The Angel Court Affair (Thomas Pitt 30) (29 page)

‘She knows something that they will torture her to death in order to learn,’ Narraway went on quietly. ‘And it has its roots here in Spain. Someone confessed something to her.’

‘Will it help if we know what?’ Vespasia asked.

‘Possibly. But we need to know who,’ he answered. ‘The details might matter.’

‘Maybe the man Sister Maria told me of, who confessed to Sofia, lied about the violence,’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps he did kill the man they found eviscerated, or at least knew who had done it.’

Narraway frowned. ‘I think she would have made him repent of it, and tell the police, at least to stop anyone else being blamed.’

‘Are you certain it is not anything to do with revenge by the family of his first wife? It’s a fearful grief to lose your child by suicide, and your grandchildren by murder. I suppose it’s impossible Nazario caused it directly somehow? Do you think that would be what this is about? Whether it is true or not, they believe he killed them all?’

‘There’s a great deal I need to learn,’ he agreed.

Vespasia looked at him in the fading light. The gold in it made his skin look even darker, his eyes black. He could easily have been Spanish himself. Only because she knew him could she see the anxiety in his face.

‘What is it?’ she said quietly. ‘What are you thinking?’

He smiled bleakly. ‘I have no reason to think Nazario himself is guilty, but we mustn’t forget that possibility.’

‘Do his wife’s family blame Sofia?’ She was afraid of the answer, but she had to ask. Why would it hurt her if they did? Did she really admire the woman she was coming to know so much that it would darken a hope, or a dream, if she were to blame? Did Sofia forgive so passionately because she understood the need to be forgiven? If so, had Vespasia never walked that path herself that she was so quick to judge, or to be disappointed?

She was aware of Narraway watching her, perhaps more closely than she wished. How vulnerable it made her to care so much what he thought; how much of her he read!

‘No,’ he said with slight surprise. ‘I wasn’t able to find out why. I would like to know more, but there isn’t time. I’ll go and see Nazario himself tomorrow.’

But it proved far more difficult than he had expected. Enquiries at the old abbey where Sofia and Nazario lived elicited the fact, told reluctantly, that Nazario had spent the last several days in a monastery many miles outside the city, where he had been helping the people of the nearest village. It was apparently something he did regularly. No one knew when he was due back to Toledo. There was nothing for Narraway to do but hire a guide, and a horse, and travel to the monastery.

He returned to the hotel and told Vespasia of it, somewhat to her alarm. He saw, wryly and with a degree of self-consciousness, that she was afraid for him.

‘My dear,’ he said gently. ‘I began my career in the Indian Army. I am perfectly comfortable riding a horse. I have even fought battles with a sabre in one hand and the reins in the other. I shall manage to ride at a decent pace along a rather good road, I promise you.’ He leaned forward and touched her cheek, closing his eyes and feeling the softness of her skin. In part he did not wish to embarrass her further by seeing the hot colour as she blushed, but he was also aware of how much they did not yet know each other.

She searched for words, and found none, so she touched him gently, and bit her lip as she watched him leave.

It was several hours’ ride through the deepening evening light from Toledo to the monastery, but Narraway enjoyed it. It was a long time since he had ridden a horse at all, let alone a strong animal such as he had now, both eager and biddable, picking its way along what was clearly a familiar path. To begin with he sat in the saddle comfortably, but he knew that by the end of the journey his body would be aching. He must not let his pride make him ridiculous by denying it. It would be an easy mistake, and the thought of it brought the heat to his face.

He relaxed and gave the horse its head. He stared around him with interest. Some of the landscape he could see brought back memories of India, even though it resembled it very little. It was a quality in the light, the width of the view and the shadows on the horizon, the warmth of the air on his face, but perhaps most of all the sway in the saddle, the constant adjustment of his weight, the smells of earth and dust and crushed herbs.

And he admitted this was also the chance to put off a little longer the need to face Nazario Delacruz, and tell him of the ransom demand. He was also pleased to delay the time when he must make some judgement of the man. It was instinctive after so many years to make assessments of people, but he disliked it more and more as he moved away from command of Special Branch. There was a freedom in not having to be right. Now mistakes, however serious, would be no more than an embarrassment. The responsibility was all Pitt’s.

