Angels in the Gloom

by Anne Perry

  He asked how she would know, since she only read the Irish ones. She won the argument, then they moved to poets. She lost that argument, but she did it graciously, because the magic of the words enraptured her.

  It was almost dark when they went out into the street again. The traffic had lessened a little, and the lamps were lit, but there were still people out walking. The breeze that ruffled the leaves at the edge of the park was warm on the skin.

  There was nothing else to cling to, no more to say. Detta started to walk and Matthew lengthened his stride to keep up with her. Each was waiting for the other deliberately to make the break.

  Then suddenly she stopped. “Lights!” she said hoarsely. “Look!”

  He followed her gaze and saw them, searchlights probing the sky, first a couple, then more, long fingers poking into the vastness of the night.

  She drew in her breath in a gasp, her body rigid. There was a silver tube, soundless, floating so high up it looked small, like a fat insect drifting on the wind. He knew it was a dirigible; the Germans called them zeppelins. There was a whole ship below the balloon itself, which in peacetime carried passengers. Now it carried a crew, and bombs.

  She swung around to face him, her eyes huge, her body stiff. She put her hands on his arms and gripped him till he could feel the strength of her fingers through the cloth of his jacket. She was breathing hard. She knew it could drop bombs anywhere. There was no point in running, and nowhere to run to anyway.

  They stood together, staring up as the lights picked out the gleaming object, then lost it, and found it again.

  Then the first bomb came. They did not see it fall, only heard the crash and the explosion as it landed somewhere to the south, near the river. Flames burst upward, then rubble and dust. Not far away a woman screamed. Someone else was sobbing.

  Matthew put his arms around Detta and held her. It seemed a natural thing to do, and she leaned against him, still clinging to his coat.

  Another bomb came down, closer and far louder. They felt the jar of it as the ground trembled. He held her more tightly. There was no point in running because the balloon could change direction at any moment, drift or hover as it willed, or the wind took it, before it finally turned and powered its engines to take it home again.

  “How many does it have?” Detta asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. There was something in her fear that made him think the violence of the explosion woke some memory in her.

  He looked up and saw the next bomb quite clearly. He could make out the dark, cigar-shaped shadow, black against the lighter sky. He watched it fall with a growing sickness inside, his stomach clenched as it came closer until finally it landed in the next street, shattering the night with a sound that bruised the eardrums. The blast knocked him sideways and tore them apart. He staggered against the wall of the shop behind him, and Detta fell to her knees on the pavement. The air was full of dust and they could hear rubble landing on the roofs and in the street. People were screaming.

  Then the flame shot up and the red glare lit the clouds of dust and smoke, and the stench of burning caught in the throat.

  Matthew went to Detta, but she was already climbing to her feet. She was dirty, her beautiful dress torn. “I’m all right,” she said clearly. “Are you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Stay here. I’ll go and see if I can help.” He looked at her, his eyes stinging. He could feel the heat already. “Stay here,” he repeated.

  “I’m coming with you.” She did not even consider obeying him. “We’ve got to do what we can.”

  “No . . . Detta . . .”

  She started forward, moving swiftly toward the corner and the only clear way around to where the shattered building had collapsed into the street.

  He went after her, afraid for her and yet with a lift of pride that her only thought was to help. For the moment English and Irish were the same, all capable of courage and pity.

  The scene was horrible. Broken walls gaped, and scattered about were household goods, furniture, bedding, a mattress on fire on the footpath, clothes tattered like rags. The body of an old man, his legs missing, lay in blood on his own footpath.

  A woman was standing paralyzed, her dress on fire.

  “Oh, Mother of God!” Detta gasped, then swung to Matthew. “Coat!” she demanded. “Quick!”

  He tore it off and she snatched it from him, lurching forward to throw it around the woman and then knock her to the ground, rolling her over and over.

  Someone was shouting, words indistinguishable.

  The fire was taking hold of the buildings. Timbers were exploding and showers of sparks arced through the air. Another blast shook the street and splintered glass crashed onto the pavements.

