No Graves As Yet

As soon as Inspector Perth discovered that the dean was absent in Italy but that Joseph was an ordained minister, he asked him to stay at hand. “Might help,” he said with a nod. He did not explain if it was to ensure truthfulness among the students or for the comfort of their distress.

“Seems nobody came nor went during the night,” Perth said, looking at Joseph with sharp gray eyes. They were alone in the master’s lodge, Mitchell having been sent on some errand. “No break-in. My men’ve bin all over. Sorry, Reverend, but it looks like your young Mr. Allard—the dead one, that is—must’ve bin shot by someone inside the college here. Police surgeon might be able to tell us what time, but it doesn’t make no difference for who could’ve bin there. He was up an’ dressed an’ sitting at his books—”

“I touched his cheek,” Joseph interrupted him. “When I went in. It wasn’t cold . . . I mean, it was . . . cool.” He shuddered inside at the memory. That had been three hours ago. Sebastian would be cold now, the spirit, the dreams, and the hunger that made him unique dissolved into—what? He knew what the answer was supposed to be . . . but he had no inner fire that affirmed it to him.

Perth was nodding, biting his lip. “Sounds right, sir. Looks like he knew whoever did it, from what Oi’ve bin told. You knew him, Reverend. Was he the sort of young gentleman to let in someone he didn’t know, at that time—which looks to’ve bin about half past five—an’ while he was studying?”

“No. He was a very serious student,” Joseph replied. “He would resent the intrusion. People don’t normally call on anyone before breakfast unless it’s an emergency.”

“What Oi thought,” Perth agreed. “An’ we’ve searched all over the room, an’ the gun’s not there. We’ll be going over the whole college for it, of course. Don’t look like he put up any sort of a fight. Took by surprise, by all we can see. Someone he trusted.”

Joseph had thought the same thing, but until now he had not put it in those words. It was indescribably ugly.

Perth was staring at him. “Spoken to a few of the young gentlemen, sir. Asked if anyone heard a shot, seeing as there must’ve bin one. One young gentleman said he heard a bang, but he didn’t take notice. Thought it was just something in the street, car mebbe, and he doesn’t know what time it was. Went back to sleep again.” Perth chewed his lip. “An’ no one has any thoughts as to why, least none as how they’ll own to. All seem took by surprise. But it’s early days. D’you know of anyone who had a brangle with him? Jealous, mebbe? He was a very good-looking young man. Clever, too, by accounts—good scholar, one of the best. First-class honors, they say.” His expression was carefully unreadable.

“You don’t kill people because they outshine you academically!” Joseph said with too much of an edge to his voice. He was being rude and he could not help it. His hands were shaking and he felt dry-mouthed.

“Don’t you?” Perth left it as a question unanswered. He sat on the edge of the porter’s desk. “Why do you kill someone, then, Reverend? Young gentlemen like these, with every advantage in the world an’ their whole lives to look forward to?” He waved at the chair for Joseph to sit down. “What would make one o’ them take a gun an’ go into someone’s rooms afore six in the morning an’ shoot him in the head? Must’ve bin a powerful reason, sir, something for which there weren’t no other answer.”

Joseph’s legs were weak, and he sank into the chair.

“An’ it weren’t spur of the moment, like,” Perth continued. “Someone got up special, took a gun with ’em, an’ there was no quarrel, or Mr. Allard wouldn’t’ve bin sitting back all relaxed, with not a book out of place.” He stopped and waited, staring curiously at Joseph.

“I don’t know.” The full enormity of it was settling on him so heavily he could scarcely fill his lungs with air. His mind flickered over the other students closest to Sebastian. Whom could he have let in at that hour and remained seated talking to him instead of getting up and fairly robustly telling him to come back at a more civilized time? Elwyn, of course. And why had Elwyn gone to see him so early? Joseph had not asked him, but no doubt Perth would.

Nigel Eardslie. He and Sebastian had shared an interest in Greek poetry. Eardslie was the better language scholar, he had the vocabulary, but he had less feeling for the music and the rhythm of it, or for the subtlety of the culture. They collaborated well, and both enjoyed it, often publishing the results in one of the college magazines. If Eardslie had also been up early studying and found a particularly good line or phrase, one that he almost gripped but not quite, he would have disturbed Sebastian, even at that time.

But Joseph would not tell Perth that, at least not yet.

And there were Foubister and Morel, good friends to each other, with whom Sebastian and Peter Rattray often made a four for tennis. Rattray was keen on debate, and he and Sebastian had indulged in many all-night arguments, to the intense pleasure of both of them. Although that did not seem a reason for going to anyone’s rooms so early.

Who else was there? At least half a dozen others came to his mind, all of whom were still here in college for one reason or another, but he could not imagine any of them even thinking of violence, let alone acting it out.

Perth was watching him, content to wait, patient as a cat at a mousehole.

“I have no idea,” Joseph repeated helplessly, aware that Perth would know he was being evasive. How could any man who was trained in the spiritual care of people, living and working with a group of students, be totally blind to a passion so intense it ended in murder? Such terror or hatred does not spring whole into being in a day. How was it that he had not seen it?

“How long’ve you bin here, Reverend?” Perth asked.

Joseph felt himself blushing, the heat painful in his face. “A little over a year.” He had to have seen it, merely refused to recognize it for what it was. How stupid! How totally useless!

“An’ you taught Mr. Sebastian Allard? What about his brother, Mr. Elwyn? Did you teach him, too?”

“For a while, for Latin. He dropped it.”

“Why?”

“He found it difficult, and he didn’t think it was necessary for his career. He was right.”

“So he weren’t so clever as his brother?”

“Very few were. Sebastian was remarkably gifted. He would have . . .” The words stuck in his throat. Without any warning, the reality of death engulfed him again. All the golden promise he had seen ahead for Sebastian was gone, as if night had obstructed daylight. It took him a moment to regain control of himself so he could continue speaking. “He had a remarkable career ahead of him,” he finished.

“Doing what?” Perth raised his eyebrows.

“Almost anything he wanted.”

“Schoolmaster?” Perth frowned. “Preacher?”

“Poet, philosopher. In government if he wanted.”

“Government? Learning old languages?” Perth was utterly confused.

“A lot of our greatest leaders have begun with a degree in classics,” Joseph explained. “Mr. Gladstone is the most obvious example.”

“Well, I never knew that!” Perth clearly found it beyond his comprehension.

“You don’t understand,” Joseph went on. “At university there are always those who are more brilliant than you are, more spectacularly gifted in a particular area. If you didn’t know that when you came, you would certainly learn it very quickly. Every student here has sufficient talent and intellect to succeed, if he works. I know of no one foolish enough to carry anything more than a passing moment of envy for a superior mind.” He said it with absolute certainty, and it was only when he looked at Perth’s expression that he realized how condescending he sounded, but it was too late to retrieve it.

“So you didn’t notice anything at all?” Perth observed. It was impossible to tell if he believed that, or what he thought of a teacher and minister who could be so blind.

Joseph felt like a new student chastised for a stupid mistake. “Nothing I thought could lead to more than a passing stiffness, a distance,” he defended himself. “Young men are emotional, highly strung sometimes. Exams . . .” He tailed off, not knowing what else to add. He was trying to explain a culture and a way of life to a man for whom it was totally foreign. The gulf between a Cambridge student and a policeman was unbridgeable. How could Perth possibly understand the passions and dreams that impelled young men from backgrounds of privilege and in most cases a degree of wealth, men whose academic gifts were great enough to earn them places here? He must come from an ordinary home where learning was a luxury, money never quite enough, necessity a constant companion on the heels of labor.

A cold breath touched him—fear that Perth would inevitably come to wrong conclusions about these young men, misunderstand what they said and did, mistake motives, and blame innocence, simply because it was all alien to him. And the damage would be irretrievable.

And then the moment after, his own arrogance struck him like a blow. He belonged to the same world, he had known all of them for at least a year and seen them almost every day during term time, and he had not had even the faintest idea of hatred slowly building until it exploded in lethal violence.

There must have been signs; he had ignored them, misinterpreted them as harmless, and misread everything they meant. He would like to think it had been charity, but it wasn’t. To have been blind to the truth was stupidity at best; at worst it was also moral cowardice. “If I can help you, of course I will,” he said much more humbly. “I . . . I am as . . . shocked . . .”

“O’ course you are, sir,” Perth said with surprising gentleness. “Everybody is. No one expects anything like this to happen. Just tell me if you remember anything or if you see anything now. An’ no doubt you’ll be doing what you can to help the young gentlemen. Some of ’em look pretty frangled.”

“Yes, naturally. Is there . . .”

“Nothing, sir,” Perth assured him.

Joseph thanked him and left, going outside into the bright, hard sunlight of the quad. Almost immediately he ran into Lucian Foubister, his face white, his dark hair on end as if he had run his hands through it again and again.

“Dr. Reavley!” he gasped. “They think one of us did it! That can’t be true. Someone else must’ve . . .” He stopped in front of Joseph, blocking his way. He did not know how to ask for help, but his eyes were desperate. He was a northerner from the outskirts of Manchester, accustomed to rows of brick houses back to back with each other, cold water and privies. The Cambridge world of ancient, intricate beauty, space, and leisure had stunned and changed him forever. He could never truly belong here; neither could he return to what he had been before. Now he looked younger than his twenty-two years, and thinner than Joseph had remembered.

“It appears that it was,” Joseph said gently. “We may be able to find some other answer, but no one broke in, and Sebastian was sitting quite calmly in his chair, which suggests he was not afraid of whoever entered his room.”

“Then it must have been an accident,” Foubister said breathlessly. “And . . . and whoever it was is too scared to own up to it. Can’t blame him, really. But he’ll say, when he realizes the police are thinking it’s murder.” He stopped again, his eyes searching Joseph’s, begging to be reassured.

It was an answer Joseph longed to believe. Whoever had committed such an act would be devastated. To run away was cowardly, and he would be ashamed, but better that than murder. And it would mean Joseph had not been blind to hatred. There had been none to see.

“I hope that’s true,” he answered, placing a hand on Foubister’s arm. “Wait and see what happens. And don’t leap to judgment yet.”

Foubister nodded, but he said nothing. Joseph watched as he hurried away to the opposite side. As clearly as if he had been told, Joseph knew he was going straight to see his friend Morel.

Gerald and Mary Allard arrived before noon. They had only to come from Haslingfield, about four miles to the southwest. The first shock of the news must have reached them after breakfast, almost certainly leaving them too stunned to react immediately. There may have been people to tell, perhaps a doctor or a priest, and other members of the family.

Joseph dreaded meeting them. He knew Mary’s grief would be wild and savage. She would feel all the pent-up, wounding rage that he did. The comforting words that she had said so sincerely to him at his parents’ funeral would mean nothing repeated back to her now, just as they had meant nothing to him at the time.

Because he was afraid of the encounter, he went straightaway, within minutes of their car pulling up at the front gate on St. John’s Street. He saw Mitchell taking them solemnly through the first quad and the second toward the master’s house. Joseph met them a dozen yards from the front door.

Mary was dressed in black, her skirt stained with dust at the hem, her hat wide, shading her veiled face. Beside her, Gerald looked like a man struggling to stand the morning after a drunken binge. His skin was pasty, his eyes bloodshot. He took a moment or two to recognize Joseph, then lurched toward him, momentarily seeming to forget his wife.

“Reavley! Thank God you’re here! What happened? I don’t understand—it doesn’t make sense! Nobody would . . .” He tailed off helplessly, not knowing what else he meant to say. He wanted help, anyone who would tell him it was not true and release him from a grief he could not bear.

Joseph gripped Gerald’s hand and steadied his other arm, taking some of his weight as he staggered. “We don’t know what happened,” he said firmly. “It seems to have been around half past five this morning, and the best thing I can say at the moment is that it was very quick, a couple of seconds, if that. He didn’t suffer.”

Mary was in front of him, her black eyes blazing even through her veil. “Is that supposed to comfort me?” she demanded, her voice hoarse. “He’s dead! Sebastian’s dead!”

Her passion was too fierce for Joseph to touch, and yet he was standing here in the middle of the quad in the July sun trying to find words that would be something more than a statement of his own futility. Where was the fire of his faith when he needed it? Anyone could believe on a calm Sunday in a church pew, when life was whole and safe. Faith is real only when there is nothing else between you and the abyss, an unseen thread strong enough to hold the world.

“I know he’s dead, Mary,” he answered her. “I can’t tell you why or how. I don’t know who did it, or whether they meant to or not. We may learn everything except the reason, but it will take time.”

“It’s the reason I want!” Her voice shook with fury. “Why Sebastian? He was . . . beautiful!”

He knew what she meant, not only his face but the brilliance of his mind, the strength of his dreams. “Yes, he was,” he agreed.

“So why has your God let some stupid, worthless . . .” She could not think of a word big enough to carry her hatred. “Destroy him?” she spat. “Tell me why, Reverend Reavley!”

“I don’t know. Did you think I would be able to tell you? I’m just as human as you are, just as much in need of learning faith, walking with trust, not—”

“Trust in what?” Her thin, black-gloved hand sliced the air. “A God who takes everything from me and lets evil destroy good?”

“Nothing destroys good,” he said, wondering if it was true. “If good were never threatened, and even beaten sometimes, then there would be no good, because it would eventually become no more than wisdom, self-interest. If—”

She turned away from him impatiently, snatching her arm back as if he had been holding her, and stalked over the grass toward Connie Thyer, standing at the doorway of the master’s house.

“I’m sorry,” Gerald muttered helplessly. “She’s taking it . . . I . . . I really . . .”

“It’s all right.” Joseph stopped his fumbling embarrassment. It was painful to see and he wanted it ended for both their sakes. “I understand. You had better go and be with her. She needs you.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Gerald said with an instant’s extraordinary bitterness. Then he caught himself, blushed, and walked away after her.

Joseph started back toward the first quad and was almost there when he saw the second woman, also veiled and in black. She was apparently lost, looking through the arch tentatively. She seemed young, from the grace of her posture, yet there was a dignity and natural assurance to her suggesting that in other circumstances she would have been very much in command of herself.

“May I help you?” Joseph asked, startled to see her. He could not imagine what she could be doing here in St. John’s, or why Mitchell had ever let her in.

She came forward with relief. “Thank you. That is very kind of you, Mr. . . . ?”

“Reavley, Joseph Reavley,” he introduced himself. “You seem uncertain which way to go. Where is it you wish to be?”

“The master’s house,” she replied. “I believe his name is Mr. Aidan Thyer. Is that correct?”

“Yes, but I am afraid he is engaged at present, and likely to be for some considerable time. An unexpected event has changed everyone’s arrangements.” There was no need to tell her of the tragedy. “I shall convey any message to him when he is free, and perhaps you can make an appointment to call at another time?”

She stood even straighter. “I am aware of the events, Mr. Reavley. You are referring to the death this morning of Sebastian Allard. My name is Regina Coopersmith. I was his fiancée.”

Joseph stared at her as if she had spoken in an alien language. It was not possible! How could Sebastian, the passionate idealist, the scholar whose mind danced to the music of language, have fallen in love and contracted himself to marriage, yet never even mentioned it?

Joseph looked at Regina Coopersmith, knowing he should be offering her some sympathy, but his mind refused to accept what she had said.

“I’m sorry, Miss Coopersmith,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t know.” He must add something. This superficially composed young woman had lost the man she loved, and in the most appalling circumstances. “I’m deeply sorry for your bereavement.” He knew how it felt to face that gulf of loneliness suddenly, without any warning at all. One day one had everything; the next day it was gone.

“Thank you,” she replied with the ghost of a smile.

“May I accompany you to the master’s house? It is through there.” He gestured behind him. “I expect the porter has your bags?”

“Yes, thank you. That would be most courteous.”

Joseph turned and walked with the young woman back into the sunlight and along the path. He glanced sideways at her. Her veil hid only part of her face; her mouth and chin were clearly visible. Her features were strong, but pleasant rather than pretty. She had dignity, resolve, but it was not a face of passion. What had made Sebastian fall in love with her? Could she have been Mary Allard’s choice for her son, rather than his own? Perhaps she had money and good connections with county families? She would give Sebastian the security and the background he would need for a career in poetry or philosophy, which might not immediately provide such things itself.

Or perhaps there were whole areas of Sebastian’s nature about which Joseph had been entirely ignorant.

The midday sun was hot and sharp, casting the shadows with hard edges, like the cutting realities of knowledge.

CHAPTER

FIVE

In a quiet house on Marchmont Street, a man who liked to be known by those he trusted as “the Peacemaker” stood near the mantel shelf in his upstairs sitting room and stared with unconcealed fury at the rigid figure opposite him.

“You searched his office and found nothing!” he said between his gritted teeth.

“Nothing of any interest to us,” the other man replied. He spoke English with complete ease, but without colloquialisms. “They concerned things with which we already know. The document was not there.”

“Well, it wasn’t in the Reavley house,” the Peacemaker said bitterly. “That was searched thoroughly.”

“Was it?” the other asked skeptically. “When?”

“During the funeral,” the Peacemaker replied, a dangerous temper audible in his voice. He did not like being challenged, particularly by someone considerably his junior in rank. It was only his respect for his cousin that made him tolerate this man to the degree he did. He was, after all, his cousin’s ally.

“Well, you have the copy Reavley was carrying,” the man pointed out. “I’ll follow the son. If he knows where it is, I’ll find it.”

The Peacemaker stood elegantly, looking as if he were at ease to anyone who glanced only casually. More careful scrutiny would have revealed tension in his body so great the fabric of his jacket was straining across his shoulders and his knuckles were white.

“There is no time,” he said in a hard, level voice. “Events will not wait. If you can’t see that, you’re a fool! We must use it within the next few days, or it will be too late.”

“One copy—”

“I have to have both! I can hardly offer him one!”

“I’ll get another,” the man offered.

The Peacemaker’s face was white. “You can’t!”

The other man straightened as if to leave immediately. “I’ll go back tonight.”

“It won’t help.” The Peacemaker held up his hand. “The kaiser is in a rage. You’ll get nothing. You might even lose what we have.” It was spoken with the unmistakable tone of a command.

The other man breathed in and out slowly several times, but he did not argue. There was anger in his face, and frustration, but it was not with the man known as the Peacemaker; it was with the circumstances he was forced to accept.

“You dealt with the other matter?” the Peacemaker asked, his voice little more than a whisper. There was pain in his face.

“Yes,” the man replied.

“How did he get hold of it, anyway?” the Peacemaker asked, sharp frown lines between his brows.

“He was the one who wrote it,” the other man answered.

“Wrote?” The demand was peremptory.

“Such things have to be written by hand,” the man explained. “It’s the law.”

“Damn!” the Peacemaker swore, just one word, but it carried a weight of passion, as if it were torn out of him with physical pain. He bent forward a little, his shoulders high, his muscles tight. “It shouldn’t have happened this way! We shouldn’t have let it! Reavley was a good man, the sort we need alive!”

“Can’t be helped,” the other explained with resignation.

“It should have been!” the Peacemaker grated, hard bitterness undisguised. “We’ve got to do better.”

The other man flinched a little. “We’ll try.”

Late on Saturday afternoon Matthew drove from London back to St. Giles. It had been an unpleasant day, not from any cause that he had expected, such as news from Ireland or the Balkans, but from an increasingly immediate domestic problem. A bomb had been found in a church in the heart of Westminster, with the fuse lit. Apparently it had been the work of a group of women who were agitating in increasingly violent ways to be given the right to vote.

