Chapter 8 The Hard Reality of It

Barrow's Tale and What Comes Of It

They arranged to meet in the butler's pantry on Monday night. Mrs. Carson had suggested the more congenial venue of their sitting room, but her husband balked at the idea.

"I don't want to be socializing with Mr. Barrow!" he said indignantly.

"We're not socializing," she said reproachfully. "We're trying to help clear Anna's name."

"That's business," he insisted, "and ought to be conducted in our place of business."

She had given in, thinking it not worth the fight.

"And I won't be thrown out again either," he'd added.

She conceded that, too. There were some things you could only do once. "Well, try to be nicer to him," she admonished him. "He's done us a good turn, after all."

"Only because you had something on him," he countered. She hadn't told him what that was, nor had he asked. He already knew more about the darker side of Thomas Barrow than he'd ever wanted to know, thank you very much.

She didn't respond to that. It was true that Barrow had agreed to cooperate only when she'd raised a painful memory, but sometimes she wondered if the younger man's narrow self-interest wasn't more habit than intention. Either way she'd let him know tonight that he was off the hook as far as she was concerned. She'd played her card once. She wouldn't do it again. She'd never played cricket and she hadn't gone to Eton, but the English didn't have a monopoly on fair play.

Barrow was prompt, of course. He moved into the office more easily than on the last occasion. There was no sense of foreboding this time as he knew what they were about. And he was almost eager to have the conversation. His attitude toward Anna's predicament hadn't changed, but his perception of Edna Braithwaite had. He was interested now. The atmosphere was more congenial this evening. Mr. Carson waited until Barrow had arrived to pour the wine. An outsider might have mistaken them all for friends.

They took a moment over their wine.

"How did you get on at Chesley Park, then, Mr. Barrow?"

He wasn't surprised that she came right to the point. "It is a place with many stories to tell, Mrs. Carson," he said obliquely.

"Well, get on with it!" Mr. Carson urged.

Barrow yielded. "You wanted to know about how Edna Braithwaite and Mr. Green were at Chesley Park," he said. He nodded to the butler, but focused his gaze on Mrs. Carson. "Your assumptions were right. They met there on several occasions. They got on well together and chatted over meals and spent time together in the servants' hall. And neither of them were much liked by the senior staff." He paused and for a moment he and Mrs. Carson only looked at each other, making careful assessments.

Mr. Carson was not a poker player. He operated in a world where straight questions were asked and answered without this subtle - and to his mind wholly superfluous - jockeying for position. "Well?" he demanded. "Is that all?"

His wife glanced at him and the line of her mouth lengthened just a little in what Barrow recognized as a discreet but indulgent smile. As understated as this was, the underbutler was just a little nauseated. The Carsons' affection for each other was displayed in scrupulously circumspect ways, but it was there all the same. He found it distasteful on a number of levels - he was no more interested in their private life than they were in his - and, though he was loathe to admit it, he was just a little jealous. They could have each other, he didn't care. But it was the simple luxury of having someone at all that he resented.

"No," she said quietly, answering her husband's question. "There's more." And then she was looking at Barrow again and the softness that smoothed her countenance when she looked at Mr. Carson had disappeared. "Isn't there." It wasn't really a question.

Barrow nodded. "It's only..." He paused for effect. "I think you didn't tell me everything going in, Mrs. Carson. I had to piece things together as I went along. I couldn't always be sure what was valuable."

Her enigmatic smile widened just a little more at this. "I'm sure you had a very powerful sense of what was and was not important, Mr. Barrow. But you're right. I wasn't as forthcoming as perhaps I ought to have been." She ignored a dismissive "Harrumph!" from beside her. "Why don't you tell us what you learned and we can all work on putting the pieces together."

Barrow was, at the best of times, reluctant to part with information that might prove useful, but that was, after all, only what he had agreed to do. "I've not got much in the way of facts," he warned. "Most of it is hearsay. Speculation."

"Then it will fit right in with what we've got already," Mrs. Carson said complacently.

He shrugged agreeably. "I don't know how it's connected to Edna Braithwaite," he said, somewhat disingenuously, "but everything I heard seems to go back to Lord Bracken's suicide."

This blunt statement brought a pained look to Mr. Carson's face. He empathized with the family in their tragedy and he recoiled naturally from scandal, anyone's scandal.

"The view at Chesley Park was that a woman was at the bottom of it. One of the maids had turned up badly beaten and..." For Mr. Carson's sake more than his wife's, Barrow let that word hang in the air for a moment, allowing the silence to speak for itself, "...and the next day Lord Bracken shot himself. The connection seemed clear."

