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 Joseph’s 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
