The Dubious Ally
They had to wait until the following night again in order to have a conference.
"I don't think M. Poirot even works in the evening," Mr. Carson grumbled.
"He's retired," Mrs. Carson said. "And that's not true. His little grey cells never stop."
"Well, mine would rather not spend any time thinking about him," he countered, and she knew he wasn't talking about the fictional detective any more.
"We must work with the tools we have."
"Aren't we moving a bit fast?" Mr. Carson asked, even as he pulled a third chair up to the desk.
"There's no time like the present," Mrs. Carson replied.
"And you're sure this is a good idea?"
She shrugged. "No, I'm not sure. But I think he's our best bet." She wasn't certain, but she thought he muttered, "Then God help us," under his breath.
Mr. Carson poured them each a glass of wine from the carafe he'd brought down the dining room, and they sat down to wait. At length there was a knock at the closed over door and Mr. Barrow appeared.
"Good evening, Mr. Carson, Mrs. Carson." He'd adapted more quickly than most to their change in status, and never made a mistake with her name.
"Come in, Mr. Barrow." It was Mrs. Carson who welcomed him.
Barrow entered the room and, at a gesture from the butler, closed the door behind him. He moved a little warily. The times he had been summoned before the two senior staff members were few enough, but it was never for a good reason. They were hardly going to offer him a commendation on his exemplary work. And yet it was odd that they were enjoying a glass of wine. This was not the right atmosphere for a reprimand. Given the way he knew they felt about him, he wondered if this meant he was about to be sacked.
"Please, sit."
The Carsons were routinely polite in their interactions with their subordinates, so Barrow was not made easy by the continued courtesy. He saw Mrs. Carson glance at her husband and he grimace in return.
"Would you care to join us in a glass of wine, Mr. Barrow." Mr. Carson recited the words as if from a script, making the gesture one of hollow inclusiveness.
Sincere or not, the offer was unprecedented and Barrow was not about to pass up the opportunity to enjoy a fine wine.. "Thank you," he said, and Mr. Carson poured the drink and pushed it across the desk to him. As he picked it up his gaze shifted from one to the other. Whatever they were up to, they seemed to be of two minds about it and Mr. Carson was the reluctant one.
"I won't beat around the bush with you, Mr. Barrow," Mrs. Carson said abruptly. "I have a favour to ask. It's nothing to do with your duties at Downton, but I'm hoping you will oblige me anyway."
That was a relief. His mind turned quickly to other possibilities. "Go on." He sipped the wine. It was a fine vintage. Lord Grantham had made a dent in it at dinner, but the rest of the family had hardly touched it, and now here it was. This was one of the perks of being a butler that Barrow was looking forward to enjoying. Some day. If ever Mr. Carson would retire. Barrow would have thought that might happen sooner, rather than later. After all, the man had been a butler for decades, but he was newly married. He should want to dedicate himself to that more seriously, if only to make up for lost time. But no, the man would still cling to his professional life.
"We are ... looking into some irregularities regarding a former employee here at Downton. Nothing to do with work at all," Mrs. Carson said emphatically, "and doing so requires making some delicate inquiries that we...," she indicated Mr. Carson and herself, "are not in a position to undertake. But you might be." She spoke calmly, in her usual imperturbable tones.
Barrow was intrigued, but he gave nothing away. He noted, almost in passing, that Mrs. Carson was as skilled at dissimulation as he was. The same could not be said for Mr. Carson, of course, who sat there staring at Barrow and making it clear that he thought this was all a very bad idea. This must be a very delicate matter for them to be approaching it so carefully.
"Go on," he said again.
"Naturally this is a confidential matter, Mr. Barrow.
"Naturally," he agreed. Mr. Carson gave him a dark look as he echoed Mrs. Carson's statement.
For a long moment, Mrs. Carson just stared at him, and Barrow maintained eye contact with her. He could see in her eyes a careful calculation in process. She had made up her mind, else he would not be here, but she was just double-checking her figures. Whatever the substance of this reckoning, Barrow had to admit some admiration for the way she operated. Finally, she spoke.
"I will be frank with you, Mr. Barrow, because I must. You may recall a house party we had here at Downton in the spring of 1922. At the time, Edna Braithwaite was serving as Her Ladyship's maid."
Though he gave no indication of it, even these fragments caught Barrow's interest. Was he about to hear the story behind that furtive exchange between the lady's maid and Mr. Branson? He nodded to indicate that he remembered these things.
