Chapter 17 #2
“Until school age,” Max confirmed. “Then his father seems to have insisted he receive a proper Englishman’s education.
But he returned here during breaks until about the age of twelve when his mother died.
Then his father seems to have been determined not to let him return. Or so the gossip sheets claim.”
“But his father passed when he was eighteen,” I remarked, having recalled as much from the CX report on Ardmore. “Did he return to visit his grandparents after?”
“They had died. His grandmother just a few years after her daughter, and his grandfather about six months before his father. Ardmore was named his sole beneficiary. Though here’s the most interesting bit.
” Max leaned forward. “He was supposed to gain full control over his grandfather’s estate upon reaching the age of eighteen, but his father petitioned the courts to have it changed to thirty. ”
“Surely that’s uncommon,” George said, voicing the questions we all seemed to hold about the legality of this.
“It is. But Ardmore’s father had cultivated powerful friends.”
I turned to meet Sidney’s gaze, beginning to see a parallel.
“Friends he may have bribed?” Sidney suggested.
“Perhaps,” Max agreed. “Regardless, his father died.” He paused in emphasis. “A fortnight after Ardmore turned eighteen.”
The implication was clear.
His gray eyes flickered with shadows. “A heart attack. But …”
I nodded. Max’s father had allegedly died of a heart attack, but we now knew he’d almost certainly been slowly poisoned. By Ardmore.
Had Ardmore’s father been his first victim? Had this all begun thirty-some years ago? The notion was rather staggering.
“You uncovered quite a lot,” I insisted, countering Max’s earlier claim.
He flopped back against the cushions again, ruffling his butterscotch-blond hair. “Nothing that gets us closer to arresting him.”
“You don’t know that, yet.” I gestured toward George.
“Take Smith’s code, for instance. I never would have been able to figure out the location of the phosgene from what he wrote if I hadn’t already uncovered that Rockham had a mistress here and where her home was located, not to mention your father and Ardmore’s connection to the Sailors Home, among other things.
Every little bit helps, and something you just told us could prove a vital clue that helps us make some necessary connection. ”
Max grunted his comprehension of what I’d just said, but he was obviously far from convinced.
“I’ve nearly finished the decryption,” George interjected, drumming his fingers against the legs of his trousers as if he was eager to get back at it.
“It should be finished by tomorrow.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the writing desk.
“The dates near the beginning of the book seem to indicate that Smith was working for Ardmore at least two years before the war ended. Both he and the Adele I previously mentioned.”
“Bloody hell,” Sidney muttered under his breath as he thunked his empty glass down on the sideboard. “Then I suspect that’s confirmation that Ardmore was involved with the ring of traitors that Adele Baverel and Walter Ponsonby were part of.”
“It’s indicative,” I amended. “But it’s not proof.”
Sidney glowered at me, no happier to be corrected than Max had been.
Everyone’s temperaments were a bit frayed today, and I wasn’t helping matters.
So when Max said he needed something from his chamber, and Sidney declared he needed some fresh air, and I discovered that George was already absorbed in his decoding, I decided to leave well enough alone.
“Verity, do you have a moment?”
Some hours had passed since we’d each gone our separate ways when George appeared in the doorway to the private sitting room off my and Sidney’s bedchamber. I was seated near the hearth, attempting to read, but having little luck because my thoughts kept wandering.
“Of course,” I replied, setting the book aside and gesturing for him to join me. He clutched the decryption notebook open in his hands. “Have you uncovered something?”
“Maybe.” The reluctance with which he spoke told me that whatever he was about to share was not going to be a pleasant discovery.
“Is it to do with the traitor ring?”
I’d watched through the window earlier as Sidney paced a circle around the perimeter of the garden.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d been upset to have his suspicions further confirmed that Ardmore was involved with the traitors whose activities might have cost many of his men their lives and nearly taken his own, but I wasn’t prepared for how much it had unsettled him.
