ideal for him. Don’t you think it would?”
She was momentarily confused.
He saw it in her face. “You don’t think so?” He was disappointed. “He loves things like this. It’s seventeenth century. It’s real!”
“Of course it’s real,” she said quietly. She saw the gentleness in his eyes, and with a lurch of sorrow so violent it caught her breath, she knew what had happened. She did not wish to tell him, but she had to. “But Shanley’s birthday isn’t until next February, Joe. It’s Father’s birthday in the beginning of May.”
He stared at her.
She gulped. “You . . . you just got them mixed up. It’ll keep . . . if . . . if you want it to.”
Joseph stared at the goblet, frowning. “I suppose I did,” he said quietly. “Stupid.” He stood up and went limping out into the hall and she heard his uneven step up the stairs. She had dwelt on her own loneliness without Archie. She had hardly even thought about Joseph, so busy trying to deal with everybody else’s fears and griefs he had no time for his own. He must miss his father appallingly. There had been a friendship between them nothing else could replace, but at times perhaps Shanley Corcoran came close. His warmth, his optimism and humor, his wealth of memories probably were more precious than she had any idea. It would be a good thing to give him the goblet, not to mark any occasion, just as a gift. She would say that to Joseph.
In the afternoon as she was walking to the village hall with a bundle of knitted squares, she was passed by Penny Lucas, who was cycling along the road. The two women exchanged waves. Hannah liked Penny’s warmth and enthusiasm, but she had not seen her in several weeks. She had no children, so perhaps she was involved in war work that had kept her out of St. Giles.
Penny pulled in to the curb ahead and dismounted with dexterity. She waited until Hannah caught up with her.
“How are you?” Hannah asked.
Penny gave a small sigh of resignation. She was a handsome woman with chestnut hair, blue-green eyes, and a lightly freckled skin that always looked blemishless. Now some of the color was gone from her cheeks, in spite of the exertion of bicycling.
“Well enough, I suppose,” she answered with a little shrug. “How about you?”
“A day at a time,” Hannah replied.
Penny pushed the bicycle and they walked slowly side by side.
“I haven’t seen you for ages,” Hannah went on. “Are you doing something interesting?”
“Not really.” Penny gave a rueful smile. “Just organizing the laundry room at the hospital in Cambridge. It’s important, I suppose, but once you’ve got a system going it’s hardly groundbreaking science.”
Her use of words jarred Hannah, reminding her forcibly of Theo Blaine and his terrible death.
Penny must have seen it in her face. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I suppose it’s at the top of everybody’s mind. He was an extraordinary man, you know.” She brushed her skirt aside from being caught in the wheels of the bicycle. “No, of course you wouldn’t. He hardly had any time to know anyone. Corcoran works them all the hours they’re awake, practically. It must be necessary, for the war, I suppose, but it’s hard to take sometimes.” Her face tightened. “He forgets that those men are young, and maybe not as obsessed with science and making history as he is.” She looked sideways at Hannah. “Sorry again. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“He was my father’s closest friend, actually,” Hannah corrected her, wondering how Penny Lucas knew so much. She could remember meeting her husband, Dacy, only a couple of times. He was a quick-tempered man with a ready smile, who collected chessmen from various cultures and liked to talk about them.
“But your friend, too,” Penny added, watching her.
“Certainly, and he’s my brother Joseph’s godfather.”
“He’s the one in the army? He was wounded, wasn’t he? How is he?”
The baker’s cart passed them, pulled by an old black horse, looking shiny in the sun, harness bright.
“Recovering, but it takes time,” Hannah replied.
“You’ll miss him when he goes back.” Penny turned away, as if to guard some emotion she knew her eyes betrayed. It sounded from her voice like pain, a sudden loneliness too strong to govern.
Hannah wondered how well Penny had known Theo Blaine. Or was it someone else she was thinking of that hurt so deeply? Had she lost brothers or cousins in the war? “Do you have family in France?” Hannah asked aloud.