Except that if you had the power, you also had the obligation. It was not society that told you that, there was nowhere to escape because it was your own inner consciousness.

Some of the time the pathway was steep and it was natural to ride behind rather than beside his guide, but on the occasions when he could, he struck up a conversation with him.

‘Señor Delacruz comes to this monastery often?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ the guide agreed.

‘How often? Every month?’

The guide shrugged and smiled. ‘Maybe.’

‘Why?’

‘Is good place.’ The guide crossed himself absent-mindedly. ‘Good men. Care for poor, for sick.’

Was this where Sofia had hidden the fugitive she was protecting? Perhaps Nazario was looking after him now?

‘And penitents?’ he asked aloud. He had no idea how to say ‘fugitives seeking asylum’ in Spanish. And if he did, he might be taken for an agent of the Spanish Government, or an informer in general.

The guide shrugged and turned his face forward, evasive again. The conversation was finished.

They arrived after dark, when the summer sky was burning with stars. They were so dense, here, far from any city lamps, that the arch above them was like a milky smear across to the darker rims of the horizon.

The monastery stood alone on high ground, its squared outlines like battlements. The path towards it was steep and the horse slowed. Narraway dismounted to walk his animal, and found he was indeed horribly stiff. He was glad of the darkness to hide it. Not that his guide would have been rude enough to have remarked on it.

The guide knocked on the huge iron ring mounted on the oak door and when it swung wide he explained in Spanish as much as he knew of Narraway. There was no mistaking the warning in his voice as he told the gatekeeper why Narraway had come. Narraway understood enough of it to know that their earlier conversation about fugitive and penitent was repeated.

The monk rang an iron bell hanging from the rough stone of the entrance. Within a couple of moments another monk appeared and took the horses.

Narraway and the guide were led in, everything said once in English and again in Spanish. They were offered food and shelter, but before accepting, Narraway explained to the abbot that his business was with Nazario Delacruz, and concerned a profound danger to his family. He must be informed immediately, and privately.

The abbot made no demur and within ten minutes, Narraway sat across a wooden table, polished by centuries of use, and faced Nazario.

‘What can I do for you, señor?’ Nazario asked courteously. He was a man of approximately Narraway’s height, perhaps an inch taller, but he was also lean and wiry, and dark.

Narraway hated what he had to do, but there was no possible escape. To be evasive only added to the inevitable pain. He must stop visualising himself in the same dilemma. And remember that this man had apparently left his wife and children for Sofia, which grief had brought about their deaths. Narraway wondered if this had been deliberate cruelty, or simply self-indulgence, weakness, Nazario’s yielding everything to his own needs.

And of course nothing ruled out the possibility that he himself was in some way, directly or indirectly, responsible for Sofia’s abduction. In Narraway’s mind he had almost used the word ‘death’.

Narraway must tell him what he had to in such a way that if there were anything at all to be learned from Nazario’s reactions, he would do so.

‘My name is Narraway,’ he introduced himself. ‘I used to be head of British Special Branch, to do with—’

‘I know who they are,’ Nazario interrupted him. ‘What do you want in Toledo? If we have revolutionaries here, I don’t know of them. And before you ask any further, I don’t wish to know.’ He spoke in fluent and easy English, even though Narraway had spoken to him in Spanish.

‘Actually so far as I know, this has nothing to do with revolution,’ Narraway replied. ‘But it is interesting that that is the first thing that comes to your mind.’

Nazario frowned. ‘You are British Special Branch. What else could it have to do with? What do you mean, “so far as you know”?’

Narraway drew in his breath to explain that he was retired, and then changed his mind.

‘I’m deeply sorry, Señor Delacruz,’ he said, his mouth unexpectedly dry. ‘But your wife has been kidnapped. We don’t know by whom. We have done everything . . .’ He stopped, seeing the stunned incomprehension on Nazario’s face, and then almost immediately the beginning of a terrible comprehension. ‘Do you know by whom?’

Nazario shook his head as if words were impossible for him.

‘But you understand?’ Narraway insisted.

‘Of course I understand,’ Nazario said sharply. ‘I speak English!’

‘I know you do,’ Narraway remained gentle. ‘I meant that you are not amazed, not incredulous.’

