Angels in the Gloom (30 page)

For a moment he had felt panic seize him. No wonder Hallam Kerr was overwhelmed. Did any of the old stories in the old words answer the confusion of today? Would anyone hear the truth wrapped up in the phrases they were so used to?

He thought not. The Bible was all to do with other people, two thousand years ago and somewhere else. They would nod and say Joseph was a good man, and go out exactly the same as they had come in, still angry, frightened, and lost.

What use was religion if it was about somebody else? It was about you, or it was about no one. He had abandoned the story of Christ walking the road to Emmaus, unrecognized by the apostles, although it was one of his favorites. He told them instead of the reality of war in Ypres, where their own families were dying. He reminded them of the corpse-filled craters of no-man’s-land, and the agony endured in terrible wounds. He did not make it anything like as harsh as the reality, only enough to tear them out of their own present.

“These are our sons and brothers!” he had told them. “They’re doing this because they love us. They believe in home, the laughter and the tolerance we stand for, the things of labor and decency. If we don’t keep it a good home, if we soil it with bigotry and intolerance, if we learn how to hate and destroy, if we forget who we are, what are they dying to save? What is there left for those who survive to come home to?”

Now he stood in the grass and the sweet-smelling air, and was afraid he had said too much. No one had spoken to him afterward, and Kerr had looked gray-faced enough to be buried in his own churchyard. Only Mrs. Nunn had smiled at him, tears in her eyes, and nodded before she went on her way home.

The elms were heavy out over the fields, clouds towering high and bright into the blue of the sky, and there was hardly a sound in the wide peace of it, except for the wind and the larks.

He reached the edge of the field and the orchard gate. He unlatched it and went in. There was someone coming toward him, floundering awkwardly. For an instant it took him back to men floundering like that in the mud, the crash and thud of shells around them. But there was no sound amid the apple trees foaming with blossom, except Inspector Perth up to his knees in the uncut grass.

“We should get a scythe to it,” Joseph apologized. “Nobody’s had time.”

Perth dismissed the suggestion with a wave. He was a town man, and he did not expect to find things here comfortable. He looked grim, lips drawn tight and brow wrinkled. “I’ve bad news, Captain Reavley,” he said, perhaps unnecessarily. “Can we stay out here, sir? This mustn’t go any further. In fact I would probably be in trouble if anyone knew I’d told you, but could be as I’ll need your help before we’re through.”

“What is it?” Joseph felt a flutter of fear making him a little sick.

“The Scientific Establishment’s been broken into again and…”

Shanley Corcoran! He had been murdered as Joseph had dreaded. He should have done something when he had the chance. Shanley knew who killed Blaine, and he had let himself be—

“I’m sorry, Captain Reavley,” Perth apologized again, cutting through his thoughts. “Mr. Corcoran’s very upset, and knowing you’re a friend of his for a long time, I…”

Joseph felt his heart beating in his throat. “He’s upset? Then he’s all right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘all right,” “ Perth qualified, biting his lip. ”He looks like a man at the end of his strength, to me.“

“You said the Establishment was broken into? What happened? Was anyone hurt? Do you know who did it?” Joseph could hear his own voice out of control, and he could not stop it. Corcoran was all right! That was all that mattered. He was dizzy with relief.

“No, we don’t know,” Perth replied. “That’s the thing, sir. Whoever it was smashed the piece of equipment the scientists were working on. Prototype, they called it. Broke it to bits. Mr. Corcoran says they’ll have to start again from the beginning.”

“But he wasn’t hurt?” Joseph insisted.

“No, sir. He was in a different part of the building. Nowhere near it, thank heaven. But he looks proper wore out, like he was coming down with the flu, or something.” He shook his head, his plain, pleasant face twisted in concern. “He’s a very brave man, Captain Reavley, but I don’t know how long he can go on like this. It looks as if there’s no question we’ve got a spy in the village, or hereabouts, and that’s a bitter thing.” His mouth was pinched as he said it and there was a downward tone in his voice, as if he had struggled a long time to avoid facing that conclusion.

