Matthew arranged to meet an old friend, Errol Lashwood, for luncheon at the Ivy Restaurant in Covent Garden. They received excellent food, and the atmosphere was easy and charming. The restaurant was highly popular with all manner of people, especially the theatrical community. Matthew had on occasion seen Bernard Shaw there, and Ellen Terry and Gladys Cooper last year when they had been playing in J. M. Barrie’s
This time Lashwood smiled and pointed out the amazing profile of Ivor Novello, who was sitting only a couple of tables away.
“Faulkner.” Matthew returned him to the subject.
“Not a bad man,” Lashwood said wryly. “Just highly unimaginative, and very little sense of joy in the absurd. I think, personally, that he is rather afraid of change, and therefore feels threatened by anything he does not understand.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps I am thinking beyond the mark. The man infuriates me. He could be so much better than he is. I believe he once fell in love with a highly unsuitable woman, and the whole experience soured him for life. His father was the same.” He smiled. “But his mother is as different as could be. Delightful woman, charming and eccentric and full of life. Still wears rather old-fashioned clothes, almost prewar, very feminine. Has a famous collection of gorgeous parasols and hats with flowers on them. Loves the horse races…and a good champagne.”
“What on earth does she make of her son?” Matthew said in amazement. “I presume he is scandalized by her?”
“On the contrary,” Lashwood assured him with a smile. “She is his only redeeming feature. He adores her.”
“But she has never managed to imbue him with her own joy in life?”
“Never.” He speared a succulent morsel of meat from his plate and put it into his mouth. “He considers it his duty, and his privilege, to look after her, and indulge her, which she accepts with the utmost grace.”
Matthew’s heart sank. It was far too little information to be of any use. “How the hell did we get lumbered with having him prosecute the men accused of killing Northrup? And how do we get him changed for someone with a little more compassion and imagination, possibly amenable to considering the larger picture?”
Lashwood pulled his mouth into a grim line. “Difficult, old fellow. He’s a friend of your boss. Sorry, but for all I know, it could have been he who picked him out.”
Matthew was suddenly cold. “Picked him out? You mean for this prosecution?” Was this at last what Sandwell had been wanting him to find out? It was the fear that had rested like poison at the back of his mind almost from the beginning—the Peacemaker was Shearing himself. He had hated the Peacemaker for killing John and Alys Reavley, and all those since then: good people, men who had trusted him.
But how many more had died fearful deaths on battlefields all over the world? How many were shot, frozen, gassed, drowned in mud, or carried to the bottom of the sea in the millions of tons of shipping lost? How many starved to death, even here at home? How many more were maimed in mind and body or crippled by grief? How much of the whole world was ruined in blood and fire and grief?
The Peacemaker had wanted to prevent it and, when that was too late, to stop it, at any cost! He was an idealist who had lost his balance. He had worked to save lives, but had taken to himself the power to decide what cost was to be paid.
He could hate such a man, but he could also understand him.
“Reavley!” Lashwood’s voice cut across his thoughts.
Matthew jerked himself back to the present. “Yes. You are quite sure? No possibility of a mistake?”
Lashwood frowned. “I’ve known Faulkner for years, and his mother.” He leaned forward across the table. “You look a bit green, old boy.”
Matthew struggled to compose his face and respond noncommittally. “So you think there’s no chance of getting him changed?”
“Not really. Bad show. Wish I could think of something helpful. But from what I hear, he actually requested the case.”
“No point in going over it. Spoil what’s left of a good meal,” Matthew said, trying to smile. He left the thoughts raging in his mind until he could escape and find privacy to think.
That opportunity came as he walked back across the park. It took him a mile and a half longer than necessary, but he could not yet bear to face Shearing. Lashwood would not have lied, nor could he have been mistaken. Shearing knew the man, knew his rigidity, and had allowed this, possibly even contrived it. Was that something Sandwell had also known Matthew would find, and be driven to the inevitable, hideous conclusion?
He found himself taking the other path across the grass, not in the direction of his own office, but back toward Sandwell’s.
He had to wait most of the afternoon to see him, but at four Sandwell returned from a Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, and admitted Matthew immediately.
“I see by your face that you have followed the trail to its bitter conclusion,” he said quietly. He walked over to the table at the far side of his office and picked up the crystal decanter from the tantalus, pouring two glasses of brandy and offering one to Matthew. “I’m sorry. It’s the worst of all answers.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” Matthew asked, taking the brandy. “Who is he? What is he? There’s nothing in his office—no pictures, no mementos, nothing from the past at all! He never mentions family, or even friends, where he went to school or university, or any other place that matters to him.”
Sandwell’s face was bleak. “He wouldn’t,” he answered, motioning Matthew to sit down and sitting opposite him. “He sounds like an Englishman because he’s taught himself to, and he’s nothing if not thorough. Actually he’s an Austrian Jew. Settled here thirty years ago. No idea what happened to his family. None of them are here in Britain, or ever were.” He sipped his brandy. “Unless they came in under forged papers, but I’m as certain as I can be that they didn’t. His name was originally Caleb Schering.” He spelled it out, in the German way.
Matthew drank a mouthful of his brandy. It was a waste of a fine spirit, but he needed its fire more than its savor. “How in God’s name did we come to have him in the Secret Intelligence Service at all, let alone as head of it?”
“Because he started when we had no cause to fear Germany, let alone the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Sandwell said simply. “And there’s no proof of a single error or slip of any kind against him. English sense of fair play, I suppose!” He shrugged slightly. “Added to which, I daresay he knows where a few bodies are buried. No one will want to be the first to suggest anything. He’s an agreeable man. People like him. One doesn’t want to seem paranoid, seeing ghosts where there are none.”
“God Almighty!” Matthew swore. “How…how bloody amateur!”
Sandwell smiled, his expression suddenly warm and extraordinarily charming. “The English disease,” he said ruefully. “And at times our genius.”
Matthew closed his eyes. “Not this time.”
“What are you going to do?” Sandwell asked after a moment or two.
“Collect evidence,” Matthew replied. “There’s nothing else I can do.”
“Where will you take it?” Sandwell’s face darkened. “Be careful, Reavley. There have been murders already. I don’t know how many, but he is playing for empires, even millions of lives. Yours would be nothing to pay for victory.”
Matthew grimaced. “I’ll remember.”
Matthew spent a wretched night. Unable to sleep, he sought every kind of escape from the only conclusion now possible.
He lay staring at the ceiling. He was safe and comfortable in his own bed. The silence surrounded him, cocooning him from the world. He began to think about his brother.
Joseph, if he was sleeping at all, would be in a hole dug in the sodden earth of Flanders. There would be no silence there. The guns never entirely stopped, least of all now with the battle for Passchendaele raging on. Now and then phosgene or mustard gas would be pervasive. Death and decay would be everywhere—the smell of it, the taste of it. Those Joseph shared tea and bad jokes with tonight might be torn apart by shrapnel tomorrow, and he would bury what was left of them.
And here was Matthew in silence and clean sheets, tossing and turning because tomorrow he would begin proving that Calder Shearing was the Peacemaker, the idealist turned betrayer who had killed John and Alys
