At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4
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“I did not approach that boy,” Wheatcroft said in a whisper. “I…I may have been foolish, but that’s all! It is…inadvisable. Perhaps I deserve to lose my government position for such stupidity. That I can accept. But I have committed no crime!”
“No,” Matthew agreed. “But blackmail is very definitely a crime, and you are accusing Corracher of that. If he is found guilty then he will not only lose his position, he will go to prison.”
Wheatcroft looked so wretched, it was hard to believe he was not physically ill. “What has that to do with Intelligence? What is it you think I know? For God’s sake, don’t you think I’ve done enough to him? I don’t believe he’s a traitor. I’ve nothing more to say about it.”
“I don’t believe so, either,” Matthew responded. “I don’t know who it is behind the charge, but I believe you can help me find out.”
Wheatcroft did not look up. “If I knew of any treason, I’d have reported it! I haven’t sunk so low as that.”
Matthew felt brutal, but there was no alternative. Neither affection nor pity were excuses to add to injustice. “What made you think of accusing him of blackmail?”
“I…” He stopped.
“Didn’t,” Matthew finished for him. “Someone else suggested it to you?”
“It wasn’t that…simple!” Wheatcroft’s face was ashen and glistening with sweat. “Corracher came to see me a couple of days after…after the…event. We quarreled over something else, stupid. They were putting a man called Jamieson to take over my work temporarily. Eunice, my wife, seemed to…she…assumed the quarrel was about the incident. She leaped to conclusions. I…I allowed her to. It…” He gave up helplessly. His eyes beseeched Matthew to understand without forcing him to put it into words.
Matthew felt both disgust and pity. Wheatcroft was trapped. It was his cowardice in allowing himself to be used in turn to trap Corracher that Matthew despised.
“Withdraw the charge,” Matthew told him. “I doubt you can restore his career. People don’t forget. But you can save yourself some honor out of it.”
“I can’t!” Wheatcroft protested. “It would be as good as saying that I was guilty! And before God, I wasn’t!”
“And it is unjust to be punished for something you didn’t do?” Matthew had asked.
“Yes! And my family ruined!”
“I imagine Tom Corracher feels the same way.”
Wheatcroft stared at him as if he stood on the edge of an abyss.
Matthew opened his mouth to apologize, then said nothing. He could not withdraw his words. They were true. There was some agony within Wheatcroft that he could not share—a guilt, a fear for himself or for others—but Matthew could not let him escape it at the price it would cost.
Did Wheatcroft know who had manipulated his wife? Probably not. Certainly he would not tell Matthew. He remembered her icy face, the fear in her and the immediacy to attack. She would tell him nothing, maybe even warn the Peacemaker, knowingly or not.
He left the Wheatcroft house with a feeling of oppression and went back to his office.
He worked late to learn all he could about Eunice Wheatcroft, searching for a connection to anyone who might be the Peacemaker, dreading the link that would tie them, however tenuously, to Shearing. But if it was there, whatever it cost him, he could not look away.
By the time he left he was tired. His neck and shoulders ached with tension and his mouth was dry. He walked outside in the dark to get a bus home. He alighted two or three streets away and took a shortcut through an alley to save himself a hundred yards.
He heard the noise behind him. It was no more than a loose pebble kicked, but he swung around, losing his balance a little. A figure fell hard against him and metal clanged on the brick.
Some deep memory of those last minutes on the Cormorant awoke in him the feel of Hannassey’s relentless strength as they struggled at the railing with the German destroyer looming out of the darkness. He lashed out hard and straight with his left fist, all his weight behind it. It connected with the man’s face and he felt bone break. Still he followed it with a lunging kick to the groin and the man went down, letting out a scream that was almost instantly choked with blood.
Matthew hesitated. He must have broken the man’s nose. Should he stay and see if the injury was worse than that? What if he couldn’t breathe—if he died?