"Lord Gillingham was one of the houseguests and he was accompanied by his valet, Mr. ... Green who, as you know, subsequently met with misfortune." She spoke the name with some distaste, but this was no moment for moral rectitude.
Hmm. This was an interesting twist. Barrow did not move a muscle.
"It has come to our attention that Miss Braithwaite and Mr. Green were likely acquainted before they met here at Downton, but when they were together here, they gave no indication of a past association. I know you to be a very observant man, Mr. Barrow. Do you remember anything to indicate otherwise?"
It was a deft probe, if only a preliminary one. The flattery was a nice touch. He did not know what she might be getting at, but he saw no need for discretion here. "I saw them speak only once, when they were playing Racing Demon in the servants' hall."
Mrs. Carson smiled. Her confidence in Barrow's skills of observation was not misplaced. "You're certain that's the only time?"
Barrow hesitated for a fraction of a second. There was something else, but until he knew the value of what he held, he was not going to show all his cards. "That's the only time I saw them speaking," he said carefully.
She appeared to accept this. "I'm interested," she had reverted to the singular pronoun, "as to why Miss Braithwaite would have concealed this acquaintance. And I want to find out why she did so. That brings me to you, Mr. Barrow. I would like you to look into this."
He could not have anticipated such a request in a century of guessing. His mind whirred with Mrs. Carson's motivations for this peculiar appeal. When he spoke, however, it was with characteristic reserve. "May I ask to what end this inquiry is directed?"
A severe expression settled on Mr. Carson's face and he glanced at his wife, but her gaze did not waver from Barrow. "I'm not satisfied with Scotland Yard's investigation of Mr. Green's death, Mr. Barrow, and I'm pursuing my own ... research, if you like ... into the matter."
"And you think Edna Braithwaite's got something to do with it? Blimey!" Skilled in the arts of communication combat, Mr. Barrow knew that sometimes it was useful to show a reaction.
"No," she said quickly and firmly, "I do not. And you will not put words to that effect in my mouth, Mr. Barrow." It was almost a reprimand.
"I understand, Mrs. Carson," he said quietly. This was getting more interesting by the minute. And he was all the more impressed with the housekeeper. She had hidden depths. "What is it you want me to do?"
Well. They had come to it now. "I would like you to go to the house Edna worked at before she came to Downton, the place where she would have met Mr. Green. And once there, I'd like you to do what you do best, Mr. Barrow."
He gave her a tight little smile to acknowledge this somewhat backhanded compliment. And then he turned over in his mind what she had said. It was a large undertaking. Playing for time, he posed another question. "What do you want to know, then?"
"Everything."
He moved his head back sharply, as if she'd aimed a blow at him, and he made a sound almost of disbelief. "You don't ask for much," he said sharply, drawing a rather more ominous growl from Mr. Carson at this display of disrespect. He reined himself in again. "I presume," he said slowly, "that your dissatisfaction with Scotland Yard stems from the assumption that Mrs. Bates is ... innocent in this matter?" He knew this was a provocative question and was not at all surprised when another exasperated noise issued from Mr. Carson.
Mrs. Carson held a hand out toward her husband in a quieting gesture to forestall any greater outburst on his part. She did not, however, break eye contact with Barrow. "Yes, Mr. Barrow. Knowing that Anna is innocent of that crime has made me impatient with the police. That said, I am not at all convinced that my concern with Edna has anything to do with it. But I'm going to pursue it anyway. So now I put it to you. Will you help me do so?"
He thought about it. There was something mysterious going on, no question about it, possibly with Edna Braithwaite and certainly with Mrs. Carson. And the intrigue of it drew him, as the dark secrets of the world immediately around him always did. There would be logistical hurdles, of course, and he was curious as to how Mrs. Carson, in this new incarnation as Scotland-Yard-at -Downton, would manage them. But it was Barrow's practice never to do anything for anyone that did not somehow advance his own interests, and so...
"I understand that the fate of Mrs. Bates and of Mr. Bates for that matter are concerns in which you have a particular interest, Mrs. Carson, but they are not ones I share. Why would I want to lend you my assistance?" He spoke in a neutral voice, but he could not stifle every hint of smugness
"How about you do it because I'm telling you to!" Mr. Carson had watched these proceedings unfold with growing misgivings. He had opposed this coalition from her first suggestion of it, in his mind likening it to Great Britain forging an alliance with Communist Russia (or the Soviet Union, as it now styled itself) against a resurgent Germany. It was a despicable prospect that no respectable British statesman could think of entertaining. The dangers, to his way of thinking, far outweighed the dubious benefits.* His attempts to dissuade Elsie of this program had come to naught and now the fruits of this folly were before them. The scoundrel Barrow had the effrontery to play games with them!
