No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry

Alys that he was going to marry Eleanor. That had been a winter day, rain spattering the window. She had been putting up her hair after changing for dinner. She had always had beautiful hair.
    He forced his mind to the present.
    “Is there anything gone?” he said aloud.
    “I don’t think so.” Matthew did not move to go in yet. “But there might be, because it’s different somehow.”
    “Are you certain?” It was a stupid question, because he knew Matthew was not certain. He simply wanted to deny the reality settling more and more firmly in his mind with each second. “I don’t see anything,” he added.
    “Wait a minute.” Matthew put up his hand as if to stop Joseph from passing him, although Joseph had not moved. “There is something . . . I just can’t put my finger on it. It’s . . . tidy. It doesn’t look as if someone just left it.”
    “Mrs. Appleton?” Joseph queried.
    “No. She won’t come in here yet. It still feels like an intrusion, as if she were doing it behind Mother’s back.”
    “Judith? Or Hannah?”
    “No.” He sounded quite certain. “Hannah might look, but she wouldn’t touch anything, not yet. And Judith won’t come in here at all. At least . . . I’ll ask, but I don’t think so.” He drew in a deep breath. “It’s the pillows. That’s not how Mother had them, and no one here would rearrange them that way.”
    “Isn’t that how most people have them?” Joseph looked over at the big bed with its handmade coverlet and the matching pillow shams just touching. It all looked completely ordinary, like anyone’s room. Then a tiny memory prickled as he deliberately brought back the image of telling his mother that Eleanor was expecting their first child. She had been so happy. He pictured her face, and the bed behind her, with the pillows at an angle, one overlapping the other. It looked comfortable, casual, not formal like this.
    “Someone has been in here,” he agreed, his heart beating so hard he felt out of breath. “They must have searched the house while we were all at the funeral.” His pulse was knocking in his ears. “For the document—just as we did?”
    “Yes,” Matthew replied. “Which means it’s real. Father was right—he really did have something.” His voice was bright and hard, shaking a little, as if he were expecting to be contradicted. “And they didn’t get it from him.”
    Joseph swallowed, aware of all the multitude of meaning that lay beyond that statement. “They still didn’t, because it wasn’t here. We searched everywhere. So where is it?”
    “I don’t know!” Matthew looked oddly blank. Now his mind was racing past his words. “I don’t know what he did with it, but they don’t have it, or they wouldn’t be still searching.”
    “Who are they ?” Joseph demanded.
    Matthew looked back at him, puzzled, still charged with emotion. “I have no idea. I’ve told you everything he said to me.”
    The sound of voices drifted up the stairs. Somewhere toward the kitchen a door closed with a bang. He and Matthew should be down with the guests as well. It was unfair to leave Judith and Hannah to do all the receiving, the thanking, the accepting of condolences. He half turned.
    “Joe!”
    He looked back. Matthew was staring at him, his eyes dark and fixed, his face gaunt in spite of the high cheekbones so like his own.
    “It isn’t only what happened to it and what it’s about,” he said quietly, as if he was concerned someone in the hall below could overhear them. “It’s whom it implicates. Where did Father get it? Obviously whoever they are, they know he had it, or they wouldn’t have been here searching.” He let the words hang between them, his white-knuckled hand on the door frame.
    The thought came to Joseph only slowly. It was too vast and too ugly to recognize at once. Then when he knew it, it could not be denied. His mouth was dry. “Was it an accident?”
    Matthew did not move; he scarcely seemed to be