The Seven Dials Affair, page 16
"Did you convince her to leave Britain with Esquivel?"
"Allegra didn't need convincing. I don't pry into the details of agents' lives—"
"Unless you find them useful," Julien said.
"—but Allegra was eager for escape. That she could wrap it up as working for her country helped her make the break. But didn't cause it."
"In your opinion."
"Well, yes, I don't generally concern myself with the inner workings of my agents' minds." Hubert leaned forwards. "Do you know what the Argentine represents? A market for goods, and as they develop trade of their own—."
"You want to make it a colony," Julien said.
"We don't need to make it a colony. The attempts to move in on them in '06 and '07 were crude mistakes. We had a chance of a British protectorate, but we lost it when Alvear fell from power. What we need are allies. Trading partners. Especially since we've lost our North American colonies."
"So you can control the economy," Malcolm said.
"So we can prosper. And so they can."
"So we have a market for British goods and their goods can fund British production," Julien said.
"It's a wise move." Hubert might say the same, in the same tone, about a peace treaty. Or an assassination.
"And for once it puts you on the side of a revolution," Malcolm said.
"I'm a pragmatist. And this revolution isn't likely to spill over to our shores. Even if people have a distressing habit of going back and forth."
"Napoleon Bonaparte wasn't the only one to dream of empire."
"I have nothing against empires."
"Quite the contrary," Julien said.
"But I should think in this case we find ourselves on the same side."
"There are never only two sides." Malcolm sat back in his chair. "How did you recruit Allegra Roth? Were you suspicious of Roth?"
"Oh no. It was long before she was married." Hubert reached for his coffee cup. "I had Chiltern reach out to her and see if we could turn her."
"Why?" Malcolm had worked with Warren Chiltern. A decent agent, if a bit too dogmatic about following orders. Recruiting likely civilians to spy was a common tactic of Hubert's. But there would need to be a reason he saw the person in question as a prospect.
"She was involved with that fellow Gresham. He was slipping over secretly to France. Even once or twice to Italy."
"He's a composer," Malcolm said. "He wanted to talk to colleagues."
"He also has links to the Carbonari."
"Really? I never heard that. Not that I necessarily would." Malcolm looked at Julien. Julien shook his head.
"You're both better connected to the Italian Radicals than you admit," Hubert said. "Not that you'd tell me if you did know anything about Gresham."
If Gresham had connections to Carbonari, it cast a different light on Allegra's asking Gresham to put her in touch with friends in Italy, as Mélanie had reported. Perhaps she'd wanted to make contact with fellow revolutionaries on Esquivel's behalf. So she could spy on them for Hubert. Malcolm tilted his head back to look at Hubert in dusty light. "Odd. You support the revolutionaries in the Argentine, but oppose them in Italy."
"Not odd at all. The Argentine rebels could help favor British interests. The Carbonari would do the opposite. And the Carbonari are in Italy, which is closer to Britain, so they can spread their ideas more easily to our shores. Just look at your friend Kit Montagu."
"I think Kit spread ideas to the Carbonari as much as the other way round."
"Yes, considering whom he married. Don't look at me like that, Malcolm. I'm aware of Sofia Vincenzo's worth. Brilliant young woman. I can admire her worth while still deploring her ideas."
Malcolm crossed his legs at the ankle. "Your broadmindedness never fails to amaze me, sir. Go on. So Allegra was willing to spy on Gresham?"
"Chiltern thought she was a good prospect, and he was right. He has good instincts even if he lacks your imagination. Which is a blessing at times. I never need to worry about what he'll do behind my back. The relationship was beginning to cool and Allegra was restless. Or so Chiltern said. And when he approached her, she agreed. She said she wanted to serve her country, but I think she was drawn by the challenge. Which brings a lot of capable women to espionage, now I think of it. Kitty and Mélanie both come to mind. Not to mention Laura O'Roarke."
"Allegra Roth told you she was drawn by the challenge?" Malcolm asked.
"She told Chiltern. Along with some interesting tidbits about Gresham. I won't go into details because they aren't relevant, and there's no sense in sharing things with you that might get back to your Italian Radical friends. She put things capably, according to Chiltern. Then the relationship ended."
"Did you offer her another assignment?"
"What assignment? She was an agent out of convenience, not training. In any case, I scarcely knew her at that point. We gave her something, with our thanks. The next I heard she was married."
"She got married because she was pregnant."
"That was hardly my concern."
"Would you feel the same way if it were Lucinda?" Julien asked.
Hubert's gaze shot to Julien's face at the mention of his youngest child. "Lucinda wouldn't—"
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Malcolm said. "Lucy is exceptionally capable—it runs in the family—and looking for a scope for her talents."
Hubert's brows drew together. He'd always, in Malcolm's memory, been quick to see his agents as "collateral damage" when anything went wrong. But the loss of his daughter Louisa and the issues his eldest daughter Mary had gone through, as well as the realization that he had another daughter who happened to be Malcolm's sister, had perhaps made him more sensitive to the challenges faced by women. "Allegra seems to have landed well enough."
"Allegra found Jeremy Roth," Malcolm said. "An extraordinarily sensitive and generous man. Who loved her. It may have provided a temporary haven. That doesn't mean the marriage was a success."
"I imagine Roth is happy to have his children."
"That doesn't mean he—and Allegra—might not have been happier in other circumstances."
"It isn't a spymaster's job to see to the happiness of his agents. Even your father, who is far more inclined to dwell on personal matters than he would admit to anyone, would agree with that, I imagine."
This time Malcolm shifted in his chair. "You'll have to ask him sometime. Did you follow up on Allegra's marriage?"
"It scarcely seemed relevant at the time. Roth was a soldier in the Peninsula. He had a bit of an association with Radical causes, and his parents were known for their Radical activities, but not enough for me to ask Allegra to report on them. It was several years before I heard from her again."
"You sought her out?" Julien asked.
"No, she sought me out. Chiltern was in the country, and she said she preferred to deal directly with me. Self-possessed. I admired that. I took her more seriously than I had in the past. Still, I didn't see any particular need for her services. Until she told me a gentleman had been paying court to her."
"Marco Esquivel," Malcolm said.
"Mmm. He'd come to my notice years before. He fought capably for us in the Peninsula. And it was clear he was going to be a force in the Argentine."
"Where he was fighting for your side."
"That doesn't mean I didn't want information on him. You're the one who just said there are more than two sides in everything."
"So you wanted someone to report on what Esquivel was doing? You didn't think of trying to make him your agent himself?" Malcolm asked.
"That would be a bit extreme, wouldn't it?"
"Not necessarily. Is San Martín your agent?"
"No comment. Except that San Martín is brilliant, a credit to his country, and his own man."
"Oh, Uncle Hubert," Julien said. "You needn't speak so like a politician. It's beneath you."
"Esquivel was able at working for his country's independence, but his ideas had a somewhat concerning tendency towards Radicalism. He'd met O'Roarke before he went to the Argentine."
"Yes, Raoul told us," Malcolm said. "Raoul is a force to be reckoned with, but you can't be spying on everyone he ever met with."
"O'Roarke's ability to inspire revolutionaries is nothing short of astounding. But it was more than that. Esquivel ran with a group of young Radicals at Cambridge. Much like you at Oxford. I wanted to keep an eye on him. I wanted a source on the revolution in the Argentine. Allegra Roth was ideally situated to be that source."
"So you asked her to go the Argentine with Esquivel?" Malcolm said.
"Not at first. I suggested it would be helpful if she got close to Esquivel. Eventually she told me Esquivel wanted her to go to the Argentine with him."
As Mélanie must once have told Raoul that Malcolm wanted her to marry him. Though that had been complicated by other things, like her being pregnant. "What did you say?" Malcolm asked.
"That it was her choice. But that information she might gather would be invaluable."
"Did you know she had two children?"
"I knew she had children." Hubert's brows drew together above his spectacles. "I think, though she didn't talk about them a great deal. It was her choice."
"To have children, or to talk about them, or to go to the Argentine?" Julien asked.
"All three, if it comes to that. But she certainly chose to go to the Argentine. A woman—or a man, for that matter—willing to make such a choice was probably not focusing a great deal of attention on their children, in any case."
Malcolm shifted in his chair again. Hubert might have a point. "I know you, Hubert. If you want to pressure an agent you can."
Hubert looked between Malcolm and Julien. "I don't recall any sort of pressure ever working particularly well with either of you. Or with Kitty, for that matter." He adjusted his spectacles. It might have been a trick of the light bouncing off them that made his gaze appear more open than usual. "I'm not unaware of the importance of parental bonds. Despite my past actions. Or perhaps because of them. But Allegra was determined to go to the Argentine. I've rarely seen her so animated as she was when she came to tell me Esquivel had asked her to go with him. She said this was the mission she'd been waiting for her whole life."
"And when she got to the Argentine?" Malcolm asked.
"She sent me reports."
"On Esquivel?"
"Among other things. On the general situation. She and Esquivel were close to the heart of the revolution. She knew all the major players."
"You had Kitty and me in the Argentine as well," Julien pointed out.
"You and Kitty were already slipping beyond my control. Assuming I ever had any sort of control over either of you. And neither of you was sharing the bed of a leader of the revolution. At least, not that I knew."
"No comment," Julien said.
"And Esquivel?" Malcolm said.
"What about him?"
"How did Allegra feel about him?"
Hubert adjusted his other spectacle earpiece. "My dear Malcolm. There may be some spymasters to whom agents confide their personal feelings. I think I need hardly tell you I am not one of them. How Allegra felt about Esquivel was her own business."
"She lived with him and reported to you on him for five years."
"So she did." Hubert's gaze held steady behind the lenses. "Even with my limited sensitivities, I understand this must be an uncomfortable parallel for you."
"I don't know about that. You could say I'm uniquely positioned to understand that she may have been spying on Esquivel and still genuinely cared about him." Malcolm regarded the man who had been his spymaster and Allegra's. "You met with Allegra yesterday."
"Who says so?"
"You were seen with her in a coffeehouse," Malcolm said. Once he'd recognized Allegra's coded papers as Hubert's, it hadn't been hard to guess the identity of the spectacled man Felicia Esquivel had told Cordelia she'd seen with Allegra.
"Sometimes meetings in the open are safer. Sometimes they're a mistake. Yes, she was updating me."
"About Esquivel?"
"He came to Britain to talk to Staples about negotiating a loan for the Argentine government." Robert Staples had been the unofficial British consul in the Argentine, never officially recognized by the government in Buenos Aires but very connected to the British merchant community in the Argentine. "He's apparently also looking for funding to set up his own shipping venture. He's talking to his Cambridge friends Beardsley and Rowley."
"A good commercial venture," Julien said. "You should approve of that."
"It was certainly less alarming than the things they got up to at Cambridge."
"Did Allegra Roth say where she was going when she left the coffeehouse?" Malcolm asked.
"No. And I didn't ask her. But given what we now know, I assume it was to the Three Queens in Seven Dials, to see her husband." Hubert uncrossed and recrossed his legs. "Given that she told me she wished to avoid her husband, I find that interesting. Presumably it was to do with their children. Jeremy Roth's equilibrium impresses me, but he was certainly a much-tried husband."
"I don't think he killed her," Malcolm said.
"You wouldn't."
"I don't either," Julien said.
"I wouldn't expect you to, either," Hubert said.
"We're both endeavoring to keep an open mind," Malcolm said.
Julien kicked his boot toe against the leg of his chair. "I begin to see why the home office take such an interest in this."
"They'd certainly prefer it to be a domestic drama, but we can't be sure it is," Hubert said.
"So they want to blame Roth," Malcolm said.
