“I can’t tell you that, sir. Discretion, confidence, you understand?”
Matthew had not argued. It would be easy enough to get to know from Wheatcroft himself tomorrow. There was now no way of avoiding seeing him.
However, before he did that, there was one last man he would see who had known Wheatcroft as a student in Cambridge, fifteen years ago: Aidan Thyer, Master of St. John’s. It was a calculated risk. Matthew had once believed Thyer himself might be the Peacemaker. He certainly had both the intelligence and the influence. He had been a brilliant scholar in his youth, and now as master he had the position and the charisma to mold generations of students who would be the future teachers, philosophers, scientists, and governors of the nation. He might even have access to members of the Royal Family and friends in power throughout Europe and the Empire. And of course he was a Cambridge man whom John Reavley would have known. He was fluent in several languages, an idealist with a vision quite broad enough to have conceived the Anglo-German Empire the Peacemaker envisioned.
Was he also ruthless enough to commit murder to bring it about? In the name of peace, in the cause of saving the millions of lives already lost, and the bleeding away of thousands more every day across the Channel, would he have destroyed a few, a handful?
Somebody had!
Matthew left the police station and walked quietly up the street. The August afternoon was still and damp, the road surface glistened in the late sun, and after the downpour the gutters were running deep. There was little traffic. People either took the underground trains or walked where possible.
He wished he could go to the cinema and escape for a couple of hours. He would sit in the dark with strangers and laugh animatedly at Charlie Chaplin, with his absurd walk, his cane, his courage, his defiance, and the individuality that would not be crushed. Or at Fatty Arbuckle and his fights with custard pies that were so brilliantly choreographed they were almost like ballet.
Or perhaps it would be fun to see a real melodrama. Someone had told him that Theda Bara would soon be appearing in
He crossed the road, oblivious to a speeding motorcar. The vehicle passed him by mere inches, and he staggered, lost his balance, and tripped. There was a screech of tires and brakes as he sprawled into the street, wrenching himself so hard his shoulder was twisted in its socket.
An engine accelerated and tires squealed again.
Struggling to catch his breath, he started to clamber to his feet, feeling more than a little ridiculous. Anger boiled up inside him.
Someone offered him a hand and pulled him up. It was an elderly gentleman with a white mustache and military bearing.
“That was a close shave, sir,” he said with a shake of his head. “Damn fool driver! Must have been drunk as a newt. Are you all right? You look a trifle shaken.”
Matthew was damp from the pavement and there were smears of mud on his elbows and knees. His left foot was wet where he had stepped in the gutter, but other than the wrench to his shoulder and a few bruises, he was unhurt.
“Yes, sir, thank you. I didn’t see him coming at all.” He felt extremely foolish.
“You wouldn’t, sir,” the other man said crisply. “Come round the corner driving like a Jehu! Straight for the pavement. If it weren’t ridiculous, I’d say he was aiming straight for you. I’d thank your stars, sir, and go home and have a hot bath, if there is such a thing available to you, and a large whisky.”
“Thank you,” Matthew said sincerely. “I think that’s exactly what I will do.”
But when he was back in his flat, sitting in the armchair with a single lamp shedding a soft light over the familiar room, and a glass of whisky in his hand, he was still cold, and his mind was racing. Was it possible that the incident in the street was not an accident?
Surely not? It was just somebody drunk, or even distracted perhaps with bad news. There was certainly enough of it about. Matthew was angry because he had been frightened, for a moment, and made to look vulnerable and ridiculous.
He telephoned Aidan Thyer and made an appointment to see him the next day. There was no point in wasting time going all the way to Cambridge, and then finding that Thyer was too busy to see anyone, or even not there at all. But telephoning did mean he was warned. If he was the Peacemaker, then he might already know what Matthew was doing, and the reason he was coming.
If it proved to be Thyer it would hurt Joseph. He had liked the man and trusted him. It would be a double betrayal because of Sebastian Allard’s death as well, and the manner of it, as well as the murder of John and Alys Reavley.
Matthew went over in his mind yet again the course he had followed in seeking the Peacemaker. It had to be someone with connections to the Royal Families of both Britain and Germany. Although since the king and the kaiser were first cousins, with Queen Victoria as a common grandmother, a connection with one might well open doors to connections with the other. He had also to be a man of extraordinary intelligence, boundless ambition, an understanding of world politics, and an idealism he could follow with ruthless dedication regardless of all cost.
Because John Reavley had found a copy of the treaty that proposed this monstrous alliance, and been murdered in the attempt to expose it, the Peacemaker had to be someone who knew him sufficiently well to predict his actions, even his daily routine.
But Matthew and Joseph had considered Aidan Thyer, Master of St. Giles; Dermot Sandwell, senior government minister and confidant of royalty; and Ivor Chetwin, Secret Intelligence agent and longtime friend of John Reavley, until an ethical difference over the morality involved in spying had divided them. Matthew had once dreaded that it might be Shanley Corcoran, brilliant scientist and lifetime friend of John Reavley. He had not even dared suggest that to Joseph. It would have wounded him desperately. But then Corcoran’s betrayal last summer had wounded him even more deeply. And he was dead now, hanged for treason.
Matthew sipped the whisky again, and did not taste it. He barely felt its fire slip down his throat. He himself had been sure it was Patrick Hannassey who had been the Peacemaker, and he had seen him die. Even up to a couple of weeks ago he had believed it was he. But this new conspiracy was too like the Peacemaker’s work to cling on to that false comfort anymore.
And of course there was always his own superior, Calder Shearing. Matthew liked Shearing. He understood his sudden explosions of temper when stupidity caused unnecessary loss. He admired both his intelligence and his emotional energy, the strength of will that drove him to work until he was exhausted, the patience to pursue every chain of reasoning, to wait, to watch and go over and over details meticulously. He was honest enough to admit his errors, and he never took credit for another man’s work. But more than any of these things, Matthew liked his dry wit, the laughter he saw in Shearing’s eyes even when the appreciation was wordless.
None of these things altered the fact that even after five years working with him, he did not know anything about Shearing beyond those boundaries. He seemed to have no personal life. He never spoke of family either past or present. He was widely knowledgeable but he never spoke of a school or university. Nothing seemed to be known of him but the present.
Could he be the Peacemaker? Yes, of course it was possible. The thought was both frightening and painful, like so much else.
“Matthew! How good to see you.” Aidan Thyer came into the Master’s Lodge sitting room, his hand outstretched. He was a slender man with flaxen-pale hair, which flopped forward onto his brow, and a sensitive, highly intelligent face. Matthew remembered now with sudden regret that Thyer’s beautiful wife, Connie, had loved another man. It was honor and probably affection that kept her loyal. But it was not love, and Thyer knew it.
“How are you, sir?” he asked aloud, taking Thyer’s offered hand. The courtesy title came to him naturally. Matthew had not studied at St. John’s, but the respect for a master of college was innate.
“Well, thank you,” Thyer replied. “Although the casualty lists are worse than any nightmare. I heard just the other day that Nigel Eardslie was lost in Passchendaele. He was one of Joseph’s students, you know.”
“I’m sorry.” There was nothing more to say.
“Sit down.” Thyer waved to a chair, and took the one opposite. “I’m sure you must have lost friends as well. There’s no one in England who hasn’t. Europe has become an abattoir. But no doubt you didn’t come here to discuss that. What can I do for you?”
“Alan Wheatcroft was a student of yours some time ago,” Matthew began. Thyer knew he was in intelligence; there was no purpose whatever in being overdiscreet.
