Corcoran understood immediately. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s possible.”
Orla had no such hesitation. “Of course it’s possible. I know Ivor is at home because he lives in Haslingfield, and I saw him only a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure if your father visited him, he’d be happy to tell you about it.”
Corcoran looked at her, then at Matthew, uncertain.
Matthew could not afford to care about old quarrels. High in his mind was the possibility that Ivor Chetwin could be the man behind the conspiracy John Reavley discovered. It was suddenly very important to know if they had met, but he would have to be extremely careful. Whoever it was did not hesitate to kill. Again he was overwhelmed with anger for his father for having been so naive as to trust someone, to think the best of them when it so agonizingly was not true.
“Matthew . . . ,” Corcoran began, his face earnest, the lamplight now accentuating the warmth in his features.
“Yes!” Matthew said instantly. “I shall be extremely careful. Father and I are quite different. I trust no one.” He wanted to explain to them what he intended to do. However, he did not know yet, and he needed the freedom to change his mind. But above all, he did not want his father’s friend watching over his shoulder to see his weaknesses, or his pain if what he found was sad and vulnerable—and private.
“That’s not what I was going to say,” Corcoran declared. “Ivor Chetwin was a decent man when I knew him. But I doubt your father would have confided anything in him before telling you. Have you considered that this issue your father was so concerned about may have been a piece of politicking that he felt was dishonorable, rather than anything you or I would consider a conspiracy? He was a little . . . idealistic.”
“Conspiracy?” Orla looked from Matthew to her husband and back again.
“Probably nothing.” Corcoran smiled very slightly. “I daresay he would have found that out if he had had the chance.”
Matthew wanted to argue, but he had no weapons. He could not defend his father; he had nothing but remembered words, which he had repeated so often he was hearing his own voice saying them now. There was nothing tangible except death, the awful absence of those he loved, the jolting surprise of the empty rooms, the telephone call no one would answer from the study.
“Of course,” he said, not meaning it, nor looking at Corcoran’s face. He was agreeing for Orla’s sake, so as not to alarm her. Then he changed the subject. “I wish I didn’t have to go back to London so soon. It is so timelessly peaceful here.”
“Have a glass of port?” Corcoran offered. “I have some real vintage stuff.”
Matthew hesitated.
“Oh, it’s excellent!” Corcoran assured him. “No cork in it, no crust or sediment, I promise.”
Matthew acceded gracefully.
The butler was sent for and dispatched to fetch one of the best bottles. He returned with it cradled in a napkin.
“Right!” Corcoran said enthusiastically. “I’ll open this myself! Make sure it’s perfect. Thank you, Truscott.”
“Yes, sir.” The butler handed it over with resignation.
“Really . . . ,” Orla protested, but without any belief she would make a difference. “Sorry,” she said ruefully to Matthew. “He’s rather proud of this.”
Matthew smiled. It was obviously a ritual that mattered to Corcoran, and he was happy to observe as Corcoran led them to the kitchen, heated the tongs in the kitchen stove, then grasped the bottle with them, closing them around its neck. Truscott handed him a goose feather and held out a dish of ice. Corcoran passed the feather through the ice, then carefully around the neck of the port.
“There!” he said triumphantly as the glass cracked in a perfect circle, cutting the corked top off cleanly. “You see?”
“Bravo!” Matthew laughed.
Corcoran was grinning widely, his face alight with triumph. “There you are, Truscott! Now you can decant it and bring it to us in the dining room. Mrs. Corcoran will have a Madeira. Come . . .” And he led the procession back to the rose-and-gold room.
It was late on Sunday afternoon when Matthew drove to Haslingfield. Ivor Chetwin did not live in the magnificent manner of the Corcorans, but his home was still extremely agreeable. It was a Georgian manor a mile outside Haslingfield, and the long drive from the road swept around a gracious curve with a stand of silver birches, their leaves shimmering in the breeze, their white trunks leaning with exaggerated grace away from the prevailing wind.
A parlor maid welcomed Matthew, but Chetwin himself appeared almost immediately, an enthusiastic spaniel puppy at his heels.
“I’d have recognized you,” Chetwin said without hesitation, extending his hand to Matthew. His voice, unusually deep, still had the echo of music in it from his native Wales. “You resemble your father about the eyes.”
The loyalty hardened even more deeply inside Matthew, memory catching him again.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me at such short notice, sir,” he replied. “I’m just up for the weekend. I spend most of my time in London now.”
“I’m afraid I only get occasional weekends here myself at the moment,” Chetwin agreed. Then, followed by the puppy, he turned and led the way into a casual sitting room that opened onto a paved and graveled garden, largely shaded by overhanging trees. It was full of blossom from bushes and shrubs at the sides, and low-growing silvery-gray-leaved plants in clumps in the paving. The extraordinary thing about it was that every flower was white.
Chetwin noticed Matthew staring.
“My white garden,” he explained. “I find it very restful. Sit down. Oh, move the cat.” He gestured toward a black cat that had settled itself in the middle of the second chair and looked very disinclined to shift.
Matthew stroked the cat gently and felt rather than heard it begin to purr. He lifted it up, and when he had taken the seat, he put it down again on his lap. It rearranged itself slightly and went back to sleep.
“My father intended to come and see you,” he said smoothly as if it were true. “I never had the chance to ask him if he actually did.”
He watched Chetwin’s face. It was dark-eyed, with a strong, round jaw, black hair graying and receding from a high brow. He could read nothing in it. It was a face that could give away exactly what its owner wished it to. There was nothing naive or easily misled in Ivor Chetwin. He was full of imagination and subtlety. Matthew had been here only a few minutes, yet already he had a sense of Chetwin’s inner power.
“I’m sorry he didn’t,” Chetwin replied, and there was sadness in his voice. If he was acting, he was superb. But then Matthew had known men who betrayed their friends, even their families, and though they profoundly regretted what they saw as the necessity, it had not stopped them.
“He didn’t contact you at all?” Matthew pressed. He should not have been disappointed, and yet he was. He had hoped Chetwin would have an idea, a thread, however fine, that would lead somewhere. He realized now it was unreasonable. John Reavley would have come to Matthew first before trusting anyone else, even the far more experienced Chetwin.
“I wish he had.” Chetwin’s face still showed the same sadness. “I would have called on him, but I doubted he would see me.” A new bleakness shadowed his eyes. “That’s one of the deepest regrets of death: the things you thought of doing and put off, and then suddenly it’s too late.”
“Yes, I know,” Matthew agreed with more emotion than he had meant to expose. He felt as if he were laying a weapon down with the blade toward himself and the handle to a potential enemy. And yet had he shown less, Chetwin would have sensed it and known he was guarding himself.
“I think of something every day I would like to have said to him. I suppose that’s really why I called. You knew him during a time when I was so young I thought of him only as my father, not as a person who led any life beyond St. Giles.”
“A natural blindness of youth,” Chetwin said. “But most of what you would have heard about your father you would have liked.” He smiled, which momentarily softened his face. “He was stubborn at times; he had an
