Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [61]
Thoughts raced through Hannah’s mind, memories of foolish things she had said and done that she would prefer no one knew. But she had thought of other things, too, about Ben Morven, the way he laughed, the easy way he walked, the look of his throat in a clean cotton shirt. He had good hands, brown and slender. . . .
But then she focused again on what Penny Lucas was saying. Was that why Penny felt so very strongly about Inspector Perth? Did she know the narrowness of the back way to Theo Blaine’s house because she had been there? “Do you know Mrs. Blaine?” Hannah said aloud.
Penny was caught by surprise. Her face had a closed look. “Well, a bit, of course. Theo worked with my husband.”
What an odd way of putting it! She did not speak of Theo as Lizzie Blaine’s husband, as if she wanted to avoid the thought.
“Why?” Penny demanded, her blue-green eyes narrowed.
“I was thinking how dreadful she must feel,” Hannah lied. “It’s an awful way to lose someone. I hope she has good friends, I mean other than just people like the vicar, or . . . or that sort of thing.”
Penny looked at the road ahead. “We all lose people, especially these days. I don’t really know if she had friends or not. She’s rather a cold, self-contained sort of person. We each cope in our own way.”
“Of course. And I expect the policeman will bother her most of all.”
Penny stopped abruptly, swinging around, her eyes wide and angry. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” Hannah assumed an expression of innocence close to apology. “I suppose because she must have known him best.”
Penny looked beaten. The courage and spirit inside her were suddenly deflated.
“I’m so sorry,” Hannah said quickly, pity overtaking sense. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose someone you know and have been friends with in such a way.” She had grown so accustomed to the lie that her parents’ deaths had been an accident, that she almost believed it herself. And regardless of that, she knew from the time Joseph had told her that it must never be spoken of. “If . . . if you want to talk to anyone who understands a bit, my brother would listen,” she offered to Penny. “A couple of years ago one of his very best friends was murdered. That’s how he knows Inspector Perth. It was pretty awful.”
“Really?” It was surprise in Penny’s face, but not much more than polite interest. “Perhaps. Just now I need to get home. I have a mountain of things to do, and I’m due back at the hospital in the morning. Thanks for . . .” She did not know how to finish the sentence, and she mounted her bicycle and with a quick smile, pedaled away with considerable speed, leaving the words unsaid.
Hannah stood on the curbside and watched her go, her blouse billowing in the wind and the sun bright on her hair, until she disappeared around the curve in the road. She seemed to feel the loss of Theo Blaine very deeply indeed, and yet she obviously did not like his wife, or know her very well.
Was it possible she had had a love affair with Blaine, and her husband had discovered it? Was that what Perth was sensing, searching to prove, and was that why Penny felt so threatened and intruded upon?
If she had met Theo Blaine secretly, where would it be? And when? Certainly not where he had been killed, but what about the woods beyond? Hardly in the winter, but in the spring or summer? Only in the evening. Too much chance of children playing in daylight.
But outside of romantic novels, did people really make love in the woods? It would be uncomfortable, almost certainly damp and a bit muddy,