No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [32]
Sebastian did not reply, and they walked slowly along the grass as the breeze rose a little. All the punts were gone to their moorings, and the spires of stone in the arched top of the Bridge of Sighs were barely darker than the sky beyond.
Matthew returned to London, going first to his flat. It was exactly as he had left it, except that the maid had tidied it, but it felt different. It should have had the comfort of home. It was where he had lived for the last five years, ever since he had left university and begun working for the Intelligence Service. It was full of the books, drawings, and paintings he had collected. His favorite painting, hanging over the fire, was of cows in the corner of the field. For him their gentle rumination, calm eyes, and slow generosity seemed the ultimate sanity in the world. On the mantel was a silver vase his mother had given him one Christmas, and a Turkish dagger with a highly ornamental scabbard.
But the flat was oddly empty. He felt as if he were returning not to the present but to the past. When he had last sat in the worn leather armchair or eaten at this table, his family was whole, and he knew of no vanishing document that was at the heart of conspiracy, violence, and secrets that brought death. The world had not been exactly safe, but whatever dangers there were lay in places far distant, and only the periphery of them touched England, or Matthew himself.
He spent a long evening deep in thought. It was the first time he had been alone more than to sleep since he had walked across the grass at Fenner’s Field to break the news to Joseph. Questions crowded his mind.
John Reavley had called him on Saturday evening, not here at his flat, but at his office in the Intelligence Services. He had been working late, on the Irish problems, as usual. The Liberal government had been trying to pass a Home Rule bill to give Ireland autonomy since the middle of the previous century, and time after time the Protestants of Ulster had blocked it, refusing absolutely to be forcibly separated from Britain and placed in Catholic Ireland. They believed that both their religious freedom and their economic survival depended upon remaining free from such a forced integration, and ultimately subjection.
Government after government had fallen on the issue, and now Arquill’s personal Liberal Party required the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party in order to retain power.
Shearing, Matthew’s superior, shared the view of many others that there was a great deal of political maneuvering in London behind the mutiny of British troops stationed in the Curragh. When the men of Ulster, solidly backed by their women, had threatened armed rebellion against the Home Rule bill, the British troops had refused to take up arms against them. General Gough had resigned, with all his officers, whereupon Sir John French, chief of the General Staff in London, had resigned also, immediately followed by Sir John Seely, secretary for war in the Cabinet.
Little wonder Shearing and his men worked late. The situation threatened to become a crisis as grave as any in the last three hundred years.
Matthew had been in his office when the call came from John Reavley telling him of the document and that he was going to drive to London with it the following day, expecting to arrive between half past one and two o’clock. He would bring Alys with him, ostensibly for an afternoon in the city, but in order to make his trip unremarkable.
How had anyone else known that he even had the document, let alone that he was taking it to Matthew, and the time of his journey? If he came by car, the route was obvious. There was only one main road from St. Giles to London.
Matthew cast his mind back to that evening, the offices almost silent, hardly anyone there, just half a dozen men, perhaps a couple of clerks. He remembered standing at his desk with the telephone in his hand, the disbelief at what his father had said. Matthew had repeated what his father had said, to make certain he had