  Matthew saw a body trapped under a fallen beam.

  “Help me!” he yelled as loudly as his lungs would bear. “Help me lift this!” He charged forward, still shouting, and put all his weight to moving the massive length of wood. “Stay still!” he ordered. “We’ll get you out. Just don’t move.”

  More rubble was falling and the heat was intensifying. Someone was there beside him and he felt the timbers begin to give. Then Detta was heaving at the fallen man, trying to reassure him.

  An ambulance crew appeared and took the man away. Matthew and Detta moved to the next person, an old woman lying in the rubble, broken-legged and helpless.

  “Don’t!” Detta said sharply as Matthew bent to lift her. “We’ll have to tie those legs or the jagged ends could cut an artery.”

  Matthew understood immediately, and wondered how he could have been so stupid. But what could they use?

  Detta was balanced on one leg. “Here,” she said, handing him her stockings. He bent to work. Another man came to help, hands trembling, sobbing under his breath. The noise around them was sporadic, shouts, sirens, more rubble falling, and above it all, what sounded like the crackle of gunfire. The air was full of dust and smoke, but it was beginning to settle.

  Fire engines pulled up, horses tethered, eyes rolling, and another ambulance. The heat subsided as the water hit the flames with a roar of steam. Matthew returned from helping to carry the last injured person to find Detta filthy, her dress torn at the shoulders and her ankles bare beneath the hem of her skirt. There was a kind of triumph in the angle of her head, and weary and bruised as she was, she stood with grace. She smiled at him.

  He gave her a half salute. It was not meant in mockery, it was the acknowledgment from one fighter to another. For once they were on the same side, and there was a sweetness he wanted to remember through the long loneliness ahead.

  She looked into his eyes and saluted back.

  The fire was nearly out inside the house. Somewhere beyond sight another wall collapsed, but with a thud, not an explosion.

  “If we get out to the main road we might find a cab,” he said, looking down at her feet. He had never thought of feet being beautiful before, but hers were: neat and strong, high-arched. “Where are your shoes?”

  She grimaced. “Under that wall,” she replied, gesturing toward a heap of shattered brick a dozen yards away.

  “I’ll carry you as far as the pavement,” he answered, picking her up before she could argue. It felt good to hold her; she was lighter than he had expected.

  He reached the end of the street and reluctantly put her down, slowly, so she was standing close to him and he could still feel the warmth of her. Then he saw the airplane. It was a tiny thing, double-winged, like a truncated dragonfly. It crossed the beam of light and disappeared. Then there was another one, climbing upward, veering right and left again. Gunfire tore into the silver ship, not the sturdy lower part carrying the bombs and the crew, but the huge, bright balloon.

  There was a moment’s silence. He and Detta stared upward as the searchlights crisscrossed the darkness, catching the planes like angry insects. Tracer bullets arced through the night. And then it happened—an explosion of flame in the air as the gas caught fire and billowed up, l
ighting the sky.

  “Oh, merciful God!” Detta said in horror. “What a terrible way to die!” She huddled closer to him, clinging onto his arm. Without his jacket he could feel the warmth of her fingers.

  Matthew wasn’t thinking of the men in the zeppelin, but of the fireball sinking more and more rapidly, new explosions ripping it apart as the bombs left in it went off. He was realizing as it loomed above him that it would come to rest on the streets below in an inferno of destruction.

  “Who?” he said hoarsely. “Them or us?”

  She turned to look at him. Then she understood and her face went sheet-white. She started to say something and stopped. They stood close together, arms around each other, as the funeral pyre in the sky sank closer to the rooftops. It stretched out, an eternity—and no time at all—too little to escape. The glare increased. It was seconds away. They could feel the heat from where they were. What irony. Perhaps the parting he dreaded would never happen after all.

  Everyone was transfixed, staring upward. A man in a long black coat crossed himself. An old woman was shaking her fist. A small dog barked furiously, racing round and round in circles, terrified and not knowing what to do.

