Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [97]
Joseph had also felt compelled to pursue the investigation into Blaine’s death because it threatened Shanley Corcoran, and that was something he could not leave, however cruel or inappropriate it might seem to others. He had asked her about the person she had seen on a bicycle coming out of the path through the trees. He had questioned her persistently, but she could add nothing helpful.
Now he walked across the field and turned over in his mind all he knew. It was little enough. Theo Blaine had been on the edge of solving the last problem with the prototype of the invention, perhaps only a day or two from completing it. He had been having an affair with Penny Lucas, and no one was likely to tell the truth as to how serious that had been, or whether it was over, or in what circumstances.
Blaine had quarreled with his wife and gone down toward the potting shed on the evening of his death. She had said she had remained in the house, but there was nothing to corroborate that, or disprove it.
Dacy Lucas was accounted for, according to Perth. No one else was, unless you considered Shanley himself, and Archie, at the Cutlers’ Arms.
Someone had cycled along the path in the woods; the tire marks were there. Perth had estimated someone of moderate weight according to the depth of the tracks in the earth. A person of heavier build than most women, or else a lighter person carrying something. Gwen Neave had seen a man, she was adamant about that.
The fork had a raised screw that had scratched Perth’s hand when he swung it experimentally. If Blaine’s murderer hadn’t protected his hands, he would have a similar scratch. Except that it would probably be healed by now. Still, it might have been noticed by someone.
Or perhaps the killer had worn gloves. In any event, there were no fingerprints. Was it a crime of passion and opportunity? Or a carefully planned killing, and the fork simply a chance taken at the last minute?
Joseph had talked to Kerr as well, resurrecting everything he knew and had observed for himself. That had amounted to nothing of use. Perhaps he was stupid to have imagined otherwise. It had all ended in Kerr begging Joseph to deliver the sermon on Sunday.
He had stood in the pulpit and looked at the familiar faces turned toward him. He could see the squire, Mrs. Nunn, Tucky still swathed in bandages, Mrs. Gee, Plugger Arnold’s father, Hannah and the children, all the families he knew. They were waiting for him, full of confidence that he could give them some comfort and guidance.
For a moment he had felt panic seize him. No wonder Hallam Kerr was overwhelmed. Did any of the old stories in the old words answer the confusion of today? Would anyone hear the truth wrapped up in the phrases they were so used to?
He thought not. The Bible was all to do with other people, two thousand years ago and somewhere else. They would nod and say Joseph was a good man, and go out exactly the same as they had come in, still angry, frightened, and lost.
What use was religion if it was about somebody else? It was about you, or it was about no one. He had abandoned the story of Christ walking the road to Emmaus, unrecognized by the apostles, although it was one of his favorites. He told them instead of the reality of war in Ypres, where their own families were dying. He reminded them of the corpse-filled craters of no-man’s-land, and the agony endured in terrible wounds. He did not make it anything like as harsh as the reality, only enough to tear them out of their own present.
“These are our sons and brothers!” he had told them. “They’re doing this because they love us. They believe in home, the laughter and the tolerance we stand for, the things of labor and decency. If we don’t keep it a good home, if we soil it with bigotry and intolerance, if we learn how to hate and destroy, if we forget who we are, what are they dying to save? What is there left for those who survive to come home to?”
Now he stood in the grass and the sweet-smelling air, and was afraid he had said too much.