No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online

our grief, my dear,” she said, laying her gloved hand on her husband’s arm. “We should not struggle to say that for which there can be no words. The village is waiting. This is their turn, and the sooner this duty is accomplished, the sooner the family can go back home and be alone.” She looked at Joseph. “Perhaps in a few days we may call and visit with you for a little longer?”
    “Of course,” Joseph answered impulsively. “Please do. I shall not go back to Cambridge until the end of the week at least. I don’t know about Matthew—we haven’t discussed it. We just wanted to get today over.”
    “Naturally,” Corcoran agreed, letting go of Joseph’s hand at last. “And Hannah will go back to Portsmouth, no doubt.” There was a pucker of anxiety between his brows. “I assume Archie is at sea, or he would be here now?”
    Joseph nodded. “Yes. But they may grant him compassionate leave when he is next in port.” There was nothing he could do for Hannah. She must now face the ordeal of helping her children recover from the pain of their grandparents’ death. It was the first big loss in their lives, and they would need her. She had already been away for the larger part of a week.
    “Of course, if it’s possible,” Corcoran acquiesced, still looking at Joseph with the slight frown, his eyes troubled.
    “Why should it not be possible?” Joseph said a trifle sharply. “For heaven’s sake, his wife has just lost both her parents!”
    “I know, I know,” Corcoran said gently. “But Archie is a serving officer. I dare say you have been too busy with your own grief to read much of the world news, and that is perfectly natural. However, this assassination in Sarajevo is very ugly.”
    “Yes,” Joseph agreed uncomprehendingly. “They were shot, weren’t they?” Did it really matter now? Why was Corcoran even thinking about it—today, of all days? “I’m sorry, but . . .”
    Corcoran looked a little stooped. It was so slight as to be indefinable, but the shadow in him was more than grief; there was something yet to come that he feared.
    “It wasn’t a single lunatic with a gun,” he said gravely. “It’s far deeper than that.”
    “Is it?” Joseph said without belief or comprehension.
    “There were several assassins,” Corcoran said gravely. “The first did nothing. The second threw a bomb, but the chauffeur saw it coming and managed to speed up and around it.” His lips tightened. “The man who threw the bomb took some sort of poison, then jumped into the river, but he was pulled out and lived. The bomb exploded and injured several people. They were taken to hospital.” His voice was very low, as if he did not want the rest of the people standing in the graveyard to hear, even though it must be public knowledge. Perhaps they had not grasped the meaning of it.
    “The archduke continued with his day’s agenda,” he went on, ignoring Orla’s frown. “He spoke to people in the town hall, and later he decided to go and visit the injured, but his chauffeur took a wrong turn and came face-to-face with the final assassin, who leaped on the running board of the car and shot the archduke in the neck and the duchess in the stomach. Both died within minutes.”
    “I’m sorry.” Joseph winced. He could picture it, but the moment he did, their faces changed to those of John and Alys, and the death of two Austrian aristocrats a thousand miles away melted into unimportance.
    Corcoran’s hand gripped his arm again, and the strength of him seemed to surge through it. “It was chaotically done, but it comes from a groundswell of feeling, Joseph. It could lead to an Austro-Serbian war,” he said quietly. “And then Germany might become involved. The kaiser reasserted his alliance with Austria-Hungary yesterday.”
    It rose to Joseph’s lips to argue that it was too unlikely to consider, but he saw in Corcoran’s eyes how intensely he meant it. “Really?” he said with puzzlement.