He looked down. He could see little more than movement, a writhing on the pavement. Perhaps the man was reaching for whatever had fallen and clanged against the brick. A knife? Matthew turned and ran, feet echoing on the alley cobbles until he emerged into his own street.
Even upstairs in his flat, with the door locked, he found he was shaking uncontrollably. The memory of the violence washed over him until he was gulping for breath. It was as if he could feel the strength of Hannassey again, the struggle, then the sudden victory. In his mind he saw Hannassey falling, spinning, arms and legs wide, until he hit the dark water, and a moment later the German destroyer squashed him like a fly.
Matthew poured himself a whisky, spilling a little, and tossed it down his throat so its fire could calm his stomach. He had not killed the man in the alley; he had seen him still moving frantically, arms groping. If Matthew had not hit back, then it would be he who was lying on the cobbles, possibly bleeding to death.
Was that what it was? An attempt to murder him? Was that really why he was shaking like this, because he knew it was not a robbery? Thieves might knock you over the head; more likely they would simply lift your wallet without you knowing it. The car driver the other day was not an accident, either.
Did this mean that at last he was enough of a nuisance to be worth killing? Even too close to the truth to be left alive? That made his heart race with excitement.
Was the Peacemaker Aidan Thyer after all? Or Calder Shearing? That was an ugly and viciously painful thought—one that made nausea grip his stomach and the sweat break out on his body. It was a strange friendship, almost tacit, and yet its depth was uniquely precious. There was a wealth of understanding between them that needed no words, and the comfort of that was immeasurable, the betrayal would be infinite. He remembered Joseph and Corcoran, and then pushed the thought from his mind.
Or could it be Dermot Sandwell, in spite of Matthew having ruled him out before? That would be far more bearable. Or someone he had not even thought of yet, but somehow had come close to without realizing it?
In Marchmont Street, the Peacemaker was woken in the small hours of the morning by his manservant. He dressed because he would not receive any visitor at the disadvantage of not being properly clothed.
He knew as soon as his guest entered the upstairs sitting room with its graceful proportions and lean, elegant furniture that the news was bad. The man who stood in the center of the floor reeked of failure.
The Peacemaker waited for him to speak.
“He got away,” the man said simply. “I thought my fellow was good, but he said Reavley fought like a tiger. Broke his nose and ruptured his spleen. He’s lucky to be alive.”
The Peacemaker was astonished. “Are you sure he had the right man? Reavley’s a thinker, not a doer.”
“I’m perfectly certain,” the man replied. “He’s been followed on and off for weeks. Discreetly—he was never aware.”
The Peacemaker raised his eyebrows skeptically.
“He wouldn’t have gone alone down an alley at night if he’d been aware he was followed,…sir,” the man replied.
The Peacemaker was annoyed with himself. He had allowed the failure to kill Reavley to rattle him, and now he had displayed a weakness in reasoning in front of this man, a rat of a creature who must be kept under tight control. He loathed having to use such people, and the necessity that drove him to it.
“You have failed twice,” he pointed out. “I cannot afford a third error. Leave him alone. I shall think of a way of dealing with him that does not depend upon your very dubious skills. I’ll send for you if I need you again.”
The man opened his mouth to argue, then met the Peacemaker’s eyes, and changed his mind. He left without speaking further.
The Peacemaker returned to his bed, but sleep eluded him. It required all his concentration and discipline of mind not to allow the Reavleys to dominate his thoughts and become an obsession. They were a nuisance, but peripheral to his main activities. The great cause was peace: first with Germany, then with the world. Never again would there be pointless slaughter like that going on at this moment at Passchendaele. The thought of it was enough to make humanity tremble and weep.
It was the night after that, with the air close and damp, and promising thunder, when Richard Mason returned from the Western Front and reported in the upstairs room. His face was gray with exhaustion. He had obviously shaved hastily and cut his chin. But it was the emotional tension in him, the grief in his eyes, the nervous tic at his temple that moved the Peacemaker to pity and a sense of the enormity of the horror. Mason had seen almost every battlefield of the war, not only in Europe but in Russia and the Middle East. He had never looked as haunted as he did now.
