Read No Graves As Yet Online

Authors: Anne Perry

No Graves As Yet (6 page)

BOOK: No Graves As Yet
13.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Joseph raised his eyebrows. “Is that a backward way of saying it is my responsibility to tell her that?” Of course it was his. He was the eldest, the one to take their father’s place, quite apart from the fact that he lived in Cambridge, only three or four miles away, and Matthew was in London. He resented it because he was unprepared. There was a well of anger inside him he dared not even touch, a hurt that frightened him.

Matthew was grinning at him. “That’s right!” he agreed. Then his smile faded and the darkness in him came through. “But there’s something we have to do before you go. We should have done it before.”

Joseph knew what he was going to say the instant before he did.

“The accident.” Matthew used the word loosely. Half of his face was like bronze in the dying light, the other too shadowed to see. “I don’t know if we can tell anything now, but we need to try. There’s been no rain since it happened. Actually, it’s the best summer I can remember.”

“Me too.” Joseph looked away. “Wimbledon finals were today. No interruptions for weather. Norman Brookes and Anthony Wilding.” He could think of nothing that mattered less, but it was easy to say, a skittering away from pain.

“Shearing telephoned me,” Matthew answered. “He said Brookes won, and Dorothea Chambers won the women’s.”

“Thought she would. Who’s Shearing?” He was trying to place a family friend, someone calling with apologies for not being here. He ran his hand gently over the dog’s head.

“Calder Shearing,” Matthew replied. “My boss at Intelligence. Just condolences, and of course he needs to know when I’ll be back.”

Joseph looked at him again. “And when will you?”

Matthew’s eyes were steady. “Tomorrow, after we’ve been to the Hauxton Road. We can’t stay here indefinitely. We all have to go on, and the longer we leave it, the harder it will be.”

The thought of such violence being deliberate was horrible. He could not bear to imagine someone planning and carrying out the murder of his parents. Yet the alternative was that John Reavley’s sharp and logical mind had slipped out of his control and sent him running from a threat that was not real, dreaming up horrors. That was worse. Joseph refused to believe it.

“And if it wasn’t an accident?” Why was it so difficult to say that?

Matthew stared at the last light as the sun kindled fire in the clouds on the horizon, vermilion and amber, tree shadows elongated across the fields. The smell of the twilight wind was heavy with hay, dry earth, and the sweetness of mown grass. It was almost harvest time. There were a handful of scarlet poppies like a graze of blood through the darkening gold. The hawthorn petals were all blown from the hedgerows, and in a few months there would be berries.

“I don’t know,” Matthew answered. “That’s the thing! There’s nobody to take it to, because we have no idea whom to trust. Father didn’t trust the police with this, or he wouldn’t have been bringing it to London. But I still have to look at it. Don’t you?”

Joseph thought for a moment. “Yes,” he admitted. “Yes. I have to know.”

         

The following afternoon, July 3, Matthew and Joseph stopped by the police station at Great Shelford again and asked if they could be shown on the map exactly where the accident had occurred. Reluctantly the sergeant told them.

“You don’t want to go looking at that,” he said sadly. “Course you want to understand, but there ain’t nothing to see. Weren’t no one else there, no brangle, no buck-fisted young feller drunk too much an’ going faster than he ought. Let it go, sir, that’s moi advoice.”

“Thank you,” Matthew replied with a forced smile. “Just like to see it. There, you said?” He put his finger on the map.

“That’s right, sir. Going south.”

“Had accidents there before?”

“Not as Oi know of, sir.” The sergeant frowned. “Can’t say what happened. But then sometimes that’s just how it is. Them Lanchesters is good cars. Get up quite a bit of speed with them. Fifty miles an hour, Oi shouldn’t wonder. A sudden puncture could send you off the road. Would do anyone.”

“Thank you,” Joseph said briskly. He wanted to end this and face looking at the scene. Get it over with. He dreaded it. Whatever they found, his mind would create a picture of what had happened there. The reality of it was the same, regardless of the cause. He turned away and walked out of the police station into the humid air. Clouds were massing in the west, and there were tiny flies settling on his skin, black pinpricks—thunder flies.

He walked to the car and climbed in, waiting for Matthew to follow.

