Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [46]
“We don’t have any . . .” She stopped. Her voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “I suppose we wouldn’t know, would we? I can’t believe anyone here would betray us. But then I can’t believe anyone here would murder him for any other reason, either.”
“Three years ago I would have believed you,” he replied gently. “But I am afraid we are not so naÏve anymore.”
She avoided meeting his eyes. “Archie’s going on the night train to Portsmouth. Nancy Arnold will drive him to Cambridge.”
“Nancy Arnold?” he said in surprise.
“She runs the taxi service now. I can’t make up my mind whether to go with him or not.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said immediately. “Railway station goodbyes are always pretty rotten. Let him think of you here at home.”
“Did he say that?”
“No.” Archie had not spoken to Joseph of anything so intimate. They had discussed the news, and more seriously the possibility that England could lose the war, and what that would mean, how their lives would change. They might both be killed, in fact Archie almost certainly would be. For Joseph it would depend more upon whether he was in Flanders at the time, or home, but well enough to carry on the fight in whatever resistance was left. The same would surely be true for Matthew. To imagine him surrendering was impossible. But what would happen to the women and children?
There was no answer, and they left it only as a dark shadow it was better to share than face alone.
“No, he didn’t say so,” Joseph expanded. “It’s just how I would feel.”
“But you’re not ready to go back!” she said urgently. “And we need you here. Kerr went to pieces today. What good is he when someone loses a son or a husband in France, or just as bad, has come home armless or legless or blind? Who else but you will help to console them?”
Joseph pondered her words. “No need to think of it now,” he said. “It’ll be ages before I’m well enough anyway. Yes, I’ll have a boiled egg. In fact, two.”
She clung onto him for a moment, fiercely, then kissed his cheek. Joseph watched as she trod straight-backed into the kitchen, her skirt twitching a little as she walked. She had always had that little sway, a part of her character that surprised. One might have expected it of Judith, but not of Hannah.
Kerr turned up again the next morning. Hannah seemed pleased to see him and regarded Joseph’s exasperation with patience. “He needs you,” she said simply. “The poor man is out of his depth. I’m going to the shops to get more wool, and then to the VAD center for supplies to sew ditty bags. I’ll be back at lunchtime.”
Kerr was in the sitting room as before, standing in the middle of the floor and looking just as white-faced as he had the previous day. Joseph’s heart sank. “What is it now?” he said somewhat less than graciously. He was afraid Kerr was going to ask him to conduct the funeral, a duty that should fall to the incumbent of St. Giles.
“I have a moral dilemma,” Kerr replied. “I have never been in this position before!”
“Life is full of positions we have never been in before,” Joseph pointed out a little tartly. Kerr’s failure was tempting him more than he wished. He could feel the yielding in himself.
Kerr was nervously clenching and unclenching his hands. He would not be put off. “This policeman seems to think it was someone in the village who killed poor Blaine,” he said abruptly. “He’s like a ferret with his teeth in your leg—he won’t let go until he has nabbed someone.”
Joseph smiled bleakly. “I think your acquaintance with ferrets must be better than mine.”
“He is going to hound us all until he knows everything about everybody. It will do untold harm.”
“Murders do,” Joseph assured him bitterly. He remembered acutely what murder had done to St. John’s and the students there. “I’m sorry. It’s a wretched thing, but there is no dilemma because there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“But I know people’s secrets!” Kerr protested, his voice rising. “It is part of my calling. You know that! What am I supposed to tell this awful