irish Channel were not known for their forgiving natures and he wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. ‘It’s justice, of a sort, Joseph,’ he said. ‘Rough justice.’
‘Not my sort, though.’
It was the least satisfactory way for an investigation to have ended that Gaines could think of, but it was the best they were going to get. Dudley Nichol’s murder would just go down in the books as an unsolved crime. Latimer’s untimely end would be regretted. He would be remembered for what he had achieved as a public servant, there would be sadness for what he might have become, but ultimately his name would pass into history. The Martens family were reunited. Events in Ireland would take their course, whether towards a bloody civil war or a peaceful end was in the lap of the gods.
Epilogue
Outside the Dorcas, the gusty autumn wind was adding to the detritus that was part of the scenery of life around there, blowing dead leaves to drift in hidden corners, to clog the gutters and blow inside whenever doors were opened, but there weren’t really enough of them to make much difference to the general scruffiness. Spitalfields didn’t go in for trees much.
Gaines had timed his visit for late afternoon, when he thought the main business at the clinic would be drawing to a close, when most patients had departed. He congratulated himself when he found his calculations had been right on the nail and that Doctor Latimer was free to see him. She held out her hand with obvious pleasure when he was shown into her surgery. He had always felt they liked and respected each other, and he was glad she hadn’t wanted to avoid him. But he would have understood if she had.
‘Come in, Inspector, and take a seat.’
‘You are looking well, Doctor Latimer.’ He felt free to address her as such now, after noticing her name on the new brass nameplate outside the door. He hoped it was an indication that she was coming to terms with her husband’s suicide and accepting what must be her drastically changed circumstances, and thought she most probably was. He had spoken the truth: she was looking well. A little older, perhaps, and a trifle thinner, but she’d gained a healthy summer tan and he fancied she had lost the shadowed look from her eyes.
She smiled and a faint colour touched her cheeks. ‘I’ve just had a holiday in Derbyshire. Have you ever been there, Inspector?’
No, he had never visited the area, he admitted, recalling that was where David Moresby’s constituency lay, though he didn’t think it necessary to mention that.
‘Oh, but you should, it’s lovely. Rather grim in places, awe-inspiring, really, but otherwise so beautiful. Walking there is something to be recommended.’
‘A good holiday does wonders, so I’m told. Never gone much on them myself. Maybe I should try it some day.’ He wasn’t one for walking, either, or not for pleasure. In his opinion he got enough of it in his daily job.
She offered tea and when she’d made it, they took refuge in small talk for a while, skirting round the reason why he was here. She had moved house, she told him; she had learned to drive and bought herself a little motor car, a small Austin that made getting around so much easier. ‘I’m thinking of getting one myself,’ he said, ‘if I can persuade my wife it’s a good investment and not a waste of money.’
She smiled and refilled his cup.
‘I’ve tried to get in touch with you before, Doctor, but they told me you were away. I had the idea you might like to know what’s been happening, but if you’d rather not—’
He had in fact debated whether to come and see her at all. He had no wish to open up old wounds, which talking over the situation would inevitably do, but he felt she had the right to know what had happened, if she so wished. It was, after all, due to her that they had apprehended O’Rourke sooner, rather than later. But he was aware of the need to tread carefully, because he didn’t know how much she knew, or was willing to admit.
He doubted very much if he would have told her everything that had been found out, even without the directions from on high which had not so much filtered down as landed on him with a thump. They had been explicit. No hint should ever leak out that a senior minister of His Majesty’s Government might have been suspected of committing murder, or even been in any way involved in it. There was no proof to connect Edmund Latimer with Dudley Nichol’s death, nothing which could connect him with anything else that might be suspect, either, and for those reasons the investigation must be considered closed. Apart from unavoidable gossip about a minor peccadillo in the shape of an extramarital affair, his reputation, and therefore that of his Party, must remain unblemished. The verdict on his death had been suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed, and that was how it had been fed to the press and the public. The matter was classed as sensitive and no hint of Latimer’s political doubts and waverings must ever be disclosed.
But he had to wonder how much of all this Alice Latimer, who was neither naive nor a fool, could go along with if ever she was made aware of it. After her husband’s suicide, Moresby had wisely prepared her for the gossip that would be bound to circulate about her husband and Mrs Fiore, and however hard this had been for her to take, she had apparently accepted it as the reason for Latimer’s uncharacteristic behaviour before his death. She also knew why Lucy had been kidnapped, and by whom, though not of Violet’s part in it. But, like the iceberg which had sunk the Titanic, there was so much more down below all this than appeared on the surface, and she must have known that.
‘I came to tell you that Daniel O’Rourke is dead.’