"Mr. Carson, please." She spoke quietly but her mild admonition silenced his snarl, and he withdrew, turning his exasperated glare to the wall rather than indulge Mr. Barrow's cheek
She was staring at Barrow again, deep in thought but not at all perturbed. "Anna's never been anything but kind to you, Mr. Barrow. She did not kill Mr. Green and I don't believe you think she did. But the police are fallible and she may yet be arrested again and tried for that crime. I don't want her to go through that, not if I can help it. And you can help her by helping me."
There was an air of dispassion about Mrs. Carson as she spoke, and yet Barrow knew this to be a cleverly constructed facade. Anna had been one of Mrs. Carson's favourites for years. What she had said was true. Anna had always been kind to him. But these things had no purchase with him. Lady Mary's maid was, in Barrow's view, a weak vessel. She was an alarming combination of vulnerability and sensitivity and fragility. Even with motive and opportunity, Barrow did not believe she could have killed Mr. Green. But her whole being repulsed him. She was a victim and he recoiled from this state as if it were catching. It was the reason for his contempt for Molesley as well. Anna might not deserve the treatment she had met at the hands of Scotland Yard, but as far as Barrow was concerned, the police were, in this instance, a necessary predator. Her weakness made her dangerous in the same way that a wounded member threatened the herd or the pack. They were better off leaving her to her fate than risking themselves protecting her.
"Again," he drawled, "I understand your interest, Mrs. Carson, but I do not see how this concerns me."
"You might try doing it out of the goodness of your heart," Mrs. Carson said mildly, at least implying that she thought there was some.
He smiled a little, as if he were trying to be helpful but just couldn't see his way. "I'm afraid that won't do."
"You ungrateful little weasel!" Mr. Carson bellowed, heaving himself to his feet in a rather deliberate effort of physical intimidation.
Barrow was unperturbed, but not incurious. It occured to him that this was what a raging grizzly bear might look like in formal attire.
Mrs. Carson appeared to think there was rather more to this outburst, for she got to her feet as well and this time turned to look at her husband. What she said, however, was a bit of a surprise to both of them.
"Might I ask you to give us a moment, Mr. Carson? Mr. Barrow and I have something to discuss and I think he would prefer we did so in private."
The mildness of her manner and the blandness of her countenance contrasted sharply with the snarl and fury she faced, but they had immediate effect. The grizzly lost his fight and calmed right down. A silent conversation ensued and then Mr. Carson scowled, cast a malevolent glance in Barrow's direction, and left the room without a word.
Mr. Barrow watched him go, wondering what it was like tobe in such thrall to another that you let them order you about in such a manner. He couldn't imagine a situation where he would become the docile creature Mr. Carson had been since Christmas day. It was a bit of a shame, really, to witness such a decline in a man's independence and self-respect.
He glanced back at Mrs. Carson, realizing that her gaze was fixed on him rather forcefully, and he was slightly uneasy under it. She was looking at him with an appraising eye, as if trying to calculate what he was worth, or, perhaps, how much would buy him. He raised an inquiring eyebrow.
Barrow was not far off. Mrs. Carson was trying to decide on tactics. She'd thought of almost nothing all day, anticipating his lack of cooperation. In all the years he had worked in this house as a servant, and even in that interlude during the war when he had served as the manager of Downton as a convalescent home, she had never known him to do a kind thing for anyone without an ulterior motive. He may have done so, but she had no evidence of it and she wouldn't believe such a thing without substantiation. The approach most likely to work would be one that deployed the tools with which he was most familiar - blackmail or coercion. She was not without ammunition when it came to Mr. Barrow. He wasn't the only one with a knowledge of the darker secrets of the house. Nor was she too high-minded to employ what she knew. But she doubted that this was, in fact, the best route to take. She wanted Barrow to do a good job. She knew he was fully capable of the task she had in mind for him, but believed he would only exercise his genius in this area if properly motivated. And although fear was a very good spur to action, a willing heart was always more likely to achieve better results.
"Mr. Barrow, I'm asking you to undertake this task as a personal favour to me."
He was puzzled as to why she thought this appeal would have any more effect on him. He put his head to one side and smirked a little to let her know that she still had not answered the unspoken question, What's in it for me?
She seemed to understand this and had an answer for it.
