Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [20]
“I don’t know,” Thyer said, frowning. “The question is completely hypothetical. I know nothing about your family that could explain Sebastian’s act, and I admit I have given it some thought myself and come to no conclusion at all. The little we know makes no sense.”
“It wasn’t personal and it could not have been financial,” Matthew went on. He had weighed what to say on the drive from London. If he said too much he would betray to Thyer that he suspected him, yet if Thyer were the Peacemaker he would know exactly why Matthew was here and everything else that he knew about the document, and the murder of Reisenburg as well. The risk of learning nothing was too great to afford such caution.
“What are you suggesting?” Thyer prompted. His voice was level, his diction perfect. He had sat here, questioned by some of the most brilliant minds of more than a generation, men who would go on to hold many of the highest positions in the land, in industry, science, finance, and government. He molded them, not they him.
“Perhaps political?” Matthew suggested carefully.
Thyer considered for a moment. “I know Sebastian had some very strong beliefs, but so do most young men. Heaven preserve us from those who have none.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I forgot for a moment what he did. I apologize. But knowing your family I find it extremely difficult to believe that your father held any conviction at all that would enrage anyone or make them feel threatened to the point of murder.”
Was that a bait to provoke Matthew into proving himself correct? It was like a complicated game of chess, move and countermove, think three places ahead. He had already considered that. “I wondered if it had anything to do with my father’s German friends.” He watched Thyer’s face. His expression barely changed, only a flicker of the eyes.
“You mean some German connection with the war?” Thyer asked a trifle skeptically. “I can’t imagine what, unless it was built on a misconception. Your father was not for war, was he? I know Sebastian hated the thought. But then so did many young men. Since they are the ones who have always had to fight our wars, and give their lives and their friends to the slaughter, they can barely be blamed for that.”
Matthew felt a faint prickling on his skin in the quiet room, so essentially English with its mahogany Pembroke table at the far side, its prints on the wall. He recognized one of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, ruins towering up like an unfinished sketch, more dream than stone. There were daffodils in the china vase, Connie Thyer’s embroidery in a basket, the April sunlight on the flower garden beyond the French doors, centuries-old walls.
Beyond the quad in the other direction there would be students in cap and gown, exactly as they had been for hundreds of years, carrying piles of books, hurrying to class. Others would be crossing the Bridge of Sighs over the river, perhaps glancing through the stone fretwork at the punts drifting by, or the smooth, shaved green of the grass under the giant trees.
“Father was not for war,” Matthew replied. “But he was not for surrender either. He would choose to fight, if pushed far enough.” He kept his voice light, as if the words were quite casual.
“So would we all,” Thyer said with a tight smile. “I really can’t help you, Matthew. I wish I could. It makes no sense to me. Sebastian went to Germany that summer, I believe. Perhaps he became infected with strange ideas there. International socialism has become a religion for some, and can carry all the irrationality and crusading zeal of a religion, even the martyr’s crown for those in need of a cause to follow.”
“You speak as if you have experience of it?” Matthew observed. It seemed a world away from Cambridge, but ideas traveled as far as words could be carried.
Thyer smiled. “I’m master of St. John’s; it is my job to know what young men