“I take it the young lady is away at present?”
“She is staying with friends.”
“Ah.” Pike searched her face with uncomfortable intensity. Dody regretted bringing up the topic of Florence. She wondered if the inspector knew something about her sister that she did not. It was time to change the subject. “I nearly forgot to tell you, I made enquiries at the hospital today, and discovered it is not yet possible to conduct blood testing for group type.”
“Ah well, then I shall have to find other means,” Pike said. “It is no matter, thank you for trying.” He was still looking intently at her.
“What is it?” she asked. “Why do you look at me like that?”
“Pardon me for saying this, but I thought you looked somewhat distraught when you first came home.”
Dody touched her cheek—was he capable of detecting invisible tear tracks, too?
She composed herself. “Have you siblings, Chief Inspector?” There, she’d brought up the Florence topic again, albeit indirectly. It was hard not to when there had been little else on her mind.
“Please call me Pike; it’s less of a mouthful. And yes, I do, a sister, quite a bit older than myself. She still treats me like a small boy and seems to disapprove of most everything I do.”
“I think Florence must feel the same about me,” Dody said ruefully.
Pike looked at her intently again. “You disapprove of your sister’s activities?”
“Sometimes. Some of them.” Dody scanned the table and latched on to the wine bottle. “More wine?”
It would be safer to switch the conversation to him, Dody decided as she filled his glass; men always enjoyed talking about themselves. “I can’t imagine what a sister would find to disapprove of in you,” she said.
“Are you mocking me?”
“A war hero, I am told, and now a high-ranking policeman—what is there to disapprove of or mock?”
“Unless one has something against the police, I agree. But I assure you, my sister is a passionate upholder of the system—any system,” he added wryly. “But, you see, I didn’t follow the path for which I was supposedly destined. I defied my parents and joined the army to avoid auditioning for the Royal Academy. I had a certain talent for the piano, but it was little more than mediocre. I decided it best to let my family down sooner, rather than later.”
“So you became an officer in the army?”
“Not initially, I had neither money nor connections.”
“Parents?”
“My father was the son of a vicar and a natural philanthropist—I never quite understood why he never went into the church himself. Perhaps he felt he could do more good moulding young minds as a schoolteacher.”
Dody smiled, encouraged him to continue with a nod of her head.
“Mother came from a reasonably prosperous ironmongering family, had the benefit of quite a good education for her day. I think she married Father hoping to change him, hoping he would obtain a teaching position in a public school.” Pike shrugged. “But he never budged, quite content in the village school even if it meant an insubstantial salary and no prospects. Mother used the money she earned teaching piano to buy my sister and I decent clothes, private tuition, and elocution lessons.” Pike smiled at the memory. “It was only when she discovered that in the army I had risen through the ranks to captain that I was finally forgiven.”
And rising through the ranks was no mean feat, Dody thought as she regarded him across the table. He straightened in his chair. She could see he did not expect praise for his achievements; he was simply revealing a part of himself that few would have guessed.
An outsider in the army because of his class, and probably an outsider in the police force because of his military status. They had more in common than she might have imagined.
“And your parents, are they still alive?”
“Alas, no.”
Annie cleared the table and brought in coffee. They moved to their seats by the fireplace, and the conversation drifted into a comfortable silence. Pike swirled his brandy, apparently deep in thought. The fire crackled in the grate; the mantel clock chimed ten. Dody excused Annie and was about to leave for bed herself, when Pike stared into the fire and said, “When you see your sister next, you might attempt to persuade her to modify her activities, be wary of her associates.”
“You mean the women of the WSPU?”
“Not only them.” He looked away from the fire to meet her eye. “I believe she has been seeing an Irishman by the name of Derwent O’Neill, a former Fenian who has a history of making bombs.” He paused briefly, and then said, “I am aware that he and his brother recently spent time with your family in Kent.”
The remark snapped Dody out of her comfortable fog of sleepiness. “You have been spying on my family?” She could hardly speak she was so angry. She should have taken Annie’s advice and never let him into the house. He had lulled her into a false sense of security with his vulnerability and his cultured behaviour, and now, typical of his kind, he had revealed his baser self.
Pike maintained a level gaze. “The O’Neills, like all political extremists, have been watched since their arrival in the country. Special Branch left a report on my desk, which Sergeant Fisher brought along with my things this afternoon. I feel I owe it to you to let you know that the Irishman was seen with your sister this morning.”
Dody pursed her lips. “They met at my parents’ house and have obviously become friends.”
He seemed undaunted by her coldness and confirmed this with an impertinent question. “May I ask the reason for his visit to Sussex?”
“You may not, but as you already have, I feel obliged to answer.”
“You have kindly taken me into your house and given me medical attention; I am in your debt. You are not obliged to answer me at all.”
“I will tell you then, but only for the sake of my family’s reputation. Derwent’s brother Patrick has written a play about the Irish struggle and was hoping my mother would use her literary connections to have it produced. Derwent was simply accompanying his brother. My mother had to turn it down, however, though not because it lacked artistic merit. She said the play would be so heavily censored the message would be lost entirely.”