The vines trailing over the fence near the far-right corner could testify to this as he whacked at them every time he passed, with a switch he’d pulled from one of the trees.
“No. It’s … well, take a look.” He passed me the book as he sank down on the chair next to mine.
I looked at him questioningly before turning to read the words at the point on the page he indicated.
13 3 1918 RIDE FERRY ROYAL MARINE
HOTEL KINGS TOWN
14 3 1918 RIDE TAX DUB LIN X FERRY
LONDON
I frowned, uncertain why he was showing me seemingly a log of Smith’s movements.
So in March 1918 Smith had taken the ferry to Kingstown and then ventured into Dublin before catching the ferry back to England.
I supposed this could be pertinent. Smith must have been on leave or special assignment.
But I puzzled over the dates, trying to figure out what they might connect to.
George didn’t comment but urged me to turn to another almost duplicate entry some pages later for July 19 and 20, 1918. It was then that the word he evidently wanted to leap out at me struck me. RIDE. Or did Smith mean Ryde, as in the Earl of Ryde?
My gaze flew to George’s. “Ryde?”
But he wasn’t finished. He flipped to one last entry, this one from September 1918, shortly before Max’s father had died.
I must have read over this decryption in recent days, but I hadn’t paid it any attention.
Perhaps because I hadn’t seen the entries from March and July.
This one was also nearly identical except for four words: WILL OWE BY REPORT.
I supposed this was meant to indicate that Willoughby had informed Smith of this information rather than Smith having observed it firsthand.
“Why would the late Earl of Ryde have come to Dublin three times that year?” I posited.
“And for only a single day.”
George was right. Max’s father always seemed to arrive on the morning ferry and depart on the evening one.
I shook my head, still struggling to acclimate to this discovery.
“But I don’t understand. He chronicled everywhere he went in his agenda.
Max found notations indicating he’d gone to inspect airfields near each of the Roman ruins where he left us clues to lead us to that cask of phosgene cylinders he concealed for us to find at Littlemote House.
” It was that cask that had revealed the truth about what cargo had actually been smuggled off the Isle of Wight on the Zebrina.
“The clues that were supposed to also lead us to the proof he hid of Ardmore’s perfidy.
” I passed George the notebook. “I assume, like me, you’re wondering if this may indicate that the late Lord Ryde hid that proof here.
In Dublin. So why didn’t he mark it in his agenda?
I’m sure Max would have noticed if he had. ”
“Maybe he did. He just didn’t write ‘Dublin,’ but perhaps something nearby, like in the case of those Roman ruins and airfields.”
“We’ll have to ask Max.” Which meant telling him. Judging from George’s pensive expression, he was dreading doing so as much as I was.
However, Max listened with far more equanimity than I would have been capable of. He even had the answer to our quandary.
“Wales,” he explained. “He journeyed three times to Wales, to Caernarfon and Holyhead.” From where the ferry to Ireland departed.
“I puzzled over those entries for some time because he listed Segontium for his reason for visiting Caernarfon and Caer Gybi for Holyhead. Both Segontium and Caer Gybi are the sites of the remains of Roman forts, one of which they’ve recently begun excavating.
Given Father’s ploy in concealing his other clues for us at the Romans’ Saxon short forts, I’d wondered if there might be something to be extrapolated from his visits to those sites in Wales, but I never connected them to Dublin. ”
He stared at the September decrypted entry from Smith’s journal, his bafflement transforming to fury. “How was I supposed to? None of the clues pointed us here!”
“Maybe we missed something,” I suggested, hoping to console him.
“And where in Dublin? How were we to figure that out? Smith doesn’t say.” He thrust the journal at George with a bit more force than was necessary, making one last retort before storming off. “And now he’s dead.”
But Willoughby was not. At least, we presumed so.
I could see that George was entertaining a similar thought. If we could track down Willoughby, maybe he could tell us. Not that that would be an easy task, but all was not lost. Not yet.