‘No . . . no, there have been threats against her, many times. None of them has resulted in anything beyond unpleasantness before. This is different, isn’t it?’ His voice wavered a little. His eyes searched Narraway’s. ‘I see by your face that there is more. What is it? Please do not play games of words with me. You are speaking of my wife. Is it to do with anarchists or not?’

‘We don’t know what it is to do with,’ Narraway said frankly. ‘But two of the women who were with her were killed.’ He watched Nazario’s face intently.

‘Who?’ Nazario asked.

‘Cleo and Elfrida,’ Narraway replied.

Nazario’s face was pinched with grief and he maintained his composure with difficulty. ‘But you think Sofia is still alive?’ There was a desperate hope in his eyes, and yet also an even sharper fear than before. He knew something far beyond what he had said.

‘I am almost sure of it,’ Narraway answered. ‘I know nothing for certain, or I would tell you.’ With a vividness he would rather not have felt, he imagined this man’s terror. His love for Vespasia, his total commitment to her, had altered his ability to play the game of interrogation in the old way. Perhaps it would also give him a compensating new insight? He needed it, however painful it would be.

‘What do you know?’ Nazario pressed. He was clinging on to his dignity with difficulty, trying not to break down in front of a stranger, and a foreigner – English, of all things. A famously unemotional race.

‘They have asked a ransom,’ Narraway told him. ‘They know that before we paid anything at all we needed proof that she is alive. As of six days ago she was.’

Nazario leaned forward.

‘Ransom? How much? I have very little, enough to live on, no more. But there are many people I can ask.’ There was a lift in his voice as if he dared to hope. ‘How much, Señor Narraway?’

Narraway felt sick at what he would have to say to this man sitting across the table from him. All the calm, the inner peace he had found was about to be shattered, like tearing his clothing off his body. Eventually he would be naked, and Narraway felt it an intrusion even to look at him. And yet if he did not do his job he was of no use to any of them. They needed help, not pity.

‘It is not money,’ he replied. ‘Señor Delacruz, I need your help, your honesty and clear sight in this. It is, I believe, extremely complicated. You know some of the people involved but possibly not all of them. I am not willingly playing with your feelings in telling you this a piece at a time, I am trying to learn from you all that I can. I think knowledge is the only effective weapon that we have.’

‘Knowledge?’ Nazario said hoarsely. ‘Knowledge of what? I will tell you all I know. What do you need?’

‘I will tell you what has happened as far as we understand it, and I expect you to explain it for me, if you can.’

Narraway told the facts simply, without complicating the narrative with other names.

‘We were warned that there might be threats against your wife. We took what we thought were reasonable precautions. However she disappeared, along with two other women who were very brutally murdered, in a house in Inkerman Road, only two miles from Angel Court, where they had been staying.’

Nazario remained motionless.

‘We had thought at first that it might be a deliberate tactic to gain some attention . . .’ He saw Nazario’s face darken with anger, and that he controlled himself with difficulty.

‘Melville Smith has admitted to helping them, and finding the place in Inkerman Road,’ Narraway went on. ‘Not for publicity, although he did cash in on that, but he said to protect Sofia, and I believe that was true, even if his motives were mixed.’

‘He wants a simpler teaching,’ Nazario said, his voice tight with strain. ‘Gain more followers by making it softer, easier . . . and untrue. He has for years, and she would never agree with him. Even so, I did not believe he would kill . . .’

‘Neither do we,’ Narraway agreed. ‘The house belongs to Barton Hall, whom I believe was the real reason your wife went to England . . .’ He waited, watching Nazario.

‘Yes,’ Nazario conceded, lowering his eyes. ‘Hall is a cousin of hers, in some degree.’ He looked up again, his eyes desperate. ‘She would not tell me why, only that it was absolutely necessary. I begged her not to, or to allow me to go with her, but she insisted I had business here, which I do, and that this was something she must do alone. She said my being with her would attract more attention, and therefore more danger.’ The muscles of his jaw tightened and a tiny nerve ticked in his temple. ‘I should not have allowed her to persuade me!’ His anger was directed at himself and again he looked away, as if Narraway had voiced the same thoughts of blame, and he could not face him.