No Graves As Yet (20 page)

“Thank you for agreeing to see me at such short notice, sir,” he replied. “I’m just up for the weekend. I spend most of my time in London now.”

“I’m afraid I only get occasional weekends here myself at the moment,” Chetwin agreed. Then, followed by the puppy, he turned and led the way into a casual sitting room that opened onto a paved and graveled garden, largely shaded by overhanging trees. It was full of blossom from bushes and shrubs at the sides, and low-growing silvery-gray-leaved plants in clumps in the paving. The extraordinary thing about it was that every flower was white.

Chetwin noticed Matthew staring.

“My white garden,” he explained. “I find it very restful. Sit down. Oh, move the cat.” He gestured toward a black cat that had settled itself in the middle of the second chair and looked very disinclined to shift.

Matthew stroked the cat gently and felt rather than heard it begin to purr. He lifted it up, and when he had taken the seat, he put it down again on his lap. It rearranged itself slightly and went back to sleep.

“My father intended to come and see you,” he said smoothly as if it were true. “I never had the chance to ask him if he actually did.”

He watched Chetwin’s face. It was dark-eyed, with a strong, round jaw, black hair graying and receding from a high brow. He could read nothing in it. It was a face that could give away exactly what its owner wished it to. There was nothing naive or easily misled in Ivor Chetwin. He was full of imagination and subtlety. Matthew had been here only a few minutes, yet already he had a sense of Chetwin’s inner power.

“I’m sorry he didn’t,” Chetwin replied, and there was sadness in his voice. If he was acting, he was superb. But then Matthew had known men who betrayed their friends, even their families, and though they profoundly regretted what they saw as the necessity, it had not stopped them.

“He didn’t contact you at all?” Matthew pressed. He should not have been disappointed, and yet he was. He had hoped Chetwin would have an idea, a thread, however fine, that would lead somewhere. He realized now it was unreasonable. John Reavley would have come to Matthew first before trusting anyone else, even the far more experienced Chetwin.

“I wish he had.” Chetwin’s face still showed the same sadness. “I would have called on him, but I doubted he would see me.” A new bleakness shadowed his eyes. “That’s one of the deepest regrets of death: the things you thought of doing and put off, and then suddenly it’s too late.”

“Yes, I know,” Matthew agreed with more emotion than he had meant to expose. He felt as if he were laying a weapon down with the blade toward himself and the handle to a potential enemy. And yet had he shown less, Chetwin would have sensed it and known he was guarding himself.

“I think of something every day I would like to have said to him. I suppose that’s really why I called. You knew him during a time when I was so young I thought of him only as my father, not as a person who led any life beyond St. Giles.”

“A natural blindness of youth,” Chetwin said. “But most of what you would have heard about your father you would have liked.” He smiled, which momentarily softened his face. “He was stubborn at times; he had an intellectual arrogance he was not even aware of. It sprang from an effortless intelligence, and yet he had untiring patience for those he perceived as genuinely limited. He treated the old, the poor, the unlearned with dignity. To him the great sin was unkindness.” He seemed to retreat further into memory, revisiting the past before his quarrel with John Reavley had bled the pleasure from it.

Matthew took the risk of probing. “I remember him as being completely without guile. Was that true, or just what I wanted to think?”

Chetwin gave a sharp little laugh. “Oh, that was true! He couldn’t tell a lie to save himself, and he wasn’t about to change what he was to please anyone, or to deceive them, even to gain his own ends.” His face became shadowed again, but his dark eyes were unreadable. “That was his weakness as well as his strength. He was incapable of deviousness, and
that
is a politician’s main weapon.”

Matthew hesitated, wondering if he should admit to being in the intelligence services, and knowing that Chetwin was also. It might be a shortcut to gaining confidences. It would save time, take him nearer the truth. Or should he guard the little ammunition he had? Where were Chetwin’s loyalties? He was easy to like, and the ties of the past were strong. But perhaps that was exactly what had cost John Reavley his life.

“He was very worried about the present situation in the Balkans,” Matthew said. “Even though he died the day of the assassination, so he didn’t hear of it.”

“Yes,” Chetwin agreed. “I know he used to have a considerable interest in German affairs and had many German friends. He climbed in the Austrian Tyrol now and then when he was younger. He enjoyed Vienna, its music and its culture, and he read German, of course.”

