Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [4]
They both laughed, and Joseph told him about other men from the village, but he spoke only of the pranks, the rivalries, the concert parties, and letters from home. He said nothing about the terrible injuries—Plugger Arnold dying of gangrene, or handsome Arthur Butterfield with his wavy hair, drowned in a bomb crater in no-man’s-land. He did not talk about the gas either, or how many men had been caught on the wire and hung there all night, riddled with shot, and no one could get to them.
Joseph spoke of friendship, the kind of trust where everything is shared. He saw, as he had many times before, the guilt in Matthew’s face, that he, a healthy young man, should be doing a job here at home when almost every other man he knew was either at the front or at sea. Few people realized how important his job was. Without good intelligence, quickly gathered and correctly interpreted, tens of thousands more lives would be lost. There was no glory at the end; in fact, seldom was there any recognition at all.
Joseph was simply grateful that his brother was safe. He did not lie awake at night, cold and sick with fear for him, or scan each new casualty list with his stomach churning. He knew that Matthew was responsible specifically for information concerning America, and the likelihood of their joining the Allies, as opposed to their present neutrality. He could imagine his duties might involve the decoding and interpretation of letters, telegrams, and other messages. “How’s Hannah?” he asked.
“Fine. I expect they’ll let her in to see you this afternoon or tomorrow. Not that there’s been much to see, until now. You’ve been out of it most of the time.” The anxiety returned to Matthew’s eyes.
“There are others a lot worse,” Joseph said truthfully. “I’ve a cracking headache, but nothing that won’t heal.”
Matthew’s eyes flickered to Joseph’s arm, which was heavily bandaged, and then the bedclothes carefully placed so as not to weigh on the wound in his leg. “You’ll be home a while,” he observed. His voice was thick. They both knew Joseph was fortunate not to have lost the arm. Perhaps, had Cavan been less skilled, he would have.
“Any other news?” Joseph asked. He said it quite lightly, but there was still a change in his tone, and Matthew heard it immediately. He knew what the question really meant: Was he any closer to finding the identity of the Peacemaker? That was the name they had given to the man behind the plot their father had discovered, and which had led to his murder and that of their mother.
It was Joseph who had learned, to his enduring grief, who it was who had physically caused the fatal car crash. He and Matthew together had found the treaty, unsigned as yet by the king, on the day before Britain declared war. But the man with the passion and the intellect behind it still eluded them. Their compulsion to find him was partly born out of a hunger for revenge for the deaths of John and Alys Reavley. Others, too, whom they’d cared for, had died—used, crushed, then thrown away by the Peacemaker in pursuit of his cause. They also needed to stop him before he achieved the devastating ruin he planned.
Matthew pushed his hands into his pockets, lifting his shoulders in the slightest shrug. “I haven’t found anything helpful,” he answered. “We know it isn’t Chetwin. I followed everything else we had, but in the end it led nowhere.” His lips tightened a fraction, and there was a moment’s defeat in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where else to look. I’ve been pretty busy trying to prevent the sabotage of munitions across the Atlantic. We’re desperate for supplies. The Germans are advancing along the Somme. We’ve over a million men wounded or dead. We lose ships to the U-boats pretty well every week. If it goes on like this another year, we’ll start to know real hunger, not just shortages but actual starvation. God! If we could only get America in on our side, we’d have men, guns, food!” He stopped abruptly, the light going out of his face.