“Sit down,” the Peacemaker said quietly. “Whisky? Tea? Have you eaten? What can I get you?”
Mason smiled bleakly. It was no more than a bare curving of the lips, hardly noticeable. “Tea would be nice. I can’t afford to be light-headed. And a sandwich. Bread that isn’t moldy. And a clean cup to drink out of.”
The Peacemaker rang for the manservant. They spoke of trivialities until the food and drink came and they could close the door and be assured of privacy. He allowed Mason time to eat and drink before he approached the subject of his report.
“Thank you,” Mason said. He met the Peacemaker’s eyes. “It’s beyond description. It’s beyond human suffering. It is hell itself.”
“But you have come with something to tell me.” The Peacemaker had seen it in Mason’s patience, his assurance. He had watched the man report on one atrocity after another over years, and he knew every mood of his mind and read its reflection in his face. Mason had brooding, sensitive features, powerful and yet more expressive than perhaps he himself realized. The depth of his emotion was mirrored too easily.
Now he answered slowly, measuring his words. He described Howard Northrup and his appointment to replace the much-respected Penhaligon. With no more than a trace of anger, he told of his stubborn incompetence. Watching him intently, the Peacemaker saw in Mason not only fury but pity as well for a man placed beyond his depth both of experience and of character.
Then, still slumped in the armchair, Mason told of Northrup’s body being found with a single bullet through the brain, fired from right in front of him, and Joseph Reavley’s unsuccessful attempt to learn from the men exactly what had happened.
“Reavley, the chaplain?” The Peacemaker kept his voice devoid of emotion with the greatest effort. He had not forgotten how Mason had thrown away his article on the nightmare of Gallipoli, with all its propaganda value, because of Reavley’s sense of futile, narrow patriotism. “And what did Reavley find?”
Mason laughed. It was a jerky, painful sound that said more vividly than words how lacerated he was inside. “Nothing! Which I imagine was what he wanted, and intended. He’s learned since Prentice’s death. He’s investigating because he has to. Neither he nor the Colonel wants anyone charged. The whole army in that section is facing slaughter. It will take both genius and lunacy to keep them facing forward and over the top, God help them! And God forgive us!” He left the words brittle and sharp in the air, unsaid between them, that they could have prevented it all, if any of their plans had succeeded.
“There’s open talk of mutiny, and it won’t take much to bring it about,” he went on. “Then they’ll have to fire on their own men. They’ll have no choice.” There was absolute certainty in his eyes. “Reavley will have more sense of right and wrong, and of survival, than to find anything.”
“Write your article,” the Peacemaker said earnestly. “Write up the action in which the surgeon saved his men. In the men’s own words: all their comradeship, loyalty to each other, their courage, and how they were betrayed by arrogant and incompetent leadership. For readers far away from the battle you must write the tragedy of it, and the sacrifice. Paint the loss as you saw it.”
Mason stared at him, eyes shadowed and uncertain. “The noise, the mud, and the slaughter are unimaginable.”
“But of course,” the Peacemaker said grimly. “If we here at home knew what it was like, without the poetic words of sacrifice and honor to gild it for us, we would never allow it to go on. We would be sick with shame that we had ever tolerated it in the beginning. We sit in clean withdrawing rooms of quiet houses and weep into our handkerchiefs, and we talk to each other about glory. Write it as it is, Mason! For the love of God, write the truth!”
Mason sat still, the trouble still heavy in his face.
The Peacemaker leaned forward. “I know the figures, Mason. I know we have barely gained a few yards of mud at the price of a hundred thousand lives. It has to stop. The government won’t do it; they’ve staked too much on victory to settle for less than that now. They’re old men, dedicated to war. We need new men, with a vision of peace and the courage to pay what it costs in pride.” For an instant he thought of Wheatcroft and Corracher standing in the way, young men with old men’s vision. But they had been dealt with! Eunice Wheatcroft’s pride would see to that. “But they can’t do it without the truth,” he went on, intent upon Mason again. “Doesn’t the vast mass of our suffering people deserve to decide on truth, not lies? If not for them, then for the men you’ve seen paying the price of their folly. Is their enemy really the German soldier opposite, suffering the same hunger, the same horror and pain? Or is it the blind cowards behind them driving them forward?”
