Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [111]
It was nearly seven o’clock and already the light was fading when he walked along the platform under the vast ceiling and out into the early evening air. It was warm, a softness to it as if summer were almost here.
He realized how hungry he was and looked for a restaurant to find a decent meal before going to see Matthew Reavley. Matthew was a young man, unmarried. There was no reason why he should be at home early, or for that matter, at all! Still, he must try, even if it took him all night, and he had to go to the SIS offices tomorrow. But tonight would be better for all sorts of reasons. It must be done in absolute privacy, where no one at all could overhear even a word. And Matthew might take considerable convincing that the Peacemaker was indeed who Cullingford now knew him to be.
The other main reason was that he wanted to do it urgently. Every hour the Peacemaker was free to make more plans, betray more people, might mean the deaths of other men, and bring defeat closer.
After dinner he made a single telephone call, and obtained the information he wanted. He hailed a taxi, and gave the driver an address a couple of hundred yards from Matthew’s street. It was almost certainly an unnecessary caution, but he still did not wish Matthew’s address known, even to a cabdriver, who might well remember a passenger in a general’s uniform.
It was nearly ten when they fought their way through the traffic and he finally paid his bill and alighted. The evening was still warm, but it was completely dark now, and the streetlamps lit only pools like a string of gigantic pearls along the footpath.
Around the corner in the side street they were further apart. It was dark between them. He noticed a man standing a few yards beyond the lamp nearest where he judged Matthew’s flat to be. He was on the curb, as if hoping to hail a taxi. He could not be waiting to cross because there was no reason why he should not. The street was silent. He hoped it was not Matthew himself! He was wearing a topcoat and hat, and carrying a stick. It was difficult to tell how tall he was. The shadows elongated him.
He turned just as Cullingford reached him, as if the sound of his footsteps in the quietness had drawn his attention. For a moment the light shone in his face, and he smiled.
“Good evening, Cullingford,” he said softly. “I assume you have come to see Reavley. That’s a pity.”
Cullingford stared into the face of the Peacemaker, twisted with regret but without a shadow of indecision.
He actually saw the lamplight on the blade of the swordstick, then the next moment he felt it in his body, a numbing blow, not sharp at all, just a spreading paralysis as he fell forward into the darkness.
Joseph was sitting in his dugout, writing letters, when Barshey Gee came in without knocking. His face was white and he stared at Joseph without even an attempt at apology.
Joseph dropped his pen and stood up. In two steps across the earth floor he was in front of Barshey. He took him by the shoulders. “What is it?” he asked, his voice gravelly, steeling himself for the news that one of Barshey’s brothers had been killed. It had to be a sniper, at this time in the afternoon. “What is it, Barshey?” he repeated.
Barshey gasped. “Oi just ’eard, Captain. General Cullingford’s been murdered! In London. ’E were home on leave, an’ some thief stuck a knife into ’im in the street. Jesus, Oi hope they hang the bastard!” He struggled for breath, his chest heaving. “What’s ’appenin’ to us, Captain Reavley? How can someone kill a general in the street?” His eyes were wide and strained. “Jeez, you look as bad as Oi feel!”
Joseph found his mouth dry, his heart pounding, not for himself but for Judith. It was like the past back again, death where you had never even imagined it, like your own life were cut off, but you were left conscious with eyes to see it, forced to go on being present and knowing it all. The end of life, but without the mercy of oblivion.
Judith was going to hurt so much! Cullingford was not her