No Graves As Yet

She smiled at him, blinking hard, and reached out to accept.

On Tuesday afternoon, Joseph took the train to London and was waiting for Matthew when he came home to his flat.

“What are you doing here?” Matthew demanded, coming into the sitting room and seeing Joseph lounging in his own favorite chair. Matthew was in uniform, and he looked tired and harassed, his fair hair untidy and uncharacteristically in need of cutting, his face pale.

“The doorman let me in,” Joseph replied, climbing to his feet to leave the chair free. “Have you eaten?” It was past dinnertime. He had found bread and a little cheese in the kitchen and some Belgian pâté, and opened a bottle of red wine. “Can I get you something?”

“Like what?” Matthew said a little sarcastically, but easing himself into the chair and relaxing slowly.

“Bread and pâté?” Joseph replied. “I finished the cheese. Wine or tea?”

“Wine, if you haven’t finished that, too! Why have you come? Not for dinner!”

Joseph ignored him until he had cut three slices of the bread and brought it along with butter, pâté, and the bottle of wine and a glass.

“You didn’t answer my question. You look like hell. Has something else happened?”

Joseph heard the edge to his voice. “So do you,” he said, sitting in the other chair and crossing his legs. “How are you progressing?”

Matthew smiled, half ruefully, and a little of the weariness ironed out of his face. “I know more. I’m not sure how much of it is relevant. The British and Irish parties met at the Palace and failed to reach any agreement. I suppose no one is surprised. The king supported the Loyalists yesterday, but I expect you know that.”

“No, I didn’t,” Joseph said. “But I meant to do with Father’s death and the document.”

“I know you did. Let me finish! I’ve spoken to several people—Shanley Corcoran; Ivor Chetwin, who used to be a friend of Father’s; my boss, Shearing; and Dermot Sandwell, from the Foreign Office. Sandwell was actually the most helpful. From everything I can gather, an Irish plot to assassinate the king seems most likely. . . .” He stopped, having seen Joseph’s face. “It answers all Father’s criteria,” he said very quietly. “Think of what British reaction would be.”

Joseph closed his eyes for a moment. Views of rage, bloodshed, martial law, and oppression filled his mind, sickening him. He had wanted his father to be right, to be justified rather than foolish, but not at this cost. He looked up at Matthew, seeing the grayness in him with an overwhelming understanding. “Is there anything we can do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. At least Sandwell is aware of it. I imagine he will warn the king.”

“Will he? I mean, would he even be able to get access to see him without alarming . . . ?”

“Oh, yes. I think they’re distantly related somewhere along the line. From the marriage of one of Victoria’s umpteen children. I just don’t know if Sandwell can make the king believe it. No one has ever assassinated a British monarch.”

“Not assassinated, perhaps,” Joseph agreed. “But we’ve certainly had a good few murdered, deposed, or executed. But the last was bloodless, and a long time ago: 1688, to be precise.”

“Rather beyond living memory,” Matthew pointed out. “Did you come to ask what I’d found so far?” He took another bite of his bread and pâté.

“I came to tell you that the police have discovered that Sebastian lied about when he left home to go back to college the day Mother and Father were killed. He actually left a couple of hours earlier.”

Matthew was puzzled. “I thought he was killed over a week later. What difference does that make?”

Joseph shook his head. “The point is that he lied about it, and why do that unless there was something he wanted to conceal?”

Matthew shrugged. “So he had a secret,” he said with his mouth full. “Probably he was seeing a girl his parents wouldn’t approve of, or who was involved with someone else, possibly even someone’s wife. Sorry, Joe, but he was a remarkably good-looking young man, which he was well aware of, and he wasn’t the saint you like to think.”

“He wasn’t a saint!” Joseph said a trifle abruptly. “But he could behave perfectly decently where women were concerned, even nobly. And he was engaged to marry Regina Coopersmith, so obviously any involvement with someone else would be something he wouldn’t want known. But that isn’t why I’m telling you about it. What does matter is that to drive from Haslingfield to Cambridge he would pass along the Hauxton Road, going north, and it now seems that it must have been at pretty much the same time as Father and Mother were going south.”

Matthew stiffened, his hand with the bread in it halfway to his mouth, his eyes wide. “Are you saying he could have seen the crash? In God’s name, why wouldn’t he have said so?”

