Angels in the Gloom (27 page)

Trotsky was talking about Jean Jaures, the French socialist who had been murdered just before the outbreak of war.

“He might have stopped all this!” Trotsky said savagely, watching Mason’s face. “I went to the Cafe Croissant, where he was killed, you know. I thought I might still feel something of him there. I did not agree with him politically, of course, but I admired him. How he could speak! Like a great waterfall, elemental! And yet he could be gentleness itself, endlessly patient in explaining.”

Mason watched him as he went on about Jaures, and then Martov, the leader of the Mensheviks in Paris, a man of towering intellect but irresolute will. He spoke of a dozen others, his own enthusiasm flooding through it all.

But did he want peace? If he returned to Russia to overthrow the tsar and the whole rotten edifice of oppression surrounding the old government, would he then take Russia out of the war? Or remain with the Allies, for whatever reason, and pursue it to the end through more seas of blood?

It was ludicrous! Mason was sitting in Trotsky’s home talking of a world revolution of social order and justice, all the while having been commissioned to murder him!

But men who had never met each other were crushed in the mud only a few score miles away, killing by the thousands. Surely the only sanity left was to stop it—any way at all?

The conversation had come around to Trotsky’s plans of returning to Russia.

“When you go back to Russia, when you get rid of the tsar, what then?” Mason asked him. “What will you do? What about the war?”

“We can’t help the rest of Europe,” Trotsky said with resignation. “We’ll make peace, of course, as soon as we have a voice at all!”

Mason felt relief well up inside him, but then he wondered if he was being hasty in accepting this answer. “You don’t feel that if you withdrew from the war, the rest of Europe might not support the revolution?” he asked aloud.

“What’s the matter with you?” Trotsky demanded. “With the losses we’re sustaining, we can’t keep fighting. And we’ve got so much to do, to put our country to rights. The last thing we need is more death. It is the ordinary men—the soldiers, the workers—who will bring about the new order. This is an unjust war—proletarian against proletarian. It must come to an end as soon as possible.” He frowned, puzzled by Mason’s apparent stupidity.

Mason leaned across the table. “When?” he asked with more urgency in his voice than he had intended. “You cannot afford to wait until Germany has beaten you, or you will merely exchange the tsar for the kaiser. And if America comes into the war, that will not help you. Then the Allies will win, and that means the tsar again. You will be back where you started, but with God knows how many of your people dead.”

“I know,” Trotsky said with pain marked deep in his face. “It must be soon. But we are persecuted on every side, even here in Paris. Martov is brilliant, but cannot make up his mind on anything. Lenin is in Zurich, and afraid to move. Believe me, I am doing everything I can. If I had not friends here I would be in danger of being driven out of France myself. But never give up hope, my friend, we will overcome in the end, and it is not far—another year, perhaps less.”

“Less,” Mason said quietly. “It needs to be less.” There was a kind of peace inside him, a freedom from a terrible weight that had crushed the breath out of his lungs.

It was not until he had at last taken leave of Trotsky and was walking along the quiet street in the dark that he even considered how many people might be slaughtered, starved, or dispossessed in the peace that Trotsky dreamed of.

The evening light was fading in a high, pale blue arc across the sky, like washed silk, and the color was lost beneath the trees where Joseph and Corcoran had been walking on the edge of the fields.

“It’s so mild I forget it isn’t summer yet,” Corcoran said with a smile.

Joseph stared across the wind-rippled grass toward Hadingly and the west. It had been a brief interlude of escape from the present, the dilemmas of grief and decision, even awareness of the terrible losses in Verdun and the uprising in Ireland. That had now been quelled with a savagery that had forfeited all the goodwill the Dubliners had originally felt toward the British troops.

Then he turned to Shanley and saw in the yellow sunset light the haggard planes of his face, the sunken skin around his eyes, the lines etched deep in the flesh from nose to mouth. He looked like an old man, beaten and worn out. It touched Joseph with unexpected fear. The confidence of a few moments before vanished. It had been an illusion created by courage and force of will, the need to believe the impossible because it was all that lay between them and defeat.

