Angels in the Gloom wwi-3 Read online

  Had he gone openly, or in secret? Joseph was cold in the sun and the larks sounded tinny and far away. Did Morven know? Had he seen Corcoran there? No, surely not, or he would have killed him before now. He could hardly afford not to.

  No, worse than that, he was waiting for Corcoran to complete the prototype, just as Corcoran had been waiting for him.

  But if Joseph was right, then it was completed and already at sea! Was Morven waiting for news that it worked? Hardly—it would be a wildly unnecessary risk. Far more likely he was simply seeking the right moment to kill Corcoran so that he was safe himself, and the only man left who could re-create the machine.

  Joseph started to walk quickly, calling Henry to follow him. He took long strides, ignoring the trampled grass. He reached the gate to the orchard and flung it open, slamming it behind him as soon as Henry was through, and sprinted under the trees to the hedge and the end of the garden. He was out of breath by the time he got to the back door and into the kitchen, oblivious of trailing mud over Mrs. Appleton’s clean floor.

  He went straight to the telephone in the hall and asked the operator to connect him to Lizzie Blaine. Please heaven she was at home. She was the only person he could think of who would take him to the Establishment. He waited impatiently while it rang. Why should she be at home? There were a dozen other places she could be.

  He heard her voice with intense relief.

  “Mrs. Blaine? This is Joseph Reavley. Can you take me to the Establishment please, right away? It’s extremely urgent.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said immediately. “Is everything all right? Has something happened?”

  “Not so far, but I must go there and warn them so that it doesn’t. I’ll be waiting in the road. Thank you!”

  It was ten minutes before she arrived, during which time he apologized to Mrs. Appleton and left a message for Hannah that he had gone on an errand, and would be back in the evening.

  Lizzie swept up in the Model T. She looked anxious, her hair falling out of its pins and a smear of dirt on her cheek. Obviously she had taken him at his word as to the gravity of the occasion.

  “Thank you,” he said, climbing in and closing the door.

  She eased out the clutch and increased the acceleration before replying. “Are you going to tell me what it is? Do you know who killed Theo?”

  “Yes, I think so,” he answered as they turned the corner into the High Street. “But I’ve got to make sure he doesn’t kill Corcoran as well. I believe they’re testing the invention, and if it’s a success he won’t need Corcoran anymore.”

  “He wouldn’t kill him for that,” she said, increasing speed onto the open road and narrowly missing the may branches sloping wide. “It would be a stupid risk.”

  “Not because they don’t need him,” Joseph explained. “This man killed your husband, and Corcoran knows it. I don’t know why he hasn’t turned him in already.”

  “Perhaps he has no proof,” she suggested, her knuckles white on the wheel as she swerved with considerable skill and straightened up again. “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Yes, when I’m absolutely sure. With Corcoran gone he would be the only man left alive who knows exactly how to re-create the invention.”

  She concentrated on her driving for several minutes in silence, her face intense on the road.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in sudden contrition. He was speaking of the murder of her husband as if it were incidental to the scientific achievement, not the death of the man she had loved, probably more than anyone else in the world.

  She flashed him a sudden smile, and it vanished as quickly. “Thank you. I’m not sure how much I want to know what happened. I thought I did, but now that it could be any minute, it’s more real, and a lot uglier. In a way it was better drifting into the past unsolved. Am I a coward?” There was pain in her voice, as if she cared what he thought and had already decided it was harsh.

  “No,” he said quietly. “Just wise enough to know that answers don’t always help.”

  “I’ll miss you when you go back to France.” She stared ahead, deliberately avoiding his eyes. She put her foot down and increased the speed, now having to concentrate fiercely to keep on the road. The silence settled between them as if by agreement. They both had much to think about.

  She screeched to a halt at the gates of the Establishment and Joseph got out, thanking her and leaving her to wait. He spent nearly a quarter of an hour explaining to officials that he had to see Corcoran urgently, and then waited, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, while messages were sent, answers returned, and more messages sent in reply.

