You are given an English sentence with a blank, and you need to predict the missing word. After completing, the whole sentence should be gramatically correct and non-ambiguous.
Q: peter had asked him of course for matthew cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life and yet here ____ matthew cuthbert at half past three on the afternoon of a busy day placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill
A: 
was