For a moment she didn’t understand, and looked at him blankly. ‘But—’ Of course she knew that O’Rourke hadn’t hanged, as he would have done if it could ever have been proved he had killed Dudley Nichol. If the case had ever come to trial. Yet it had almost seemed for a moment as though she had thought he had. ‘How?’ she asked at last.
‘He … died, in prison. I don’t rightly know how,’ he lied, in no way prepared to go into specific detail. That wasn’t for her ears. In any case, he knew little more than that O’Rourke had opened his mouth too wide, about those guns and more, given information that put others in danger. There were ways of getting at such men, in or out of prison. He wouldn’t give much for Paddy Tooley’s chances, either.
She struggled with that for a bit. ‘I think you mean he was killed,’ she said eventually. ‘How appalling. How sad and pointless this whole business has been.’ She sat silently contemplating her cold tea. ‘He did kill my cousin, of course,’ she said eventually.
‘Oh, yes.’ Gaines had no need of proof to believe that.
‘My husband saw him that night, you know. O’Rourke and Dudley.’
‘What?’
‘He – Edmund – left me a letter.’ He waited, listening to the wind rattling the window in its frame and a door banging somewhere while she braced herself to go on.
; She had read that letter eventually, though she’d been curiously reluctant to do so. Finally, she had steeled herself to do it – to read the letter and Edmund’s ‘daybooks’ too, or at least the most recent of them. As diaries, they were merely a dry and detailed daily record of events, current affairs, meetings in his own North London constituency, sub-committees, conversations with colleagues and so on. But there were notes with them that served to reinforce those barely comprehensible lines he had left behind when he shot himself. Latterly, he had come to regret deeply his decision to support the supplying of arms to those dedicated to bringing about Home Rule, those for whom a fight to the death would not be going too far. He recorded a conversation he had had with the Prime Minister, and Asquith’s belief that such provisions could only add to the certainty of tumult, riot and bloodshed, which had echoed the doubts already set up in his mind. But it was the letter, not the diaries, which had revealed exactly how much he had been disturbed, not only by the commitment he had made and whether he had enough courage enough to see it through, but also his concerns with his personal life.
The letter had been full of regrets for the situation as it concerned Alice and himself. She was sad that he should have blamed himself for marrying her at all, for what he termed a marriage of convenience, as if she had been a starry-eyed young girl just emerging from the schoolroom that he had deliberately taken advantage of. Whereas she had been twenty-five years old, brought up by a practical, sensible and experienced father who had taught her not to view the world through rose-coloured spectacles, but to evaluate situations and people for what they were, and she had gone into her marriage with her eyes wide open, not expecting a fairy-tale romance. And she had not been actively unhappy. Edmund had always been a kind, generous and considerate husband and he had, moreover, taken pains to ensure she didn’t learn of his affair with Mrs Fiore. Nevertheless, she couldn’t deny that it had been a shock, learning how she had been deceived, and it had hurt badly. The fact that it had apparently been going on even before their marriage did not lessen the hurt.
Clearly, whatever he had chosen to do hadn’t been without cost to him, and yet she had never suspected just how tormented he had become. ‘I sleep hardly at all, and when I do, I have nightmares,’ he had written. ‘I believe I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Literally going mad, doubting my own judgements and unable to make decisions, which leads to mistakes and makes me no longer fitted for the position I hold. I even have doubts about my ability to carry out my intention to end it all, though I can see no other solution. It is a sad irony that if you are reading this, my dear Alice, I shall, after all, have managed to accomplish that at least.’
How little we know other people, even those nearest to us, Alice had thought through her tears. To think how little it was, really, to have brought him to the point where he felt the only solution was to end his life. Who would ever have suspected that beneath that confident and competent exterior self-recrimination and doubt over so many things was building up to that final, fatal step?
‘But that is not the worst of it,’ he had continued, evidently feeling the necessity to unburden himself of everything. ‘I believe I was contributory to your cousin’s death. I lied to you when I told you I had not seen him the morning he left Manessa House. I did as you and I had agreed and went to tell him he must leave, and we ended by having high words. I will not encumber you with the sordid details, enough to say that I told him to pack his bags immediately. Later, I was sorry for what I had said. I knew there was no basis for the accusations I had thrown at him. I was simply jealous of the easy friendship he had with you. I went back home, not expecting him to be there and he was not, but I found the note he had left for you. He had given no address, simply stating that he was going back to Spitalfields.
‘I did not dine with Hugh Palfreyman, as I told you, that night. After leaving the Essendines’, I went instead to Spitalfields, without any clear idea of where I might find Dudley, if at all, and simply wandered aimlessly around. I did not expect to encounter him in a public house but I was by then in need of a drink and when I went into one which looked reasonably respectable, there he was, with a companion. Perhaps it was fate, giving me the chance to apologize for my behaviour, which I did. He accepted with good grace, that I will say. The last I saw of him was when he and his friend hailed a taxi and drove away.’