"The maid, Leah Close," Mrs. Carson said quietly, biting her lip. Barrow's discretion could not prevent her mind filling with a vision of Anna on that terrible night at Downton Abbey.

"Yes," Barrow said shortly.

"But...that was...the valet's work, surely," Mr. Carson interceded, swallowing his own disgust.

"Yes," Barrow said again.

Mrs. Carson nodded. "That was something I should have told you," she admitted. "I was focusing on Edna and Mr. Green. You should have had all the particulars there, Mr. Barrow."

"Well, I figured it out," he said easily.

"So...the family thought the...incident...with the maid drove Lord Bracken to his death." However distasteful it all was, Mr. Carson could see how the scenario was a plausible one.

"Yes. And they believed that, upstairs and down, until Lord Gillingham told Lord Bracken - the new one - otherwise, some months later. Only," and though this had nothing to do with the Carsons' interests, Barrow wanted to tell someone about it, "Lord Bracken didn't see fit to tell the staff that bit of it." He was surprised to hear the bitterness in his own voice.

"What?" Mrs. Carson was shocked, but this revelation drained Mr. Carson's face of all colour.

"That is unconscionable!" he gasped, in a horrified whisper.

"It is," Barrow said grimly. "They didn't know the truth until I told them. I thought Mr. Wendover might have a heart attack." He'd turned an alarming shade of purple when Barrow, at Michael's behest, had conveyed the news. The butler hadn't broken into sobs, but it had been a very near thing. "Mr. Wendover and the dead Lord Bracken were very close," he said, watching Mr. Carson attentively. "Apparently his brother didn't much like that. That's how things are at Chesley Park, Mr. Carson," he added.

All three of them took a moment over that.

"That's a terrible story," Mr. Carson said in a hushed voice. And then he cleared his throat. "But what's this got to do with Braithwaite and Green?" He did not like to dwell on the scandals or the tragedies of others without purpose.

Now Barrow fixed his gaze on the housekeeper. "As I said, I'm not sure," he said carefully, although he thought he might. "You see, it seemed to fit, the maid in a bad way and the master killing himself...," - Mr. Carson winced again, "...so they all believed it. But Lord Bracken - the dead one - his valet told me a story once I'd apprised him of the truth. He said Lord Bracken was upset about something. Lord Gillingham, who was there - obviously - with Green in tow, said the same thing. But the valet knew there was a woman on his master's mind and suspected there might be an...unsuitable...alliance that would threaten the family's honour were anything to come of it."

"And...Mr. Green's crime, and that poor young maid, drew everyone's attention in a different direction," Mrs. Carson concluded.

"Yes. The downstairs lot, especially Lord Bracken's devoted valet - but almost everyone else, too - thought the violence out of character for their lordship, but they didn't know there might be another possibility."

Barrow was staring hard at Mrs. Carson. He knew she knew more than she'd told him. He knew more than he'd told her, about both Braithwaite and Green. But he hesitated to confide in her before she demonstrated a willingness to trust him.

Mrs. Carson's mind was racing. Didn't she have a good idea about whom the other woman in the ill-fated Lord Bracken's life might be! Here, almost certainly, was the information she had sought from Chesley Park. She realized that Barrow was peering at her and she met his eyes without giving away anything of her own.

"Is there anything else, Mr. Barrow?"

How cool she is. He said nothing as he tried to decide what course of action to take.

She took his silence to mean 'no.' Now she smiled at him, a genuinely grateful smile. She might have hoped for more, but even Mr. Barrow couldn't draw blood from a stone. He'd brought some pertinent information, material that meant something to her because she had a broader understanding of Edna Braithwaite, knowledge that she had not imparted to him. "I thank you for you time, Mr. Barrow."

"Wait! Is that it?" Mr. Carson could not conceal his dismay. He, too, grasped the meaning of the information, but he was not nearly as patient as was his wife in the painstaking reconstruction of events. When he read a detective novel, he spent no time at all trying to figure out who the murderer was. Instead he raced to the conclusion as the quickest route to resolution. She, in contrast, liked to take her time with a story and mull over the evidence. It frustrated him to watch her at it.

Barrow was no less shocked by Mrs. Carson's words than her husband had been, although for different reasons. "Wait!," he said, echoing the butler. "You're not...dismissing me, are you? From the...investigation?" This was not at all what he wanted.