Fortunately no one had been hurt, but the possibility of destruction was deeply disturbing. It had meant Matthew had been drawn from his investigation of Blunden and the political weapons that might have been used against him. Instead he had been busy all day with increasing the security in London itself, and had had to ask Shearing for permission to leave, which would not ordinarily have been the case on a weekend.

His sense of exhilaration as he drove out of the heat and enclosure of the city was like an escape from captivity. He felt almost intoxicated as the Sunbeam Talbot accelerated on the open road.

The weather was fine, another golden evening with great puffball clouds piling up in the east, with the sun blazing on them till they drifted like white galleons in the shimmering air, sails full set to the horizon. Beneath them the fields were already ripe with harvest.

The light deepened across the broader skies of the fenland, almost motionless in the amber of sunset.

Matthew drove into St. Giles, along the main street past the shining millpond, and turned along the road to the house. Mrs. Appleton met him at the front door and her face lit with pleasure.

“Oh, Mr. Matthew, it’s good you’re here. An’ you’ll be staying?” She stepped back to allow him in, just as Judith came down the stairs, having heard the crunch of car tires on the gravel.

Judith ran down the last couple of steps, Henry at her heels, his tail aloft. She threw her arms around Matthew, giving him a quick, fierce hug. Then she pulled back and looked at him more carefully.

“Yes, of course I’m staying,” he said to Mrs. Appleton over Judith’s shoulder. “At least until lunchtime tomorrow.”

“Is that all?” Judith demanded. “It’s Saturday evening now! Do they expect you to work all the time?”

He did not bother to argue. It was a discussion they had had before, and they were unlikely to agree. Matthew had a passion for his work that Judith would probably never understand. If there was anything that fired her will and her imagination enough to give all of herself to it, then she had not yet discovered what it was.

Matthew acknowledged the dog, then followed her into the familiar sitting room with its comfortable furniture and slightly worn carpet, colors muted by time. As soon as the door was closed, Judith asked him if he had discovered anything.

“No,” he said patiently, reclining in the big chair that had been his father’s. He was self-conscious about sitting in it. He had always taken it when his father was not there, but now it seemed like a statement of ownership. Yet to have sat somewhere else would have been awkward also, a break with habit that was absurd, another difference from the past that had no purpose.

She watched him, a tiny frown on her face.

“I suppose you are trying?” There was a flash of challenge in her eyes.

“That’s part of why I came up this weekend . . . and to see you, of course. Have you heard from Joseph?”

“A couple of letters. Have you?”

“Not since he went back.” He looked at her, trying to read her feelings from her expression. She sat a little sideways on the couch, with her feet tucked up, the way Alys had criticized and told her was unladylike. Was she as much in control as she looked, with her hair swept back from her calm brow, her smooth cheeks, and her wide, vulnerable mouth?

Or was the emotion bottled up inside her, too raw to touch, but eating away at her will? She was the one of them who was still living here in the house. How often did she come down the stairs and find herself startled that there was no one to greet her except Mrs. Appleton? Did she hear the silence, the missing voices, the footsteps? Did she imagine the familiar touch, the smell of pipe tobacco, the closed study door to indicate that John must not be interrupted? Did she listen for the sound of Alys singing to herself as she arranged flowers and did the dozens of other small things that showed someone in the house loved it?

He could escape. His life was the same as before, except for the occasional telephone call and the visits home. The difference was all inside. It was knowledge he could set aside when he needed to.

It would be like that for Hannah also, and for Joseph. He was worried about them as well, but differently. Hannah had Archie to comfort her and her children to need her and fill her time.

Joseph was different. Since Eleanor’s death something within him had retreated from emotions to hide in reason. Matthew had grown up with Joseph, who was seven years older and always seeming cleverer, wiser, and quicker. He had imagined he would catch up, but now in adulthood he began to think that perhaps Joseph had an intellect of extraordinary power. Understanding for which other people labored came to him with ease. He could climb on wings of thought into regions most people only imagined.

But Joseph also retreated from the realities of certain kinds of pain, and in the last year he had escaped more completely. In fleeting, unguarded moments, Matthew had seen this remoteness in his brother’s eyes.

Judith was watching him, waiting for him to continue.

“I’ve been pretty busy lately,” he said finally. “Everyone’s preoccupied with Ireland, and of course with the Balkan business.”

“Ireland I can understand, but why the Balkans?” She raised her eyebrows. “It hasn’t anything to do with us. Serbia is miles away—the other side of Italy, for heaven’s sake. It’s a pretty revolting thought, but won’t the Austrians just go in and take whatever they want in reparation, and punish the people responsible? Isn’t that what usually happens with revolutions—either they succeed and overthrow the government, or they get suppressed? Well, anyone who thinks a couple of Serbian assassins are going to overthrow the Austro-Hungarian Empire has to be crazy.” She shifted her feet around the other way and settled further into the cushions.

Henry got up from where he had been lying and rearranged himself closer to her.

“It’s not they who would do it,” Matthew said quietly.

“Who, then?” She frowned. “I thought it was just a few lunatic young men. Is that not true?”

“It seems as if it was,” he agreed. “War is just the last in a chain of events that could happen . . . but almost certainly someone will step in with enough sense to stop it. The bankers, if no one else. War would be far too expensive!”

She looked at him very levelly, her gray-blue eyes unflinching. “So why did you mention it?”

He forced himself to smile. “I wish I hadn’t. I just wanted you to know I’m not making excuses. I don’t know where to begin. I thought I’d go over and see Robert Isenham tomorrow. I expect he’ll be at church—I’ll see him afterward.”

“Sunday lunch?” she said with surprise. “He won’t thank you a lot for that! What do you want to ask him?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Nothing so blunt as that. You wouldn’t make a detective, would you!”

Her face tightened a little. “What do you think he knows?”

Matthew became serious again. “Maybe nothing, but if Father confided anything at all, it would probably be to Isenham. He might even have mentioned where he was going or whom he was expecting to see. I don’t know where to start, other than going through everyone he knew.”

“That could take forever.” She sat quite still, her face shadowed in thought. “What do you think it could be, Matthew? I mean . . . what would Father have known about? People who plot great conspiracies don’t leave documents lying around for anyone to find by chance.”

A chill touched him. For an instant he was not quite sure what it was, but the unpleasantness was certain. Then he saw it in her eyes, a fear she could not put words to.

“I know he didn’t find it by accident,” he answered her. “Unless it belonged to someone he knew very well . . .”

“Like Robert Isenham.” She finished the thought for him. “Be careful!” Now the fear was quite open.

“I will,” he promised. “There’s nothing suspicious in my going to see him. I would do it anyway, sooner or later. He was one of Father’s closest friends, geographically if nothing else. I know they disagreed about many things, but they liked each other underneath it.”

“You can like people and still betray them,” she said, “if it was for a cause you believed in passionately enough. You have to betray other people rather than betray yourself—if that’s what it comes to.” Then, seeing the surprise in his face, she added, “You told me that.”

“I did? I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do. It was last Christmas. I didn’t agree with you. We had quite a row. You told me I was naive, and idealists put causes before anything else. You told me I was being a woman, thinking of everything personally rather than in larger terms.”

“So you don’t agree with me, but you’ll quote my own words back at me in an argument?”

She bit her lip. “Actually, I do agree with you. I just wasn’t going to say so then. You’re cocky enough.”

“I’ll be careful.” He relaxed into a smile and leaned forward to touch her for a moment, and her hand closed tightly around his.

The morning was overcast and heavy with the clinging heat of a storm about to break. Matthew went to church, largely because he wanted to catch up with Isenham as if by chance.

The vicar caught sight of him in the congregation just before he began his sermon. Kerr was not a natural speaker, and the presence of overwhelming emotion in a member of his audience, especially one for whom he felt a responsibility, broke his concentration. He was embarrassed, only too obviously remembering the last time he had seen Matthew, which had been at his parents’ funeral. He had been unequal to the task then, and he knew he still was.

Sitting in the fifth row back, Matthew could almost feel the sweat break out on Kerr’s body at the thought of facing him after the service and scrambling for something appropriate to say. He smiled to himself and stared back expectantly. The only alternative was to leave, and that would be even worse.

Kerr struggled to the end. The last hymn was sung and the benediction pronounced, and row by row the congregation trooped out into the damp, motionless air.

Matthew went straight to Kerr and shook his hand. “Thank you, Vicar,” he said courteously. He could not leave without speaking to him, and he did not want to get waylaid and miss the chance to bump into Isenham. “Just came home to see how Judith is.”

“Not at church, I’m afraid,” Kerr replied dolefully. “Perhaps you could talk to her. Faith is a great solace at times like these.”

It was clumsy. There were no other “times like these.” How many people have both their parents murdered in a single, hideous crime? Of course Kerr did not know it was murder. But given Judith’s character, the last thing poor Kerr needed was an encounter with her! He would attempt desperately to be kind, to say something that would be of value to her, and she would grow more and more impatient with him, until she let him see how useless he was.

“Yes, of course,” Matthew murmured. “I’ll convey your good wishes to her. Thank you.” As he turned and left, he felt that was exactly what his mother would have said—or Joseph. And they would not have meant it any more than he did.

He caught up with Isenham in the lane just beyond the lych-gate. The man was easily recognizable even from behind. He was of average height, but barrel-chested with close-cropped fair hair graying rapidly, and he walked with a slight swagger.

He heard Matthew coming, even though his footsteps were light on the stony surface. He turned and smiled, holding out his hand. “How are you, Matthew? Bearing up?” It was a question, and also half an instruction. Isenham had served twenty years in the army and seen action in the Boer War. He believed profoundly in the Stoic values. Emotion was fine, even necessary, but it should never be given in to, except in the most private of times and places, and then only briefly.

“Yes, sir.” Matthew knew what was expected, and he meant this encounter to earn him Isenham’s confidence and to learn from it anything John Reavley might have told him, even in the most indirect way. “The last thing Father would have wanted would be for us to fall apart.”

“Quite! Quite!” Isenham agreed firmly. “Fine man, your father. We’ll all miss him.”

Matthew fell into step beside him, as if he had been going that way, although as soon as they came to the end of the lane he would turn the opposite direction to go home.

“I wish I’d known him better.” Matthew meant that with an intensity that showed raw through his voice, more than he wanted. He meant to be in control of this conversation. “I expect you were probably as close as anyone,” he continued more briskly. “Funny how differently family see a person . . . until you’re adult, anyway.”

Isenham nodded. “Yes. Never thought of it, but I suppose you’re right. Funny thing, that. Look at one’s parents in a different light, I suppose.” Unconsciously he increased his pace.

Matthew kept up with him easily, as his legs were longer. “You were probably the last person he really talked with,” he went on. “I hadn’t seen him the previous weekend, nor had Joseph, and Judith was out so often.”

“Yes, I suppose I was.” Isenham dug his hands deep into his pockets. “It’s been a very bad time. Did you hear about Sebastian Allard? Dreadful business.” He hesitated an instant. “Joseph will be very upset about that, too. I daresay the boy wouldn’t even have gone up to Cambridge, if it weren’t for Joseph’s encouragement.”

“Sebastian Allard?” Matthew was confused.

Isenham turned to look at him, stopping in the road where it had already changed into the long, tree-lined avenue down toward his own house. “Oh, dear. No one told you.” He looked a trifle abashed. “I presume they felt you’d had enough to get over. Sebastian Allard was murdered, in Cambridge. Right in college . . . St. John’s. Devilish thing. Yesterday morning. I only heard from Hutchinson. He’s known the Allards for years. Dreadfully cut up, of course.” He pursed his lips. “Can’t expect you to feel the same, naturally. I imagine you’ve got all the grief you can manage at the moment.”

“I’m very sorry,” Matthew said quietly. There was no sound here in the shelter of the trees and not a breath in the air. “What an appalling tragedy,” he said to fill the silence. “I must call in on Joseph before I go back to London. He’ll be very grieved. He’s known Sebastian for years.” He was aware of the numbing pain Joseph would feel, but now he wanted to ask Isenham about John Reavley. He forced all other thoughts out of his mind and kept pace with him in the shade of the ancient elms that closed out the sky above them.

Again the tiny thunder flies were hovering, irritating the eyes and face. Matthew swatted at them, even though he knew it was useless. If only it would hurry up and rain! He did not mind getting wet, and it would be a good excuse to stay at Isenham’s house longer. “Actually, it’s been a pretty rotten time altogether,” he continued. “I know a good few people are worried about this Balkan business.”

Isenham took his hands out of his pockets. “Ah! Now there you have a real cause for anxiety,” he said, his broad, windburned face intensely serious. “That’s very worrying, you know? Yes, I expect you do know . . . I daresay more than I do, eh?” He searched Matthew’s eyes intently.

Matthew was a little taken aback. He had not realized that Isenham knew where he worked. Presumably John had said something? In pride, or confiding a shame? The thought stung with all the old sharpness, multiplied by the fact that now Matthew would never be able to prove to his father the value of his profession, and that it was not devious or grubby, full of betrayals and moral compromise.

“Yes,” Matthew acknowledged. “Yes, it’s pretty ugly. Austria has demanded reparation, and the kaiser has reasserted Germany’s alliance with them. And of course the Russians are bound to be loyal to Serbia.”

The first heavy drops of rain spattered on the leaves, and far in the distance thunder rattled like a heavy cart over cobbles, jolting and jarring around the horizon.

“War,” Isenham said succinctly. “Drag us all in, damn it! Need to get ready for it. Prepare men and guns.”

“Did Father know that, do you think?” Matthew asked.

Isenham pursed his lips before responding. “Not sure, honestly.” It was an unfinished remark, as if he had stopped before he said too much.

Matthew waited.

Isenham looked unhappy, but he apparently realized he had to continue. “Seemed a trifle odd lately. Nervous, you know? He . . . er . . .” He shook his head. “The day before he died he expected war.” He was puzzled. “Not like him, not at all.” He increased his pace, his body stiff, shoulders straight. The rain was beating on the canopy of leaves above them and beginning to come through. “Sorry, Matthew, but there it is. Can’t lie about it. Definitely odd.”

“In what way?” Matthew asked, the words coming automatically as his mind raced to absorb this new information and at the same time defend himself from what it meant.

He was relieved that the weather made it so easy to stay with Isenham, although at the same time it allowed him no excuse to avoid asking still more searching questions. Thank goodness the house was no more than sixty yards away or they would get very wet indeed. Isenham bent forward and began to run. “Come on!” he shouted. “You’ll get soaked, man!”

They reached the gate of his garden and dashed through to open the front door. The path was already swimming in water, and the smell of hot, wet earth filled the air. Plants drooped under the fierceness of the storm as it drummed on the leaves.

As Matthew turned to close the gate behind him, he saw a man walking across the lane, coat collar turned up, dark face shining wet. Then the figure disappeared through the trees.

Matthew found Isenham inside and stood dripping in the hallway, surrounded by oak paneling, hunting prints, and leather straps with horse brasses in dozens of different designs.

“Thank you.” Matthew accepted the towel Isenham offered him and dried his hands and his face on it. The rain could not have come at a better time if he had designed it. “I think there were certain groups Father was worried about,” he went on, picking up the conversation before their dash to the gate.

Isenham lifted his shoulders in a gesture of denial and took the towel back, dropping it on the floor by the cloakroom door along with his own. “He said something about plots, but frankly, Matthew, it was all a bit . . . fanciful.” He evidently had struggled to find a polite word, but the real meaning was plain in his face. He shook his head. “Most of our disasters came from good, old-fashioned British blunders. We don’t plot our way into wars. We trip over our own feet and fall into them by accident.” He winced, looking apologetic, and rubbed his hand over his wet hair. “Win in the end, on the principle that God looks after fools and drunkards. Presumably he has a soft spot for us as well.”

“You don’t think he could have found something?”

Isenham’s face tightened. “No. He lost the thread a bit, honestly. He rambled on about the mutiny in the Curragh—at least that’s what I think he was talking about. Wasn’t very clear, you know. Said it would get a lot worse, hinted that it would end in a conflagration that could engulf all England, even Europe.” He colored with embarrassment. “Nonsense, you see? War minister resigned and all that, I know, but hardly Europe in flames. Don’t suppose anyone across the Channel gives a damn about it one way or the other. Got their own problems. You’d better stay for a bite of lunch,” he added, looking at Matthew’s sodden shoulders and feet. “I’ve got a telephone. Call Judith and let her know.”

He turned and led the way to the dining room, where his housekeeper had laid out cold meat, pickles, fresh bread and butter, a newly baked pie that had barely cooled, and a jug of thick cream.

“Sufficient for two, I think,” he pronounced. He ignored his own wet clothes because he could do nothing about Matthew’s. It was part of his code of hospitality that he should sit to dine in dripping trouser legs, because his guest was obliged to do so.

“You don’t think the Irish situation could escalate?” Matthew said when they were halfway through the excellent cold lamb and he had taken the edge off his hunger.

“To involve Europe? Not a chance of it. Domestic matter. Always has been.” Isenham took another mouthful and swallowed before continuing. “I’m sorry, but poor old John was a bit misled. Ran off with the wrong end of things. It happens.”

It was the note of pity in his voice that Matthew could not bear. He thought of his father and saw his face as vividly as if he had left the room only minutes before, grave and gentle, his eyes as direct as Judith’s. He had a quick temper at times and he suffered fools badly, but he was a man without guile. To hear him spoken of with such condescension hurt fiercely, and Matthew was instantly defensive.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “What happens?” He heard the anger inside himself and knew he had to control it. He was sitting in Isenham’s house, eating his food, and more important than that, he needed his help. “What was it he was afraid of?”

“Best leave it,” Isenham replied, looking down at his plate and very carefully balancing a piece of pickle on the crust of his bread.

“Are you saying he was deluded?” The instant it was out, he wished he had chosen a word less pejorative. He was betraying his own hurt, as well as leaving himself unguarded. It sabotaged his purpose. He was angry with himself. He had more skill than that!

Isenham raised his eyes, hot and miserable. “No, no, of course not. He was just . . . a little jumpy. I daresay we all are, what with the army mutinying, and then all this violence in the Balkans.”

“Father didn’t know about the archduke,” Matthew pointed out. “He and Mother were killed that day themselves.”

“Killed?” Isenham asked.

Matthew amended it instantly. “When the car went off the road.”

“Of course. I’m . . . I’m sorrier than I can say. Look, wouldn’t you rather—”

“No. I’d like to know what he was worried about. You see, he mentioned it to me, but only briefly.” Was that a risk? It was a deliberate one. He watched Isenham’s face minutely for even a flicker of the eyes that would give away more than the older man had said, but there was none. Isenham was merely embarrassed.

“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to let down an old friend. Remember him as he was, Matthew.”

“Was it really so bad?” It was barely within Matthew’s control not to lash back.

Isenham flushed. “No, of course not! Just . . . just a misinterpretation of facts, I think. A touch overdramatic, out of proportion. After all . . .” He was trying to make it better, and failing. “We’ve always had wars here or there over the last thousand years or so. It’s our national spirit, our destiny, if you like.” His voice lifted with his own belief. “We’ll survive it. We always do. It’ll be nasty for a while, but I daresay it won’t last more than a few months.”

It was clear to Matthew that Isenham was aware of having revealed his friend’s weakness to the man’s own son, and when John Reavley was not here to defend himself. “I’m sure in a little while he would have seen that,” he added lamely.

Matthew leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What was it he thought?” He felt his heart hammering.

