Angels in the Gloom

She frowned. “Isn’t that better than by somebody in the village, which would mean one of us, and that would be awful!”

“My dear,” he said gently, “he died in his own garden. Whoever killed him has to be one of us. It is only their reason for doing it that is in question.”

“We don’t have any . . .” She stopped. Her voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “I suppose we wouldn’t know, would we? I can’t believe anyone here would betray us. But then I can’t believe anyone here would murder him for any other reason, either.”

“Three years ago I would have believed you,” he replied gently. “But I am afraid we are not so naÏve anymore.”

She avoided meeting his eyes. “Archie’s going on the night train to Portsmouth. Nancy Arnold will drive him to Cambridge.”

“Nancy Arnold?” he said in surprise.

“She runs the taxi service now. I can’t make up my mind whether to go with him or not.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said immediately. “Railway station goodbyes are always pretty rotten. Let him think of you here at home.”

“Did he say that?”

“No.” Archie had not spoken to Joseph of anything so intimate. They had discussed the news, and more seriously the possibility that England could lose the war, and what that would mean, how their lives would change. They might both be killed, in fact Archie almost certainly would be. For Joseph it would depend more upon whether he was in Flanders at the time, or home, but well enough to carry on the fight in whatever resistance was left. The same would surely be true for Matthew. To imagine him surrendering was impossible. But what would happen to the women and children?

There was no answer, and they left it only as a dark shadow it was better to share than face alone.

“No, he didn’t say so,” Joseph expanded. “It’s just how I would feel.”

“But you’re not ready to go back!” she said urgently. “And we need you here. Kerr went to pieces today. What good is he when someone loses a son or a husband in France, or just as bad, has come home armless or legless or blind? Who else but you will help to console them?”

Joseph pondered her words. “No need to think of it now,” he said. “It’ll be ages before I’m well enough anyway. Yes, I’ll have a boiled egg. In fact, two.”

She clung onto him for a moment, fiercely, then kissed his cheek. Joseph watched as she trod straight-backed into the kitchen, her skirt twitching a little as she walked. She had always had that little sway, a part of her character that surprised. One might have expected it of Judith, but not of Hannah.

Kerr turned up again the next morning. Hannah seemed pleased to see him and regarded Joseph’s exasperation with patience. “He needs you,” she said simply. “The poor man is out of his depth. I’m going to the shops to get more wool, and then to the VAD center for supplies to sew ditty bags. I’ll be back at lunchtime.”

Kerr was in the sitting room as before, standing in the middle of the floor and looking just as white-faced as he had the previous day. Joseph’s heart sank. “What is it now?” he said somewhat less than graciously. He was afraid Kerr was going to ask him to conduct the funeral, a duty that should fall to the incumbent of St. Giles.

“I have a moral dilemma,” Kerr replied. “I have never been in this position before!”

“Life is full of positions we have never been in before,” Joseph pointed out a little tartly. Kerr’s failure was tempting him more than he wished. He could feel the yielding in himself.

Kerr was nervously clenching and unclenching his hands. He would not be put off. “This policeman seems to think it was someone in the village who killed poor Blaine,” he said abruptly. “He’s like a ferret with his teeth in your leg—he won’t let go until he has nabbed someone.”

Joseph smiled bleakly. “I think your acquaintance with ferrets must be better than mine.”

“He is going to hound us all until he knows everything about everybody. It will do untold harm.”

“Murders do,” Joseph assured him bitterly. He remembered acutely what murder had done to St. John’s and the students there. “I’m sorry. It’s a wretched thing, but there is no dilemma because there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“But I know people’s secrets!” Kerr protested, his voice rising. “It is part of my calling. You know that! What am I supposed to tell this awful man?”

“It’s perfectly simple,” Joseph replied. “You tell him nothing.”

“And if what I know allows a murderer to go free? Or worse than that, an innocent man to be hanged?” Kerr’s face twisted in misery. “It isn’t as simple as you are saying. This crime may be linked with the war. Perhaps poor Blaine was killed because of his work at the Establishment, and whoever is guilty is a German spy. Have you considered that? Doesn’t that alter my duty? I may not be in the army, but I am as loyal to my country as you are.”

Joseph saw the wretchedness in the man’s face, the confusion and the longing to be accepted.

“Of course you are. And it is a dilemma. If you observe anything for yourself that has bearing on the crime, or could have, then you should tell Inspector Perth. But if it is only something that you have been told by someone else, then you do not know if it is true or not. You can’t judge. Let Perth find it out for himself, or not.”

Disbelief filled Kerr’s face. “You make it sound so simple.” It was almost an accusation, as if Joseph were still attempting to evade the issue.

Joseph looked away. “Judgment is anything but simple.” Judgment was impossible, he thought. One stumbled from hour to hour, trying to understand, trying to get it right, hardly ever sure whether one had or not. It all mattered far too much: love and hate, loyalties torn in too many directions, uncertainty, guilt, decisions that had to be made too quickly and without a chance to think and weigh.

“Just do your best,” he said to Kerr. “Perth will probably find out eventually anyway. Don’t betray anybody’s trust in you.”

“Thank you,” Kerr said with a rush of overriding gratitude, his face suddenly pink. “I knew you would advise me.” He hesitated a moment as if to repeat himself, then straightened his shoulders and went to the door.

Joseph was exhausted and his arm ached appallingly. It seemed as if a hideous pattern was starting all over again.

CHAPTER

SIX

Matthew was in his office as usual on the morning Blaine’sbody was found. He was reading a letter and he finally put it down with a sense of relief. He was always pleased to hear from Judith because he worried about her, not only because of the very obvious danger of being injured, or even killed, but the threats of ordinary illness made far worse by the long hours and the wet and filthy conditions.

But in her letter she accepted that every avenue of inquiry had been followed to its end, and they knew no more about the Peacemaker than they had before. He could still be almost anyone, except Ivor Chetwin or Dermot Sandwell. Even Aidan Thyer, Master of St. John’s, might be the Peacemaker. Most painful to Matthew, and perhaps most frightening, was the chance it was Calder Shearing himself. That thought touched Matthew now and then like the cold fingers of nightmare. His father had hated Secret Intelligence and all its works. Was Shearing’s involvement what his father had meant when he had warned Matthew to trust no one because the corruption reached right to the very top?

He had had no difficulty in deciding not to tell Judith anything of his thoughts on Patrick Hannassey yet. There was too much yet to test. Where had Hannassey been at the time of John and Alys Reavley’s deaths? And was it imaginable that John Reavley had known him? Could he possibly have had private access to the king and the kaiser?

He still had these questions in his mind when Desborough entered and announced that Shearing wanted him immediately. “Something bad,” he added with a frown. “By the look on his face, pretty bloody. Thought I’d warn you.”

“Thanks,” Matthew said drily, rising to his feet. He put Judith’s letter in his pocket and went along the corridor to Shearing’s office. His mind raced over the most probable disasters in the Atlantic, or worse still, in America itself. Either one of their own agents had been caught, or there had been another major incident on the Mexican-American border.

“There’s been a murder in St. Giles,” Shearing said bluntly as Matthew entered his office. “Theo Blaine. He was Corcoran’s best man, in fact he was brilliant, key to the whole project.”

Matthew was stunned. It was the last thing he had been expecting. “Do we show our interest by investigating it, or leave it to the Cambridge police?”

Shearing looked exhausted. He had the dazed, rather stiff air of someone newly bereaved, but Matthew knew it was not the young scientist personally whose loss bruised him so deeply, but the wound it dealt to the project that was possibly crucial to their survival in the war. He harbored the thought that perhaps this was another brilliant act of the Peacemaker’s. A blow like this, with such surgical precision, emulated the pattern of his parents’ deaths—swift, murderous, but in its own way hideously strategic.

“Reavley!” Shearing’s voice broke his moment’s inattention.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I can go to St. Giles without drawing any particular notice, if you want me to. I can stay at home, visit with my brother. He’s still far from recovered. But if it was a German agent who killed him, that won’t fool anyone.”

“We’ve no idea yet who it was,” Shearing replied. “He was only found this morning.”

“Where? By whom?” Matthew asked. It was still hard to grasp as reality. It was someone he had never met, but his death could affect the entire country, millions of lives, perhaps the course of history. It was too vast to have meaning yet.

“By his wife,” Shearing answered. He moved to stand with his back to the window, the late morning light shadowed from his face for a moment. “By the potting shed at the bottom of the garden. He was probably there all night.”

“She didn’t miss him?” Matthew was startled. Perhaps this was nothing to do with Germany, but was simply a domestic tragedy.

Shearing must have read the thought in his expression. The ghost of a smile touched his eyes and vanished instantly. “Don’t cling to that, Reavley. It means nothing.” He walked slowly over to his desk, but without sitting down in the leather-padded, round-backed chair, as if it would in some way imprison him. “His throat was torn out with the prongs of a garden fork.”

Matthew winced.

Shearing saw it. “It could still have been a woman’s crime,” he pointed out. “That doesn’t mean it had nothing to do with Germany. It could be any of a dozen things, and whatever it was, it is still the loss of the best scientific brain in the country. That matters more than any one man’s life.”

There was nothing to argue. “What do you want me to do, sir?”

“Get your brother the priest to resurrect the man!” Shearing snapped, his eyes blazing for a moment, then with fear and will suppressing the panic he leveled his voice. “We need to know whether it was personal or enemy inspired,” he answered. “We’ve done everything we can to keep the project secret, but it’s almost impossible. If there is a German spy or sympathizer in St. Giles, we must find and destroy him, preferably without exposing him publicly. It’s devastating for morale to know we are so vulnerable. And of course we need to guard ourselves better in the future.”

Matthew did not interrupt.

“In the hope that it was personal, possibly domestic,” Shearing went on, “we must avoid drawing undue attention. It’s a murder. Leave the local police to do what we have to hope they are trained for.” His lips tightened. “What I need you to do, Reavley, is find out from Corcoran the absolute truth, however bitter—can we complete the project without Blaine?”

“Yes, sir,” Matthew said quietly.

“We can allow other people hope,” Shearing said. “I need the truth, Reavley, whatever it is.”

“Yes, sir. I know that.”

Matthew assigned his immediate duties to his colleagues and cleared his desk, then early the next morning he drove to St. Giles. There was no point in going the same day. The police would need time to assemble the preliminary facts, and more important, Corcoran would have to assess the situation at the Establishment. He would investigate what Blaine had left in the way of notes or instructions to others, whom else he had trusted, or who might understand his calculations. It was not a judgment that would be made in haste.

As Matthew motored to St. Giles, there was a haze of green over the fields and the first leaves were beginning to open in the hedges. Every so often there was a burst of white blossom.

Matthew was one of the few people who had access to as much petrol as he needed, but he was acutely aware of the shortages and he did not abuse the privilege. However, he would need to travel not only to St. Giles but also to the Establishment, to Shanley Corcoran’s house in Madingley, and probably back and forth to Cambridge. This time he had a reason to drive, and he enjoyed the surge of power in the engine of his Sunbeam, and the sense of momentary freedom it gave him to race along the open road.

He tried to plan in his mind what he would say, then decided it was useless. Grief could not be met with prepared speeches; in fact it could not be met at all, only treated with the dignity of being honest.

He went to the Establishment first. It was less than half an hour beyond St. Giles through the winding, familiar lanes, verges deep in grass. He was not in uniform, since the whole visit was ostensibly a private one, but he carried identification, and was obliged to produce it before being allowed in to see Corcoran.

The edifice was large and utilitarian, and at the moment there was an air of gloom about it. Doors were closed and they were also locked until opened by discreet guards. Their faces were tense, shoulders stiff, and if they recognized Matthew from previous visits, they gave no indication.

After what seemed like endless corridors indistinguishable from one another, he found Corcoran in his office, sitting at his desk and perusing a mass of papers. Even at a glance Matthew could see that many of them were covered with formulas and calculations. Matthew would not have understood them, but even so Corcoran automatically covered them with a couple of large sheets of paper before standing up to greet him.

“Matthew! It’s good to see you.” He clasped Matthew’s hands in both of his. He looked shocked, his face crumpled, every line heavier and more deeply scored, as if dragged downward. But his eyes were vivid as always, and his hands were warm and strong. “Of course you’ve come about this dreadful situation. Poor Blaine was brilliant. One of our best.”

“I know. Can you complete the project without him?” Matthew asked.

Corcoran winced and gave a half smile. “You’re blunt! I suppose you have to be. It will be difficult, but yes, of course we will. We have to. I know every bit as well as you do that victory could depend on it, and very probably will.” His mouth tightened. “I can do it, Matthew. I’ll work on it myself, day and night. I have good men left. Ben Morven is first class—well, good second,” he amended. “And Francis Iliffe, and Dacy Lucas. Every man will throw all he has into it, believe me.”

“I know you will, but will it be enough without Blaine?” Matthew hated having to persist. “I need the truth, Shanley, not optimism, and not just hope or faith. How hard will it be? What difference will it make to the time, being without Blaine? Your best estimate?”

Corcoran considered it for several moments, his eyes dark and bright.

“For whom am I guessing, Matthew? Calder Shearing?”

“Yes. And I would think for Admiral Hall, too.” Admiral “Blinker” Hall was head of naval intelligence.

Corcoran grimaced again, as if stabbed with pain. “Of course it will make it very much harder,” he admitted soberly. “If I have to be specific, it may take us two or even four weeks longer.” His voice trembled with the fierceness of his emotion. “But I swear I will do it!” He gestured toward the desk. “I’ve dropped everything else and I am personally reviewing all Blaine’s notes to determine and execute what he was planning. I know what lives will be lost by even that much delay.”

Matthew believed him, but he was also concerned. Corcoran was well over sixty and he looked shattered by weariness. He had lost considerable weight in the last year and was working himself to exhaustion without the new additional burden. This kind of intense mental drive over such extraordinary hours would be enough to break the health of a young man, let alone one his age. Matthew understood sacrifice, and it was selfish and absurd to make different rules for those you cared about, whatever the reason. And yet it was almost beyond his ability not to.

“Don’t work yourself into the grave,” he said, almost lightly, but there was a catch in his voice. Corcoran was more than a great man whom he admired intensely, he was a deeply loved friend, a link with the past and all that was precious in it. Memory stretched back into childhood so sweet it held a pain for all that had slipped away with John Reavley’s death, the war, the need to fight at such a hideous price for what they had once taken so lightly for granted. “We couldn’t do without you,” he added.

“Oh, come on!” Corcoran smiled suddenly. “It’s only work! Work is a challenge!” He held up his hand in a fist. “It’s what man was born for—work and love. That’s who we are, isn’t it? A life that doesn’t challenge you to give all you have is only half a life, unworthy of the possibilities of man. Your father would say that, and you know it.”

Matthew looked away, feeling suddenly stripped, and too vulnerable to meet Corcoran’s eyes. If he lost him, too, it would hurt more than he was prepared to face. He must think of something practical to divert the torrent of feeling that threatened to sweep away his balance.

“Shearing said to tell you that if there is anything you need, he’ll get it for you,” he said abruptly. “That might not be quite carte blanche, but it’s close.”

“It’ll do,” Corcoran assured him. “I’ll compile a list. Give me half an hour. I’ll get someone to take you around the place, show you the two or three things that you can be allowed to see—like the canteen and the lavatory! Not that I think for a moment you would understand the rest anyway. But it’s a protection for you as much as for us. Come with me, I’ll find someone.” He went to the door. “Lucas! Come, meet Matthew Reavley from Special Intelligence Services. Show him what you can for half an hour, then bring him back here. Be nice to him. He’s not only my friend; he’s the man who’ll bring us all the tools and funds we want!”

“Well, all there is,” Matthew amended, as he shook hands with Dacy Lucas.

Richard Mason left the nightmare of Verdun behind him, thinking as he rattled over the torn-up roads toward Ypres of what he could write in his report on the slaughter in the French army. Twelve days of incessant rain had made the landscape a sea of mud broken only by skeletonlike limbs of shattered trees and the occasional length of barbed wire.

The French had taken Dead Man’s Hill back from the Germans, a few thousand square yards of hell. The ground, like that of Ypres, was strewn with the blood and bones of both sides. Mason could not see them as essentially different. The rotting corpse of a German soldier did not smell the same as that of an English one, or French. But it was only to do with what they ate, nothing at all with what they believed or cared about, how much they loved, their dreams or their pain.

The whole thing was an obscene parody of what life should be, like something Hieronymus Bosch would have created as a vision of damnation.

The car hit a shell hole in the road and careered to one side, the driver righting it only with difficulty. Ypres was still ten miles away. Mason had not told the man why he wanted to come here. There would be nothing different to see. It was a struggle to make his reports in any way separate from one another, or one lot of dead men unique and identifiable, except to those who had known and loved them.

He was going because here he might see Judith Reavley again, even if only for an hour or two. He had encountered her twice since their first meeting at the Savoy in London nearly a year ago. Both times had been just behind the lines in Flanders.

Once she had been at the side of the road by her ambulance, changing the wheel where one of the tires had obviously burst. He had been in a staff car going the other way and had stopped and offered to help. He had half expected to be told with asperity that she could manage perfectly well. No doubt she could, and had had to often enough. She had surprised him by accepting assistance without a murmur, and rewarding him with a smile that he still remembered warmly.

“I thought you might be offended,” he had said with a sense of relief.

They had stood together side by side on the road—he tidy, dry-footed, actually quite smart, she with her boots caked in mud, the bottom of her skirt sodden wet and blood on her sleeves. Her hair had been pinned up hastily and untidily, but her face was designed for tenderness and there was a kind of beauty in her nothing could hide.

“Then you don’t know me, Mr. Mason,” she had replied. “I am not interested in proving to you that I can change a wheel. I care only about getting these men to a hospital as quickly as possible, and two of us will do that more quickly than I can alone. Thank you.” And with another smile, cooler this time, she had climbed up into the driver’s seat. She directed him to crank the engine for her and pass her the handle, which he had done obediently.

Their second encounter had been less accidental. He had wanted to talk to injured men in one of the field dressing stations and had deliberately chosen one where he knew she would be. He had watched her working quickly, grim-faced, cleaning the inside of her ambulance from a particularly bloody trip. He could smell the vinegar and carbolic in the water she had used. Her hands were raw with it.

He had brought her a cup of tea, pretty disgusting stuff made in a Dixie can and redolent of petrol and grease, but at least fairly hot. She had thanked him and drunk it without comment. It was a telling observation that she was so accustomed to the foul tea that she did not seem to notice. He still found it revolting.

They had talked a little, even laughed at a couple of current jokes. The occasion stood out in his memory because they had not quarreled. For a while he had deluded himself it was agreement. Later, he had thought it was more likely she simply cared too much about her men, and too little about him, to expend additional energy.

That was partly why he had wanted so urgently to go back to Ypres this time. He needed to know how she would respond to him now.

Ahead of him the mist was thickening as darkness approached. He could hear the guns in the distance and the smell of the trenches was in his nose and throat. As long as he lived he would never forget or become immune to the nausea of the taste of death in the air.

He should report to the commanding officer, as a matter of courtesy. The commander would be busy. Bombardment usually increased at this time of the day and would go on all night. There would be raiding parties, possibly a serious assault, even a whole battalion going over the top. Casualties could be heavy.

Mason thought again of Judith and in his mind’s eye she was smiling. She was a moment’s grace in a world drowned in ugliness. Drowned was too appropriate a word. It was raining again, not hard, just a steady gray pall over everything, blurring the road, smearing headlights, shining back off the pools of muddy water everywhere around them. With the coming of darkness it was getting colder.

Star shells went up, briefly lighting the sky. The guns were louder now. They were not more than a mile from the trenches. There was a slight wind carrying the smell of the latrines.

It took him another hour to reach the brigade headquarters and report his presence. He was received with courtesy, but no one had time to do more than be civil. He had bread and hot tea tasting of oil, and tinned Machonachie stew. No one told him where he could or could not go; his reputation was his passport to anything he wished.

It was a hard night. The Germans mounted a raid and were fought off with heavy casualties. No prisoners were taken, but there were half a dozen dead, and at least three times that many wounded.

When dawn came gray and bitterly cold, the east wind slicing through the flesh as if it could strike the bone, Mason was helping wounded men from stretchers to field dressing stations and then to ambulances. He saw Wilson Sloan, the young American volunteer he had met six months ago with Judith. He looked older; his face was thinner and there was something different about his eyes. There was no time to talk, except for a moment, about the practicalities of moving men, lifting without causing further hurt, and not getting the ambulance stuck in the mud that was everywhere. Sloan worked singly, uncomplainingly, and now with considerable skill.

It was broad daylight when he saw the outline of the ambulance, dark in the fine rain, a shadow against the trunks of trees. One of the doors was blown off the back and it sat at an angle. He ran forward, a sudden surge of panic inside him, floundering in the mud. The driver in the front seemed to be unconscious, slumped over the wheel. It was not until he was level with the cab, his feet slithering, that he even realized it was a woman.

“Judith!” he shouted, his heart pounding. It was ridiculous; it could be anyone.

She sat motionless, head bowed over the wheel, resting on her arms. He was sick with the thought that she was dead, although there was no wound visible, but it was hard to see when her clothes were stained dark with rain. She must be wet to the skin, and frozen. Perhaps she had died of exposure.

He gulped air, gagging, and put out his hand to touch her arm. The muscles tensed to resist him, and the vitality poured back into him, with overwhelming relief.

“Go away,” she said expressionlessly. “There’s nothing to do.”

“Judith?” She sounded so different now he was uncertain it was her after all. With her profile hidden she did not look the same. He could not see the planes of her cheek or the line of her nose.

She ignored him. Did she not recognize his voice either?

“Judith!” He felt the panic back again, high in his throat. What if she were seriously injured? He did not know enough first aid to save her, not when it mattered so savagely! Not when it was her! “Judith!” The cry was high-pitched, strangled.

She raised her head very slowly and looked at him. Her wide blue-gray eyes held only slight expression, a mild uninterested surprise. She did not bother to speak to him.

“Judith . . .” he gulped. “Are you hurt?”

“Not particularly,” she answered. “There’s nobody here. They took them. There’s nothing more to do.”

“You must be freezing,” he exclaimed. “Does the engine work?”

“No.” She offered no explanation. The anger was burned out of her, and the hunger, and the hope. For an instant he felt robbed; the light he had come to find was not here. Then he saw her pale face, empty-eyed, and the sad, wounded line of her mouth, and all he could think of was how to heal her, not for himself, but for her, even if he never saw her again.

“Judith,” he said softly. “You must get out and we’ll go and find something to eat, something warm. The ambulance is no good. Someone else will come and take it away. Come on. . . .” He held out his hand.

She did not bother to argue. She simply remained there, motionless.

The guns were firing only sporadically now. In between there was something almost like silence.

He hated being abrupt, but he had seen shell shock before, that terrible, thousand-yard stare of those who carry the horror within themselves, for whom the gunfire is in the brain.

“Judith! Do as you’re told! Give me your hand—now! You are in the way and you have to get out.”

She obeyed—probably out of habit. She moved slowly, stiff with cold, but he was relieved to see that she bore only a few bruises and one blood-stained bandage on her lower arm.

“Come on,” he insisted. “Walk.”

She hesitated, looking over her shoulder at the ambulance.

“Someone will come for it,” he told her. “You’ve got to report in.”

“What for? Because you say so, Mason? What in God’s name do you know about it? If we aren’t dead today, we will be tomorrow, or the day after.”

“It’s bad,” he agreed. “So is Verdun. But we’re not finished. And even if we are, we’re not going down moaning.”

She was walking slowly, squelching in the mud. “Perhaps you were right about war and peace, and it’s all pointless.”

He pulled her forward and she increased speed without complaining. He could have wept to see the change in her. Only now did he realize it was far more than beauty, it was the inner light of a uniquely precious belief, one person’s heart and vision, which he would miss irrevocably should it be destroyed by the terrible experience of war. That she was wrong that the war was pointless, that she was Joseph Reavley’s sister, did not matter; only that she was alive, and she was in pain.

“I never said it was pointless! I said it was . . .” He could not remember. Anyway, it did not matter. All that mattered was catching some passion in her, any passion at all—anger, hope, love, hate. He would have said anything to free her from the grip of despair. “I said we shouldn’t start a world war over one boundary dispute.”

She looked at him with a slight puckering of her brow. “No, you didn’t. And it wasn’t one boundary dispute. Wars never are.”

He felt a flame of exultation. She was going to argue! “Yes, it was! The kaiser crossed through Belgium. If he’d gone straight across the French frontier we would probably have stayed at home!”

“No, we wouldn’t!” She turned away sharply. “If it hadn’t been Belgium it would have been something else. I don’t know much history, but even I know enough for that. It’s bloody, it’s consuming half Europe, and it’s beginning to stain the rest of the world. Perhaps it’s even senseless now. But it wasn’t ever just a squabble about boundaries, and you can’t be stupid enough to think it was.”

Was he losing her again? He looked at the weary slope of her shoulders. She was trudging along, too exhausted in body to do more than barely pick up her feet. But it was her heart he needed to reach, her will. She needed to believe there would be something left to win, no matter how hard it was or how long it took. He was not sure that he believed it himself.

“Perhaps I’m too close to it,” he said, although it was a pointless observation.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked.

It was broad daylight now and the rain had eased off. There would soon be other traffic, even though this was not a main road and it was too badly cratered for convoy use.

“Verdun,” he answered.

She turned to look at him. “Was it bad?”

“Yes.”

“Poor devils.”

He needed to think of something else to say, but for a moment memory of Verdun drove out everything else. He did not realize that she was still looking at him.

“Don’t tell people they’re losing,” she said firmly. “It might be true for the moment, but it would be a betrayal. They need our faith.”

He stared at her incredulously.

She gave a tiny, twisted smile. “You have to have faith, even to die well,” she explained.

It was there! The old fire, just a tiny light, but the grace and the courage he loved. He seized hold of her, ignoring her bandaged arm, and hugged her, half lifting her off her feet and swinging her around. She was wet and cold, and her skin smelled of antiseptic and engine oil, but the warmth inside him was enough to make all of it sweet to him.

He put her down on the rutted road again and went forward, increasing his speed, willing to drag her if necessary. They had to reach an outpost, one of the field dressing stations, a command dugout, anyplace where she could get warm and dry and eat something.

Two hours later she was asleep and Mason had eaten the usual frontline breakfast of stale bread, beef stew, and strong tea. Then a corporal brought up the mail, and ten minutes after that the major in command of the station handed Mason a sealed letter.

He tore it open and began reading. The handwriting was clear and strong, the wording casual, as any man might use to a friend. However, the message within was anything but ordinary. It was from the man he knew as the Peacemaker and, masked by pleasantries, contained the information that he had heard about the social unrest in Russia—the vast possibilities of relieving the Eastern Front and stopping the slaughter there. Which would in turn alter the balance on the Western Front, and perhaps bring an early end to the war.

It was all couched in terms of village politics, but Mason knew enough of what it meant for his interest to be held as if in a vise. When he finished reading the letter, he put it in his pocket and sat crouched on an ammunition box, his feet on duckboards awash with rainwater, the weak spring sun thawing some of the chill out of his flesh. He could hear the sounds of men moving about. Someone was singing a bawdy song. There was a burst of laughter, and then others joined in. There was a kind of desperate courage in the singing that he admired with a passion so intense he found his hands were shaking on the tin mug he was holding, slopping the tea over. Anything that would save them was worth trying. Tired, beaten, bereaved, afraid—none of them were excuses for not trying. Pride was not even the beginning of an excuse. He would go back and listen to the Peacemaker, see if there was anything worth attempting. Then men like these around him could go home, and a woman like Judith could drive ordinary cars crazily along country roads instead of carrying the bleeding and the dead through this carnage.

He was on his way back to London anyway. He had only come through Ypres in the hope of seeing Judith. He was startled and a little afraid how much it had mattered to him. He was not at all certain it was what he wanted, not now, not when nothing could be held on to, treasured, promised for life.

But there should be life, for all these tens of thousands of men around him, its possibilities and hopes and chances for good or ill.

He drank the rest of the tea and climbed to his feet. He could not afford to stay here any longer. He must leave before the night’s bombardment began, and cadge a lift toward the train.

Mason arrived on a troop train in London and climbed out onto the platform at Waterloo station, stiff and cold. He heard the doors open and men call out, the clatter of boots, the whistle and hiss of steam as the engine belched. The platform was crowded, people pushing and jostling together, all straining eagerly to catch sight of a particular face, and growing more and more desperate if they didn’t. There were nurses in long, gray uniforms, always busy, too much to do, too little time; porters with luggage, men too old to fight, or not fit enough; and multitudes of men in khaki with white bandages, some spotted with blood.

Outside the station most of the people waiting in the taxi line were wounded. Though Mason was stiff and cold, he was unhurt so he walked to the nearest stop and waited for an omnibus. It could even end up being quicker in the end.

London looked drabber and more exhausted than Mason had remembered it. The women wore smart, elegant jackets, skirts to the midcalf with often a longer one beneath, but there was no color, no extravagance. There were no lace parasols as there used to be before the war, no hats with big flowers on them.

The street was alive with both horse-drawn carriages and automobiles and contained all the familiar advertisements, all the noise and the movement—but it looked dirty in the sun.

Since the last time he had been to Marchmont Street, he had reported not only from the Western Front and Gallipoli again, but also the desperate Italian resistance to Austria and the fighting in the Balkans. His emotions were raw with the bitter sameness of the loss. And now Judith’s face, blank with misery, haunted his mind. He wanted to hear her laugh again, to see her walk with a lift in her stride, with the energy, passion, and even arrogance that had caught his eye before.

The horns and the traffic brought him back to the present and the street again. The bus came and he boarded it, glad to find a seat.

He alighted while he was still half a mile from Marchmont Street. It was easier and certainly faster to walk the rest of the way than wait for another bus.

He recalled the first time he had come here, before the war. He had been full of hope and the belief that they really could make a difference; the horror of the Boer War need never happen again. Their ideals had been vast, a new age of peace and progress for mankind. Of course there was a price—nothing came without one, least of all change. But it had seemed then to be infinitely worth doing. How long ago that was now!

He reached the door he was looking for and rang the bell. He was shown upstairs by a manservant. Here again after a full year in which so much had happened, Mason felt self-conscious. The whole world was drawn in and seemed bent on slaughter, except the Americas. Only they remained the same, huge and aloof, blanketed in peace and prosperity while Europe drowned in its own blood.

Now he had returned to the Peacemaker’s house. Nothing had changed in the hallway or the landing. The walls were the same soft red. The same pictures were still hanging, landscape masterpieces of mountains and lakes, country by-roads, fields with great trees and quiet cows beneath them. There was even the same Chinese porcelain ginger jar on the stand at the top of the stairs.

The Peacemaker himself looked no different, either, except perhaps around the eyes. He was more tired, more guarded. Something of the fire was spent, but when Mason looked more closely he knew the determination was the same.

The Peacemaker held out his hand. “Good to see you, Mason. How are you? Tired, I imagine. Tea, or whisky? I have a good Glenmorangie if you’d like it.”

Mason declined. “But tea would be excellent.”

“Earl Grey?”

“Thank you.”

The Peacemaker gave instructions, adding the request for sandwiches as well, then returned, closing the door and inviting Mason to sit down. “I imagine Verdun was worse than you wrote in your dispatch?” he said quietly.

“Everything is worse than I write,” Mason answered. He knew roughly why the Peacemaker had summoned him. Russia, of course, but to do what? Mason believed in the same cause, with a passion even deeper and more consuming than before, but he was not prepared to bring it to pass in the same way. Watching the slaughter at Verdun until he could hear the guns in his dreams and taste blood, there was still no such thing as “peace at any price.” Some prices in their very nature made peace impossible, except in a way that could not last. He had said as much last year.

Was it conceivable that the Peacemaker had finally realized this himself?

Mason looked at the man opposite him with a kind of desperate hope. He had the intelligence, the power, and the vision to stop it! Personal feelings, likes and dislikes, even individual pride, were nothing compared with that gain, if it were possible.

“You can’t tell people what it’s really like,” he finished quietly. “The only pain of it we know is in the broken bodies that return, and the faces of the women who have lost their men.”

The Peacemaker sat motionless, his mouth drawn into a tight grip of pain. “We came close to stopping it, Mason,” he said softly, his voice thick with emotion. “We missed by hours! God knows what absurd chance made Reavley find that treaty, or what quixotic idiocy made him take it.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “But we have to deal with what we have now. That much of the past is irrelevant. It’s blood under the bridge,” he said with a bitter smile. “The situation is approaching a crisis. That is why I asked you to come.”

As the Peacemaker leaned forward, his face caught the light. “We are bogged down in France and Flanders, losing a thousand men a day! Gallipoli was a disaster. Italy may survive, but it hangs in the balance. The news from German East Africa is not good. Van Deventer is leading twelve hundred men to Kondoa Irangi, but the going is hard and they are being decimated by disease. In Mesopotamia our forces have still not lifted the siege of Kut and saved our men inside. The Tigris Corps’ casualties number about ten thousand men! That’s a quarter of Aylmer’s total force, which means it’s a loss all together of twenty-three thousand.”

Mason had not known the figures. They were far worse than he had assumed, but what puzzled him was what the Peacemaker wanted of him. Had he misunderstood the letter, and it was not Russia at all?

“But the change that matters most is that in the German High Command,” the Peacemaker went on, lowering his voice still further. “With every week that passes they too are losing more men, and their attitude hardens. They have held Narotch to Russian losses estimated well over a hundred thousand men. There will be a counteroffensive, probably next month. So far the Germans have resisted withdrawing men from Verdun to redirect them to the Eastern Front, but that may not last.”

“Exactly what is it you want?” Mason asked.

Before he answered, the Peacemaker smiled, softening his features startlingly, as if he had seen across a crowded room someone he liked enormously. “I want an understanding on both sides that there will be no victors in this war, except those who did not participate. Mason, it must be stopped somehow, before there is such bitterness on both sides that there can be no realistic peace afterward. Too much bloodshed, and the fury for vengeance may become so overwhelming that no settlement is possible, except when one side or the other has been utterly destroyed. Considering recent developments, that may be Britain. And God knows, that would be a tragedy unsurpassed even in the futile and terrible history of the world.”

Mason felt cold, as if he were overtaken with illness.

“I don’t want it for Germany, either,” the Peacemaker continued earnestly. “They are a great people, with a culture that has enriched mankind. Who can read their poets, their philosophers, or benefit from their science without gratitude? Who can listen to Beethoven and not be enlarged in spirit? His genius bestrides the world and transcends the petty language of words.”

Mason agreed wholeheartedly, but he was still waiting for clarification of why he had been summoned.

The manservant brought the tea tray with delicate sandwiches, left it on the table, and departed as silently as he had arrived.

“The death toll is already hideous,” the Peacemaker resumed, pouring for both of them. “It is mounting every day, and it is the best who die, the bravest and the most honorable, and very often the strongest, those who would have been the leaders of the future. In a little while Europe will be impossible to rebuild because the best will be gone.”

His lips pursed into a dry smile terrible with sadness. “The social changes are already irrevocable. Women are doing the jobs men used to. Many of them will not marry because the men who would have been their husbands are dead. Generations will pass before the loss is caught up. And we will all be degraded by the savagery, the starvation, and the betrayals that follow war.”

His eyes searched Mason’s face.

“We have a duty to save them, and ourselves, from that, and we haven’t much longer in which to do it,” he said, emotion cracking his voice. “The old governments, the men who wanted peace, are being replaced by warmongers who make their name and fame out of ruin. Are you still willing to help? Do you still have the strength and the courage to care?”

“Of course I care!” Mason retorted, angry that the Peacemaker felt any need to ask the question, even rhetorically. “What is it you plan? What has it to do with Russia, beyond dreams?”

The Peacemaker’s expression did not alter, but something in him relaxed so his elegantly cut suit eased into different lines on his body.

“Simply?” he asked. “Have you any concept of how many troops, how many tanks and guns could be released if Russia came out of the war?”

“I’m sure I could calculate it,” Mason replied. “But I can’t see any likelihood of that happening. It was the tsar’s treaties within Europe that took them in in the first place. None of that has changed.”

“It could do,” the Peacemaker answered, the excitement sharp in his voice now. “What do you know about Russia—not the army, but the society, the government, the mass of the people?”

Mason thought for a few moments. “Hunger, social injustice, crop failure,” he replied. “I suppose it could be summed up as chaos and shocking numbers of dead not only in battle but right across the land, due to poverty and climate, and lack of resources except in the hands of the few. They won’t beat Germany!” He frowned. “But Germany won’t beat them, either. Nobody ever has. It’s not just the stoicism of the people and their unbelievable sacrifice.” He shivered as he remembered the carnage he had seen. “It’s the land itself. We western Europeans can’t begin to comprehend how vast Russia is. It’s . . . endless! It swallowed Napoleon. It will swallow the kaiser if he’s stupid enough to try to invade it.”

“And God knows how many people,” the Peacemaker said, a hush of awe in his voice, as if he were already in the presence of the dead. “And what of the Russian government?”

“The tsar? Out of touch with everything,” Mason replied. “No concept of reality at all. His only son is a hemophiliac and not likely to live long. The tsarina is terrified for him, poor woman, and seems entirely dominated by the lunatic Rasputin. The whole edifice is corrupt from floor to ceiling.”

“Exactly,” the Peacemaker agreed. “Ready to fall. It will only need a little assistance. . . .”

Mason stiffened. “Assistance?”

The Peacemaker’s eyes were burning. “If it does not happen soon, it will be very violent, worse than the revolution in France in 1789 when the gutters of Paris ran with blood. Russia needs change, and soon, before the country is torn apart. The Russian people have no stake in the war! They should make peace with Germany, pull out, gain a new government and a new order of social justice.”

“And how can we bring that about?” It was a rhetorical question. Mason did not expect an answer.

But the Peacemaker gave him one. “By helping their own reformers—revolutionaries, if you like. Every great change begins with a dream, a man with a vision of something better who inspires others.”

A memory seared across Mason’s mind of a cramped office in London in 1903, a wild energy in the air, passionate ideals of a new social order, justice, the rule of the people at last. There had been men with fire in their eyes and in their brains. The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks had split from each other, the latter unwilling to wait on the former’s moderation.

The Peacemaker saw it in his face. He was smiling.

Mason had been a journalist then, sharing his office in Clerkenwell with the editor of Iskra, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

“Now is the time,” the Peacemaker said, his voice little more than a whisper, as if he could be overheard even here. “We must assure that it happens while Russia is still self-contained, and the violence, when it erupts, and it will, does not spill over into the rest of Europe, and eventually the world.”

Mason struggled to accommodate the enormity of what he was hearing.

The Peacemaker held his gaze. “Once Germany conquers Russia, even part of it, it will be too late. Then it will be Germany’s problem, and we can’t afford that. Rebuilding Europe after this war will take every ounce of our strength, all our courage, skill, and resources. Our people will be exhausted, God knows how many dead or crippled. Mason—we’ve got to put a stop to it! Before it’s too late. . . .”

“How?”

“We have two possibilities,” the Peacemaker answered softly. “There are two men who could light the fires of revolution in Russia. I know Lenin. So do you. . . .”

Of course Mason knew Lenin. The passion in the man was unforgettable, once one had really looked at him. At first he might seem insignificant, another quiet worker with his head bowed in books, but meet his eyes and all thought of the ordinary fled.

“I know what he thinks,” the Peacemaker went on. “He doesn’t want war any more than the Russian people do. But he’s in Zurich now, and unwilling to leave. His fire is all in his mind, not yet in his belly.”

Mason waited. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked like a minuscule heartbeat.

“You know Trotsky as well,” the Peacemaker said, scrutinizing Mason carefully. “I need to know what he wants—revolution, of course—but war or peace with Europe. That is the only question we have to answer.”

“And if it’s war?” Mason found his voice was shaking. Even as Trotsky’s name came to his mind he could see the square face and piled-up mass of dark, curling hair, the vitality of the man. He was small, and yet the passion of him filled a room. Instinctively he had liked him more than the dry, inward-looking Lenin.

“You know the answer to that,” the Peacemaker answered, a tight, sad smile on his face. “The revolution will happen in Russia, Mason. It is as inevitable as the phases of the moon. We must have peace. Five million men are dead in Europe already. What is one more?”

Mason gulped air, his heart racing. He had seen countless dead men. He had waded through corpses. It should not matter, and yet it did. The thought repulsed him.

“Have you only the stomach for dreams, not reality?” the Peacemaker challenged.

“No.” Was it the truth? Mason had talked with Trotsky, eaten with him, even liked him. Trotsky had actually told him about his exile in Siberia and how he had escaped and come to England. “No,” he repeated. The man he remembered would be for peace. Was he still the same?

“Find him,” the Peacemaker repeated. “We can change what is to come, Mason. We can end this storm of slaughter! My God, someone has to!”

Mason was hardly aware of his hands and feet, as if he were detached from his body. He held history in his hands. He thought of the men in Verdun, of Judith by the side of the road in Ypres, and other men and women across the battlefields of Europe. “Yes, of course,” he said firmly. Suddenly there was no doubt. He would have killed an enemy soldier with regret, but without hesitation. If Leon Trotsky was in favor of war, then he must be prevented from returning to Russia, and Lenin must go in his place.

The Peacemaker was talking about arrangements. Mason barely heard his voice. His mind was stunned by the enormity of what he had agreed to do, but there was no escaping it. Please God, let Trotsky be for peace.

When Mason was gone, the Peacemaker poured himself a glass of Glenmorangie and was surprised to find his hand trembling. It was excitement, release of tension because finally he had succeeded in getting Mason back. To use him to contact Leon Trotsky was a stroke of genius. It would be the beginning of accomplishing a great goal.

He sipped the whisky and walked back to his chair, sitting down and crossing his legs. He relaxed at last. He had control again.

He had told Mason nothing of affairs at the Scientific Establishment in Cambridgeshire, not the murder of Theo Blaine, or the man the Peacemaker had so carefully placed in the heart of the work there. Mason did not need to know.

He also had not revealed anything about his concerns over the safety of the German naval code. There was nothing specific that he could name—no incident, nothing said that made him think the British had broken the code. It was just a sense of satisfaction in the manner of Admiral “Blinker” Hall, a man for whom the Peacemaker had the most profound respect. Hall should have been more worried, more anxious than he was.

The Peacemaker’s plan was already well in progress. It involved Matthew Reavley, and his attraction to Detta Hannassey. She possessed not only beauty but grace and intelligence and passion. She was unpredictable, daring, sometimes tender, a mixture of madness and sanity that was almost unique. Not surprisingly, Reavley was fascinated with her. That could be used very well indeed. At the very best, the Peacemaker would find out if British Naval Intelligence had broken the code. If they had, he would have to make sure Admiral Hall knew it was Reavley who had betrayed the fact, and that would give the Peacemaker a sharp, sweet pleasure. One day he would have to destroy Joseph Reavley, too, but that could wait. Never place pleasure before business.

It was a pity Patrick Hannassey was becoming a nuisance. He might have to be disposed of quite soon.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

It was a fine day, and Joseph decided to walk to the village and visit a few other people he knew, particularly Tucky Nunn, who was home now, and Charlie Gee’s mother, and Plugger Arnold’s father. He took the walking stick, and Hannah watched him go down the path and out of the gates. He turned around once with a wry smile, knowing she was watching him, and then disappeared along the sunlit road, Henry trotting happily at his heels.

Hannah went back to her work, forcing the thoughts out of her mind as to how far he was recovered, whether he would ever really be completely strong again. She scrubbed the floor fiercely and moved everything around in the larder for no adequate reason. There was mending and ironing to do, and she wrote a long letter to Judith.

Joseph returned shortly after two, having eaten in the village. He looked tired, definitely limping quite badly, but extraordinarily pleased with himself.

“Look!” he said as soon as he was in the door. He produced out of a large paper bag a beautiful, softly curved pewter goblet with an ornate handle. The lines were simple, the sheen on it like dark gray satin.

“Oh, Joseph! It’s gorgeous!” she said enthusiastically. “It will be perfect on the shelf in your room. You need a few things to replace those you took with you to Flanders. How old is it?” She knew without asking that it was not a reproduction, apart from the patina on it. No doubt Joseph had found it at the junk shop at the end of the High Street, where John Reavley had spent so many hours.

“It’s not for me,” he answered happily. “It’s Shanley’s birthday in a couple of weeks. I thought it would be ideal for him. Don’t you think it would?”

She was momentarily confused.

He saw it in her face. “You don’t think so?” He was disappointed. “He loves things like this. It’s seventeenth century. It’s real!”

“Of course it’s real,” she said quietly. She saw the gentleness in his eyes, and with a lurch of sorrow so violent it caught her breath, she knew what had happened. She did not wish to tell him, but she had to. “But Shanley’s birthday isn’t until next February, Joe. It’s Father’s birthday in the beginning of May.”

He stared at her.

She gulped. “You . . . you just got them mixed up. It’ll keep . . . if . . . if you want it to.”

Joseph stared at the goblet, frowning. “I suppose I did,” he said quietly. “Stupid.” He stood up and went limping out into the hall and she heard his uneven step up the stairs. She had dwelt on her own loneliness without Archie. She had hardly even thought about Joseph, so busy trying to deal with everybody else’s fears and griefs he had no time for his own. He must miss his father appallingly. There had been a friendship between them nothing else could replace, but at times perhaps Shanley Corcoran came close. His warmth, his optimism and humor, his wealth of memories probably were more precious than she had any idea. It would be a good thing to give him the goblet, not to mark any occasion, just as a gift. She would say that to Joseph.

In the afternoon as she was walking to the village hall with a bundle of knitted squares, she was passed by Penny Lucas, who was cycling along the road. The two women exchanged waves. Hannah liked Penny’s warmth and enthusiasm, but she had not seen her in several weeks. She had no children, so perhaps she was involved in war work that had kept her out of St. Giles.

Penny pulled in to the curb ahead and dismounted with dexterity. She waited until Hannah caught up with her.

“How are you?” Hannah asked.

Penny gave a small sigh of resignation. She was a handsome woman with chestnut hair, blue-green eyes, and a lightly freckled skin that always looked blemishless. Now some of the color was gone from her cheeks, in spite of the exertion of bicycling.

“Well enough, I suppose,” she answered with a little shrug. “How about you?”

“A day at a time,” Hannah replied.

Penny pushed the bicycle and they walked slowly side by side.

“I haven’t seen you for ages,” Hannah went on. “Are you doing something interesting?”

“Not really.” Penny gave a rueful smile. “Just organizing the laundry room at the hospital in Cambridge. It’s important, I suppose, but once you’ve got a system going it’s hardly groundbreaking science.”

Her use of words jarred Hannah, reminding her forcibly of Theo Blaine and his terrible death.

Penny must have seen it in her face. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I suppose it’s at the top of everybody’s mind. He was an extraordinary man, you know.” She brushed her skirt aside from being caught in the wheels of the bicycle. “No, of course you wouldn’t. He hardly had any time to know anyone. Corcoran works them all the hours they’re awake, practically. It must be necessary, for the war, I suppose, but it’s hard to take sometimes.” Her face tightened. “He forgets that those men are young, and maybe not as obsessed with science and making history as he is.” She looked sideways at Hannah. “Sorry again. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“He was my father’s closest friend, actually,” Hannah corrected her, wondering how Penny Lucas knew so much. She could remember meeting her husband, Dacy, only a couple of times. He was a quick-tempered man with a ready smile, who collected chessmen from various cultures and liked to talk about them.

“But your friend, too,” Penny added, watching her.

“Certainly, and he’s my brother Joseph’s godfather.”

“He’s the one in the army? He was wounded, wasn’t he? How is he?”

The baker’s cart passed them, pulled by an old black horse, looking shiny in the sun, harness bright.

“Recovering, but it takes time,” Hannah replied.

“You’ll miss him when he goes back.” Penny turned away, as if to guard some emotion she knew her eyes betrayed. It sounded from her voice like pain, a sudden loneliness too strong to govern.

Hannah wondered how well Penny had known Theo Blaine. Or was it someone else she was thinking of that hurt so deeply? Had she lost brothers or cousins in the war? “Do you have family in France?” Hannah asked aloud.

“No.” The word was oddly flat. “We’re all girls. My father’s so ashamed of it. No sons to send to the front.” She gave a little shiver, a gesture oddly vulnerable. “He doesn’t even think much of a son-in-law who works in a scientific place. It could be a factory, for all he perceives, except that it isn’t really work—pushing a pen around. Actually Dacy works far longer hours than anyone else I know. Except Theo; he’s probably one of the most brilliant men alive today.” She took a breath and almost gagged on it. “At least . . . yesterday. Isn’t that awful!”

“Yes, it is,” Hannah agreed, taken aback by the depth of emotion in the other woman’s voice. It seemed odd to stand together on the footpath in the sun, knowing each other so slightly and speaking of the deepest passions of life and loss as if they were friends. But that had probably happened to women all over the country. Just as the trenches made brothers of men, so the ripping apart of the old certainties, the aching loneliness of change and bereavement, made sisters of women who might never have known each other in peacetime. “You think you can’t bear it, except that there isn’t any way out,” she added.

Penny straightened her shoulders and started to walk again. Plugger Arnold’s father passed them, leading a shire horse, and Hannah smiled at him.

“That loathsome policeman keeps coming around prying into our lives,” Penny said angrily. “I don’t suppose he’s going through my laundry basket, but I feel I can’t even take a bath for fear that he’ll knock on the door to see how much hot water I’m using.”

“His must be a very difficult job.” Hannah matched her step to Penny’s. “If there really is a German spy in St. Giles, it could be pretty well anyone, couldn’t it?”

Penny nodded in agreement. “Although I can think of dozens it wouldn’t be—the old village families, especially those with sons or brothers at the front. When you think of it, that doesn’t leave many.”

“He’ll have to look in other villages, the nearby ones, anyway,” Hannah reasoned.

“You wouldn’t get a car down that back lane,” Penny pointed out. “You’d scratch it to pieces and leave tire tracks all over the place. Our busy inspector would have seen them. Maybe that’s why he’s questioning everyone close enough to walk . . . or I suppose bicycle.” She gave a rueful little smile. “It’s incredibly grubby!” Then suddenly she was angry again. “I hate it! It’s not his fault, but I hate him, too—with his devious remarks and probing little eyes, as if he’s all the time imagining . . . I don’t know what. Think what it would be like married to such a man who spends his days pawing through the sins and tragedies of other people’s lives.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “I’m sorry. You haven’t even met him. How could you know?”

Thoughts raced through Hannah’s mind, memories of foolish things she had said and done that she would prefer no one knew. But she had thought of other things, too, about Ben Morven, the way he laughed, the easy way he walked, the look of his throat in a clean cotton shirt. He had good hands, brown and slender. . . .

But then she focused again on what Penny Lucas was saying. Was that why Penny felt so very strongly about Inspector Perth? Did she know the narrowness of the back way to Theo Blaine’s house because she had been there? “Do you know Mrs. Blaine?” Hannah said aloud.

Penny was caught by surprise. Her face had a closed look. “Well, a bit, of course. Theo worked with my husband.”

What an odd way of putting it! She did not speak of Theo as Lizzie Blaine’s husband, as if she wanted to avoid the thought.

“Why?” Penny demanded, her blue-green eyes narrowed.

“I was thinking how dreadful she must feel,” Hannah lied. “It’s an awful way to lose someone. I hope she has good friends, I mean other than just people like the vicar, or . . . or that sort of thing.”

Penny looked at the road ahead. “We all lose people, especially these days. I don’t really know if she had friends or not. She’s rather a cold, self-contained sort of person. We each cope in our own way.”

“Of course. And I expect the policeman will bother her most of all.”

Penny stopped abruptly, swinging around, her eyes wide and angry. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Hannah assumed an expression of innocence close to apology. “I suppose because she must have known him best.”

Penny looked beaten. The courage and spirit inside her were suddenly deflated.

“I’m so sorry,” Hannah said quickly, pity overtaking sense. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose someone you know and have been friends with in such a way.” She had grown so accustomed to the lie that her parents’ deaths had been an accident, that she almost believed it herself. And regardless of that, she knew from the time Joseph had told her that it must never be spoken of. “If . . . if you want to talk to anyone who understands a bit, my brother would listen,” she offered to Penny. “A couple of years ago one of his very best friends was murdered. That’s how he knows Inspector Perth. It was pretty awful.”

“Really?” It was surprise in Penny’s face, but not much more than polite interest. “Perhaps. Just now I need to get home. I have a mountain of things to do, and I’m due back at the hospital in the morning. Thanks for . . .” She did not know how to finish the sentence, and she mounted her bicycle and with a quick smile, pedaled away with considerable speed, leaving the words unsaid.

Hannah stood on the curbside and watched her go, her blouse billowing in the wind and the sun bright on her hair, until she disappeared around the curve in the road. She seemed to feel the loss of Theo Blaine very deeply indeed, and yet she obviously did not like his wife, or know her very well.

Was it possible she had had a love affair with Blaine, and her husband had discovered it? Was that what Perth was sensing, searching to prove, and was that why Penny felt so threatened and intruded upon?

If she had met Theo Blaine secretly, where would it be? And when? Certainly not where he had been killed, but what about the woods beyond? Hardly in the winter, but in the spring or summer? Only in the evening. Too much chance of children playing in daylight.

But outside of romantic novels, did people really make love in the woods? It would be uncomfortable, almost certainly damp and a bit muddy, and with a hideous chance of being stumbled on by someone out walking their dog, or an enthusiastic botanist or collector of butterflies. What a ghastly embarrassment! She felt her own face color as she visualized the scene and, in spite of herself, she began to giggle.

So much for illicit passion in the woods!

She walked slowly, thinking. For a romantic liaison you would have to go to a well-populated place where you could remain anonymous—and that meant Cambridge. Penny was there anyway, at her duties in the hospital. What about Theo Blaine? He would have had a car to drive to and from the Establishment. He could very easily have gone to Cambridge. The Establishment would have assumed he had gone home; Lizzie Blaine would have assumed he was working late.

Perhaps Dacy Lucas had even borrowed Penny’s bicycle to go along the back lane through the trees to confront Blaine, and they had quarreled. What if Blaine had refused to give up his affair, and Lucas had attacked him in fury? Or perhaps Lucas had threatened to tell Lizzie Blaine, and Blaine had attacked him, and Lucas had defended himself rather too well? Then, seeing what he had done, he had been horrified and run away. Who would believe he had not meant it?

Probably Inspector Perth knew all this. But what if he did not? He might still be convinced that it was a German spy. That thought was so horrible she felt suddenly as if her own home had been violated, someone dirty and violent had broken in and soiled everything. It would take months, years before it could be made clean again.

Perhaps she should tell Perth at least where to look! She had grown up with the code of honor that you did not tell tales on people, and if you were caught in something you owned up to it. Above all, you never ever let someone else take the punishment for what you had done. That was the ultimate cowardice.

But this was different. How much would everyone suffer if Perth stayed in the village and continued to awaken suspicions, even resurrect old feuds? There was more than enough grief already, and no doubt more to come. The first whispers of suspicion had started.

Without realizing it, Hannah had changed direction and was walking briskly toward the railway station.

Perth was not in when she arrived at the police station in Cambridge, and she had to wait over half an hour before he came. He looked hot and tired, as if his feet hurt, which quite possibly they did. His shoes were worn down at the sides and he limped a little.

“Yes, Mrs. MacAllister, what can I do for you?” He waited until she was seated, then lowered himself into the chair opposite her, taking his weight off his legs with visible relief.

Briefly and quite succinctly she told him what she had heard, and what she suspected.

“Really?” He was guarded, but certainly not without interest. “She was on a bicycle, you say?”

“Yes. Most people ride bicycles in Cambridgeshire, especially now. It’s the best way to get around.”

“I know that, ma’am. I’m local born and bred,” he said patiently. “A ladies’ bicycle that’d be?”

“Yes, of course!”

“You didn’t happen to notice her hands, did you?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“She didn’t have a little cut or scratch, or a plaster, maybe? About here.” He indicated a small sticking plaster on his own hand, across the palm near the base of his forefinger.

“I don’t think so. I don’t remember. Why? You . . .” Her imagination raced. “How did you do that?”

“You don’t want to know that, ma’am.” He winced slightly.

“You picked up . . . the . . . fork!” She realized with a shiver why he was reluctant to tell her.

“Yes, ma’am. It’s just a little sort of nick. A screw sitting a bit too high. But it tore the skin and drew blood.”

“If she picked it up, couldn’t you tell?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. Whoever used it smeared it with so much mud there was nothing to see. No fingerprints at all, nor any blood. Could be they had gloves.”

“Why would she kill him?” she asked. “If she loved him . . .”

“In love, Mrs. MacAllister,” Perth corrected sadly. “It’s a very different kind of a thing, sometimes. It’s about wanting, sort of owning, not about caring what happens to the other person. I’ve known people kill someone they reckoned was unfaithful to them. Or maybe just rejected them, let them down hard.”

“I don’t . . .” she began, then stopped.

“ ’Course you don’t,” he agreed. “Nobody does. Wouldn’t need detectives in the police if it were clear. Thank you for coming in.”

She left feeling queasy. She was wrong for coming, and yet if she had not, that would have been wrong, too. There was no good path.

She walked back toward the station and was almost there when she nearly bumped into Ben Morven, who was crossing the road and apparently going the same way. His face lit up with pleasure immediately.

“We’ll make the next train easily,” he said. Then he frowned, looking at her more closely. “You all right?”

“Does it show that much?” She was rueful.