Her smile was a warm one. "I prevailed upon you to go to Chesley Park and learn all you could about Edna and Mr. Green, and you've done a fine job, Mr. Barrow. I'm...we're grateful. You've paid your debt, if that's what you want to call it. I can't ask anything more of you."

Barrow had the uneasy feeling that there was a nuanced negotiation going on here, but in the moment he was slightly distracted. She was telling him that she would not again raise with him or anyone else his unseemly outburst of a few years ago. This concession on her part was, to his mind, unprecedented. An emotional weakness was something that never disappeared and thus might be exploited time and again. It was the foundation of blackmail. And yet she was surrendering her right to it. And he accepted that it wasn't just another tactic on her part. She meant it. He felt quite liberated. But...

"Please," he said quietly, giving nothing away with regard to the anger he had felt since he'd heard the footman's story. "I want to help." How rarely had he appealed for anything with such sincerity!

She meditated, her face impassive. "Do you now believe that Anna is innocent, Mr. Barrow?" It was a holding action question while she calculated.

"I never believed she was guilty," Barrow said honestly. "It was only that I did not care to put myself out to prove it."

Mr. Carson made an impatient sound. "Why do I find that so easy to believe?" he asked of no one in particular.

But Barrow was preoccupied with Mrs. Carson's unsettling silence. It was odd. He held some valuable cards, but she was still dominating the game. He couldn't flush her out. She'd trusted him initially because she'd had no recourse, but she was not necessarily prepared to do so again. He had to show her that he could be trusted.

"There's something else," he said abruptly. "Something I didn't tell you the first time we talked about this. At the time I didn't realize its relevance." Was it a lie if no one believed you? He forged ahead. "You asked me if I'd ever seen Miss Braithwaite and Mr. Green speaking. I told you'd I'd only seen them talking once, in the servants' hall when they were playing that card game."

"And now you've remembered another instance," Mr. Carson said sarcastically. He threw his wife a look that clearly said I told you so.

"No," Barrow said swiftly. "That was the literal truth. But on the weekend of the house party I saw something else, the morning after the big dinner. I saw Miss Braithwaite with Mr. Branson."

Mr. Carson glanced indiscreetly at Mrs. Carson, but she didn't move a muscle.

"Go on, Mr. Barrow," she said smoothly.

"She was asking him to be kind to her about...what had happened the previous night." He could have repeated her exact words, but felt it wiser to phrase indelicate matters circumspectly for Mr. Carson's benefit.

"And what's that got to do with the valet?" Mr. Carson demanded. Despite his wife's admonishments on the subject, he was still disgusted by Mr. Branson's behaviour. Unable to communicate his dismay directly, he re-directed it at Barrow, conveying his impatience with any suggestion of impropriety on the part of a member of the family, even if that member was Mr. Branson and even if he was guilty of indiscretion.

"Realizing that I was intruding on a personal conversation, I turned away...," he said this not really expecting any credibility for it and there was none to be had, "...and I almost ran right into Mr. Green. I didn't give it any meaning at the time, but..."

"But you think he heard the conversation, too," Mrs. Carson finished, turning to look at her husband.

"And he, recognizing it for what it was, might have thought to turn it to use against her," he said promptly, following her train of thought, "giving us a motive - other than revenge - for murder."

It was a poignant moment.

"I wish you hadn't said that," Mrs. Carson said flatly, breaking the spell.

"Why not?"

She sighed. "It's only that, in the books, whenever the detective's assistant has an idea, it's always wrong."

He frowned indignantly. "Perhaps I'm M. Poirot in this mystery!"

They stared at each other for a long moment and then simultaneously shook their heads, said "No!" emphatically, and exchanged deeply personal smiles.

Barrow did not know why they were suddenly discussing detective fiction, but the whole exchange gave him a queasy feeling. Could they not purge their general conversation of these intimate little signs? He brushed this aside for the rather more potent implications of their words. Unless he was mistaken, this was confirmation of what he himself had suspected about Mr. Branson and Miss Braithwaite, and an acknowledgment that the Carsons understood the implications of this incident for the events at Chesley Park. So Edna had tried her tricks at Downton, even after the tragedy in Cheshire. Only, Mr. Branson was made of sterner stuff than the ill-fated Lord Bracken, or perhaps had more powerful allies at Downton than Arthur St. Claire had known in his own house.

Still, Barrow did not want either his concession or his objective to be lost in the Carsons' musings. "I don't understand," he said, drawing their attention back to him.

