Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [32]
She opened the front door and went into the familiar hall. Mrs. Appleton was in the kitchen; the smell of baking drifted through the house. The dining room door was open, the bunch of daffodils on the table reflected on its polished surface. She could smell their warm, heavy scent.
She found Joseph upstairs in his bed. His eyes were closed, but there was a book open upside down on his lap. It was one of those days when his arm was hurting more than usual; she could see it in the shadow on his face.
He must have heard her step, light as it was, because he opened his eyes.
“Hurts?” she asked with a half smile.
“Not much,” he answered.
“It might not get strong enough for you to go back?” She lifted her voice at the end, as if it were a question. “The vicar isn’t much good. There’d be a lot for you to do here. Everything’s changing, and we don’t know what’s right as easily as we used to.” She drew in her breath. “The vicar hasn’t the faintest idea what the men have been through, but you have.” Without meaning to, she was putting all the arguments at once. She could hear the urgency in her own voice, and knew she had said too much.
There was indecision in his face. He must feel the warmth around him, smell the clean cotton of the sheets, the flowers on the dresser, bright in the sunlight through the window. He must hear the sound of birdsong outside, and the wind in the branches, sweet off the fields.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. She was ashamed. His decision, whatever it was, would be hard enough. He was the one who would be cold, tired, hungry, perhaps injured in Flanders, not she. She was being unfair.
“I think Kerr will become better at it,” he said quietly. “With practice.”
“Yes, I expect he will,” she agreed, and went out again before she made any more mistakes, even if it was just to let him see her tears.
In the upper room in Marchmont Street the Peacemaker finished reading the letter on his desk and burned the pages one at a time. It was a letter from his cousin in Berlin, one of the few men in the world he trusted absolutely. It was wiser to leave nothing to chance. German plans for the United States were crucial to success in the war. If America could be persuaded to join the Allies, the forces against Germany would be vastly increased. The American army was small as yet, but their resources were virtually inexhaustible. They had coal and steel enough to supply the world, and food, of course. In time it would tip the balance of the war fatally against Germany.
That was why America had to be kept occupied with the Mexican threat at its southern border, and possibly even with a Japanese base on the Pacific coast, just to the south in Baja California. Germany had brilliant men throughout the North American continent, agents who kept Berlin constantly in touch with every move of President Wilson and of the Congress, of public and private feeling in every state. With great skill and secrecy they moved money and guns into Mexico and judged the ambition and the violence in that turbulent country to an exactness.
The Santa Ysabel massacre was a piece of extraordinary good fortune, but with care it could be repeated on a scale large enough to keep America’s attention focused entirely on their own affairs, but not so large as to precipitate a full-scale invasion of Mexico.
Detta Hannassey was becoming more and more useful. No doubt her principal aim was to free Ireland, but she was a far better tool in helping Germany to keep control of the sabotage in America than he had thought she would be. She was resourceful, clever without arrogance, and she had sufficient sense of humor never to betray herself by posturing or losing her temper. She was not as dangerous as her father, and therefore in many ways a better weapon to use.
He took the poker and crushed the ashes of Manfred’s letter so there was nothing left.
The war at sea was the more urgent issue now. That could be won or lost