“Because he was afraid,” Joseph replied. He felt the tightness knot inside him. “Perhaps he recognized whoever it was, and knew they had seen him.”

Matthew’s eyes were fixed on Joseph’s. “And they killed him because of what he had seen?”

“Isn’t it possible?” Joseph asked. “Someone killed him! Of course, he may have passed before the crash and known nothing at all about it.”

“But if he did see it, that would explain his death.” Matthew ignored his supper and concentrated on the idea, leaning forward in his chair now, his face tense. “Have you come up with any other motive for what seems to be a pretty cold-blooded shooting?”

“Cold-blooded?”

“Do your students usually call on each other at half past five in the morning carrying guns?”

“They don’t have guns,” Joseph replied.

“Where did it come from?”

“We don’t know where it came from or where it went to. No one has ever seen it.”

“Except whoever used it,” Matthew pointed out. “But I presume no one left the college after Elwyn Allard found the body, so who left before? Don’t they have to pass the porter’s lodge at the gate?”

“Yes. And no one did.”

“So what happened to the gun?”

“We don’t know. The police searched everywhere, of course.”

Matthew chewed on his lip. “It begins to look as if you’ve got someone very dangerous indeed in your college, Joe. Be careful. Don’t go wandering around asking questions.”

“I don’t wander around!” Joseph said a little tartly, stung by the implication not only of aimlessness, but of incompetence to look after himself.

Matthew was deliberately patient. “You mean you are going to tell me this about Sebastian and leave it for me to investigate? I’m not in Cambridge, and anyway, I don’t know those people.”

“No, of course I don’t mean that!” Joseph retorted. “I’m just as capable as you are of asking intelligent and discreet questions, and deducing a rational answer without annoying everybody and arousing their suspicions.”

“And you’re going to do it?” That seemed to be a question.

“Of course I am! As you pointed out, you are not in a position to. And since Perth knows nothing about it, he won’t. What else do you suggest?”

“Just be careful,” Matthew warned, his voice edgy. “You’re just like Father. You go around assuming that everyone else is as open and honest as you are. You think it’s highly moral and charitable to think the best of people. So it is. It’s also damn stupid!” His face was angry and tender at the same time. Joseph was so like his father. He had the same long, slightly aquiline face, the dark hair, the kind of immensely reasonable innocence that left him totally unprepared for the deviousness and cruelty of life. Matthew had never been able to protect him and probably never would. Joseph would go on being logical and naive. And the most infuriating thing about it was that Matthew would not really have wished his brother to be different, not if he was honest.

“And I can’t afford for you to get yourself killed,” he went on. “So you’d better just get on with teaching people and leave the questions to the police. If they catch whoever shot Sebastian, we’ll have a lead toward who’s behind the conspiracy in the document.”

“Very comforting,” Joseph replied sarcastically. “I’m sure the queen will feel a lot better.”

“What has the queen to do with it?”

“Well, it’ll be a trifle late to save the king, don’t you think?”

Matthew’s eyebrows rose. “And you think finding out who shot Sebastian Allard is going to save the king from the Irish?”

“Frankly, I think it’s unlikely anything will save him if they are determined to kill him, except a series of mischances and clumsiness, such as nearly saved the archduke of Austria.”

“The Irish falling over their own feet?” Matthew said incredulously. “I’m not happy to rely on that! I imagine rather more is expected of the SIS.” He looked at Joseph with a mixture of misery and frustration. “But you stay out of it! You aren’t equipped to do this sort of thing.”

Joseph was stung by the condescension in him, whether it was intentional or not. Sometimes Matthew seemed to regard him as a benign and otherworldly fool. Part of him knew perfectly well that Matthew was aching inside from the loss of his father just as much as he was himself, and would not admit that he was afraid of losing Joseph as well. Perhaps it was something he would never say aloud.

But Joseph’s temper would not be allayed by reason. “Don’t be so bloody patronizing!” he snapped. “I’ve seen just as much of the dark side of human nature as you have. I was a parish priest! If you think that just because people go to church that they behave with Christian charity, then you should try it sometime and disabuse yourself. You’ll find reality there ugly enough to give you a microcosm of the world. They don’t kill each other, not physically anyway, but all the emotions are there. All they lack is the opportunity to get going with it.” He drew in his breath. “And while you’re at it, Father wasn’t as naive as you think. He was a member of Parliament, after all. He didn’t get killed because he was a fool. He discovered something vast and—”

“I know!” Matthew cut him off so sharply that Joseph realized that he had hit a nerve; it was precisely what Matthew feared and could not bear. He recognized it because it was within himself as well: the need to deny and at the same time protect. He could see his father’s face as vividly as if he had left the room minutes ago.