Gaines coughed and Alice brought her thoughts back to the present, to find him looking at her expectantly. ‘Your husband left you a letter?’ he prompted.
‘Yes.’ She hesitated, then explained briefly what he had written about meeting Dudley the night he was murdered. ‘I would have come forward and told you that if necessary, of course I would, as I believe Edmund would have done, but as it was … O’Rourke was already in prison for his other offences and …’ To have shown that letter, so essentially private, to the police, would have been a betrayal of Edmund’s deepest feelings, especially after it became evident that the case would never reach the point where O’Rourke would face trial for the murder. ‘Do you think I was wrong, not to let you know, Inspector?’
‘Yes, Doctor Latimer, I do. He might then have hanged for his crime.’
She flushed. ‘But he has paid the price.’
He said nothing to that. A gulf of misunderstanding stretched between them.
At last she broke the silence. ‘You should see Lucy, how she’s grown. She’s walking now – or staggering, I should say. I’m afraid she’s going to have to have a new nanny, though, now that Emma is leaving.’
‘And I may be looking for a new sergeant. He’s anxious for promotion now that he’ll have a wife.’
‘I’m so glad for her. But it’s a pity she’s going. Lucy loves her and it will be difficult to find someone as good – in Ferdie’s eyes. He’s besotted with that child.’ She let moments go by, then she said cautiously, ‘They were both so happy, he and Violet, to have her home again, they never questioned why she was brought home like that.’
‘Indeed.’ The Martens had been surprisingly content to leave the outcome of the kidnapping as it was, so long as Lucy was safely home with them once more, but he had never seen Alice as being happy with such a solution, any more than he had been himself. He was therefore not surprised at what she said next.
‘But I’m afraid I just didn’t believe she was brought home simply because the kidnappers had got cold feet after Dudley was killed, as everyone seemed to think.’
‘It was one possibility.’
‘But not the correct one, was it?’ She hung back, undecided for a moment, then, apropos of nothing, she said, ‘Emil Martens has decided to take a back seat at the bank – or what he calls a back seat. At least he’s allowing Ferdie more say in running the business, though I’m not sure how Ferdie feels about the responsibility. I think maybe he’ll jump to it, though. It’s very easy to underestimate him.’
‘I had noticed.’
‘I thought you might have.’
It had occurred to him more than once to wonder why the obvious solution to Lucy’s return hadn’t presented itself to him at the time. Ferdie, distraught by the thoughts of his daughter out there somewhere. Unable to sleep, walking the streets, trawling in his motor car looking for her, incapable of fixing his mind on anything other than that. And then, Lucy being miraculously, if mysteriously, retuned.
It was his turn to speak, Alice was waiting for him to take her up on what she’d begun, but he couldn’t help her out. At last she sighed and said, ‘It seemed like a miracle, you know, just to find her there, back home.’ She paused, then rushed on. ‘We’d all grown so used to Ferdie going out looking for her and coming and going at all hours. If he’d been out that morning, no one would have remarked on it – but that’s just what happened, isn’t it? It was Ferdie who brought her home and left her out there in her pram.’
It was even more of a miracle that he had known where to find her. Violet certainly hadn’t told him. She had been as startled as any of them when L
ucy had been returned. Yet who else but Ferdie would have thought of Violet’s former, beloved nanny? And who else would Nanny Ryan have surrendered the child to but her own father? At some point, he must have eventually suspected Violet’s part in the kidnapping of their own child. It wouldn’t have been difficult, even for him, to put two and two together. In actual fact, that should have been no surprise at all. Ferdie, perhaps more than most, had the measure of his wife.
‘So you knew, Inspector.’
‘Maybe I suspected.’
‘There won’t be any – repercussions?’
‘The case is closed, Doctor Latimer,’ he said, and saw her visibly relax. That was what she wanted to hear, why she’d mentioned it at all, having guessed that he must have worked it out. To his mind, what Violet Martens had done was a monstrous thing for any woman to have agreed to, but the business was now nothing to do with him, for which he was duly thankful. He could leave the family to sort out with one another what it had done to their relationships.
It had begun to grow darker while he was inside the clinic and the street outside was for the moment a strange oasis of quiet in the noisy clamour of the warrens of streets, alleys and courts surrounding it. The street lamps had come on but they looked pale and anaemic in the fading afternoon light. It was the dark of the moon tonight and the sky would soon be inky black, but when night came the lamps would shine brightly by contrast and the darkness beyond would recede. For a moment, he thought of three men, standing in a circle of lamplight, but he didn’t allow the thought to linger. One thing he’d learned as a policeman was when to refuse to let doubts hang around any longer.
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