by Anne Perry
“I was the last one out of the house this morning,” Matthew replied, keeping his voice very low so that it would not carry to anyone in the dining room. “After Mrs. Appleton, and she didn’t come back—she was at the funeral all the time.”
“Of course she was!”
“Someone’s been in here,” Matthew answered quietly, but with no hesitation or lift of question in his voice. “I know exactly where I left everything. It’s the papers. They’re all on the square, and I left some of them poking out a fraction, to mark my place.”
“Horatio?” Joseph said, thinking of the cat.
“Door was closed,” Matthew answered.
“Mrs. Appleton must have . . . ,” Joseph began, then, seeing the gravity in Matthew’s eyes, he stopped. “What are you saying?”
“Someone was in here while we were all at the funeral,” Matthew replied. “No one would have noticed Henry barking, and he was shut in the garden room. I can’t see anything gone . . . and don’t tell me it was a sneak thief. I locked up myself, and I didn’t miss the back door. And a thief wouldn’t go through Father’s papers; he’d take the silver and the ornaments that are easy to move. The silver-rimmed crystal bud vase is still on the mantelpiece, and the snuffboxes are on the table, not to mention the Bonnington, which is quite small enough to be carried.”
Joseph’s mind raced, wild ideas falling over each other, but before he could put words to any of them, Hannah came out of the dining room. She looked from one to the other of them. “What’s wrong?” she said quickly.
“Matthew’s mislaid something, that’s all,” Joseph replied. “I’ll see if I can help him find it. I’ll be in in a moment.”
“Does it matter now?” There was an edge to her voice, close to breaking. “For heaven’s sake, come and speak to people! They’re expecting you! You can’t leave me there alone! It’s horrible!”
“I’d be happier to look first,” Matthew answered her before Joseph found the words. His face was miserable and stubborn. “Have you been upstairs since you came home?”
She was incredulous, her eyes wide. “No, of course I haven’t! We have half the village in the house as our guests, or haven’t you noticed?”
Matthew glanced at Joseph, then back at Hannah. “It matters,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’ll be down in a minute. Joe?”
Matthew took a deep breath and walked to the foot of the stairs.
Joseph followed after him, leaving Hannah standing in the hall, fuming. When he reached the landing, Matthew was in the doorway to their parents’ bedroom, staring around as if to memorize every article there, every line and shadow, the bright bars of light through the window across the floorboards and the carpet. It was so achingly familiar, exactly as it had been as long as he could remember: the dark oak tallboy with his father’s brushes and the leather box Alys had given him for cuff links and collar studs; her dressing table, with the oval mirror on a stand that needed a little piece of paper wedged to keep it at the right angle; the cut-glass trays and bowls for hairpins, powder, combs; the wardrobe with the round hatbox on top.
He had stood here to tell his mother that he was going to leave medicine because he could not bear the helplessness he felt in the face of pain he could do nothing to ease. Joseph knew how disappointed his father would be. John had wanted it so fiercely. He had never explained why. He would say very little, but he would not understand, and his silence would hurt more than any accusation or demand for explanations.
And Joseph had come here later to tell Alys that he was going to marry Eleanor. That had been a winter day, rain spattering the window. She had been putting up her hair after changing for dinner. She had always had beautiful hair.
He forced his mind to the present.
“Is there anything gone?” he said aloud.
“I don’t think so.” Matthew did not move to go in yet. “But there might be, because it’s different somehow.”
“Are you certain?” It was a stupid question, because he knew Matthew was not certain. He simply wanted to deny the reality settling more and more firmly in his mind with each second. “I don’t see anything,” he added.
“Wait a minute.” Matthew put up his hand as if to stop Joseph from passing him, although Joseph had not moved. “There is something . . . I just can’t put my finger on it. It’s . . . tidy. It doesn’t look as if someone just left it.”
“Mrs. Appleton?” Joseph queried.
“No. She won’t come in here yet. It still feels like an intrusion, as if she were doing it behind Mother’s back.”
