Free No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry Page B

been.” She leaned forward and buried her head in his shoulder. “Joe! What’s happening to us? How can this be?”
    He put his arms around her. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know.”
    Matthew rubbed his eyes, pushing his hair back savagely. “Of course I’m going to do something!” he repeated. “That’s why he was bringing it to me.” There was pride and anger in his voice. His face was pinched with loss of what was irretrievable now. He was still struggling to be reasonable. “If it were something the police could deal with, he’d have taken it to them.” He looked at Joseph. “We dare not trust anyone,” he warned them both. “Judith, you must make sure the house is locked every night, and anytime you and the servants are all out—just as a precaution. I don’t think they’ll come back, because they’ve already looked here, and they know we haven’t got it. But if you’d rather go and stay—”
    “With a friend? No, I wouldn’t!” she said quickly.
    “Judith . . .”
    “If I change my mind, I’ll go to the Mannings’,” she snapped. “I’ll say I’m lonely. They’ll understand. I promise! Just don’t push me. I’ll do what I want.”
    “There’s a novelty!” Matthew said with a sudden, bleary smile, as if he needed to break the taut thread of tension.
    She looked at him sharply, then her face softened and her eyes filled with tears.
    “I’ll find them,” he promised, his voice choking. “Not only because they killed Mother and Father, but to stop them doing whatever it was in the document—if we can.”
    “I’m glad you said we .” She answered his smile now. “Tell me what I can do.”
    “When there is anything, I will,” he said. “I promise. But call me if there’s anything at all! Or Joseph—just to talk if you want. You must do that!”
    “Stop telling me what to do!” But there was relief in her voice. A shred of safety had returned, something familiar, even if it was a restriction to fight against. “But of course I will.” She reached out to touch him. “Thank you.”

CHAPTER
THREE
    Joseph found his first day back at St. John’s even more difficult than he had anticipated. The ancient beauty of the buildings, mellow brick with castellated front and stone-trimmed windows, soothed his mind. Its calm was indestructible, its dignity timeless. His rooms closed around him like well-fitting armor. He looked with pleasure at the light reflected unevenly on the old glass of the bookcases, knowing intimately every volume within, the thoughts and dreams of great men down the ages. On the wall between the windows overlooking the quadrangle were paintings of Florence and Verona. He remembered choosing them to keep in his heart those streets worn smooth by the footsteps of his heroes. And of course there was the bust of Dante on the shelf, that genius of poetry, imagination, the art of the story, and above all the understanding of the nature of good and evil.
    He had been away for long enough for an amount of work to have collected, and the concentration needed to catch up was also a kind of healing. The languages of the Bible were subtle and different from modern speech. Their very nature necessitated that they refer to everyday things common to all mankind: seed time and harvest, the water of physical and spiritual life. The rhythms had time to repeat themselves and let the meaning sink deep into the mind; the flavor and the music of it removed him from the present, and so from his own reality.
    It was friends who brought him the sharp reminder of loss. He saw the sympathy in their eyes, the uncertainty whether to speak of it or not, what to say that was not clumsy. Every student seemed to know at least of the deaths, if not the details.
    The master, Aidan Thyer, had been very considerate, asking Joseph if he was sure he was ready to come back so soon. He was valued, of course, and irreplaceable, but nevertheless he must take more time if he needed