Twenty-One Days (Daniel Pitt #1)(82)

Daniel felt that they had to have a plan ready for the next morning. That was going to mean a hard day followed by a hard night.

In the middle of the afternoon, he reached the end of his pile, and Blackwell reached the end of his ten minutes later.

Mercy looked up. ‘Well?’ she asked.

Daniel felt defensive. The book was principally about Victor Narraway, with major digressions about people he had known, and letters that were personal and had little to do with his career. But it was cruel. There was more than one interpretation of most events, and Graves had always chosen the one that fitted his own estimate of Narraway as greedy, vain, and in the end always self-serving. So many stories that he had found skirted the edge of slander, but never tipped over. Daniel felt as if all the defence somehow made more of the fault rather than less. If there were nothing wrong, why would anyone leap to offer an excuse? It drew more attention to the lapse and made most people consider it in the light of the assumption that it required defending.

‘Clever,’ Mercy said quietly. ‘But not infallible, I think.’

‘Do you?’ Daniel heard his own voice sounding absurdly hopeful. ‘Not infallible?’

‘There is this story here.’ Mercy held up a sheet of paper and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘Page one hundred and sixty-eight. It concerns Dorothy Devoke. Graves says Narraway was having an affair with her. Used her to gain very personal information about her husband, Richard Devoke. Forced him into supporting Narraway in some venture or another, and when it turned out badly – Devoke lost a fortune – it transpired that Narraway did not put any of his own money into it. Dorothy was furious and caused a very ugly scene at Claridge’s, of all places. Devoke left the Government and retired to the country. Narraway prospered.’

Daniel had reached the place where Graves referred back to it. ‘It sounds bad . . .’

‘That is because of the language used,’ Mercy explained. ‘Put in other words, it sounds different. It’s all supposition. And I know a lot about Dorothy Devoke. I could make as good a case for the opposite view . . . which is that Narraway warned him not to invest, and he did, out of perversity.’

‘But does it help us?’ Daniel insisted. Doubt was not enough. Especially if Richard Devoke had been so upset about the losses that he had given up his position in the Government.

Mercy smiled patiently. ‘You’re missing the point, my dear. Robert Devoke, Richard’s son, is a very powerful man now. Discreetly, of course, but he has the ear of some very important people. He knows the truth behind this, and if he has temporarily forgotten, I for one would be happy to remind him. Narraway actually helped him. I happen to know that because I—’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I just know.’

Daniel did not wish either to probe her personal life, or hear things he would rather not know.

‘Richard Devoke would be happy to have his revenge. If this book comes out, he’ll be . . . embarrassed. It is an affair he would prefer we all forgot. I would be happy to warn him that this book repeats it, in the worst possible light. He will be happy to make the publishers wish they had not given it house room.’

‘Good!’ Daniel allowed himself some relief. ‘Page . . .?’

‘One sixty-eight to one ninety,’ she answered. She handed him the twenty-three pages.

‘Thank you.’ He attached them together, and when he looked up, she had resumed reading again.

Daniel glanced across at Blackwell, but Blackwell was deep in concentration and unaware of Daniel, or of his mother. There was a deep frown on his face, and his mouth was turned down at the corners, as if he found something he was reading to be more and more distasteful.

Ideas raced through Daniel’s mind. Was Blackwell discovering a truth that he knew would distress Daniel profoundly, but that sooner or later he would have to hear? Daniel liked Blackwell. In his own way, he was honest. He would be deliberately vague about facts, but never about his own kind of morality. And he could not bear unkindness, arrogance, or hypocrisy. He could not afford to be judged, and in turn he judged others gently.

Looking again at his face as he read, Daniel was certain that Blackwell had found one of the sins he despised.

But Daniel could not afford to sit watching Blackwell, and wondering what arguments he might be seeing, and if it would hurt Daniel to know it. He was no use to his father, or his memories of Narraway and Vespasia, if he could not face the darkness as well as the light. Everyone made mistakes, even those you loved the most. Friends did not require you to be perfect, and to live up to their dreams of you. To do so was unfair, juvenile, and in itself deeply unkind. He had made a few mistakes of his own. He would prefer that those who loved him did not know. You carried these things alone, if you are permitted to. Sometimes they were public. It was tempting to lie, find excuses, but in the end it only increased the burden.

How was he going to find out about Narraway? The whole book was based on this trivia. There were bound to be failures as well as successes, otherwise he would never have attempted anything that stretched his knowledge or judgement, his abilities, or his honesty. What kind of a man is that? The question that bothered him now was not that Narraway had made mistakes, it was whether he had blamed others for them or acknowledged them himself.

He bent back to his own reading again.

He found Narraway’s occasional mistakes, but Graves had found them through Narraway’s own admission. He had added to them generously, crediting other events to those errors. Daniel thought that, with care, those could be proved false, or at least questionable. But he also realised explaining them away, no matter how successfully, looked like making excuses. Narraway would emerge as unlikeable, self-justifying. Graves had called him a weasel in the night. The image remained in the mind.