Mrs. Carson admirably came right back to the point. "Are you quite serious, Mr. Barrow, about continuing to help us?"

"I am."

"And for some reason other than personal gain?" Mr. Carson intoned, not attempting to conceal his scepticism.

Barrow met the butler's disdainful look. "I have my own reasons for wanting to be part of this, Mr. Carson, and they have nothing to do with...influence. Mr. Green and Miss Braithwaite wronged someone I know. The valet is beyond retribution now, but she can still pay for it." If they thought him vengeful, he didn't care. Wasn't his pursuit of justice as legitimate as theirs?

"I believe you," Mrs. Carson said simply and Barrow felt a flash of gratitude toward her. "So I will explain."

"I'm not sure you should," her husband said cautiously.

She gave him a reassuring smile. "I am."

So this is what it is like to be included, Barrow thought.

"When she was at Downton, Mr. Barrow, Edna Braithwaite tried to entice Mr. Branson into a relationship, hoping to take advantage of his changed circumstances. When persuasion failed her, she turned to lies and coercion." Mrs. Carson was prepared to trust Barrow, but like him, she never gave away the whole game. He didn't need to know the details. "What you've said about Lord Bracken suggests a pattern in her behaviour of seducing vulnerable men of good fortune. And, as Mr. Carson said, in the hands of an unscrupulous man like Mr. Green, who might have known what she was up to at Chesley Park and probably did know what she was trying here with Mr. Branson, it could add up to a motive for murder."

"That's not much in the way of fact," Barrow said, not trying to undermine the impact of what she'd said, but merely making an observation.

She shrugged. "We know a lot more about them now. We're collecting information on character, Mr. Barrow, not trial evidence."

He hesitated. "There's something else. From Chesley Park."

"What a surprise," Mr. Carson muttered audibly. He was a little taken aback at his wife's forthrightness. He trusted her judgment, but his wariness of the underbutler was too deeply ingrained to be routed by one or two good turns.

Barrow was not deterred by the butler's disgruntlement. It was Mrs. Carson he needed to convince. "Mr. Green was blackmailing someone there, threatening to expose a...a secret...and taking in payment the small wages of the victim."

"Blackmailing who? About what?" Mr. Carson asked.

But Barrow could not be drawn on this. "I can't say."

"Naturally," Mr. Carson said, rolling his eyes and thinking that fictional representations of crime detection did not do justice to the frustrations of the job.

Mrs. Carson, watching Barrow closely, moved to smooth over this brittleness. "So Edna Braithwaite and the valet are unpleasant people. Well, we knew that. Both of them exploiting the weak and the vulnerable as they find them."

"She drove a weak man to his death and he...," Carson paused, unwilling of Green's vile crimes explicitly, "he ... and then blackmailed someone else."

"Yes," Barrow agreed crisply. "That and more."

"So now what? Is it time to go to Scotland Yard?" Mr. Carson looked to his wife.

She sighed. "Mr. Barrow is right. We've no proof of anything. It's all speculation. We don't know Edna had anything to do with Lord Bracken. We just know of a pattern of behaviour on her part and some suggestive developments there that support the contention that she did."

"There is something else," Barrow said again, and this time both of the Carsons fixed him exasperated looks.

"How many more something elses are there?" Mr. Carson demanded.

"I think it's the last one. One of the staff at Chesley Park said that Edna told him she had designs on Lord Bracken. She wanted to move up, he said."

"A rather critical piece of evidence, Mr. Barrow!" Mrs. Carson said, showing impatience for the first time.

"Yes, but...he can't testify again her."

"And why not?"

"Because..." Barrow paused and then looked very hard into Mrs. Carson's eyes. "Because if he spills her secret, she'll spill his. He'd lose his job and possibly more." He hoped she would understand what he could not put into words.

Mr. Carson certainly didn't. "This is getting more sordid by the moment. Mr. Barrow, we are talking about murder. Sometimes one has to risk the exposure of one's own dirty little secrets for the greater good." He spoke this with all the assurance of a man whose own unwashed laundry was only mildly grubby and which, incidentally, had already been aired and with remarkably little in the way of repercussions.

"It can't be done, Mr. Carson." Barrow was adamant.

The butler might have pressed the issue but he desisted at a glance from his wife. "How do we move forward, then?" he asked, determined to take up the question with her again once Barrow had gone.