“He discussed it with you?”

“Oh, yes. We had many friends in common in those days.” There was sadness in his voice and a gentleness that seemed entirely human and vulnerable. But if he was clever, it would do!

“Did he keep up with them, do you know?” Matthew asked. He was going to trail a faint thread of the truth in front of Chetwin, to see if he picked it up, or if he even noticed.

There was nothing guarded in Chetwin’s clever face. “I should imagine so. He was a man who kept his friends.” He gave a little grimace. “Except in my case, of course. But that was because he did not approve of my change in career. He felt it was immoral—deceitful, if you like.”

Matthew drew in his breath. It was like jumping into melted ice. “The intelligence services . . . yes, I know.” He saw Chetwin flinch so minutely it was no more than a shadow. Had he not been looking for it, he might not have recognized it as such. “I think it was because of you that he was so disappointed when I joined them as well,” he went on, and this time there was no mistaking the surprise. “You didn’t know?” he added.

Chetwin breathed out very slowly. “No . . . I didn’t.”

Matthew was in the presence of a master at guile, and he knew it. But he could play the game, too. “Yes. He didn’t approve of it, of course,” he said, smiling ruefully. “But he knew that we have our uses. Sometimes there is no one else to turn to.”

This time Chetwin hesitated.

Matthew smiled.

“Then he’d changed,” Chetwin said slowly. “He used to think there was always a better way. But I suppose you know that, also?”

“Something like that,” Matthew said noncommittally. He struggled for something else to pursue. He could not leave Chetwin, possibly the best source of hidden information about his father, without trying every conceivable avenue. “Actually, I think he had changed,” he said suddenly. “Something he said to me not long ago made me think he had begun to appreciate the value of discreet information.”

Chetwin’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?” He did not conceal the interest in his face.

Matthew hesitated, acutely aware of the potential danger of revealing too much to Chetwin. “Just the value of information,” he said finally, leaning back a little in his chair. “I never heard the rest of it. I thought it might matter. Whom would he have taken it to?”

“Information about what?” Chetwin asked.

Matthew was very careful. “I’m not sure. Possibly the situation in Germany.” That was probably far enough from the troubles in either Ireland or the Balkans to be safe.

Chetwin thought for a moment or two. “Best to go to the man at the top,” he said finally. “If it was important, it would reach Dermot Sandwell eventually.”

“Sandwell!” Matthew was surprised. Dermot Sandwell was a highly respected minister in the Foreign Office—an outstanding linguist, well traveled, a classicist and scholar. “Yes, I suppose it would. That is excellent advice.Thank you.”

Matthew stayed a little longer. Conversation moved from one thing to another: politics, memories, small gossip about Cambridgeshire. Chetwin had a vivid and individual turn of phrase describing people, and a sharp wit. Matthew could see very clearly why his father had liked him.

Half an hour later he rose to go, still uncertain whether his father had confided anything about the document to Chetwin or not, and if he had, whether doing so had been the catalyst for his death.

Matthew drove back to London that evening in heavy, thundery weather, wishing the storm would break and release the gray, choking air into rain to wash it clear.

Thunder rolled menacingly around the western rim of the clouds at about half past six as he was twenty miles south of Cambridge, gliding between deep hedges in full leaf. Then ten minutes later the lightning forked down to the ground and the rain dashed torrentially, bouncing up again from the smooth black road till he felt as if he were drowning under a waterfall. He slowed up, almost blinded by the downpour.

When it was gone, steam rose from the shimmering surface, a silver haze in the sun, and it all smelled like a Turkish bath.

On Monday morning the newspapers told the public that the king had reviewed 260 ships of the Royal Navy at the Spithead base, and that the naval reserves had been called up on orders from the first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and the first sea lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg. There was no word whatever of Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia on the reparations demanded for the death of the archduke.

Calder Shearing sat at his desk staring grimly ahead of him into the distance. Matthew stood, not yet given permission to sit.

“Means nothing,” Shearing said to Matthew darkly. “I’m told there was a secret meeting in Vienna yesterday. I wouldn’t be surprised if they push it to the limit. Austria can’t be seen to back down. If they did, then all their territories would think they could assassinate people. That’s the damn shame of it.” He muttered something else under his breath, and Matthew did not ask him to repeat it. “Sit down!” he said impatiently. “Don’t hover like that as if you were about to go. You aren’t! We’ve all these reports to go through.” He indicated a pile of papers on his desk.

It was a comfortable room, but there were no family photographs, nothing to indicate where he had been born or grown up. Even its functionality was anonymous, clever rather than personal. The Arabic brass dish and bowl were beautiful but of no meaning. Matthew had asked him about them once. Similarly the watercolor paintings of a storm blowing up over the South Downs, and another of dying winter light over the London Docks, the black spars of a clipper sharp and straight against the sky; neither carried any personal significance.

The conversation moved to Ireland and the situation in the Curragh, which was still a cause of anxiety. It was far from resolved.

Shearing swore softly and imaginatively, more to himself than for Matthew’s benefit. “How could we be so bloody stupid as to get ourselves into this mess!” he said, his jaw so tight the muscles stood out in his neck. “The Protestants were never going to let themselves be absorbed by the Catholic south. They were bound to resort to violence, and our men would never have fired on them. Any damn fool knows they’ll not shoot their own—and so you’ve got a mutiny!” His dark face was flushed. “And we can’t let mutiny go unpunished, so we’ve painted ourselves into an impossible corner! How stupid do you have to be not to see that coming? It’s like being caught by surprise when it snows in January!”

“I thought the government was consulting the king,” Matthew replied.

Shearing looked up at him. “Oh, they are! They have! And what happens if the king sides with the Ulster Loyalists? Has anybody thought of that?”

Matthew clenched inside. He had been too consumed with the murder of his father, and the question of the document and what might be in it, to give deeper thought to such an idea. Now he did, and it was appalling. “He can’t! Can he?” he demanded.

The anger in Shearing’s face was so sharp its power filled the room. “Yes, he damned well can!” he spat, glaring at Matthew.

“When will they reach a decision?”

“Today . . . tomorrow! God knows. Then we’ll see what real trouble is.” He saw the question in Matthew’s eyes. “Yes, Reavley,” he said with level, grating calm. “The assassination in Serbia is bad, but believe me, it would be nothing compared with one at home.”

“An assassination!” Matthew exclaimed.

Shearing’s eyebrows rose. “Why not?” he challenged. “What’s the difference? Serbia is a subject part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and some of its citizens think assassination of a royal duke is the way to freedom and independence. Ireland is part of the British Empire. Why shouldn’t some of its subjects assume that the assassination of a king might earn them the freedom they want?”

“Protestant Northern Ireland wants to remain part of the British Empire,” Matthew replied, keeping his voice level with difficulty. “That’s what the term
Loyalist
means! They don’t want to be swallowed up in Roman Catholic Ireland!” But even as he was saying it he knew the words were empty.

“Very rational,” Shearing said sarcastically. “I’m sure if you say that a little louder all the madmen with glory in their brains will put their guns away and go home again.” He pulled a thin sheaf of papers out of the drawer in his desk and held it out. “Go and look at those, see what you make of them.”

Matthew took them from him. “Yes, sir.” He went back to his own office with his fingers numb, his head singing with ideas.

Matthew attempted to work on the papers all day. They were the usual notes on intelligence information intercepted, reports of the movement of men either known or suspected of Irish independence sympathies. He was still looking for any threat to Blunden and his appointment to the War Ministry, with the obvious effect it would have on further military action in Ireland, the need for which seemed almost certain.

If the position went to Wynyard, with his robust opinions and more volatile judgment, it might not only hasten the violence, but make it worse, possibly even spreading it to England itself.

He found it difficult to keep his mind on the subject. It was too nebulous to grasp, the connections too remote. And one name occurred a number of times: Patrick Hannassey. He had been born in Dublin in 1861, the second son of a physician and Irish patriot. His elder brother had gone into law, and died young in a boating disaster off the County Waterford coast. Patrick also had studied law for a while, and he married and had a daughter. Then tragedy had struck again. His wife had been killed in a pointless exchange of violence between Catholic and Protestant, and Patrick, in his grief, had abandoned the slow-moving workings of the law in favor of the swifter struggle of politics, even of civil war.