“Judith? Or Hannah?”
“No.” He sounded quite certain. “Hannah might look, but she wouldn’t touch anything, not yet. And Judith won’t come in here at all. At least . . . I’ll ask, but I don’t think so.” He drew in a deep breath. “It’s the pillows. That’s not how Mother had them, and no one here would rearrange them that way.”
“Isn’t that how most people have them?” Joseph looked over at the big bed with its handmade coverlet and the matching pillow shams just touching. It all looked completely ordinary, like anyone’s room. Then a tiny memory prickled as he deliberately brought back the image of telling his mother that Eleanor was expecting their first child. She had been so happy. He pictured her face, and the bed behind her, with the pillows at an angle, one overlapping the other. It looked comfortable, casual, not formal like this.
“Someone has been in here,” he agreed, his heart beating so hard he felt out of breath. “They must have searched the house while we were all at the funeral.” His pulse was knocking in his ears. “For the document—just as we did?”
“Yes,” Matthew replied. “Which means it’s real. Father was right—he really did have something.” His voice was bright and hard, shaking a little, as if he were expecting to be contradicted. “And they didn’t get it from him.”
Joseph swallowed, aware of all the multitude of meaning that lay beyond that statement. “They still didn’t, because it wasn’t here. We searched everywhere. So where is it?”
“I don’t know!” Matthew looked oddly blank. Now his mind was racing past his words. “I don’t know what he did with it, but they don’t have it, or they wouldn’t be still searching.”
“Who are they?” Joseph demanded.
Matthew looked back at him, puzzled, still charged with emotion. “I have no idea. I’ve told you everything he said to me.”
The sound of voices drifted up the stairs. Somewhere toward the kitchen a door closed with a bang. He and Matthew should be down with the guests as well. It was unfair to leave Judith and Hannah to do all the receiving, the thanking, the accepting of condolences. He half turned.
“Joe!”
He looked back. Matthew was staring at him, his eyes dark and fixed, his face gaunt in spite of the high cheekbones so like his own.
“It isn’t only what happened to it and what it’s about,” he said quietly, as if he was concerned someone in the hall below could overhear them. “It’s whom it implicates. Where did Father get it? Obviously whoever they are, they know he had it, or they wouldn’t have been here searching.” He let the words hang between them, his white-knuckled hand on the door frame.
The thought came to Joseph only slowly. It was too vast and too ugly to recognize at once. Then when he knew it, it could not be denied. His mouth was dry. “Was it an accident?”
Matthew did not move; he scarcely seemed to be breathing.
“I don’t know. If the document was all he said it was, and whoever he took it from knew he was coming to me with it, then probably not.”
There was a footstep at the bottom of the stairs.
Joseph swiveled around. Hannah was standing with her hand on the newel, her face white, struggling to keep her composure. “What’s the matter?” she said abruptly. “People are beginning to ask where you are! You’ve got to talk to them, you can’t just run away. We all feel like—”
“We’re not,” Joseph cut across her, beginning to com
e down the stairs. There was no point in frightening her with the truth, certainly not now. “Matthew lost something, but he’s remembered where he put it.”
“You must speak to people,” she said as he reached her. “They’ll expect us all to. You don’t live here anymore, but they were Mother’s neighbors, and they loved her.”
He slipped his arm lightly around her shoulder. “Yes, of course they did. I know that.”
She smiled, but there was still anger and frustration in her face, and too much pain to be held within. Today she had stepped into her mother’s shoes, and she hated everything that it meant.
Joseph did not see Matthew alone again until just before dinner. Joseph took Henry into the garden, in the waning light, watching it fade and deepen to gold on the tops of the trees. He stared upward at the massed starlings that swirled like dry leaves, high and wide across the luminous sky, so many dark flecks, storm-tossed on an unseen wind.
He did not hear Matthew come silently over the grass behind him, and was startled when the dog turned, tail wagging.