“That’s it,” Isenham said, shaking his head from side to side. “He wasn’t clear. Honestly, Matthew, I don’t think he knew! I think . . . I didn’t want to say this, but you force me to.” He looked resentful, his face red even under his windburn. “I think he got hold of half an idea and imagined the rest. He wouldn’t tell me what it was because I don’t think he could. But it had something to do with honor . . . and he wanted war. There! I’m sorry. I knew it would hurt you, but you insisted.”

It was preposterous. John Reavley would never countenance war, no matter what anyone had done. It was barbaric, revolting! It was utterly unlike anything he believed in and had fought for all his life, against all the decency he had treasured, nurtured, every human faith he had professed! The very reason at the heart of his hatred of the intelligence services was what he saw as their dishonesty, then manipulation of people to serve nationalist ends, and ultimately to make war more likely.

“He wouldn’t want war!” Matthew said aloud, his voice shaking. The mere idea tore away all that was certain inside him.

But then, how well had he known his father? How many children knew their fathers as men, as fighters, lovers, friends? Do children ever become old enough to see clearly beyond the tie of love?

“He wouldn’t ever want war!” Matthew repeated intensely, fixing Isenham with a glare.

Isenham nodded. “He had half a story and he wasn’t making sense of it. He was a good man. Remember that, Matthew, and forget the rest.” He took another bite of bread and pickle, then helped himself to more meat, speaking with his mouth full. “This kind of tension makes everyone a bit jumpy. Fear does different things to people. Some run away. Some go forward to meet it before it’s there—can’t bear the suspense. Seems John was one of those. Seen it out on the hunting field sometimes, more in the army. Takes a strong man to wait.”

Matthew felt the accusation of weakness scald with a pain almost physical. John Reavley was not weak! Matthew drew in his breath in a gasp, longing to retort with something that would crush the notion out of existence, but he could not find even an idea, let alone words.

“There are no grand conspiracies, only nasty little plots now and then,” Isenham continued, as if unaware of the emotions raging inside Matthew. “He wasn’t in government anymore, and I think he missed it. But look around you.” He waved his free hand. “What could be going on here?”

The truth sank in on Matthew with a slowly crushing weight: Isenham was probably right, and the harder he struggled against the realization, the tighter it coiled around him.

“You should remember the best in him, Matthew,” Isenham said. “That was what he was really like.”

Then Isenham deliberately changed the subject, and Matthew allowed the conversation to move to other matters: the weather, people in the village, an upcoming cricket match, the daily minutiae of a safe and gentle life in the peace of a perfect summer.

He walked home again when the rain had stopped. The elms were still dripping, and the road steamed in glittering drifts like silken gauze, too faint to catch, and yet weaving brightness around him. The perfume of the earth was almost overpowering. Wet leaves and flowers shone as the sunlight caught them.

Birdsong was sudden and liquid, a beauty of sound, and then gone again.

As he passed the church he saw a man move very quickly into the shadow of the lych-gate, the thick honeysuckle completely hiding him. When Matthew drew level and looked sideways, he was gone. He was certain from his height and the oddly sloping angle of his shoulders that it was the same man he had seen earlier on his way to Isenham’s house. Was he going somewhere and had taken shelter from the rain? Without having any reason he could name, Matthew went under the lych-gate and into the churchyard.

There was no one there. He walked a few paces between the gravestones and looked toward the only place where anyone could be concealed. The man had not gone into the church; the door had been in Matthew’s sight all the time.

He walked two or three yards farther on, then to the right, and saw the outline of the man half concealed by the trunks of the yew trees. He was standing motionless. There was nothing ahead of him but the churchyard wall, and he was looking not down, as if at headstones, but out across the empty fields.

Matthew bent his head as if reading the gravestone in front of him. He remained motionless for several moments. The man behind the yew tree did not move, either.

Finally Matthew walked over to his parents’ grave. There were fresh flowers. Judith must have put them there. There was no stone yet. It looked very raw, very new. This morning two weeks ago they had still been alive.

The world looked just the same, but it wasn’t. Everything was altered, as a golden day when suddenly the clouds mass across the sun. All the outlines are the same, but the colors are different, duller, something of the life gone from them.

The caltrop marks on the road had been real, the rope on the sapling, the shredded tires, the searching of the house, and now this man who seemed to be following him.

Or was this exactly what his father had done, added together little pieces that had no connection with each other, and made of them a whole that reflected no reality? Maybe the marks were not caltrops but something else, put there not at the time of the crash but some other time that day. Perhaps an agricultural implement of some sort had stopped and left scars from the blades of a harrow?

Had there really been anyone in the house, or was it just things rearranged wrongly in the shock of tragedy, a reversal of habit, along with everything else?

And what was to prove the man behind the yews had anything to do with Matthew? He might not want to be seen for a dozen reasons: something as simple as an illicit Sunday afternoon assignation, or a grave to visit privately, to conceal his emotion. Was this how delusion started? A shock, too much time to think, a need to feel as if you understood, so you find yourself weaving everything together, regardless of wherever it fits?

For a moment he considered speaking to the man, a comment on the rain, perhaps, then decided not to intrude on his contemplation. Instead he straightened up and walked back through the lych-gate and out into the lane without looking toward the yews again.

CHAPTER

SIX

Afew miles away in Cambridge the Sunday was also quiet and miserable. Thunder threatened all morning, and by the afternoon it rolled in from the west with heavy rain. Joseph spent most of the day alone. Like everyone else, he went to chapel at eleven, and for an hour he drowned all thought in the glory of the music. He ate luncheon in the dining hall; in spite of its magnificence, it was claustrophobic because of the heat and the oppressive weather outside. With an effort he joined in casual conversation with Harry Beecher regarding the latest finds in Egyptology, about which Beecher was wildly enthusiastic. Afterward he went back to his rooms to read. The Illustrated London News lay on the table in his study, and he glanced at the theater and arts sections, avoiding the current events, which were dominated by pictures of the funeral of the great statesman Joseph Chamberlain. He had no desire whatever to look at pictures of mourners, whoever they were.

He considered scriptures, then instead lost himself in the familiar glory of Dante’s Inferno. Its imagery was so sharp it carried him out of the present, and its wisdom was timeless enough, at least for the moment, to lift him above personal grief and confusion.

It was infinitely just—the punishments for sin were not visited from outside, decided by a higher power, but were the sins themselves, perpetuated eternally, stripped of the masks that had made them seductive once. Those who had given in to the selfish storms of passion, regardless of the cost to others, were now battered and driven by unceasing gales, forced to rise before them without rest. And so it was, down through the successive circles, the sins of indulgence, that injured self, the sins of anger that injured others, to the betrayal and corruption of the mind which damaged all mankind. It made infinite sense.

And yet, Joseph reasoned, beauty was there. Christ still “walked the waters of Styx with unwet feet.”

If Inspector Perth was working, Joseph did not see him that day. Nor did he see Aidan Thyer or any of the Allard family.

Matthew called in briefly on his way back to London, simply to say how sorry he was about Sebastian. He was gentle, full of a tacit compassion.

“It’s rotten,” he said briefly, sitting in Joseph’s rooms in the last of the twilight. “I’m very sorry.”

Hundreds of words turned in Joseph’s mind, but none of them seemed important, and certainly none of them helped. He remained in silence, simply glad that Matthew was there.

However, Monday was entirely different. It was July 13. It seemed that on the previous day the prime minister had spoken at length about the failure of the army’s present methods of recruitment—a sharp and unpleasant reminder that if the Balkan situation was not resolved and war erupted, then Britain might be unable to defend itself.

Far more immediate to Joseph was Perth’s presence in St. John’s. The inspector moved about discreetly, speaking to one person after another. Joseph caught glimpses of him, always just going, leaving behind him a wake of deeply troubled young men.

“I hate it!” Elwyn said as he and Joseph met crossing the quad. Elwyn was flustered, as if he were being harried on all sides, trying to do something for everyone and desperate to be alone and deal with his own grief. He stared after Perth’s disappearing figure.

“He seems to think it’s one of us!” Elwyn said exasperatedly, the disbelief evident in his voice. “Mother’s watching him like a hawk. She thinks he’s going to produce an answer any minute. But even if he did, it wouldn’t bring Sebastian back.” He looked down at the ground. “And that’s the only thing that would make her happy.”

Joseph could see in his face all that he did not say, and imagined it only too easily: Mary Allard wild with pain, lashing out at everyone without realizing what she was doing to her other son, while Gerald offered ineffectual and comforting remarks that only made her worse—and, finally, Elwyn trying desperately to be whatever they expected of him.

“I know it’s wretched,” Joseph replied. “Do you feel like leaving college for a while? Take a walk into town? I need new socks. I left some of mine at home.”

Elwyn’s eyes widened. “Oh, God! I forgot about your parents. I’m so sorry!”

Joseph smiled. “It’s all right. I forget at times. Do you feel like a walk?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, I do. Actually, I need a couple of books. I’ll go to Heffer’s. You can try Eaden Lilley’s. They’re about the best for haberdashery around here.”

They walked together back across the quad and out of the main gate into St. John’s Street, then right into Sydney Street. It was fine and dry after the rain, and the Monday morning traffic included at least half a dozen motorcars, along with delivery vans, drays, and wagons. Cyclists and pedestrians wove in and out of them at practiced speed. It was quieter than term time because the usual gowned figures of students were absent.

“If they don’t find anyone, what will happen?” Elwyn said when they had the chance to speak and be heard.

“I suppose they’ll give up,” Joseph answered. He looked sideways at his companion, seeing the anxiety in his face. He could imagine Mary Allard’s fury. Perhaps that was what Elwyn was thinking of, too, and afraid of. “But they will.” The instant the words were out, he knew they were a mistake. He saw the bleak pain in Elwyn. He stopped on the footpath, reaching for Elwyn’s arm and swinging him round to a standstill also. “Do you know anything?” he asked abruptly. “Are you afraid to say it, in case it would give somebody a motive for killing Sebastian?”

“No, I don’t!” Elwyn retorted, his face flushed, his eyes hot. “Sebastian wasn’t anything like as perfect as Mother thinks, but he was basically pretty decent. You know that! Of course he said some stupid things, and he could cut you to bits with his tongue, but so can lots of people. You have to live with that. It’s like being good at rowing, or boxing, or anything else. You win sometimes, and sometimes you lose. Even those who didn’t like Sebastian didn’t hate him!” His emotion was overwhelming. “I wish they . . . I wish they didn’t have to do this!”

“So do I,” Joseph said sincerely. “Perhaps it will turn out to be more of an accident than deliberate.”

Elwyn did not dignify that with an answer. “Do you think there’ll be war, sir?” he asked instead, beginning to walk again.

Joseph thought of the prime minister’s words in the newspaper. “We have to have an army, whether there’s war or not,” he reasoned. “And the mutiny in the Curragh has shown a few weaknesses.”

“I’ll say!” Elwyn pushed his hands into his pockets, his shoulders tense. He was broader, more muscular than Sebastian, but there was an echo of his brother in the fair hair and the warm tones of his skin. “He went to Germany in the spring, you know?” he continued.

Joseph was startled. “Sebastian? No, I didn’t know. He never mentioned it.”

Elwyn shot a glance at him, pleased to have known first. “He loved it,” he said with a little smile. “He meant to go back when he could. He was reading Schiller, when he had time. And Goethe, of course. He said you’d have to be a barbarian not to love the music! The whole of human history has produced only one Beethoven.”

“I knew he was afraid, of course,” Joseph answered him. “We spoke of it just the other day.”

Elwyn’s head jerked up, his eyes wide. “You mean worried, not afraid! Sebastian wasn’t a coward!”

“I know that,” Joseph said quickly and honestly. “I meant that he was afraid for the beauty that would be destroyed, not for himself.”

“Oh.” Elwyn relaxed again. In that single gesture Joseph could see a wealth of Mary’s passion, her pride and brittleness, her identification with her sons, especially the elder. “Yes, of course,” Elwyn added. “Sorry.”

Joseph smiled at him. “Don’t think of it. And don’t spend your time trying to imagine who hated Sebastian, or why. Leave it to Inspector Perth. Look after yourself . . . and your mother.”

“I am,” Elwyn answered him. “All that I can.”

“I know.”

Elwyn nodded unhappily. “Goodbye, sir.” He turned away toward the bookshop and left Joseph to continue on his way to the department store to look for socks.

Once inside, he wandered around the tables and the ceiling-high shelves. He was outside again, with a pair of black socks and a pair of dark gray ones, when he bumped into Edgar Morel.

Morel looked flustered. “Sorry, sir,” he apologized, stepping aside. “I . . . I was miles away.”

“Everyone’s upset,” Joseph responded, and was about to move when he realized that Morel was still looking at him.

A young woman passed them. She was wearing a navy and white dress, her hair swept up under a straw hat. She hesitated an instant, smiling at Morel. He colored, seemed about to say something, then averted his eyes. The young woman changed her mind and quickened her step.

“I hope she didn’t go on my account,” Joseph commented.

“No!” Morel said too vehemently. “She . . . she was really more Sebastian’s friend than mine. I expect she just wanted to give her condolences.”

Joseph thought that was less than the truth. She had looked at Morel with some urgency.

“Did he know her well?” he asked. She had seemed an attractive girl, perhaps a little under twenty, and she carried herself with grace.

“I don’t know,” Morel replied, and this time Joseph was certain it was a lie. “Sorry for banging into you, sir,” he went on. “Excuse me.” And before Joseph could say anything else, Morel moved very quickly to the doorway of Eaden Lilley’s and disappeared inside.

Joseph walked on farther into the town, stopping for a while in Petty Cury, leading toward the market. He passed Jas. Smith and Sons and then the Star and Garter, dodged a couple of delivery carts and two dangerously speeding bicycles, and came back by Trinity Street to St. John’s.

Tuesday was much the same, a routine of small chores. He saw Inspector Perth coming and going busily, but he managed to put Sebastian’s death out of his mind most of the time, until Nigel Eardslie caught up with him crossing the quad early in the afternoon. It was hot and still again; the windows of all the occupied rooms were wide open, and every now and then the sound of music or laughter drifted out.

“Dr. Reavley!”

Joseph stopped.

Eardslie’s square face was puckered with anxiety, hazel eyes fixed on Joseph’s. “That policeman’s just been talking to me, sir, asking a lot of questions about Allard. I really don’t know what to say.” He looked awkward.

“If you know something that could have a bearing on his death, then you’ll have to tell him the truth,” Joseph answered.

“I don’t know what the truth is!” Eardslie said desperately. “If it’s just a matter of where I was or whether I saw this or that, then of course I can answer. But he wanted to know what Allard was like! And how do I answer that decently?”

“You knew him pretty well,” Joseph said. “Tell him about his character, how he worked, who his friends were, his hopes and ambitions.”

“He didn’t get killed for any of those,” Eardslie replied, a slight impatience in his voice. “Do I tell him about his sarcasm as well? The way he could cut you raw with his tongue and make you feel like a complete fool?” His face was tight and unhappy.

Joseph wanted to deny it. This was not the man he had known. But then no student would dare exercise his pride or cruelty on a tutor. A bully chooses the easy targets.

“I could tell him how funny Sebastian was,” Eardslie was continuing. “He made me laugh sometimes till I couldn’t get my breath and my chest hurt, but it could be at someone else’s expense, especially if they’d criticized him lately.”

Joseph did not reply.

“Do I tell him that he could forgive wonderfully and that he expected to be forgiven, no matter what he’d done, because he was clever and beautiful?” Eardslie rushed on. “And if you borrowed something without asking, even if you lost it or broke it, he could wave it aside and make you think he didn’t care, even if it was something he valued.” His mouth pinched a little, and the light faded in his eyes. “But if you questioned his judgment or beat him at one of the things that mattered to him, he could carry a grudge further than anyone else I know. He was generous . . . he’d give you anything. But God, he could be cruel!” He stared at Joseph helplessly. “I can’t tell the police that. He’s dead.”

Joseph felt numb. That was not the Sebastian he knew. Was Eardslie’s the voice of envy? Or was he speaking the truth Joseph had refused to see?

“You don’t believe me, do you!” Eardslie challenged him. “Perth might, but the others won’t. Morel knows Sebastian took his girl, Abigail something, and then dumped her. I think he did it simply because he could. She saw Sebastian and thought of him as this sort of young Apollo and he let her believe it. It flattered him.”

“You can’t help it if someone falls in love with you,” Joseph protested, but he remembered the character attributed to the Greek god, the childishness, the vanity, the petty spite, as well as the beauty.

Eardslie looked at him with barely concealed anger. “You can help what you do about it!” he retorted. “You don’t take your friend’s girl. Would you?” Then he blushed, looking wretched. “I’m sorry, sir. That was rude.” He jerked his chin up. “But Perth keeps asking. We want to be decent to the dead, and we want to be fair. But someone killed him, and they say it had to be one of us. I keep looking at everyone and wondering if it was them.

“I met Rattray along the Backs yesterday evening, and I started remembering quarrels he’d had with Sebastian, and wondering if it could be him. He’s got a hell of a temper.” He blushed. “Then I remembered a quarrel I’d had, and wondered if he was thinking the same thing of me!” His eyes pleaded for some kind of reassurance. “Everybody’s changed! Suddenly I don’t feel as if I really know anyone . . . and even worse than that, in a way, I don’t think anyone trusts me, either. I know who I am and that I didn’t do it, but no one else knows!” He took a deep breath. “The friendships I took for granted aren’t there anymore. It’s done that already!”

“They are still there,” Joseph said firmly. “Get a grip on your imagination, Eardslie. Of course everyone is upset over Sebastian’s death, and frightened. But in a day or two I expect Perth will have it solved, and you’ll all realize that your suspicions were unfounded. One person did something tragic and possibly evil, but the rest of you are just what you were before.” His voice sounded flat and unreal. He did not believe what he was saying himself—how could Eardslie? He deserved better than that, but Joseph did not have anything to give that was both comforting and even remotely honest.

“Yes, sir,” Eardslie said obediently. “Thank you, sir.” And he turned and walked away, disappearing through the arch into the second quad, leaving Joseph alone.

The following morning Joseph was sitting in his study again, having written to Hannah, which he had found difficult. It was simple enough to begin, but as soon as he tried to say something honest, he saw her face in his mind and he saw the loneliness in her, the bewilderment she tried to hide and failed. She was not accustomed to grief. The gentleness she had for others was rooted in the certainties of her own life; first her parents and Joseph, then Matthew and Judith, younger than she and relying on her, wanting to be like her. Later it had been Archie, and then her own children.

She reminded him so much of Alys, not only in her looks but in her gestures, the tone of her voice, sometimes even the words she used, the colors she liked, the way she peeled an apple or marked the page in a book she was reading with a folded spill of paper.

Hannah and Eleanor had liked each other immediately, as if they had been friends who had simply not seen each other for a while. He remembered how much pleasure that had given him.

Hannah had been the first one to come to him after Eleanor’s death, and she had missed her the most, even though they had lived miles apart. He knew they had written every week, long letters full of thoughts and feelings, trivial details of domestic life, more a matter of affection than of news. Writing to Hannah now was difficult, full of ghosts.

He had finished, more or less satisfactorily, and was trying to compose a letter to Judith when there was a discreet tap on the door.

Assuming it was a student, he simply called for whoever it was to come in. However, it was Perth who entered and closed the door behind him.