  It was nearly twenty-five minutes after arriving that he reached the waiting room, and a full quarter hour after that before he was ushered into Corcoran’s office. Corcoran, pale and tired, looked up from a desk littered with papers.

  “What is it, Joseph? Surely it could have waited until this evening? You would have been welcome to come over to dinner.”

  “I don’t think it can wait,” Joseph answered, too tense to sit down in the chair opposite him. “Not safely. And I couldn’t have said it in front of Orla anyway. You’ve got to have Perth arrest Morven before he kills you as well.” He leaned forward onto the desk, refusing to allow it to separate them. “I’m not going to let you run this risk anymore!” He nearly added that he cared too much, but it sounded melodramatic, and selfish.

  “The work . . .” Corcoran began.

  “It’s finished!” Joseph said impatiently. “It’s on sea trials, isn’t it? With Archie. You said he was going to do them. Isn’t that where Matthew’s gone?”

  Corcoran’s dark eyes opened very wide. “You think I know?” he said slowly, surprise and a flicker of fear in his face.

  “Don’t affect ignorance!” Anger welled up dangerously inside Joseph, too close to breaking his control. The danger was real, and he could not bear to lose Corcoran as well. It was as if the past and all he loved in it were being taken from him piece by piece. “You may not know where they’ve gone, but you know you finished the prototype and they took it! And Morven knows it.”

  “To test!” Corcoran shook his head. “There’s so much that you don’t understand, and I can’t tell you. Morven will not kill me. . . .”

  “He can’t afford not to!” Joseph was raising his voice in spite of himself. “For God’s sake, you were there that night! You saw it, or something! Enough to work it out.”

  Corcoran gulped. “What makes you think that, Joseph?”

  Joseph’s patience was close to ripping apart. “Don’t treat me like a fool, Shanley! You lied to me about where you were when Blaine was killed. You said you were with Archie at the Cutlers’ Arms. You weren’t.” He saw Corcoran wince as if he had been hit. “I’m not checking up on you!” he said angrily. “Archie told me where he met you, at the Drouthy Duck! I just today realized what you’d said.”

  He steadied his voice, dropping it to be gentler, hearing his own anguish in it and unable to moderate it. “You were protecting Morven because you needed his gifts to finish whatever it is you were making. Well, it’s finished now! And the first chance he gets he’ll kill you. Give him up!”

  Corcoran stared at him, amazement and grief battling in his face. He looked old, almost beaten. There was only a last shred of will left to hang on to.

  “Shanley, you can’t protect him anymore!” Joseph pleaded. God, how he hated this war! Year by year it was stripping him of everything he loved! “I know you may like him,” he urged, his voice panicky, too high. “Damn it, I liked him myself, but he killed Theo Blaine. He stabbed him in the neck with a gardening fork and left him to bleed to death in the mud under his own trees—for his wife to find!” He leaned farther forward. “And he’ll do the same to you, but I won’t let that happen!”

  “We . . . we still need him, Joseph,” Corcoran said slowly. “It’s only sea trials. It may need work yet!” He sat forward, elbows on the desk, his face, almost bloodless, only
a yard away from Joseph’s. “This is the greatest invention in naval warfare since the torpedo! Perhaps even greater. It could save England, Joseph!” His eyes burned with the fire, the passion of it. “The whole British Empire rests on our mastery of the sea!” His voice trembled. “If we master the sea, we master the world, and lay peace on it. I can’t turn him in yet!”

  “And if he kills you first?” Joseph demanded. He heard what Corcoran said about England, about the empire, even about victory and peace, words that sounded like the vision of a forgotten heaven of the past, a glory remembered now like the gold of a dream. But he could not bear to let go of the love he still had, the memories of all certainty and goodness bound up in this man. “Morven is a spy! He killed Blaine, and he’ll kill you!”

