Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [43]
He forced his attention back to the present and the white-faced woman of perhaps twenty-five or so, looking at Perth and trying to find the words to tell him what had happened.
“When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Blaine?” Perth said calmly, waiting until she sat down in one of the kitchen chairs, then doing the same.
“We quarreled last night,” she admitted, her face flushed with shame. “About half past nine. He went out into the garden. I went up to bed about half an hour after that. I . . . I didn’t see him again.”
“What did you quarrel about?” Perth asked, no expression in his voice or his tired, ordinary face.
“Nothing, really,” she said miserably. It was a lie. Joseph knew it as he watched her, but not a guilty one. Perhaps it was defensive—to hide the foolishness of a man already dead. “It was stupid, just tiredness and short temper,” she went on. “He’d been working very hard at the Establishment. He didn’t often get home before eight or even nine in the evening.”
Perth’s expression was unreadable. Had he seen the lie as well?
Joseph did not believe Lizzie Blaine this time, either. There was a change in the way she sat, not a movement but a lack of it, as if she were rigid inside, guarding herself. The quarrel had been specific, and she did not want to admit it. Did she know who had killed her husband?
Perth looked at her curiously. “Were you angry that he worked late so often, Mrs. Blaine?”
She hesitated. “No, of course not.” She met his eyes. “It’s for the war. It’s something we all have to do. It would be worse if he were in the army, or the navy, wouldn’t it?” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “At least it might have been,” she corrected herself.
Perth glanced at Joseph, then he nodded again. “I’m afraid, Mrs. Blaine, that terrible as it is out there, we’ve got our own troubles at home, too. Crime doesn’t stop just ’cos of the war. Wish it did. You went to bed, you say? Did you hear Mr. Blaine come back inside?”
“No.” She swallowed.
“That didn’t worry you?” There was skepticism in his face.
She looked at him defiantly now. “No. He used to stay up sometimes, thinking. He was a scientist, Inspector, not an office clerk. He was always thinking.”
Perth’s face tightened. Not many people worked office hours these days, certainly not police, but he did not say so aloud. “And you didn’t wake up in the night and wonder where he was?”
“No,” she answered. She was sitting stiff-backed on the wooden chair, her shoulders rigid, her knuckles white on the tabletop. “I slept right through. I’d worked pretty hard during the day, too, and I was exhausted.”
Perth’s eyes flickered around the tidy kitchen. Had he noticed that there was nothing belonging to children downstairs, and no mention of them? “Working?” he asked.
“With the VADs,” she answered. “We had a garden party where everybody brought a blanket. We got nearly three hundred, but it took a long time afterward to fold and pack them.”
“I see. So you would have been late home also?”
“Half past six. I wanted to cook dinner for him.”
His voice dropped a little and became gentler. “And this morning, Mrs. Blaine?”
Her lips quivered and she swallowed as if there was an obstruction in her throat. “When I woke up and saw he still wasn’t there, I knew something was wrong. We . . . we have a shed at the bottom of the garden, where the walk is at the end under the trees.” She shivered although it was warm in the room from the black lead stove still alight from the night before. “I thought he might have been so angry that he had slept down there,” she went on. “I know that’s ridiculous. It’s far too cold for that, but I went down anyway, after I knew he wasn’t in the house. I . . .” She dragged her hand over her face, pushing her dark hair back. “I found him lying on the earth just by the path, and the . . .” She stopped. Every trace of color left her face. Joseph could only imagine the horror in her mind.
“I see. And what time was that?” Perth asked.
“What?” She looked lost, as if the meaning of what he said had evaded her.