At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4

by Anne Perry

  “You can’t prove that,” she pointed out. “I burned his second letter, and he did write the first, just not then. He wrote several. It wasn’t hard to put one together. He always used the same ink and the same paper. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Whose idea was it, Mrs. Wheatcroft?”

  “Mine!” she said quietly.

  “If you had said it was his, I would not have believed you,” he told her. “You had to force him into it, if not for your sake personally, then for your sons.”

  “If you like!” She had regained her composure. “But when Alan realized what his disgrace would do to them, he was willing.”

  “I doubt it,” he said drily. “But it’s irrelevant now. It was the guilt of lying that killed him.”

  “It was the guilt of being so unbelievably stupid!” she snapped.

  “How did you know to blame Tom Corracher rather than anyone else?” He remembered Sandwell’s words about political ideology, and the Peacemaker’s plan behind the ruin of all four men.

  For an instant she hesitated, then grasped after an answer. “That was Alan’s idea. I just said to think of someone.”

  “Someone with the same political beliefs about the terms of any possible peace treaty with the Germans,” he elaborated.

  Again there was confusion in her eyes, then a sudden new understanding. “They worked together. It made sense.”

  She was guessing. Actually they had not worked together, simply held the same opinions. Someone else had suggested the idea of blaming Corracher to her. Perhaps she knew who it was and why. More probably she was simply a willing tool, caring only to save herself and her sons. Anyone would do as a sacrifice, and the larger cause was irrelevant.

  “Was anyone else aware of this, Mrs. Wheatcroft?” he asked casually, as if it were no more than a passing thought.

  Again the half-second’s hesitation, then she denied it. “No, of course not.”

  He looked at her chiseled face. It was beautiful in a hard, brittle way, but without yielding, without forgiveness. Perhaps she was a knowing tool after all. In protecting her own, she was not open to the vulnerability of mercy or conscience.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wheatcroft.” He rose to his feet. “You have been most civil. I shan’t need to trouble you again.”

  A faint smile touched her lips. “It would be courteous to say I regret that, Captain Reavley, but I do not. Good day.”

  He also took Sandwell’s other piece of advice and made inquiries about the man who had been sent to prosecute the twelve soldiers accused of murdering Major Northrup. The answer that came back was exactly what Sandwell had warned. Faulkner was known to be a stickler for the law in every detail. He believed justice, and therefore society, was best served by following procedure to the letter. The innocent were protected by the unfailing punishment of the guilty, and there was no room for personal interpretation of the law.

  Matthew arranged to meet an old friend, Errol Lashwood, for luncheon at the Ivy Restaurant in Covent Garden. They received excellent food, and the atmosphere was easy and charming. The restaurant was highly popular with all manner of people, especially the theatrical community. Matthew had on occasion seen Bernard Shaw there, and Ellen Terry and Gladys Cooper last year when they had been playing in J. M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton at Wyndham’s Theatre.

  This time Lashwood smiled and pointed out the amazing profile of Ivor Novello, who was sitting only a couple of tables away.

  “Faulkner.” Matthew returned him to the subject.

  “Not a bad man,” Lashwood said wryly. “Just highly unimaginative, and very little sense of joy in the absurd. I think, personally, that he is rather afraid of change, and therefore feels threatened by anything he does not understand.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps I am thinking beyond the mark. The man infuriates me. He could be so much better than he is. I believe he once fell in love with a highly unsuitable woman, and the whole experience soured him for life. His father was the same.” He smiled. “But his mother is as different as could be. Delightful woman, charming and eccentric and full of life. Still wears rather old-fashioned clothes, almost prewar, very feminine. Has a famous collection of gorgeous parasols and hats with flowers on them. Loves the horse races…and a good champagne.”

  “What on earth does she make of her son?” Matthew said in amazement. “I presume he is scandalized by her?”

  “On the contrary,” Lashwood assured him with a smile. “She is his only redeeming feature. He adores her.”

  “But she has never managed to imbue him with her own joy in life?”

