‘Excellent notion, Hopkirk. Wentworth – would you be willing to do that? Break the news? Deliver your message? Work your magic again?’
She looked from one to the other, not troubling to hide her scorn for their readiness to exploit a female. ‘You want me to break the ground for the superintendent, sir? I’ll do what I can to ease his path,’ she said with quiet sarcasm.
Hopkirk turned a blazing blue gaze on her and seared her eyeballs for two seconds.
It was Joe who flinched.
The men waited in some discomfort, wincing with each piercing scream of pain and rage that came from the open window of the sitting room. A silence followed, and then they made out an intermittent sobbing. Wentworth’s voice was not audible but her questions and comments were interleaved by Mrs Dunne’s replies. Vehement, pleading, truculent, and, at the last, despairing, she ran the gamut of noisy emotion.
Lily emerged a quarter of an hour later, pale and shaking. She walked up to the two men and, straight backed, delivered her statement. ‘Mrs Dunne is English; her husband, now dead, was Irish. She confirms her son’s identity and says she suspected his involvement with a political cause. He is no fire-eating republican – he has a gentle nature – and she insists, as the boy himself indicated, that he must have been led along this path by others. She referred to his best friend, whom she seems to despise, as Ronald O’Connor and gave me his address.’ Lily passed a sheet from her notebook to Hopkirk. ‘There’s a tin trunk under Patrick’s bed where you might find further indications concerning the identity of those who were running him. She knows he kept his copies of the official organ of the Irish Volunteers in there.’ Lily looked up at Hopkirk. ‘I assured her that the forces of law and order would tread lightly in view of her cooperation and not wreck her home.’
Hopkirk shook his head and then said stiffly: ‘Then you exceeded your brief, constable.’ He turned away from her to hide his flash of anger. Catching the force of Sandilands’ dour expression, he added grudgingly: ‘I’ll have a word with the men.’ He called Chappel and the DCs. ‘In we go, and we’re bidden to “tread lightly”. Hear that? No rough stuff, and anything you pick up to examine, you put back in its place. Got it, lads? Pretend it’s your granny’s house you’re turning over.’
‘Well done, Wentworth,’ Joe said, watching the superintendent bang on the front door. ‘I think we can leave them to it. Now – what about a cup of tea somewhere? I’ll ask the driver to drop us at the nearest Joe Lyons, shall I? Or would you prefer the Ritz? I think we have a small triumph to celebrate.’
‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to go straight back to the Yard.’
* * *
Lily maintained a stiff silence in the car on the way back, fidgeting with something in her pocket. She plodded up the stairs after him, heard him sing out his arrival into Miss Jameson’s office and followed him into his room.
She waited in the at ease position before his desk and watched as he pounced on a large envelope placed centrally and held down by a jade paperweight. Urgent! said a handwritten note attached.
‘Will you excuse me for a moment?’ Joe asked, hardly aware of her presence, his face suddenly strained. He took out a sheet of typed writing paper with a very flamboyant heading and read. He read it again.
He looked at Lily. ‘Won’t you sit down? You’ll excuse me if I do. Rather weakening news at the end of a long and tiring day. As this affects you, I’ll summarize the rather surprising contents. It’s from the Home Secretary. He refuses to accept my resignation, which he considers precipitate and unjustified. Ah! Tomorrow’s papers, he assures me, will sport letters to the editors from various highly placed gents, among them a field marshal, the First Sea Lord, members of Parliament and ministers for Ireland, making it clear that they take personal responsibility for requesting the withdrawal of police protection. No blame can possibly attach to any public servant.’ Joe gave her an evil grin and added: ‘I should guess he includes himself in that category. We’re in the clear, Wentworth. Blue Train to the Riviera postponed. You’ll have to put off seeing those palm trees for a bit longer.’
His rush of boyish good humour provoked an answering smile. ‘I’m glad justice has been done, sir,’ she said. ‘Any other outcome would have been a hideous shame. And I congratulate you on having such powerful allies. From what I’ve seen of the task you have ahead of you, you’re going to need them all. I wish you luck with it.’