No Graves As Yet

Peacemaker” stood near the mantel shelf in his upstairs sitting room and stared with unconcealed fury at the rigid figure opposite him.

“You searched his office and found nothing!” he said between his gritted teeth.

“Nothing of any interest to us,” the other man replied. He spoke English with complete ease, but without colloquialisms. “They concerned things with which we already know. The document was not there.”

“Well, it wasn’t in the Reavley house,” the Peacemaker said bitterly. “That was searched thoroughly.”

“Was it?” the other asked skeptically. “When?”

“During the funeral,” the Peacemaker replied, a dangerous temper audible in his voice. He did not like being challenged, particularly by someone considerably his junior in rank. It was only his respect for his cousin that made him tolerate this man to the degree he did. He was, after all, his cousin’s ally.

“Well, you have the copy Reavley was carrying,” the man pointed out. “I’ll follow the son. If he knows where it is, I’ll find it.”

The Peacemaker stood elegantly, looking as if he were at ease to anyone who glanced only casually. More careful scrutiny would have revealed tension in his body so great the fabric of his jacket was straining across his shoulders and his knuckles were white.

“There is no time,” he said in a hard, level voice. “Events will not wait. If you can’t see that, you’re a fool! We must use it within the next few days, or it will be too late.”

“One copy—”

“I have to have both! I can hardly offer him one!”

“I’ll get another,” the man offered.

The Peacemaker’s face was white. “You can’t!”

The other man straightened as if to leave immediately. “I’ll go back tonight.”

“It won’t help.” The Peacemaker held up his hand. “The kaiser is in a rage. You’ll get nothing. You might even lose what we have.” It was spoken with the unmistakable tone of a command.

The other man breathed in and out slowly several times, but he did not argue. There was anger in his face, and frustration, but it was not with the man known as the Peacemaker; it was with the circumstances he was forced to accept.

“You dealt with the other matter?” the Peacemaker asked, his voice little more than a whisper. There was pain in his face.

“Yes,” the man replied.

“How did he get hold of it, anyway?” the Peacemaker asked, sharp frown lines between his brows.

“He was the one who wrote it,” the other man answered.

“Wrote?” The demand was peremptory.

“Such things have to be written by hand,” the man explained. “It’s the law.”

“Damn!” the Peacemaker swore, just one word, but it carried a weight of passion, as if it were torn out of him with physical pain. He bent forward a little, his shoulders high, his muscles tight. “It shouldn’t have happened this way! We shouldn’t have let it! Reavley was a good man, the sort we need alive!”

“Can’t be helped,” the other explained with resignation.

“It should have been!” the Peacemaker grated, hard bitterness undisguised. “We’ve got to do better.”

The other man flinched a little. “We’ll try.”

Late on Saturday afternoon Matthew drove from London back to St. Giles. It had been an unpleasant day, not from any cause that he had expected, such as news from Ireland or the Balkans, but from an increasingly immediate domestic problem. A bomb had been found in a church in the heart of Westminster, with the fuse lit. Apparently it had been the work of a group of women who were agitating in increasingly violent ways to be given the right to vote.

Fortunately no one had been hurt, but the possibility of destruction was deeply disturbing. It had meant Matthew had been drawn from his investigation of Blunden and the political weapons that might have been used against him. Instead he had been busy all day with increasing the security in London itself, and had had to ask Shearing for permission to leave, which would not ordinarily have been the case on a weekend.

His sense of exhilaration as he drove out of the heat and enclosure of the city was like an escape from captivity. He felt almost intoxicated as the Sunbeam Talbot accelerated on the open road.

The weather was fine, another golden evening with great puffball clouds piling up in the east, with the sun blazing on them till they drifted like white galleons in the shimmering air, sails full set to the horizon. Beneath them the fields were already ripe with harvest.

The light deepened across the broader skies of the fenland, almost motionless in the amber of sunset.

Matthew drove into St. Giles, along the main street past the shining millpond, and turned along the road to the house. Mrs. Appleton met him at the front door and her face lit with pleasure.

“Oh, Mr. Matthew, it’s good you’re here. An’ you’ll be staying?” She stepped back to allow him in, just as Judith came down the stairs, having heard the crunch of car tires on the gravel.

Judith ran down the last couple of steps, Henry at her heels, his tail aloft. She threw her arms around Matthew, giving him a quick, fierce hug. Then she pulled back and looked at him more carefully.

“Yes, of course I’m staying,” he said to Mrs. Appleton over Judith’s shoulder. “At least until lunchtime tomorrow.”

“Is that all?” Judith demanded. “It’s Saturday evening now! Do they expect you to work all the time?”

He did not bother to argue. It was a discussion they had had before, and they were unlikely to agree. Matthew had a passion for his work that Judith would probably never understand. If there was anything that fired her will and her imagination enough to give all of herself to it, then she had not yet discovered what it was.

Matthew acknowledged the dog, then followed her into the familiar sitting room with its comfortable furniture and slightly worn carpet, colors muted by time. As soon as the door was closed, Judith asked him if he had discovered anything.

“No,” he said patiently, reclining in the big chair that had been his father’s. He was self-conscious about sitting in it. He had always taken it when his father was not there, but now it seemed like a statement of ownership. Yet to have sat somewhere else would have been awkward also, a break with habit that was absurd, another difference from the past that had no purpose.

She watched him, a tiny frown on her face.

“I suppose you are trying?” There was a flash of challenge in her eyes.

“That’s part of why I came up this weekend . . . and to see you, of course. Have you heard from Joseph?”

“A couple of letters. Have you?”

“Not since he went back.” He looked at her, trying to read her feelings from her expression. She sat a little sideways on the couch, with her feet tucked up, the way Alys had criticized and told her was unladylike. Was she as much in control as she looked, with her hair swept back from her calm brow, her smooth cheeks, and her wide, vulnerable mouth?

Or was the emotion bottled up inside her, too raw to touch, but eating away at her will? She was the one of them who was still living here in the house. How often did she come down the stairs and find herself startled that there was no one to greet her except Mrs. Appleton? Did she hear the silence, the missing voices, the footsteps? Did she imagine the familiar touch, the smell of pipe tobacco, the closed study door to indicate that John must not be interrupted? Did she listen for the sound of Alys singing to herself as she arranged flowers and did the dozens of other small things that showed someone in the house loved it?

He could escape. His life was the same as before, except for the occasional telephone call and the visits home. The difference was all inside. It was knowledge he could set aside when he needed to.

It would be like that for Hannah also, and for Joseph. He was worried about them as well, but differently. Hannah had Archie to comfort her and her children to need her and fill her time.

Joseph was different. Since Eleanor’s death something within him had retreated from emotions to hide in reason. Matthew had grown up with Joseph, who was seven years older and always seeming cleverer, wiser, and quicker. He had imagined he would catch up, but now in adulthood he began to think that perhaps Joseph had an intellect of extraordinary power. Understanding for which other people labored came to him with ease. He could climb on wings of thought into regions most people only imagined.