We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [38]
“Hello, Reverend,” he said with a twisted smile. “Have you come to do your holy duty, or to find out if I killed that poor woman? I hope to God it wasn’t one of us. What a bloody miserable way to end the war.”
“Do you think it might have been one of us?” Joseph asked him.
“Of course not!” Morel said in assumed horror. As always, he was struggling between intellect and dreams. He desperately did not want it to be one of his own men. For all his pretense at an armor of cynicism and his biting, irreverent wit, his care for his own men was deeper than any loyalty that duty could impose. They had journeyed through a kind of hell together, seen the deaths of half of those they loved, and it was not over yet. The ones who survived were weighed down by the ghosts of lost lives—joy and pain to carry for those who had forfeited their own chance to feel at all.
Joseph looked at him. His skin where his uniform usually protected it was clear and fine, apart from the scratches and louse bites they all had. The bones of his shoulders were still slender as a youth’s, yet his eyes were those of an old man. Everyone was like that, but Joseph knew Morel, and that made it different.
“Do you mean not British, or not the Cambridgeshires?” he asked him.
Morel grimaced. “I’m a realist, Reverend. Not the Cambridgeshires. I know a lot of people are saying it had to be one of the Germans, and since they’re not locked up because we’ve nowhere to put them, it’s a nice thought. But it could have been pretty well anybody. I don’t envy you your job of finding out who, and I suppose you have to. You would, anyway.” He winced. “You never could leave well enough alone, even when nobody else knew there was even a problem.”
“I’ve learned,” Joseph said rather tartly.
Suddenly Morel’s face softened and a sweet affection shone through. “I know.” Then it vanished again. “But I hear there are a couple of policemen this time, so you won’t be able to hide anything. Don’t even try!”
“I have no intention of trying!” Joseph snapped. “There’s nothing ambiguous about the morality of this.” Even as he said it he knew that that might not be true. When was a crime ever utterly one-sided? Was the man who did this born violent—bestial? Or had they taught him how to hate, and that killing was the answer to rage? Had they created what he was now?
Morel rolled his eyes and did not bother to answer. Instead he recounted what he knew of men’s comings and goings through the night from the time he had arrived, in pain but very definitely conscious and observant.
Joseph thanked him, asked what he could do to help, then moved on to the next man.
That evening Joseph joined Matthew in the dugout. There was no spare accommodation in the clearing station now that only the most seriously wounded could be moved on. Anyone able to stand remained, imprisoned by Jacobson’s command. The Germans were herded together, but they had only the barest shelter, apart from those for whom exposure might mean death. Even the male members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment—Wil Sloan and two others—were not allowed to leave.
“It can’t last,” Matthew said grimly, trying to get a candle lit in a tin in order to create a makeshift stove to boil water. “Damn this thing! How the hell do you ever manage?”
Joseph did it for him with the ease of practice.
“Thank you,” Matthew said drily. “I hope I leave here before I do enough of that to become as good as you are.”
“I’ve had four years’ experience,” Joseph replied. “Although I usually managed to cadge from somebody else.”
Matthew looked at him gravely. “You love these men, don’t you, Joe.” It was an observation; there was no question in his voice.
“Of course,” Joseph answered without hesitation. “If you can pass through this