Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [60]
Her use of words jarred Hannah, reminding her forcibly of Theo Blaine and his terrible death.
Penny must have seen it in her face. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I suppose it’s at the top of everybody’s mind. He was an extraordinary man, you know.” She brushed her skirt aside from being caught in the wheels of the bicycle. “No, of course you wouldn’t. He hardly had any time to know anyone. Corcoran works them all the hours they’re awake, practically. It must be necessary, for the war, I suppose, but it’s hard to take sometimes.” Her face tightened. “He forgets that those men are young, and maybe not as obsessed with science and making history as he is.” She looked sideways at Hannah. “Sorry again. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“He was my father’s closest friend, actually,” Hannah corrected her, wondering how Penny Lucas knew so much. She could remember meeting her husband, Dacy, only a couple of times. He was a quick-tempered man with a ready smile, who collected chessmen from various cultures and liked to talk about them.
“But your friend, too,” Penny added, watching her.
“Certainly, and he’s my brother Joseph’s godfather.”
“He’s the one in the army? He was wounded, wasn’t he? How is he?”
The baker’s cart passed them, pulled by an old black horse, looking shiny in the sun, harness bright.
“Recovering, but it takes time,” Hannah replied.
“You’ll miss him when he goes back.” Penny turned away, as if to guard some emotion she knew her eyes betrayed. It sounded from her voice like pain, a sudden loneliness too strong to govern.
Hannah wondered how well Penny had known Theo Blaine. Or was it someone else she was thinking of that hurt so deeply? Had she lost brothers or cousins in the war? “Do you have family in France?” Hannah asked aloud.
“No.” The word was oddly flat. “We’re all girls. My father’s so ashamed of it. No sons to send to the front.” She gave a little shiver, a gesture oddly vulnerable. “He doesn’t even think much of a son-in-law who works in a scientific place. It could be a factory, for all he perceives, except that it isn’t really work—pushing a pen around. Actually Dacy works far longer hours than anyone else I know. Except Theo; he’s probably one of the most brilliant men alive today.” She took a breath and almost gagged on it. “At least . . . yesterday. Isn’t that awful!”
“Yes, it is,” Hannah agreed, taken aback by the depth of emotion in the other woman’s voice. It seemed odd to stand together on the footpath in the sun, knowing each other so slightly and speaking of the deepest passions of life and loss as if they were friends. But that had probably happened to women all over the country. Just as the trenches made brothers of men, so the ripping apart of the old certainties, the aching loneliness of change and bereavement, made sisters of women who might never have known each other in peacetime. “You think you can’t bear it, except that there isn’t any way out,” she added.
Penny straightened her shoulders and started to walk again. Plugger Arnold’s father passed them, leading a shire horse, and Hannah smiled at him.
“That loathsome policeman keeps coming around prying into our lives,” Penny said angrily. “I don’t suppose he’s going through my laundry basket, but I feel I can’t even take a bath for fear that he’ll knock on the door to see how much hot water I’m using.”
“His must be a very difficult job.” Hannah matched her step to Penny’s. “If there really is a German spy in St. Giles, it could be pretty well anyone, couldn’t it?”
Penny nodded in agreement. “Although I can think of dozens it wouldn’t be—the old village families, especially those with sons or brothers at the front. When you think of it, that doesn’t leave many.”
“He’ll have to look in other villages, the nearby ones, anyway,” Hannah reasoned.
“You wouldn’t get a car down that back lane,” Penny pointed out. “You’d scratch it to pieces and leave tire tracks all over the place. Our busy inspector would have seen them. Maybe that’s why he’s questioning