  Corcoran blinked as if his vision were blurred and his eyes so exhausted he had trouble seeing. Then, very slowly, he sank his head on his hands. “I know,” he said softly, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “Tell Perth!” Joseph reached across and placed a hand on Corcoran’s wrist, a touch more than a grip.

  “I can’t, not yet.” Corcoran lifted his head. “Leave it, Joseph. There’s more to it than you know.”

  “I won’t let you be killed!” He thought of his father. The pain of his loss ached inside him like a bruise to the bone, as if he had been beaten and it hurt even to breathe. Why couldn’t he make Corcoran see his danger? His father would have known what to say. Even Matthew might have done better than this. He wished Matthew were here with his judgment, his sanity. But he wasn’t. There was no one else.

  Corcoran stared at him, his face gaunt, almost like dead flesh. “Leave it, Joseph,” he said again. “I know what Morven is. I’ve known for months. But it’s not time yet!”

  “Why not?” Joseph demanded.

  “I can’t do without him until we’re sure the prototype works.” Corcoran tried to smile. He looked like an old man staring death in the face with all the courage he could still grasp. “Please, Joseph, let it go for now. I know what I’m doing. He caught Blaine by surprise. Poor man had no idea. I do, and I’ll be careful. It’s not in his interest to kill me yet.”

  “Is that why you were there?” Joseph asked, still struggling with the idea of asking Perth to end it all now, while he was sure Corcoran was alive and well.

  Corcoran looked inexpressibly weary, as if suddenly his mind had lost the thread. He blinked.

  “Were you trying to save Blaine the night he died?” Joseph insisted.

  Corcoran sighed and pushed his hand across his hair, as if to take it back off his brow, but it had grown suddenly more sparse, and the gesture was pointless. “Yes. I was too late.”

  “Tell Perth!” Joseph urged. “Let him put more men here!”

  Corcoran smiled. “My dear Joseph, come back to reality! I know you are afraid for me, and it is just the love and concern I would expect from you. You have always been the most like your father, passionate, tender-hearted.” He blinked as if to hide tears, and his voice was softer. “You have much of his intellect, but not his power to separate the dream from the practical. This is an establishment where we do work that may save thousands of lives, tens of thousands, even end the war with a British victory and save England and all the literature, the law, and the dreams that have built an empire.” His lips tightened. “Perth is a decent man, adequate in his way, but it is impossible to have him or his men in here except for an hour or two at a time, under supervision, as they have to be. And I need to get back to my work. There are other inventions, other plans. Had you been anyone else I would not have taken the time from them to see you.” He rose to his feet stiffly. He looked as if every year of his age weighed painfully on his shoulders. “But it means much to me that you care so deeply. I shall make time to see you again before you return to Flanders.”

  Joseph felt curiously beaten. There was nothing for him to do but say goodbye and leave.

  He found Lizzie waiting for him in the car, parked just beyond the gate. He climbed in and sat down, closing the door. He felt drained and inexplicably defeated. Corcoran knew, but still Joseph had not been able to do anything to ensure his safety. And although he realized the murderer was beyond question Ben Morven, it was still an ugly thing to have it confirmed. He had liked Ben. He had thought there was something good in him, something of gentleness and honor. Perhaps he was a complete failure as a judge of people? He saw what he wanted to see. To judge kindly is a virtue, sometimes the difference between love and self-righteousness, but to miss the truth altogether, to fail to see evil, allows it to grow until it poisons everything. It is a kind of moral cowardice that leaves the battle to others, while calling itself charity. In the end it is not courage, honor, or love, simply evasion of discomfort to oneself.

  “Are you all right?” Lizzie said softly. “You look pretty awful.”

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m not even any use. I’ll get out and crank. You start.”

  When they were a few yards down the road, around the corner into the lane back toward St. Giles, she turned to him again. “You’re like a dentist hovering over a bad tooth. It has to come out! Who killed Theo?”

  “Ben Morven,” he answered. “He’s the German spy here. He needed to take Theo’s place on the project, so he could have the information it would give him, and I suppose the opportunity to sabotage the whole project.”

