No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [12]
Joseph took her by the elbow and helped her into the backseat, straightening the slender black skirt around her ankles before closing the door and going around to the other side to get in next to her.
Albert got back in and started the engine.
Hannah said nothing. It was up to Joseph to speak before the silence became too difficult. He had already decided not to mention the document. It was an unneeded concern for her.
“Judith will be glad to see you,” he started.
She looked at him with slight surprise, and he knew immediately that her thoughts had been inward, absorbed in her own loss. As if she read his perception, she smiled slightly, an admission of guilt.
He put out his hand, palm upward, and she slid hers across and gripped his fingers. For several minutes she was silent, blinking back the tears.
“If you can see sense in it,” she said at last, “please don’t tell me now. I don’t think I could bear it. I don’t want to know a God who could do this. Above all I don’t want to be told I should love Him. I don’t!”
Several answers rose to his lips, all of them rational and scriptural, and none of them answering her need.
“It’s all right to hurt,” he said instead. “I don’t think God expects any of us to take it calmly.”
“Yes, He does!” She choked on the words. “ ‘Thy will be done’!” She shook her head fiercely. “Well, I can’t say that. It’s stupid and senseless and horrible. There’s nothing good in it.” She was fighting to make anger conquer the fearful, consuming grief. “Was anyone else killed?” she demanded. “The other car? There must have been another car. Father wouldn’t simply have driven off the road, whatever anyone says.”
“Nobody else was hurt, and there’s no evidence of another car.”
“What do you mean, evidence?” she said furiously, the color flooding her face. “Don’t be so pedantic! So obscenely reasonable! If nobody saw it, there wouldn’t be!”
He did not argue. She needed to rage at someone, and he let her go on until they were through the gates and had drawn up at the front door. She took several long, shuddering breaths, then blew her nose and said she was ready to go inside. She seemed on the edge of saying something more, something gentler, looking steadily at him through brimming eyes. Then she changed her mind and stepped out of the door as Albert held it for her and gave her his hand to steady her.
They ate supper quietly together. Now and again one of them spoke of small, practical things that had to be done, but nobody cared about them. Grief was like a fifth entity in the room, dominating the rest.
Afterward Joseph went to his father’s study again and made certain that all the letters had been written to friends to inform them of John and Alys’s death and tell them the time of the funeral. He noticed that Matthew had written the one letter he had considered most important, to Shanley Corcoran, his father’s closest friend. They had been at university together—Gonville and Caius. Corcoran would be one of the hardest to greet at the church because his pain would be so deep and the memories were so long, woven into so many of the best days right from the beginning.
And yet there were ways in which the sharing would also help. Perhaps afterward they would be able to talk about John in particular. It would keep some part of him alive. Corcoran would never become bored with it or let the memory sink into some pleasant region of the past where the sharpness did not matter anymore.
About half past nine the village constable came by. He was a young man of about Matthew’s age, but he looked tired and harassed.
“Oi’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head and pursing his lips. “We’ll all miss ’em terrible. I never knew better people.”
“Thank you,” Joseph said sincerely. It was good to hear, even though it twisted the pain. To have said nothing would be like denying they mattered.
“Sunday was a bad day all round,” the constable went on, standing uncomfortably in the hall. “Did you hear what happened in Sarajevo?”
“No, what?” Joseph did not care in the slightest, but he did not wish to be rude.
“Some