Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [134]
“Are you going to be all right?” she asked softly.
“Yes, of course I am,” he answered, looking at her, then seeing her strong, steady face, turning away again. There was no doubt in her. She understood all that it meant. “Lizzie, you must say nothing. Not for Corcoran’s safety, for your own. Do you understand me?” he said urgently, even roughly.
She shivered. “Yes. I know. As long as you are going to do something. I’m not going to cover for anyone at all who killed Theo, whatever the reason.” They were in the main street of St. Giles. She turned the corner and pulled the car to a halt outside the house and looked at him, her eyes wide and bright from the lights in the doorway. “He doesn’t deserve that. He behaved like a fool with Penny Lucas, but not enough to die for, or be forgotten as if he didn’t matter.” She was quite steady now. “He did matter. He was brilliant, and stupid, brave and vulnerable and thoughtless, like most of us, except he did everything more. I’m not going to let him be forgotten. I’m not looking for vengeance, I suppose not even justice. It seems as if half the young men in Europe are dying. I just refuse to let it pass as if it wasn’t worth trying to do the right thing.”
“I’ll do the right thing,” he promised. He meant it intensely, for her sake as well as his own. “I’ll go to London tomorrow, and speak to the people who can deal with it, but not here, not Inspector Perth. I don’t have the kind of proof he would need. It’s just my word, at the moment.”
She reached across quickly and touched his hand, then gave a little smile, and nodded.
“Thank you for taking me,” he acknowledged her help, and got out of the car. He looked back at her for a moment and saw her smiling at him, the tears wet on her cheeks in the lamplight. He turned and went inside.
In the morning he took the bus to Cambridge, and then the train to London. He had told Hannah that it was business, but he had not told her the nature of it. She saw the darkness in his face and she did not ask.
He had no idea how long he would be gone, but he had a key to Matthew’s flat and if he had to stay in London, then he would do, as long as it was required until Admiral Hall of naval intelligence would see him. He would not trust Calder Shearing, because he knew that Matthew did not. This must go as high as he was able to reach. He still half hoped that there would be someone who could prove to him that he was wrong. He would look like a disloyal fool, but he could deal with his own weakness, blame himself and execute the appropriate penance. It would still be better than facing a truth as bitter as that which he knew his mind already accepted.
He went to naval intelligence. He knew where it was from his previous experience the year before, after the business at Gallipoli. Of course it was a different man who met him this time.
“Yes, sir?” the man asked blandly.
Joseph gave him his name, rank, and regiment, and said that Matthew was his brother. “I have information regarding the murder of Theo Blaine at the Scientific Establishment in Cambridgeshire,” he went on. “I can repeat it only to Admiral Hall.”
“I’m sorry, sir, that is not possible,” the man said immediately. “If you would like to write it down it will be submitted in due course.”
Joseph kept his temper only with the greatest difficulty. It was a kind of absurd nightmare that this dreadful task should be so difficult, as if fate were testing his resolve.
“The matter is in regard to immediate danger threatening a device currently being tested in sea trials on the HMS Cormorant,” he told the man.
That provided the result he wanted. Quarter of an hour later he was in the office of Admiral “Blinker” Hall, a short, robust man with a keen face and a shock of white hair. It was apparent within minutes how his nickname had been earned.
“Right, Captain Reavley, what is it?” Hall asked bluntly. “And don’t waste time explaining,