Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [144]
He was smiling, tears on his face as well. Archie was alive—above all, Matthew was alive! Matthew was alive—he was all right—he would be coming back.
And that meant, of course, that Joseph would have to return to Ypres. But not yet, not today.
There were twenty-four hours’ respite, then Joseph went to London to testify at the trial of Shanley Corcoran. He was charged with high treason. The trial was held in a closed room; the only thing to make it different from a place where any kind of business might be conducted was the situation of the chairs, the height of the windows above the ground, and the armed and uniformed men at the doors.
As with any other trial, Joseph did not hear the testimony previous to his own. He waited in an anteroom alone, pacing the floor, sitting for a short time on the hard-backed chair, then pacing again. He turned over and over in his mind what he would say, if he would simply answer what was asked of him, in a sense leave his contribution to truth or justice in someone else’s hands. That would take from him the final responsibility, the blame for Corcoran’s fall, and whatever happened to him because of it. It should not be Joseph’s decision to weigh his guilt.
The door opened and a small, quiet man in a dark suit told him it was time.
Joseph went with him.
The room was silent as he entered. He saw Corcoran immediately. There were only a dozen or so people there, no jury. This was not a trial at which any member of the public could be present. Both its evidence and its findings would remain secret. It reminded him of a court-martial.
He had not intended to meet Corcoran’s eyes, but his gaze was drawn in spite of himself. Corcoran sat at a small table with his defender beside him. He looked ashen and stiff-bodied but somehow smaller than Joseph remembered him. But then at heart he had been different from the way Joseph remembered him for a long time, perhaps always.
Now he was angry, his dark eyes brilliant, still a question, a demand in his expression—would Joseph finally measure up to the loyalty his father would have given, the loyalty to all past love and laughter, passions shared, and which he was convinced he deserved?
The prosecutor began. “Please state your name, your present occupation, and where you live,” he directed. His voice was soft, very polite. He was a rather elegant man.
“Joseph Reavley. I am a chaplain in the army. I live in Selborne St. Giles, in Cambridgeshire.”
“And why are you not with your regiment now, Captain Reavley?”
“I was injured, but I am due to return as soon as you permit me,” Joseph replied.
“When your duty here is completed, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Just so. How long ago were you wounded, and when did you go from hospital to St. Giles?”
Joseph gave the answers, and detail by detail the prosecutor drew from him his involvement with solving the murder of Theo Blaine, his acquaintance with Blaine’s widow, his conversations with Hallam Kerr and with Inspector Perth. It was a meticulous, almost dry, account, but then there was no jury to impress, no emotion to manipulate. The three judges would deal only with facts.
Throughout it all it was a battle between Joseph and Corcoran, who sat staring as if Joseph were the betrayer and he the victim, a man in an impossible situation who had been beaten by circumstance, and in the end turned on by the one person he trusted like a son. Such was the agony in his face that Joseph became more and more certain that he had actually convinced himself it was so.
Worse was to come. The defense lawyer, a lean man with fair, receding hair, stood up and walked toward Joseph, stopping a couple of yards in front of him.
“Would you like to sit down, Captain Reavley?” he asked courteously. “I know you received serious wounds which must be barely healed. We do not wish to cause you unnecessary pain.”
Joseph straightened his shoulders and stood even more crisply to attention. “No, thank you, sir. I am perfectly recovered.”
“I understand you