“Morning, Reverend,” he said cheerfully. He still wore the same dark suit, slightly stretched at the knees, and a clean, stiff collar. “Sorry if Oi’m interrupting your letters.”

“Good morning, Inspector,” Joseph replied, rising to his feet, partly from courtesy, but also because he felt startled and at a disadvantage still sitting. “Do you have some news?” He was not even sure what answer he wanted to hear. There had to be a resolution, but he was not yet ready to accept that anyone he knew could have killed Sebastian, even though his brain understood that it had to be true.

“Not really what you’d call news,” Perth replied, shaking his head. “Oi bin talking to your young gentlemen, o’ course.” He ran his fingers over his thin hair. “Trouble is, if a man says he was in bed at half past foive in the morning, who’s to know if he’s telling the truth or not? But Oi can’t afford to take his word for it, you see? Different for you, ’cos Oi know from Dr. Beecher that you was out rowing on the river.”

“Oh?” Joseph was surprised. He did not remember seeing Beecher. He invited Perth to sit down. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to help. There would be no one around in the corridors or on the stairs at that time.”

“Unfortunately for us.” Perth sat in the large chair opposite the one Joseph had risen from, and Joseph sank back into his own. “No witnesses at all,” Perth said dolefully. “Still, people ain’t often obliging enough to commit murder when they know someone else is looking at ’em. Usually we can write off a goodly number because o’ their being able to show they was somewhere else.” He studied Joseph gravely. “We come at a crime, particularly a murder, from three sorts of angles, Reverend.” He held up one finger. “First, who had the opportunity? If somebody weren’t there at the time, that cuts them out.”

“Naturally,” Joseph nodded.

Perth regarded him steadily. “Second,” he continued, putting up the next finger, “there’s the means, in this case a gun. Who had a gun?”

“I have no idea.”

“That’s a shame, you see, because no one else has neither, leastways not that they’re telling of.” Perth still had a pleasant air about him, as if he were a lecturer with a bright student, leading him through the points of a piece of logic. “We know it was a small gun, a revolver of some sort, because of the bullet—which we got, by the way.”

Joseph winced at the horrible thought of its passage through Sebastian’s torn brain, presumably into the wall of the room. He had not looked. Now he was aware of Perth’s eyes watching him, but he could not keep the revulsion from his face, or the slight feeling of sickness from his stomach.

“An’ o’ course it would be awkward like to be carrying a rifle or a shotgun around with you in a place like this,” Perth went on, his voice unemotional. “Nowhere to hide it from being seen, except in a case for a trumpet or something like that. But what would anybody be doing with a trumpet at foive o’clock in the morning?”

“Cricket bat,” Joseph said instantly. “If . . .”

Perth’s eyes widened. “Very clever, Reverend! Oi never thought o’ that, but you’re right. A nice early practice out on that lovely grass by the river, or even one o’ those cricket fields—Fenner’s, or what’s the other one, Parker’s Piece?”

“Parker’s Piece belongs to the town,” Joseph pointed out. “The university uses Fenner’s. But you can’t practice cricket by yourself.”

“O’ course. Town and gown—separate.” Perth nodded, pursing his lips. The difference was a gulf between them, uncrossable, and Joseph had inadvertently just reminded him of it. “But then, you see, our fellow might not have bin sticking to the rules,” he said stiffly, his expression tight, defensive. “In fact, he might not even have practiced at all, seeing as he would have had a gun in his case, not a bat.” He leaned forward. “But since we’re having a lot o’ trouble finding this gun, which could be anywhere by now, that means we got just the last thing left on which to catch him, doesn’t it? Motive!” He held up his third finger.

Joseph should have realized it from the moment Perth had come in. The inspector knew Joseph would have nothing to give him on means or opportunity. He would hardly be here simply to keep Joseph informed. “I see,” he said flatly.

“Oi’m sure as you do, Reverend,” Perth agreed, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “Not easy to find that out. Not even counting the fact that no one wants to incriminate ’emselves, they don’t want to speak ill o’ the dead neither. It ain’t decent. People talk the greatest rubbish Oi ever heard about a person just because they’re dead. Why do you think that is, Reverend? You must come across a lot of that in your line o’ work.”

“I don’t have an active ministry now,” Joseph explained, surprised by the pang of guilt it caused him, like a captain having left his ship in bad weather, and before his crew. That was ridiculous; what he was doing here was just as important a job, and one to which he was far better suited.

“Still ordained, though, aren’t you.” Perth made it a statement.

“Yes.”

“You must be a good judge o’ folk, an’ Oi dare say as they trust you more’n most, tell you things?”

“Sometimes,” Joseph said carefully, aware with a biting hollowness that he had been confided in very little, or he would not be as confused as he was by this eruption of violence. “But a confidence is precisely that, Inspector, and I would not break it. However, I can tell you that I have no idea who killed Sebastian Allard, or why.”

Perth nodded slowly. “Oi took that for granted, sir. But you know these young men mebbe better’n anyone else.”

“I don’t know of any reason!” Joseph protested. “Being a minister means that people tend not to tell you their uglier thoughts!” He realized with dismay how profoundly that was true. How many things had he been blind to? For how long? Years? Had his own pain made him retreat from reality into uselessness? Then, without grasping the fullness of what he said, he spoke with sudden intensity. “But I shall find out! I ought to have known!” He meant it, savagely, with the intensity of a drowning man’s need for air. Perth might need to solve Sebastian’s murder for his professional reputation, or even to prove that town was as good as gown, but Joseph needed to do it for his belief in reason and the power of men to rise above chaos.

Perth nodded slowly, but his eyes were wide and unblinking. “Very good, Reverend.” He drew in his breath as if about to add something more, then just nodded again.

After Perth had gone, Joseph began to appreciate the enormity of what he had promised himself. There was no point in waiting for people to reveal some anger or resentment against Sebastian. They had not done so before; they certainly would not now. He had to go and investigate for himself.

The first person he spoke to was Aidan Thyer. He found him at home finishing a late breakfast. He looked tired and flustered, his fair hair more faded by gray than had been apparent at a glance, his face unrefreshed by sleep. He looked up at Joseph in surprise as the maid showed him into the dining room.

“Good morning, Reavley. Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“Nothing new,” Joseph replied a trifle drily.

“Tea?” Thyer offered.

“Thank you.” Joseph sat down, not because he particularly wanted tea, but it obliged the master to continue the conversation. “How are Gerald and Mary?”

Thyer’s face tightened. “Inconsolable. I suppose it’s natural. I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a son, let alone in such a way.” He took another bite of his toast. “Connie’s doing everything she can, but nothing makes the slightest difference.”

“I suppose one of the worst things is realizing that someone hated him so much they resorted to murder. I admit, I had no idea there was such a passion in anyone.” Joseph poured himself tea from the silver pot and sipped it tentatively. It was very hot; obviously someone had refilled it. “Which shows that I was paying far too little attention.”

Thyer looked at him with surprise. “I had no idea, either! For God’s sake, do you think that if I had—”

“No! Of course not,” Joseph said quickly. “But you might at least have been more aware than I of an undercurrent of emotion, a rivalry, an insult, real or imagined, or some kind of a threat.” The truth embarrassed him, and it was hard to admit. “I had my head so buried in their academic work that I paid too little attention to their other thoughts or feelings. Perhaps you didn’t?”

“You’re an idealist,” Thyer agreed, picking up his tea, but the sharp perception in his eyes was not unkind.

“And you can’t afford to be,” Joseph replied. “Who hated Sebastian?”

“That’s blunt!”

“I think it would be better if we knew before Perth did, don’t you?”

Thyer put down his cup again and regarded Joseph steadily. “Actually, more people than you would care to think. You were very fond of him, knowing the family, and perhaps he showed you the best of himself for that reason.”

Joseph took a long breath. “And who saw the other side?” Unwittingly, Harry Beecher’s wry, familiar face came to his mind, sitting on the bench in the Pickerel, watching the boats on the river in the evening light, and the sudden tightness in his voice.

Thyer considered for a moment. “Most people, one way or another. Oh, his work was brilliant, you were right about that, and you perceived it long before anyone else. He had the potential to be excellent one day, possibly one of the great poets of the English language. But he had a long way to go to any kind of emotional maturity.” He shrugged. “Not that emotional maturity is any necessity for a poet. One could hardly claim it for Byron or Shelley, to name but two. And I rather think that both of them probably escaped murder more by luck than virtue.”

“That is not very specific,” Joseph said, wishing he could leave it all to Perth and never know more than simply who had done it, not why. But it was already too late for that.

Thyer sighed. “Well, there’s always the question of women, I suppose. Sebastian was good-looking, and he enjoyed exercising his charm and the power it gave him. Perhaps in time he would have learned to govern it, or on the other hand it might have grown worse. It takes a very fine character indeed to have power and refrain from using it. He was a long way from that yet.” His face tightened until it was curiously bleak. “And of course there is always the possibility that it was not a woman but a man. It happens, particularly in a place like Cambridge. An older man, a student who is full of vitality and dreams, hunger . . .” He stopped. Further explanation was unnecessary.

Joseph heard a sound in the doorway and swiveled around to see Connie standing behind him, her face grave, a flash of anger in her dark eyes.

“Good morning, Dr. Reavley.” She came in and closed the door behind her with a snap. She was wearing a deep lavender morning dress, suitable both for the heat and for the tragedy of her houseguests. The sweeping lines of it, impossibly slender at the knees, became her rich figure, and the color flattered her complexion. Even in these circumstances it was a pleasure to look at her.

“Really, Aidan, if you have to be so candid, you might at least do it with more discretion!” she said sharply, coming further into the room. “What if Mrs. Allard had overheard you? She can’t bear to hear anything but praise for him, which I suppose is natural enough in the circumstances. I don’t suppose the boy was a saint—few of us are—but that is how she needs to see him at the moment. And apart from unnecessary cruelty to her, I don’t want a case of hysteria on my hands.” She turned away from her husband, possibly without seeing the shadow in his face, as if he had received a blow he half expected. “Would you like some breakfast, Dr. Reavley?” she invited. “It won’t be the least difficulty to have Cook prepare you something.”

“No, thank you.” Joseph felt discomforted for having wanted Thyer to be candid, and a degree of embarrassment at having witnessed a moment of personal pain. “I am afraid the master’s comments were my fault,” he said to Connie. “I was asking him because I feel we need to have the truth, if possible before the police uncover every mistake of judgment by a student—or one of us, for that matter.” He was talking too much, explaining unnecessarily, but he could not stop.

Connie sat down at the head of the table, managing the restriction of her skirts with extraordinary grace, and Joseph was aware of the faint lily-of-the-valley perfume she wore. He felt a wave of loss for Alys that was momentarily overwhelming.

“I suppose you are right,” Connie conceded. “Sometimes fear is worse than the truth. At least the truth will destroy only one person. Or am I creating a fool’s paradise?”

A flicker of awareness crossed Thyer’s face, and he drew in his breath, then changed his mind and did not speak.

This time Joseph was honest. “Yes . . . I’m sorry, but I think you are,” he said to her. “Students have asked me whether they should tell the inspector what they know about Sebastian or be loyal to his memory and conceal it. I told them to tell the truth, and because of it Foubister and Morel, who have been friends ever since they came up, have quarreled so bitterly, both feel betrayed. And we have all learned things about each other we were far happier not knowing.”

Still not looking at her husband, she reached across and touched her fingers to Joseph’s arm. “It seems ignorance is a luxury we can no longer afford. Sebastian was very charming, and he was certainly gifted, but he had uglier sides as well. I know you would prefer not to have seen them, and your charity does you great credit.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he contradicted her miserably. “It was a matter of self-protection, not generosity of spirit. I rather think cowardice is the correct name for it.”

“You are too hard on yourself.” She was very gentle. There was a softness in her face he had always liked. Now he thought briefly, and with a respect that surprised him, how fortunate a man Aidan Thyer was.

In the evening, Joseph went as usual to the senior common room for a few moments’ quiet companionship and time to relax before dinner. Almost as soon as he entered he saw Harry Beecher sitting in a comfortable chair near the window, nursing a glass of what looked like gin and tonic.

Joseph walked toward him with a sudden lift of pleasure. He had shared many years of friendship with Beecher and never found in him meanness of spirit or that self-absorption that makes people blind to the feelings of others.

“Your usual, sir?” the steward asked, and Joseph accepted, sitting down with a deep sense of ease at the sheer luxurious familiarity of the surroundings, the people he had known and found so congenial over the last, difficult year. They thought largely as he did. They had the same heritage and the same values. Disagreements were minor and on the whole added interest to what might otherwise have become flat. The challenge of ideas was the savor of life. Always to be agreed with must surely become an intolerable loneliness in the end, as if anchored by endless mirrors of the mind, sterile of anything new.

“Looks as if the French president is going to Russia to speak to the czar,” Beecher remarked, sipping at his glass.

“About Serbia?” Joseph asked, although it was a rhetorical question.

“What a mess.” Beecher shook his head. “Walcott thinks there’ll be war.” Walcott was a lecturer in modern history they both knew moderately well. “I wish to hell he’d be a bit more discreet about his opinions.” A flicker of distaste crossed his face. “Everyone’s unsettled enough without that.”

Joseph took his glass from the steward and thanked him, then waited until the man was out of earshot. “Yes, I know,” he said unhappily. “Several of the students have spoken about it. You can hardly blame them for being anxious.”

“Even at the worst, I don’t suppose it would involve us.” Beecher dismissed the idea, taking another sip of his drink. “But if it did—if, say, we were drawn in to help?” His eyebrows lifted with faint humor. “But I don’t know whom. I can’t see us being overly concerned with the Austrians or the Serbs. Regardless, we don’t conscript to the army. It’s all volunteer.” He smiled lopsidedly. “I think they are rather badly upset about Sebastian Allard’s murder, and that’s what they are really worried about.” His mouth tightened momentarily. “Unfortunately, from the evidence, the murderer has to have been someone here in college.” He looked at Joseph with sudden, intense candor. “I suppose you haven’t got any idea, have you? You wouldn’t consider it your religious duty to protect them . . . ?”

Joseph was startled. “No, I wouldn’t!” The hot anger still welled up inside him at the thought of Sebastian’s vitality and dreams obliterated. “I don’t know anything.” He looked at Beecher earnestly. “But I feel I need to. I’ve gone over everything I can remember of the last few days I saw Sebastian, but I was away, because of my parents’ death, for a good while right before he was killed. I couldn’t have seen anything.”

“You think it was foreseeable?” There was surprise and curiosity sharp in Beecher’s eyes. He ignored his unfinished drink.

“I don’t know,” Joseph admitted. “It can’t have happened without some cause that built up over a while. Unless it was an accident—which would be the best possible answer, of course! But I can’t imagine how that could happen, can you?”

“No,” Beecher said with quiet regret. The evening light through the long windows picked out the tiny lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked more tired than he was admitting, and perhaps a lot more deeply worried. “No, I’m afraid that’s a fool’s paradise,” Beecher said with quiet regret. “Someone killed him because they meant to.” He reached out and picked up his drink again, sipping it and rolling it around his mouth, but it obviously gave him no pleasure. “Certainly his work was falling off over the last few weeks. And to be honest”—he looked up at Joseph apologetically—“I’ve seen a certain harder edge to it, and a lack of delicacy lately. I thought it might be a rather uncomfortable transition from one style to another, made without his usual grace.” That was half a question.

“But?” Joseph prompted. He knew Beecher did not like Sebastian, and he didn’t relish what his friend would say.

“But on looking back, it was more than just his work,” Beecher said. “His temper was fragile, far more than it used to be. I don’t think he was sleeping well, and I know of at least a couple of rather stupid quarrels he got involved in.”

“Quarrels about what? With whom?”

Beecher’s lips pulled tight in the mockery of a smile. “About war and nationalism, false ideas of honor. And with several people, anyone fool enough to get involved in the subject.”

“Why didn’t you mention it?” Joseph was startled. He had not seen anything of the sort. Had he been blind? Or had Sebastian hidden it from him deliberately? Why? Kindness, a desire not to concern him? Self-protection, because he wanted to preserve the image of him Joseph had, keep one person seeing only the good? Or had he simply not trusted him, and it was only Joseph’s imagination and vanity that they had been friends?

“I assumed that Sebastian confided in you,” Beecher said. “I realized only the other day that he hadn’t. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t say anything at the time,” Joseph pointed out. “You noticed something was wrong with him, but you didn’t ask if I had seen it also, and if I knew what it was. Perhaps together we could have done something to help.”

“I didn’t like Sebastian nearly as much as you did,” Beecher said slowly. “I saw his charm, but I also saw how he used it. I considered asking you if you knew what was causing him such distress, and I believe it was profound. Actually, I did approach it once, but you didn’t take me up. We were interrupted by something, and I didn’t go back to it. I didn’t want to quarrel with you.” He raised his eyes, bright and troubled, and for once the humor in him was totally absent.

Joseph was stunned. He had been expecting pain, but this blow hurt far more than anything he had foreseen. Beecher had tried to protect him because he thought Joseph was not strong enough to accept or deal with the truth. He had thought that he would turn aside from a friend rather than look at it honestly.

How could he? What had Joseph ever said or done that even Beecher believed him not only so blind, but such a moral coward?

Was that why Sebastian had not told him? He had spoken of the fear of war and its destruction of the beauty he loved, but surely that was hardly sufficient to disturb him the way Beecher had implied. And it had obviously started weeks before the assassination in Sarajevo.

Elwyn had turned on him instantly when Joseph had said something about fear, denying hotly that Sebastian was a coward, a charge that had never crossed Joseph’s mind. Should it have? Had Sebastian been afraid and felt unable to confide it to Joseph, who was supposed to be his friend? What was friendship worth if one had to wear a mask over the thoughts that really hurt?

Not a great deal. Without honesty, compassion, the will to understand, it was no more than an acquaintanceship, and not even a good one at that.

And Beecher’s forbearance was no better. There was pity in it, even kindness, but there was no equality, and certainly no respect.

“I wish I had known,” Joseph said bitterly. “Now all we are left with is that somebody hated him so uncontrollably they went to his room early in the morning and shot him in the head. That’s a very deep hatred, Harry. Not only did we not see it before, we can’t even see it now, and God knows I’m looking!”

The next day, late in the morning, Joseph called on Mary and Gerald Allard, still at the master’s house, at least until the funeral, which the police had held up because of the investigation. They had been acquaintances a long time. He could think of nothing to say that would ease their pain, but that did not excuse the need at least to express some care. Apart from that, he must learn anything from them he could that would help him to know Sebastian better.

“Come in,” Connie said as soon as the maid took Joseph from the front hall into her quiet sitting room. He saw immediately that none of the Allards was there. The moment could be put off a little longer, and he was ashamed of being so relieved.

“Do sit down, Dr. Reavley.” She looked at him with a smile, as if she read his thoughts and sympathized with them.

He accepted. The room was wildly eclectic. Of course it was part of the college and could not be fundamentally altered, but Thyer’s taste was conservative, and most of the house was furnished accordingly. However, this room was hers, and a Spanish flamenco dancer whirled in a glare of scarlet in the painting over the mantelpiece. It burst with vitality. It was crudely painted and really rather in bad taste, but the colors were gorgeous. Joseph knew Thyer loathed it. He had given her a modern, expensive impressionist painting that he disliked himself, but he thought it would please her, and at least be fit to hang in the house. She had accepted it graciously and put it in the dining room. Perhaps Joseph was the only one who knew that she did not like it, either.

Now he sat down next to the Moroccan blanket in rich earth tones and made himself comfortable, disregarding a tall brass hookah on the table beside him. Oddly, he found the mood of the room both unique and comfortable.

“How is Mrs. Allard?” he asked.

“Plunging between grief and fury,” she answered with wry honesty. “I don’t know what to do for her. The master has to continue with his duties to the rest of the college, of course, but I have been doing what little I can to offer some physical care to her, though I confess I feel helpless.” She gave him a sudden, candid smile. “I’m so glad you’ve come! I’m at my wits’ end. I never know if what I’m saying is right or wrong.”

He felt vaguely conspiratorial; it eased the moment. “Where is she?” he asked.

“In the Fellows’ Garden,” she replied. “That policeman was questioning her yesterday, and she was berating him for his failure to arrest anyone yet.” Her eyes became serious, and the soft lines of her mouth pulled a little tighter with pity. “She said there couldn’t be more than one or two people who hated Sebastian.” Her voice dropped. “I’m afraid that’s not really true. He was not always a comfortable person at all. I look at that poor girl, Miss Coopersmith, and I wonder what she is feeling. I can read nothing in her face, and Mrs. Allard is too consumed in her own loss to spare her anything but the most perfunctory attention.”

Joseph was not surprised, but he was sorry.

“Poor Elwyn is doing all he can,” Connie went on. “But even he cannot console his mother. Although I think he is a considerable strength to his father. I am afraid Gerald is in a private hell of his own.” She did not elaborate, but her eyes met Joseph’s with the ghost of a smile.

He understood perfectly, but he was not prepared to let her see that, not yet. He had a wrenching pity for Gerald’s weakness, and it forced him to conceal it, even from Connie.

He rose to his feet. “Thank you. You have given me a few moments to collect my thoughts. I think I had better go and speak to Mrs. Allard, even if it doesn’t do much good.”

She nodded and walked with him through to the passage and the side door into the garden. He thanked her again and went out into the sun and the motionless, perfumed heat, where the flowers blazed in a profusion of reds and purples and billowed across the carefully paved walks between the beds. Flaming nasturtiums spilled out of an old terra-cotta urn left on its side. Spires of blue salvia made a solemn background to a riot of pansies, faces jostling for attention. Delphiniums towered almost to eye level, and ragged pinks cast up a giddy perfume. A butterfly staggered by like a happy drunkard, and the droning of bees was a steady, somnolent music in the background.

Mary Allard was standing in the center looking at the dark burgundy moss roses. She was dressed entirely in black, and Joseph could not help thinking how insufferably hot she must have been. In spite of the sun, she had no parasol, and she was also unveiled. The harsh light exposed the tiny lines in her skin, all dragging tight and downward, betraying the pain eating inside her.

“Mrs. Allard,” he said quietly.

From the sudden rigidity of her body under the silk, she had obviously not been aware of his presence. She swiveled around to face him. “Reverend Reavley!” There was a challenge in her bearing and the directness of her eyes.

It was going to be more difficult than he had imagined.

“I came by to see you,” he began, knowing he was being trite.

“Do you know anything more about who killed Sebastian?” she demanded. “That policeman is useless!”

Joseph changed his mind. Any attempt at comfort was doomed to failure. Instead he would pursue his own need, which was also hers.

“What does he think?” he asked her.

She was startled, as if she had expected him to argue with her and insist that Perth was doing his best, or at the very least defend him by pointing out how difficult his task was.

“He’s going around looking for reasons to hate Sebastian,” she answered witheringly. “Envy, that’s the only reason. I told him that, but he doesn’t listen.”

“Academic?” he asked. “Personal? Over anything in particular?”

“Why?” She took half a step toward him. “Do you know something?”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “But I want very much to find out who killed Sebastian, for a lot of reasons.”

“To cover your own failure!” She spat the word. “That’s all that’s left. We sent him here to learn. That was your idea! We trusted you with him, and you let some creature kill him. I want justice!” Tears filled her eyes, and she turned away from him. “Nothing can bring him back,” she said hoarsely. “But I want whoever did it to suffer.”

Joseph could not defend himself. She was right; he had failed to protect Sebastian because he had seen only what he wanted to see, not any of the darker envies or hatreds that had to have been there. He had thought he was dealing with reality, a higher, saner view of man. In truth, he had been looking for his own comfort.

It was also pointless to argue about justice or to tell her that it would ease nothing. It was morally wrong, and she would almost certainly never know all the truths of what had happened. It would only add to her anger to tell her that mercy was the better part, just as she herself would need mercy when her own judgment should come. She was not listening. And if he was honest, his own rage at violence and senseless death was so close beneath the surface of his words that he would have been a hypocrite to preach to her. He could not forget how he had felt when he stood on the Hauxton Road and realized what the caltrop marks meant, and pictured it in his mind.

“I want them to suffer, too,” he confessed quietly.

She lifted her head and turned slowly back to him, her eyes wide.

“I apologize,” she whispered. “I thought you were going to come and preach at me. Gerald tells me I shouldn’t feel like that. That it’s not really me speaking, and I’ll regret saying it later.”

“Maybe I will as well.” He smiled at her. “But that’s how I feel now.”

Her face crumpled again. “Why would someone do that to him, Joseph? How can anyone envy so much? Shouldn’t we love beauty of the mind and want to help it, protect it? I’ve asked the master if Sebastian was in line for any prizes or honors that might have excluded someone else, but he says he doesn’t know of anything.” She drew her black eyebrows together. “Do you . . . do you suppose that it could have been some woman? Someone who was in love with him, obsessed with him, and couldn’t accept rejection? Girls can be very hysterical. They can imagine that a man has feelings for them when it is only a passing admiration, no more than good manners, really.”

“It could be over a woman—” he began.

“Of course it could!” she interrupted eagerly, seizing on the idea, her face lighting up, the rigid line of her body relaxing a little. He could see in the sun the sheen on the silk of her gown and how it pulled over her thin shoulders. “That’s the one thing that makes sense! Raging jealousy because a woman was in love with Sebastian, and someone felt betrayed by her!” She put out her hand tentatively and laid it on his arm. “Thank you, Joseph. You have at least made sense out of the darkness. If you came to comfort me, you have succeeded, and I am grateful to you.”

It was not how he had intended to succeed, but he did not know how to withdraw. He remembered the girl in the street outside Eaden Lilley’s, and what Eardslie had said about Morel, and wished he did not have to know about it.

He was still searching for an answer when Gerald Allard came from the quad gate of the garden, walking carefully along the center of the path between the tumbles of catmint and pinks. It was a moment before Joseph realized that his considered step was due to the fact that he had already partaken of more refreshment than he could absorb. He looked curiously at Joseph, then at his wife.

Mary’s eyes narrowed at the sight of him.

“How are you, my dear?” he inquired solicitously. “Good morning, Reavley. Nice of you to call. However, I think we should speak of other things for a little while. It is—”

“Stop it!” Mary said, her teeth clenched. “I can’t think of other things! I don’t want to try! Sebastian is dead! Someone killed him! Until we know who it was and the person is arrested and hanged, there are no other things!”

“My dear, you should—” he began.

She whirled around, catching the fine silk of her sleeve on a stem of the moss rose. She stormed off, uncaring that she had torn the fabric, and disappeared through the door to the sitting room of the master’s house.

“I’m sorry,” Gerald said awkwardly. “I really don’t know . . .” He did not finish.

“I met Miss Coopersmith,” Joseph said suddenly. “She seems a very pleasant young woman.”

“Oh . . . Regina? Yes, most agreeable,” Gerald concurred. “Good family, known them for years. Her father’s got a big estate a few miles away, in the Madingley direction.”

“Sebastian never mentioned her.”

Gerald pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “No, I don’t suppose he would. I mean . . .” Again he stopped.

This time Joseph waited.

“Well, two separate lives,” Gerald went on uncomfortably. “Home and . . . and here. Man’s world, this.” His arm swept around in a wide, slightly unsteady circle. “Not the place to discuss women, what?”

“Is Mrs. Allard fond of her?”

Gerald’s eyebrows shot up. “No idea! Yes! Well, I suppose so. Yes, must have liked the girl.”

“You put that in the past,” Joseph pointed out.

“Oh! Well . . . Sebastian’s dead now, God help us.” He gave a little shrug. “Next Christmas will be unbearable. Always spend it with Mary’s sister, you know. Fearful woman. Three sons. All successes one way or another. Proud as Lucifer.”

Joseph could think of nothing to say. Gerald would probably wish later that he had never made such a remark. It was better not to acknowledge it now. He made the heat an excuse to leave Gerald wandering aimlessly between the flowers and go back into the house.

He went into the sitting room to thank Connie and take his leave, but when he saw the figure of the woman standing by the mantel, in spite of the fact that she was roughly the same height and build as Connie, he knew instantly that it was someone else. The words died on his lips when he saw the black dress, which was fashionable, with a broad sash at the waist and a sort of double tunic in fine pleats over the long, tapering skirt.

She turned around, and her eyes widened with something like relief. “Reverend Reavley! How agreeable to see you.”

“Miss Coopersmith. How are you?” He closed the door behind him. He would like the opportunity to speak to her. She had known a side of Sebastian that he had been totally unaware of.

She gave a little shrug, slightly self-deprecatory. “This is difficult. I don’t really know what I am doing here. I hoped I could be of some comfort to Mrs. Allard, but I know I’m not succeeding. Mrs. Thyer is very kind, but what do you do with a fiancée who isn’t a widow?” Her strong, rather blunt face was touched with self-mocking humor to hide the humiliation. “I’m an impossibility for a hostess.” She gave a little laugh, and he realized how close she was to losing her grip on self-control.

“Had you known Sebastian long?” he asked her. “I have, but only the academic side of his life.” It was odd to say that aloud; he had not imagined it to be true, but now it was unquestionable.

“That was the biggest side,” she replied. “He cared about it more than anything else, I think. That’s why he was so terrified there’d be a war.”

“Yes. He spoke to me about it a day or two before he . . . died.” He remembered that long, slow walk along the Backs in the sunset as if it had been yesterday. How quickly a moment sinks into the past. He could still see quite clearly the evening light on Sebastian’s face, the passion in the young man as he spoke of the destruction of beauty that he feared.

“He traveled widely this summer,” she went on, looking at the distance, not at Joseph. “He didn’t talk about it very much, but when he did you could feel how strongly he cared. I think you taught him that, Reverend, how to see the loveliness and the value in all kinds of people, how to open his mind and look without judgment. He was so excited by it. He wanted intensely to live more . . .” She hunted for the word, “More abundantly than one can being buried by the confines of nationalism.”

As she said it, he remembered Sebastian’s comments about the richness and diversity of Europe, but he did not interrupt her.

She went on, controlling her trembling voice with difficulty. “For all his excitement at the different cultures, especially the ancient ones, he was terribly English at heart, you know?” She bit her lip to gain a moment’s hesitation, trying to control herself before she went on. “He would have given anything he had to protect the beauty of this country—the quaint and funny things, the tolerance and the eccentricity, the grandeur and the small, secret things one discovers alone. He’d have died to save a heath with skylarks, or a bluebell wood.” Her voice was trembling. “A cold lake with reed spears in it, a lonely shore where the light falls on pale sandbars.” She gulped. “It’s hard to believe they are all still just the same, and he can’t see them anymore.”

He was too full of emotion himself to speak. His thoughts included his father as well, and all the multitude of things his mother had treasured.

“But lots of people love things, don’t they?” She was looking intently at him now. “And there were parts of him I didn’t know at all. A terrible anger sometimes, when he thought of what some of our politicians were doing, how they were letting Europe slip into war because they are all so busy protecting their own few square miles of territory. He hated jingoism, really hated it. I’ve seen him white to the lips, almost so choked with it that he couldn’t speak.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Do you think there will be war, Mr. Reavley? Sebastian wanted peace . . . so much!”

Joseph saw Sebastian’s face in the fading light again, as clearly as if he had been in the room with them.

“Yes, I know he did.”

“I wonder if he would be surprised to see how much turmoil he’s left behind.” She gave a tiny laugh, almost like a hiccup. “We are tearing ourselves apart trying to find out who killed him, and you know, I’m not sure if I want to succeed. Is that wicked of me, irresponsible?”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” he answered. “We are going to be forced to know.”

“I’m afraid of that!” She stared at him, searching his face.

“Yes,” he agreed. “So am I.”

CHAPTER

SEVEN

On the evening of Friday, July 17, Matthew again left London and drove north toward Cambridge. It was a fine evening, with a slight wind piling clouds into bright towers of light high up in a cobalt sky—a perfect time to be on the road, once he had left the confines of the city. Long stretches opened up ahead of him, and he increased speed until the wind tore at his hair and stung his cheeks and in his imagination he thought what it would be like to fly.

He reached Cambridge at about quarter past seven. He came in on the Trumpington Road with the river on his left and Lammas Land beyond, past Fitzwilliam, Peterhouse, Pembroke, Corpus Christi, and up the broad elegance of King’s Parade with shops and houses to the right, and intricate wrought iron railings to the left. He passed the ornate spires of the screen that walled off the Front Court of King’s College, then the classical perfection of the Senate House, with Great Saint Mary’s opposite.

He pulled up at the main gate of St. John’s and climbed out of the seat. He walked stiffly to the porter’s lodge and was about to tell Mitchell who he was and that he had come to see Joseph, when Mitchell recognized him.

Within a quarter of an hour his car was safely parked and he was sitting in Joseph’s rooms. The sun made bright patches on the carpet and picked out the gold lettering on the books in the case. The college cat, Bertie, sat with his eyes closed in the warmth, and every now and again his tail gave a slight twitch.

Joseph sat in shadow. Even so, Matthew could see the weariness and the pain of uncertainty etched in his face. His eyes looked hollow in spite of his high cheekbones. His cheeks were thin and there were shadows that had nothing to do with the darkness of his hair.

“Do they know who killed Sebastian yet?” Matthew asked.

Joseph shook his head.

“How’s Mary Allard? Someone told me she came here.”

“She and Gerald are staying at the master’s house. The funeral was today. It was ghastly.”

“They haven’t gone home?”

“They’re still hoping the police will find something any day.”

Matthew looked at him with concern. He seemed to lack all vitality, as if something inside him were exhausted. “Joe, you look bloody awful!” he said abruptly. “Are you going to be all right?” It was a pointless question, but he had to ask. He had some idea of how fond Joseph had been of Sebastian Allard, and of his acute sense of responsibility, perhaps taken too personally. Was this additional blow too much for him?

Joseph raised his eyes. “Probably.” He rubbed his hand over his forehead. “It just takes a day or two. There doesn’t seem to be any sense in this. I feel as if everything is slithering out of my grasp.”

Matthew leaned forward a little. “Sebastian Allard was extraordinarily gifted, and he could be more charming than anyone else I can think of, but he wasn’t perfect. Nobody is entirely good—or bad. Someone killed Sebastian, and it’s a tragedy, but it’s not inexplicable. There’ll be an answer that makes as much sense as most things ever do . . . when we know it.”

Joseph straightened up. “I expect so. Do you suppose reason is going to be any comfort?” Then before Matthew could answer he went on. “The Allards brought Regina Coopersmith with them.”

Matthew was lost. “Who is Regina Coopersmith?”

“Sebastian’s fiancée,” Joseph replied.

That explained much, Matthew thought. If Joseph had not known of her, he would feel excluded. How odd that Sebastian should not have told him. Usually when a young man was engaged to marry he told everyone. A young woman invariably did.

“His idea, or his mother’s?” Matthew asked bluntly.

“I don’t know. I’ve talked with her a little. I should think it’s his mother’s. But it’s probably irrelevant to his death.” He changed the subject. “Are you going home?”

“For a day or two,” Matthew replied, feeling a sense of darkness inside him as he recalled the anger he had felt listening to Isenham the previous week. The wound was far from healed. He thought of his father and the interpretation Isenham had had of his actions, and it felt like an abscessed tooth. He could almost ignore it until he accidentally touched it, then it throbbed with all the old pain, exacerbated by a new jolt.

Joseph was waiting for him to go on.

“I went to see Isenham when I was up last weekend,” Matthew said finally. And then he recounted his conversation with the former army man.

Joseph listened thoughtfully.

“I talked to him for quite a long time,” Matthew concluded, “but all he told me that was specific was that Father wanted war.”

“What?” Joseph’s voice was angry and incredulous. “That’s ridiculous! He was the last man on earth to want war. Isenham must have misheard him. Perhaps he said he thought war was inevitable! The question is, was it Ireland or the Balkans?”

“How would Father know anything about either?” Matthew was playing devil’s advocate and hoping Joseph could beat him.

“I don’t know,” Joseph answered. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t. You said he was very specific that he had discovered a document outlining a conspiracy that would be dishonorable and change—”

“I know,” Matthew cut across him. “I didn’t tell Isenham that, but he said Father had been there, and was . . .” He paused.

“What? Losing control of his imagination?” Joseph demanded.

“More or less, yes. He was kinder about it than that, but it comes to the same thing. I know you’re angry, Joe. So was I, and I still am. But what is the truth? No one wants to think someone they love is mistaken, losing their grip. But wanting doesn’t alter reality.”

“Reality is that he and Mother are dead,” Joseph said a little unsteadily. “That their car hit a row of caltrops on the Hauxton Road and crashed, killing them both, and whatever document he had, whatever it said, wasn’t with him. Presumably whoever killed him searched the car and the bodies and found it.”

Matthew was forced to carry on the logic. “Then why did they search the house for it?”

“We only think they did,” Joseph said unhappily, then added, “but if they did, then they must have thought it important enough to take the risk of one of us coming back early and catching them. And don’t tell me it was a petty thief. No valuables were taken, though the silver vase, the snuffboxes, the miniatures were all in plain sight.”

“But it could still have been a small scandal rather than a major act of espionage affecting the world.”

“It was major enough to murder two people in order to hide it,” Joseph said, his jaw tight. “And apart from that, Father didn’t exaggerate.” He made it a simple statement, no additions, no emphasis.

Images raced through Matthew’s mind: his father standing in the garden in old clothes, trousers a trifle baggy, mud-stained at the knees, watching Judith picking blackberries; sitting in his armchair in the winter evening by the fire, a book open on his lap as he read them stories; at the dining room table on a Sunday, leaning a little forward in his chair as he argued reasonably; reciting absurd limericks and smiling, singing the Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs as he drove along the road with the top of the old car down in the wind and the sun.

The pain of loss was sweet for all he had been, and almost too sharp to bear because it no longer existed except in memory. It was a moment before Matthew could control his voice enough to speak. “I’ll go and see Shanley Corcoran.” He took a deep breath. “He was Father’s closest friend. I can at last tell him the truth, or most of it.”

Joseph hesitated a moment or two before speaking. “Be careful,” was all he said.

Matthew spent the evening at home in St. Giles, and he telephoned Corcoran to ask if he could call the next day. He received an immediate invitation to dinner, which he accepted unhesitatingly.

He was glad of a lazy morning, and he and Judith dealt with a number of small duties. Then in the hot, still afternoon they took Henry and walked together to the churchyard and on through the lanes, Henry scuffling happily in the deep grasses on either side. The wild rose petals had mostly fallen.

Matthew changed for dinner early and was glad to be able to put the top down on the car and drive the ten or twelve miles to Corcoran’s magnificent home. As he passed through Grantchester, a dozen or more youths were still practicing cricket in the lengthening sun, to the cheers and occasional shouts of a handful of watchers. Girls in pinafore dresses dangled hats by their ribbons. Three miles further on, children were sailing wooden boats in the village duck pond. A hurdy-gurdy man cranked out music, and an ice cream seller was packing his barrow to go home, his wares gone, his purse heavy.

Matthew crossed the main road between Cambridge and the west, then a mile and a half further along he swung off just short of Madingley, and in through the gates of Corcoran’s house. He had barely stepped out of the car when the butler appeared, solemn-faced and punctilious.

“Good evening, Captain Reavley. How pleasant to see you, sir. We have been expecting you. Have you anything you wish carried, sir?”

“No, thank you.” Matthew declined with a smile, reaching into the car to pick up the box of Orla’s favorite Turkish delight from the passenger seat. “I’ll manage these myself.”

“Yes, sir. Then if you leave your keys, I’ll see that Parley puts your car away safely. If you’d like to come this way, sir?”

Matthew followed him under the portico and up the shallow steps, through the door and into the wide, stone-flagged hallway, black and white squared like a chessboard. A full suit of medieval armor stood beside the carved newel post at the right-hand side of the mahogany staircase, its helmet catching the sun through the oval window on the landing.

Matthew dropped the car keys onto the tray the butler was holding, then turned as the study door opened and Shanley Corcoran appeared.

A wide smile lit Corcoran’s face and he came forward, extending both his hands. “I’m so glad you could come,” he said enthusiastically, searching Matthew’s face. “How are you? Come in and sit down!” He indicated the study doorway, and without waiting for a reply he led the way in.

The room was typical of the man—exuberant. The books and artifacts were highly individual, and there were also scientific curiosities and exquisite works of art. There was a Russian icon, all gold and umber and black. Above the fireplace hung an Italian old master drawing of a man riding a donkey, probably Jesus entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. An astrolabe made of silver, polished bright, stood on the mahogany Pembroke table by the wall, and an illustrated copy of Chaucer on the drum table in the center of the room.

“Sit down, sit down,” Corcoran invited, gesturing toward the other chair.

Matthew sank back into it, at ease already in the familiar room with its happy memories. It was quarter past seven, and he knew dinner would be served by eight. There was no time to waste on a preparatory conversation. “Did you hear about the death of Sebastian Allard?” he asked. “His family is devastated. I don’t suppose it will begin to heal until they find out what happened. I know how they feel.”

Corcoran’s face darkened. “I understand your grief.” His voice was very gentle. “I miss John. He was one of the kindest, most honest men I knew. I can’t begin to imagine how you must feel.” A frown of puzzlement creased his brow. “But what more is there to know about his death? No one was responsible. Perhaps it was a slick of oil on the road, or something wrong with the steering of the car? I don’t drive, personally. I know nothing about the mechanics.” He smiled at the irony of it. “I understand airplanes a little, and submarines a lot, but I imagine there are considerable differences.”

Matthew attempted to smile in answer. Being here with Corcoran brought back memories with an intensity he had been unprepared for. The veil between past and present was too thin. “Well, neither airplanes nor submarines are going to crash off the road, if that is what you meant. But I don’t believe that was what happened. In fact, I’m sure it wasn’t.” He saw Corcoran’s eyes widen slightly. “Joseph and I went to the place,” he explained. “We saw the skid marks exactly where the car veered off. There was no oil.” He hesitated, then took the plunge. “Only a line of scratches, as if made by a row of iron caltrops across the tarmacadam.”

The silence was so heavy in the room that Matthew could hear the ticking of the long-case clock against the far wall as if it were beside him.

“What are you saying, Matthew?” Corcoran said at last.

Matthew leaned forward a little. “Father was on his way to see me in London. He called me up to arrange it the night before. I’ve never heard him more serious.”

“Oh? About what?” If Corcoran already had any idea, there was no indication of it in his face.

“He said he had discovered a conspiracy that was highly dishonorable and would eventually affect the whole world. He wanted my advice on it.”

Corcoran’s vivid blue eyes were unblinking. “Your professional advice?” he said cautiously.

“Yes.”

“You couldn’t have misunderstood?”

“No.” Matthew was not going to elaborate and perhaps put words into Corcoran’s mouth. Suddenly the conversation was no longer easy, or simply between friends.

“I knew he was concerned about something,” Corcoran said, looking at Matthew over the top of his steepled fingers. “But he didn’t confide in me. In fact, he was politely evasive, so I didn’t pursue it.”

“What did he say to you, exactly?” Matthew pressed.

Corcoran blinked. “Very little. Only that he was worried about the pressure in the Balkans—which we all are, but he seemed to think it were more explosive than I did.” Corcoran’s expression tightened, his lips a thin line. “It seems he was right. The assassination of the archduke is very ugly. They’ll demand reparation, and of course Serbia won’t pay. The Russians will back the Serbs, and Germany will back Austria. That’s inevitable.”

“And us?” Matthew asked. “That’s still a long way from Britain, and it has nothing to do with our honor.”

Corcoran was thoughtful for a moment. The ticking of the clock measured the silence in the room.

“The alliances are a web right across Europe,” he said at last. “We know some of them, but perhaps not all. It’s fears and promises that could be our undoing.”

“Do you think Father could possibly have known about the assassination before it happened?” It was a wild thought, but he was reduced to desperation.

Corcoran lifted his shoulders, but there was no incredulity in his face and no ridicule. “I can’t think how!” he answered. “If he had any connections with that part of the world, he didn’t mention them to me. He knew France and Germany well, and Belgium, too, I think. He had some relative who married a Belgian, I believe, a cousin he was fond of.”

“Yes, Aunt Abigail,” Matthew confirmed. “But what has Belgium to do with Serbia?”

“Nothing, so far as I know. But what puzzles me far more is that he should want to involve you professionally.” He looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, Matthew, but you know as well as I that he hated all secret services.”

“Yes, I know!” Matthew cut in sharply. “He wanted Joseph to go into medicine, and when Joseph didn’t, he wanted me to. He never really said why. . . .” He stopped, seeing surprise and a swift tenderness in Corcoran’s face.

“He didn’t tell you?” Corcoran asked.

Matthew shook his head. It was a place inside him that still hurt too much to explore. He had always believed that one day he would have the chance to show his father the value of what he did. Discreetly, it also saved lives; it saved the peace in which people could go about their ordinary, open business without fear. It was one of those professions that, if practiced with great enough skill, one was unaware of. It was visible only when it failed. But John’s death had made that proof impossible, and it was an unresolved pain he had no way to deal with.

“It was a long time ago,” Corcoran began thoughtfully. “When your father and I were both young. Perhaps it was even something to do with me, I don’t know. It was in our first year at Cambridge—”

“I didn’t know you were the same year!” Matthew interrupted.

“I was a year older than he. I was there on my father’s money, he was on a scholarship. He started in medicine, you know?” Even without Matthew’s amazement, it was obvious in Corcoran’s face that he knew Matthew had not known. “I was reading physics. We used to spend hours talking and dreaming about what we could do after we graduated.”

Matthew tried to visualize the two young men, minds full of the future, of hopes and ambitions. Had John Reavley been happy with what he had achieved? It hurt like a slow, grinding pain in the pit of the stomach to think that perhaps he had not, that he had died a disappointed man.

“Don’t,” Corcoran said gently, his eyes searching Matthew’s face. “He changed his mind because he wanted to go into politics. He thought he could achieve more there, so he read classics instead. That’s where most of our leaders come from, the men who learned the discipline of the mind and the history of thought and civilization in the West.” He let out his breath slowly. “But there were times when he regretted it. He found politics a hard and often graceless master to serve. In the end he preferred the individual to the mass, and he thought it would give you greater happiness, and far more security.”

“But you went on with physics,” Matthew said.

Corcoran gave a downwardly twisted smile, self-mocking but also evasive. “I was ambitious in a different way.”

“Father thought we were underhand, essentially betrayers—that the intelligence services deliberately used people and had no loyalties. He had no patience with deviousness. He couldn’t be bothered to be indirect, to play to people’s vanities or use their weaknesses. I don’t think he understood how to. And he thought that was what we do.”

“Isn’t it?” Corcoran asked with a kind of wry regret.

Matthew sighed and leaned back in his chair again, crossing his legs. “Sometimes. Mostly it’s just collecting as much information as possible and fitting it together so we see a picture. I wish I could have shown him that.”

“Matthew,” Corcoran said earnestly, “if he was coming to you for your professional advice, then whatever he had discovered, he must have believed it was profoundly serious and that only one of the secret services could help.”

“But you have no idea what it was? What did he say to you? Anything? Names, places, dates, who would be affected . . . anything at all?” Matthew pleaded. “I don’t know where to start, and I don’t trust anyone, because he said important people were involved.” Even to Corcoran he held back that his father had spoken of the royal family. Given how large Queen Victoria’s family had been, the net spread very wide indeed.

Corcoran nodded. “Of course,” he agreed. “If he could have trusted the ordinary services, then he would have.”

There was a knock on the door, and Orla Corcoran came in. She was dressed in a bluish green gown of silk charmeuse with Venetian lace draped around her shoulders. In the fashion of the moment, the waist was high and soft, and the full drape came almost to the ankle before sweeping back to be caught up behind, revealing only a few inches of the plainer skirt beneath. It was decorated with two crimson roses, one just under the bosom, the other on the skirt. Her dark hair was curled loosely and had only a few streaks of gray at the temples; they made her the more striking.

“Matthew, my dear,” she said with a smile. “How good it is to see you.” She regarded him more closely. “But you are looking a little tired. Have you been working too hard with all this wretched business in eastern Europe? The Austrians don’t seem to manage their affairs very well. I do hope they don’t draw us all into their mess.”

“I’m in good health, thank you,” he said, taking her hand and touching it to his lips. “Unfortunately they haven’t given me anything so interesting to do. I fear I may be picking up the domestic duties of others who are sent off to exotic parts.”

“Oh, you really don’t want to go to Serbia!” she said instantly. “It would take you ages to get there, and then you wouldn’t understand a word they said.” She turned to Corcoran. “Dinner is about to be served. Do come through, and talk about pleasanter things. Have you been to the theater lately? Last week we saw Lady Randolph Churchill’s new play at the Prince of Wales.” She led the way across the hall, passing a maid dressed in black with a crisp white lace-edged apron apparently without seeing her. “Very mixed, I thought,” she went on. “Lots of drama, but a bit thin on skill here and there.”

“You are repeating exactly what the reviewers say, my dear,” Corcoran remarked with amusement.

“Then perhaps for once they are right!” she retorted, leading the way into the splendid rose-and-gold dining room.

The long mahogany table was very simple, in the classic style of Adam. The mahogany chairs’ high, tapered backs echoed the lines of the windows. The curtains were drawn, hiding the view across the garden and the fields beyond.

They took their seats, and the first course was served. Since it was high summer and in the nature of a family meal rather than a formal one, a cold collation was quite acceptable. The second course was grilled trout and fresh vegetables, with a light German wine, dry and very delicate.

Matthew passed the natural compliments to the cook, but he meant them with great sincerity.

The conversation meandered over a dozen subjects: the latest novels published, accounts of travel in North Africa, more local gossip of Cambridgeshire families, the likelihood of a cold winter after such a glorious summer, anything but Ireland or Europe. Eventually they touched on Turkey, but only as a possible site for the ruins of what was once the great city of Troy.

“Wasn’t that where Ivor Chetwin went?” Orla asked, turning to Corcoran.

Corcoran glanced at Matthew, then back to his wife. “I don’t know,” he answered.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” she said impatiently, spearing a slice of nectarine with her fork. “Matthew knows perfectly well that John quarreled with Ivor. You don’t have to tiptoe around it as if it were a hole he would fall into.” She turned to Matthew, the fork still in her hand. “Ivor and your father used to be very good friends, nine or ten years ago. They both knew a man called Galliford, Galliard, something like that. He was doing something serious that he shouldn’t, I don’t know what. They never tell you.” She ate the last of the nectarine quickly. “But Ivor told the authorities about it and the man was arrested.”

Corcoran drew in his breath, seemingly to interrupt, then apparently changed his mind. The damage was done.

“John never really forgave him for it,” Orla continued. “I don’t know why—after all, Galliford, or whatever his name was, was guilty of doing it. That was Ivor’s chance to join some branch or other of the secret services, and he took it. After that he and John never really spoke to each other, except to be polite. It was a great shame, because Ivor was a lovely man and they used to enjoy each other’s company.”

“It wasn’t that he caught Gallard,” Corcoran said quietly. “It was the way in which he did it that John couldn’t forgive. John was a very candid man—almost innocent, you might say. He expected a certain standard of honesty from other people.” He glanced at Matthew.

“Father never told me about Ivor Chetwin,” Matthew said. “Did he go to Turkey?”

“Of course he did!” Orla responded. “But he came back.”

“Do you think Father would have seen him again? Recently? In the last week or so before he died?”

Orla looked surprised.

Corcoran understood immediately. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s possible.”

Orla had no such hesitation. “Of course it’s possible. I know Ivor is at home because he lives in Haslingfield, and I saw him only a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure if your father visited him, he’d be happy to tell you about it.”

Corcoran looked at her, then at Matthew, uncertain.

Matthew could not afford to care about old quarrels. High in his mind was the possibility that Ivor Chetwin could be the man behind the conspiracy John Reavley discovered. It was suddenly very important to know if they had met, but he would have to be extremely careful. Whoever it was did not hesitate to kill. Again he was overwhelmed with anger for his father for having been so naive as to trust someone, to think the best of them when it so agonizingly was not true.

“Matthew . . . ,” Corcoran began, his face earnest, the lamplight now accentuating the warmth in his features.

“Yes!” Matthew said instantly. “I shall be extremely careful. Father and I are quite different. I trust no one.” He wanted to explain to them what he intended to do. However, he did not know yet, and he needed the freedom to change his mind. But above all, he did not want his father’s friend watching over his shoulder to see his weaknesses, or his pain if what he found was sad and vulnerable—and private.

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Corcoran declared. “Ivor Chetwin was a decent man when I knew him. But I doubt your father would have confided anything in him before telling you. Have you considered that this issue your father was so concerned about may have been a piece of politicking that he felt was dishonorable, rather than anything you or I would consider a conspiracy? He was a little . . . idealistic.”

“Conspiracy?” Orla looked from Matthew to her husband and back again.

“Probably nothing.” Corcoran smiled very slightly. “I daresay he would have found that out if he had had the chance.”

Matthew wanted to argue, but he had no weapons. He could not defend his father; he had nothing but remembered words, which he had repeated so often he was hearing his own voice saying them now. There was nothing tangible except death, the awful absence of those he loved, the jolting surprise of the empty rooms, the telephone call no one would answer from the study.

“Of course,” he said, not meaning it, nor looking at Corcoran’s face. He was agreeing for Orla’s sake, so as not to alarm her. Then he changed the subject. “I wish I didn’t have to go back to London so soon. It is so timelessly peaceful here.”

“Have a glass of port?” Corcoran offered. “I have some real vintage stuff.”

Matthew hesitated.

“Oh, it’s excellent!” Corcoran assured him. “No cork in it, no crust or sediment, I promise.”

Matthew acceded gracefully.

The butler was sent for and dispatched to fetch one of the best bottles. He returned with it cradled in a napkin.

“Right!” Corcoran said enthusiastically. “I’ll open this myself! Make sure it’s perfect. Thank you, Truscott.”

“Yes, sir.” The butler handed it over with resignation.

“Really . . . ,” Orla protested, but without any belief she would make a difference. “Sorry,” she said ruefully to Matthew. “He’s rather proud of this.”

Matthew smiled. It was obviously a ritual that mattered to Corcoran, and he was happy to observe as Corcoran led them to the kitchen, heated the tongs in the kitchen stove, then grasped the bottle with them, closing them around its neck. Truscott handed him a goose feather and held out a dish of ice. Corcoran passed the feather through the ice, then carefully around the neck of the port.

“There!” he said triumphantly as the glass cracked in a perfect circle, cutting the corked top off cleanly. “You see?”

“Bravo!” Matthew laughed.

Corcoran was grinning widely, his face alight with triumph. “There you are, Truscott! Now you can decant it and bring it to us in the dining room. Mrs. Corcoran will have a Madeira. Come . . .” And he led the procession back to the rose-and-gold room.

It was late on Sunday afternoon when Matthew drove to Haslingfield. Ivor Chetwin did not live in the magnificent manner of the Corcorans, but his home was still extremely agreeable. It was a Georgian manor a mile outside Haslingfield, and the long drive from the road swept around a gracious curve with a stand of silver birches, their leaves shimmering in the breeze, their white trunks leaning with exaggerated grace away from the prevailing wind.

A parlor maid welcomed Matthew, but Chetwin himself appeared almost immediately, an enthusiastic spaniel puppy at his heels.

“I’d have recognized you,” Chetwin said without hesitation, extending his hand to Matthew. His voice, unusually deep, still had the echo of music in it from his native Wales. “You resemble your father about the eyes.”

The loyalty hardened even more deeply inside Matthew, memory catching him again.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me at such short notice, sir,” he replied. “I’m just up for the weekend. I spend most of my time in London now.”

“I’m afraid I only get occasional weekends here myself at the moment,” Chetwin agreed. Then, followed by the puppy, he turned and led the way into a casual sitting room that opened onto a paved and graveled garden, largely shaded by overhanging trees. It was full of blossom from bushes and shrubs at the sides, and low-growing silvery-gray-leaved plants in clumps in the paving. The extraordinary thing about it was that every flower was white.

Chetwin noticed Matthew staring.

“My white garden,” he explained. “I find it very restful. Sit down. Oh, move the cat.” He gestured toward a black cat that had settled itself in the middle of the second chair and looked very disinclined to shift.

Matthew stroked the cat gently and felt rather than heard it begin to purr. He lifted it up, and when he had taken the seat, he put it down again on his lap. It rearranged itself slightly and went back to sleep.

“My father intended to come and see you,” he said smoothly as if it were true. “I never had the chance to ask him if he actually did.”

He watched Chetwin’s face. It was dark-eyed, with a strong, round jaw, black hair graying and receding from a high brow. He could read nothing in it. It was a face that could give away exactly what its owner wished it to. There was nothing naive or easily misled in Ivor Chetwin. He was full of imagination and subtlety. Matthew had been here only a few minutes, yet already he had a sense of Chetwin’s inner power.

“I’m sorry he didn’t,” Chetwin replied, and there was sadness in his voice. If he was acting, he was superb. But then Matthew had known men who betrayed their friends, even their families, and though they profoundly regretted what they saw as the necessity, it had not stopped them.

“He didn’t contact you at all?” Matthew pressed. He should not have been disappointed, and yet he was. He had hoped Chetwin would have an idea, a thread, however fine, that would lead somewhere. He realized now it was unreasonable. John Reavley would have come to Matthew first before trusting anyone else, even the far more experienced Chetwin.

“I wish he had.” Chetwin’s face still showed the same sadness. “I would have called on him, but I doubted he would see me.” A new bleakness shadowed his eyes. “That’s one of the deepest regrets of death: the things you thought of doing and put off, and then suddenly it’s too late.”

“Yes, I know,” Matthew agreed with more emotion than he had meant to expose. He felt as if he were laying a weapon down with the blade toward himself and the handle to a potential enemy. And yet had he shown less, Chetwin would have sensed it and known he was guarding himself.

“I think of something every day I would like to have said to him. I suppose that’s really why I called. You knew him during a time when I was so young I thought of him only as my father, not as a person who led any life beyond St. Giles.”