They drove west through Little Shelford and Hauxton and on toward the London road, then turned north to the mill bridge. It was only a matter of three or four miles altogether. Matthew held his foot on the accelerator, trying to race the storm. He did not bother to explain; Joseph understood.

It was only a matter of minutes before they were over the bridge. Matthew was obliged to brake with more force than he had intended in order not to overshoot the place on the map. He pulled in to the side of the road, sending a spray of gravel up from the tires.

“Sorry,” he said absently. “We’d better hurry. It’s going to rain any minute.” He swung out and left Joseph to go after him.

It was only twenty yards, and he could see already the long gouge out of the grass where the car had plowed off the paved road, over the verge and the wide margin, crushing the wild foxgloves and the broom plants. It had torn up a sapling as well and scattered a few stones before crashing into a clump of birch trees, scarring the trunks and tearing off a hanging branch, which lay a few yards further on, its leaves beginning to wither.

Matthew stood beside the broom bushes, staring.

Joseph caught up with him and stopped. Suddenly he felt foolish and more vulnerable with every moment. The police sergeant was right. They should not have come here. It would have been far better to leave it in the imagination. Now he could never forget it.

There was a low rumble of thunder around the western horizon, like the warning growl of some great beast beyond the trees and the breathless fields.

“We can’t learn anything from it,” Joseph said aloud. “The car came off the road. We won’t ever know why.”

Matthew ignored him, still staring at the broken wake of the crash.

Joseph followed his gaze. At least death must have been quick, almost instantaneous, a moment of terror as they realized they were out of control, a sense of insane, destructive speed, and then perhaps the sound of tearing metal and pain—then nothing. All gone in seconds, less time than it took to imagine it.

Matthew turned and walked back to the road, beside the churned-up wake, careful to avoid stepping on it—not that there was anything more than broken plants. The ground was too dry for wheel tracks.

Joseph was on the edge of repeating that there was nothing to see when he realized that Matthew had stopped and was staring at the ground. “What is it?” he said sharply. “What have you found?”

“The car was weaving,” Matthew answered. “Look there!” He pointed to the edge of the road ten yards further on, where there was another clump of foxgloves mown down. “That’s where it came off the road first,” he said. “He tried to get it back on again, but he couldn’t. A puncture wouldn’t do that, not that way. I’ve had one—I know.”

“It was more than one,” Joseph reminded him. “All the tires were ripped.”

“Then there was something on the road that caused it,” Matthew said with conviction. “The possibility of getting four spontaneous punctures at the same moment isn’t even worth considering.” He started to run until he was level with the first broken foxgloves, then he slowed and began to search the ground.

Joseph followed after him, looking from right to left and back again, and then beyond. It was he who first saw the tiny scratches on the tarmacadam surface. He glanced sideways and saw another less than a foot away, and then another beyond that.

“Matthew!”

“Yes, I see them.” Matthew reached the line and bent to his knees. Once he had found them, it was easy to trace the marks right across the road, each less than the width of a car tire from the next. They were only slight scars, except in two places about axle-width apart, where they were deeper, actual gouges in the surface. In the heat of this summer, day after day of sun, the tar would have been softer than usual, more easily marked. In winter there might have been nothing.

“What were they?” Joseph asked, racking his mind for what could have torn tires on a moving car and left this track behind, yet not be here now, nor have been found embedded in the tires themselves. Except, of course, no one had been looking for such things.

Matthew stood up, his face white. “It can’t be nails,” he said. “How could you put nails on a road to stay point upward and catch only the car you wanted, and not leave them in the tires for police to find if they looked?”

“Wait for them,” Joseph answered, his heart knocking in his chest so violently his body shook. A cold, hurting rage engulfed him that anyone could cold-bloodedly place such a weapon across the road, then crouch out of sight, waiting for a car with people in it, and watch it crash. He could hardly breathe as he imagined them walking over to the wreck, ignoring the broken and bleeding bodies, perhaps still alive, and searching for a document. And when they did not find it, they left, simply went away, carefully taking with them whatever had caused the wreck.

He hated them. For a moment the heat of it poured over his skin in sweat. Then he found himself shivering uncontrollably, even though the air was hot and still, damp on the skin. More thunder flies settled on his face and hands.