“Sorry. That was a bit clumsy. But you look as if something nasty has happened.”

She saw the anxiety in his eyes and found herself laughing. “I’ve been talking to that miserable policeman,” she told him. “I really can’t bear the thought that there is a German spy in St. Giles who killed poor Mr. Blaine to stop his work—or that there was some sort of personal hatred so awful that it ended in murder.”

“I’m afraid I don’t see any other conclusion,” he said unhappily. “From what I hear, it could hardly have been an accident.”

“No.” She refused to picture it in her mind.

He took her arm, and his strength was enough to draw her to a stop. “Don’t think about it, Hannah. Leave it to Perth. It’s his job. Either you’ll waste your time and learn nothing, or you’ll discover too many things about people you would far rather not know. We all need a little space. . . .” he hesitated, letting go of her. “A little room to cover our mistakes and let them go. It’s a lot easier to do better next time, if last time isn’t printed in your neighbor’s eyes.”

They were in the way of the crowd, but she did not care. She looked at him gravely. “You knew him. Did you like him?”

“Yes,” he said without prevarication. “Actually he was a good bloke, nicely eccentric. A bit selfish at times, but I think that was because he was so absorbed in his work he didn’t realize that most people didn’t even know what he was doing, let alone care. I did like him.”

“Was he really brilliant? I mean—someone who would go down in history?”

He smiled slightly. “I think so.”

“Might he hurt somebody without meaning to, just because he wasn’t . . . paying attention to them?” She did not know how to phrase it without being obvious.

He understood immediately. “You mean like Lizzie?”

“Or anyone else,” she added.

“I don’t know.” He frowned. “Lizzie wasn’t in that evening. I telephoned to speak to Theo. I called two or three times, but there was no answer. I suppose I’m going to have to tell that damn policeman, if he asks. I’d rather not. I like her, too.”

“Does that make a difference?” she asked candidly.

He lifted his shoulders a little. “No, I suppose not. And as long as he doesn’t have the answer, he’ll go on looking, turning the village inside out and opening old wounds of all sorts. Somebody did it. We have to know who. Poor Theo. What a terrible way to die.” He took her arm again. “Come on, or we might miss the train.”

They hurried along the pavement and went in through the entrance to find the platform crowded with people. A troop train had just pulled in, carrying wounded from the front and everywhere they turned there were white-faced women who were alternately hopeful and fearful of seeing the ones they loved. Some of them had heard only a little news and they were almost numb with the exhaustion of waiting.

The engine still belched steam, doors clanged to, voices rose to a fever pitch—all echoing in the vast roofs above. Someone called out for help; orders were barked. Nurses in gray uniforms were trying to organize stretchers and find ambulance drivers. Porters were doing their best to get the most severely wounded away first.

Hannah could see motionless, bandaged figures lying on stretchers. One she saw very clearly had thick swaths of cloth, already bloodied, where his right leg should have been. She thought of Joseph, and how easily that could have happened to him.

“I’ve got to help,” Ben said urgently, cutting through the clamor in her mind. “I’ll get the next train. I can carry some of these. You go on.”

“Maybe I can help, too,” she said spontaneously.

He considered her offer for a moment. “Come on then.”

They worked without consciousness of time. Their train to St. Giles came and went. Ben helped carry stretchers and load them into the waiting ambulances. Hannah lent her strength and balance to the walking wounded, the gray-faced men who were exhausted with sleeplessness and pain.

It was more than an hour before the soldiers were all tended to. As the medical orderlies thanked them, Hannah realized that she was rumpled and marked with dust and occasional smears of blood. Her shoes were scuffed where she had been accidentally trodden on.

Ben was far more creased and his shirt was torn and soiled. He pushed his hair back and smiled at her. There was no need for words between them; both of them realized they were experiencing a kind of silent victory.

“You have blood on your face,” she told him. “Have you a handkerchief?”

He shook his head. “It’s just off my hand. I caught it on a rough piece on one of the stretchers.” He looked down at his left hand, just below the base of his index finger, exactly where Inspector Perth had caught himself on Blaine’s garden fork. Only Ben’s was fresh, and still bleeding, a small tear, caused by gripping something sharp.

Hannah suddenly felt ice inside her.

“Don’t tell me blood makes you faint!” he said incredulously. “You’ve just been helping people with real wounds!”

She controlled herself with an effort, trying to smooth the horror out of her eyes. “No, of course not! I was just thinking . . . I don’t know what. I suppose remembering Joseph coming back. He was such a mess. I dread his having to go again. It could be worse next time.”

“Don’t think of next time.” He tried to smile at her, anxiety in his face, and gentleness. “Maybe there won’t be one. The war’s got to finish one day. It could be soon. Come on, or we’ll miss this train, too.”

The following afternoon Perth came again to see Joseph. Followed by Henry, they went out into the garden and through the gate into the orchard, partly to avoid any chance of being overheard by one of the children when they came home from school.

Perth looked tired and harassed. Joseph remembered that expression from St. John’s two years ago, and all the misery of suspicion then. Except that in St. John’s he had known that whoever had committed the crime was either one of his own students or a lecturer who was at least a colleague, more probably a friend. This time there was no such certainty. He was ashamed of how precious that relief was.

“Not much progress,” Perth said lugubriously. “But it does seem, from information given, that it’s possible Mr. Blaine was having an affair with the wife of one of his colleagues.” He gave Joseph a startlingly penetrating glance, then turned away again to watch a thrush land on the grass near one of the apple trees. “Need some rain to bring the worms up,” he added.

“And the bicycle?” Joseph asked.

Perth shook his head. “Can’t find anyone willing to say they saw it. Least not at a time that’s any use to us. We know when he must have got home, because of when he left the Establishment, and that’s certain.” He chewed his lip. “Not that Mrs. Blaine says any different. He ate his dinner. They had a quarrel about something and nothing, she says. Afterward, Blaine went outside and she stayed in and had a long bath. Nobody to prove that right or wrong. But then there likely wouldn’t be. Was after dark, so not many people out, and no one anywhere to see a lone cyclist along the lane. Which no doubt he was counting on.”

“If it was after dark, they’d have a light,” Joseph pointed out. “Only a fool would cycle along a wooded track in the dark. That’s asking to trip over a tree root or even a pothole. That lane has plenty of them. And lots of people might take a dog out for a last walk.”

Perth looked at Henry, happily rooting around in the long grass. “Don’t have a dog myself,” he said regretfully. “But you’re right. I’ll have to go and ask all the dog owners again. One fellow did see a woman on a bicycle, half a mile away from the Blaines’ house. Bit odd, though, don’t you think? Can you imagine a woman committing such a violent murder, Captain Reavley?”

“No,” Joseph said honestly. In spite of all the death he had seen, he was sickened at the thought of anyone deliberately tearing open a man’s neck with the tines of a garden fork.

Perth looked at him unhappily.

“Thing is, Captain, if he was killed by a German spy in the village, who would that be? And why Blaine rather than any of the other scientists up at the Establishment?”

“Opportunity?” Joseph suggested. “Maybe whoever it is was watching everyone, and Blaine was the first one who gave him a really good chance.”

With a sudden booming bark Henry went charging after several birds.

Perth watched him dolefully. “Doesn’t work out that way,” he argued. “Been asking around a bit, looking into who was where, and that sort of thing. Plenty of chances to kill Mr. Iliffe, if anyone wanted to. Wanders around by himself quite a lot, it seems. Goes down to his local pub of an evening, and across back through the lanes to his house after dark. Says he never thought of any danger. Same with young Morven. Could have caught him, if anyone’d been trying. Lives alone. Got a cottage out on the Haslingfield Road. Small place. Easy broke into, if you’d a mind. Could look like a burglary.”

“Then I don’t know,” Joseph admitted. “Looks as if they wanted Blaine. Mr. Corcoran told me he was the best mind in the place, brilliant and original.”

Henry came trotting back, wagging his tail. Joseph bent slightly to acknowledge him.

“Nice dog that,” Perth observed. “Always wanted one of them. So we come to the question of who knew that Mr. Blaine was so important? And another thing, why now?” He looked at Joseph with a challenge. “Why not a month ago, or next week? Chance again? I don’t like chance, Captain Reavley. I’ve found that it doesn’t play much of a role in a criminal investigation. Mostly when people commit murder, there’s a pretty big reason for it. I want to know what that reason was, and who knew about it.”

“If Blaine really was crucial to the work they’re doing . . .” Joseph said thoughtfully. “Then I imagine everyone at the Establishment would know it, and probably those immediately connected with him, such as Mrs. Blaine, and perhaps the wives of the other scientists there.”

“That says who,” Perth agreed. “And people talk. A woman would be proud of her husband. Perhaps a little rivalry, a little boasting? If there’s a spy in the village, then he’ll be listening to every bit of gossip there is. That’s his job. Still leaves the question, why now? What happened that day, or the day before?”

“Something to do with the work at the Establishment,” Joseph replied. “I suppose you’ve spoken to Mr. Corcoran?”

“Oh yes. He says they were getting very close to a breakthrough on some top secret project.”

“That’s if it was a spy, and not some personal enmity,” Joseph said.

“Exactly. And if Mr. Blaine truly was having an affair with someone, then it would likely have been nothing to do with the work.”

“Any reason to suppose he was?”

“Looks like it, Captain. Which is a pity. And seems as if Mrs. Blaine might not have been in the house, as she says she was. Could have been she was just in the bathroom like she said, and didn’t hear the telephone. Hard to say, isn’t it?” He looked around at the apple trees. “You’ll have a good crop, if the wind doesn’t get them.”

“They’re mostly cookers,” Joseph told him. “Do you actually think Blaine was having an affair? Or is that just a possibility you must consider?”

“Consider,” Perth agreed sadly. “Consider carefully. Very fond of an apple pie. Nothing to beat it, with a good drop of cream on. Have to be new to the village, this spy. Can’t see any of the old families turning a hand to such a thing. Most of them got boys up the front anyway. Been looking into who’s come here in the last couple or three years. Since about 1913, say. Not many. For example, what do you know about the vicar, Captain? You being a churchman, and all, how do you reckon him?”

Joseph was startled. It had never crossed his mind to regard Hallam Kerr as other than the kind of man who adopts the church as an occupation because he isn’t adequate to make a respectable living at any other profession. It would offer him the kind of security and social standing to which his family might well be accustomed. The fact that he was totally unsuited for it may only have become apparent after he was ordained.

“Not naturally gifted,” Perth observed wryly.

Joseph caught a flash of humor in his eyes. “No,” he agreed. “Not at all.”

“And no wife to help him, either,” Perth added. “Is that customary?”

“Not for a parish, no. But then wartime isn’t usual. The previous vicar went to Birmingham, I believe. More to do than here. And now his curate’s gone to London.” Was it even conceivable that Kerr was not the ass he appeared, but something far more sinister? It was a startlingly chilling thought because it was so unexpected.

“You’ve been a priest, Captain. In a way you still are. What’s your opinion, sir? Is Hallam Kerr good?”

Joseph was embarrassed now. Kerr irritated him, but part of that very irritation was because he was sorry for the man. Pity was an acutely uncomfortable feeling.

“He’s inadequate,” Joseph replied finally. “But what can you say or do for those you visit who are faced with unbearable suffering? Who can explain God to someone who has just lost everything they care about in a way that seems totally senseless? One shouldn’t hold Kerr accountable for his inadequacies.”

Perth shook his head. “Isn’t it a matter of degree, Captain Reavley? You can’t help it all, just some of it. Have the courage at least to look at it square, and not tell people lies, or speak to them in quotes.”

That was more perceptive than Joseph had expected and it took him aback. “Yes,” he agreed quickly. “And Kerr has a lot to learn yet, but that doesn’t mean to say he won’t.”

“No, sir, I dare say not. All the same, I think I’d like to find out a bit more about him. Where he’s from, and where he trained for the ministry, things like that. Did he know Mr. Blaine, do you know?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe you could find out, sir, without putting the wind up him, like? I’d be greatly obliged.”

In the event, Joseph was prevented from deciding when to go and see Kerr, or how to explain his visit. That evening Kerr arrived at the front door and Hannah had no acceptable alternative but to show him in to the sitting room where Joseph had been reading.

“Don’t stand up!” Kerr said quickly, holding out his hand as if to keep Joseph in his seat by force. He looked harassed and frightened. There were shadows around his eyes and a tightness in his mouth. In the morning he had probably parted his hair in the middle and plastered it down with water, but now it was dry and poked up in spikes.

“Sit down, Reverend,” Joseph invited, trying to sound at least reasonably welcoming. The man was obviously in some distress. “How are you?”

Hannah drew in her breath to offer him tea, but he was already oblivious of her. She withdrew, closing the door behind her. With a sinking heart, Joseph knew that she would not interrupt them.

“This is terrible,” Kerr replied, sitting down wearily in the chair opposite Joseph. “In a way it’s worse than war. It’s the ultimate enemy, isn’t it? Fear, suspicion, everyone imagining the worst. We aren’t united anymore. Or weren’t we ever? Was it only a comfortable delusion?”

Joseph could not find the energy to argue with him, but Perth’s words came back with a darkness that seemed more intense now. Was it really possible Kerr was a German agent or sympathizer?

“What’s happened?” he asked. In the end that was the question that mattered.

Kerr leaned forward in the chair. “One of my parishioners—I can’t reveal who, of course—told me that on the night poor Blaine was murdered, Dacy Lucas and his wife quarreled violently! It was very angry, shouting voices, both his and hers, and then he stormed out of the house and drove away.”

“People do quarrel occasionally,” Joseph replied. “It doesn’t mean a great deal.”

Kerr seemed even more agitated. “It was not a slight or usual thing,” he said urgently. “I am not married myself, but I know that women can feel neglected at times. They don’t understand the moral and ethical demands of certain callings. During wartime, scientific invention and discovery must be at the forefront of our endeavors. Perhaps it would be easier to understand if a man were in the army, but all that is irrelevant.” He jerked his hand sideways dismissively. “This quarrel—and it was a quarrel, Captain Reavley, not just a little complaint—was spoken in unmistakably violent terms.”

“I see,” Joseph said quietly, uncertain if he preferred Blaine’s murder to be ordinary sexual rage instead of a German sympathizer in the village. Perhaps he did.

“That is not all,” Kerr went on miserably. “The late Theo Blaine quarreled with his wife the same night, also very savagely. He left the house to go down to his shed in the garden, which is where he was killed. Mrs. Blaine swore that she did not leave the house, but neither did she see or hear anything at all to make her suspect something wrong. At least that is what she says.” He stared at Joseph expectantly.

Joseph sat still, wondering how Kerr knew all this. It was an old story with many possibilities, all of them sad and very predictable.

“Can that be true?” Kerr demanded, leaning forward and staring at Joseph. “Do you suppose she really saw and heard nothing?”

“I should think so.” Joseph tried to remember the Blaine house from his visit there. The shed was some distance even from the back door, let alone the front where the sitting room was, and the main bedroom faced the front as well. “If he did not cry out, there wouldn’t be much to hear. Let Inspector Perth sort it out.”

“But that’s it!” Kerr said desperately. “He doesn’t know!”

“Know?” Perth had to be aware of the proportions of the house and garden.

Kerr was exasperated. “He doesn’t know about the quarrels! I was told in the utmost confidence—by a parishioner, don’t you see?”

Joseph was familiar with parishioners’ utmost confidences. “They will have to use their judgment whether to report it to the police or not,” he said to Kerr. “You did not hear those quarrels yourself, so you have no knowledge of them. . . .”

“But I do!” Kerr protested. “The person who told me is absolutely honest. And considering the incident, distressed—I may say terrified—that there is an enemy sympathizer among us.”

“Is that fear rampant?” Joseph asked, uncertain quite what answer he wanted. Was one betrayal better or worse than the tragedy of murder by one of their own?

“Absolutely!” Kerr’s eyes opened wider. “It is horrifying to believe that one of us is actually an enemy. Surely you, of all people, must understand that? Our men are giving their lives out there in France, in terrible conditions, to save England.” He flung his arm out sharply. “And here is this person willing, even eager, to sell us to Germany by murder and treason. It’s . . . it’s so evil it defies imagination.” His cheeks were stained with pink, his eyes bright.

“And what about our spies in Germany?” Joseph asked, thinking of Perth’s suspicions. Then seeing the look on Kerr’s face, he wished instantly that he had not. The man was confused, and because he did not understand, he perceived himself to be attacked.

“I don’t know what you mean!” he protested. “Are you suggesting there is no difference between us, Captain Reavley? If that were so, why on earth would our young men be fighting and dying out there? What you are saying is manifestly ridiculous.”

“In theory there’s all the difference in the world,” Joseph said wearily. If Kerr were really a German agent as Perth had considered, then his acting skill amounted to genius. “When it comes to fact,” he went on, “the difference isn’t much more than that they are fighting against us, whereas we are fighting against them.”

“I don’t know what you mean!” Kerr repeated.

“I’m not sure that I do, either,” Joseph conceded, although it was not the truth. It was just pointless to argue. “Are you so sure that God is an Englishman? Might He not see little difference between one nationality and another, only between a man who does the best he can, and one who doesn’t?”

Kerr blinked. It was quite clear in his face that he was being presented with a vast idea that had never occurred to him before. Suddenly the simple had become savagely and impossibly complicated.

Joseph was sorry he had given the man more than he could accommodate, but he could not bring himself to say so. One thing he was convinced of: Perth was utterly wrong—Kerr was every bit the ass he seemed.

“It’s probably a domestic tragedy, just as you’re supposing,” he said quietly. Conscience demanded that he be kinder to the man. “But leave it to Perth to find out. He’s really quite capable. I’ve seen him work before. He’ll uncover the truth, but carefully, piece by piece, without error. All you can do is tell him what you know, not what other people have told you. They may be malicious, or simply mistaken, and you would unwittingly compound the injustice. If the time should ever come when you know for certain that the wrong person may be convicted, then reconsider. But we are far from that now. You can’t carry the world. Don’t try. You’ll break your back, and that won’t help anyone. Then you’ll be no use for when you are needed by the next person who requires your comfort or help.”

Kerr gulped, but his shoulders were relaxed, his hands still. “Yes,” he said, then again more firmly. “Yes, of course. You are very wise. Very fair. I’m sorry I didn’t see that at first.”

Now Joseph was ashamed for his abruptness. “I should have explained myself a little more clearly.”

Kerr stared at him. “It’s all . . . it’s so alien! Everything’s changing.”

Joseph thought that it was not so much that the world was changing as that they were being forced to see it more realistically. He did not say so. “Yes,” he agreed, feeling like a hypocrite. “I think it’s hard, one way or another, for everyone.”

Kerr was obviously still disturbed about something. “This man Perth,” he said anxiously. “He’s digging up particulars—indiscretions, old quarrels—that have nothing to do with poor Blaine’s death.” He waved his hand uselessly. “It’s like tearing the bandages off everyone’s wounds. I’ve tried, but I can’t do anything to stop him. I feel so . . . helpless! People expect me to look after them, and I can’t!”

Joseph felt a sudden, completely humble sympathy for him. “People expect too much of us altogether,” he said ruefully. “A bit like doctors. We can’t cure everything, only ease the pain a bit, and give advice which they don’t have to take.”

