No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [73]
Matthew was lost. “Who is Regina Coopersmith?”
“Sebastian’s fiancée,” Joseph replied.
That explained much, Matthew thought. If Joseph had not known of her, he would feel excluded. How odd that Sebastian should not have told him. Usually when a young man was engaged to marry he told everyone. A young woman invariably did.
“His idea, or his mother’s?” Matthew asked bluntly.
“I don’t know. I’ve talked with her a little. I should think it’s his mother’s. But it’s probably irrelevant to his death.” He changed the subject. “Are you going home?”
“For a day or two,” Matthew replied, feeling a sense of darkness inside him as he recalled the anger he had felt listening to Isenham the previous week. The wound was far from healed. He thought of his father and the interpretation Isenham had had of his actions, and it felt like an abscessed tooth. He could almost ignore it until he accidentally touched it, then it throbbed with all the old pain, exacerbated by a new jolt.
Joseph was waiting for him to go on.
“I went to see Isenham when I was up last weekend,” Matthew said finally. And then he recounted his conversation with the former army man.
Joseph listened thoughtfully.
“I talked to him for quite a long time,” Matthew concluded, “but all he told me that was specific was that Father wanted war.”
“What?” Joseph’s voice was angry and incredulous. “That’s ridiculous! He was the last man on earth to want war. Isenham must have misheard him. Perhaps he said he thought war was inevitable! The question is, was it Ireland or the Balkans?”
“How would Father know anything about either?” Matthew was playing devil’s advocate and hoping Joseph could beat him.
“I don’t know,” Joseph answered. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t. You said he was very specific that he had discovered a document outlining a conspiracy that would be dishonorable and change—”
“I know,” Matthew cut across him. “I didn’t tell Isenham that, but he said Father had been there, and was . . .” He paused.
“What? Losing control of his imagination?” Joseph demanded.
“More or less, yes. He was kinder about it than that, but it comes to the same thing. I know you’re angry, Joe. So was I, and I still am. But what is the truth? No one wants to think someone they love is mistaken, losing their grip. But wanting doesn’t alter reality.”
“Reality is that he and Mother are dead,” Joseph said a little unsteadily. “That their car hit a row of caltrops on the Hauxton Road and crashed, killing them both, and whatever document he had, whatever it said, wasn’t with him. Presumably whoever killed him searched the car and the bodies and found it.”
Matthew was forced to carry on the logic. “Then why did they search the house for it?”
“We only think they did,” Joseph said unhappily, then added, “but if they did, then they must have thought it important enough to take the risk of one of us coming back early and catching them. And don’t tell me it was a petty thief. No valuables were taken, though the silver vase, the snuffboxes, the miniatures were all in plain sight.”
“But it could still have been a small scandal rather than a major act of espionage affecting the world.”
“It was major enough to murder two people in order to hide it,” Joseph said, his jaw tight. “And apart from that, Father didn’t exaggerate.” He made it a simple statement, no additions, no emphasis.
Images raced through Matthew’s mind: his father standing in the garden in old clothes, trousers a trifle baggy, mud-stained at the knees, watching Judith picking blackberries; sitting in his armchair in the winter evening by the fire, a book open on his lap as he read them stories; at the dining room table on a Sunday, leaning a little forward in his chair as he argued reasonably; reciting absurd limericks and smiling, singing the Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs as he drove along the road with the top of the old car down in the wind and the sun.
The pain of loss was sweet for all he had been, and almost too sharp to