Cullingford, not Sam and Prentice, not himself and Mason.
“You’re right,” he agreed quietly. “I would have drowned him rather than let him publish his piece.” He started to shake his head. “I would have let it go down.” He blinked as tears filled his eyes. “But he can’t do it now. I tried to tell him the reason for it all, explain to him, but I didn’t have the words. Andy showed him.”
“Who’s Andy?” Matthew asked.
“Tommy Atkins,” Joseph replied, then in simple, choking words he told Matthew what had happened. Matthew listened in silence, his hand held tight over Joseph’s.
“Where’s Mason now?” he said when Joseph fell silent.
“In the next room,” Joseph replied. “He was colder than I was, because he was wet. But he’s all right. He made it.”
“There’s no one in the next room,” Matthew said with a frown. “I passed it as someone was leaving. Tallish fellow, with dark hair. He looked pretty rough.”
Joseph felt himself cold again.
“You must find out who was going to print it,” he said urgently. “If the Peacemaker gets hold of him, he just might write it again. I don’t think so—but we have to be sure!
“Mason comes from Beverly in Yorkshire. When he thought we wouldn’t make it, he told me he’d known the newspaper owner all his life. The man has several papers, all in Yorkshire and Lancashire. He could kill recruiting right across the Midlands. You ought to be able to find him. Politically he’s a pacifist for a united Europe, doesn’t care at what cost, or who’s in charge.” He closed his eyes, his mind and his heart aching with understanding for Sam. He wished to God he had never told anyone at all that Prentice was murdered. “Bloody Prentice was working for him as well,” he said aloud. “Mason told me.”
“The Peacemaker?” Matthew’s eyes filled with understanding. “The original plan couldn’t work, so his plan now is to bring about British surrender because we haven’t the army to defend ourselves any more. God damn it, Joe! We have to stop him, whatever the cost!
“And you’re sure it’s not Chetwin?”
“Absolutely. It seemed so . . . inevitable. But it’s not.” He repeated to Matthew what Mynott had said about Chetwin’s German fiancee, her death and her parents’ grief and anger. “It would have been impossible for Chetwin to have any connection with the document,” he went on. “The kaiser wouldn’t let him into the palace grounds to deliver the coal, never mind to take a secret document of state to someone here to carry to the king. I think he was lucky to get out of Germany alive.”
“Father would be pleased,” Matthew said with a very slight smile. “He didn’t want to hate Chetwin. Although I don’t think he would have admired that story! Poor girl.”
“And her parents. She was their only child.” For a moment memory of Eleanor came back again. He saw in Matthew’s eyes that the same thought had come to him. His sorrow was there naked, his ache to be able to help, and the knowledge that he could not.
Joseph found himself smiling, not that the memory was much easier, but because Matthew understood it. “We’ve paid too much to give in now,” he said aloud. “How could we face those who’ve given everything they had, and tell them it was for nothing? We haven’t the stomach to go on! We asked everything from them. They gave it and we took.”
“I know.” Matthew bit his lip. “We won’t give in. But we’re a long way from the end. I’m glad it wasn’t Chetwin, but I wish to hell I knew who it was. We need to, Joe, whoever it is. He’s ruthless. Killing Cullingford like that shows he’ll destroy anyone he thinks stands in his way.” His face was bleak. “Gus Tempany died, too. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the Peacemaker, but he was a hell of a fine man, and a friend of Cullingford’s. Died the day after Cullingford. Accident of some sort, in his flat. I actually went and asked the porter if Cullingford had been there the day before, and he said he had.”
The coldness seemed to be in the air of the room. Joseph felt Cullingford’s death more deeply than he had expected to. His mind turned automatically to Judith, and meeting Matthew’s eyes, he knew his had also.
As if in answer, Matthew spoke. “I write to Judith, pretty well every day. She writes back, but she doesn’t really say much. I feel so damn helpless.”
“Letting her know you’re there is about all you can do,” Joseph replied. “It does help, at least after a while.”
Matthew nodded very slightly. “Our losses are appalling,” he said bleakly. “And the war at sea is getting worse.” He shook his head with a slight, self-deprecating smile. “I suppose I hardly need to tell you that! And you’ve seen more of the carnage than I have. No one could know better how little we can afford to be betrayed from within as well. We’ve got to find him and destroy him, before he takes our faith in ourselves away from us.”
“You’ll find the newspaper owner?” Joseph pressed.
“Yes. But that won’t be all the Peacemaker is doing.”
“No. No, of course not. I suppose if Mason’s well enough to get out of here, I must be, too.” He sat up slowly. He still ached, but his head was clear. “I’ve got to get back to Ypres,” he added. “I must see Judith. And I have to do something about Sam.”
“In a day or two,” Matthew agreed gently. “Come to my flat for a while first. Give yourself a chance, Joe. You’re no use to anyone like this.”
“I don’t know if I can afford it. What day is it anyway?”
“May nineteenth. I’ve told your unit; you’ve got till the end of the week at least, more if you need it. I don’t know what you’re going to do about Sam. I can’t help you with that, but Judith will be all right. We’re all going to lose people. She’ll hurt, but she’ll recover. You need a day or two here first. I’ll take one or two early nights. We’ll go to the music hall, or see a Charlie Chaplin film. You need to think of something absurd, that doesn’t matter a damn, before you go back. So do I.”
Joseph looked up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask how you are!”
“That’s all right! I wouldn’t have told you anyway,” Matthew said with a sudden, beautiful smile.
In Marchmont Street the Peacemaker was stunned. Mason looked appalling. His eyes were hollow, and his face had a haunted air as of a man whose dreams make sleep worse than waking. He stood straight, but there was an overwhelming weariness in him, and when he moved it obviously hurt him.
“You lost it?” the Peacemaker repeated. “You said it was wrapped in oiled silk!”
“I didn’t lose it, I destroyed it,” Mason repeated. “I took it out of its wrapping and threw it into the water. Actually I had very little choice, if I wanted to survive. He would have let us all drown rather than have it published.”
“Drown himself? And the other crewman?”
“Yes.”
The Peacemaker stared at the man in front of him and saw in his wide-boned, passionate, stubborn face an immovable certainty that he was right. And there was something more than facts, there was a difference in emotion, a change in his eyes. “Joseph Reavley? The biblical language teacher from Cambridge?” he asked, still finding it difficult to believe.
“Yes,” Mason replied. “He’s serving as a chaplain in Ypres now. He’s seen a lot of action. I watched him helping the wounded in Gallipoli. He’s done a lot of it before.”
The Peacemaker swore. He was not often wrong about men. He could not afford to be, and this was an expensive mistake. That was two brilliant pieces of propaganda, opportunities to tell the truth in its horror, that had been snatched from him. He looked steadily at Mason, trying to read beyond the weariness; the emotion that Gallipoli and the sea had stirred in him. How long had he been adrift in an open boat with a blind and suicidal chaplain? Mason was a good man, he abhorred the waste, he cared for the individual, but he could also see beyond sentimentality to the greater good, which only too evidently Joseph Reavley could not. . . . Damn Joseph Reavley! He was far more of a nuisance than could have been foreseen!
“Never mind,” he said aloud. “You can write it again. It might not have the immediacy of the battlefield, but write the truth! Say you were pursued across the Mediterranean, that you took ship in Gibraltar but it was sunk and you only just survived crossing the Channel in a lifeboat, and you lost your original draft. It will make even more compelling reading.” He went on urgently. “And it will heighten people’s awareness of how vulnerable we are at sea.”