“I know,” Matthew repeated. He looked away. “I just want you to be careful!”

“I will.” This time the promise was made sincerely, with gentleness. “I’ve no particular desire to get shot. Anyway, one of us has got to keep Judith in some kind of check . . . and you aren’t going to!”

Matthew grinned suddenly. “Believe me, Joe, neither are you!”

Joseph picked up the wine bottle and for a few moments did not speak. “If Father was bringing the document to you in London, and whoever killed him took it from the car, what were they searching the house for?”

Matthew thought for a while. “If it really is a plot of some sort to kill the king, Irish or otherwise, perhaps there are at least two copies of it,” he replied. “They took the one Father was bringing, but they need the other as well. It’s far too dangerous to leave it where someone else might find it—especially if they actually put it into effect.”

It made perfect sense. At last there was something about it that fell into place. Intellectually it was a comfort, finally something reason could grasp. Emotionally it was a darkening of the shadows and a waking of a more urgent fear.

CHAPTER

NINE

Joseph returned to Cambridge the following morning, the twenty-second of July. The train pulled away from the streets and rooftops of the city and into the open country northward.

He felt an urgency to be back in college again, and to look with fresh and far more perceptive eyes at the people he knew. He was aware that he would see things he would prefer not to: weaknesses that were impinging on his consciousness, Morel’s anger and perhaps jealousy because Abigail had been in love with Sebastian. Had he taken his revenge for that, storing it up until it became unbearable? Or was it the insult to Abigail he avenged? Or was it nothing to do with either of them, but one of the other cruelties? Had someone cheated and been caught? Would a man kill to save his career? To be sent down for cheating was certainly the ruin of all future hope in a profession or society.

Matthew’s question about the gun came back again. Where had it come from? Perth had said it was a handgun. Joseph did not know a lot about guns; he disliked them. Even in the open countryside where he lived, close to woods and water, he knew of no one who kept handguns.

As soon as he reached the college, he went to his rooms. After he washed and changed, he started to review the situation. It was like taking the concealing bandages off a wound to find where the infection was, the unhealed part, and how deep it went. If he was to tell himself the truth, he knew it was to the bone.

And it was time he addressed the next issue he was aware of. Had someone cribbed from Sebastian or he from them? The suggestion had been that it was Foubister, and he knew why. Foubister came from a working-class family in the suburbs of Manchester. He had studied at Manchester Grammar School, one of the best in the country, and come to Cambridge on scholarship. His parents must have saved every penny simply to afford his necessities such as clothes and fare. The shock of coming from the narrow, back-to-back houses of the northern industrial city, to the broad countryside of Cambridge, the ancient city steeped in learning, the sheer wealth of centuries of endowment, was something he could not hide.

His mind was outstanding, quick, erratic, highly individual, but his cultural background was of poverty not only in material surroundings, but in art, literature, the history of Western thought and ideas. The leisure to create what was beautiful but essentially of no immediate practical use was as alien an idea to everyone he had known before coming here. It strained the imagination that he should have found the same felicitous phrase to translate a passage from the Greek or Hebrew as Sebastian Allard, whose background was so utterly different, nurtured in the classics from the day he started school.

Joseph stood up with a weariness inside and went to look for Foubister. He found him coming down the stairs from his own rooms. They met at the bottom, just inside the wide oak door open onto the quad.

“Morning, sir,” Foubister said unhappily. “That wretched policeman doesn’t know anything yet, you know?” His face was pale, his eyes defiant, as if he had already read Joseph’s intent. “He’s ferreting around in everyone’s affairs, asking questions about who said what. He’s even gone into past exam results, would you believe?”

So Perth was already pursuing the thought of a cheat! Did he understand that such a charge would follow a man all his life? The whisper of it would deny him a career, blackball him from clubs, even ruin him in society. Was that something a man like Perth would grasp?

Someone had killed Sebastian. If it were not for that, then it was something else equally ugly. Perhaps it would be even worse if it were for a trivial reason?