She stirred in her chair. "We must proceed as though we believe Edna Braithwaite to be the culprit. She's the only possibility we have and I think we have a strong, if largely unsubstantiated, case against her. We know that she knew Mr. Green and that she was up to dirty tricks that he was likely aware of. We also know that he was capable of blackmail and violence, giving her a potential motive. We do not have the evidence yet, but we must find some." She spoke with determination.

"I disagree."

Mrs. Carson and Barrow both looked with some astonishment at Mr. Carson.

"The likelihood of finding evidence against Edna with regard to Mr. Green is minimal at this point," he said. "The police have been all over the thing from the other end and haven't even come close to this solution. Time has concealed her tracks too well, and all we've got is speculation."

"Are you saying she's gotten away with murder?" his wife demanded. "That our hopes of relieving Anna of this travesty are hopeless?" She shook her head in wonder. "I never thought I'd see the day when you gave up on British justice!"

"I haven't," he said calmly. "I'm only saying that it may be next to impossible to pin her down on a past crime. It might be easier to catch her in the act of a new one."

"You mean she has to kill someone else?" She was aghast.

"Let's hope it won't come to that," he said warmly. "I'm only saying that if she killed once for blackmail, then maybe she'll try to do so again. Say, perhaps, if someone were to put it to her that her secret might come out and imperil her future ambitions."

"But how do we make that happen?"

Mr. Carson emitted a humourless laugh. "She may have done our work for us. She is working, as we know, at the estate at Cross Harbour in Durham where there is an unmarried heir to a large fortune in residence. Such a situation may make her particularly susceptible to another blackmail attempt."

The other two gaped at him and he took a little offense at their astonishment. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You really do read Burke's Peerage for pleasure," Barrow said, with an air of disbelief.

Mr. Carson huffed and looked away.

"You're not the blackmailing type, Mr. Carson," Barrow broke in. "And neither are you," he added, glancing at the housekeeper. "But I am. I think we could carry it off." How easily he had included himself.

"As I recall," Mr. Carson said, a little dubiously, "you chatted her up a few times yourself. Can you be convincing?"

"We parted on bad terms. Besides, I'd never let a friendly word get in the way of an opportunity." He said this largely because he thought they would find it believable. If it ensured his participation in the scheme, it would be worth this slight on his character. "And I doubt she would either. She'd probably kill her own grandmother if her prospects were threatened one more time."

"I'm not sure about this," Mrs. Carson put in, drawing them back to the subject. "Going to Chesley Park was one thing. But this is dangerous. We think she killed a man, Mr. Barrow, and I won't have you risking your life on this. Not even for Anna. We'll have to find another way."

"I spent two years in the trenches, Mrs. Carson," Barrow said forcefully. "I've known danger. And I want to be a part of this. Mr. Carson is right. Green's murder is a cold trail. But we've got an advantage now. We know what we're after from the beginning."

"So you will go to Cross Harbour...," Mr. Carson began.

"And let her know I know about her schemes, and maybe Mr. Green, too." Plotting was oddly exhilarating, now that it seemed they were on to something. Barrow went on eagerly. "I can tell her I'm looking forward to a steady income once she's successful there. Third time lucky!"

"Once the bee's in her bonnet, then we may have to concoct an opportunity for her to act," Mr. Carson continued, "but..."

"But she may not wait for us to provide an opportunity," Mrs. Carson interrupted. "She may strike without warning. When you stir up a hornet's nest, you can't anticipate the consequences. That's your life on the line, Mr. Barrow. I won't ask that of you."

He straightened his shoulders and met her gaze without blinking. "I want to see her fall, Mrs. Carson."

"And if she isn't the killer?" she inquired. She was convinced that Edna Braithwaite was behind the valet's murderer, but this enthusiastic exchange between the two men and the potential hazards of their musings made her want to slow things down.

"Then she won't take the bait," Barrow said easily.

Minutes ticked by in silence and then Barrow got to his feet. "Perhaps we can work out the details over the next few days," he said lightly. "I had a tiring weekend, so just now I think I'm going to go to bed." He nodded at them and ducked out.

Mrs. Carson became aware that her husband was holding out a hand to her. "We ought to go up, too," he said gently, recognizing her distraction.

She reached out to take his hand, but she could not shake her unease. What did you expect? she asked herself. We're dealing with a murderer, after all. But she knew what had happened. It had all suddenly shifted from the speculative realm, where she and Charlie could joke about fictional detectives, to hard reality, and now it was entirely possible that someone else was going to get hurt. And that was a sobering thought indeed.

