but I think that was because he was so absorbed in his work he didn’t realize that most people didn’t even know what he was doing, let alone care. I did like him.”
“Was he really brilliant? I mean—someone who would go down in history?”
He smiled slightly. “I think so.”
“Might he hurt somebody without meaning to, just because he wasn’t . . . paying attention to them?” She did not know how to phrase it without being obvious.
He understood immediately. “You mean like Lizzie?”
“Or anyone else,” she added.
“I don’t know.” He frowned. “Lizzie wasn’t in that evening. I telephoned to speak to Theo. I called two or three times, but there was no answer. I suppose I’m going to have to tell that damn policeman, if he asks. I’d rather not. I like her, too.”
“Does that make a difference?” she asked candidly.
He lifted his shoulders a little. “No, I suppose not. And as long as he doesn’t have the answer, he’ll go on looking, turning the village inside out and opening old wounds of all sorts. Somebody did it. We have to know who. Poor Theo. What a terrible way to die.” He took her arm again. “Come on, or we might miss the train.”
They hurried along the pavement and went in through the entrance to find the platform crowded with people. A troop train had just pulled in, carrying wounded from the front and everywhere they turned there were white- faced women who were alternately hopeful and fearful of seeing the ones they loved. Some of them had heard only a little news and they were almost numb with the exhaustion of waiting.
The engine still belched steam, doors clanged to, voices rose to a fever pitch—all echoing in the vast roofs above. Someone called out for help; orders were barked. Nurses in gray uniforms were trying to organize stretchers and find ambulance drivers. Porters were doing their best to get the most severely wounded away first.
Hannah could see motionless, bandaged figures lying on stretchers. One she saw very clearly had thick swaths of cloth, already bloodied, where his right leg should have been. She thought of Joseph, and how easily that could have happened to him.
“I’ve got to help,” Ben said urgently, cutting through the clamor in her mind. “I’ll get the next train. I can carry some of these. You go on.”
“Maybe I can help, too,” she said spontaneously.
He considered her offer for a moment. “Come on then.”
They worked without consciousness of time. Their train to St. Giles came and went. Ben helped carry stretchers and load them into the waiting ambulances. Hannah lent her strength and balance to the walking wounded, the gray-faced men who were exhausted with sleeplessness and pain.
It was more than an hour before the soldiers were all tended to. As the medical orderlies thanked them, Hannah realized that she was rumpled and marked with dust and occasional smears of blood. Her shoes were scuffed where she had been accidentally trodden on.
Ben was far more creased and his shirt was torn and soiled. He pushed his hair back and smiled at her. There was no need for words between them; both of them realized they were experiencing a kind of silent victory.
“You have blood on your face,” she told him. “Have you a handkerchief?”
He shook his head. “It’s just off my hand. I caught it on a rough piece on one of the stretchers.” He looked down at his left hand, just below the base of his index finger, exactly where Inspector Perth had caught himself on Blaine’s garden fork. Only Ben’s was fresh, and still bleeding, a small tear, caused by gripping something sharp.
Hannah suddenly felt ice inside her.
“Don’t tell me blood makes you faint!” he said incredulously. “You’ve just been helping people with real wounds!”
She controlled herself with an effort, trying to smooth the horror out of her eyes. “No, of course not! I was just thinking . . . I don’t know what. I suppose remembering Joseph coming back. He was such a mess. I dread his having to go again. It could be worse next time.”
“Don’t think of next time.” He tried to smile at her, anxiety in his face, and gentleness. “Maybe there won’t be one. The war’s got to finish one day. It could be soon. Come on, or we’ll miss this train, too.”
The following afternoon Perth came again to see Joseph. Followed by Henry, they went out into the garden and through the gate into the orchard, partly to avoid any chance of being overheard by one of the children when they came home from school.
Perth looked tired and harassed. Joseph remembered that expression from St. John’s two years ago, and all the misery of suspicion then. Except that in St. John’s he had known that whoever had committed the crime was either one of his own students or a lecturer who was at least a colleague, more probably a friend. This time there was no such certainty. He was ashamed of how precious that relief was.
“Not much progress,” Perth said lugubriously. “But it does seem, from information given, that it’s possible Mr. Blaine was having an affair with the wife of one of his colleagues.” He gave Joseph a startlingly penetrating glance, then turned away again to watch a thrush land on the grass near one of the apple trees. “Need some rain to bring the worms up,” he added.
“And the bicycle?” Joseph asked.
Perth shook his head. “Can’t find anyone willing to say they saw it. Least not at a time that’s any use to us. We know when he must have got home, because of when he left the Establishment, and that’s certain.” He chewed his lip. “Not that Mrs. Blaine says any different. He ate his dinner. They had a quarrel about something and nothing, she says. Afterward, Blaine went outside and she stayed in and had a long bath. Nobody to prove that right or wrong. But then there likely wouldn’t be. Was after dark, so not many people out, and no one anywhere to see a lone cyclist along the lane. Which no doubt he was counting on.”
“If it was after dark, they’d have a light,” Joseph pointed out. “Only a fool would cycle along a wooded track in the dark. That’s asking to trip over a tree root or even a pothole. That lane has plenty of them. And lots of people might take a dog out for a last walk.”
Perth looked at Henry, happily rooting around in the long grass. “Don’t have a dog myself,” he said regretfully. “But you’re right. I’ll have to go and ask all the dog owners again. One fellow did see a woman on a bicycle, half a mile away from the Blaines’ house. Bit odd, though, don’t you think? Can you imagine a woman committing such a violent murder, Captain Reavley?”
“No,” Joseph said honestly. In spite of all the death he had seen, he was sickened at the thought of anyone deliberately tearing open a man’s neck with the tines of a garden fork.
Perth looked at him unhappily.
“Thing is, Captain, if he was killed by a German spy in the village, who would that be? And why Blaine rather than any of the other scientists up at the Establishment?”
“Opportunity?” Joseph suggested. “Maybe whoever it is was watching everyone, and Blaine was the first one who gave him a really good chance.”
With a sudden booming bark Henry went charging after several birds.
Perth watched him dolefully. “Doesn’t work out that way,” he argued. “Been asking around a bit, looking into who was where, and that sort of thing. Plenty of chances to kill Mr. Iliffe, if anyone wanted to. Wanders around by himself quite a lot, it seems. Goes down to his local pub of an evening, and across back through the lanes to his house after dark. Says he never thought of any danger. Same with young Morven. Could have caught him, if anyone’d been trying. Lives alone. Got a cottage out on the Haslingfield Road. Small place. Easy broke into, if you’d a mind. Could look like a burglary.”
“Then I don’t know,” Joseph admitted. “Looks as if they wanted Blaine. Mr. Corcoran told me he was the best mind in the place, brilliant and original.”
Henry came trotting back, wagging his tail. Joseph bent slightly to acknowledge him.
“Nice dog that,” Perth observed. “Always wanted one of them. So we come to the question of who knew that Mr. Blaine was so important? And another thing, why now?” He looked at Joseph with a challenge. “Why not a month ago, or next week? Chance again? I don’t like chance, Captain Reavley. I’ve found that it doesn’t play much of a role in a criminal investigation. Mostly when people commit murder, there’s a pretty big reason for it. I want to know what that reason was, and who knew about it.”
“If Blaine really was crucial to the work they’re doing . . .” Joseph said thoughtfully. “Then I imagine everyone
