Read Online Betrayal at Lisson Grove by Anne Perry - Free Book Online

returned to the account within two weeks. He had not known because he had assumed the account dormant. There was no notification from the bank.
    It was close to midnight, and he was still sitting staring at the far wall without seeing it when there was a sharp, double tap on the window of the french doors opening onto the garden. It was a rhythm that only a person’s knuckles could make. It startled him out of his reverie and he froze for an instant, then got to his feet. The speed with which he did it, moving away from the glass and the light, made him realise how tense he was.
    The tap came again, and he looked at the shadow outside. He could just see the features of a man’s face beyond, unmoving, as if he wished to be recognised. Narraway thought for a moment of Pitt, but he knew it was not he. He was in France, and this man was not as tall.
    He must concentrate – think! He had allowed this blow to stun him. In a single act they had removed from him almost all that mattered to him, his purpose, his value in other people’s eyes, and perhaps in his own as well, and also a great deal of his pleasure.
    The man at the window was Stoker. He should have known that straight away. It was ridiculous to be standing here in the shadows as if he were afraid. He went forward and unlocked the french doors and opened them wide.
    Stoker came in, holding a bundle of papers in a large envelope, half hidden under his jacket. His hair was damp from the slight drizzle outside, as if he had walked some distance. Narraway hoped he had, and taken more than one cab, to make following or tracing him difficult.
    ‘What are you doing here, Stoker?’ he said quietly, for the first time this evening drawing the curtains closed. It had not mattered before, and he liked the presence of the garden at twilight, the birds, the fading of the sky, the occasional movement of leaves.
    ‘Brought some papers that might be useful, sir,’ Stoker replied. His voice and his eyes were perfectly steady, but there was a tension in his body, in the way he held his hands, that betrayed to Narraway that he knew perfectly well the risk he was taking.
    Narraway took the papers from him and glanced down at them, riffling through the pages swiftly to see what they were. Then he felt the breath tighten in his chest, and his own fingers clumsy. They referred to an old case in Ireland, twenty years ago. The memory of it was powerful, for many reasons, and he was surprised how very sharply it returned.
    It was as if he had last seen the people only a few days ago. He could remember the smell of the peat fire in the room where he and Kate had talked long into the night about the planned uprising. He could almost bring back the words he had used to persuade her it could only fail, and bring more death and more bitterness with it.
    He could bring back with exactness that still hurt the look in her eyes, the lamplight on her skin, the sound of her voice when she spoke his name – and the guilt.
    Even with his eyes open, in his mind he could see Cormac O’Neil’s fury, and then his grief. He understood it. They all had reason to hate Narraway. But for all its vividness, it had been twenty years ago.
    He looked up at Stoker. ‘Why these?’ he asked. ‘This case is old, it’s finished.’
    ‘The Irish troubles are never finished,’ Stoker said simply.
    ‘Our more urgent problem is here now,’ Narraway replied. ‘And possibly in Europe.’
    ‘Socialists?’ Stoker said drily. ‘They’re always grumbling on.’
    ‘It’s a lot more than that,’ Narraway told him. ‘They’re fanatic. It’s the new religion, with all the fire and evangelism of a holy cause. And just like Christianity in its infancy, it has its apostles and its dogma – and its splinter groups, quarrels over what is the true faith.’
    Stoker looked puzzled, as if this were all true but irrelevant.
    ‘The point is . . .’ Narraway said sharply, ‘. . . they each consider the others to be