Protecting Our Own

"How do you credit Lord Bracken not telling the staff the truth about his brother?" Mr. Carson asked, settling into bed. "At the very least not telling his butler. His Lordship would never have done such a thing." Even in his distraction he pulled the covers back for her and felt the pleasant tingle of anticipation at the thought of her body next to his.

Mrs. Carson's affectionate gaze rested on her husband, whose brow was knit with consternation over the unsavoury fact of Lord Bracken's behaviour. Her Mr. Carson was a man of the world in many ways, and yet he still clung in some things to convictions that betrayed an unshakable naiveté. Even with evidence abundant, he continued to believe that gentlemen conformed to certain morés and when they strayed from them he was shocked.

"I agree with you," she said, getting in beside him and smiling as he tucked the blankets around her. "But then, you and His Lordship are friends. It sounds to me as if Lord Bracken-the-younger might have had cause for jealousy in the relationship between his brother and the butler. Playing favourites like that can sometimes have adverse effects," she added pointedly.

His mind was focused on her first statement and so he missed the lesson she had tried to impart. "His Lordship and I are not friends," he said firmly. He would not deny that he and Lord Grantham had a very close association that in some ways mimicked the intimacies of friendship, but he saw the lord-butler dynamic as a unique one.

She decided not to press the issue. "It's about sibling rivalry," she said more emphatically. "Perhaps there was bad blood between the brothers."

"Even so." His own brother had hardly lived beyond infancy, making the question an abstract one for him, but Mr. Carson could not even imagine such an animosity.*

Watching the consideration of this possibility play out in his eyes, she sighed. "Can you not see it? Think of Lady Mary and Lady Edith!"

He looked affronted. "They would never stoop to such low..."

"Oh, for goodness sake, Charlie! Who do you think it was spilled the beans on Lady Mary and the Turkish diplomat but her own sister Lady Edith? And I'm certain Lady Mary would return the favour if chance offered!" She did not know of any quid pro quo on the eldest Crawley girl's part, but it was not hard to imagine it happening.

He looked aghast. "You cannot know that!" he fumed. Why was she always bringing up that incident!

"But I do."

"How on earth...?"

"I listen at keyholes, Charlie."

He drew back just a little bit and studied her for a moment with not a little trepidation. As well as he knew her, he could not tell if she were teasing him or not. He decided it was wiser to abandon this line of conversation altogether, and reached over to put out the light, hoping darkness might turn her mind to other pursuits.

It had been a long day and the session with Barrow, however worthwhile the object, had taken up even more time. Mr. Carson resented it just a little because marriage had made going to bed his favourite time of day and he did not like to surrender a moment of it. By unspoken agreement they spent several minutes indulging in kisses and caresses directed to relaxing them for sleep, rather than exciting the tensions of greater intimacy. Perhaps tomorrow night...

And yet she did not seem to be relaxing.

"What is it?" he asked solicitously, cradling her in his arms and drawing her head against his chest.

"It's just..." She knew he wouldn't to get into this. Not now.

His chest heaved a little, an indication that he discerned the source of her unease. "You're still thinking about it," he said, and though he rather wished his attentions were enough to drive such mundane considerations from her mind, he knew how troubling matters could persist.

"I don't think we ought to let Mr. Barrow go to Durham." There. She'd said it.

He groaned a little. "There's a name I never want mentioned in my bed, if you don't mind." That was his complaint, but it did nothing to resolve her concerns. "He knows what he's about," he said, trying to be reassuring. "Remember what he said. He was in the war."

She sniffed sceptically. "And he wasn't prepared for that either, was he! And listen to you. You didn't even want to involve him and now you're prepared to launch him into the arms of a murderer."

"I'd put money on his survival in any circumstances," he said flatly. "Look," he added, "he's not booked onto an early train. Let's discuss it tomorrow."

Well, she couldn't argue with that. And it was pleasant to lie here in the powerful arms of her loving husband and to pretend, for a little while at least, that the worries of the world could not touch her. She reached up to kiss his cheek and could feel his smile taking shape beneath her lips. No sooner had she snuggled into his chest again, determined to abandon her worries for a moment at least, than he broke his own code.

"What's gotten into Mr. Barrow anyway? He goes away to Chesley Park all surly and uncooperative, and comes back ready to take on the lioness in her den." Her response did not really clarify things for him.

"We all try to protect our own," she murmured, tightening her arms around him.

* AUTHOR'S NOTE: There is no canon foundation for Mr. Carson having a brother. I invented him.