Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [99]
Joseph nodded. It was a miserable thought, but an inevitable one. He wished with a savage depth that he had more to tell Perth, something of meaning. “I’ll go and talk to Francis Iliffe, and see what I can find out,” he said. But he resolved first to go and try to comfort Shanley Corcoran.
In the house on Marchmont Street the Peacemaker received a visitor. It was the same young man who had called before to bring him word from Cambridgeshire. He stood in the upstairs room, his young face tired. He was trying to hide at least some of his unease, but it was more out of courtesy than any hope to deceive.
“Have the police discovered who killed Blaine?” the Peacemaker asked.
“No,” the young man replied. “To begin with, they considered the probability that it was a domestic matter. Blaine was having an affair with Lucas’s wife. But Lucas couldn’t have killed him. He can prove quite easily that he was somewhere else.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes. I checked it myself.”
“What about Blaine’s wife?” the Peacemaker asked.
“Possible. But they aren’t considering her seriously, I don’t think. . . .”
“Couldn’t be a woman’s crime?” the Peacemaker said with derision. “Rubbish. A strong, healthy young woman, driven by jealousy, could easily have done it. From what you say, it was a crime of opportunity and passion anyway. The weapon was already there. No one brought it! That’s hardly planned.”
“I know that.” A flicker of impatience crossed the young man’s features. “But someone broke into the Establishment the day before yesterday, late in the evening, and smashed the prototype. . . .”
“And you come to tell me now?” the Peacemaker demanded, his hands clenching, fury rising inside him like bile.
The young man’s eyebrows rose, his eyes wide. “And if I’d come racing up to London the morning after, don’t you think Inspector Perth might have regarded me a great deal more closely than either of us want?” There was no respect or fear in his voice. That was a change the Peacemaker noted with interest.
“Smashed it?” he asked. “Didn’t take it?”
“Exactly.”
“Why? Any ideas?”
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” the young man answered. “The actual guidance system is not too large or too heavy for one man to carry, and that’s all you would need. The rest of it is pretty standard—that’s the beauty of it. It could be used on anything: torpedo, depth charge, even regular shell, if you wanted.”
“I know that!” the Peacemaker snapped. “Is that the best you can do?”
A flash of temper lit the young man’s eyes, but he controlled it. “The Establishment would be extraordinarily difficult to break into. They have doubled the guards, but no one was attacked.”
“Bribery?”
“It’s possible, but they’d have had to bribe at least three men in order to reach where the prototype was.”
“Money would be no object,” the Peacemaker pointed out.
“But the more people you bribe, the more chance of one of them changing his mind or betraying you. And you’ve not only got to get in, you’ve got to get out again. And what about afterward? Do you want to leave three men who have that knowledge?”
The Peacemaker waited.
“I think no one came in or went out,” the young man said. “It was someone inside all the time.”
The Peacemaker relaxed. It made perfect sense. “And I assume if it were you, you would tell me?” he said with an edge to his voice—half humor, half threat.
“I wouldn’t smash it before it’s finished,” the young man replied levelly. “If you don’t believe my loyalty, at least believe my intellectual curiosity.”
“I hadn’t thought to question your loyalty,” the Peacemaker said very carefully. “Should I?” There was something in the young man’s manner, a change in the timber of his voice since the last time he had been here. Or perhaps, on reflection, it dated further back.
“I still believe exactly as I did when we first met,” the young man said intently, his concentration sudden and very real. “More so, if anything.”
The Peacemaker knew that that was the literal