  “Never.” He speared a succulent morsel of meat from his plate and put it into his mouth. “He considers it his duty, and his privilege, to look after her, and indulge her, which she accepts with the utmost grace.”

  Matthew’s heart sank. It was far too little information to be of any use. “How the hell did we get lumbered with having him prosecute the men accused of killing Northrup? And how do we get him changed for someone with a little more compassion and imagination, possibly amenable to considering the larger picture?”

  Lashwood pulled his mouth into a grim line. “Difficult, old fellow. He’s a friend of your boss. Sorry, but for all I know, it could have been he who picked him out.”

  Matthew was suddenly cold. “Picked him out? You mean for this prosecution?” Was this at last what Sandwell had been wanting him to find out? It was the fear that had rested like poison at the back of his mind almost from the beginning—the Peacemaker was Shearing himself. He had hated the Peacemaker for killing John and Alys Reavley, and all those since then: good people, men who had trusted him.

  But how many more had died fearful deaths on battlefields all over the world? How many were shot, frozen, gassed, drowned in mud, or carried to the bottom of the sea in the millions of tons of shipping lost? How many starved to death, even here at home? How many more were maimed in mind and body or crippled by grief? How much of the whole world was ruined in blood and fire and grief?

  The Peacemaker had wanted to prevent it and, when that was too late, to stop it, at any cost! He was an idealist who had lost his balance. He had worked to save lives, but had taken to himself the power to decide what cost was to be paid.

  He could hate such a man, but he could also understand him.

  “Reavley!” Lashwood’s voice cut across his thoughts.

  Matthew jerked himself back to the present. “Yes. You are quite sure? No possibility of a mistake?”

  Lashwood frowned. “I’ve known Faulkner for years, and his mother.” He leaned forward across the table. “You look a bit green, old boy.”

  Matthew struggled to compose his face and respond noncommittally. “So you think there’s no chance of getting him changed?”

  “Not really. Bad show. Wish I could think of something helpful. But from what I hear, he actually requested the case.”

  “No point in going over it. Spoil what’s left of a good meal,” Matthew said, trying to smile. He left the thoughts raging in his mind until he could escape and find privacy to think.

  That opportunity came as he walked back across the park. It took him a mile and a half longer than necessary, but he could not yet bear to face Shearing. Lashwood would not have lied, nor could he have been mistaken. Shearing knew the man, knew his rigidity, and had allowed this, possibly even contrived it. Was that something Sandwell had also known Matthew would find, and be driven to the inevitable, hideous conclusion?

  He found himself taking the other path across the grass, not in the direction of his own office, but back toward Sandwell’s.

  He had to wait most of the afternoon to see him, but at four Sandwell returned from a Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, and admitted Matthew immediately.

  “I see by your face that you have followed the trail to its bitter conclusion,” he said quietly. He walked over to the table at the far side of his office and picked up the crystal decanter from the tantalus, pouring two glasses of brandy and offerin
g one to Matthew. “I’m sorry. It’s the worst of all answers.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?” Matthew asked, taking the brandy. “Who is he? What is he? There’s nothing in his office—no pictures, no mementos, nothing from the past at all! He never mentions family, or even friends, where he went to school or university, or any other place that matters to him.”

  Sandwell’s face was bleak. “He wouldn’t,” he answered, motioning Matthew to sit down and sitting opposite him. “He sounds like an Englishman because he’s taught himself to, and he’s nothing if not thorough. Actually he’s an Austrian Jew. Settled here thirty years ago. No idea what happened to his family. None of them are here in Britain, or ever were.” He sipped his brandy. “Unless they came in under forged papers, but I’m as certain as I can be that they didn’t. His name was originally Caleb Schering.” He spelled it out, in the German way.

  Matthew drank a mouthful of his brandy. It was a waste of a fine spirit, but he needed its fire more than its savor. “How in God’s name did we come to have him in the Secret Intelligence Service at all, let alone as head of it?”