Joseph looked at him with a sudden clarity, seeing not just a methodical policeman who was tackling a difficult case, but a man of deep loyalties to his country.

The blossom was drifting off the pear tree, the white petals lost in the high grasses, and a thrush was singing in the hedge.

“War changes us,” he said to Perth.

Perth swung his head around, his eyes miserable and challenging. “Does it, sir?”

“Strips us down to the best and the worst in us.” Joseph smiled at him very slightly, just a warmth in his eyes. “I think so. I’ve found heroes where I didn’t expect, as well as villains.”

“Yes, I suppose,” Perth conceded. “I’d like to put men in the Establishment to keep Mr. Corcoran safe, but I haven’t got anyone to spare. But I wouldn’t know who to tell him to watch, and the intelligence people wouldn’t let me anyway. There’s nothing to do but find the bastard and see that he’s hanged! And they will hang him, for what he did to poor Mr. Blaine, apart from anything else. I’d like to know what ideas you have, Captain. I know you’ve been thinking on it a great deal.”

Joseph nodded. It was a miserable thought, but an inevitable one. He wished with a savage depth that he had more to tell Perth, something of meaning. “I’ll go and talk to Francis Iliffe, and see what I can find out,” he said. But he resolved first to go and try to comfort Shanley Corcoran.

In the house on Marchmont Street the Peacemaker received a visitor. It was the same young man who had called before to bring him word from Cambridgeshire. He stood in the upstairs room, his young face tired. He was trying to hide at least some of his unease, but it was more out of courtesy than any hope to deceive.

“Have the police discovered who killed Blaine?” the Peacemaker asked.

“No,” the young man replied. “To begin with, they considered the probability that it was a domestic matter. Blaine was having an affair with Lucas’s wife. But Lucas couldn’t have killed him. He can prove quite easily that he was somewhere else.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes. I checked it myself.”

“What about Blaine’s wife?” the Peacemaker asked.

“Possible. But they aren’t considering her seriously, I don’t think…”

“Couldn’t be a woman’s crime?” the Peacemaker said with derision. “Rubbish. A strong, healthy young woman, driven by jealousy, could easily have done it. From what you say, it was a crime of opportunity and passion anyway. The weapon was already there. No one brought it! That’s hardly planned.”

“I know that.” A flicker of impatience crossed the young man’s features. “But someone broke into the Establishment the day before yesterday, late in the evening, and smashed the prototype…”

“And you come to tell me now?” the Peacemaker demanded, his hands clenching, fury rising inside him like bile.

The young man’s eyebrows rose, his eyes wide. “And if I’d come racing up to London the morning after, don’t you think Inspector Perth might have regarded me a great deal more closely than either of us want?” There was no respect or fear in his voice. That was a change the Peacemaker noted with interest.

“Smashed it?” he asked. “Didn’t take it?”

“Exactly.”

“Why? Any ideas?”

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” the young man answered. “The actual guidance system is not too large or too heavy for one man to carry, and that’s all you would need. The rest of it is pretty standard—that’s the beauty of it. It could be used on anything: torpedo, depth charge, even regular shell, if you wanted.”

“I know that!” the Peacemaker snapped. “Is that the best you can do?”

A flash of temper lit the young man’s eyes, but he controlled it. “The Establishment would be extraordinarily difficult to break into. They have doubled the guards, but no one was attacked.”

“Bribery?”

“It’s possible, but they’d have had to bribe at least three men in order to reach where the prototype was.”

“Money would be no object,” the Peacemaker pointed out.

“But the more people you bribe, the more chance of one of them changing his mind or betraying you. And you’ve not only got to get in, you’ve got to get out again. And what about afterward? Do you want to leave three men who have that knowledge?”

The Peacemaker waited.

“I think no one came in or went out,” the young man said. “It was someone inside all the time.”

