We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [71]
“Be quiet and listen,” Lizzie said firmly. There was a charge of emotion in her voice so intense, Judith stopped.
“Hodges’s friend was blown to bits beside him,” Lizzie went on. “He was only fourteen; Hodges is just fifteen. He was sort of an older brother to him. It must have been a howitzer.” She gulped and swallowed. “Or something like that. Hodges lost control and ran in blind horror and panic. He went all the way from where they were, very near the front line, back to where Matthew saw Punch Fuller catch up with him. Punch knifed him himself, to make him a genuine injury, and then carried him into the Casualty Clearing Station as if he’d come from the front line.”
Judith nodded. She understood profoundly.
“He’ll stick to that story to save the boy’s life,” Lizzie went on quietly. “If the truth gets out he’ll be shot as a coward. He’s only a child, for heaven’s sake. The other boy was his best friend, and he feels responsible, and guilty as hell for surviving, and now for running, too. He knows Punch saved his life, and he’ll die rather than betray him as well. And he does look on himself as a traitor. He’s terrified and so ashamed he’s not sure if he even wants to survive.”
Judith was numb. “How do you know all this?” she said hoarsely. “If Punch wouldn’t tell you, and Hodges wouldn’t betray him…?”
“Some I guessed,” Lizzie answered with a sigh. Her face was very white. “His wound is superficial. And it’s obviously a bayonet. A German soldier would have stabbed him in the chest or the stomach, not the leg where it really does little harm. It’s not self-inflicted, but it’s not battle-inflicted, either. I worked it out, and then I asked him. I didn’t let him lie, and I think in a way he didn’t want to. His mother’s probably not much older than I am. He shouldn’t even be here!” There was a sudden fury in her voice so violent that her body was trembling. “If you tell that story they’ll court-martial him, then shoot him. And if you don’t, they’ll hang Matthew, I know that!”
Judith drew in her breath and let it out again. “We have to do something. Perhaps Joseph can—”
“They won’t believe him,” Lizzie said reasonably. “He’s Matthew’s brother. They won’t believe you, either. But if I go to Jacobson, he might believe me. I can’t make Punch Fuller say anything, but if Jacobson wants to catch whoever really did it, he’ll let Matthew go. This could prove it wasn’t him.”
Judith nodded. It was a risk, appalling, cruel, inescapable, but to do nothing was worse.
Jacobson agreed. Lizzie’s story corresponded exactly to what Matthew had described, and he understood enough of the terror and the grief to see how it could have happened. Such things must have occurred many times before. He did not explain, he simply let Matthew go. He questioned Eames, Benbow, Cavan, and several others again. What little evidence he had pointed toward Schenckendorff. He had no choice but to arrest the man.
Joseph, Judith, and Matthew sat huddled together in Joseph’s bunker. Outside, the rain fell steadily, dripping down the steps. The star shells were too far away to light the sky, and the flash of muzzles was invisible beyond the slight rise in the land.
“There’s no point in going to London without Schenckendorff,” Judith said quietly.
“There’s no point in going at all until we can tell the prime minister who the Peacemaker is!” Matthew answered bitterly.
“I could tell him,” Judith said.
Joseph stared at her, his face incredulous in the yellow candlelight. “How do you know? And without Schenckendorff, why on earth would anyone believe you?”
“I would go to him with Father’s copy of the treaty, which has the kaiser’s signature on it, and put it in front of him,” she answered. “Then I would tell him that the Englishman who had planned it, with his German cousin, was Dermot Sandwell. Colonel Schenckendorff couldn’t come himself because he died after being injured coming through the lines.”
Matthew’s face went blank with surprise for an instant. Then it changed to anger and disbelief, and the struggle to understand.
“Schenckendorff