“A natural blindness of youth,” Chetwin said. “But most of what you would have heard about your father you would have liked.” He smiled, which momentarily softened his face. “He was stubborn at times; he had an intellectual arrogance he was not even aware of. It sprang from an effortless intelligence, and yet he had untiring patience for those he perceived as genuinely limited. He treated the old, the poor, the unlearned with dignity. To him the great sin was unkindness.” He seemed to retreat further into memory, revisiting the past before his quarrel with John Reavley had bled the pleasure from it.

Matthew took the risk of probing. “I remember him as being completely without guile. Was that true, or just what I wanted to think?”

Chetwin gave a sharp little laugh. “Oh, that was true! He couldn’t tell a lie to save himself, and he wasn’t about to change what he was to please anyone, or to deceive them, even to gain his own ends.” His face became shadowed again, but his dark eyes were unreadable. “That was his weakness as well as his strength. He was incapable of deviousness, and that is a politician’s main weapon.”

Matthew hesitated, wondering if he should admit to being in the intelligence services, and knowing that Chetwin was also. It might be a shortcut to gaining confidences. It would save time, take him nearer the truth. Or should he guard the little ammunition he had? Where were Chetwin’s loyalties? He was easy to like, and the ties of the past were strong. But perhaps that was exactly what had cost John Reavley his life.

“He was very worried about the present situation in the Balkans,” Matthew said. “Even though he died the day of the assassination, so he didn’t hear of it.”

“Yes,” Chetwin agreed. “I know he used to have a considerable interest in German affairs and had many German friends. He climbed in the Austrian Tyrol now and then when he was younger. He enjoyed Vienna, its music and its culture, and he read German, of course.”

“He discussed it with you?”

“Oh, yes. We had many friends in common in those days.” There was sadness in his voice and a gentleness that seemed entirely human and vulnerable. But if he was clever, it would do!

“Did he keep up with them, do you know?” Matthew asked. He was going to trail a faint thread of the truth in front of Chetwin, to see if he picked it up, or if he even noticed.

There was nothing guarded in Chetwin’s clever face. “I should imagine so. He was a man who kept his friends.” He gave a little grimace. “Except in my case, of course. But that was because he did not approve of my change in career. He felt it was immoral—deceitful, if you like.”

Matthew drew in his breath. It was like jumping into melted ice. “The intelligence services . . . yes, I know.” He saw Chetwin flinch so minutely it was no more than a shadow. Had he not been looking for it, he might not have recognized it as such. “I think it was because of you that he was so disappointed when I joined them as well,” he went on, and this time there was no mistaking the surprise. “You didn’t know?” he added.

Chetwin breathed out very slowly. “No . . . I didn’t.”

Matthew was in the presence of a master at guile, and he knew it. But he could play the game, too. “Yes. He didn’t approve of it, of course,” he said, smiling ruefully. “But he knew that we have our uses. Sometimes there is no one else to turn to.”

This time Chetwin hesitated.

Matthew smiled.

“Then he’d changed,” Chetwin said slowly. “He used to think there was always a better way. But I suppose you know that, also?”

“Something like that,” Matthew said noncommittally. He struggled for something else to pursue. He could not leave Chetwin, possibly the best source of hidden information about his father, without trying every conceivable avenue. “Actually, I think he had changed,” he said suddenly. “Something he said to me not long ago made me think he had begun to appreciate the value of discreet information.”

Chetwin’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?” He did not conceal the interest in his face.

Matthew hesitated, acutely aware of the potential danger of revealing too much to Chetwin. “Just the value of information,” he said finally, leaning back a little in his chair. “I never heard the rest of it. I thought it might matter. Whom would he have taken it to?”

“Information about what?” Chetwin asked.

Matthew was very careful. “I’m not sure. Possibly the situation in Germany.” That was probably far enough from the troubles in either Ireland or the Balkans to be safe.

Chetwin thought for a moment or two. “Best to go to the man at the top,” he said finally. “If it was important, it would reach Dermot Sandwell eventually.”

“Sandwell!” Matthew was surprised. Dermot Sandwell was a highly respected minister in the Foreign Office—an outstanding linguist, well traveled, a classicist and scholar. “Yes, I suppose it would. That is excellent advice.Thank you.”

Matthew stayed a little longer. Conversation moved from one thing to another: politics, memories, small gossip about Cambridgeshire. Chetwin had a vivid and individual turn of phrase describing people, and a sharp wit. Matthew could see very clearly why his father had liked him.

Half an hour later he rose to go, still uncertain whether his father had confided anything about the document to Chetwin or not, and if he had, whether doing so had been the catalyst for his death.

Matthew drove back to London that evening in heavy, thundery weather, wishing the storm would break and release the gray, choking air into rain to wash it clear.

Thunder rolled menacingly around the western rim of the clouds at about half past six as he was twenty miles south of Cambridge, gliding between deep hedges in full leaf. Then ten minutes later the lightning forked down to the ground and the rain dashed torrentially, bouncing up again from the smooth black road till he felt as if he were drowning under a waterfall. He slowed up, almost blinded by the downpour.

When it was gone, steam rose from the shimmering surface, a silver haze in the sun, and it all smelled like a Turkish bath.

On Monday morning the newspapers told the public that the king had reviewed 260 ships of the Royal Navy at the Spithead base, and that the naval reserves had been called up on orders from the first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and the first sea lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg. There was no word whatever of Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia on the reparations demanded for the death of the archduke.

Calder Shearing sat at his desk staring grimly ahead of him into the distance. Matthew stood, not yet given permission to sit.

“Means nothing,” Shearing said to Matthew darkly. “I’m told there was a secret meeting in Vienna yesterday. I wouldn’t be surprised if they push it to the limit. Austria can’t be seen to back down. If they did, then all their territories would think they could assassinate people. That’s the damn shame of it.” He muttered something else under his breath, and Matthew did not ask him to repeat it. “Sit down!” he said impatiently. “Don’t hover like that as if you were about to go. You aren’t! We’ve all these reports to go through.” He indicated a pile of papers on his desk.

It was a comfortable room, but there were no family photographs, nothing to indicate where he had been born or grown up. Even its functionality was anonymous, clever rather than personal. The Arabic brass dish and bowl were beautiful but of no meaning. Matthew had asked him about them once. Similarly the watercolor paintings of a storm blowing up over the South Downs, and another of dying winter light over the London Docks, the black spars of a clipper sharp and straight against the sky; neither carried any personal significance.

The conversation moved to Ireland and the situation in the Curragh, which was still a cause of anxiety. It was far from resolved.

Shearing swore softly and imaginatively, more to himself than for Matthew’s benefit. “How could we be so bloody stupid as to get ourselves into this mess!” he said, his jaw so tight the muscles stood out in his neck. “The Protestants were never going to let themselves be absorbed by the Catholic south. They were bound to resort to violence, and our men would never have fired on them. Any damn fool knows they’ll not shoot their own—and so you’ve got a mutiny!” His dark face was flushed. “And we can’t let mutiny go unpunished, so we’ve painted ourselves into an impossible corner! How stupid do you have to be not to see that coming? It’s like being caught by surprise when it snows in January!”

“I thought the government was consulting the king,” Matthew replied.

Shearing looked up at him. “Oh, they are! They have! And what happens if the king sides with the Ulster Loyalists? Has anybody thought of that?”

Matthew clenched inside. He had been too consumed with the murder of his father, and the question of the document and what might be in it, to give deeper thought to such an idea. Now he did, and it was appalling. “He can’t! Can he?” he demanded.

The anger in Shearing’s face was so sharp its power filled the room. “Yes, he damned well can!” he spat, glaring at Matthew.

“When will they reach a decision?”

“Today . . . tomorrow! God knows. Then we’ll see what real trouble is.” He saw the question in Matthew’s eyes. “Yes, Reavley,” he said with level, grating calm. “The assassination in Serbia is bad, but believe me, it would be nothing compared with one at home.”

“An assassination!” Matthew exclaimed.

Shearing’s eyebrows rose. “Why not?” he challenged. “What’s the difference? Serbia is a subject part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and some of its citizens think assassination of a royal duke is the way to freedom and independence. Ireland is part of the British Empire. Why shouldn’t some of its subjects assume that the assassination of a king might earn them the freedom they want?”

“Protestant Northern Ireland wants to remain part of the British Empire,” Matthew replied, keeping his voice level with difficulty. “That’s what the term Loyalist means! They don’t want to be swallowed up in Roman Catholic Ireland!” But even as he was saying it he knew the words were empty.

“Very rational,” Shearing said sarcastically. “I’m sure if you say that a little louder all the madmen with glory in their brains will put their guns away and go home again.” He pulled a thin sheaf of papers out of the drawer in his desk and held it out. “Go and look at those, see what you make of them.”

Matthew took them from him. “Yes, sir.” He went back to his own office with his fingers numb, his head singing with ideas.

Matthew attempted to work on the papers all day. They were the usual notes on intelligence information intercepted, reports of the movement of men either known or suspected of Irish independence sympathies. He was still looking for any threat to Blunden and his appointment to the War Ministry, with the obvious effect it would have on further military action in Ireland, the need for which seemed almost certain.

If the position went to Wynyard, with his robust opinions and more volatile judgment, it might not only hasten the violence, but make it worse, possibly even spreading it to England itself.

He found it difficult to keep his mind on the subject. It was too nebulous to grasp, the connections too remote. And one name occurred a number of times: Patrick Hannassey. He had been born in Dublin in 1861, the second son of a physician and Irish patriot. His elder brother had gone into law, and died young in a boating disaster off the County Waterford coast. Patrick also had studied law for a while, and he married and had a daughter. Then tragedy had struck again. His wife had been killed in a pointless exchange of violence between Catholic and Protestant, and Patrick, in his grief, had abandoned the slow-moving workings of the law in favor of the swifter struggle of politics, even of civil war.

It would suit his avowed purpose very well to succeed to the War Minister’s post, where he could be taunted, defied, and mocked into action that would seem to justify armed retaliation, and the beginning of open warfare. He preached uprising, but he did it subtly, and he was a hard man to catch: elusive, clever, never overreaching himself with arrogance, never betraying those who trusted him, not looking for personal power and certainly not for money.

A little before six Matthew went back to Shearing’s office, knowing he would find him still there.

“Yes?” Shearing looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin colorless.

“Patrick Hannassey,” Matthew replied, placing the papers on the desk in front of him. “I’d like your permission to go after him. He is the most serious threat to Blunden, because frankly he’s far cleverer. Blunden doesn’t react instinctively, but Hannassay’s capable of making him look like a coward, compared with Wynyard.”

“Denied,” Shearing answered him.

“But he’s—” Matthew began.

“I know,” Shearing cut him off. “And you’re right. But we don’t know where he is, and his own men will never betray him. For the time being he’s disappeared. Learn what you can about him, but discreetly, if there’s time. Go after Michael Neill, his lieutenant—you’ll get plenty of cooperation on that.”

There was a flatness in his voice that alarmed Matthew, a sense of defeat. “What is it?” he asked edgily.

“The king has backed the Loyalists,” Shearing answered, watching Matthew, bleak misery in his eyes. “Go and see if you can find out what Neill is up to, and if there’s anyone willing to betray him. Anything that will help.”

“Sir . . .”

“What?”

Should he mention John Reavley’s document? Was this what it was about, and he had the chance now to make it matter? Perhaps even to save the country from plunging into civil war? But Shearing might be part of it.

“Reavley, if you’ve got something to say, then say it!” Shearing snapped. “I haven’t got time to play nursemaid to your feelings! Get on with it, man!”

What could he say? That his father knew there was a conspiracy?

Shearing drew in his breath sharply, with a little hiss between his teeth, impatient, scratchy.

“Only that I think you’re right, sir,” Matthew said aloud. “One of my informants believed there was a conspiracy.”

“Then why the hell didn’t you mention it?” Shearing’s eyes were hot and black.

“Because he had no facts,” Matthew retorted with equal tartness. “No names, no dates, places, nothing but a belief.”

“Based on what?” Shearing glared at him, challenging him for a reply.

“I don’t know, sir. He was killed before he could tell me.” How hard the words were to say, even in anger.

“Killed?” Shearing said softly. Death of one of his own men, honor indirectly so, always hurt him more than Matthew expected. “How? Are you saying he was murdered for this piece of information?” His fury exploded in a snarl, full of helplessness he could no longer conceal. “What the hell’s the matter with you that you didn’t tell me? If your parents’ deaths have robbed you of this much of your wits, then . . .” He stopped.

In that instant Matthew knew that Shearing understood. Had he gone too far? Had he done precisely what his father had warned him against?

“Was it your father, Reavley?” Shearing asked, regret in his face now, something that might even have been pity.

There was no purpose in lying. Shearing would know, if not now, then later. It would destroy his trust and make Matthew look a fool, and it would gain nothing.

“Yes, sir,” he admitted. “But he was killed in a car accident on his way to see me. All I know is that he spoke of a conspiracy that would dishonor England.” It was ridiculous—he had trouble keeping his voice steady. “And it went as high as the royal family.” That was not all of the truth. He omitted the involvement of the world. That was only his father’s opinion, and perhaps he put too much importance on England’s place in things. He said nothing of the scars on the road and his certainty that it had been murder.

“I see.” In the low, slanting sunlight through the windows the tiny lines in Shearing’s skin were etched clearly. His emotion and his weariness were naked, but his thoughts were as hidden as always. “Then you’d better follow it up, find out all you can.” His lips tightened. It was impossible to imagine his thoughts. “I presume you will anyway. Do it properly.”

“And Neill?” Matthew asked. “Blunden?”

Shearing’s eyes were bright, as though with amusement he could not share. “I have other men who can do that, Reavley. You are not indispensable. You will be of more use to me doing one job properly than half doing two.”

Matthew did not allow his gratitude to show. Shearing should not think him too much in debt. “Thank you, sir. I’ll report when I have something.” He turned on his heel before Shearing could add anything, and went out, closing the door behind him. He felt a curious sense of freedom, and of danger.

Matthew began immediately and his first call was exactly as Chetwin had suggested, to Dermot Sandwell. Matthew asked if he might see him as a matter of urgency, to do with the king’s announcement today of his support for the Ulster Loyalists. He gave his name and rank, and that he was on assignment to the Secret Intelligence Service. There was no point in hiding it because Sandwell could very easily find out and would be extremely unlikely to receive him at all otherwise.

He had to wait only fifteen minutes before he was taken into first the outer office and then the inner. It was a handsome room overlooking Horseguards’ Parade, furnished with an extremely individual and pleasing mixture of classical and Middle Eastern styles. A burr walnut desk was flanked by Queen Anne chairs. Turkish brassware sat on an Italian petra dura table. Persian miniatures painted on bone decorated one wall, and above the fireplace was a minor Turner of exquisite beauty, and probably worth as much money as Matthew would earn in a decade.

Sandwell himself was tall and very slight, but there was a wiry grace to him that suggested strength. His hair and skin were fair, and his eyes were a uniquely vivid blue. There was an intensity to his face that would have made him unusual even were the rest of him ordinary. It would have held the attention of anyone who had been in his company for more than a few moments.

He came forward and shook Matthew’s hand, his grip firm, then he stepped back.

“What can I do for you, Reavley?” He waved at the chair to indicate Matthew was to sit, then sat back again in his own, his eyes not leaving Matthew’s face. He continued to create a life and a tension in the room while remaining perfectly motionless. Matthew noticed that there was a mosaic ashtray on the desk, with at least half a dozen cigarette ends in it.

“As you know, sir, His Majesty has expressed his support for the Ulster Loyalists,” he began. “And we are concerned that in doing so he may have placed himself in a certain amount of danger from Nationalists.”

“I should think that is beyond doubt,” Sandwell agreed, with only the smallest flicker of impatience across his face.

“We have cause, insubstantial but sufficient to concern us, that there may be a plot to assassinate him,” Matthew went on.

Sandwell was motionless, but something inside him became even more rigid. “Have you, indeed? I admit that in itself it does not surprise me, but I had no idea they were so . . . daring! Do you know who is behind it?”

“That’s what I’m working on,” Matthew answered. “There are several possibilities, but the one that seems most likely so far is a man named Patrick Hannassey.”

“A Nationalist with a long history of activity,” Sandwell agreed. “I’ve had slight dealings with him myself, but not lately.”

“No one has seen him for over two months,” Matthew said drily. “Which is one of the facts that concerns us. He has dropped out of sight so completely that none of our contacts knows where he is.”

“So what is it you want from me?” Sandwell asked.

“Any information you might have on Hannassey’s past contacts,” Matthew replied. “Anything about him we might not know—foreign connections, friends, enemies, weaknesses . . .” He had decided not to mention Michael Neill. Never pass on information you do not have to.

Finally Sandwell spoke. His voice was quiet and rough-edged. “Hannassey fought in the Boer War . . . on the Boer side, of course. He was captured by the British and held in a concentration camp for some time. I don’t know how long, but several months at least. If you’d seen that . . .” His voice cracked. “War can rob men of their humanity. Men you would have sworn were decent and they were before fear, pain, hunger, and the propaganda of hatred stripped away that decency and left only the animal will to survive.”

His blue eyes flashed up and held Matthew’s with a storm of feeling that his casual, easy elegance had completely masked. “Civilization is thin, Captain Reavley, desperately thin, a veneer like a single coat of paint, but it is all we have between us and the darkness.” His long-fingered, almost delicate hands were clenched, the knuckles pale where the skin stretched. “We must hold on to it at any cost, because if we lose it, we face chaos.”

His voice was soft, but it contained a contempt he could not control. “Believe me, Captain Reavley, civilization can all be swept away and we can turn into savages so hideous it is a horror you can never wipe from your soul.” Now his voice was little more than a whisper. “You wake up sweating in the night, your skin crawling, but the nightmare is inside you, for the possibility that this is what we are all like . . . underneath the smiling masks.”

Matthew could offer no argument. Sandwell was speaking about something of which he had no knowledge. He had heard only fragments of accusation and denial, rumors of ugliness that belonged to another world and other, far different people.

Sandwell smiled, but it was a grimace, an attempt to conceal again a little of the passion he had allowed to show itself too nakedly. “We must grasp civilization, Reavley, pay any price to keep it for ourselves and those who come after us. Guard the gates of sanity so madness does not return. We can do that for each other . . . we must. If we can’t, there is nothing else worth doing. You want to find Hannassey, I’ll help you. If he assassinates the king, God only knows what hatred will follow! We could even end up with martial law, the persecution of thousands of totally innocent Irish people, simply by association. As it is, it’s going to take the effort of every good man in Europe to keep the lid on this Austro-Serbian affair, after the assassination of the archduke. Neither side can afford to back down, and they are both gathering allies everywhere they can: Russia for the Serbs, Germany for the Austrians—naturally.”

He reached for a black leather cigarette case and took out a cigarette so automatically he seemed unaware of doing it. He lit it and drew in a deep draft of smoke. “As well as the Irish, you might look toward some of the socialist groups,” he continued. “Men like Hannassey take their allies anywhere they find them. Socialist aspiration is far greater than many people think. There’s Jaurès, Rosa Luxemburg, Adler, unrest everywhere. I’ll give you what help I can—all the information this office has is at your disposal—but time is short . . . desperately so.”