The argument died in Mason’s eyes. The Peacemaker saw it and knew he had won.
Matthew reached a decision. Detection of facts had achieved very little. All his inquiries into Eunice Wheatcroft’s connections had gained him nothing. He still had no proof who the Peacemaker was. He would carry the battle to Sandwell, and perhaps spur him to action, which would show him innocent or guilty.
He contrived to have himself invited to a dinner party Sandwell was giving at his home in order to discuss intelligence matters. As a senior minister, it was part of his responsibility. This was an elegant occasion with all the glamour and discreet good taste of the years before the war. The meal was abstemious, as became men who led a country where some of the poor actually starved. The talk was somber. There was no pretense made that victory was certain, only that surrender was unthinkable. The dead had paid too much for the living to betray them.
After the coffee and brandy had been served, Sandwell rose to his feet. He was slender, almost gaunt now, his fair hair gleaming in the subdued light from the lamps. He asked the others to excuse him, and gestured to Matthew to follow him into one of the smaller side offices.
It was tidy, gracious, and sparsely furnished. Sandwell sat down in one of the armchairs and invited Matthew to the other. He crossed his legs, his polished shoes shining for an instant as he moved. His eyes were almost electric blue, curious, amused. He waited for Matthew to speak.
Matthew began his well-rehearsed discourse. “Thank you, sir. I’ll not waste time with prevarication. I imagine you are aware of the original prosecution against Alan Wheatcroft, and now that against Tom Corracher as well?”
“Naturally,” Sandwell agreed. “Is that of interest to the intelligence service?”
“I believe so. Corracher is not guilty of any attempt to blackmail Wheatcroft. The accusation is Wheatcroft’s way of escaping the consequences of either a very naïve action, or possibly a minor offense, but one with major effects upon his career, and probably more important to him, his marriage.”
Sandwell was watching Matthew intently. Matthew tried to read the emotion in the brilliant eyes, and could discern nothing. It was like looking into a mirror.
Matthew smiled in spite of himself, and saw the answer in Sandwell’s face.
“Yes, sir, I think it does, which is why I believe the idea may not have originated with him.”
“I assume you asked him?”
“Yes. He told me it was his wife’s suggestion.”
“Ah. The redoubtable Eunice.”
“You know her?” Suddenly the air was electric. Had Sandwell stiffened? Was Matthew at last facing the Peacemaker in a ridiculously civilized, lethal fencing match with words? Or wasting time talking in riddles to an innocent man?
The Peacemaker was an idealist: passionate, ruthless, believing utterly in his cause. He would crush Matthew as he had his father, with regret, but without hesitation.
“Do you know Mrs. Wheatcroft, sir?” Matthew reiterated.
“I have met her,” Sandwell replied. “But I was speaking of her reputation. Elegant but chillingly cold.”
“My impression exactly,” Matthew agreed. “I think if I were Wheatcroft I would not wish to incur her displeasure, let alone her contempt.”
“Sufficiently to accuse a friend of blackmail, falsely?” Sandwell asked with a lift of surprise. “That is a particularly squalid thing to do.”
“It is a particularly squalid charge,” Matthew pointed out.
“I don’t see how it concerns Intelligence, even so. Or what I could do to be of assistance.”
Matthew had hoped the question would arise and he had prepared for it. “Tom Corracher is an able man, with unique connections in Hungary. We can’t afford to lose him so easily. Apart from the damage to morale of such a sordid scandal just now when the army is taking the most hideous losses. We need strength and honor at home.”
“I see.” Sandwell sat silently for some time. Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and a burst of laughter came from the dining room where the men were still passing the port and brandy.