  “Because he started when we had no cause to fear Germany, let alone the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Sandwell said simply. “And there’s no proof of a single error or slip of any kind against him. English sense of fair play, I suppose!” He shrugged slightly. “Added to which, I daresay he knows where a few bodies are buried. No one will want to be the first to suggest anything. He’s an agreeable man. People like him. One doesn’t want to seem paranoid, seeing ghosts where there are none.”

  “God Almighty!” Matthew swore. “How…how bloody amateur!”

  Sandwell smiled, his expression suddenly warm and extraordinarily charming. “The English disease,” he said ruefully. “And at times our genius.”

  Matthew closed his eyes. “Not this time.”

  “What are you going to do?” Sandwell asked after a moment or two.

  “Collect evidence,” Matthew replied. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “Where will you take it?” Sandwell’s face darkened. “Be careful, Reavley. There have been murders already. I don’t know how many, but he is playing for empires, even millions of lives. Yours would be nothing to pay for victory.”

  Matthew grimaced. “I’ll remember.”

  Matthew spent a wretched night. Unable to sleep, he sought every kind of escape from the only conclusion now possible.

  He lay staring at the ceiling. He was safe and comfortable in his own bed. The silence surrounded him, cocooning him from the world. He began to think about his brother.

  Joseph, if he was sleeping at all, would be in a hole dug in the sodden earth of Flanders. There would be no silence there. The guns never entirely stopped, least of all now with the battle for Passchendaele raging on. Now and then phosgene or mustard gas would be pervasive. Death and decay would be everywhere—the smell of it, the taste of it. Those Joseph shared tea and bad jokes with tonight might be torn apart by shrapnel tomorrow, and he would bury what was left of them.

  And here was Matthew in silence and clean sheets, tossing and turning because tomorrow he would begin proving that Calder Shearing was the Peacemaker, the idealist turned betrayer who had killed John and Alys Reavley.

  He finally gave up trying to sleep and made himself a cup of tea. Then he sat in his armchair noting all he knew already, and what he needed to learn from a reputable source who would not take the inquiry back to Shearing.

  The second was the more difficult. He remembered Sandwell’s warning that Shearing would not hesitate to kill if he was threatened. Matthew already knew that. He had never forgotten Cullingford, and his loss still hurt. Looking back now he was certain that the attack in the alley when he had so nearly been knifed himself was not an attempted robbery but a murder foiled more by luck than skill.

  Why? He had not suspected Shearing then. In fact it was barely twenty-four hours since they had eaten a hasty supper together of ham sandwiches and coffee, set up over maps of safe houses and escape routes for saboteurs. He could see it exactly in his mind’s eye: the lamplight on the table, Shearing’s dark head bent over the diagrams, his sudden smile when he had seen the solution, and then the eagerness in his voice. It had been one of the rare betrayals of emotion in him. Matthew had felt an intense companionship at that moment. They had even joked afterward; Shearing had told some long-winded story about a dog and a newspaper. They had laughed, mostly from relief.

  There was really only one person he could speak to, and that was Admiral “Blinker” Hall, the head of naval intelligence. He had gone to him before when he had had knowledge that was sensitive and painful. He was used to harboring secrets that would make or break nations, and that could never be revealed.

  It was still a little after one the following afternoon when Matthew was shown into Admiral Hall’s office. Hall was sitting behind the desk, papers spread in front of him. He was a stocky man with an eaglelike face and thick white hair. His narrowed blue eyes blinked rapidly every now and then, as if he could not help himself.

  “Well, Reavley, no preamble. No time. What is it that you must tell me that cannot wait?”

  “Not tell you, sir,” Matthew corrected him. “Ask you.”

  “You had better know a good reason for this. Sit down, man. I’m not spending my time straining my neck looking up at you! Spit it out.”

  Matthew sat obediently.

  “Information has come to me, sir, from a source high in the government that casts doubt on some of Colonel Shearing’s actions and decisions.” He felt like a traitor saying it aloud.

  “For example?” Hall asked, blinking several times.

