At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [16]
Corracher frowned, struggling with his own emotions. “I could understand his wanting to find any way of escaping the charge. He must have been desperate. Anyone would be. But why say it was me? Why not one of his closer friends, somebody more likely?”
“For example?” Matthew pressed. He loathed doing this—it was personal in the most distasteful way—but to evade it now out of squeamishness would make it worse.
Corracher looked embarrassed. “Well there are people with…connections to that sort of thing. I mean…men…” He tailed off miserably, as if the air in the room oppressed him.
Matthew was less delicate. “Who prefer other men rather than women,” he finished for him. “But presumably are discreet about it. Yes, of course there are. You think one of them may have set up the scene, or possibly was himself blackmailed into it?”
“It seems probable,” Corracher conceded.
“Any idea who?”
“No. I…I could give you a list of names of those whose nature I am aware of, but it seems a despicable thing to do.” His face registered his disgust at the manipulation of a shared vulnerability in such a way.
“I’m only interested in finding who set up the Wheatcroft scandal and blamed you,” Matthew said vehemently. “If you are right, then someone is effectively ruining both of you. They are robbing the government of the men most likely to fight for a lasting peace. One that will prevent enemy alliance with future elements in Germany which would allow the same thing to happen again. God knows, we need a just peace, but not a weak one.”
“That is why I came to you, Captain Reavley,” Corracher said, his eyes meeting Matthew’s again. “I don’t believe it is coincidental. Whoever has created the evidence that makes me look guilty has been very clever. There’s no way I can fight against it without betraying other good men and raising doubts about other men’s personal lives.”
Matthew saw it very clearly. It was simple and supremely effective. Like a slip noose, every movement against it pulled it even tighter. “Tell me about Wheatcroft,” he asked. “Exactly what is he accused of doing? Where? Who else was involved, and what part are you supposed to have played? What evidence is there, written or witnessed? Is any of it true, even the bits that merely support or contribute?”
Corracher was deeply unhappy. He began slowly, hesitating as he searched for words, too embarrassed to look up. “Wheatcroft is accused of having solicited a sexual act with a young man in a public lavatory near Hampstead Heath. He lives not far from the heath and was walking his dog, which he does regularly. He had been seen talking to the same young man at least twice within two or three hundred yards of the place a week or two earlier. He says that this man simply asked him directions and he gave them.”
“Both times?” Matthew interrupted.
“Yes. It was quite late, at dusk, and he was apparently lost.”
“What does the young man say?”
Corracher’s face tightened. He looked up quickly, then away again. “That’s the thing. He’s a friend of mine, at least his father is. I’ve known him in a casual way most of his life. He’s a bit wild. He’s run up a degree of debt that he can’t pay, and it would be difficult for his father to come up with that much.”
“I take it he says Wheatcroft approached him?” Matthew concluded.
“Yes.”
“And it couldn’t be true?”
“He says I told him to say it!” Corracher’s face was scarlet now, but the anger in him was painfully real.
“Give me times, dates, and names,” Matthew said gently.
“There’s more.” Corracher’s voice was husky. “Wheatcroft says I asked him for money to keep it quiet, and he paid me a hundred pounds, but when I came back for more he told me to go to hell. And that was when I told Davy Pollock—the young man in question—to report it to the police. There is a hundred pounds in my bank that I can’t account for. Wheatcroft said he put it there the day after I demanded it, and he has the paying-in receipt.”