No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [127]
They passed the border and were snared in the warm, sweet perfume. A barn owl swooped low between the trees and disappeared on soundless wings.
“Don’t you want to know what the document was?” she asked.
“Of course I do.” He said it automatically, and only afterward realized that if it was something their father had misjudged, then perhaps he would rather not.
He stopped at the edge of the lawn and she stood beside him, the moonlight on her face. “Then we ought to be able to find out where he got it, surely,” she said. “He can’t have had it very long, or he would have taken it to Matthew sooner.” Her voice was steady now, some inner resolve asserting itself.
“We’ve already tried to find out everywhere he went for several days before that,” he answered. “He saw the bank manager, Robert Isenham, and old Mr. Frawley, who keeps the curiosity shop up on the Cambridge Road.” He looked at her gently. “He and Frawley know each other pretty well. If Father had just discovered anything awful, Frawley would have known there was something wrong.”
“Mother went to see Maude Channery the day Father called Matthew,” she said seriously.
“Who is Maude Channery?” If he knew, he had forgotten.
“One of Mother’s good causes,” she answered, struggling for a moment to keep her voice level. “Father couldn’t bear her, said she was a fearful old fraud, but he drove Mother there anyway.”
“He’d have to, if it was far,” he pointed out. “Unless you did—and Mother would never go to visit anyone important in your Model T! Not if the Lanchester was available.”
“I could have driven her in the Lanchester,” she argued.
“Oh? Since when could you drive that?” he said, surprised. “Or more to the point, since when would Father have let you?”
“Since he couldn’t stand Maude Channery,” she retorted, a tiny flash of humor in her voice, there and then gone again. “But he didn’t. He took Mother. And when they came back he went straight to his study, and Mother and I had supper alone.”
He hesitated. The idea was absurd. “Surely you aren’t suggesting he got a document of international importance from an old woman who was one of Mother’s good causes?”
“I don’t know! Can you think of somewhere better to start? You haven’t got anything, and neither has Matthew.”
“We’ll go and see her tomorrow if you like,” he offered.
She gave him a wry look, and he knew it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him again not to be so condescending, but instead she simply accepted. She said that they would make it a morning call, before he could change his mind—and she would be ready at ten.
Joseph woke up early. It was a warm, blustery day, the wind full of the fine dust of the first crops being gathered. He walked down to the village and collected the Sunday papers from Cully Teversham at the tobacconists, and exchanged the usual pleasantries—a word about the weather, a spot of local gossip—and left to go home again. He passed a few neighbors on the way, and nodded good morning.
He intended not to open the papers until breakfast, but his curiosity overcame him. The news was worse than he had expected. Serbia had rejected Austrian demands, and diplomatic relations had been broken off. It seemed like the prelude to war. Russia had declared that it would act to protect Serbia’s interests. Who would win the Tour de France seemed like an issue from another era already sliding into the past, almost irretrievable even now, and a visit to Maude Channery was the last thing on his mind.
But he had promised Judith, and at least it would make up for some of the time he had been so absorbed with his own emotions that he had forgotten hers.
They set off at ten o’clock, but it took them until after half past to drive as far as Cherry Hinton. After making inquiries at the village shop, they found Fen Cottage on the outskirts, and parked the car just around the corner.
They had knocked twice on the front door before it swung open and they were faced by a short, elderly