No Graves As Yet Read Online Free PDF Page A

carefully to ease the ache. “It’s not here,” he said wearily.
    Matthew did not answer for several moments. He kept his eyes on the drawer he had been going through for the third time. “Father was very clear,” he repeated stubbornly. “He said the effect of it, the daring, was so vast it was beyond most men’s imagination. And terrible.” He looked up at last, his eyes red-rimmed, angry, as if Joseph were attacking his judgment. “He couldn’t trust anyone else because of who was involved.”
    Joseph’s imagination was too tired and too full of pain to be inventive, even to save Matthew’s feelings. “Then where is it?” he demanded. “Would he trust it to the bank? Or the solicitor?”
    Denial was in Matthew’s face, but he clung to the possibility for a few seconds, because he could think of nothing else.
    “We’ll have to speak to them tomorrow anyway.” Joseph sat down on the chair by the desk. Matthew was sitting beside the drawers on the carpet.
    “He wouldn’t give it to Pettigrew.” Matthew pushed his hair back off his forehead. “They’re just family solicitors—wills and property.”
    “Then quite a safe place to hide something valuable and dangerous,” Joseph reasoned.
    Matthew glared at him. “Are you trying to defend Father? Prove that he wasn’t imagining it out of something that was really perfectly harmless?”
    Joseph was stung by the accusation. It was exactly what he was doing—defending, denying—and he was confused and dizzy with loss. “Do I need to?” he demanded.
    “Stop being so damn reasonable!” Matthew’s voice cracked, the emotion raw. “Of course you need to! It wasn’t in the car! It isn’t in the house.” He jerked his hand sharply toward the door and the landing beyond. “Doesn’t it sound wild enough to you, unlikely enough? A piece of paper that proves a conspiracy to ruin all we love and believe in—and that goes right up to the royal family—but when we look for it, it vanishes into the air!”
    Joseph said nothing. The tag end of an idea pulled at his mind, but he was too exhausted to grasp it.
    “What is it?” Matthew said roughly. “What are you thinking?”
    “Could it be obvious?” Joseph frowned. “I mean, something we are seeing but not recognizing?”
    Matthew looked round the room. “Like what? For God’s sake, Joe! A conspiracy of this magnitude! The document is not going to be hung up on the wall along with the pictures!” He put the papers in the drawer, climbed to his feet, and carried it back to the desk. He replaced it in its slots and pushed it closed. “And before you bother, I’ve taken the backs off all the drawers and looked.”
    “Well, there are two possibilities.” Joseph was driven to the last conclusion. “Either there is such a document or there isn’t.”
    “You have a genius for the obvious!” Matthew said bitterly. “I had worked that out for myself.”
    “And you concluded that there is? On what basis?”
    “No!” Matthew snapped. “I just spent the evening ransacking the house because I have nothing better to do!”
    “You don’t have anything better to do,” Joseph answered him. “We had to go through the papers anyway to find what needs attending to.” He gestured toward the separated pile. “And the sooner we do it, the less bloody awful it is. We can think of a conspiracy while we look, which is easier than thinking that we are performing a sort of last rite for both our parents.”
    “All right!” Matthew cut in. “I’m sorry.” Again he pushed the thick fair hair off his face. “But honestly, he sounded so certain of it! His voice was charged with emotion, not a bit dry and humorous as it usually is.” His mouth pulled a little crooked, and when he spoke again his voice cracked. “I know what it must have cost him to call me on something like that. He hated all the secret services. He wouldn’t have said anything if he hadn’t been certain.”
    “Then he put it