  A piece of burning debris landed fifty yards away.

  People were passing them in the street, cars and wagons, everyone trying to get out of the way, but there was no time. What was left of the balloon with its gondola crashed on a row of houses and shops and another wave of fire billowed up.

  Matthew started forward. He had no idea what on earth he could do, but it was instinctive to try. It was Detta who held him back.

  “No,” she shouted, her voice harsh. “There’s nothing. No one will get out of that. Come. They need trained people now. We’ve done what we can. We’ll only be in the way.”

  It was true, but it seemed a kind of defeat. He was exhausted. His whole body ached. He realized only now that he was also cut and burned. But infinitely more painful was the knowledge that they had said all there was to say, all the lies about England and Ireland, the half-truths about America, the evasions about Germany. Tonight they had seen a moment from the reality of war in the broken houses and shattered lives, the grief and the blood. And in attempting to help, they had seen the best in each other—but with nothing to add to it. This was a clean place to break.

  They each thought they had been true to their cause, and deceived the other. Time would show who was right, and who was wrong would pay. It hurt almost beyond bearing that if he could, he had to make it her.

  They walked slowly. The first available cab that passed would mean the time to say goodbye. She would not want him to know where she went home to. For minutes he did not look at the stream of traffic passing. The glare of fire made everything red. There were sirens behind them and the sound of other explosions—probably roofs caving in; slate, timbers, and glass bursting in the heat; gas mains exploding.

  Was it going to go on like this, war from the air? No one safe anywhere?

  He looked at the street and saw a cab moving slowly. It was time to put an end to the waiting. He put up his arm and the cab drew in to the curb.

  “Where to, guv?” the driver asked. “You ’urt, sir? Yer din’t get caught in that bombing, did yer? ’Orspital?”

  “No, we’re not hurt. Just tried to help a bit,” he replied. “Please take the lady wherever she wants to go.” He handed the driver half a crown, and opened the door for her.

  She stood for a moment, the gleam from the fires red on the sides of her face, her dark eyes wide. There was no laughter in her at all, none of the old daring and imagination, only sadness. She looked very young.

  “You’re wrong, Matthew,” she said quietly, a catch in her voice. “I don’t always like fighting. Sometimes it’s a rotten way to do things. Don’t change—that’s a battle I wouldn’t like to win.” She reached up and kissed him quickly on the mouth, then got into the cab and closed the door.

  It pulled away from the curb, and he watched it until he could no longer distinguish it from the others in the darkness, then he started to walk. He walked all the way back to his flat. It took him an hour and a half, but it seemed like all night.

  Joseph was getting considerably stronger. It still hurt him to walk, but far less now and he wore only a light sling on his arm. The bone was knitting well, and as long as he did not jar it he could ignore the occasional twinge.

  He had been to see Gwen Neave. He was returning now across the fields, his footsteps soundless on the grass. He had meant to find out how she was, to offer any help, however slight, in the practical duties she would have to perform, although he thought she was probably extremely capable. And so it had proved. It was company she needed, and someone with whom she could speak in confidence about mounting tension in the village. Suspicion was cutting like acid into old friendships, leaving scars it might take years to heal. The Nunns and the Tevershams were whispering about each other. Someone had seen Mrs. Bateman with a foreign letter. One of Doughy Ward’s sisters had been accused of loose talk, or worse. There were fights at school. Children had broken old Billy Hoxton’s windows. It was all stupid and ugly, and growing worse.

  Joseph had also felt compelled to pursue the investigation into Blaine’s death because it threatened Shanley Corcoran, and that was something he could not leave, however cruel or inappropriate it might seem to others. He had asked her about the person she had seen on a bicycle coming out of the path through the trees. He had questioned her persistently, but she could add nothing helpful.

  Now he walked across the field and turned over in his mind all he knew. It was little enough. Theo Blaine had been on the edge of solving the last problem with the prototype of the invention, perhaps only a day or two from completing it. He had been having an affair with Penny Lucas, and no one was likely to tell the truth as to how serious that had been, or whether it was over, or in what circumstances.