"Not much help in doing that if we actually have an unravelling international plot on our hands. No matter what Sidmouth might wish, I won't waste my energies trying to convince you not to investigate. And I don't really want to. We need the truth and you're more likely to arrive at it than Bow Street. Especially without Roth, who is possibly their best runner. For all his tendency to strike out on his own. Or perhaps because of it."
"Hubert." Malcolm sat back in his chair. "Did you just ask us to investigate for you?"
"My dear Malcolm. I've long since ceased being under the illusion I could ask either of you to do anything."
"Did Allegra ever indicate she thought Esquivel might be on to her?" Julien said.
"No." Hubert's gaze hardened behind his spectacles. "But if he had done, I'm not sure he'd have been as flexible and broadminded in his thinking as Malcolm was about Mélanie. In fact, one could say he'd have a far stronger motive to have killed her than Roth."
"So one could. Which brings us to another question," Julien said. "Did you have my wife's late husband killed?"
CHAPTER 21
Hubert's gaze shot to Julien. "Edward died of heart failure."
"There are theories that it was murder."
"Whose theories?"
"Allegra Roth's, apparently. Or perhaps I should say Alejandra Vargas's. Which makes it particularly interesting."
"Edward Ashford was never of very great interest."
"Ashford was getting investors to sink money into a fraudulent scheme that could have sent ripples from Buenos Aires to London. You told me so yourself when you had me looking into him."
"I didn't tell you to kill him, did I?"
"You didn't tell me to kill him. That doesn't mean you didn't hire someone else."
"Why would I hire someone else when I had you in place?"
"Possibly because you thought I wouldn't have followed orders, given my relationship with his wife."
"Malcolm's the one with tiresome scruples, Julien. Not you. At least, not then. I'll own you show them distressingly often, of late."
Julien folded his arms across his chest. "And perhaps also because if you'd directly ordered me to kill a British officer, you might have been giving me ammunition to use against you. Assuming I tried to come back and reclaim what is laughingly called my heritage."
"Which you did. And as I recall, I stepped aside with remarkably little fuss."
"By then it was the best move to check the Elsinore League. I'm not at all sure you were thinking that way when I was in the Argentine."
Hubert leaned forwards. "If I'd felt we had no choice but to get rid of Edward Ashford, I'd probably have involved you. I didn't think it had gone that far. When Ashford died, the silver mine scheme was beginning to unravel. I think Ashford was being set up to take the blame for it. Once he was dead, whoever else was involved managed to sweep the whole thing under the rug. I'd have stood a better chance of learning the truth with Ashford alive." Hubert frowned. "If Ashford was murdered, it could have all sorts of implications. Do you have any idea who might be behind it?"
"One of our first thoughts was you," Julien said.
"Surely you didn't simply stop there."
"A jealous husband. A spurned mistress. Or someone he'd swindled in the silver mine scheme."
"When you heard Allegra suspected Ashford was murdered, did you hear who she suspected was behind it?"
"Oh yes," Julien said. "She suspected Kitty."
Hubert raised a brow. "Interesting."
"Kitty didn't kill him. Her morals are considerably better than mine. And far better than yours."
"Yes, I wouldn't have thought it of her."
"Did Allegra ever tell you she thought Ashford might have been murdered?"
"No."
"But you had her investigating him," Julien said.
"What makes you think that?"
"You were interested in Ashford. And we heard a rumor he and Allegra were lovers."
"I asked for information on him. How Allegra chose to get it was her own business." Hubert pushed his spectacles up. "Does Kitty know you were spying on Ashford for me?"
"When all this came out, I had to tell her. I probably should have done a long time since. I found reasons not to."
Hubert nodded. "Give it time. With what you have between you, you and Kitty should be fine. I've learnt one can muddle through with far worse."
"Uncle Hubert," Julien said. "Is that the voice of concern?"
"Is that so surprising?"
"Not as much so as it once would have been. Which perhaps is the most astonishing thing of all."
