No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [76]
Matthew shook his head. It was a place inside him that still hurt too much to explore. He had always believed that one day he would have the chance to show his father the value of what he did. Discreetly, it also saved lives; it saved the peace in which people could go about their ordinary, open business without fear. It was one of those professions that, if practiced with great enough skill, one was unaware of. It was visible only when it failed. But John’s death had made that proof impossible, and it was an unresolved pain he had no way to deal with.
“It was a long time ago,” Corcoran began thoughtfully. “When your father and I were both young. Perhaps it was even something to do with me, I don’t know. It was in our first year at Cambridge—”
“I didn’t know you were the same year!” Matthew interrupted.
“I was a year older than he. I was there on my father’s money, he was on a scholarship. He started in medicine, you know?” Even without Matthew’s amazement, it was obvious in Corcoran’s face that he knew Matthew had not known. “I was reading physics. We used to spend hours talking and dreaming about what we could do after we graduated.”
Matthew tried to visualize the two young men, minds full of the future, of hopes and ambitions. Had John Reavley been happy with what he had achieved? It hurt like a slow, grinding pain in the pit of the stomach to think that perhaps he had not, that he had died a disappointed man.
“Don’t,” Corcoran said gently, his eyes searching Matthew’s face. “He changed his mind because he wanted to go into politics. He thought he could achieve more there, so he read classics instead. That’s where most of our leaders come from, the men who learned the discipline of the mind and the history of thought and civilization in the West.” He let out his breath slowly. “But there were times when he regretted it. He found politics a hard and often graceless master to serve. In the end he preferred the individual to the mass, and he thought it would give you greater happiness, and far more security.”
“But you went on with physics,” Matthew said.
Corcoran gave a downwardly twisted smile, self-mocking but also evasive. “I was ambitious in a different way.”
“Father thought we were underhand, essentially betrayers—that the intelligence services deliberately used people and had no loyalties. He had no patience with deviousness. He couldn’t be bothered to be indirect, to play to people’s vanities or use their weaknesses. I don’t think he understood how to. And he thought that was what we do.”
“Isn’t it?” Corcoran asked with a kind of wry regret.
Matthew sighed and leaned back in his chair again, crossing his legs. “Sometimes. Mostly it’s just collecting as much information as possible and fitting it together so we see a picture. I wish I could have shown him that.”
“Matthew,” Corcoran said earnestly, “if he was coming to you for your professional advice, then whatever he had discovered, he must have believed it was profoundly serious and that only one of the secret services could help.”
“But you have no idea what it was? What did he say to you? Anything? Names, places, dates, who would be affected . . . anything at all?” Matthew pleaded. “I don’t know where to start, and I don’t trust anyone, because he said important people were involved.” Even to Corcoran he held back that his father had spoken of the royal family. Given how large Queen Victoria’s family had been, the net spread very wide indeed.
Corcoran nodded. “Of course,” he agreed. “If he could have trusted the ordinary services, then he would have.”
There was a knock on the door, and Orla Corcoran came in. She was dressed in a bluish green gown of silk charmeuse with Venetian lace draped around her shoulders. In the fashion of the moment, the waist was high and soft, and the full drape came almost to the ankle before sweeping back to be caught up behind, revealing only a few inches of the plainer skirt beneath. It was decorated with two crimson roses, one just under the bosom, the other on the skirt. Her dark hair was curled loosely and had