“I’m going to take Hannah to the station tomorrow morning,” Matthew said. “She’ll catch the ten-fifteen. That’ll get her to Portsmouth comfortably before teatime. There’s a good connection.”
“I suppose I should get back to Cambridge,” Joseph responded. “There’s nothing else to do here. Pettigrew will call us if he needs anything. Judith’s going to stay on in the house. I expect she told you. Anyway, Mrs. Appleton’s got to have someone to look after.” He said the last part wryly. He was concerned for Judith, as John and Alys had been. She showed no inclination to settle to anything, and seemed to be largely wasting her time. Now that her parents were no longer here, circumstances would force her to address her own future, but it was too early now to say so to her.
“How long can she run the house on the finances there are before the will is probated?” Matthew asked, pushing his hands into his pockets and following Joseph’s gaze across the fields to the copse outlined against the sky.
They were both avoiding saying what they really thought. How would she deal with the hurt? Whom would she rebel against now that Alys was not here? Who would see that she did not let her wild side run out of control until she hurt herself irretrievably? How well did they know each other, to begin the love, the patience, the guiding that suddenly was their responsibility?
It was too soon, all much too soon. None of them was ready for it yet.
“From what Pettigrew said, about a year,” Joseph replied. “More, if necessary. But she needs to do something other than spend time with her friends and drive around the countryside in that car of hers. I don’t know if Father had any idea where she goes, or how fast!”
“Of course he knew!” Matthew retorted. “Actually, he was rather proud of her skill . . . and the fact that she is a better mechanic than Albert. I’ll wager she’ll use some of her inheritance to buy a new car,” he added with a shrug. “Faster and smarter than the Model T. Just as long as she doesn’t go for a racer!”
Joseph held out his hand. “What will you bet on it?”
“Nothing I can’t afford to lose!” Matthew responded drily. “I don’t suppose we can stop her?”
“How?” Joseph asked. “She’s twenty-three. She’ll do what she wants.”
“She always did what she wanted,” Matthew retorted. “Just as long as she understands the realities! The financial ones, I mean.” It was not what he meant, and both of them knew it. It was about far more than money. She needed purpose, something to manage grief.
Joseph raised his eyebrows. “Is that a backward way of saying it is my responsibility to tell her that?” Of course it was his. He was the eldest, the one to take their father’s place, quite apart from the fact that he lived in Cambridge, only three or four miles away, and Matthew was in London. He resented it because he was unprepared. There was a well of anger inside him he dared not even touch, a hurt that frightened him.
Matthew was grinning at him. “That’s right!” he agreed. Then his smile faded and the darkness in him came through. “But there’s something we have to do before you go. We should have done it before.”
Joseph knew what he was going to say the instant before he did.
“The accident.” Matthew used the word loosely. Half of his face was like bronze in the dying light, the other too shadowed to see. “I don’t know if we can tell anything now, but we need to try. There’s been no rain since it happened. Actually, it’s the best summer I can remember.”
“Me too.” Joseph looked away. “Wimbledon finals were today. No interruptions for weather. Norman Brookes and Anthony Wilding.” He could think of nothing that mattered less, but it was easy to say, a skittering away from pain.
“Shearing telephoned me,” Matthew answered. “He said Brookes won, and Dorothea Chambers won the women’s.”
“Thought she would. Who’s Shearing?” He was trying to place a family friend, someone calling with apologies for not being here. He ran his hand gently over the dog’s head.
“Calder Shearing,” Matthew replied. “My boss at Intelligence. Just condolences, and of course he needs to know when I’ll be back.”
Joseph looked at him again. “And when will you?”
Matthew’s eyes were steady. “Tomorrow, after we’ve been to the Hauxton Road. We can’t stay here indefinitely. We all have to go on, and the longer we leave it, the harder it will be.”
The thought of such violence being deliberate was horrible. He could not bear to imagine someone planning and carrying out the murder of his parents. Yet the alternative was that John Reavley’s sharp and logical mind had slipped out of his control and sent him running from a threat that was not real, dreaming up horrors. That was worse. Joseph refused to believe it.
