No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [5]
The sergeant was waiting. He too did not want to inflict that distress.
Matthew blinked several times. “May we have the others, please?” he requested.
The clothes were inspected, as both brothers tried to distance their minds from what their hands were doing. There were no papers except for one small receipt in their father’s trouser pocket, soaked with blood and illegible, but there was no way in which it could be called a document. It was barely two or three inches square.
They folded the clothes again and set them in a pile on top of the oilskin. It was an awkward moment. Joseph did not know what to do with them. The sight and touch of the garments knotted up his stomach with grief. He wished he had never had to see them at all. He certainly did not want to keep these clothes. Neither did he want to pass them over to strangers as if they did not matter.
“May we take them?” he asked haltingly.
Matthew jerked his hand up. Then the surprise died out of his face as if he understood.
“Yes, sir, o’ course,” the sergeant replied. “I’ll just wrap ’em up for you.”
“If we could see the car, please?” Matthew asked.
But it was still on the way back from Hauxton, and they had to wait another half hour. Two more cups of tea later they were taken to the garage where the familiar yellow Lanchester sat gashed and crumpled. The whole of the engine was twisted sideways and half jammed into the front of the passenger area. All four tires were ripped. No human being could have remained alive inside it.
Matthew stood still, struggling to keep his balance.
Joseph reached out to him, glad to break the physical aloneness.
Matthew righted himself and walked over toward the far side of the car, where the driver’s door was hanging open. He took his jacket off and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
Joseph went to the windowless frame of the passenger door, keeping his eyes averted from the blood on the seat, and banged the glove compartment to make it open.
There was nothing inside except a small tin of barley sugar and an extra pair of driving gloves. He looked across and saw Matthew’s face, wide-eyed and confused. There was no document in the side pocket. Joseph held the road atlas and riffled the pages, but nothing fell out.
They searched the rest of the car as well as they could, forcing themselves to ignore the blood, the torn leather, the twisted metal, and the shards of glass, but there was no document of any sort. Joseph stepped back at last, elbows and shoulders bruised where he had caught himself on the jutting pieces of what had been seats and the misshapen frames of the doors. He had skinned his knuckles and broken a fingernail trying to pry up a piece of metal.
He looked across at Matthew. “There’s nothing here,” he said.
“No . . .” Matthew frowned. His right sleeve was torn and his face dirty and smeared with blood.
A few years earlier Joseph might have asked his sibling if he was certain of his facts, but Matthew was beyond such brotherly condescension now. The seven years between them were closing fast.
“Where else could it be?” he said instead.
Matthew hesitated, breathing in and out slowly. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He looked beaten, his eyes hollow and his face shadowed with fatigue from battling the inner shock and grief, trying to keep it from overwhelming him. Perhaps this document was something to cling to, something over which he could have some control.
Joseph understood how it mattered to him. John Reavley had wanted one of his sons to enter the medical profession. He had believed passionately that it was the noblest of callings. Joseph had started medical studies to please his father, and then found himself drowned by his inability to affect all but the smallest part of the suffering he witnessed. He knew his limitations, and he saw what he thought was his strength and his true vocation. He answered the call of the Church, using his gift for languages to study the original Greek and Hebrew of the scriptures. Souls