He looked at Foubister’s miserable face, the anger in it, the desperation. He had such a burden of trust, hope, and sacrifice on his shoulders. Added to that, even coming here had opened a world to him he would never forget. The family that had nurtured him and loved him so selflessly was already someplace to which he could never fully return. The gulf widened, every day. He had already lost most of his Lancashire accent; only the odd vowel sound appeared now and then. He must have worked terribly hard to achieve that.

As if he had spoken it aloud, Foubister sensed Joseph’s thought. “I didn’t crib!” he exclaimed, his face white, his eyes hurt and angry.

“It would be very foolish,” Joseph replied. “Your style is nothing like his.” Then in case it seemed like an insult he added, “You are quite individual. But do you think it is possible someone else has cribbed, and Sebastian knew it?”

“I suppose it is,” Foubister admitted reluctantly, shifting from one foot to the other. “But it would be stupid. You’d have known one style from another, the pattern of thinking, the words, the phrases, the kind of ideas. Even if you weren’t sure, you’d suspect.”

It was true. Joseph knew each voice as uniquely as the brush stroke of an artist or the musical phrase of a composer.

“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “I’m just looking for a reason.”

“We all are,” Foubister said tensely, holding the book in his hand more tightly. “We’re all wandering around tearing ourselves to pieces. He doesn’t understand!” He jerked his arm backward to indicate Perth, somewhere in the college behind him. “He doesn’t really know anything about us! How could he? He’s never been in a world like this.” He said it without condescension, but with impatience for those who had placed Perth out of his depth, a feeling he himself must taste every day, even if it was lessening, at least on the surface. But surely, deeper into thought, he must have understood that the thread of it ran through everything—class, manner, words chosen, even dreams.

Joseph drew breath to interrupt, then silenced himself. He should listen. Unguarded talk was exactly what he needed to hear—and weigh. He forced himself to relax and lean a little against the doorjamb.

“Someone mentions an argument, and he thinks it’s a fight!” Foubister went on, his wide eyes on Joseph’s, expecting understanding. “That’s what university is all about, exploring ideas! If you don’t question it, try to pick it to pieces, you never really know whether you believe it or not.”

Joseph nodded.

“We don’t argue to prove a point!” Foubister went on, his voice rising in desperation. “We argue to prove that we exist! Differences of opinion don’t mean hate, for heaven’s sake—exactly the opposite! You can’t be bothered to waste time arguing with someone you don’t respect. And respect is about the same thing as liking, isn’t it?”

“Almost,” Joseph agreed, thinking back to his own college days.

They heard a clatter of feet on a stairway above them, and a moment later a student excused himself and ran past, clutching a pile of books. He glanced at Joseph and Foubister. His eyes were wide with question and suspicion. It was clear in his expression that he thought he understood something. He turned away and sprinted across the quad and through the archway.

“You see?” Foubister challenged, fear rising sharply in his voice. “He thinks I cheated and you’re calling me out on it!”

“You can’t stop people leaping to conclusions. If you deny it, you’ll make it worse,” Joseph warned. “He’ll find out he’s wrong.”

“Will he? When? What if they never find out who killed Sebastian? They’re not doing very well so far!”

“You said people were arguing and Perth didn’t understand,” Joseph said levelly. “Who was he thinking of in particular?”

“Morel and Rattray,” Foubister answered. “And Elwyn and Rattray, because Rattray doesn’t think there’ll be war, and Elwyn does. Sometimes he sounds as if he almost looks forward to it! All heroic sort of stuff, like the Charge of the Light Brigade, or Kitchener at Khartoum.” His voice betrayed not only fear but disgust. “Sebastian thought there would be war, and that it would be catastrophic, which seems to be what Perth thinks. Got a face like an undertaker! Elwyn is only afraid it’ll all be over before he has a chance to do his bit! But it was just argument!”

He stared at Joseph, his eyes begging for agreement. “You don’t kill someone because they disagree with you! Might kill myself if nobody did!” A smile flashed across his face and vanished. “That would be a sure sign I was talking such rubbish nobody cared enough about it, or me, to be bothered contradicting. Either that or I was in hell.” He stood motionless, his cotton shirt hanging limply on his body. “Imagine it, Dr. Reavley! Total isolation—no other mind there but your own, echoing back to you exactly what you said! Oblivion would be better. Then at least you wouldn’t know you were dead!”