“And if it wasn’t an accident?” Why was it so difficult to say that?
Matthew stared at the last light as the sun kindled fire in the clouds on the horizon, vermilion and amber, tree shadows elongated across the fields. The smell of the twilight wind was heavy with hay, dry earth, and the sweetness of mown grass. It was almost harvest time. There were a handful of scarlet poppies like a graze of blood through the darkening gold. The hawthorn petals were all blown from the hedgerows, and in a few months there would be berries.
“I don’t know,” Matthew answered. “That’s the thing! There’s nobody to take it to, because we have no idea whom to trust. Father didn’t trust the police with this, or he wouldn’t have been bringing it to London. But I still have to look at it. Don’t you?”
Joseph thought for a moment. “Yes,” he admitted. “Yes. I have to know.”
The following afternoon, July 3, Matthew and Joseph stopped by the police station at Great Shelford again and asked if they could be shown on the map exactly where the accident had occurred. Reluctantly the sergeant told them.
“You don’t want to go looking at that,” he said sadly. “Course you want to understand, but there ain’t nothing to see. Weren’t no one else there, no brangle, no buck-fisted young feller drunk too much an’ going faster than he ought. Let it go, sir, that’s moi advoice.”
“Thank you,” Matthew replied with a forced smile. “Just like to see it. There, you said?” He put his finger on the map.
“That’s right, sir. Going south.”
“Had accidents there before?”
“Not as Oi know of, sir.” The sergeant frowned. “Can’t say what happened. But then sometimes that’s just how it is. Them Lanchesters is good cars. Get up quite a bit of speed with them. Fifty miles an hour, Oi shouldn’t wonder. A sudden puncture could send you off the road. Would do anyone.”
“Thank you,” Joseph said briskly. He wanted to end this and face looking at the scene. Get it over with. He dreaded it. Whatever they found, his mind would create a picture of what had happened there. The reality of it was the same, regardless of the cause. He turned away and walked out of the police station into the humid air. Clouds were massing in the west, and th
ere were tiny flies settling on his skin, black pinpricks—thunder flies.
He walked to the car and climbed in, waiting for Matthew to follow.
They drove west through Little Shelford and Hauxton and on toward the London road, then turned north to the mill bridge. It was only a matter of three or four miles altogether. Matthew held his foot on the accelerator, trying to race the storm. He did not bother to explain; Joseph understood.
It was only a matter of minutes before they were over the bridge. Matthew was obliged to brake with more force than he had intended in order not to overshoot the place on the map. He pulled in to the side of the road, sending a spray of gravel up from the tires.
“Sorry,” he said absently. “We’d better hurry. It’s going to rain any minute.” He swung out and left Joseph to go after him.
It was only twenty yards, and he could see already the long gouge out of the grass where the car had plowed off the paved road, over the verge and the wide margin, crushing the wild foxgloves and the broom plants. It had torn up a sapling as well and scattered a few stones before crashing into a clump of birch trees, scarring the trunks and tearing off a hanging branch, which lay a few yards further on, its leaves beginning to wither.
Matthew stood beside the broom bushes, staring.
Joseph caught up with him and stopped. Suddenly he felt foolish and more vulnerable with every moment. The police sergeant was right. They should not have come here. It would have been far better to leave it in the imagination. Now he could never forget it.
There was a low rumble of thunder around the western horizon, like the warning growl of some great beast beyond the trees and the breathless fields.
“We can’t learn anything from it,” Joseph said aloud. “The car came off the road. We won’t ever know why.”
Matthew ignored him, still staring at the broken wake of the crash.
Joseph followed his gaze. At least death must have been quick, almost instantaneous, a moment of terror as they realized they were out of control, a sense of insane, destructive speed, and then perhaps the sound of tearing metal and pain—then nothing. All gone in seconds, less time than it took to imagine it.