“No.” The word was oddly flat. “We’re all girls. My father’s so ashamed of it. No sons to send to the front.” She gave a little shiver, a gesture oddly vulnerable. “He doesn’t even think much of a son-in-law who works in a scientific place. It could be a factory, for all he perceives, except that it isn’t really work—pushing a pen around. Actually Dacy works far longer hours than anyone else I know. Except Theo; he’s probably one of the most brilliant men alive today.” She took a breath and almost gagged on it. “At least . . . yesterday. Isn’t that awful!”
“Yes, it is,” Hannah agreed, taken aback by the depth of emotion in the other woman’s voice. It seemed odd to stand together on the footpath in the sun, knowing each other so slightly and speaking of the deepest passions of life and loss as if they were friends. But that had probably happened to women all over the country. Just as the trenches made brothers of men, so the ripping apart of the old certainties, the aching loneliness of change and bereavement, made sisters of women who might never have known each other in peacetime. “You think you can’t bear it, except that there isn’t any way out,” she added.
Penny straightened her shoulders and started to walk again. Plugger Arnold’s father passed them, leading a shire horse, and Hannah smiled at him.
“That loathsome policeman keeps coming around prying into our lives,” Penny said angrily. “I don’t suppose he’s going through my laundry basket, but I feel I can’t even take a bath for fear that he’ll knock on the door to see how much hot water I’m using.”
“His must be a very difficult job.” Hannah matched her step to Penny’s. “If there really is a German spy in St. Giles, it could be pretty well anyone, couldn’t it?”
Penny nodded in agreement. “Although I can think of dozens it wouldn’t be—the old village families, especially those with sons or brothers at the front. When you think of it, that doesn’t leave many.”
“He’ll have to look in other villages, the nearby ones, anyway,” Hannah reasoned.
“You wouldn’t get a car down that back lane,” Penny pointed out. “You’d scratch it to pieces and leave tire tracks all over the place. Our busy inspector would have seen them. Maybe that’s why he’s questioning everyone close enough to walk . . . or I suppose bicycle.” She gave a rueful little smile. “It’s incredibly grubby!” Then suddenly she was angry again. “I hate it! It’s not his fault, but I hate him, too—with his devious remarks and probing little eyes, as if he’s all the time imagining . . . I don’t know what. Think what it would be like married to such a man who spends his days pawing through the sins and tragedies of other people’s lives.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “I’m sorry. You haven’t even met him. How could you know?”
Thoughts raced through Hannah’s mind, memories of foolish things she had said and done that she would prefer no one knew. But she had thought of other things, too, about Ben Morven, the way he laughed, the easy way he walked, the look of his throat in a clean cotton shirt. He had good hands, brown and slender. . . .
But then she focused again on what Penny Lucas was saying. Was that why Penny felt so very strongly about Inspector Perth? Did she know the narrowness of the back way to Theo Blaine’s house because she had been there? “Do you know Mrs. Blaine?” Hannah said aloud.
Penny was caught by surprise. Her face had a closed look. “Well, a bit, of course. Theo worked with my husband.”
What an odd way of putting it! She did not speak of Theo as Lizzie Blaine’s husband, as if she wanted to avoid the thought.
“Why?” Penny demanded, her blue-green eyes narrowed.
“I was thinking how dreadful she must feel,” Hannah lied. “It’s an awful way to lose someone. I hope she has good friends, I mean other than just people like the vicar, or . . . or that sort of thing.”
Penny looked at the road ahead. “We all lose people, especially these days. I don’t really know if she had friends or not. She’s rather a cold, self-contained sort of person. We each cope in our own way.”
“Of course. And I expect the policeman will bother her most of all.”
Penny stopped abruptly, swinging around, her eyes wide and angry. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” Hannah assumed an expression of innocence close to apology. “I suppose because she must have known him best.”
