At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4 Read online

  Joseph knew it would be difficult even to find a place where he could make himself heard, never mind to frame the questions. He was acutely conscious of disturbing men in their few moments’ peace to ask pointless questions. And if he was honest, he was not sure he wanted the answers. He had been just as appalled by Northrup’s stupidity as they were. He had prayed for some kind of release from it—but not this.

  He began with Tiddly Wop Andrews. He found him standing on the fire step up to his knees in water, drinking tea out of a Dixie can. It was early evening.

  “Hello, Chaplain,” Tiddly Wop said between the bursts of artillery fire. He always spoke quietly. He was a handsome man but profoundly shy. “Looking for someone?”

  Joseph was on the trench floor. The duckboards had been swept away and he found it difficult keeping his balance in the mud. Because he was lower than the fire step, he was up to his thighs in it.

  “Anyone who might know exactly what happened to Major Northrup,” he replied.

  Tiddly Wop grinned. “He got shot,” he replied cheerfully. “That’s one Jerry whose hand Oi’d loike to shake. Moight even give ’im a cup o’ moi tea!” He pulled a face. “’Cepting Oi’ wouldn’t want ter poison the poor bleeder.”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know.” Joseph kept his own face straight with an effort. “The general thinks he was shot by one of our men. Colonel Hook has asked me to make inquiries.”

  Tiddly Wop’s blue eyes opened wide. “You going to, then?”

  “If he was murdered, don’t you think I should?” Joseph countered.

  Tiddly Wop thought about it. “You know, Chaplain, Oi used to think Oi knew pretty good what was roight and what wasn’t. But nothing much looks the same as it used to. Oi’m not so certain anymore.” He frowned. “Oi hated Major Northrup ’cos of the men who died ’cos he wouldn’t listen. Oi didn’t shoot him, but if Oi knew who did, Oi’m not saying Oi’d tell you. Oi ’spect Oi’ll be facing whatever judgment there is in a few days, an’ most of moi mates with me. Oi’d rather answer to them than to General Northrup.”

  So would Joseph, but he could not admit it. He did not know what to say.

  “If Oi knew, and Oi told you, what’d you think of me?” Tiddly Wop asked gravely.

  “Maybe it’s just as well you don’t know,” Joseph answered him. He would never be sure if that was the truth or not, nor did he wish to be.

  “Chaplain,” Tiddly Wop started as Joseph turned to leave.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s koind of hard at the moment. Oi’d be careful if Oi was you…about asking, Oi mean.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean. Thank you.” Joseph waded away, sliding and squelching through the mud.

  He sat in his dugout the second evening, tired and cold to the bone because he was wet. He had spent two days asking questions and heard more stories of Northrup’s ignorance. There was little sympathy for him, sometimes even open hostility without any disguise that Joseph was wasting his concern on the dead instead of doing what he could for those still alive. He had no argument to rebut it: simply that Colonel Hook had ordered it, and better he than the military police.

  Night had come, violent and full of pain. The next day had been the same. A few yards were gained, and they were closer to Passchendaele than before. But another thousand men were dead, with twice as many injured.

  He had been told stories of Northrup’s last leadership of the men into no-man’s-land. No one had seen him fall. No one had been there at the time. Everyone accounted for everyone else. Friendship and its loyalties were the beacons that towered above the darkness. Joseph knew they were lying because in several instances they actually contradicted each other in their eagerness to protect everyone. He realized with surprise that he would have accepted it all and relayed it to Colonel Hook exactly if he had thought there was the slightest chance of his believing it.

  He shivered and stared around him. He had lived in this hole in the ground for more than a year, like some hibernating animal. Half a dozen of his favorite books were here, his picture of Dante, the writer of The Divine Comedy. Could his vision of hell have been as bad as this reality?

  What of Dante’s beliefs, his searing portraits of good and evil? Would he be so certain of it if he had seen this welter of terror, heroism, loyalty, and death? Joseph wasn’t. He ought to be unequivocally for the law, sure of the few absolutes of justice and the perceived order that had sustained them for more than a thousand years.

  Surely there was a constant morality, values beyond any questions, no matter what? Were the truths that spanned the abyss not the surest evidence of God’s existence, and His continuing governance of the world? Sometimes in darkness such as this they were the only evidence.