  “His explicit approval of Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner as prosecutor in the court-martial against Captain Cavan, and the other men, if they are caught,” Matthew answered. “Faulkner is an absolute hard-liner, and if Cavan is found guilty and shot, it will be a disaster to morale, possibly beyond our ability to cope with. It could even become a full-scale mutiny.” He had no need to elaborate for Hall what would follow that disaster.

  “Have you asked him?” Hall raised his eyebrows.

  “No, sir. I realize I know nothing about Colonel Shearing except that he is an Austrian-Jewish immigrant. He arrived some thirty years ago, and none of his family is in this country, as far as we know.”

  “No, they aren’t,” Hall agreed, leaning back a little and making a steeple of his fingers on the desk. He regarded Matthew over the top of them. “All his family are dead. Both his parents were killed by the Austrian police. The woman he loved—Ingrid, I believe her name was—was raped and killed in a particularly brutal incident on the Serbian border. He and his brother, Baruch Schering, escaped to England, but Baruch went back, working for British Intelligence, to see what information he could gain about political alliances in the Balkans at the time. He was especially concerned about Austrian treaties with Russia which might affect us in the future.”

  His eyes were steady, the blink forgotten. “He was caught and tortured, but he died without giving away any of our other men, although he knew the names of at least a dozen of them. It is because of Baruch and our debt to him that we trusted Caleb…Calder Shearing. He has never let us down. I am prepared to stake Captain Cavan’s life, and the outcome of the court-martial in Passchendaele, on his honor in this, if not his judgment. If, indeed, he really did propose Faulkner.”

  Matthew sat still, his face burning, his brain trying to accommodate all he had heard, and decide what he believed. He had come in accepting at last that Shearing was the Peacemaker. Deeply as that hurt, he no longer fought the idea. Now all was confusion again.

  Hall must have seen it in his face. “I understand your concern, Reavley. On the face of it, to send Faulkner seems the worst possible choice. He may have reasons we are unaware of. Find out, and bring me the answer.”

  “I have no authority with which to question him, sir,” Matthew began.

  “I said find out, Reavley
, not ask him,” Hall snapped. “Learn what you can about any friendship between them. Is it possible Shearing is so burdened with other issues he has been misled, careless, or used by someone else? And do it quickly. We have no time to spare. Report to me in forty-eight hours. Or less, if you find a satisfactory answer.”

  Matthew stood up. “Yes, sir.” His head was swimming. He heard every tick of the clock on the desk as if it were consuming the seconds until Cavan should be shot, and the whole Western Front collapse.

  Judith also had very little sleep, and even in those brief hours snatched here and there she was troubled by memories and fears. She was accustomed to physical exhaustion and the discomfort of being bruised by the constant jolting of the ambulance over rough ground, her muscles aching from floundering in mud and trying to lift stretchers awkwardly. She was also, like everyone else, accustomed to being wet most of the time, having her feet hurt as her rough shoes scraped where the leather had become twisted and hard from being soaked and caked with mud. She felt permanently filthy. Like everything along the entire Western Front, she almost certainly smelled stale and dirty. She felt about as feminine as a road navvy or railway stoker…or a soldier.

  Over the last year, that had not mattered. Seeing the wounded, thinking about the war in general and this Salient in particular was all that anyone had time for; helping friends, and friends were whoever was near you. But Mason had looked at her with that tender, aching intensity, the softness in his eyes so naked it tore through her like a fire, destroying complacency and balance.

  Before the war she had been beautiful. She knew it from the reflection in men’s eyes. Now they looked on her as one of the chaps, something of a mascot even: a good driver, a good sport, brave, reliable, someone to trust. And yet still not really one of them.

  As she lay curled up in the back of the ambulance, she could dimly see the outline of Wil Sloan a few feet away. He was breathing evenly, almost certainly asleep. She had never admired anyone more. Wil was brave with a casual air as if it were ordinary, and he made off-beat silly jokes, told long stories about the American West that no one else understood. But he laughed at the English tales that must have been equally obscure to him. He shared his food and blankets, when there were any, and he never complained. She would have trusted him with anything except the vulnerability of her emotional need and confusion at the moment.