Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [103]
“And in other ways?”
Iliffe looked at Lizzie, but she allowed him to answer without adding anything herself.
“Grew up in working-class Lancashire,” Iliffe said. “Grammar school, Manchester University. Opened up a new world to him. Don’t know if you can understand that, Mr. Reavley. Sorry, I don’t know your rank. . . .”
“Captain, but it’s irrelevant. Yes, I can understand it. I lectured in Biblical languages in Cambridge before the war. I had many students with a similar background, some were even brilliant, in their own field.” He ignored the pain inside him as he said that.
Iliffe saw it. “Gone to the trenches?” he asked.
“Many of them, yes. It’s not exactly a war-exempt skill.”
“Then you know the impact of ideas on a boy from a narrow, working-class town suddenly in a ferment of social, political, and philosophical ideas, realizing he’s got a dazzling mind and the whole world is out there, and his for the conquering. Morven’s an idealist. At least he was a year ago. I think some of the dreams have been tempered a bit by reality since then. One grows up. Are you thinking he’s a German sympathizer?”
“Are you?” Joseph countered.
Lizzie looked from one to the other of them, but she did not interrupt.
“No, frankly,” Iliffe replied. “But a socialist, possibly. Even an internationalist of sorts. I can’t see him killing Blaine.” He glanced at Lizzie. “Sorry,” he apologized gently. He turned back to Joseph. “But then I can’t see anyone doing that, and obviously someone did. Does your pastoral experience teach you how to recognize violence like that behind the everyday faces, Reverend?”
“No,” Joseph said simply. “We all have the darkness. Some act on it; most of us don’t. I can’t tell who will, or who already has.”
“Pity,” Iliffe said drily. “I was hoping you had all the answers. I’m damn sure I don’t.”
Outside on the way home again Lizzie said very little. Joseph apologized once more for having asked her to drive him on such a journey.
“Don’t.” She shook her head. “In an obscure sort of way it makes me feel better to think I’m doing something. It isn’t right to carry on with my life as if Theo were going to come back one day. I was his wife. I loved him. . . . I ought to be trying to find out who killed him, and prevent them from killing his work as well.”
He looked at her face, concentrated on the dark road and the bright path of the headlights. He could see only her profile, lips smiling, and tears on her cheek.
He did not say anything and they drove home in an oddly companionable silence.
The next day was Sunday. Archie had come home late the previous evening for a short leave, but he made the effort to get up and they all went to church together, dressed in their best clothes. Archie and Joseph both wore uniforms and Hannah walked between them, her head high with pride. They spoke to everyone they knew, assuring them they were well, asking in return but never mentioning other members of families. One could not be certain from day to day who was critically injured, posted missing in action, or even newly dead. There was kindness in it, sensitivity to pain and fear, and the knowledge that the blow could come at any moment. There was so much that could not be said, or the dam would break.
Joseph saw Ben Morven in a pew to their left, and caught his eyes on Hannah, watching her with a bright gentleness that betrayed more than he could have known. Once he saw Hannah look back at him, and then away again quickly, blushing.
The submerged tension in the air was crackling. Everyone practiced Sunday-best behavior, but the anger and suspicion were there, conspicuous in the tight lips, the whispers, and the silences.
Joseph wondered if Ben could possibly have killed Theo Blaine. Perhaps in a fistfight? He was young and strong and passionate in his loves and his dreams. But not in the dark, ripping his throat out with a garden fork! Could he?
That was absurdly naÏve. Idealism had crucified men, burned them at the stake, broken them on the wheel. Of course he could. It was hypocrisy that made the hand