The instant passed. Joseph replaced his own mask of ease, as if he had not noticed anything. Since his decision to remain in St. Giles it had become easier. There was nothing in the future to dread except the burdens of the village, the familiar pains of confusion and bereavement.

Corcoran smiled, a sad, weary look. Joseph had blanked the understanding from his face too late. “You know this man, Perth, don’t you.” It was an observation, not a question.

“A little,” Joseph conceded. “He might have changed in a couple of years. Is he making things difficult for you?”

Corcoran did not answer immediately. He seemed to be weighing his words. A plowman leading two shire horses passed along the lane at the bottom of the field, harness clinking gently. He must have been harrowing up on the slope beyond the woods.

They had not spoken of the murder. Now it lay between them like a third presence.

“Gwen Neave saw him,” Joseph said aloud. “A man in a light coat, on a woman’s bicycle, coming out of the path through the trees shortly after Blaine must have been killed. That would be why the tracks were deeper than if it had been a woman—a greater weight.”

Corcoran was stiff, as if the idea froze him in horror.

Joseph felt a moment’s guilt for having mentioned it. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Corcoran did not move and when he spoke his voice was hoarse. “Not your fault, my dear fellow. Did you say Mrs. Neave saw a man coming out of the woods? Was it light enough to tell?”

Joseph was aware of his own clumsiness. “No, she said not. But he was in a state of considerable distress. He was sick, and then he relieved himself. That was the point at which she realized that he was without question a man. Until then she had assumed it was a woman, perhaps because it was a woman’s bicycle.”

Corcoran’s face was almost blank. It seemed the idea was too ugly for him to grasp it.

“Shanley?” Joseph moved closer to him, suddenly anxious.

Corcoran turned slowly. “What a dreadful time we live in, Joseph, he said softly. ”I knew about Blaine’s affair, and God forgive me, but I hoped it was only that old evil of jealousy that had spurred this awful action. To tell you the truth, I thought Blaine had seen sense and ended it. Mrs. Lucas is a woman of intense and rather selfish appetite. I assumed she had lost all control of herself and in a fit of jealousy had struck at poor Blaine.“ He closed his eyes as if he could block out the idea. ”It is peculiarly disgusting, and perhaps I wronged her in allowing the thought into my mind.“ He looked guilty and profoundly regretful. ”I suppose it is what I wanted to think. It seemed… more ordinary. Not a new threat, if you see what I mean?“

“Yes, of course I do.”

“But you say it was a man?” He still looked as if he were hoping Joseph might be in some doubt.

“Yes. And I suppose when you consider the way in which Blaine was killed, it would be remarkable if a woman could have achieved it. The strength necessary…” He trailed off. The thought was repulsive.

Corcoran’s mouth tightened in distaste, pulling his lips crooked. “Women can be strong, Joseph. If she was driven by rage, and she took him by surprise. A garden fork, you said?”

“Yes.”

“She could have struck him with it first.” He swung an imaginary weapon in his hands. “And then…” He could not finish. He closed his eyes and shuddered at what his inner vision showed him.

“I should think that is what happened,” Joseph agreed. “Actually Perth picked up the fork and did the same thing. It nicked his skin.” He held up his hand and showed Corcoran where.

Corcoran imitated his gesture, looking at his own unblemished skin. He had good hands, strong and well formed. Joseph remembered how they always seemed to be warm.

“Dacy Lucas?” he asked aloud.

Corcoran shook his head. “I thought so, Joseph, but I was deceiving myself. I fear very deeply that it has nothing to do with Blaine’s unfortunate lapse from morality. I have to think he was killed because someone believed he was on the verge of making a breakthrough in scientific discovery which would blaze the way for a totally different era of naval warfare, and would unquestionably win the war at sea for Britain.”

Joseph felt a coldness as if the fields in the long light of evening had suddenly been mantled in snow. The world he loved was slipping out of his grasp like water through his fingers. No strength of passion or grief could hold on to it.