  She said nothing for several moments, frowning as she turned a sharp corner, and then another. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said at last. “Ben Morven is very good, but he’s not in the same field. To a layman it might look as if they were, but they weren’t. Theo talked to me about his work—not the details, of course, but I know what his skills were.” She looked at him quickly, then at the road again. “They were both physicists, but Theo’s specialist field was wave transmission through water, Ben Morven’s is servo mechanisms. He couldn’t have taken Theo’s place. Corcoran himself could have, except that he wasn’t as good.”

  “Not as good!” Joseph said incredulously.

  “Not in that field,” she replied. “Physics and mathematics of that order, inventive, original, are a young man’s skills. Corcoran was the best in his time, but that was twenty-five years ago.”

  “But . . .” He struggled after explanations, something to rebut what she was saying. It was heading toward an abyss that appalled him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  He sat stunned. He did not want to think of it, but the reasoning unrolled in front of him just like the ribbon of road ahead, and he was carried along just as inevitably as if he were in a vehicle of the mind that he could neither stop nor steer away.

  Corcoran had lied about Morven, not in order to protect the work, but about their relative abilities, even the nature of their skills. Morven had not taken Blaine’s place; Corcoran had taken it himself, or tried to. Was that why the work had taken so much longer? Corcoran was not as good, he had not the keenness of grasp, the agility of intellect.

  Lizzie drove on silently.

  Other things came into Joseph’s mind, like the branches coming into sight as they turned a corner in the road. Corcoran sitting at the family table making them all laugh, years ago, when Joseph was a boy; Corcoran telling stories, complimenting Alys and making her blush but laugh at the same time; Corcoran talking about his work, eyes burning with pride and enthusiasm, saying how it would revolutionize the war at sea, how it would save Britain. He had not boasted that his name would go down in history as the man whose brilliance altered the course of life, but it was there between the lines.

  Only had he lived, it would have been Theo Blaine’s name that was written, not Corcoran’s.

  Was that it? Glory? Had he, not Morven, murdered Blaine, believing he could take his place, and then found he could not? The thought was unbearable! What treachery to the past, to friendship, to his father, that he could even allow such a thing into his head! Joseph despised himself that he could do it, but it was th
ere, immovable.

  How could he have been so wrong all his life? And his father be wrong as well? John Reavley had loved Corcoran as a friend since university days. Was he so deluded that he had missed such a fatal hunger for fame, for endless adoration?

  At last Lizzie interrupted, her voice strained as if she could keep silent no longer. “What is it?” she asked. “I have to know one day. You don’t need to protect me.”

  “I . . .” he started. Then he realized how rude that would sound, saying that it was himself he was protecting, his dreams and his beliefs, all the safety of the past that comforted and sustained now. He watched her face, strong and humorous and brave, trying to find a way through loss. She deserved the truth, and he realized with surprise that he would like to share it with her. It would be easier, not harder for him.

  Finding the words with difficulty, he described to her what he had thought, the slow piecing together until the picture they made was inescapable.

  It was several moments before she answered.

  Had he made a hideous mistake, turned on the one man who was doing all he could for the best, selflessly? Would Lizzie despise him for it as much as Corcoran himself would, and Matthew, and Hannah?

  But a voice inside him said that he was not wrong. War could strip a man down to essentials of strength or weakness that the comforts of peace had layered with deceit. It revealed flaws that lesser times left decently covered.

  Lizzie pulled the car to a stop at the side of the lane and turned to face him. Her eyes were full of unhappiness and a deep and terrible pity.

  “I wish I could think of anything to argue you out of that, but if I did I would be lying, and we can’t afford anything less than the truth, can we.” It was a statement, not a question. “I’m so sorry. It would be so much easier if it were anyone else.”

  He was not alone in his knowledge. It left him no choice. The dilemma and the guilt of choice were gone, and the freedom. He was propelled forward now, whatever he wished.

  “Are you going to be all right?” she asked softly.