  He was lying to himself. The sure theories of the past broke before the need to save lives now, to understand whatever it was that had happened to Howard Northrup, and to the men who had brought it about. The answers did not obey rules. Compassion, loyalty to the living who trusted him to understand, swept away the old faith in rules.

  Or was it just a simple and very human matter of who you liked, and who you didn’t, who belonged to your pack, the old bonds of loyalty again? He had prayed for understanding, some answers to make the slaughter comprehensible, so men at least knew what they were dying for, and he had received this, which only made it worse.

  There was a parcel from Hannah with cake, raspberry jam, a bundle of books, and new socks. There was a note with it where briefly, almost self-consciously, she described the familiar, heart-stopping beauty of the countryside, the harvest-gold fields, the soaring poplars, leaves fluttering in the sunset breeze, the heavy elms, skirts down to the ripe corn heads, the starling whirling across the evening sky.

  He pulled out paper to answer her, and wrote possibly too much. Sharing his confusion with her only made him see more clearly how uncertain he was, and his reasons sounded like excuses. In the end he tore it up. It sounded too much as if he were expecting her to find a solution for him. He would thank her properly later.

  Instead he wrote to Lizzie Blaine again. He smiled as he remembered how quick she had been to understand last year, how she had had the wisdom not to offer false comfort when he had at last found the awful answer, and had to accept it, and his deep and bitter disillusionment.

  The physical pain of his shattered arm and ripped-open leg had almost gone; only now and then did it ache and remind him. But the wound to his faith in people and in his own judgment, the destruction of old loves and old certainties would not ever be forgotten. The truth about Shanley Corcoran had broken something in him.

  Lizzie knew that things were never solved, only a little better understood, the doubts faced, courage gripped a little more tightly. It was easier to admit to her than to Hannah that he was troubled by his own sympathy with the men more than the law, that he could conceal the truth, turn away from it, in the needs of mercy.

  Perhaps he cared less what she thought of him than he did about Hannah. Or it could be that Hannah was his sister, and might need to believe that he knew more of the answers than he did. He had been there all Hannah’s life, when so much else had been ripped away. She had found the loss of her mother particularly hard. And the war had taken all the old certainties she had loved, the way of life she had grown up believing would last forever. She was not like Judith, hungering for adventure. She loved the sweetness of what she had, village life, her home and family, giving the quiet service of a good neighbor—food for the hungry, time with the lonely, a quiet hand for the sick or afraid. She did not want glory; she wanted peace and the assurance of a tomorrow.

  There was none, especially for a woman whose husband was at sea, whose eldest son was fast approaching the age when he could join the navy also—not to speak of both a brother and a sister on the Western Front.

  To Lizzie he would not matter so much, and he could write honestly, without fear of hurting her. Her friendship seemed a clean and precious thing. He wrote with ease.
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  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  M atthew spent a wretched afternoon at the police station with the officers in charge of prosecuting Alan Wheatcroft, and now of prosecuting Tom Corracher as well. He had hoped they would have some information to indicate who had set the scandal in motion, and that it would eventually lead back toward the Peacemaker. Matthew was more and more convinced it was he behind the dismissal of all four ministers.

  “Sorry, sir,” the young policeman said with extreme discomfort. “We’d ’ave ’eld off if we could. Fine man, Mr. Wheatcroft. Rather not know these things, as long as no one’s ’urt. But we ’ad no choice.”

  “Really? Someone important, Constable?” Matthew had asked hopefully. “I thought it was the boy himself who complained. And you believed him?”

  “It was, sir. That’s the thing of it.” He looked apologetic. “You see, it wasn’t the first time we had a complaint about Mr. Wheatcroft. First time the boy was younger, and we thought as possibly ’e’d got ’old o’ the wrong idea, so to speak. It was all dealt with very quietly. We couldn’t do it a second time.”

  “Oh!” Matthew was startled. It was not something he had foreseen at all. “Who knew of this original claim?”

  “No one, sir. For the boy’s sake, we said nothing.”

  “But possibly his parents knew.”

  “His father, sir. We didn’t want to distress his mother with it.”

  “What was his name?”

  “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 Camille. That would be something to see.

  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?”