The Peacemaker relaxed. It made perfect sense. “And I assume if it were you, you would tell me?” he said with an edge to his voice—half humor, half threat.

“I wouldn’t smash it before it’s finished,” the young man replied levelly. “If you don’t believe my loyalty, at least believe my intellectual curiosity.”

“I hadn’t thought to question your loyalty,” the Peacemaker said very carefully. “Should I?” There was something in the young man’s manner, a change in the timber of his voice since the last time he had been here. Or perhaps, on reflection, it dated further back.

“I still believe exactly as I did when we first met,” the young man said intently, his concentration sudden and very real. “More so, if anything.”

The Peacemaker knew that that was the literal truth, but was there some double edge to the meaning of the words? “Then it seems we have a third player in the game,” he said very slowly.

The young man paled. “I think perhaps we have. And before you ask me, I have no idea who.”

“Are they still going forward?”

“Yes. Corcoran is determined, whatever the cost. He’s working all day and half the night as it is. I don’t know when he eats or sleeps. He looks twenty years older than he did two months ago.”

“Were you close to success?” It was a question he hardly dared ask. If Corcoran did succeed, then Britain would gain a whole new lease on life at sea. It could prolong the war another year, even two—and God alone knew how many more lives would be lost.

The young man did not answer the question. His face was bleak, his eyes unhappy.

“If he does, you must take it for Germany,” the Peacemaker said with a sudden flare of passion. “Tell me when he’s anywhere near it, whatever it costs you! I’ll see the prototype is taken, if I have to burn the place to the ground.”

The young man nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll watch. I’m working on it myself. Unless Corcoran gets a sudden breakthrough, I’ll be able to see it in advance.” His voice was oddly flat, possessing none of the hunger there used to be. Was he tired, harassed by the police presence, the questions intruding on his work, the suspicion? Or was he really afraid there was a third player, and his own life was at risk?

Or was he going soft, learning to become too much part of one small village in Cambridgeshire, and its people? He must be watched. The work, the goal was too important to indulge any individual.

Two days later the Peacemaker had a very different visitor. This was not a young English scientist with a pleasant freckled face and brown hair that waved off his brow. It was an Irishman closer to fifty, of average height, lean-bodied, his hair neither dark nor fair. If one did not study the expression in his face, he was unremarkable. Only his eyes reflected his intelligence, and then only if he chose that they should.

He stood in front of the Peacemaker, carefully balanced as if to run or to strike, but it was only habit. He had been here many times, and his weapons in this battle were of the intellect.

“Have they the code?” the Peacemaker asked him bluntly.

“No,” Hannassey replied. “They’ve worked out how the saboteurs get their funding and who they are by turning a German agent in the docks, and using a double agent in the banking system.”

“Are you sure?” the Peacemaker asked with a lift of interest.

“Yes. The double agent was murdered,” Hannassey replied. “We found the body. The main thing is that our plans in Mexico can go ahead. The code is safe. We can run rings around the Americans, keep them busy on the Rio Grande for another year at least. Bleed them dry. After that it won’t matter whether or not they enter the war.”

“And you trust Bernadette—not just her loyalty, but her judgment?” the Peacemaker persisted. There was an arrogance in Hannassey that he did not like.

Hannassey smiled, a cold expression of mirth without pleasure. “Sure, I’d trust her loyalty to the end of the earth and beyond,” he replied. “She has the courage to take on God Himself.” There was a shadow in his face, but he did not explain it. Bernadette was his daughter. If he saw a flaw in her he would admit it to no one else, least of all his men.

The Peacemaker offered no comment. He had assessed Bernadette for himself. He trusted no one else’s judgment.

Hannassey was motionless. His intense, controlled stillness was one of the few things that marked him out physically. “Who are the leaders of British Naval Intelligence?” he asked with the slightest smile. “One superannuated admiral who blinks like an owl, a chief with a wooden leg, and a couple of dozen assorted academics from this college and that.” He was not being dismissive; it was simply fact. The British were amateurs.