“I see—like Mr. Shaw’s satire of the government and the suffragettes?”
This new evidence of the range of his knowledge startled her for a moment. “Yes, like Press Cuttings. If a play written by someone as influential as Mr. Shaw could so easily be squashed, Mother knew Patrick O’Neill’s wouldn’t have a chance, even though it was in her opinion very good. As for Mr. Derwent O’Neill, I think I can assure you his bomb-making days are over. He uses a different weapon against the British government now, the power of argument and persuasion.” When Pike failed to respond, Dody stood up from her chair and gripped the mantelpiece. “There now, are you satisfied? Is the interrogation complete?”
The lines on either side of Pike’s mouth deepened and he suddenly looked very weary. “I’m sorry, but I felt I had to ask, to warn you.” He was silent for a moment, and then said, “I know your sister means a great deal to you and that you would not like to think of her mixing with dangerous people. Your family does have a reputation…”
The man was impossible, all the more because secretly she agreed with him. Pike’s fears for Florence were her own. Derwent O’Neill was a dangerous man; she was sure of it. But Pike had no right to speak of her family’s reputation.
“My family, Chief Inspector, has passions. Passions that you could probably not begin to understand.”
Pike did not flinch. He continued on his intended course. “There’s more. There is a weighty intelligence file on Derwent O’Neill, and among the many items sent over by the Dublin police, there are several reports of his taking uninvited liberties with young ladies—he has never been prosecuted on this count, mind. His victims have not been willing to face public attention in the courts.”
Victims? So her instincts about O’Neil
l had been more than correct. She sat back down and covered her eyes with her hands. Despite the warmth of the fire, she felt herself shudder. She looked up to see Pike hobbling towards her. “Stay where you are—your knee,” she ordered, though her voice had lost its command.
“Damn and blast it, do you never cease playing the doctor?” Pike leaned over and clutched the arm of her chair. “Well then, let me play the policeman. Let me put it to you that you know your sister has been keeping company with O’Neill, and that the two of you fought over this, and that is the reason she is currently staying with friends and why your eyes showed signs of weeping when you arrived home this evening.”
She closed her eyes, fearing what else he might read in them. Tears caught in her throat but she would not allow them to spill. “You notice too much, Pike,” she said.
He remained where he was for a moment, looking down at her. Then he reached out and touched her arm. His hand lingered for a moment. The warmth of his touch brought unexpected comfort, and then something more. Deep blue eyes studied her face with concern and she found she could not meet them. “There now, I’m sorry for upsetting you,” he said. “I’m sure your sister is perfectly safe; she is, after all, a formidable young woman.”
Dody nodded, her energy for an altercation gone, like sparks up the chimney. “No, you were right to tell me. And it is true, you have merely confirmed my own suspicions about the man, and for that I am grateful,” she said, glad that her voice did not betray the internal tremor his touch had triggered. She patted his hand. “Now please, return to the chaise, I am quite all right now.”
Once he was settled again and her thoughts restored, she said, “The trouble is, Florence is not amenable to advice from me at the best of times, and right now we are barely talking. I don’t know what I can do.”
“Then perhaps she will work him out for herself.”
Dody shook her head. “For all her brashness, she is quite the innocent. She has had little experience with that type of man. She’s also impulsive and blinkered. All she seems capable of thinking about these days is her wretched cause.”
Pike took a small silver case from his briefcase and offered Dody a cigarette, which she leaned over to take. She would have preferred her pipe but didn’t have the will to get up and fetch it from her bag in the hall.
He held up his matchbox. “I’d light it for you only …” Dody shook her head and indicated for him to throw the box, which she deftly caught with one hand. Pike looked impressed.
“Can you have O’Neill arrested?” she asked after lighting up and inhaling deeply.
“On what charge?”
“Oh, come now, since when have the police needed a reason to arrest someone?”
Pike furrowed his brows as if to say, Please, not this jousting session again. She knew she had overstepped the mark and immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that; not all policemen are tarred with the same brush.” She wanted to tell him that she feared the suffragettes and O’Neill were planning something dangerous together, but stopped herself. She had no proof as to what they were up to, and more important, she knew where her loyalties lay—not with the militants, but with her sister.
He made a good show of forgetting her flippant remark. “O’Neill is already being watched,” he said. “I can alert Special Branch to be more vigilant, but other than that, there is little I can do.”
“I will send Florence a note warning her about O’Neill. I won’t say how I found out about him, just that it has come to my attention.” Dody left her cigarette in the ashtray and moved to the writing desk by the window. “I imagine she will take little notice of it, but it might at least open her mind to the possible dangers of the association.” Not to mention the dangers of the bombs, she added silently to herself.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Do you wish to reply to the note I delivered earlier, Miss Florence? Miss Dody was most particular I ask.” Fletcher carried a bulging sack of tools from the porch of Olivia’s flat and deposited it on the floor of the carriage.
Florence caught Olivia’s eye and looked briefly to the inky sky. “What, right now?” Eight o’clock at night outside Olivia’s flat was hardly the time or place to be entering into a correspondence with her sister. “I’ll see her tomorrow when this is all over,” she said. “Does she know you’ve brought me the carriage?”