"I remember a conversation we had once, Mr. Barrow. It was a cool autumn evening and I'd stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. I was more than a little surprised to find you out there, in the coal yard, in the dark, huddled in the corner. Do you recall the evening I mean?" The lightness of her tone was belied by the deadly intent of her gaze.
As if he could ever forget it. His impudent grin disappeared.
"You were despondent," she persisted, her dispassionate tone striking a dissonant note with the dark story she had to tell.
"Yes, I..." He hoped to cut her off. He did not want to go there for her purpose or any other.
"Do you remember what happened?" she asked, and although her tone was almost gentle, there was a determination there.
"I do," he said, with gritted teeth. It was a memory he had buried and hoped never to see disinterred. But he could hardly blame her for pulling it out. He had overplayed his hand.
"I remember," she said, as if he had denied doing so. "I asked you why you were so distraught and you told me that you dared not confide in me because what you had to say would 'shock and disgust' me. Shock and disgust. I believe those were your very words."
They were. He pursed his lips in that pouty look he got when thwarted, but he held his tongue.
"Naturally, I was intrigued," she went on relentlessly. "And as so little in my life has managed to do either of those things, I invited you into my sitting room so that I might experience these novel sensations."
He was determined not to let her see the turmoil she had unleashed within him at this memory. Of course he remembered. His distress had been such that he had not been able to reject her invitation. Although he had been crying quietly when she came upon him the yard, once ensconced in her sitting room, he broke down completely, tears cascading down his face, his body heaving with his sobs. And he had told her everything. That he was ruined because he was being let go without a reference. That Mr. Carson could not give him a reference because Jimmy - Jimmy! - had threatened to go to the police. Why Jimmy had made this threat. Who and what he, Barrow, really was. And how hard it was to walk that fine line between his true self and the facade he must show to the world. And how desperately lonely that sometimes made him.
If it was not humiliating enough to have confessed all of this to her, worse still was what had happened next. She had comforted him. As he sat there weeping his heart out, she had gotten out of the chair in which she'd been sitting while he unloaded this tale of woe, and come to his side. Then she drew his head against her and held him in silence until he had cried himself out. And he had clung to her as he did so, with the same abandon as a small child would its mother.
His despair over the situation, both of Jimmy's apparent vindictiveness and the practical ramifications of the footman's actions with regard to future employment, had been only part of the agony that gripped him. Another aspect was the overt exposure of his true nature that the incident had forced upon him and the reactions to that revelation. Jimmy's aggressive rejection. Alfred's horrified recoil. Mr. Carson's controlled but frank disgust.
To that point in his life, Barrow had openly admitted his true nature to - or been found out by - very few. His father, an otherwise fairly unobservant man, had discerned it early on and responded brutally. In part to explain their father's behaviour, he had confided in his sister and she didn't speak to him for two months complete, and when she finally acknowledged him again it was only on condition that he promise never to tell their mother. He agreed. Not that it made much difference, as her manner remained frosty and, later, her disinclination to let him anywhere near her children was actually worse than being cut off entirely. Still desperate for acceptance in the wake of his family's rejection, he had confided in one of his best mates, something he later recognized as a desperate bid for acceptance. He'd hoped it would be possible to explain, but he'd gotten a punch in the mouth and lost a friend in the same moment. He had not voluntarily spoken of it again.
The only person not of his nature to have raised it with him was Miss O'Brien, Her Ladyship's maid for more than a decade. O'Brien had a brother "like that" and she was not put off by it. Her attitude was, in fact, the main reason why he had allied with her at Downton. She accepted him. But she was the only one
The wretchedness of his situation in that moment led him to confess to Mrs. Hughes (as she was then), but even as he did so, he was gripped with a kind of terror. O'Brien had been a rarity. Experience had trained him to hope for the patent disgust of Mr. Carson at best, the physical violence of father and one-time friend at worst. There was no room on this spectrum for a more positive reaction.
But the housekeeper had responded to him as a mother to a hurt child, offering him a gentle embrace rather than the back of her hand, and allowed him to cry out his grief and fear and despair. And when he'd collected himself again, after soaking his own handkerchief and three of hers, she had paid him the great compliment of refusing to pity him. She'd busied herself at her desk for a moment while he composed himself, and then turned straight back to the core of his crisis.
"Jimmy has shown himself to have less character than one might have hoped from him," she had said grimly. "But that's no excuse for ruining a man's prospects for employment on such grounds. I'll speak to Mr. Carson about this, Thomas. I can't promise that anything will come of it, but I won't stand by and let this travesty go unremarked."
