Angels in the Gloom wwi-3

by Anne Perry

  “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.”

&n
bsp; “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?