Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [11]
If it were Thyer, it would hit Joseph profoundly. But pain had nothing to do with truth.
“Nothing between?” he asked aloud. “No one to the door, even at the back? No deliveries, no tradesmen?”
“No,” she answered.
Was she being careful, or trying to avoid an answer that would hurt so deeply? But it had to be someone John Reavley had known, and presumably trusted. It had to be someone close enough and with the intellectual and moral power to have influenced Sebastian to kill two people he had known for years, the parents of the man who had tutored and helped him even before going up to university and even more afterward.
“Did he say anything about where he was going?”
“No. Do you think it was Aidan Thyer?” Her voice was crowded with disbelief. After Sebastian’s death she had stayed in Thyer’s house! He had witnessed her grief, and appeared to do all he could to help.
“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully. “There are lots of possible explanations. But it is at least somewhere to begin. Someone told him what to do, and where my father would be.”
“Why could it not have been at any time?” she asked, frowning slightly. “Why only in the afternoon of the day before? Why did he do it? Your brother was Sebastian’s closest friend.”
“I know. It had nothing to do with Joseph. It was political.” That was as close to the truth as he would come.
“That’s absurd!” she retorted. “Your father used to be a member of Parliament, I know, but he didn’t stand for any convictions Sebastian was against. He didn’t stand for anything out of the ordinary. There were scores of men like him, maybe even hundreds.” It was possibly not intended to be rude, but her tone was dismissive and she made no effort to hide it.
Matthew pictured his father’s mild, ascetic face with its incisive intelligence, and the honesty that was so clear it was sometimes almost childlike. Yes, there were many men who believed as he had, but he himself was unique! No one could fill the emptiness his death had created. Suddenly it was almost impossible not to snap back at Mary’s callous remark. It required all his self-control to answer civilly.
“And had any of those hundreds been the ones to learn the information he had, and had the courage to act on it,” he said carefully, “then they would have been the ones killed.” He deliberately avoided using the word “murdered.”
Her face pulled tight and she turned away. “What information?”
“Political. I can’t tell you more than that.”
“Then go and talk to Aidan Thyer,” she told him. “There’s nothing I can do to help you.” And without waiting for him to say anything more, or to wish him good-bye, she turned and walked back toward the door leading inside, a stiff-backed figure, every other passion consumed in grief, oddly dignified, and yet completely without grace.
Matthew remained outside, and went back to the car along the grass and around the footpath.
CHAPTER
TWO
“I don’t know,” Sam said wearily, pushing his hair back and unintentionally smearing mud over his brow. “It’s such a bloody mess it’s impossible to tell for sure. Looks like one of the props came loose and some of the wall collapsed. But what made it happen could be any of a dozen things. How much of his hand has he lost?”
They were in Sam’s dugout, off the support trench. It was three steps down from the trench itself, a deep hole in the ground, duckboards on the floor, a sacking curtain over the door. It was typical of many officers’ quarters: a narrow cot, a wooden chair, and two tables, both made out of boxes. On a makeshift shelf beside the bed there were several books—a little poetry, some Greek legend, a couple of novels. There was a gramophone on one of the boxes, and inside the box about twenty records, mostly classical piano music, Liszt and Chopin, a little Beethoven, and some opera. Joseph knew them all by heart. There was also a photograph of Sam’s brother, younger, his face pinched with ill health.
“Two