Matthew had gone back to the side of the road, but opposite from the place where the car had swerved off. On this side there was a deeper ditch, thick with primrose leaves. There was a thin, straight line where they were torn, as if something sharp had ripped through them right from the tarmacadam edge all the way across to the ditch and beyond.

Dizzily, his vision blurred except for a crystal clarity at the center. Through it Joseph saw a birch sapling next to the hedge. A frayed end of rope hung from the trunk, biting into the bark about a foot from the ground. He could imagine the force that had caused that. He could see it—the yellow Lanchester with John Reavley at the wheel and Alys beside him, possibly at something like fifty miles an hour, striking it . . . striking what?

He turned to Matthew, willing him to deny it, wipe away what he imagined.

“Caltrops,” Matthew said softly, shaking his head as if he could rid himself of the idea.

“Caltrops?” Joseph asked, puzzled.

“Twists of iron prong,” Matthew replied, hooking his fingers together to demonstrate. “Like the things they put in barbed wire, only bigger. They used them in the Middle Ages to bring down knights on horseback.”

Thunder rumbled again, closer to them. The air was almost too clammy to breathe.

“On a rope,” Matthew went on. He did not look at Joseph, as if he could not bear to. “They must have waited here until they heard the car coming. Then when they knew it was the Lanchester, they sprinted across the road to the far side, and pulled it tight.” He bowed his head for a moment. “Even if Father saw it,” he said hoarsely, “there would be no way to avoid it.” He hesitated a moment, taking a deep breath. “Then afterward they cut the rope—hacked it, by the look of it—and took the whole thing away with them.”

It was all clear. Joseph said nothing. It was hideously real now, no more possibility of doubt. John and Alys Reavley had been murdered—he to silence him and retrieve the document, she because she happened to be with him. It was brutal, monstrous! Pain ran through him like fire inside his head. He could see the terror in his mother’s face, his father struggling desperately to control the car and knowing he couldn’t, the physical destruction, the helplessness. Had they had time to know it was death and they could do nothing for each other, not even time for a touch, a word?

And he could do nothing. It was over, complete, beyond his reach. There was nothing left but blind, bright red fury. They would find whoever had done this. It was his father, his mother, it had happened to. People who were precious and good had been destroyed, taken from him. Who had done it? What kind of people—and why?

They must find them, stop them. This must never happen again.

He would do what he should. He would be kind, obedient, honorable—but never hurt like this again. He could not endure it.

“Is Judith safe?” he said abruptly. “What if they go back to the house?” The thought of having to tell her the truth was ugly, but how could they avoid it?

“They won’t go back.” Matthew straightened up unsteadily. “They know it’s not there. But where the hell is it? I’m damned if I know!” His voice was breaking, threatening to go out of control. He stared at Joseph, willing him to help, to find an answer where he could not.

Thunder cracked across the sky above them, and the first heavy spots of rain fell, splashing large and warm on them and on the road.

Joseph seized Matthew’s arm and they turned and ran to the car, sprinting the last few paces and scrambling in, struggling with the roof as the heavens opened and torrential rain swirled across the fields and hedges, blinding the windscreen and drumming on the metal of the car body. Lightning blazed and vanished.

Matthew started the engine, and it was a relief to hear it roar to life. He put the car into gear and inched out onto the swimming road. Neither of them spoke.

When the cloudburst had passed and they could open the windows, the air was filled with the perfume of fresh rain on parched earth. It was a fragrance like no other, so sharp and clean they could hardly draw enough of it. The sun returned, gleaming on wet roads and dripping hedges, every leaf bright.

“What did Father say, exactly?” Joseph asked when at last he had control of himself enough to speak almost levelly.

“I’ve gone over and over it so many times I’m not sure anymore,” Matthew answered, his eyes ahead on the road. “I thought he said he was bringing it, but now I’m not certain. And since they didn’t find it, and they must have looked, and so did we, the only alternative seems to be that he hid it somewhere.” He was almost calm, addressing it as though it were an intellectual problem he had to solve, and the passion of the reality had never existed.

BOOK: No Graves As Yet
13.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A Witch's Love by Erin Bluett
Night Sky by Jolene Perry
The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman
Bunches by Valley, Jill
When Angels Fall by Melissa Jolley
The Collector of Names by Mazzini, Miha
You by Joanna Briscoe
Unknown by Unknown