“Your father was a brave man,” he said quietly when she had finished. “I wish I could have known him.”
She was furious with herself because the tears filled her eyes and her voice choked when she tried to speak.
“I’m sorry,” he said with deep contrition. He put his pipe away and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. He handed it to her.
She took it, wiped her eyes, which was almost useless, then blew her nose fiercely. She stood holding the handkerchief. She could hardly give it back to him now.
“I think Eldon may have been involved in the same thing,” he said thoughtfully. There was immense sadness in his face, but he did not flinch away from the knowledge. “I’ve thought about some of the things he said to me last time I was on leave. He boasted about changing things. He often did that, as young men will, but he seemed surer of himself than before, as if he were speaking of something specific.”
She said nothing.
He pulled on his pipe slowly and let out the smoke. She could smell it in the damp air.
“We had one of the stupid arguments we had so often. He hated the army and everything to do with militarism, as he called it. He said there was a better way than violence, way of peace and government that would supersede petty nationalism, and that I was fast becoming an anachronism, and I’d see!” He was standing still, the pipe in his hand almost as if he were not quite sure what to do with it. The light reflected on the polished wood of the bowl. “I thought he was just bragging at the time, but looking back, I think he knew what he was saying.”
She turned to look at him, and he averted his eyes, even though in the twilight she could barely have read the expression in them. She knew it was shame, because he read Prentice so easily, the shallow and the vulnerable in him, the child that had needed to impress, and the man who had embraced an evil to do so, perhaps without recognizing it. She looked back at the trees against the sky, now little more than shadows in the afterglow.
“I saw photographs of him,” she said quietly. “At a regatta. You were there. He looked young and eager, sort of excited, as if everything good lay ahead of him. I suppose there are thousands of young men like that. People must look at those pictures now, and . . .” She could not go on. She was hurting both of them, and it was pointless.
He put out his hand and touched her arm, his fingers strong, a steadying grip, just for a moment, then withdrawn again.
“There was a young woman as well,” she said, to fill the silence.
“I don’t remember,” he answered.
“She was unusual, very tall,” she elaborated. “Dramatic eyes. They were pale, as if they might have been light blue or green.” Then a memory came back to her of Hannah using the same words.
She stopped abruptly and swung back to face him, her heart pounding. “I think I know how the instructions were given to Sebastian to murder my parents! It couldn’t have been a letter—you don’t put that sort of thing down on paper. Anyway, you’d have to be certain that Sebastian was going to do it. You could hardly wait for him to write back! It had to be a conversation. Matthew said he didn’t have a telephone call, except from Mr. Thyer at St. John’s, and that was only a few moments. But he did meet a young woman in one of the local pubs.” She was speaking more and more rapidly, her voice rising with excitement. “Hannah saw her! She was tall, with amazing light eyes! Of course it doesn’t have to be the same woman, but it could have been! She might have drawn Prentice into it as well!”
Cullingford was staring at her, amazed, vulnerable, strangely naked in the last shreds of the light no more than a warmth in the sky. “Yes,” he agreed gently. “Yes, it could. I’m going to London tomorrow. Just a couple of days. I’ll look into it. See who she was.”
She was surprised. He had said nothing about it before. She was startled how fiercely she would miss him, even for so short a time. She took the handkerchief out of her pocket and offered it back to him.
He laughed a little shakily. “Keep it,” he said, reaching out very gently to touch her cheek with his fingers. “Be here when I get back. Please?”
“Of course I will!” The words were awkward, her throat aching so savagely she could barely swallow.
He leaned forward and kissed her, softly, on the mouth, hesitating a moment, then more fully. Then he let her go and turned to walk toward the house, without looking back.
Cullingford was in London by half past eleven. First he went to see Abigail Prentice. It was a stiff, highly emotional meeting, neither of them able to bridge the gulf of pain between them.
“Hello, Owen,” she said with as much warmth as she could manage. There was an awkwardness in her that could not totally forgive him because he was a professional soldier, a man who had deliberately given his life to fighting, a thing she could not understand, and here he was, alive. Her son who fought with his mind and his beliefs, whose only weapon was the pen, had been drowned in no-man’s-land, and buried where she could not even visit his grave. She had not been there to comfort him, or to mourn.
“Hello, Abby.” He kissed her fleetingly on the cheek. It was all she offered him.
“Are you home on leave?” she asked, going ahead of him into the sitting room.
“A couple of days,” he replied.
“I thought as a general you would have been able to have longer.” She sat down in the old armchair near the fire. There were early yellow roses in a vase on the table. They were still in bud, short-stemmed, picked from the climber over the arbor in the garden. In a couple of weeks they would be glorious. “I suppose they can’t manage without you,” she added, both pride and resentment in her voice.
He wondered if he was sitting where Judith had sat when she was here. He glanced at the familiar room, the photographs of Prentice, one or two of himself, not many. There were several of Belinda, some of Abby and her husband. Then he saw the one Judith had referred to. He remembered the occasion. It was Henley, as she had supposed. It had been a hot day, dazzling sun on the water. There were young men in light trousers, straw boater hats, striped blazers, girls in dresses that were self-consciously nautical, or else all muslins and ribbons, and parasols against burning in the sun. The hallmarks of the day had been laughter, cold lemonade and beer and champagne, picnic hampers filled with fruit and sherbet, pheasant in aspic, and cucumber sandwiches.
And there was Laetitia Dawson with the startling eyes, almost as tall as Cullingford, a fraction taller than Prentice, but the young man had been fascinated by her. Had his involvement with the Peacemaker begun even there, the first introduction to the seductive and terrible ideas?
Was it she who had given Sebastian Allard his final, murderous instructions also?
“Would you like tea?” Abby asked.
“Thank you,” he accepted, simply because it would be easier than sitting here doing nothing, and he would not go so soon.
“Will you stay to lunch?” she added.
“No, no thank you. I have to get into the city and see various people.”
“Thank you for sending Miss Reavley,” she went on awkwardly. “That was thoughtful of you. She was very nice. She spoke well of Eldon.”
He pictured Judith here in this room, struggling for something kind to say, just as he was now. She had loathed Prentice and despised his insensitivity toward men for whom she cared with an almost unbearable tenderness. Thinking of her his heart raced, the room became too small, too imprisoning. He wanted to be back in Flanders, even with the violence and the grief, the noise and fear and dirt. In Flanders were the people he loved and the causes he understood.
“Good,” he said aloud. “I’m glad she was of some help.”
“Nothing helps, Owen,” Abby answered. “I am just acknowledging your thought.”
“Abby, I did not send him into no-man’s-land,” he told her. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but she was too stiff, too fragile, and he did not dare. “He took his chances, like any young man,” he went on. “If you are angry with everyone who lives, because he didn’t, you are going to hurt yourself intolerably. There are casualties in war, just as there are in life. We do the best we can, the best we understand. Sometimes we are wrong. Eldon was following his belief. Don’t blame other people for that.” He was lying to her. Hadrian had told him that Eldon had been murdered, which was different from war. But he had given many people sufficient cause to hate him, and Cullingford had no idea which of them had been offered the chance and taken it. He could not blame Charlie Gee’s brother, if it had been he, or Edwin Corliss’s friends. But there was no need for Abby to know that. She had grief enough.