“I’m . . . I’m so grateful to talk to you,” Kerr said impulsively, his face pink. “This whole thing is quite dreadful. The other young men at the Establishment can’t prove where they were when Blaine was killed, either. Everyone is under suspicion. And of course they knew him. It could simply have been a personal dislike, I suppose, a rivalry or quarrel over work. Do you think?”

“It would be an easier answer for the village, if not for the war effort,” Joseph conceded. “I understand what you mean.”

“Good. Good. You’ve been very kind.” Kerr rose to his feet, satisfied. He stood straight, as if with some new sort of strength. “I’m very grateful to you, Captain. You see it all so clearly.”

Joseph did not deny it. That was a truth Kerr did not need. Joseph had made sufficient difficulties for him for one visit. After Kerr had gone, he walked outside in the garden. The spring evening was mild and close. The air was still full of gold from the lowering sun. There was no breeze to whisper in the branches of the elms, but the starlings whirled up in huge flocks, wheeling against the blue of the sky and the shredded mares’ tails of cloud glowing to the west.

He stood alone amid the burning color of the tulips, crimson and purple and hot scarlet. Kerr had been satisfied when he had finally gone, perhaps because he no longer felt alone in his responsibility. That was what Joseph had promised himself when he had first committed his life to being a chaplain in the war. He would try to do what he could for everyone, regardless of their need. He could not cure, he could not even share physical or emotional pain, but he could be there. At least he would not run away.

But had he turned away inside himself? By trying to be all things to others, had he ended being nothing to himself? He had said what he thought Kerr needed to hear. He was thinking of Kerr’s weakness, his very apparent confusion. He was doing the same for Hannah, thinking of her fear of change, of losing the familiar that was so sweet.

In all that he said and did, where was his own passion, his integrity, that part of mind or spirit that was so rooted in belief that it would anchor him no matter what storms blew? What would he live or die for? What would hold him upright if he faced the ultimate storm and there was no one else to consider, no single voice that cried “help me!” and gave him something to do, a direction to consume his thoughts so he had no time and no need to examine himself?

If he faced the silence, where was his inner strength? What color was the chameleon itself? No color at all? Nothing, except as reflected by others? That would be a kind of moral suicide, the final emptiness. Is that what he was doing to himself?

He prayed with all his heart. “Father, do I stay here and pick up the task Kerr can’t and won’t do? These are my people, too! Or do I go back to the trenches, the mud and the stench of death, and be with my men there? What do you want me to do? Help me!”

The starlings wheeled back and settled in the elms. The light was deepening, the colors in the sky growing hotter. The silence was total.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Hannah walked away slowly from the women gathered in the street around the casualty notices. There had been one man killed from Cherry Hinton, another missing from Haslingfield, but no one from St. Giles. Relief welled up inside all the people standing together. They could look each other in the eye for a while longer. There were hesitant smiles, the freedom to think of ordinary things: mending and sewing, shopping, work, the upcoming Easter weekend. But voices were quiet, hushed with the weight of knowing that just beyond that sloping hill, the copse of trees, the spire of the next village church, was the loss that next time might be here.

Hannah walked homeward slowly in the still, damp morning. The sun broke through in misty shafts, making everything silver and green, shining through the raindrops on twigs and grass heads. Some of the early blossoms had blown off and lay in white petals on the path.

She was a couple of hundred yards from the corner when she met Ben Morven coming out of the ironmongers’. He was wearing a corduroy jacket over a crisp white shirt and gray slacks. His face lit up with pleasure seeing her. It was really out of all proportion, but his smile suddenly lifted her spirits also, and she found her step lighter and a warmth inside. She remembered how he had worked at the railway station in Cambridge, the intensity of his concentration trying not to jolt the injured, to be quick and gentle, and how he had ignored his own bruises.

He fell into step beside her, matching his stride to hers.

“The news is not very good,” she said, biting her lip. “Apparently someone has been arrested bringing a vast number of guns into Ireland. As if we hadn’t enough trouble there already.”

He shook his head. “I heard. It’s insane! The last thing we need is more turmoil in Ireland! They can’t win, we can’t afford to let them! It’ll just mean more bloodshed.” He glanced around at the peaceful, almost deserted street, the tension gone, the people dispersed. A little brown dog scampered along the footpath. Two young girls stood absorbed in conversation. An old man sat in the seat near the duck pond, chewing on the stem of his pipe. The wind gusted, but it was warm to the skin.

“There’s so much bad news at the moment,” he added. “I sometimes wonder if we are all insane. Or perhaps I’ll wake up and discover it’s still 1914, and all this never happened. It’s me that’s wrong, not the rest of the world.”

“I’d like that,” she said quietly, startled by how passionately she meant it, too. “I would give anything I can think of to go back to the way it used to be. It was so . . .”

“Sane,” he said with a smile, his eyes bright and soft.

“Do you think it will ever be like that again, when the war is over?” She wanted him to say it would, even if he could not know or dared not believe.

“Yes, of course it will.” He did not hesitate and his voice was full of warmth. “We’ll make it. It may take a little time, and there’ll be so many people to look after. But we haven’t changed inside. We still believe the same things, love the same things. We’ll heal. As with any illness, the fever breaks, then we begin to get our strength back.” He gave her a quick, bright glance. “Maybe it will give us an immunity?”

She smiled; it was such a commonplace idea it made sense. “Like getting the measles, or chicken pox?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Exactly. We’ll have had a dose so strong we’ll never do it again. If you get burned badly enough, you don’t ever go near the fire in the future.”

“I like that!” she said quickly. “Then perhaps in a hideous way it would even be worth it. We would crown our folly with something so awful that future generations would learn from it. Then our price would have bought something worth having. Thank you. . . .”

He looked at her with a softness in his eyes so undisguised she was suddenly embarrassed. For the first time it was impossible for her to mistake his thoughts.

The moment broke with a shriek of outrage twenty yards up the street and Hannah was so startled she froze, the blood hot in her face.

Ben jerked around and stared.

Mrs. Oundle, a very large lady in a green dress, was standing outside the butcher’s shop clutching a torn piece of paper, and the brown dog was racing across the road with a brace of lamb chops in his mouth.

The old man on the bench stood up and reached out to stop the dog, who veered sideways, splashing through the water and soaking the man. Mrs. Oundle was still shrieking.

The butcher came out to see what the trouble was and she rounded on him furiously. Two little boys hopped up and down in glee, then, when Mrs. Oundle saw them, turned and fled, boots clattering on the pavement.

Hannah tried to stifle her laughter and totally failed.

The dog dropped the chops in the water and started to bark.

Ben doubled over, tears of delight running down his cheeks.

Mrs. Oundle and the butcher both got angrier and angrier, but it was no use at all, Hannah was incapable of stopping laughing, either. All the fear and misery exploded inside her in a glorious release of hilarity, and in the sheer joy of sharing it with someone else who saw the divine absurdity of it in exactly the same way as she did. There was no point in even trying to apologize to Mrs. Oundle. For a start, she was not sorry, and everyone could see that. On the contrary, she was supremely grateful for the sane absurdity of it.

She took Ben’s arm and they turned away, still laughing.

The brown dog was ducky-diving in the pond to find his chops and Mrs. Oundle and the butcher were sizing each other up to decide who was to blame, when Ben left Hannah at her gate where Joseph was pulling weeds, one-handed, in the garden.

He spoke briefly to Ben, then followed Hannah inside to the kitchen.

“Tea?” she asked, still smiling. “Thank you for doing the weeding.” She filled the kettle under the tap.

“It’s my garden,” Joseph replied.

She froze. It was an extraordinary remark. She turned around slowly to face him. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, his sleeve was rolled up, his good arm slightly scratched and stained with mud and the green sap of grasses.

“Why did you say that?” she asked. “I know perfectly well that this is your house. When the war is over, and you come back here, I shall return to Portsmouth, or wherever Archie . . . if he is still alive . . . is posted. Or are you saying that you are going to stay here, and you want it back now?”

He blushed. “No, of course I’m not. I meant it’s fair that I do something of the work to keep it up, while I’m here. And even if I do stay, it’s still your home for as long as you want it to be.”

“But you might stay?” she asked eagerly, ignoring the fact that something had obviously angered him.

“I don’t know.” His expression was deeply unhappy.

“You don’t have to decide today,” she tried to comfort him. “It will be another three or four weeks before your arm is completely better.”

“I know.” None of the misery left his face.

“Why are you so angry?” she asked. “Is it the Irish news? Do you really think there’ll be war there, too?”

“No, it’s not the Irish news,” he replied. “Hannah, that young man is falling in love with you, and don’t pretend you don’t know it. That would be unworthy of you.”

She felt the blood scald up her face. Yesterday she could have denied it, but today it was impossible. She felt intruded upon. Joseph had no right to enter that part of her life. It was not only embarrassment that burned in her but anger.

“I didn’t deny it!” she snapped at him. “How dare you accuse me like that, of something I haven’t done. I said nothing to you about it because it is none of your business.”

He did not flinch, as if he had expected her to react exactly as she had. It added insult to the turmoil of feelings inside her.

“Is that as honest as you can be, Hannah?” he asked. “You are afraid something will happen to Archie, so you are allowing yourself to care for someone safe, and letting him care for you. I understand fear, and loss, but that doesn’t make it right.”

Her temper snapped. All the loneliness, tension, and fear, the sense of exclusion tumbled out of the tight repression in which she had kept it.

“No, you don’t!” she said savagely. “You don’t understand the waiting, the being shut out. You don’t understand having to pretend it doesn’t hurt all the time so you protect your children. You don’t understand being a family for a few days, and then being on your own, then having a family again, and then wondering if it’s for the last time. When it goes one way or the other, you can begin to recover from it, but this never lets you get used to anything!” She drew in a shivering breath, still glaring at him. “I hate all the changes! I don’t want women bank managers, women police, women taxi drivers, and I don’t want to be able to vote for members of Parliament. I want to do what women have always done, be a wife to my husband and a mother to my children! I hate uncertainty, anger, fighting, destroying everything we used to value.”

“I know.” His face was bleak and very pale. “I don’t like it much myself. I think a lot of people who make the best of it do so because they have no choice. You can be dragged into the future, kicking like a child, or you can walk in upright and with some dignity. That’s almost all the choice you’ve got.”

“You sound pompous, Joseph. This is just about Ben Morven being a little in love with me,” she responded. She knew Joseph despised pomposity. She ached for the warmth and the brightness of being cared for, that softness in Ben Morven’s eyes when he looked at her. It gave her hope that even if Archie were killed, there was still someone who could love her. She had put words to it at last—if Archie were killed. It was like a miniature death just to think it.

Joseph leaned back a little against the kitchen table, easing the weight from his damaged leg. “Is that how you would explain it to Tom?” he asked.

“That is horribly unfair! Tom is fourteen!” she protested. “He has no idea. . . .” She stopped. Joseph was standing there with his eyes wide, his dark eyebrows raised a little. She felt her face burn.

“Really?” he asked with surprise.

She turned around and marched out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

Jenny was standing in the hall, her face solemn. “Are you cross with Uncle Joseph?” she asked seriously. “Because he has to go back to the war again and leave us?”

Hannah was taken aback. “No. No of course not. . . .”

“We’ll look after you, Mummy. I’ll help more. I won’t make a mess in my room. And I’ll make my bed.”

Hannah wanted to weep, and hug Jenny so hard she might even hurt her. The passion inside her was too much, but she must control herself, or she could frighten Jenny. She was a child. She would not be afraid so long as Hannah herself was not. It all depended upon her. That was the trouble, it was always the trouble, and Joseph did not understand.

“You help a lot already,” she said, making herself smile. “I was just upset because of something that happened in the village. Uncle Joseph was telling me I did the wrong thing, and I was cross with him because I don’t like to be told I’m wrong, especially when I am. And Uncle Joseph isn’t going back to the war for a long time yet, maybe not at all. He isn’t well enough.”

“Is he going to get well? Margaret’s daddy isn’t going to get well. She says he was gassed, and he’ll always be sick.”

She touched Jenny’s hair, pushing it out of her eyes automatically. It was too soft to stay in grips.

“That’s terrible. But it isn’t what happened to Uncle Joseph. He will get well, just not for a while yet. Perhaps you could help out by making him a cup of tea. Let him put the kettle on, and you get out the pot for him. I need to go out quickly, just for a little while.”

“Are you coming back?”

“Yes, of course I am! Tell Uncle Joseph I’ve gone to put it right.”

“What right?”

“He’ll know.”

It was an extraordinarily difficult thing to do because she knew she had been guilty of deceit, both of Ben and of herself. Several times she hesitated, actually stopping on the footpath, wondering if she was ridiculous to seek him out at the tearoom where she knew he would be having an early lunch, perhaps not even alone. Was she making more out of a glance than he had ever meant? Would she end up embarrassing herself even more? It would be far easier simply to let it go until the next time they happened to meet.

That would probably be at church tomorrow, and that was the last place to have the sort of conversation she needed to. How could she be brief, honest, and retain some dignity for both of them? She should leave it until the opportunity arose by itself. Which could be a week from now!

She reached the tearoom and stopped outside. The sun was winking on mullioned windows and there was a black and white cat basking on the sill inside. She could go in and buy something for Joseph, and still change her mind. A chocolate cake to have with dinner?

She pushed the door open. It was noisy, cheerful. Half a dozen couples were there already eating sandwiches and talking. She saw Ben at a table with another man, a few years older, perhaps in his middle thirties. That was the perfect excuse to avoid the whole issue. She could not possibly raise the issue in front of his friend.

She walked to the counter and smiled at Mrs. Bateman. She had known her for as long as she could remember.

“Afternoon, Miss Hannah,” she said cheerfully. “Chocolate cake, is it, for Mr. Joseph?” Without waiting for a reply she disappeared to go to the kitchen, leaving Hannah alone at the counter.

The next moment Ben was behind her. “Are you all right?” he said gently. “You look . . .” He could not find a tactful word.

“Flustered,” she supplied for him, meeting his eyes, then wishing she had not. The warmth was still there, all the possibilities she was willing and afraid to see. Now was the moment. “I am,” she answered. “I realized that I behaved rather badly an hour ago when poor Mrs. Oundle lost her chops.”

He grinned broadly. “So did I! I haven’t seen anything so funny in months, and I needed to laugh. Do you think we should apologize to her? Or would that only make it worse? There are some things you need to pretend didn’t happen, or at least that you didn’t see.”

“Since we doubled up and howled with laughter, I don’t think that’s going to work,” she answered. “But actually that wasn’t what I meant.”

He looked puzzled.

She hurried on before he could say something that would make it impossible for her. How on earth could she do this without sounding awkward, humorless, and incredibly arrogant? The only recourse was to be honest. She looked at him steadily, seeing in his face both the intelligence and the capacity for pain. “I’ve been behaving as if I were not married, and I am,” she said quietly. “I’m very married, and I love my husband. I just miss him a great deal when he’s away, and I’ve forgotten how to behave properly. I owe you an apology for that, and I am sorry.”

The color bleached from his skin, leaving the freckles standing out. “I see.” His voice was husky. “Yes, of course you are . . . married, I mean.”

She knew she had hurt him, and despised herself for it. How incredibly, contemptibly selfish. Whatever Ben felt for her, it was mild compared with the disgust she felt for herself.

Mrs. Bateman returned with the large chocolate cake. “There y’are, Miss Hannah. You tell Mr. Joseph it’s the best Oi’ve got, an’ it’s on the house.”

“I can’t do that!” she protested. “I’ll . . .”

“You’ll take it,” Mrs. Bateman said with a satisfied smile. “If Mr. Joseph won’t accept it from me, then let ’im bring it back an’ say so to me face. He’ll not do it, Oi’ll wager. Whole village thinks the world of ’im, Miss Hannah. You tell him that. Now, Mr. Morven, what can Oi get for you, sir?”

Joseph accepted the cake. He knew Mrs. Bateman had an excellent kitchen, and it was her pleasure to give away the best now and then. It was her way of marking her respect for certain favorites. It would hurt her to have refused.

It was a warm, comfortable evening. Hannah said nothing, but he knew from the direct gaze she gave him, and the very slight, rueful smile that she had faced her problem, and dealt with it.

But later, alone in his room, he lay awake, conscious of how abrupt he had been with her, and how sure of himself when he had not even considered what might lie ahead for her. What if Archie were one of the thousands who would not come back from the sea?

She had accused him of being pompous. Was she simply lashing out with the charge she knew would hurt him most? Or was she right? Was he a hollow man, criticizing where he had not walked? How much life and love was there inside him? Was he judging a passion he had forgotten how to feel, a warmth and a hunger he had lost?

He had been so busy trying to answer other people’s needs that he had stifled his own. And without that ache of life, the vulnerability to hurt, what understanding did he have of any of it? Or of anybody who had the courage to be all they could, to be hollowed out by joy and pain into a vessel big enough to hold all of life?

Coward was a terrible word, the ugliest known to a soldier—and perhaps if they were honest, anyone at all. He was accustomed to the reality of courage in the trenches, what it cost a man to face misery daily, to see his friends blown apart and so much torn flesh they were barely recognizable as having once been men. And he had seen them do it with dignity and quiet, self-effacing humor.

What courage had he? The courage to face other people’s wounds, but not to risk sustaining them himself?

No, that was unfair. He was hurt by their pain. He realized with shock just how much he dreaded going back to Flanders. For over a week now he had avoided even thinking about it. His mind had been filled with the need for him here, among his own people, in the village where he was born, and the incumbent priest was useless.

He fell asleep still troubled, not liking himself much.

On Saturday Joseph was invited to dinner with Shanley and Orla Corcoran. Hannah had been invited also, but more as a courtesy than with the belief that she would come. She had a previous commitment to take the children to a party in the village.

“I have no way to get to you,” Joseph protested.

“Lizzie Blaine will come for you,” Corcoran replied. “She has a friend to visit a mile or so away from us, and will be happy to do it.”

So Joseph accepted. He wrapped the pewter goblet carefully, making it as tidy and elegant as he could, and took it with him. He was excited at the thought of Corcoran’s pleasure when he saw it.

Lizzie arrived at exactly the time she had said, and he got into the car. It was a utilitarian Model T Ford that reminded him sharply of the one Judith had driven with such reckless pleasure before the war. He mentioned it to her as they set off.

“Your sister?” she said with interest. “Is she the one who drives an ambulance in Flanders now?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve thought of that. I should try to do something really useful. Take my mind off myself for a while.” She said it with a small, rueful gesture. “What sort of qualifications would I need?”

“Are you sure it’s what you want?” he asked, looking sideways at her face, as she stared through the windscreen intent on the road ahead. She was not a pretty woman but there was a kind of individuality and intelligence in her that he liked. Her nose was a little crooked and too long for beauty. Her eyes were very clear blue, in spite of her dark hair. She looked less numb than she had when he first met her, the day of her husband’s death, but she must still be suffering a bitter bereavement. It was simply that the pain had settled deeper and she had managed some fragile mask to hide the surface.

Was she also feeling passionately betrayed? Was that why she wanted now to go to France and lose herself in the war? That was not a good reason to go. Injured men needed someone who wanted to live, whose mind was free to give wholly to the job of getting them back to hospitals, and help.

They turned off the village street onto the road toward Madingley. The fields were hazed with green and an old man, shoulders bent, led weary horses along the lane to the Nunns’ farm.

“You should think about it a little longer,” Joseph advised. “Wait at least until you have had a chance to heal a little from your loss. You are still shocked now.”