“Thank you, sir,” Matthew said simply. He was profoundly grateful. Suddenly he was lurching forward with a frightening speed. From being alone he had moved to having one of the most discreetly powerful men in foreign affairs willing to listen to him and to share information. Perhaps the truth was only just beyond sight. In days, a week at most, he would face the truth of his parents’ death. John Reavley had been right—there was a conspiracy.

“Thank you, sir,” he repeated, rising to his feet. “I appreciate that very much.” Small words to convey the excitement and the apprehension inside him.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

On Monday, July 20, Joseph spent the morning in a lively albeit erratic discussion with half a dozen students in which he doubted anyone learned very much.

He found himself enervated by the exchange as he walked back across the quad toward his own room, eager for the peace of familiar books and pictures, and above all the silence. He was fourteen or fifteen years older than most of the young men he had been with, but today it seemed more than a generation. They were frightened, perhaps of the thought of war in Europe, even though it was distant and problematical.

Far more immediate was the continuing police investigation of Sebastian Allard’s murder. That could not be escaped. It was omnipresent as Sebastian’s grieving mother walked the Fellows’ Garden in black, waiting for justice, her rage and misery consuming her. She seemed in a self-chosen isolation from the rest of the world. Inspector Perth continued his interrogations, never telling anyone what he had concluded from their answers. And always was the knowledge that one of these gilded scholars, studying the collected thoughts of the ages, had fired the deliberate shot.

Joseph was almost at the door when he heard the light, rapid footsteps behind him and turned to find Perth a couple of yards away. As always, he wore a suit that fitted without elegance or grace. His hair was combed back straight and his mustache trimmed level. He was carrying a pipe by the bowl, as if he was undecided whether to light it or not.

“Oh! Good. Reverend Reavley . . . glad to catch up wi’ you, sir,” he said cheerfully. “Are you going inside?”

“Yes. I’ve just finished a debate with some of my students.”

“Oi never thought you gentlemen worked so hard, even in holiday times,” Perth observed, following Joseph in through the carved stone doorway and past the oak stairs, almost black with age, the middle of the steps hollowed by centuries of feet.

“Quite a few students choose to remain here and do some extra study,” Joseph replied, turning the bend and going on up. “And then there are always the undergraduates pursuing other studies.”

“Oh, yes, the undergraduates.”

They reached the landing and Joseph opened his own door. “Is there something I can do for you, Inspector?”

Perth smiled appreciatively. “Well, since you ask, sir, there is.” He stood expectantly on the step.

Joseph surrendered and invited him inside. “What is it?” he asked.

“Oi think it’d be true to say, sir, that you knew Mr. Allard better than any o’ the other gentlemen here?”

“Possibly.”

Perth put his hands in his pockets. “You see, Reverend, Oi’ve bin talking to Miss Coopersmith, Mr. Allard’s fiancée, as was, if you see what Oi mean? Nice young lady, very collected, no weeping an’ wailing, just a quiet sort o’ grief. Can’t help admiring it, can you?”

“No,” Joseph agreed. “She seems a fine young woman.”

“Did you know her before, sir? Seeing as you know the Allard family, and Mr. Sebastian especially. People tell me you were very close, gave him lots of advice in his studies, watched over him, as you might say.”

“Academically,” Joseph pointed out, acutely aware how true that was. “I knew very little of his personal life. I have a number of students, Inspector. Sebastian Allard was one of the brightest, but he was certainly not the only one. I would be deeply ashamed if I had neglected any of the others because they were less gifted than he. And to answer your question, no, I did not know Miss Coopersmith.”

Perth nodded, as if that corroborated something he already knew. He closed the door behind him but remained standing in the middle of the floor, as if the room made him uncomfortable. It was alien territory, with its silence and its books. “But you know Mrs. Allard?” he asked.

“A little. What is it you are looking for, Inspector?”

Perth smiled apologetically. “Oi’ll come to the point, sir. Mrs. Allard told me what time Sebastian left home to come back to college on Sunday the twenty-eighth o’ June. He’d been up in London on the Saturday, but he came home in the evening.” His face became very somber. “That were the day of the assassination in Serbia, although o’ course we didn’t know that then. An’ Mr. Mitchell, the porter at the gate, told me what time he got here.”

“The purpose?” Joseph reminded him. Since Perth did not, he felt unable to sit down either.

“Oi’m coming to that,” Perth said unhappily. “He told his mother as he’d got to come back for a meeting here . . . an’ so he had. Six people as’ll confirm that.”

“He wasn’t killed on the twenty-eighth,” Joseph pointed out. “It was several days after that—in fact, a week. I remember because it was after my parents’ funeral, and I was back here.”

Perth’s face registered his surprise and then his sympathy. “Oi’m sorry, sir. A dreadful thing. But my point is, like yourself, Mr. and Mrs. Allard live close by, not more’n ten miles. How long would you say it’d take to drive that far, for a young man with a fast car like his?”

“Half an hour,” Joseph replied. “Probably less, depending on the traffic. Why?”

“When he left home he told his parents he was going to see Miss Coopersmith for a couple of hours,” Perth replied. “But she says that he stayed barely ten minutes with her. He went, going through your village o’ St. Giles, an’ on toward Cambridge, about three o’clock.” He shook his head. He was still holding the pipe by its bowl. “That means he should’ve bin here by quarter to four, at the outside. Whereas he didn’t actually get here, Mr. Mitchell says, until just after six.”

“So he went somewhere else,” Joseph reasoned. “He changed his mind, met a friend, or stopped in the town before coming on to college. What does it matter?”

“Just an example, sir,” Perth said. “Bin asking around a bit. Seems he did things like that quite regular, couple of hours here, couple there. Oi thought as you might know where he spent that time, an’ why he lied to folks about it.”

“No, I don’t.” It was an unpleasant thought that Sebastian had regularly done something he had wanted or needed to hide from his friends. But it was drowned in Joseph’s mind by another thought, sharp and clear as a knife in sudden light. If Perth was accurate about the time Sebastian had left his home, and that he had driven south to Cambridge through St. Giles, which was the natural and obvious way, then he would have passed the place on the Hauxton Road where John and Alys Reavley were killed, within a few minutes of it happening.

If it had been just before, then it meant nothing; it was merely a coincidence easily explained by circumstance. But if it had been just after, then what had he seen? And why had he said nothing?

Perth was staring at him, bland, patient, as if he could wait forever. Joseph forced himself to meet his eyes, uncomfortably aware of the intelligence in them; Perth was far more astute than he had appreciated until now. “I’m afraid I have no idea,” he said. “If I learn anything I shall tell you. Now if you will excuse me, I have an errand to run before my next tutorial.” That was not true, but he needed to be alone. He must sort out the turbulence of thought in his mind.

Perth looked a little surprised, as if the possibility had not occurred to him. “Oh. You sure you have no idea what he was doing? You know students better ’n Oi do, sir. What might it’ve bin? What do these young men do when they ain’t studying an’ attending lectures and the loike?” He looked at Joseph innocently.

“Talk,” Joseph replied. “Go boating sometimes, or to the pub, the library, walk along the Backs. Some go cycling or practice cricket at the nets. And of course there are papers to write.”

“Interesting,” Perth said, chewing on his pipe. “None of that seems worth lying about, does it?” He smiled, but it was not friendliness so much as satisfaction. “You have a very innocent view o’ young men, Reverend.” He took the pipe out again, as if suddenly remembering where he was. “Are those the things you did when you was a student? Maybe divinity students are a great deal more righteous-living than most.” If there was sarcasm in his voice, it was well concealed.

Joseph found himself uncomfortable, aware not only that he sounded like a prig, but that perhaps he had been as deliberately blind as that made him sound, and that Perth was not. He could remember his own student days perfectly well, and they were not as idealized as the picture he had just painted. Divinity students, along with medical, were among the heaviest drinkers of all, not to mention other even less salubrious pursuits.

“I started in medicine,” he said aloud. “But as I recall, none of us appreciated being obliged to account for our free time.”

“Really?” Perth was startled. “A medical student? You? Oi din’t know that. So you know some o’ the less admirable kinds of youthful carry-ons, then?”

“Of course I do,” Joseph said a trifle sharply. “You asked me what I know of Sebastian, not what I might reasonably suppose.”

“Oi see what you mean,” Perth replied. “Thank you for your help, Reverend.” He nodded several times. “Then Oi’ll just keep on.” He turned and went out of the door, at last pulling out a worn, leather tobacco pouch and filling the pipe as he went down the stairs, slipping a bit on the last and most uneven one.

Joseph left a few moments later and walked briskly across the quad and out of the main gate into St. John’s Street. But instead of turning right for the town, he went left for a few yards along Bridge Street, across it, along the main road, and eventually onto Jesus Green, looking over to Midsummer Common.

All the time his mind was struggling with the fact that Sebastian had passed by the place in the Hauxton Road where John and Alys Reavley had been killed. The question that burned in his head was this: Had Sebastian witnessed it and known that it was not an accident, possibly even seen whoever it was emerge from the ditch and go over and search the bodies? If so, then he had known too much for his own safety.

Since he too was in a car, he must have been seen by them, and they had to have realized he knew what had happened. Had they tried to follow him?

No, if they were on foot, their car hidden, then they would be unable to go after him. But with any intelligence at all, a few questions and they could have found who owned the car and where he lived. From there on it would be simple enough to trace him to Cambridge.

Had he been aware of that? Was that why he had been so tense, so full of dark thoughts and fears? Had it not really been anything to do with Austria or the destruction that a war in Europe would bring, but the knowledge that he had seen a murder?

Joseph walked across the grass. The sun was hot on his right cheek. There was no traffic on the Chesterton Road, and only a couple of young men in white trousers and cricket sweaters walking side by side a hundred yards away, probably students from Jesus College. They were involved in heated conversation and oblivious of anyone else.

Why had Sebastian said nothing? Even if he had not known at the time that it was John and Alys Reavley who had been killed, he must have known afterward. What was he afraid of? Even if he had weighed the chance of them tracing his car, since he had not recognized them, what threat was he?

Then the answer came to Joseph, ugly and jagged as broken glass. Perhaps Sebastian had known them.

If they were responsible for his death, then there was only one hideous and inescapable conclusion: it was someone here in college! No one had broken in. Whoever murdered Sebastian was one of those already here, someone they all knew and whose presence was part of daily life.

But why had Sebastian told no one? Was it somebody so close, so unbelievable, that he dared not trust anyone with the truth, not even Joseph, whose parents were the victims?

The sun burned in the silence of the mown turf. The traffic seemed to belong to another world. He walked without sense of movement, as if caught in an eddy of time, separate from everyone else.

Was it fear for himself that had kept Sebastian silent? Or defense of whoever it was? Why would he defend them?

Joseph came to the edge of Jesus Green and crossed the road onto Midsummer Common, walking south into the sun.

But if Sebastian thought it was an accident and he had been the one who had reported it, why hide that fact? If he had simply run away, why? Was he such a coward he would not go to the wreck, at least to see if he could help?

Or had he recognized whoever it was who had laid the caltrops and pulled them away afterward, and kept silent because it was someone he knew? To defend them? Or had they threatened him?

And had they killed him afterward anyway?

Was that why he had not come straight to college that day . . . fear?

But what about all the other occasions Perth spoke of? Joseph felt a strange sense of disloyalty even thinking such things. He had known Sebastian for years, met his straight-eyed, passionate gaze as they spoke of dreams and ideas, beauty of thought, music of rhythm and rhyme, the aspirations of men down the ages from the first stumbling recorded words in history. Surely they had trusted each other better than this? Had they been no more than children playing with concepts of honor, as real children built towers of sand to be crashed away by the first wave of reality?

He had to believe it was more than that. Sebastian had come even earlier than Regina Coopersmith said, and passed along the Hauxton Road before the crash. Or he had gone somewhere else altogether, by another route. Whoever had killed him had done so for a reason that had nothing to do with John and Alys Reavley’s deaths. That was the only answer he could bear.

Joseph turned back toward St. Johns, increasing his pace. Enough had been said about Sebastian and the injuries people felt they had suffered at his hands that a closer look at some of them would lead either to proving them trivial or, if followed to the very end, to the reason for his death.

One episode that came to his mind first was the curious exchange with Eardslie when they were standing outside Eaden Lilley’s and the young woman who walked with such grace had appeared about to speak to them and then changed her mind. It had been suggested that Sebastian had intentionally taken someone else’s girl, simply to show that he could, and then cast her aside. Was that true?

It took Joseph half an hour to find Eardslie, who was sitting on the grass on the Backs, leaning against the trunk of a tree with books spread out around him. He looked up at Joseph in surprise and made as if to stand up.

“Don’t,” Joseph said quickly, sitting down on the ground opposite him, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable. “I wanted to talk to you. Do you remember the young woman who passed us outside Eaden Lilley’s the other day?”

Eardslie drew in his breath to deny it.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t make that a question,” Joseph amended. “It was quite obvious that you did know her, whether it was well or slightly, and that, seeing me there, she decided not to speak to you.”

Eardslie looked uncomfortable. He was a serious young man, the oldest son, of whom his family expected a great deal, and the weight of it frequently lay rather heavily on him. Now in particular he seemed conscious of obligation. “Probably a matter of tact, sir,” he suggested.

“No doubt. What would she need to be tactful about?”

Eardslie colored slightly. “Her name is Abigail Trethowan,” he said unhappily. “She was more or less engaged to Morel, but she met Sebastian, and sort of . . .” He was at a loss to put into words what he meant.

“Fell in love with Sebastian,” Joseph finished for him.

Eardslie nodded.

“And you are suggesting that Sebastian brought that about deliberately?” Joseph asked, raising his eyebrows.

Eardslie’s color deepened and he looked down. “It certainly looked that way. And then he dropped her. She was very upset.”

“And Morel?”

Eardslie raised his eyes. They were wide, golden-flecked, and burning with anger.

“How would you feel, sir?” he said furiously. “Somebody takes your girl from you, just to show you and everybody else that he can? And then he doesn’t even want her, so he just dumps her, as if she were unwanted baggage. You can’t take her back or you look a complete fool, and she feels . . . like a . . .” He gave up, unable to find a word savage enough.

Joseph realized how much Eardslie himself had cared for Abigail, possibly more than he was admitting.

“Where does she live?” Joseph asked.

Eardslie’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to say anything to her!” He was horrified. “She’d be humiliated, sir! You can’t!”

“Is she the kind of woman who would conceal the truth of a murder rather than face embarrassment?” Joseph asked.

Eardslie’s struggle was clear in his face.

Joseph waited.

“She’s at the Fitzwilliam, sir. But please, do you have to?”

Joseph stood up. “Would you rather I ask Perth to do it?”

He found Abigail Trethowan in the Fitzwilliam library. He introduced himself and asked if he might speak to her. With considerable apprehension she accompanied him to a tea shop around the corner, and when he had ordered for both of them, he broached the subject.

“I apologize for speaking of what must be painful, Miss Threthowan, but the subject of Sebastian’s death is not going to rest until it is solved.”

She was sitting straight-backed in her chair, like a schoolgirl with a ruler at her back. Joseph could remember Alys reminding both Hannah and Judith of the importance of posture and poking a wooden spoon through the spokes of the kitchen chairs to demonstrate, catching them in the middle of the spine. Abigail Trethowan looked just as young, proud, and vulnerable as they had. It would be hard to forgive Sebastian if he had done what Eardslie believed.

“I know,” she said quietly, her eyes avoiding his.

How could he ask her without being brutal?

All around them was the clatter of china and the murmur of conversation as ladies took tea and exchanged gossip, in many cases bags and boxes of shopping piled near their feet. No one was vulgar enough to look at Joseph and Abigail openly, but he knew without doubt that they were being examined from head to foot, and speculation was rich and highly inventive.

He smiled at Abigail and saw by the flash of humor in her eyes that she was as aware of it as he.

“I could ask you questions,” he said frankly. “But wouldn’t it be better if you simply told me?”

The color burned up her cheeks, but she did not look away from him. “I’m ashamed of it,” she said in a voice that was little above a whisper. “I’d hoped I wouldn’t ever have to think of it again, much less tell anyone.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid there is no escape. We owe it to everyone else involved.”

Once their tea and scones were served, she began her account. “I met Edgar Morel. I liked him very much, and gradually it turned into love—at least I thought it did. I had never really been in love before, and I didn’t know what to expect.” She glanced up at him and then down at her hands again. She held them clasped in front of her, strong, well-shaped, and bare of rings. “He asked me to marry him, and I was wondering whether to accept. It seemed a little soon.” She drew in her breath. “Then I met Sebastian. He was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.” She raised her eyes to meet Joseph’s, and they were bright, swimming in tears.

He wanted to help her, but there was nothing he could do except listen. If he did not interrupt, it would be over more quickly.

“He was so clever, so quick to understand everything,” she went on, rueful now, obviously curious about the irony of it. “And he was funny. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life.” She looked at him again. “I never really laughed, not just a little giggle but the sort of aching, uncontrollable laughter my mother would think was totally indecent. And it was such fun! We talked about all sorts of things and it was like being able to fly—in your mind. Do you know what I mean, Mr. Reavley?”

“Yes, certainly I do,” he said with a catch in his voice, partly for Sebastian, partly for Eleanor, perhaps most of all for inner loneliness for something he needed and did not have.

She sipped her tea.

He took one of the scones and put butter, jam, and cream on it.

“I was in love with Sebastian,” she continued with conviction. “It wouldn’t matter what Edgar did. I could never feel like that about him. I couldn’t marry him. It would have been an impossible lie. I told him, and he was very upset. It was awful!”

“Yes, I’m sure it was,” he agreed. “When you are in love, there is not much that hurts as deeply as rejection.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He waited.

She sniffed a little and sipped her tea again, then set down the cup. “Sebastian rejected me. He said he liked me very much, but he liked Edgar also, and he couldn’t do what amounted morally to stealing his girl.” She took a shivery breath. “I never saw him alone after that. I was mortified. For ages I didn’t want to see anyone. But I suppose it passes. We all survive.”

“No, we don’t,” he corrected her. “Sebastian is dead.”

The blood drained from her face, and she stared at him in horror. “You don’t . . . you don’t think Edgar . . . Oh, no! No! He was upset, but he would never do that! Besides, it really wasn’t Sebastian’s fault. He didn’t do anything to encourage me!”

“Would that make you feel any better if you were in Edgar’s place?” he asked. “It wouldn’t comfort me to know somebody had taken the woman I loved, without even having to try.”

She closed her eyes, and the tears ran down her cheeks. “No,” she said huskily. “No, I think I’d feel worse. I still don’t believe Edgar would kill him. He didn’t love me that much, not to commit murder for. He’s a nice man, really nice, just not . . . not alive as Sebastian was.”

“It isn’t always the value of what is taken that makes us hate,” he pointed out. “Sometimes it’s just the fact that we’ve been robbed. It’s pride.”

“He wouldn’t,” she repeated. “If you think he did, then you don’t know him.”

Perhaps she was right, but he wondered if she was defending him because she carried such a burden of guilt for having hurt him. It would be a way of paying some of that debt.

And yet the Morel he knew would not have killed for such a reason. He could easily see him fighting, perhaps punching Sebastian hard enough to kill him by accident, but not deliberately with a gun. For one thing, the sheer physical release of violence would not be in it. It would leave him still empty, and consumed not only with guilt but with fear also.

“No, I don’t think he would, either,” he agreed.

“Do you have to tell that policeman?”

“I won’t unless something happens to change things,” he promised. “Unfortunately there are many other possibilities, and very few of us can prove we didn’t. Please have one of these scones. They really are excellent.”