We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [72]
“Lloyd George won’t know that.” Judith was practical.
“It can’t be Sandwell,” Matthew said at last, his voice rough. “We ruled him out. And Lloyd George certainly wouldn’t believe you. I understand your frustration, Judith, but you can’t fling accusations around like that.”
“It’s not an accusation!” she said vehemently. “Schenckendorff told me it was Sandwell. When we ruled him out, we were wrong. He fooled us.”
“You asked Schenckendorff, and he told you?” Joseph’s voice rose sharply in amazement.
“It wasn’t exactly as bare as that,” she explained. “I told him Matthew had been arrested for the murder. I think he felt guilty because Matthew wouldn’t even have been here if he hadn’t come to meet Schenckendorff, at his request.”
“For God’s sake, Judith!” Matthew’s fists were clenched, his back rigid. “The man was prepared to tyrannize half of Europe! He’s not going to feel guilty that I’ve been wrongly accused of a crime because I came over to get him back to London.”
“Guilt is about shabbiness of behavior, hypocrisy, not the enormity of the sin,” she answered him. “Isn’t it, Joseph?”
Joseph put his hand up in dismissal. “I’ve no idea, and it doesn’t matter. We don’t know whether Schenckendorff is telling the truth or not. For that matter, we don’t even know for certain if he is who he says he is. It’s not beyond the Peacemaker’s ability to get him a false identity. Not that much identity is needed by prisoners coming through the lines.”
Judith frowned. “Do you think, this close to the armistice, that he really has time to bother with us, even to get revenge?”
“Maybe it isn’t so much trouble.” Matthew looked at her, his face pinched with a fear he was struggling to hide. “Just a single act by one German who may be desperate and have little to lose. It was our father who ruined the Peacemaker’s plans in the beginning. He won’t have forgotten that, and I don’t think he’s a man to forgive. If you’re losing, revenge may be the only sweet taste left.”
Joseph gazed steadily at the broken duckboards on the floor, and the single piece of old matting over them. “Or perhaps Schenckendorff is completely genuine, and his realization of what the Peacemaker has become, the slow corrosion that power has worked on the morality he started with, perhaps when they were younger, and knew each other well—”
“That wouldn’t account for his killing poor Sarah,” Matthew interrupted. “If he did that, he deserves to hang for it.” His voice was rough with emotion.
Judith knew it was for his own treatment of Sarah also, for the whole, helpless destructive path of violence and blindness that had ended alone in the dark beside the amputated limbs and human refuse of a battlefield hospital. It was no one’s fault, and everyone’s. The world had changed, and much of the brutality of that had altered forever the role of women, not only for themselves but in others’ eyes as well. Nothing was safe and reliable anymore. Nothing could be trusted to be as it was before.
“What I was going to say is that he may be exactly what he says he is,” Joseph explained. “But it won’t have happened suddenly. The Peacemaker could have sensed his change of heart awhile ago, and struck first.”
Matthew stared at him. “You mean instead of just having Schenckendorff shot, he set up this elaborate plan and had him blamed for Sarah’s murder?” His face tightened. “Then there’s someone else here who’s the Peacemaker’s man! He did it, and is making it look like Schenckendorff. God Almighty! What a revenge. A German officer and aristocrat, to be hanged for murder, when really he came through the lines at hideous cost to himself to commit the final act of honor to his principles rather than his leader.” He pushed his hand through his hair. He sighed and caught in his breath. “That’s our Peacemaker! What are we going to do?”
Joseph looked from Matthew to Judith, and back again. “What we set out to do: to find out for certain, beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise,