Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [136]
“In secret?” Joseph was startled.
“Yes. We will call you when you are needed.”
“Me? But . . .”
“You must testify as to what Commander MacAllister told you, and Mrs. Blaine.”
“But it’s hearsay!” Joseph protested. “It’s not evidence!”
“Is it true?” Hall’s eyes opened very wide.
“Yes! But . . .”
“You will swear to it?”
Joseph hesitated, not because he had any doubt, but because it meant that he was casting the final pieces that would weigh damnation for Shanley Corcoran.
“Are you telling the truth, Captain Reavley?” Hall repeated.
“Yes . . .”
“Then you will swear it before the tribunal if you are called. Thank you for coming forward. I realize what it has cost you.”
Joseph rose to his feet slowly, straightening his leg and his back. “No, you don’t,” he said wearily. “You have no idea at all.” He turned and walked to the door slowly, as if each step were too long, and too slow. He heard Hall speaking behind him, but he did not listen. There was nothing he could say that would do any good.
Joseph returned to St. Giles the next day. He walked into the house in the early afternoon and he was barely in the hall when Hannah came out of the kitchen white-faced, her hair coming loose from its pins.
“Joseph, something terrible has happened,” she said immediately, without waiting for him to speak. “Orla Corcoran telephoned, but I couldn’t reach you at Matthew’s flat. You must have left already.” She stepped in front of him, so close he could smell the sweetness of the lavender soap on her skin. Her voice was trembling. “Joseph, someone came this morning to arrest Shanley and took him away. They didn’t say what for, and Orla is almost beside herself. She has no idea what it’s about and she doesn’t know what to do. They told her to say nothing, so she can’t even call a lawyer. How can we help? I told her you would know.”
“We can’t help,” he replied, seeing the grief and incomprehension in her face. He opened the sitting room door and pulled her in, closing it after her. He did not want Mrs. Appleton to hear. “It is to do with Blaine’s murder,” he explained. “And the project they have at the Establishment. It has to be secret.”
“They’ve found the spy.” She searched his face, her eyes serious, probing for honesty. “Was Shanley protecting him? Is that what’s wrong?”
“No, actually they haven’t. I’m not sure if there is one.”
“There has to be! He murdered Theo Blaine.” She stated it as fact.
Should he let it go? It would be easier. The temptation was so powerful it burned through his mind like a fire, hurting and destroying.
She saw something of the turmoil inside him and reached up her hand a little uncertainly to touch his cheek. “Joseph, please don’t shut me out. I’m not running away anymore. I am sure that whatever it is, it’s terrible. I haven’t seen such pain in your eyes since Eleanor died. What is it?”
He looked at her. She was so like their mother, and yet stronger. Her innocence was gone; not destroyed but transformed into something else, something prepared to love, whatever the cost. She needed him to trust her, and now overwhelmingly he needed her to share the burden with him. He had not intended to, but he told her.
“Shanley killed Blaine himself because Blaine was going to create something brilliant, and take the credit,” he said. “It was his, rightly. Shanley killed him out of envy, thinking he could finish the work, but he was wrong. He wasn’t clever enough.”
He saw the incredulity in her face, then it turned to hurt, then finally grief. “Oh, Joseph, I’m so sorry!” She put her arms around him and held him as if he had been younger than she, the wounded one, the sleepless one whose nights were too long, too dark, and too cold to be endured alone.
He was glad of it. It was all he could do not to let the hot tears of disillusionment and betrayal burn his face.
CHAPTER
* * *
FIFTEEN
It was a long time before Joseph could compose himself sufficiently to telephone Orla Corcoran and say to her that for the moment there was nothing he could do to help,