wretchedly. “The police have been sent for, of course. I mean someone from Cambridge. There’ll have to be an investigation. It’s going to turn the whole village upside down. There’ll be scandal. As if we hadn’t enough to . . .” He covered his face with his hands. “What can I say to his wife? I can hardly go in with condolences as if she had lost him in France. This is hideous . . . personal hatred so terrible . . .” He looked up, his skin blotched from the pressure of his fingers. “What do I say?” he pleaded. “How do I explain this, and tell her there is some kind of God who is in control and can make sense out of it all? What can I do to comfort her?”
“You won’t know until you see her,” Joseph answered. “There’s no formula.”
“I can’t do it! I don’t know the words. . . .” He gestured helplessly. “If he’d died in the army, or the navy, I could say he made a great sacrifice and God would . . . I don’t know . . . watch over him, take him home. . . .” He floundered to a stop.
Joseph wanted to argue the futility of saying such things however anyone had died, but Kerr was not listening to him. He wanted Joseph to do the job for him—and for Mrs. Blaine’s sake, as well as for Kerr’s, he must. “You’ll have to drive me,” he answered, and saw the flood of relief in Kerr’s face, and then apprehension. “I haven’t got a car, and I couldn’t drive it with one hand if I had,” Joseph pointed out.
“Oh! Yes, yes of course.” Kerr stood up. “Thank you. Thank you. Will you . . . er . . . come now?”
“I must tell my family, then I’ll accompany you.” Joseph stood also, finding himself oddly stiff and a little dizzy. “I shall be back in a moment.” He left Kerr in the sitting room and went through to look for Hannah.
She was in the kitchen. She turned to face him as soon as she heard his footsteps, even before he was through the door. She had a dish cloth in one hand, dripping unnoticed onto the floor. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
“One of the scientists at the Establishment has been murdered,” he answered gently. There was no point in trying to protect her. The whole village would know in an hour or two. “Kerr wants me to go with him to see the widow.”
“You don’t have to.” She put the dish cloth down and took a step toward him. “You’re still sick.”
“Yes, I must, for Mrs. Blaine’s sake.”
She drew in her breath to argue, then let it out again, the struggle over before it began. “Can I help?”
“Maybe later.” He turned to leave.
“Joseph?”
“Yes?”
“Is that going to stop Shanley from completing the invention?” She was frightened and it was naked in her face.
He knew the fear, tight gripping in the stomach, shivering cold. It was far bigger than one life or death, however terrible. It could be the loss they all dreaded, the beginning of the final defeat.
“I don’t know.” He tried to sound calm, braver than he felt. “This man might not have even been working on it.”
“Shanley’s going to be so distressed—either way. Don’t forget him, will you!” she warned.
“No, of course not.” He hesitated a moment more, touched her briefly with his good hand, then went out into the hall.
He sat silently beside Kerr as they drove along the main street of St. Giles. It was the first time Joseph had seen it since his last leave in October. In the ambulance from Cambridge he had been lying down, and in too much pain to think of peering out. Now he looked at the familiar buildings whose shape he could have drawn in his dreams with the name of every shop, and who owned them, the post office, the school, the village pond, and of course the lych-gate to the church and the graveyard beyond. John and Alys Reavley were there. He missed them with a slow ache that never entirely left him, but he was also grateful that they did not have to see the gathering darkness of this time, or fear for those they loved.
Once again he was dealing with murder, the shock and grief of it, and the anger that would certainly follow. And he thought of Mrs. Prentice. He had loathed her son. He could have imagined killing him himself, especially the night of Charlie Gee’s injury. That still sickened him almost beyond bearing. He understood Sam. God!—how he understood Sam! And missed him still.
At least he did not know the poor woman he was going to see now, and whoever had killed her husband would also be someone he did not know. This time he would be a bystander, and perhaps he could be of some help. He might eventually even help Kerr! He needed it as much as anyone.
Kerr drew up abruptly alongside a flowering hedge, white with early blackthorn blossom. “The house is just the other side of that,” he said, nodding toward it. “I’ll wait here. I don’t want to seem to be watching. It would make the poor woman feel even worse.”
Coward, Joseph thought, but he said nothing. He opened the car door with his good hand and stepped out. The air was cool and sweet and the earth slightly damp as he walked to the gate and then up the path. He loathed doing this and was prepared to be told pretty briskly to go away.
He knocked on the door, and waited long enough to believe it would not be answered. He stepped back and was about to turn away, both disappointed and relieved, when it pulled open slowly and he saw a slender, dark- haired woman with a face bleached by shock.
“Mrs. Blaine?” He did not wait for her answer. It could be no one else. “I am Mrs. MacAllister’s brother, Joseph Reavley. I’m a chaplain in the army, home on sick leave.” His bandaged arm in the sling was obvious. “If I can be of any help or comfort to you, please call on me.”
She stared, then looked past him as if to make certain he was alone.
He waited without moving.
“I don’t know what anyone can do,” she said helplessly. “It’s . . .” She made a small gesture of complete loss.
He smiled very slightly. “Well, I’m not a lot of practical use at the moment,” he admitted. “I couldn’t even make you a decent cup of tea. But I can write letters, or get in touch with solicitors or banks, or anyone else you need to notify. Sometimes doing that sort of thing is terribly hard because you have to keep on repeating the same things, and it doesn’t get any easier. It’s like hammering home the reality of it.”
Her blue eyes widened very slightly. “Yes . . . it . . . it will be. I hadn’t thought . . .” She gave a little shake of her head. “I suppose you do this all the time.”
“No. I just write letters to tell people that someone they loved is missing or lost,” he answered. “Sometimes it’s just that they are wounded and can’t write themselves.”
“You sound as if you know. . . .”
“I lost my own wife.” He did not want to add anything more. It was over three years ago now, and the whole world had changed in that time, but it still hurt.
“I’ll make the tea.” She pulled the door wider. “Please come in. I suppose I need advice, and I’d rather not do this alone.”
He followed her through to the kitchen. It was an ordinary house, tidy but obviously lived in. There were coats hanging in the hall, a basket of clean laundry on the bottom of the stairs ready to be carried up. An open book lay on the hall table and letters were waiting to be posted. There were two umbrellas in the stand next to outdoor shoes, and a pair of binoculars.
The kitchen was immaculate. She must have found the body before starting to make breakfast. What had she done since then? Perhaps nothing, just moved from one place to another aimlessly, suddenly without purpose, too stunned to care about anything.
Now she had something to do, tea to make for a visitor. Her hands were shaking slightly but she managed, and he allowed her to do it without interfering. She offered him biscuits and he accepted. All the time he talked, just trivia, letting the conversation wander wherever she wished it to, half sentences, irrelevances.
“We came here because of Theo’s work at the Establishment,” she said as she sat down at the wooden kitchen table opposite him. “He’s brilliant. Mr. Corcoran isn’t going to know how to replace him. Of course he won’t be able to. Theo was unique. He seemed to be able to get ideas out of the air, to think sideways.” She looked at him questioningly to see if he understood what she meant. It seemed to matter to her that he believed her. Small pieces of sense seem to, absurdly, at such times. He knew that.
He nodded. In a while he would ask her about letters, people to tell, anything that needed canceling. The practical things could be very hard to do alone. Even sorting through a dead person’s clothes was desperately painful. The very familiarity of it was overwhelming, the smell, the remembered touch of someone you loved. With
