No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [8]
“And bills,” he added. “I’ll see the bank, and the solicitor.”
She stood stiffly in the middle of the floor, her shoulders rigid. She was wearing a pale blouse and a soft green narrow skirt. She had not yet thought to put on black. “I suppose somebody’ll have to sort . . . clothes and things. I—” She gulped. “I haven’t been into the bedroom yet. I can’t!”
He shook his head. “Too soon. It doesn’t matter, for ages.”
She relaxed a fraction, as if she had been afraid he was going to force her. “Tea?”
“Yes, please.” He was surprised how thirsty he was. His mouth was dry.
Matthew was in the kitchen with Mrs. Appleton, a square, mild-faced woman with a stubborn jaw. Now she was standing at the table with her back to the stove on which a kettle was beginning to whistle. She wore her usual plain blue dress, and her cotton apron was screwed up at the right-hand corner as if she had unthinkingly used it to wipe the tears from her eyes. She sniffed fiercely as she looked first at Judith and then at Joseph, for once not bothering to tell the dog not to come in. She drew in her breath to say something, then decided she could not trust herself to keep her composure. Clearing her throat loudly, she turned to Matthew.
“Oi’ll do that, Mr. Matthew. You’ll only scald yourself. You weren’t never use to man nor beast in the kitchen. Do nothing but take my jam tarts, as if there was no one else in the house to eat ’em. Here!” She snatched the kettle from him and with considerable clattering and banging made the tea.
Lettie, the general housemaid, came in silently, her face pale and tearstained. Judith asked her to make up Hannah’s room, and she departed to obey, glad to have something to do.
Reginald, the only indoor manservant, appeared and asked Joseph if they would want wine for dinner and if he should lay out black clothes for him and Matthew.
Joseph declined the wine but accepted the offer to lay out the mourning clothes, and Reginald left. Mrs. Appleton’s husband, Albert, was outside working off his grief alone, digging in his beloved garden.
In the kitchen they sat around the scrubbed table in silence, sipping the hot tea, each sunk in thought. The room was as familiar as life itself. All four children had been born in this house, learned to walk and talk here, left through the front gate to go to school. Matthew and Joseph had driven from here to go to university, Hannah to go to her wedding in the village church. Joseph could remember the endless fittings of her dress in the spare bedroom, she standing as still as she could while Alys went around her with pins in her hands and in her mouth, a tuck here, a lift there, determined the gown should be perfect. And it had been.
Now Alys would never be back. Joseph could remember her perfume, always lily-of-the-valley. The bedroom would still smell of it.
Hannah would be devastated. She was so close to her mother, so like her in a score of ways, she would feel robbed of the model for her life. There would be nobody to share with her the small successes and failures in the home, the children’s growth, the new things learned. No one else would reassure her anxieties, teach her the simple remedies for a fever or sore throat, or show the easy way to mend, to adapt, to make do. It was a companionship that was gone forever.
For Judith it would be different, an open wound of things not done, not said, and now unable ever to be put right.
Matthew set his cup down and looked across the table at Joseph.
“I think we should go and sort some of the papers and bills.” He stood up, scraping his chair on the floor.
Judith seemed not to notice the tremor in his voice or the fact that he was trying to exclude her.
Joseph knew what he meant: It was time to look for the document. If it existed, then it should be here in the house, although why John would have set out to show it to Matthew and then not taken it with him was hard to understand.