“I’ve said nothing about it to Miss Dody or to Annie, miss. They think I’m just running errands. And anyhow, I really did need to see the coach maker about the new upholstery—”
“Good man,” Florence cut him off, no keener to enter a discussion about upholstery than she was to write a note to her sister. “And that policeman has gone?”
“Left this morning, took him to the station myself.”
“And good riddance,” Olivia said. “I’m afraid your sister has sunk considerably in my estimation, Flo. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that she would go harbour the enemy.”
Florence sighed. The news had upset her, too, though she was damned if she would let it distract her from the mission ahead.
“What was in the note anyway?” Olivia asked.
“Just Dody being a worrywart. Derwent O’Neill apparently has a reputation with the ladies. Probably some tosh told to her by that policeman.”
Olivia snorted. “I’d like to see O’Neill try something with me.”
Florence rubbed her arms to warm them, her eyes on the doorway of Olivia’s building. “Daisy and Jane. What’s keeping them?”
“Calm down, old girl, they’ll be moving as fast as they can.”
“I know, I know. I just can’t bear all this horrid waiting. Fletcher, go and fetch the trunk, please. They must have finished packing it by now.”
“Are you sure you can trust your man?” Olivia said as they watched him lumber towards the door.
“Fletcher’s a good egg; he told us about the policeman, didn’t he? Still, the less he knows about this operation, the better. He’ll go straight home after he’s dropped us off. We’ll make our own way back, even if it means walking—it’ll be easier without the equipment anyway.”
“I’m not piggybacking Jane.”
Florence laughed. Olivia always managed to lift her mood. “It’s a shame Molly Jenkins can’t make it; we could have used her muscle.”
“Probably locked in the house by her brute of a husband.”
Fletcher came out of the building, his back stooped under a large trunk. Jane and Daisy followed, Daisy giggling in high spirits. Olivia moved towards her and put an arm around her thin shoulder. “Try to keep calm now, Daisy dear.”
“But it’s all such a lark, ain’t it?”
Olivia did up the buttons on Daisy’s coat. “Now, you must tie your scarf around your face when we get there. That way, even if we are seen, no one will recognise you.”
Daisy responded with an angelic smile. “Yes, you, too, Olivia.”
Florence had been reluctant to allow Daisy along. She felt it was unfair to endanger the girl. Devoted to the cause though she was, Daisy was inclined not to think and she could easily, albeit unintentionally, betray them. But Daisy had begged and pleaded, and Florence had been outvoted. She turned to Jane Lithgow. “You packed the wires and the blasting caps?”
Jane Lithgow lifted her chin and said, “Of course. And the acid and the dynamite—they’re all in the trunk.”
Florence had her doubts about Jane, too. The regal Jane had never so much as pulled a weed from a window box, let alone survived a Fabian hockey match. How on earth, she wondered, did she think she could destroy a golf course?
The night was clear and cold. As the sound of clopping hooves faded into the distance, Florence and Jane carried the trunk to the grassy velvet of the eighteenth hole, where Daisy and Olivia, each illuminated by a shrouded lantern, had begun their work. Daisy was slicing through the turf next to the sandbunker with her shovel as if she were digging a vegetable patch. Olivia stood at the po
le that marked the hole, struggling to undo the strings of the club flag.
Florence blew into the scarf covering her nose and mouth, her breath unnaturally loud to her muffled ears. Every now and then the silence was broken by a whisper, the clank of metal, the hoot of an owl from the nearby copse. Daisy giggled. Florence hissed her silent, then saw what had set her off. Olivia had replaced the club flag with their suffragette pennant of purple, green, and white and was standing to attention before it. She made a caricature of a military salute, prompting another fit of giggles from Daisy. Florence hissed for silence again. The golf course had no watchman, but the police occasionally patrolled the neighbouring common and it was important that they remain as quiet as possible.
From the trunk Florence took a bucket and a small drum of water while Jane unwound the last of the padding around a wicker-covered bottle. She stood up, carefully holding it reverently in her arms as if it were a newborn babe. “Acid to water, acid to water …” Jane chanted.
“I can’t see what difference it makes,” Daisy said. “Take the kettle to the pot, or the pot to the kettle, it’s all the same tea.”
“If we do it wrong,” Jane said with relish, “we will blow ourselves up.”
Daisy took a hasty step back. “Really?” Olivia shot Jane a poisonous look before putting her arm around the terrified girl.
“That is what Mr. O’Neill said.”
“Oh, do try to get on, please,” Florence snapped, exasperated that Olivia, whom she could usually rely on, should choose this moment to become belligerent.
Florence poured the water from the small drum into the bucket. Daisy gulped a breath as Jane removed the glass stopper from the bottle and slowly added the acid.
Florence looked at the rolling topography about her. “Where shall we put it?”
Olivia pointed to a gentle dip of smooth grass above the sandbunker. As good a spot as any, Florence thought as she carried the bucket over with the others following. Jane insisted that because she had such a fine copperplate, she should do the honours. She reached into her pocket and brandished a stiff bristle paintbrush.
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