No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [53]
“It’s not they who would do it,” Matthew said quietly.
“Who, then?” She frowned. “I thought it was just a few lunatic young men. Is that not true?”
“It seems as if it was,” he agreed. “War is just the last in a chain of events that could happen . . . but almost certainly someone will step in with enough sense to stop it. The bankers, if no one else. War would be far too expensive!”
She looked at him very levelly, her gray-blue eyes unflinching. “So why did you mention it?”
He forced himself to smile. “I wish I hadn’t. I just wanted you to know I’m not making excuses. I don’t know where to begin. I thought I’d go over and see Robert Isenham tomorrow. I expect he’ll be at church—I’ll see him afterward.”
“Sunday lunch?” she said with surprise. “He won’t thank you a lot for that! What do you want to ask him?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Nothing so blunt as that. You wouldn’t make a detective, would you!”
Her face tightened a little. “What do you think he knows?”
Matthew became serious again. “Maybe nothing, but if Father confided anything at all, it would probably be to Isenham. He might even have mentioned where he was going or whom he was expecting to see. I don’t know where to start, other than going through everyone he knew.”
“That could take forever.” She sat quite still, her face shadowed in thought. “What do you think it could be, Matthew? I mean . . . what would Father have known about? People who plot great conspiracies don’t leave documents lying around for anyone to find by chance.”
A chill touched him. For an instant he was not quite sure what it was, but the unpleasantness was certain. Then he saw it in her eyes, a fear she could not put words to.
“I know he didn’t find it by accident,” he answered her. “Unless it belonged to someone he knew very well . . .”
“Like Robert Isenham.” She finished the thought for him. “Be careful!” Now the fear was quite open.
“I will,” he promised. “There’s nothing suspicious in my going to see him. I would do it anyway, sooner or later. He was one of Father’s closest friends, geographically if nothing else. I know they disagreed about many things, but they liked each other underneath it.”
“You can like people and still betray them,” she said, “if it was for a cause you believed in passionately enough. You have to betray other people rather than betray yourself—if that’s what it comes to.” Then, seeing the surprise in his face, she added, “You told me that.”
“I did? I don’t remember.”
“Yes, you do. It was last Christmas. I didn’t agree with you. We had quite a row. You told me I was naive, and idealists put causes before anything else. You told me I was being a woman, thinking of everything personally rather than in larger terms.”
“So you don’t agree with me, but you’ll quote my own words back at me in an argument?”
She bit her lip. “Actually, I do agree with you. I just wasn’t going to say so then. You’re cocky enough.”
“I’ll be careful.” He relaxed into a smile and leaned forward to touch her for a moment, and her hand closed tightly around his.
The morning was overcast and heavy with the clinging heat of a storm about to break. Matthew went to church, largely because he wanted to catch up with Isenham as if by chance.
The vicar caught sight of him in the congregation just before he began his sermon. Kerr was not a natural speaker, and the presence of overwhelming emotion in a member of his audience, especially one for whom he felt a responsibility, broke his concentration. He was embarrassed, only too obviously remembering the last time he had seen Matthew, which had been at his parents’ funeral. He had been unequal to the task then, and he knew he still was.
Sitting in the fifth row back, Matthew could almost feel the sweat break out on Kerr’s body at the thought of facing him after the service and scrambling for something appropriate to say. He smiled to himself and stared back expectantly. The only alternative was to leave, and that would be even worse.
Kerr struggled to the end. The last hymn