No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry Page A

breathing.
    “I don’t know. If the document was all he said it was, and whoever he took it from knew he was coming to me with it, then probably not.”
    There was a footstep at the bottom of the stairs.
    Joseph swiveled around. Hannah was standing with her hand on the newel, her face white, struggling to keep her composure. “What’s the matter?” she said abruptly. “People are beginning to ask where you are! You’ve got to talk to them, you can’t just run away. We all feel like—”
    “We’re not,” Joseph cut across her, beginning to come down the stairs. There was no point in frightening her with the truth, certainly not now. “Matthew lost something, but he’s remembered where he put it.”
    “You must speak to people,” she said as he reached her. “They’ll expect us all to. You don’t live here anymore, but they were Mother’s neighbors, and they loved her.”
    He slipped his arm lightly around her shoulder. “Yes, of course they did. I know that.”
    She smiled, but there was still anger and frustration in her face, and too much pain to be held within. Today she had stepped into her mother’s shoes, and she hated everything that it meant.
             
    Joseph did not see Matthew alone again until just before dinner. Joseph took Henry into the garden, in the waning light, watching it fade and deepen to gold on the tops of the trees. He stared upward at the massed starlings that swirled like dry leaves, high and wide across the luminous sky, so many dark flecks, storm-tossed on an unseen wind.
    He did not hear Matthew come silently over the grass behind him, and was startled when the dog turned, tail wagging.
    “I’m going to take Hannah to the station tomorrow morning,” Matthew said. “She’ll catch the ten-fifteen. That’ll get her to Portsmouth comfortably before teatime. There’s a good connection.”
    “I suppose I should get back to Cambridge,” Joseph responded. “There’s nothing else to do here. Pettigrew will call us if he needs anything. Judith’s going to stay on in the house. I expect she told you. Anyway, Mrs. Appleton’s got to have someone to look after.” He said the last part wryly. He was concerned for Judith, as John and Alys had been. She showed no inclination to settle to anything, and seemed to be largely wasting her time. Now that her parents were no longer here, circumstances would force her to address her own future, but it was too early now to say so to her.
    “How long can she run the house on the finances there are before the will is probated?” Matthew asked, pushing his hands into his pockets and following Joseph’s gaze across the fields to the copse outlined against the sky.
    They were both avoiding saying what they really thought. How would she deal with the hurt? Whom would she rebel against now that Alys was not here? Who would see that she did not let her wild side run out of control until she hurt herself irretrievably? How well did they know each other, to begin the love, the patience, the guiding that suddenly was their responsibility?
    It was too soon, all much too soon. None of them was ready for it yet.
    “From what Pettigrew said, about a year,” Joseph replied. “More, if necessary. But she needs to do something other than spend time with her friends and drive around the countryside in that car of hers. I don’t know if Father had any idea where she goes, or how fast!”
    “Of course he knew!” Matthew retorted. “Actually, he was rather proud of her skill . . . and the fact that she is a better mechanic than Albert. I’ll wager she’ll use some of her inheritance to buy a new car,” he added with a shrug. “Faster and smarter than the Model T. Just as long as she doesn’t go for a racer!”
    Joseph held out his hand. “What will you bet on it?”
    “Nothing I can’t afford to lose!” Matthew responded drily. “I don’t suppose we can stop her?”
    “How?” Joseph asked. “She’s twenty-three. She’ll do