“We’ll have to finish it without him!” Corcoran said abruptly. “Work harder.” He turned till his face shone like bronze in the light. “I’m almost there. Believe me, Joseph, it will be a turning point in history. Future generations will look back on this summer in Cambridgeshire as the beginning of a new age. I only have”—he lifted his shoulders slightly—“a little way to go. A few more steps. If only they give me time!” Then he shivered and fear touched his eyes before he turned away again.

“Shanley!” Joseph reached toward him.

“No, no!” Corcoran denied his anxiety softly. “I just hate having this wretched, pedestrian little man poking into everything, asking questions, awakening ugly thoughts. I suppose he is simply doing his duty, as he sees it. And of course he is not aware of the wider issues and he cannot be told.” He pulled his mouth into a thin line. “I loathe the suspicion everywhere, like a disease in the air. Nothing is as it used to be. One cannot afford to trust anybody, and it would not be a kindness to do so. A slip, a word or an omission, anything at all, and a person falls under suspicion. To know nothing is the only safety.”

Joseph saw an entire landscape of fear he had not even imagined before. No wonder Corcoran was exhausted. Undeniably, there were things he could share with no one. The pressure to succeed was almost unbearable, knowing what lay in the balance, even the difference between victory and defeat. And closer and more urgent than that was the knowledge that one of his own men must inevitably be guilty.

But there was another fear that invaded Josephs mind. “You can finish the work? You are sure?” he asked, hating his own doubt.

“Yes!” Corcoran looked startled, as if the question angered him. “It will take longer, that’s all.”

“Do the others in the Establishment know that? Surely they will deduce it from the fact that you are still working on the prototype?”

“Yes…” Then Corcoran saw what it was that had struck Joseph like a physical blow. A softness filled his face and his eyes were bright. “I shall take great care, I assure you.”

“Will you?” Joseph demanded. “How? What will you do to protect yourself? Look over your shoulder all the time? I know you better than that. Have you even the faintest idea who the murderer is?”

Corcoran raised his eyebrows. “Faintest?” He sighed. “If I rely on the honesty and the ability of Inspector Perth, then I know at least that it was not Dacy Lucas.”

“Do you? How?”

“Because Perth established where he was, and he could not have been anywhere near Blaine’s house.”

“Are you absolutely certain?”

Corcoran half turned away. “No. I don’t know for myself. Actually I was at the Cutlers’ Arms just outside Madingley, talking to your brother-in-law about possible sea trials for the prototype.” His voice was heavy with irony. “That’s how sure I was then that we were on the brink of completing it. It seems now like another world.”

The shadows were so long that the trees in the distance seemed to stretch across half the field. The black scatter of starlings drifted up against the gold of the sky, turned and were swept sideways, curving around and settling again.

The unhappiness in Corcoran’s face was clear. Joseph knew him far too well to misread it. And there was fear as well, but subtle as a half-forgotten scent.

Joseph did not even know what the prototype was, or what it was designed to do. He could deduce its importance from Corcoran’s manner, from Matthew’s repeated visits to him, and above all from the fact that Corcoran himself believed one of his own men could be driven to commit murder to prevent its creation. That had to mean that the Germans had placed a man in the Establishment, secretly waiting his time, perhaps since the beginning of the war, an Englishman prepared to betray his own people.

Would Corcoran condone murder to preserve the invention? If it saved as many lives as he implied, if it even turned the tide of the war at sea, then yes, of course he might!

“Shanley…” He turned toward him again. “For God’s sake, be careful! If you know who it is, protect yourself! If he killed Blaine to sabotage the project, he’ll certainly kill you to protect himself! He’s ruthless, and you have no idea who he is!” The thought of Corcoran as a murder victim was unbearable. He was laughter and bright memories, reason, courage, and hunger for life. He was the bond with all that was good in the past now slipping away like the light fading on the horizon as the wind rose rustling in the elms. Joseph needed to cling to him and protect him, as if in some way he could even reach John Reavley through him.