Chapter 14 #2
I’d long feared that Alec’s unchecked bravery and recklessness would get him killed.
Only his skill and experience had thus far saved him.
But under Collins’s leadership, I worried the worst of his tendencies were being encouraged, and it was only a matter of time before his brazenness got him in trouble.
Case in point.
The bedchamber door swung open and in stepped Sidney, looking none too pleased. I couldn’t halt the guilty flush that crested my cheeks, even though I was not at fault. Sidney seemed to realize this, directing all of his ire toward the man on the opposite side of the bed as he closed the door.
“Xavier,” he pronounced in a clipped voice.
“Kent,” Alec echoed.
“Do I even want to know how you slipped in here?”
“He used the hole in the wall of Max’s room,” I explained before Alec could make a smart quip in reply.
Sidney arched a single eyebrow. “I see. Now I wish I’d given in to my impulse to seal that up after our raid.
” He crossed his arms, leaning back against the door as he and Alec sized each other up.
I’d expected more irritation from my husband, but he seemed to adjust remarkably fast to the other man’s presence.
“I’m going to assume you’re here to verify my wife’s well-being.
” He gestured toward me. “You’ve seen her, and now you can go. ”
Alec pushed to his feet, but then I realized we would be foolish not to take advantage of this opportunity to confer with him.
“But while you’re here,” I interjected before Alec could take a step toward the door. “You’ve heard about Ardmore? That he’s escaped culpability yet again?”
“Aye.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers, glancing between us. “Word is Willoughby is taking the fall this time.”
I wasn’t surprised he already knew this. “Allegedly he’s gone into hiding and the Crown Forces haven’t been able to locate him. Do you have any idea where?”
He shook his head. “After the incident outside Mountjoy, he never returned to any of the hotel rooms registered under his name.”
A few months earlier, we’d discovered that Willoughby had paid for rooms at more than one hotel throughout Dublin in an effort to mask his movements.
One corner of Alec’s mouth quirked into a wry grimace. “I know because I checked.” He turned to look toward the window. The glass was turning dark as dusk settled in. “I wasn’t about to let him walk free while you were not.”
I shared a speaking look with Sidney, both of us able to guess what violent intentions lay behind those words.
“Then he must have guessed that Ardmore intended for him to shoulder the blame,” Sidney remarked.
“I wonder if he deduced that even before the phosgene plot was foiled,” I ruminated, thinking back on some of the fatalistic language he’d used during our final conversation a fortnight ago. “And if he did see it coming, I wonder if he took any precautions.”
Sidney and Alec both seemed to give this due consideration.
“The trouble is, I don’t know precisely what those precautions would be.”
Sidney moved closer to the bed. “If it had been me, I would have arranged a way to quietly get out of Ireland.”
“A private boat, perhaps,” I suggested, following his reasoning. “Something inconspicuous. Like a fishing trawler.”
“At the least, he might have set up some sort of bolt-hole.” Alec narrowed his eyes at a spot on the wall above the door as if imagining this hideout. “Someplace that no one else knew about or could trace him to. Somewhere he could wait out the worst until he could escape the country.”
Listening to him, I couldn’t help but be curious whether he possessed just such a bolt-hole for himself. I hoped so. And I hoped he’d kept its existence from everyone, even Collins.
“Were his belongings confiscated from the hotels?” I asked.
Alec nodded. “Before I got there.”
Then there was nothing we could look through for evidence of Ardmore’s guilt or clues to his next intentions.
As for Willoughby, I didn’t know that it would do us any good trying to locate him.
My previous attempts to persuade him to turn against Ardmore had been fruitless, and even though he’d now been betrayed, I didn’t hold much confidence in him helping us.
Frankly, I feared he might already be dead, killed by another of Ardmore’s henchmen, his body not yet found.
I thought of the rumor Alec and his handler, the banker Tobias Finnegan, had started when we’d first arrived in Dublin to search for him.
It had claimed that Alec had been killed and dumped in a nearby peat bog.
There had also been recent newspaper reports of a priest whose body had been found in a peat bog somewhere in the west country.
He’d been lured out on a phony call and murdered—some said by the Black and Tans—before his body was discarded in the bog to keep it from being discovered.
Could something similar have happened to Willoughby?
“I understand Anderson and Sturgis were here earlier.”
Alec understood? Or he knew? Perhaps because he’d seen them come and go from the neighboring house. His tone may have sounded offhand, but I knew he must be intensely interested.
“They want us to investigate a murder.”
His brows shot up before furrowing deeply. “After detaining, interrogating, and torturing you?!”
The last words hit me like a punch in the gut.
I’d not told Alec what had happened, and I was quite certain Sidney hadn’t told Joe O’Reilly when he’d delivered my message.
So how had he known? Had someone from the Castle informed him, or was he merely inferring from the blistering around my eye?
Whatever the case, it took me a moment to regain my equilibrium.
“They’ve got some nerve!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, well, they think Ardmore has something to do with the murder,” I said.
This caught his attention.
Sidney leaned one shoulder against the far bedpost. “What do you know about the killing of Lieutenant Harlow on the Forty Steps?”
“Not much. Other than that Collins’s men didn’t do it and neither did the IRA.” Alec shook his head. “Not that close to the Castle.”
“Then you didn’t know that his wife was allegedly Ardmore’s latest mistress?”
“I did not.” It was clear from the looks Alec was darting between us that he was trying to work out the implication. “And they think Ardmore killed her husband?”
I shared the skepticism I heard in his voice. “Yes, but not necessarily because he was her husband. He may have had another reason he wanted Harlow dead.”
“What was Harlow’s position?”
“He’d recently been employed as a courts-martial officer,” Sidney replied.
Alec scowled.
“But prior to that he was a quartermaster.”
This seemed to hold significance for both men. While I recognized that quartermasters were responsible for ordering and allocating all the supplies for their unit, I knew little else.
“What does that mean?” I murmured into their pregnant silence.