No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry

called him on Saturday evening, not here at his flat, but at his office in the Intelligence Services. He had been working late, on the Irish problems, as usual. The Liberal government had been trying to pass a Home Rule bill to give Ireland autonomy since the middle of the previous century, and time after time the Protestants of Ulster had blocked it, refusing absolutely to be forcibly separated from Britain and placed in Catholic Ireland. They believed that both their religious freedom and their economic survival depended upon remaining free from such a forced integration, and ultimately subjection.
    Government after government had fallen on the issue, and now Arquill’s personal Liberal Party required the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party in order to retain power.
    Shearing, Matthew’s superior, shared the view of many others that there was a great deal of political maneuvering in London behind the mutiny of British troops stationed in the Curragh. When the men of Ulster, solidly backed by their women, had threatened armed rebellion against the Home Rule bill, the British troops had refused to take up arms against them. General Gough had resigned, with all his officers, whereupon Sir John French, chief of the General Staff in London, had resigned also, immediately followed by Sir John Seely, secretary for war in the Cabinet.
    Little wonder Shearing and his men worked late. The situation threatened to become a crisis as grave as any in the last three hundred years.
    Matthew had been in his office when the call came from John Reavley telling him of the document and that he was going to drive to London with it the following day, expecting to arrive between half past one and two o’clock. He would bring Alys with him, ostensibly for an afternoon in the city, but in order to make his trip unremarkable.
    How had anyone else known that he even had the document, let alone that he was taking it to Matthew, and the time of his journey? If he came by car, the route was obvious. There was only one main road from St. Giles to London.
    Matthew cast his mind back to that evening, the offices almost silent, hardly anyone there, just half a dozen men, perhaps a couple of clerks. He remembered standing at his desk with the telephone in his hand, the disbelief at what his father had said. Matthew had repeated what his father had said, to make certain he had heard correctly.
    The cold ran through him. Was that it? In the quiet office someone had overheard him? That had been enough. Who? He tried to recall who else had been there, but one late night blended into another. He had heard footsteps, voices deliberately kept low so as not to disturb others. He might not have recognized them then; he certainly could not now.
    But he could find out, discreetly. He could at least trace the possibly treasonous behavior among his own colleagues—when even a week ago he would have trusted them all without hesitation.
             
    When he arrived in the morning everything was familiar: the cramped spaces, the echoing wooden floor, the black telephones, the dust motes in the air, the worn surfaces, and the harsh desk lamps, unnecessary now in the sunlight through the windows. Clerks bustled back and forth, shirtsleeves grimy from endless papers and ink, collars stiff and often a trifle crooked.
    They wished him good morning and offered their condolences, shy and awkward and, for all he could see, intensely sincere. He thanked them and went to his own small room, where books were wedged into too small a case and papers were locked in drawers. The inkwell and blotting papers were just as usual, not quite straight on his desk, two pens lying beside them. The blotting paper was clean. He never left anything that might be decipherable.
    He fished for his keys to unlock the top drawer. At first it did not slide in easily, but took a moment of fiddling. He bent to look more closely, and that was when he saw the finest of scratches on the metal