Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [132]
“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