  Blaine had quarreled with his wife and gone down toward the potting shed on the evening of his death. She had said she had remained in the house, but there was nothing to corroborate that, or disprove it.

  Dacy Lucas was accounted for, according to Perth. No one else was, unless you considered Shanley himself, and Archie, at the Cutlers’ Arms.

  Someone had cycled along the path in the woods; the tire marks were there. Perth had estimated someone of moderate weight according to the depth of the tracks in the earth. A person of heavier build than most women, or else a lighter person carrying something. Gwen Neave had seen a man, she was adamant about that.

  The fork had a raised screw that had scratched Perth’s hand when he swung it experimentally. If Blaine’s murderer hadn’t protected his hands, he would have a similar scratch. Except that it would probably be healed by now. Still, it might have been noticed by someone.

  Or perhaps the killer had worn gloves. In any event, there were no fingerprints. Was it a crime of passion and opportunity? Or a carefully planned killing, and the fork simply a chance taken at the last minute?

  Joseph had talked to Kerr as well, resurrecting everything he knew and had observed for himself. That had amounted to nothing of use. Perhaps he was stupid to have imagined otherwise. It had all ended in Kerr begging Joseph to deliver the sermon on Sunday.

  He had stood in the pulpit and looked at the familiar faces turned toward him. He could see the squire, Mrs. Nunn, Tucky still swathed in bandages, Mrs. Gee, Plugger Arnold’s father, Hannah and the children, all the families he knew. They were waiting for him, full of confidence that he could give them some comfort and guidance.

  For a moment he had felt panic seize him. No wonder Hallam Kerr was overwhelmed. Did any of the old stories in the old words answer the confusion of today? Would anyone hear the truth wrapped up in the phrases they were so used to?

  He thought not. The Bible was all to do with other people, two thousand years ago and somewhere else. They would nod and say Joseph was a good man, and go out exactly the same as they had come in, still angry, frightened,
and lost.

  What use was religion if it was about somebody else? It was about you, or it was about no one. He had abandoned the story of Christ walking the road to Emmaus, unrecognized by the apostles, although it was one of his favorites. He told them instead of the reality of war in Ypres, where their own families were dying. He reminded them of the corpse-filled craters of no-man’s-land, and the agony endured in terrible wounds. He did not make it anything like as harsh as the reality, only enough to tear them out of their own present.

  “These are our sons and brothers!” he had told them. “They’re doing this because they love us. They believe in home, the laughter and the tolerance we stand for, the things of labor and decency. If we don’t keep it a good home, if we soil it with bigotry and intolerance, if we learn how to hate and destroy, if we forget who we are, what are they dying to save? What is there left for those who survive to come home to?”

  Now he stood in the grass and the sweet-smelling air, and was afraid he had said too much. No one had spoken to him afterward, and Kerr had looked gray-faced enough to be buried in his own churchyard. Only Mrs. Nunn had smiled at him, tears in her eyes, and nodded before she went on her way home.

  The elms were heavy out over the fields, clouds towering high and bright into the blue of the sky, and there was hardly a sound in the wide peace of it, except for the wind and the larks.

  He reached the edge of the field and the orchard gate. He unlatched it and went in. There was someone coming toward him, floundering awkwardly. For an instant it took him back to men floundering like that in the mud, the crash and thud of shells around them. But there was no sound amid the apple trees foaming with blossom, except Inspector Perth up to his knees in the uncut grass.

  “We should get a scythe to it,” Joseph apologized. “Nobody’s had time.”

  Perth dismissed the suggestion with a wave. He was a town man, and he did not expect to find things here comfortable. He looked grim, lips drawn tight and brow wrinkled. “I’ve bad news, Captain Reavley,” he said, perhaps unnecessarily. “Can we stay out here, sir? This mustn’t go any further. In fact I would probably be in trouble if anyone knew I’d told you, but could be as I’ll need your help before we’re through.”