“You think it will get better?” Lizzie said wryly, glancing at him for an instant, then back at the road. “Are all the ambulance drivers in France calm and comfortable inside? None of those girls have lost husbands, brothers, or fiancés?” She swerved around a pothole in the road. “Haven’t you lost people you cared about? Did they send you home?”

Of course it was preposterous. You cared about the men you were with. No one who had not been there could understand the friendships in the trenches, the sharing of everything: food, body warmth, dreams, letters from home, jokes, terror, secrets you would have told no one else, perhaps even life’s blood. The bond was unique, fierce, and lifelong. There were ways in which no one else would ever be so close, memories that locked you together beyond words.

He thought of Sam Wetherall, and for a moment a pain of loss engulfed him like a fire burning out everything else. It was as if it had been only yesterday that they had sat in the dugout together and talked about Eldon Prentice, and shared the last of Sam’s chocolate biscuits. He could still smell the Flanders earth, slick, wet clay, and the latrines, and the odor of death that got into everything.

“No, they don’t send us home,” he answered her. “And sometimes when we’ve lost someone particularly close, or made mistakes, got too tired to think, someone else pays for it. But we don’t deliberately start out too bruised to care.”

She smiled faintly. “You’re very blunt.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I prefer it that way. That policeman doesn’t seem to have any idea yet who killed Theo, you know.”

“He will, but it could take time.”

A weasel ran across the road, sleek and bright. She braked a little, then accelerated again. “You knew him before, didn’t you.” That was more of a statement than a question.

He was surprised. “Yes. A friend of mine was murdered, just before the war.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”

“Yes, it was. But Perth’s a good man.”

She was driving with unconscious skill, as if she loved the feel of the control and the power. It sat easily with her; there was no rushing, no arrogance. Her hands were relaxed on the wheel. She would be a good ambulance driver, if she was not too angry and too hurt to give herself to it.

“I knew he was having an affair with Penny Lucas,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure how. I’m not even sure if it was partly my fault.”

His mind wheeled around thoughts of Hannah, and Judith, and then other people he had known; love, envy, loneliness, the need to know beyond question that you mattered to someone. Relationships were complicated, full of hungers so intense they overrode all wisdom and understanding of morality and loss.

He should have been gentler with Hannah. What had crippled his imagination so badly that he had allowed himself to be angry with her? “How could it be your fault?” he asked.

Lizzie kept her eyes on the road. “I don’t know. Sometimes I wish life could be as it used to, but part of me is excited by the changes, the new possibilities opening up. I’ve always just waited on Theo.” Her face was motionless in the evening sunlight. “He was truly brilliant, you know, perhaps one of the best scientists we’ve ever had. It’s not just me who’s lost him, it’s Britain, maybe the whole world. But in a way now I can be me.” A wobbly smile touched her lips. “I’ve got to. I no longer have him to look after anymore.” She blinked back sudden tears. “What I mean is, perhaps I wasn’t doing it so well anyway.”

He believed her. She was filled with regret, and her determination was a balance between fear and hope, and a mask for the pain too deep to face.

Had she loved Theo enough to be passionately jealous? He did not want to consider even the possibility. But he had been wrong before. Other people he had cared about, loved, and known far better than he knew her, had had the courage, the violence, and the moment’s unreasoning fire inside them to be blinded to the values of eternity and see only the need of the moment—and kill.

There was death and bereavement all around them. Casualty lists were posted every day. How easy was it to think of France, only twenty miles across the Channel, and keep sanity untainted here?

“Wait until Perth has solved it and you’ve had a little time to get your strength and make a firm decision,” he said to her.

She smiled and took a deep breath, reaching for a handkerchief in her pocket. She was too busy trying to master herself to repeat her thanks.

They were almost at the Corcorans’ house and they did not speak again until arranging what time she should return to take him home.

The visit was just what Joseph needed: the warmth of welcome, the familiar rooms with their memories of the past, old pictures, old books, chairs that were long worn into the shape that held his body. The French doors were open to birdsong in the garden, even though the air was growing cooler. There was a comfort about it all that put mistakes in perspective.

Corcoran was delighted with the goblet. He held it up to let the light play on its satin surface. The beauty of the gift captivated him, but far more than that was the fact that Joseph had chosen it and given it to him. He set it in the middle of the dinner table and his eyes kept going toward it.

Over dinner with Corcoran’s wife, Orla, they talked of matters other than war and tragedy: timeless ideas and the beauty of poetry, music, and fine art that outlasted the storms of history.

Afterward, Orla excused herself, and Joseph and Corcoran sat alone in the twilight. At last they turned to the matters of the present.

“You must have known Theo Blaine quite well,” Joseph said almost casually. “Did you like him?”

Corcoran looked surprised. “Actually I did. He had a very pure enthusiasm it was impossible not to like.”

“Was he really one of the best scientists in England?”

A slight shadow passed over Corcoran’s face, hardly more than a change in his eyes. “Yes, I have no doubt he was, or at least he could have been. He had some distance yet to mature and realize his full potential. Certainly he was remarkable. But don’t worry, Joseph. We will finish our project even without him. He is not indispensable.”

“Do you think it was a German spy or sympathizer who killed him?”

Corcoran chewed his lip. “The more I consider that possibility, the less certain I am. At first I assumed, because of the work we were doing, that it had to be. Now I am beginning to remember that as well as being a superb mind he was also a young man, with a young man’s appetites and occasionally an impractical way of looking at things, and particularly at people.”

Joseph smiled in spite of himself. “Is that a euphemistic way of saying that he ignored other people’s feelings? Like, possibly, his wife’s? Or those of Dacy Lucas?”

Corcoran’s eyes widened. “You know about that?”

“I’ve heard. Was he self-centered?”

“I suppose so. A lot of young men are, in that area of their lives. And I think Mrs. Lucas is a headstrong woman, perhaps a trifle bored with being the wife of a man devoted to his work, in which she has no part, and very little understanding.” He shook his head. “She has a hot temper, and I think considerable appetite, at least for admiration.” His face puckered. “I’m truly sorry about it, Joseph. Sometimes we ask a great deal of people, and we forget that even highly talented individuals may have the same human weaknesses and needs as the rest of us.”

“Shanley, are you speaking of Theo Blaine, or of Mrs. Lucas? Or Dacy Lucas?”

“Or Lizzie Blaine,” Corcoran added wryly. “I really have no idea. And to be honest, I prefer not to. I don’t want to look at the people I know and like—and think such things of them.” His mouth twisted a little. “Perth told me that a woman was seen on a bicycle about half a mile from Blaine’s house, and there were bicycle tire marks in the damp earth of the path along the back. I wouldn’t like to think that it was Mrs. Lucas. That would be terrible. Although I suppose I have to admit that it is possible.”

“Why would she kill Blaine? She had nothing to be jealous of. If she wished to end the affair then she could have done it,” Joseph reasoned.

“Perhaps she didn’t wish to,” Corcoran responded, looking at Joseph with a patient smile. “Maybe he did?”

Joseph realized the obviousness of that now, but the thought was ugly. “And kill him?” he protested. “That seems . . .”

“A very violent passion,” Corcoran observed. “Of course it does. Insane to you or me. Very probably it was a German spy. I rather hope so. That resolution would be infinitely preferable to revealing the murderer as someone I know and probably like.”

“Did you know about his affair before?” Joseph asked.

Corcoran spread his hands in half apology. “I chose not to look, but I suppose I was aware.” Guilt creased his face. “Do you think I should have intervened somehow?”

Joseph drew in breath to say that he should, then changed his mind. “I don’t know. It probably would have looked more like interfering than the warning of friendship. I doubt it would have stopped him.”

“I could hardly threaten to dismiss him,” Corcoran said ruefully. “His genius put him above such law, and he knew it.”

“And whoever killed him?” Joseph asked, then almost instantly wished he had bitten the words into silence. Would Corcoran protect a man, even from payment for murder, if his brain were needed to finish a project that might be crucial to the war?

“Don’t ask me, Joseph,” Corcoran replied quietly. “I don’t know. Do the ordinary laws of society apply to men like Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, or geniuses of the spirit like da Vinci or Beethoven? Would I have saved Rembrandt or Vermeer from the gallows, if they had warranted it? Or Shakespeare or Dante, or Homer? Yes—probably. Wouldn’t you?”

Joseph had no answer to offer. Did you weigh one gift against another, count the price in other people’s lives, innocent people, make judgments? He refused to think whether such a thing had been necessary, or would yet be. Shanley Corcoran had no more idea than he had who had killed Theo Blaine.

He smiled, and they indulged in a pleasant debate as to who was the greater, Beethoven or Mozart. Corcoran always favored the lyrical clarity of Mozart, Joseph the turbulent passion of Beethoven. It was a conversation they had had before, more times than they could count, and it was a sort of game.

When Lizzie Blaine returned, it was already half past ten, and of course Corcoran had to be up in the morning and at his office in the Establishment. Only then did Joseph realize how tired his old friend must be. He moved slowly and as he walked with Joseph to the door, there was a dry, papery look to the skin around his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said, ashamed of the time he had taken up. He should have said at the outset that he would leave earlier, and asked Lizzie Blaine to come before ten.

“My dear boy, it has been delightful to see you. No matter what work there is to do, even I am allowed a little self-indulgence now and then. A few hours of doing what you wish restores the spirits and gives you strength to resume. I am the better for seeing you, I assure you.”

Joseph thanked Orla as well, and then went out into the darkness with Lizzie. Within moments they were motoring back toward St. Giles.

“He looks terribly tired,” Lizzie said after a while. The nighttime road did not seem to disconcert her at all. The overhanging hedgerows, tilting camber, and heavily overgrown verges made her hesitate no more than the bright bars of moonlight on the smooth tarmac of the stretches between.

“Yes, he was,” Joseph agreed, recalling now the strain in Corcoran’s face in repose, the tension in his hands, usually so relaxed. “It must be hard for him to carry the extra load. Your husband’s loss is very great.”

“Does he think it was Germans?” she asked quickly.

He did not know how to answer. What should he say to hurt her the least, and yet still be honest? “Do you think the Germans would pick on him particularly, more than Iliffe, Lucas, or Morven—or Corcoran himself?”

“Theo was the most original thinker. He would come up with something that seemed crazy at first, completely unrelated, then after a moment or two you could see that it was just sideways, not the way you’d been thinking. He could turn things inside out and show you a new sense to them.”

Joseph was surprised. “He talked about his work to you?” He tried not to sound incredulous.

“No, but I knew him pretty well. Or at least part of him,” she corrected herself and then paused in reflection. “You should have seen him play charades. It sounds ridiculous now. He used to invent the wildest clues, but once you caught on to what they were, they made perfect sense. He loved the Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs. And Edward Lear’s nonsense verses. He could recite Lewis Carroll’s ‘Hunting of the Snark,’ from beginning to end. Carroll was a mathematician, too, or I suppose I should say Charles Dodgson was. Theo loved mathematics. He got excited about it, the way I would about really beautiful poetry.” She stopped abruptly.

Joseph was aware with pain how very much she had loved him. Perhaps she was realizing it, too, in spite of all the effort to pretend otherwise. She was staring ahead of her, blinking hard, leaning forward a little as if the moonlight on the road dazzled her.

Of course she would never replace him, no matter what she said. He left an abyss that would remain unfilled. Would he leave such an emptiness for Corcoran, too, professionally? That was the fear that gnawed inside Joseph’s mind like an ache in the bone. Was it nothing to do with anybody’s love affair, loyalty, or betrayal, but a simple matter of an enemy somewhere in their midst? Was there someone, unsuspected, clever enough to have killed the one man capable of inventing a machine that would change the war? What was one woman’s widowhood compared with that? A small, terrible fraction of a whole that stretched on unimaginably.

He must think about it more. He knew the village and its people in a way Perth never would. He would not only hear the whispers but he would understand them. Passive goodwill was not enough.

They arrived back in St. Giles and as they drew up Joseph recognized Hallam Kerr’s Ford parked outside the house. The lights were on in the hall and sitting room in spite of the hour.

Joseph glanced at Lizzie. She was looking at him, understanding the sudden leap of anxiety in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said with more sincerity than his haste suggested. He did not even know what he was afraid of, but Kerr would not be here, or Hannah still up, unless there was something deeply wrong. He leaned over and opened the door with his good hand.

“Good night,” she answered as his feet crunched on the gravel.

Hannah and Kerr were in the sitting room and both whirled around where they stood, their faces white, eyes hollow and wide, as if they did not know how to blink.

“What is it?” Joseph demanded, his heart pounding, breath choking him. “What’s happened?” He was terrified it was Archie.

Hannah came to him quickly, and something in the very fact that she moved dispelled a little of his fear. “What’s happened?” he demanded again, his voice rising.

“Joseph, a ship went down today. Gwen Neave’s sons were on it—both of them. She’s lost everyone she has!”

Joseph touched Hannah’s arm with his good hand, and looked beyond her to Kerr. “Have you been to see her?” he asked with compassion.

“I can’t! For God’s sake, what can I say to her?” Kerr’s voice strangled in his throat. “Tell her there’s a God who’s in charge of this . . . this”—he swung his arm around in a gesture of despair—“parody of life?” He was out of control, teetering on the edge of hysteria. There was a desperation in his eyes as if he were seeking an escape he could not find.

Joseph turned to Hannah. “I know it’s late, but would you get a cup of tea, please.” He did not want the tea so much as an excuse for asking her to leave. He closed the door behind her when she did, then turned to Kerr.

“I can’t!” Kerr said again, his voice rising thin and sharp. “What use am I to her? Do you want me to go into her home, in her time of terrible grief, and offer her hollow platitudes?” Now he was angry, lashing out at Joseph. “What do you suggest I say, Captain? That they’ll all meet up again in the Resurrection? Have faith, God loves you, perhaps? Does he?” he accused. “Look me in the face, Captain Reavley, and tell me you believe in God!”

He waved his hands again. “If you can do that, then tell me what He’s like, where He is, and why the hell He allows this to happen. We’re all facing inconceivable loss, and the world’s gone mad! It’s the destruction of everything. It’s an insult to the reality of other people’s pain to mouth meaningless words at them. They need hope, and I haven’t any to give them.”

Joseph thought of the warmth and vitality of Shanley Corcoran, of his will to pick up the pieces of Theo Blaine’s job and work day and night to try to put it together, and complete it as he would have if he had lived. He would keep on through exhaustion, defeat, grief, even fear of failure, and perhaps uglier than that, fear of the same man who had killed Blaine coming after him, too. He never considered the possibility of stopping or giving up.

By contrast, here was sniveling Hallam Kerr.

“Then stop thinking about what you know or believe,” Joseph replied tersely, hearing the anger in his voice like a slap to the face. “Think about what you can say to help Gwen Neave. She’s a widow who has just learned that she’s also lost both her sons. She’s your job, not your fear or doubts. And she needs you now, tonight, not when you think you’re ready to go.”

Kerr’s face was gray, his eyes lifeless. “I can’t go,” he said flatly. “If I try telling her to have faith, lean on God, she’ll know I’m lying.” There was open rage in him now. “I don’t think there is a God, not one I can worship. He may have created the universe—I have no idea and I really don’t care. If He exists, He has no love for us, or else it’s all spun out of control, and He is as incapable of doing anything about it as we are. Perhaps he’s just as lost and frightened as the rest of us, don’t you think, Captain?”

He stared at Joseph as if seeing him clearly for the first time, his eyes wide and hectic. “You told me vividly what it’s like in the trenches—not some propaganda from newspapers and recruiting posters about heroes fighting to save us. That’s what I used to think, but you showed me it’s a lie. The truth is that it’s hunger and cold, filthy food, rats, and at the end of it a slow, hideous death. Perhaps there won’t even be enough of you left to bury.” He gasped in his breath. “Or worse than that, half of you alive, armless and legless, hearing the screaming going on even when you’re asleep, feeling the mud suck you down, and the rats’ feet run over your face.”

He was swaying a little, his skin was white. “You see I’ve been listening to some of the other wounded men in the hospital, as you told me to. Do you still think there’s a God in control of all this, then?” He started to laugh, a jerky, obscene sound on the edge of weeping. “Or did the devil win after all?”

Joseph studied the anguish in Kerr’s eyes, the fury and despair, the knowledge that he was falling into an abyss that had no bottom, and he was helpless to stop it.

“I’ve no idea,” Joseph replied bluntly. “But I know whose side I’m on. And it’s about time you made up your mind. War isn’t a new invention, nor is death, or doubt. Think of the centuries of admirable men and women before us. Do you suppose they had some certainty that stopped them doubting, or kept them from being terrified and thinking they were abandoned?”

“I . . . I . . .” Kerr shook his head in confusion.

“For God’s sake!” Joseph’s voice was growing louder. “They were just as lost as we are! The difference is that they didn’t give up! And it’s the only difference!”

Kerr kept on shaking his head and staggered backward, collapsing into the big chair by the fireplace, hands flapping. “I . . . can’t! I could recite all the things I’m supposed to say, but they’re just words. They mean nothing. I mean nothing, and she’ll know that. I’m a failure, but I refuse to be a hypocrite.”

“Who cares what you are?” Joseph shouted at him. “She’s the one who matters tonight, not you! Just be there!”

But Kerr bent over, his face in his hands, nothing in him moving.

“Then drive me there,” Joseph ordered him. “If that’s what you want, I’ll go.”

“I can’t face her,” Kerr was speaking through his clenched hands, knuckles white. “God didn’t create us, we created Him, out of our own terror of being alone. I can’t say that to her.”

“I just asked you to drive the damn car!” Joseph snarled.

The door opened behind him and Hannah came in. She had not bothered with the tea. “I’ll look after him,” she said quietly. “You’ll have to go and see Mrs. Neave, Joseph. She needs you every bit as much as you needed her when you were frightened and in pain.”

“How do I get there?” he said helplessly. His arm ached and his leg was pounding. He was so tired he was dizzy.

“I went after Lizzie Blaine. She’s waiting for you,” Hannah answered.

There was no excuse left, and he did not really want one. He would not sleep anyway. Perhaps being with Gwen Neave would be only marginally harder than staying and trying to pull Hallam Kerr out of the morass he had sunk into. Doubt was not a sin; intelligence demanded it now and again. He had just picked a damned selfish time to let it overtake him.

Lizzie Blaine was sitting in the car waiting for him, the engine running. He got in and thanked her. He was already half ashamed of himself for being so harsh with Kerr. He had seen shell shock in men in the trenches, and pitied it. Perhaps Kerr was suffering a kind of religious shell shock, spirituality stunned by too much challenge to a faith that had been slender at the best of times.

Lizzie did not speak. Perhaps she was too bitterly acquainted with grief to feel any need to make conversation. It was an odd, wordless companionship they shared driving through the lanes. The moon was now hidden by cloud, and the headlamps swept hedges and tree trunks as they careered around corners. Cottages were dark and beasts silent in the fields. Once an owl swooped low and large, gone again almost before its short body and huge wing span identified it.

They pulled up outside Gwen Neave’s house, along the road toward Cambridge. The blinds were drawn here, too, but there was light around the edges.

“I’ll come in and make tea, or something, if you like,” Lizzie offered. “Tidy up, whatever’s needed. I can stay the night with her, if she wants me to. You can’t do that.”

He smiled at her. Whatever madness had made Theo Blaine begin an affair with another woman? Who knew why anyone fell in love? Who knew why one person would betray another, or a belief, a nation?

