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
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 come 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
