Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [146]
Joseph turned away, sick at heart. He faced Paxton. “That is very good advice,” he said distinctly. “And it is what I did. Mr. Corcoran had said to me that he had killed Theo Blaine because Blaine was incapable of finishing the project they were working on, but to protect his own scientific reputation he was going to sell it to the Germans.”
Paxton’s eyebrows shot up. “Even though it did not work?”
“I didn’t believe it either,” Joseph replied, and saw Paxton’s face flame. “I went to Admiral Hall of naval intelligence and told him all I knew. He would be able to check on Theo Blaine’s abilities, and those of all the other men working at the Establishment.”
Paxton shifted his position again. “And if Blaine could not complete the work, Captain Reavley, but intended to betray what there was of it to our enemies, what would you have done in Mr. Corcoran’s place? You, who exceed your own orders and go over the top into no-man’s-land to bring back the dead? Is this not actually what you received your Military Cross for? Was not the journalist Eldon Prentice actually dead? It was a corpse you risked your life to bring back, was it not?”
“Victoria Crosses are given for a specific act of extraordinary valor,” Joseph corrected him. “Military Crosses are for a number of lesser acts. Lots of men go out to bring back the injured. You can’t always tell if they’re dead or not until you reach your own trenches. It’s wet and cold and dark out there, and you’re being shot at. Sometimes men die before you get them back.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Very moving,” Paxton said. “But irrelevant. There are many kinds of courage, moral as well as physical. I repeat, if you knew for a certainty that the most brilliant scientist in your Establishment was also a traitor, but you could not prove it to others, what would you do, Captain Reavley?”
Joseph closed his eyes. This was the moment. Corcoran was sitting rigid, staring at him. He could feel his eyes as if they burned a scalding heat onto his skin. “I would do what I have done,” Joseph replied. “I would take the evidence to naval intelligence and let them deduce from it what they would. I could be mistaken.”
“And was Mr. Corcoran mistaken, in your opinion? Did he act in error?”
Joseph’s mouth was dry, his heart pounding. “No. I do not believe so. He described a scientist whose ambition and hunger for glory was so consuming that he would betray everything and everyone else, rather than yield the ultimate achievement to another. He would sooner have Britain lose than win with someone else’s invention. But it was not Theo Blaine he was describing, it was himself.”
Paxton flung out his arms. “You have known the man all your life!” His voice cracked with incredulity. “He was your dead father’s best and dearest friend, and this is what you think of him?” Now there was derision in him, and stinging contempt. “What changed your mind, Reverend? A loss of faith in everything, perhaps even in God? What happened to you in the trenches, in the no-man’s-land you describe so well, the cold, the wet, the agony, being shot at?” He waved his arms. “And you were hit, weren’t you? Are you lashing out at a God the Father who did not protect you from all this?” He gestured again toward Corcoran. “Or at the father who died and left you to face this horror and deal with it alone? What changed you, Chaplain? What turned you into a betrayer?”
What had been the moment, exactly? Joseph searched in his mind and he knew.
“You are right when you said I tried to be all things to all people,” he replied with a strange, aching calm. “It was when I was talking with the minister in St. Giles, about what to say to a young soldier who has lost both his legs. Sometimes there is nothing you can do, except be there. He asked me if I was sure that there is a God, quite sure. Sometimes I’m not!”
There was a movement in the room. Corcoran’s stare did