“Thank you,” he accepted. “She might feel better if you do. We’ll . . . we’ll see.” It was time to move. There was no point whatever in putting it off. This was always a kind of hell. He undid the door with his good hand and eased himself out before Lizzie could come around and open it for him. He walked up to the front door and knocked.

It was several moments before it was opened, then Gwen Neave stood there like a ghost, a woman from whom life had departed. There was no recognition in her eyes.

“Joseph Reavley,” he said quietly. “Broken arm and shell injury in my leg. You looked after me in the hospital in Cambridge when I first came back from Ypres, about four weeks ago. You were there every time I woke up, always knowing what I needed. I wish I could do as much for you, but if you would like me to stay, to talk a little, or not, I’m here.”

“Oh . . . yes.” Her voice was hoarse, the words hard to form. “I remember you. A chaplain . . . weren’t you?” She stepped back a little.

“I still am,” he answered, following her in. “Mrs. Blaine drove me. Can she do anything to help . . . practical, perhaps? I’m afraid I’m still rather useless.”

She backed farther in toward the sitting room, but with a blank look as if she had not understood him. Lizzie followed, but went toward where she assumed the kitchen must be.

“Chaplain . . .” Gwen Neave responded. “I’m not sure that I want . . .” There was fear in her face, as if she thought he would start telling her something unbearable.

“It’s irrelevant,” he said. “Just to help you place me. You must have so many patients.”

“Military Cross.” She stared at him. “For bringing injured men back from no-man’s-land. I remember you.” She sat down, not so much in any kind of ease but simply because she was losing both her balance and her strength to remain standing.

What on earth could he say? This proud woman who had helped so many men in their extremity of physical distress, perhaps even death, did not want platitudes about suffering or resurrection. She must have heard it all. She might not even be a Christian, for all he knew. It would be a presumption of extraordinary insensitivity to start speaking as if she were. No words had helped him in the first shock of Eleanor’s death. There was only a vast, aching hole inside him where there had been light and love just a few hours before. What had he wanted to hear, to say? Nothing comforting, nothing prepared and necessarily impersonal. Other deaths had not mattered to him. Only Eleanor’s was real, eating into his heart. He wanted to talk about her, as if it kept her close and real a little longer.

“Tell me about your sons,” he asked her. “My brother-in-law is at sea, on a destroyer. For all the hardship and the danger, there’s a part of him that wouldn’t do anything else. The sea has a kind of magic for him.”

She blinked. “Eric was like that. He had a toy boat he sailed in the village pond when he was little. He had very fair hair, straight as stair rods. It flopped up and down on his head when he jumped with excitement. His father used to rig his boat for him and put it in the water, and when the wind caught it, it went right to the other side. Terrified the ducks.”

There was a moment’s agonized silence, then she went on, memories crowding her mind, falling over each other as she found words for them. Lizzie brought tea in and after she departed, Gwen continued to explore the terrible wounds of her love.

Then at last she could cry. She bent over, great wrenching sobs of raw, tearing loss for her children who were gone. Joseph said nothing, but very gently knelt on the floor, awkwardly because of his injured leg, and held her with his good arm.

When finally she was exhausted and pulled away, he was too cramped to be able to move.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Here. I’ll help you up. No! Don’t do that, you’ll make it worse!” Expertly, accustomed to helping injured men, she eased him to a sitting position.

“Thank you,” he said again. “A good thing one of us is competent. Would you like Mrs. Blaine to stay with you? She will if you wish, if you’d rather not be alone.”

“Oh God! Didn’t the poor woman just lose her husband?” She was aghast.

“Yes. But she’ll stay, if you like.”

“Do you know who did it yet?”

“No. They’re still looking.”

“I saw him . . . I think.” She frowned. “I’d been to see Mrs. Palfrey. She lost her brother a month ago. Posted missing. I saw the man just on the edge of the woods, in the dark. He had a pale coat on. At first, I thought it was a woman, then he relieved himself, so I knew it was a man.”

He was stunned. “With a bicycle? A woman’s bicycle, coming from the track past the Blaines’ house?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It was very late. It must have been . . . after . . .” She stopped. “Does Mrs. Blaine want to stay?” she whispered. “I’d rather be alone, but if she . . .”

“No, I don’t think so,” he answered. “She just offered. If you want to talk again, or I can do anything for you, let Mrs. MacAllister know, and I’ll be here.”

“Thank you,” she said automatically, then paused for a moment, looking at him with full concentration. “Thank you, Captain Reavley.”

He could not sleep. At two o’clock he was still wide awake, seeing Gwen Neave’s shattered face in his mind—her consuming grief, not furious, not questioning or railing against fate, simply a kind of inner death.

He got up and went to the window, pulling the curtains back. The night was radiant with moonlight that flooded the sky, catching every flake of the mackerel clouds with silver. Just below the sill the first white roses were out, single flowers, pale as the moon, like apple blossom.

He stood gazing at the scene. The beauty was almost too intense to bear. Then he heard the piercing sweetness of a nightingale—once, twice—then the silence washed back again like a deep ocean, drowned in light.

He ached with a measureless hunger to hold the moment forever, make it part of him so he could never lose it.

He was needed here. It was a lifetime’s work to touch this grief and heal even a fraction of it. He must stay.

CHAPTER

NINE

Patrick Hannassey might be the Peacemaker. In fact, theprobability stabbed like a knife into Matthew’s thoughts no matter which avenue he followed. He told himself it was ridiculous. He had always known that Hannassey was an enemy of England, willing to resort to violence. But it was different to think that he could be the man behind the murder of his parents.

He and Joseph had done everything they could to learn the Peacemaker’s identity. They had considered all they knew that must define him: first, his access to both the king and the kaiser in a manner sufficiently confidential to present the treaty and its astounding contents for their consideration; second, John Reavley had to have known him well enough to have stumbled accidentally on the treaty and taken it. There were times when in order to commit other acts, the Peacemaker had to have been in London. Finally, there was little doubt that he had also had a powerful influence on Eldon Prentice, and upon Richard Mason. Therefore he had strong connections with the press—not the national newspapers who obeyed the government’s restriction notices, but the smaller, less responsible provincials.

How did these criteria apply to Patrick Hannassey? Matthew had to put them to the test, whatever the answer.

The appalling violence of the Easter Rising in Dublin and the British suppression of it gave him the opportunity he needed. On Easter Monday the gunboat Helga opened fire on Dublin, setting alight Liberty Hall and several other buildings, and killing civilians. British troops landed at Kingstown and marched to Dublin, entering the city, in spite of de Valera’s men ambushing them.

The next day Major-General Sir John Maxwell’s troops, sent by Prime Minister Asquith, and mostly untrained, began shooting Irishmen on sight, and the General Post Office went up in flames. It became obvious that even worse was to come. Questions about leading Irish Nationalists did not need to be explained.

Matthew was dining with a friend with whom he had been at school. It was a quiet restaurant and they sat in the corner discreetly, sharing a bottle of claret and a rather good game pie. He asked the questions that pounded in his mind, hoping for the answers, and dreading them.

“Hannassey?” Barrington said thoughtfully. “Do you think he’s behind this uprising? Behind Connelly and Pearse?”

“Can’t say,” Matthew replied, meaning to imply that he was.

Barrington smiled. “So what is it you want to know?”

Matthew began with the least controversial issue. “His history. For example, before the war what sort of influence did he have? Where did he travel?”

“Travel?” Barrington was surprised. “Europe. He had some sort of diplomatic position regarding Anglo-Irish interests.”

“Including Germany?”

“Naturally. Hadn’t you better tell me what this is about, Reavley?”

“I don’t know what it’s about yet,” Matthew evaded. “Still in the stage of seeing if it’s anything at all. Diplomatic service in Germany?”

“If you’re asking me if he’s a German sympathizer, yes, of course he is. Sympathizes with anyone who’s against us.”

“I took that for granted, given other circumstances. Would he know anyone connected with the kaiser?”

Barrington frowned, twiddling his coffee spoon in his fingers.

“Yes. He’s a very personable man, highly intelligent and if he wants to be, very cultured. Certainly the kaiser. King too, come to that.”

“And members of our Parliament?” Matthew persisted.

“He might have known pretty well anyone of influence.” Barrington shook his head. “Who do you have in mind, Reavley? You are being very evasive. Are you sure this isn’t something we should know?”

“It’s to do with something my father said before he died.” That was obliquely true, more or less.

“I heard about that. Road accident, wasn’t it? I’m very sorry.”

“Yes. Rather got swallowed in the news at the time.”

“Oh?”

“Same day as the assassination in Sarajevo.”

“Oh. That’s too bad. Do you think he knew something about Hannassey that still matters?”

“I’m chasing a possibility. Do you keep tabs on Hannassey?”

“Sometimes. Lose him pretty regularly. He’s a master of looking so damn ordinary he disappears. What dates are you interested in?”

“Late May, early June last year.”

“London, mostly. Can’t tell you where exactly.”

“Thank you. Last question: Has he any influence with the press?”

“None that I know. I should doubt it very much.”

“Not even local press, small papers in the north?”

“No idea. Why?”

“I’ll tell you, if it comes to anything.” He drank the last of his coffee. “Do you fancy a brandy?”

In his office again, Matthew received a wireless message from America and decoded it. He read it with acceptance and perhaps a kind of satisfaction, grim as it was. A stevedore in the New York docks had been murdered.

He wrote his reply. It was not necessary to say much. His man already had his instructions. The corpse was to be made to appear a spy, trained by Germany and then “turned” to betray their plans to Britain. His murder was payment for that act, an object lesson to would-be traitors.

Now also was the time to show the evidence on paper of a fictional agent in the German-American banking system who had revealed the details of all the transactions paying the man in the docks who had placed the bombs in the ships’ holds.

Matthew reread his letter once more, making certain of every detail, then encrypted it and gave it to the operator to send.

He reported to Shearing in the late afternoon as if no thoughts teemed in his mind except those of the allied shipping crossing the Atlantic with smoke bombs hidden among the tightly packed munitions. He forced away all thought that he was on the verge of exposing the Peacemaker at last, and the deeply painful knowledge that it was Detta’s father. The knowledge of how she would be hurt was something he could not face. He concentrated instead on the vast entanglement of loyalties, political office, and judgment that made up the Anglo-American relationship.

“Well?” Shearing asked. He looked tired. His usually immaculate suit was creased and his tie was not quite straight. Once again Matthew wondered where he lived, and why he had never mentioned even a parent or a brother. Why was there nothing in his office that betrayed any love or memory, any ties to place or culture? He seemed a man without roots. That very anonymity was vaguely frightening. It made him less than human. Every other man had a photograph, an ornament, pictures—some ties to who he was. At least the fear had gone that he could be the Peacemaker. Matthew realized only now that it was gone how much that had hurt.

“We have a suitable body for the double agent,” he said briefly. “I’m going to tell Detta Hannassey about it this evening.”

Shearing nodded. “She’ll know if she’s being fed, Reavley. Don’t do it all at once.”

“I won’t.”

Shearing smiled with a bleak humor. “On the other hand, time is short.”

“Yes, sir.” Matthew stood to attention for a moment, then turned and left. As so often before, he wished profoundly that he could trust Shearing. Perhaps now he could, but the old caution was too deep to cast aside. John Reavley’s last words to him had been that the conspiracy reached right to the top. Who also was tainted? And if he did trust, who else would die?

There were moments when he missed his father with exactly the same desperate, incredulous pain as on the very first day. There was an emptiness inside him that no one else could fill. They would have sat together, probably on a bench in Regent’s Park, watching the ducks, and talked about whatever the problem was. They might have walked around an art gallery, seeing what was for sale, looking for bargains, old watercolors that needed cleaning and restoring, the foxing taken off, and refreshed to show their beauty.

Matthew would have wanted to tell him of his strange relationship with Detta Hannassey, and how they knew that each was playing a game with the other, with a mixture of lies and truths. In the big matters—the ideals and the battles—they were against each other, even to the extent of using deceit and counterdeceit. In the little things—the jokes and the teasing, the tenderness, even the fleeting pleasures of flowers or music, a moment of sunlight on the water, the flight of a bird—they were passionately honest. But Matthew could not have told his father this. John Reavley would have seen it as one more example of the loathsome duplicity and betrayal innate in espionage. Would he ever have understood how many lives it saved? Matthew wished he could have told him! It would have undone an ache inside him if he could.

This was all in his mind when he met Detta at the theater that evening. He never collected her from her home, as he would have with another woman. She did not permit him to know where she lived. He thought it more than possible she did not always sleep in the same bed each night. He preferred not to know. Jealousy would be ridiculous, but he knew its taste well enough to avoid even the suspicion.

He had intended to be there well before she was, which ought not to be difficult. She was often late, arriving casually at the last moment when he was on the point of giving up, her smile as bright as usual. But this evening she was there already. He saw her standing in the foyer as soon as he was through the doors. She was dressed in dark blue. She tended to choose cold colors, but she never looked cold. They heightened her drama, as if she did not belong in the everyday world but was merely visiting it from a more mystical place. Her gown was very simple and she wore a dark cloak over it, as the evening would be cooler after the performance.

She did not come toward him. She stood quite still, smiling, until he should reach her. He wondered if she was always as intensely sure of herself as she seemed. Perhaps her doubts were more of others, of life itself.

“Hello, Matthew,” she said warmly. She never abbreviated his name. “This was a fine choice. I’m in the mood for farce.” She looked up at him, her eyes so dark he could see the laughter in them, and the pain as well.

“Hello,” he replied. “Yes. It’s supposed to be a good production.”

She glanced around at the other people coming in. As so often these days, they all seemed very young, no more than in their mid-twenties, but there was a gauntness to their faces that was deeper than hunger or tiredness. It was something in the skin, a certain look to the eyes. They were men on leave from the trenches, for a few days pretending nothing existed but these lights and laughter, the jokes, the music, the girls on their arms. They wanted to have fun, to taste youth and irresponsibility again, gulping at it like a diver coming up for air.

“Poor devils,” Detta said quietly. “They know, don’t they!” She did not add any more; the soft lilt in her voice told of a long familiarity with the dark side of love. “They’re as Anglo-Saxon as you are.” Then her mouth twisted in wry laughter. “But they know, all the same. I suppose if you make it plain enough, often enough, then even an Englishman will see it eventually.”

“As opposed to an Irishman, who’ll see it immediately, whether it’s there or not?” he asked. If he were too gentle with her she would detect pity, and hate him for it.

“Something like that!” She shrugged.

They did not speak while they found their seats.

“Mr. Manhattan,” she repeated the play’s title when they were comfortable. “Your mind still on America?”

It was the opening he wanted, but actually he had chosen the show because it was a light musical comedy, with emphasis on the comedy. The star, Raymond Hitchcock, had a reputation for engaging the audience in a way that drew them in whether they intended it or not. A friend had said that Iris Hoey was excellent in the burlesque, and the music was very good.

“Hard not to be,” he answered Detta’s question. “Our men are still getting dud ammunition.”

She did not look at him. “But you’re doing something about that, aren’t you? That is, when you’re not here with me, forgetting your responsibilities and having fun!” It was more a comment than a question, and there was a play of humor around her mouth.

He knew the complexities of her thought. This was a jibe at him that he was too sober, that he had not the wild Irish imagination. His feet were earthbound, and his mind as well. And she was also leaving the opening wide for him to pursue the subject, which was what they were both here for. Was she also testing to see if he cared about her and was willing to say so? She knew he did. He was not a good enough actor to pretend otherwise. Perhaps her sudden vulnerabilities were all a pretense on her part? He should not let that thought hurt so much.

“I forget all my responsibilities when I’m with you,” he answered, allowing both honesty and laughter into his voice. He saw the pleasure in her, too real to be hidden immediately. “Until I look at the faces of the soldiers on leave,” he added. “Then I remember I’m part of it all, whether I want to be or not.” He had to remember there was a war on, to prevent his feelings for her from sweeping him away. The price of forgetting could be their lives.

She swung around to face him, eyes wide as if he had slapped her. But there was admiration as well as the sudden loss of happiness. “Of course you are,” she said quietly. “You’ve come to work, even if it has its pleasures. If I weren’t Irish, you wouldn’t be here.”

“If you weren’t Irish, you wouldn’t be here, either,” he pointed out.

“And do you imagine I know who is sabotaging your bullets and shells?” she asked, turning away so he could see only her profile.

“Possibly,” he replied. “But it hardly matters. I’m quite sure you wouldn’t tell me. But I think it’s far more likely you simply know that it’s being done, and probably how. But I don’t really need you to tell me that because I already know.”

“Then why are you here?” She still did not look at him. Her voice was light and very soft. He had to lean closer to her to be sure of catching every word. He could smell the perfume of her hair and see the shadow of her lashes on her cheek.

The orchestra started to tune up in the pit. People were still busy settling in their seats, waving to friends they recognized, calling out greetings. Girls were laughing and flirting. There was a hectic pleasure in the air. No comedian could fail to amuse them, nor on the other hand, could they totally block out the shadow of knowledge of world events just beyond the edge of the lights.

“I’m here deceiving everybody,” Matthew replied in a whisper. “I tell myself I’m here to gain confirmation from you, but that’s not true, because I don’t need it. We turned the spy in New York. We got all the information from him that we wanted, even the name of their man in the German bank, and the account numbers. But he paid for it with his life.”

She was silent for several minutes.

He waited. What she really wanted was to know if they had broken the code, but what would she pretend to want? In that instant he longed for her to be like the people around them, here just for fun, to flirt, perhaps even to love and lose, but without deceit. He longed for it so fiercely it was a hollow, physical ache inside him.

She turned and met his eyes. In a glance she understood, and allowed it to show in her own face. Then deliberately, like smashing a glass into a hundred shards of light, she broke it. “Did your people kill him?” she asked.

He was cold in the heat of the theater. “No,” he replied. “I imagine his own people did.”

“Then they knew he had betrayed them,” she pointed out. “They’ll change their routine. Your intelligence will be no good to you.”

He smiled bleakly. “We’ll act before then, if we haven’t already.”

“What good will that do?”

“The Germans won’t risk angering the Americans by doing it again. They’ll have to think of something else, and no doubt they will. But Wilson has this grand idea of stepping in to be the arbiter of peace in Europe. It seems to matter intensely to him. His place in history. Neither we nor Germany can afford to destroy that illusion, especially with presidential elections in November. Far more of this is about internal American politics than you might think.”

“There are a lot of Germans in America,” she said, looking at the stage where the tempo of the music had quickened.

“And Irish,” he added. “But plenty of British, too, and even a few French, and Italians. Don’t forget the Italians. God knows how many of them have been slaughtered on the Austrian border.”

She did not answer. Her face was bleak with misery, as if she had suddenly remembered a vast, ancient grief.

The music swept over them. All around them, young people were living in the moment, refusing to think of yesterday or tomorrow. Some sat close, arms around each other.

Detta said no more until the interval and they went to the foyer and bar. Matthew bought her a drink and some chocolates. A few yards away a group of young men in uniform were repeating one of the jokes and laughing too loudly, too long. The undertones of despair in their voices caught his ear like a cry.

He glanced at Detta. There was a naked pity in her eyes so powerful he put his hand on her arm without thinking what he was doing.

She turned to him in surprise, and the pity vanished, although hiding it cost her an effort. Then she read in his face that it had stirred a softness in him, no sense of victory over her because she had yielded a moment. For this instant her grace and her compulsive loyalty to her cause tugged at his emotions. It made him ache for her, made him long to break through the barrier of lies and games so that for a moment they could cling to each other in the passions of the mind and heart that hold people together. They had the understanding of the same beauty, the same gentleness, pity for hurt and loss, the infinite treasuring of life’s sweetness, and above all the hunger not to be alone in it.

But he was alone. She was watching young lovers in front of them; in profile, she was unreadable to him. Their separate loyalties held them both too hard. To yield anything would be betrayal, and if they gave up that much of themselves, what had they left to give to anyone, let alone to each other?

Did the loneliness cut her as deeply to the bone as it did him? Or was that unreadable part of her, the Celtic dream with its plaintive music on the half note, its myths that stretched back through history to the fantastic, enough to feed her hunger?

He looked at the vitality in her face, the delicate curve of her neck, her shoulders a little too thin for perfection, and felt as if the impenetrable glass between them could never be broken.

Then she turned and he blanked his expression just in time to stop her reading his hurt. At least he thought it was in time.

“Don’t you feel for them, Matthew?” she asked, a pucker between her brows. “They have this moment, and they know that could be all. They’ve been snatched from hell for a few hours, and tomorrow or the day after, they go back. Perhaps they’ll never come home again. Can’t you see it on their faces, hear it on the edge of their laughter? It’s in the air, like the smell of a storm coming.”

He looked at her. She was beautiful, so alone, chasing a dream. What would happen if she ever caught it? Would she stop and hold it close, taste its sweetness and be happy? Or would she then create another dream to pursue, her heart as elusive, as unsettled as it was now? He feared the answer to that. Not that it mattered! The pursuit itself would always stand between them.

She reached out her hand and touched his cheek. She was smiling, but the pain behind her eyes was real. “I don’t understand you English,” she said huskily. “I’m sure there’s somebody fierce and wonderful behind that throw-away calm, I just can’t crack the shell. I want the curtain to go up on the play for a while, so I can laugh, or the pain inside me is going to burst.” And she turned and walked away across the foyer, as graceful as a reed in the wind.

He followed her, knowing irrefutably that they were already on the brink of a betrayal—of each other or themselves. If she won the battle of wits, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young soldiers might pay with their lives. He did not want to think what his victory would cost. The Irish were not kind to those who failed them.

Richard Mason found the streets of Paris surprisingly empty. Though it was late April, just after Easter, when he turned into the narrow Rue Oudry where he knew Trotsky lived, there seemed nothing of spring in the air. A breeze blew old newspapers and pamphlets along the pavement. There was no one sitting in the cafés and too many of the women he had seen were wearing black, even young ones who at any other time would have had a smile and a word for him.

Walking toward his destination he had noticed how many of the street clocks had stopped, and the statue of the Lion de Belfort had dirty straw sticking out of its mouth. All anyone could think of was the news from Verdun.

It was early evening as he approached Trotsky’s home. The Russian journalist worked on an émigré newspaper, scratching out a living, and as always pursuing his dreams for a revolution of social justice, a world where workers overthrew oppression and there was food and warmth for all.

Mason’s hands were sweating, and he found it hard to catch his breath. In the days since he had left London the Peacemaker’s words had beaten in his brain: “Kill him! If he will continue the war, kill him!”

Of course he could not do that tonight! All he had to do now was meet Trotsky again and make some evaluation of the man. But he would not have changed, would he? People like Trotsky never changed! There was a fire in him nothing would quench. He had been sentenced to exile to Siberia, escaped from Russia to Sèvres and then Paris. He had been poor to starvation, and a stranger in a foreign land. Still he wrote with the same passion as of old, greater if anything.

The Peacemaker might not know Trotsky, but Mason did. He knocked on the door. Then he wanted to run, but his feet were like lead and his knees weak. Whatever Trotsky said, Mason could not murder him, although that was what the Peacemaker wanted.

A woman in black passed him, her face masklike in grief. How many loved ones had she lost? Mason had seen the corpses piled in Verdun too deep to count, too many to bury. They would be there until the rats ate them and the earth itself subsided in the rain and mud covered them over. His stomach clenched. Yes, of course, he could kill one Russian exile, if it brought peace even a day nearer.

The door swung open and another woman in black looked at him without interest.

He asked in French if Monsieur Trotsky was at home.

She said that he was, and showed him up to the apartment where Trotsky lived with his wife and two sons.

Trotsky himself opened the door. He was a small man, stocky with a wealth of black curling hair so thick it added inches to his height. Intelligence lit his square face with its full lips and powerful chin, so utterly different from the sparer, more ascetic Lenin. He stared at the tall man on his doorstep in bewilderment, then as Mason spoke, memory and pleasure lit his eyes.

“Mason!” he said incredulously. “Come in! Come in!” He stepped back, making way for Mason to follow him inside the small room. “It’s been an age! How are you?” He waved at a chair and indicated a bottle of Pernod. “Drink?”

Trotsky introduced his wife, who gave a quick smile and excused herself, saying she was just going to put their two young sons to bed. Mason greeted her with circumspection, uncomfortably aware of Trotsky’s other family in St. Petersburg.

Mason then recounted his experiences as a war correspondent, allowing Trotsky to assume that his journalism background had brought him to Paris. However, he was obliged to be economical with the truth, omitting anything to do with the Peacemaker, his recent visit to Ypres, and Judith Reavley. He was acutely conscious of the small room, and its contrasts. All over the table papers were covered with scribbled political arguments. But also scattered around the room were the details of family life: children’s toys, handmade and well used; a piece of mending with the needle still in it, thread hanging; a small bowl with half a dozen leaves and flowers; a plate with a chip on one side; a book with a paper marking the place.

Trotsky was talking about Jean Jaurès, the French socialist who had been murdered just before the outbreak of war.

“He might have stopped all this!” Trotsky said savagely, watching Mason’s face. “I went to the Café Croissant, where he was killed, you know. I thought I might still feel something of him there. I did not agree with him politically, of course, but I admired him. How he could speak! Like a great waterfall, elemental! And yet he could be gentleness itself, endlessly patient in explaining.”

Mason watched him as he went on about Jaurès, and then Martov, the leader of the Mensheviks in Paris, a man of towering intellect but irresolute will. He spoke of a dozen others, his own enthusiasm flooding through it all.

But did he want peace? If he returned to Russia to overthrow the tsar and the whole rotten edifice of oppression surrounding the old government, would he then take Russia out of the war? Or remain with the Allies, for whatever reason, and pursue it to the end through more seas of blood?

It was ludicrous! Mason was sitting in Trotsky’s home talking of a world revolution of social order and justice, all the while having been commissioned to murder him!

But men who had never met each other were crushed in the mud only a few score miles away, killing by the thousands. Surely the only sanity left was to stop it—any way at all?

The conversation had come around to Trotsky’s plans of returning to Russia.

“When you go back to Russia, when you get rid of the tsar, what then?” Mason asked him. “What will you do? What about the war?”

“We can’t help the rest of Europe,” Trotsky said with resignation. “We’ll make peace, of course, as soon as we have a voice at all!”

Mason felt relief well up inside him, but then he wondered if he was being hasty in accepting this answer. “You don’t feel that if you withdrew from the war, the rest of Europe might not support the revolution?” he asked aloud.

“What’s the matter with you?” Trotsky demanded. “With the losses we’re sustaining, we can’t keep fighting. And we’ve got so much to do, to put our country to rights. The last thing we need is more death. It is the ordinary men—the soldiers, the workers—who will bring about the new order. This is an unjust war—proletarian against proletarian. It must come to an end as soon as possible.” He frowned, puzzled by Mason’s apparent stupidity.

Mason leaned across the table. “When?” he asked with more urgency in his voice than he had intended. “You cannot afford to wait until Germany has beaten you, or you will merely exchange the tsar for the kaiser. And if America comes into the war, that will not help you. Then the Allies will win, and that means the tsar again. You will be back where you started, but with God knows how many of your people dead.”

“I know,” Trotsky said with pain marked deep in his face. “It must be soon. But we are persecuted on every side, even here in Paris. Martov is brilliant, but cannot make up his mind on anything. Lenin is in Zurich, and afraid to move. Believe me, I am doing everything I can. If I had not friends here I would be in danger of being driven out of France myself. But never give up hope, my friend, we will overcome in the end, and it is not far—another year, perhaps less.”

“Less,” Mason said quietly. “It needs to be less.” There was a kind of peace inside him, a freedom from a terrible weight that had crushed the breath out of his lungs.

It was not until he had at last taken leave of Trotsky and was walking along the quiet street in the dark that he even considered how many people might be slaughtered, starved, or dispossessed in the peace that Trotsky dreamed of.

The evening light was fading in a high, pale blue arc across the sky, like washed silk, and the color was lost beneath the trees where Joseph and Corcoran had been walking on the edge of the fields.

“It’s so mild I forget it isn’t summer yet,” Corcoran said with a smile.

Joseph stared across the wind-rippled grass toward Hadingly and the west. It had been a brief interlude of escape from the present, the dilemmas of grief and decision, even awareness of the terrible losses in Verdun and the uprising in Ireland. That had now been quelled with a savagery that had forfeited all the goodwill the Dubliners had originally felt toward the British troops.

Then he turned to Shanley and saw in the yellow sunset light the haggard planes of his face, the sunken skin around his eyes, the lines etched deep in the flesh from nose to mouth. He looked like an old man, beaten and worn out. It touched Joseph with unexpected fear. The confidence of a few moments before vanished. It had been an illusion created by courage and force of will, the need to believe the impossible because it was all that lay between them and defeat.

The instant passed. Joseph replaced his own mask of ease, as if he had not noticed anything. Since his decision to remain in St. Giles it had become easier. There was nothing in the future to dread except the burdens of the village, the familiar pains of confusion and bereavement.

Corcoran smiled, a sad, weary look. Joseph had blanked the understanding from his face too late. “You know this man, Perth, don’t you.” It was an observation, not a question.

“A little,” Joseph conceded. “He might have changed in a couple of years. Is he making things difficult for you?”

Corcoran did not answer immediately. He seemed to be weighing his words. A plowman leading two shire horses passed along the lane at the bottom of the field, harness clinking gently. He must have been harrowing up on the slope beyond the woods.

They had not spoken of the murder. Now it lay between them like a third presence.

“Gwen Neave saw him,” Joseph said aloud. “A man in a light coat, on a woman’s bicycle, coming out of the path through the trees shortly after Blaine must have been killed. That would be why the tracks were deeper than if it had been a woman—a greater weight.”

Corcoran was stiff, as if the idea froze him in horror.

Joseph felt a moment’s guilt for having mentioned it. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Corcoran did not move and when he spoke his voice was hoarse. “Not your fault, my dear fellow. Did you say Mrs. Neave saw a man coming out of the woods? Was it light enough to tell?”

Joseph was aware of his own clumsiness. “No, she said not. But he was in a state of considerable distress. He was sick, and then he relieved himself. That was the point at which she realized that he was without question a man. Until then she had assumed it was a woman, perhaps because it was a woman’s bicycle.”

Corcoran’s face was almost blank. It seemed the idea was too ugly for him to grasp it.

“Shanley?” Joseph moved closer to him, suddenly anxious.

Corcoran turned slowly. “What a dreadful time we live in, Joseph,” he said softly. “I knew about Blaine’s affair, and God forgive me, but I hoped it was only that old evil of jealousy that had spurred this awful action. To tell you the truth, I thought Blaine had seen sense and ended it. Mrs. Lucas is a woman of intense and rather selfish appetite. I assumed she had lost all control of herself and in a fit of jealousy had struck at poor Blaine.” He closed his eyes as if he could block out the idea. “It is peculiarly disgusting, and perhaps I wronged her in allowing the thought into my mind.” He looked guilty and profoundly regretful. “I suppose it is what I wanted to think. It seemed . . . more ordinary. Not a new threat, if you see what I mean?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“But you say it was a man?” He still looked as if he were hoping Joseph might be in some doubt.

“Yes. And I suppose when you consider the way in which Blaine was killed, it would be remarkable if a woman could have achieved it. The strength necessary . . .” He trailed off. The thought was repulsive.

Corcoran’s mouth tightened in distaste, pulling his lips crooked. “Women can be strong, Joseph. If she was driven by rage, and she took him by surprise. A garden fork, you said?”

“Yes.”

“She could have struck him with it first.” He swung an imaginary weapon in his hands. “And then . . .” He could not finish. He closed his eyes and shuddered at what his inner vision showed him.

“I should think that is what happened,” Joseph agreed. “Actually Perth picked up the fork and did the same thing. It nicked his skin.” He held up his hand and showed Corcoran where.

Corcoran imitated his gesture, looking at his own unblemished skin. He had good hands, strong and well formed. Joseph remembered how they always seemed to be warm.

“Dacy Lucas?” he asked aloud.

Corcoran shook his head. “I thought so, Joseph, but I was deceiving myself. I fear very deeply that it has nothing to do with Blaine’s unfortunate lapse from morality. I have to think he was killed because someone believed he was on the verge of making a breakthrough in scientific discovery which would blaze the way for a totally different era of naval warfare, and would unquestionably win the war at sea for Britain.”

Joseph felt a coldness as if the fields in the long light of evening had suddenly been mantled in snow. The world he loved was slipping out of his grasp like water through his fingers. No strength of passion or grief could hold on to it.

“We’ll have to finish it without him!” Corcoran said abruptly. “Work harder.” He turned till his face shone like bronze in the light. “I’m almost there. Believe me, Joseph, it will be a turning point in history. Future generations will look back on this summer in Cambridgeshire as the beginning of a new age. I only have”—he lifted his shoulders slightly—“a little way to go. A few more steps. If only they give me time!” Then he shivered and fear touched his eyes before he turned away again.

“Shanley!” Joseph reached toward him.

“No, no!” Corcoran denied his anxiety softly. “I just hate having this wretched, pedestrian little man poking into everything, asking questions, awakening ugly thoughts. I suppose he is simply doing his duty, as he sees it. And of course he is not aware of the wider issues and he cannot be told.” He pulled his mouth into a thin line. “I loathe the suspicion everywhere, like a disease in the air. Nothing is as it used to be. One cannot afford to trust anybody, and it would not be a kindness to do so. A slip, a word or an omission, anything at all, and a person falls under suspicion. To know nothing is the only safety.”

Joseph saw an entire landscape of fear he had not even imagined before. No wonder Corcoran was exhausted. Undeniably, there were things he could share with no one. The pressure to succeed was almost unbearable, knowing what lay in the balance, even the difference between victory and defeat. And closer and more urgent than that was the knowledge that one of his own men must inevitably be guilty.

But there was another fear that invaded Joseph’s mind. “You can finish the work? You are sure?” he asked, hating his own doubt.

“Yes!” Corcoran looked startled, as if the question angered him. “It will take longer, that’s all.”

“Do the others in the Establishment know that? Surely they will deduce it from the fact that you are still working on the prototype?”

“Yes . . .” Then Corcoran saw what it was that had struck Joseph like a physical blow. A softness filled his face and his eyes were bright. “I shall take great care, I assure you.”

“Will you?” Joseph demanded. “How? What will you do to protect yourself? Look over your shoulder all the time? I know you better than that. Have you even the faintest idea who the murderer is?”

Corcoran raised his eyebrows. “Faintest?” He sighed. “If I rely on the honesty and the ability of Inspector Perth, then I know at least that it was not Dacy Lucas.”

“Do you? How?”

“Because Perth established where he was, and he could not have been anywhere near Blaine’s house.”

“Are you absolutely certain?”

Corcoran half turned away. “No. I don’t know for myself. Actually I was at the Cutlers’ Arms just outside Madingley, talking to your brother-in-law about possible sea trials for the prototype.” His voice was heavy with irony. “That’s how sure I was then that we were on the brink of completing it. It seems now like another world.”

The shadows were so long that the trees in the distance seemed to stretch across half the field. The black scatter of starlings drifted up against the gold of the sky, turned and were swept sideways, curving around and settling again.

The unhappiness in Corcoran’s face was clear. Joseph knew him far too well to misread it. And there was fear as well, but subtle as a half-forgotten scent.

Joseph did not even know what the prototype was, or what it was designed to do. He could deduce its importance from Corcoran’s manner, from Matthew’s repeated visits to him, and above all from the fact that Corcoran himself believed one of his own men could be driven to commit murder to prevent its creation. That had to mean that the Germans had placed a man in the Establishment, secretly waiting his time, perhaps since the beginning of the war, an Englishman prepared to betray his own people.

Would Corcoran condone murder to preserve the invention? If it saved as many lives as he implied, if it even turned the tide of the war at sea, then yes, of course he might!

“Shanley . . .” He turned toward him again. “For God’s sake, be careful! If you know who it is, protect yourself! If he killed Blaine to sabotage the project, he’ll certainly kill you to protect himself! He’s ruthless, and you have no idea who he is!” The thought of Corcoran as a murder victim was unbearable. He was laughter and bright memories, reason, courage, and hunger for life. He was the bond with all that was good in the past now slipping away like the light fading on the horizon as the wind rose rustling in the elms. Joseph needed to cling to him and protect him, as if in some way he could even reach John Reavley through him.

Corcoran smiled, and for a moment there was an intense joy in his eyes. “Thank you, Joseph,” he said with a huskiness in his voice. “But I’ll be safe. You needn’t worry.”

“Do you know who it is, Shanley?”

“Do you think I would defend him if I did?”

“Wouldn’t you? If he were crucial to the project?”

“And he would give it to the Germans?” Corcoran said with mockery in his disbelief.

Joseph would not be diverted. “If you thought you could use him until exactly the right moment, then betray him before he betrayed you? Is that not what this kind of battle is about?”

Corcoran smiled. “My dear Joseph, I can’t answer that. I don’t know, because I haven’t faced the situation yet.” His eyes were dark and gentle as he looked back in the fast fading light. “But don’t fear for me. I’m very careful. Believe me, I care about the project more than anything else in my life. It is brilliant! More than I dare tell you. It would save not only a million lives, but Europe itself. That has to outweigh individual justice or even individual lives, hard as that is.”

There was no argument to make. Joseph stood silent, but the fear for Corcoran sank deeply into him.

It was not enough for him simply to pity or to fear. All the love in the world was worth nothing if he did not act. He had unraveled murder before now, even when he had not wanted to know who had committed it. Now, when it mattered desperately, he must try again—with renewed conviction.

CHAPTER

TEN

This!” Detta said with complete conviction, her eyes alight, herlips smiling. “It’s perfect!”

Matthew looked at it. It was a man’s wristwatch of a highly individual design, with a thin green circle around the face that was only visible when the light caught it. “It’s excellent,” he agreed, more bitterly aware of the irony than she was. It was a gift for her father, to her an Irish Nationalist fighting for his country against the British oppressor. There was nothing in her face, in its passion, laughter, or wild imagination that let him believe she also knew that he was the man who had ordered the murder of his parents. For him it was not just a war of nations but an acutely personal violation that would last as long as he lived.

“Yes, it’s excellent,” he agreed, struggling to mask his feelings. He refused to imagine Hannassey wearing it.

“Thank you for being so patient,” she said warmly. “It’s always difficult to know what to choose for a man. Women are easy.” Her expression was pinched with momentary pain.