He'd taken great gulping breaths to restore his equilibrium and nodded at her words.
"And just for the record," she'd added in that cool, professional tone without a nuance of pity, "I'm neither shocked, nor disgusted."
He'd believed her, although he did not take either her actions or her words as an endorsement of his nature. She might accept the fact of it, as she accepted and accommodated any variety of unwelcome complications, but little else. In the moment, however, an absence of shock and disgust - and the genuineness of the physical comfort she had unhesitatingly extended to him - was much more than he could have expected, and he had been grateful.
And then Mr. Bates, of all people, had appeared in his room, pleading a commitment to justice and demanding the tools that he might employ to redress this particular wrong. And in quick succession, Jimmy had withdrawn the charge and Lord Grantham had promoted him to under-butler.
In the back of his mind he had perhaps linked these developments to the episode with Mrs. Hughes but, striving to bury it all, he had not confronted this reality. Now she was drawing him back to those dark days and at least implicitly connecting the dots for him. It was a compelling appeal.
As he pondered these things - with her waiting patiently before him - it occurred to him that he had also to be grateful to her for her discretion. She might or might not have related that unpleasant incident to Mr. Carson, then or more recently, but he thought she had not. And in this moment, she had sent her husband from the room so that he was not party to the resurrection of that fraught memory. She had wielded the recollection as a weapon, but done so with tact. He appreciated that.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, his smugness and impudence vanished. He owed her.
She took his change of heart in stride. "I want you to go to Chesley Park and find out everything you can about Edna Braithwaite. I'm particularly interested in her relationship with Mr. Greene, of course, but I don't want you to restrict your inquiries only to that."
"That's rather vague."
She shrugged. "I think you'll figure it out as you go along."
"What makes you think I can get you what you need?"
Her laughter startled him. "Oh, Mr. Barrow, we both know the answer to that!"
He changed the subject. "Where is Chesley Park and how am I to gain entrance there?"
"It's in Cheshire and I've got a plan," she said immediately. That didn't surprise him. "But it may take a little while to put together. And Mr. Barrow, I doubt you will have more than two or three days."
He gave her his official helpful servant smile. "I always try to do my work as efficiently as possible, Mrs. Carson."
She nodded. "Yes, I know that. I'll let you know when the time comes."
He recognized this as a dismissal and stood up. But then he paused. "Why are you going to all this trouble?"
She looked away for a minute and then her eyes came back to him and they were less guarded than was usually the case. "Anna is very dear to me, Mr. Barrow. And she's troubled. I must do what I can."
What's that like? he wondered. His hand was on the doorknob when she spoke again.
"And you're wrong about Mr. Carson, Mr. Barrow. That's not weakness. It's trust."
She might think so, but Barrow wasn't convinced. To his surprise, Mr. Carson was not lurking in the passage, but was instead in the housekeeper's sitting room, pacing. Their eyes met briefly as Barrow passed by. He hurried on, not wanting to explain himself.
He needn't have worried. Mr. Carson was not at all interested in speaking to him either. Knowing that the interview was over, Mr. Carson went straight to his pantry. Mrs. Carson was still sitting beside his desk, placidly sipping her wine as if nothing unusual had transpired that evening.
"Well?" he demanded, closing the door behind him.
She looked up at him with a radiant smile. "He'll do it."
Mr. Carson was astonished. "How did you manage it? Did you blackmail him?"
It was a sad comment on Mr. Barrow, really. "No, my love," she said, with a little laugh. "Kindness can be even more effective than coercion, if you know what you're doing."
Mr. Carson just looked at her for a moment. My wife, he told himself, is such a clever woman. He reached out to her, gently caressing her face before sliding his hand round the back of her neck and bending over to kiss her.
"My goodness!" she declared, in mock indignation. "Just anyone could walk in on us, Mr. Carson!" That was his line, and they both knew it.
But he just smiled indulgently. "He was the last one to go up. We're quite alone, Mrs. Carson."
She was elated. She'd accomplished what she'd hoped for with Mr. Barrow and now here her usually reticent husband was behaving boldly and sounding almost risque.
'That may be so, my dear, but we've much more pleasant quarters upstairs."
He drew her to her feet and then into his arms for another lingering kiss.
"We'll go up, then, shall we?"
* AUTHOR'S NOTE: If Mr. Carson lives until 1941, he might change his mind. On June 22, 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, Prime Minister Winston Churchill offered a formal alliance to the U.S.S.R., a nation he had formerly reviled, defending his position in the House of Commons with the remark, "If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
