Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [83]
“Well?” Shearing asked. He looked tired. His usually immaculate suit was creased and his tie was not quite straight. Once again Matthew wondered where he lived, and why he had never mentioned even a parent or a brother. Why was there nothing in his office that betrayed any love or memory, any ties to place or culture? He seemed a man without roots. That very anonymity was vaguely frightening. It made him less than human. Every other man had a photograph, an ornament, pictures—some ties to who he was. At least the fear had gone that he could be the Peacemaker. Matthew realized only now that it was gone how much that had hurt.
“We have a suitable body for the double agent,” he said briefly. “I’m going to tell Detta Hannassey about it this evening.”
Shearing nodded. “She’ll know if she’s being fed, Reavley. Don’t do it all at once.”
“I won’t.”
Shearing smiled with a bleak humor. “On the other hand, time is short.”
“Yes, sir.” Matthew stood to attention for a moment, then turned and left. As so often before, he wished profoundly that he could trust Shearing. Perhaps now he could, but the old caution was too deep to cast aside. John Reavley’s last words to him had been that the conspiracy reached right to the top. Who also was tainted? And if he did trust, who else would die?
There were moments when he missed his father with exactly the same desperate, incredulous pain as on the very first day. There was an emptiness inside him that no one else could fill. They would have sat together, probably on a bench in Regent’s Park, watching the ducks, and talked about whatever the problem was. They might have walked around an art gallery, seeing what was for sale, looking for bargains, old watercolors that needed cleaning and restoring, the foxing taken off, and refreshed to show their beauty.
Matthew would have wanted to tell him of his strange relationship with Detta Hannassey, and how they knew that each was playing a game with the other, with a mixture of lies and truths. In the big matters—the ideals and the battles—they were against each other, even to the extent of using deceit and counterdeceit. In the little things—the jokes and the teasing, the tenderness, even the fleeting pleasures of flowers or music, a moment of sunlight on the water, the flight of a bird—they were passionately honest. But Matthew could not have told his father this. John Reavley would have seen it as one more example of the loathsome duplicity and betrayal innate in espionage. Would he ever have understood how many lives it saved? Matthew wished he could have told him! It would have undone an ache inside him if he could.
This was all in his mind when he met Detta at the theater that evening. He never collected her from her home, as he would have with another woman. She did not permit him to know where she lived. He thought it more than possible she did not always sleep in the same bed each night. He preferred not to know. Jealousy would be ridiculous, but he knew its taste well enough to avoid even the suspicion.
He had intended to be there well before she was, which ought not to be difficult. She was often late, arriving casually at the last moment when he was on the point of giving up, her smile as bright as usual. But this evening she was there already. He saw her standing in the foyer as soon as he was through the doors. She was dressed in dark blue. She tended to choose cold colors, but she never looked cold. They heightened her drama, as if she did not belong in the everyday world but was merely visiting it from a more mystical place. Her gown was very simple and she wore a dark cloak over it, as the evening would be cooler after the performance.
She did not come toward him. She stood quite still, smiling, until he should