Joseph heard the note of hysteria in his voice.

“Foubister,” he said gently. “Everyone is frightened. Something terrible has happened, but we have to face it, and we have to learn the truth. It won’t go away until we do.”

Foubister steadied a little bit.

“But you should have seen some of the things people have come up with!” He shivered in spite of the breathless heat in the sheltered doorway. “Nobody looks at anyone the way they used to. It’s a sort of poison. One of us here actually took a gun, walked into Sebastian’s room, and for some dreadful reason shot him in the head.” He shrugged, and Joseph noticed how much thinner he was than a month ago.

“We have our faults, and I’ve seen that in the last couple of weeks more than I ever wanted to.” Foubister’s face was white with misery, and he hunched as if even in this dazzling summer he could be cold. “I look at fellows I’ve worked with, sat with at the pub all evening, and wondered if any of them could have killed Sebastian.”

Joseph did not interrupt him.

“And even worse than that,” Foubister went on, speaking more and more rapidly, “people look at me—all sorts of people, even Morel—and I can see the same thoughts in their eyes, and the same embarrassment afterward. What’s going to happen when it’s over and we know who it was? Will we ever go back to how we were before? I won’t forget who thought it could be me! How can I feel the same about them as I used to? And how could they forgive me, because I, too, have wondered . . . about lots of people!”

“It won’t be the same,” Joseph said frankly. “But it may still be bearable. Friendships change, but that doesn’t have to be bad. We all make mistakes. Think how much you would like your own buried and forgotten, and then do the same for others—and for yourself.” He was afraid he sounded trite, because he dared not say what was really in his mind: What if they never found who had shot Sebastian? What if the suspicion and the doubt remained here working their erosion forever, dividing, spoiling, tearing apart?

“Do you think so?” Foubister asked earnestly. He shrugged again and pushed his hands into his pockets. “I doubt it. We’re all too damned scared to be idealistic.”

“Did you like Sebastian?” Joseph said impulsively, just as Foubister turned to walk away.

“I’m not sure,” Foubister replied with painful honesty. “I used to be certain I did. I wouldn’t even have questioned it. Everyone liked him, or it seemed that way. He was funny and clever, and he could be extraordinarily kind. And once you start liking someone, it becomes a habit. You don’t change, even if they do.”

“But?” Joseph prompted.

“When you were with him you saw something good,” Foubister said ruefully, “and you believed you could do something that mattered, too. But then sometimes he’d just forget you, or go ahead and do something so much better you felt crushed.”

Joseph tried to ignore his own feelings. Sebastian had still needed him, but one day when he didn’t, would he have treated Joseph with the same offhand arrogance? He would never know. It was all a matter of belief, and he ought to be able to have some control over that.

“Anyone in particular?” he said aloud.

Foubister’s eyes widened. “If you mean do I know who killed him, no, I don’t. You don’t get a gun and shoot someone because they hurt you or make you feel like a fool, not unless you’re mad! You might punch him, or—” He bit his lip. “No, you wouldn’t even do that, because you’d be showing everyone how much you hurt. You’d just wear a nice smile as long as anyone was looking at you, and wish you could find a place to hide. Depending on who you are, you either look for something spectacular to do yourself, to show you are just as good, or you take hell out of someone else. I don’t know, Dr. Reavley, maybe you do kill. I wish I did know, because it would mean at least that I could stop suspecting everyone else.”

“I understand,” Joseph said gently.

“Yes, I suppose you do. Thank you at least for saying that.” Foubister gave a tiny smile, then turned and walked away, shoulders still tight, his body angular, yet moving with a certain grace.

It was unavoidable now. Joseph must go back to the translations that gnawed at the back of his mind, the occasions when Foubister and Sebastian had struck the same brilliant and unexpected phrase. He hated the thought that Foubister had cheated, but it seemed more and more likely. Was it really only other people’s whispers that made Foubister so conscious of suspicion and so afraid, or was it guilt?

He might never know, but he was compelled to look. There were papers he could reread, compare, do all he could to satisfy his own mind. He knew Foubister’s work, and he knew Sebastian’s. If he had any skill at all, any feeling for the cadence of language, he would know if one man was copying another. If not, then he was no more than a mechanic.

He went back inside and climbed slowly back up the stairs, fingers touching the dark oak of the banister. The first floor up was cooler, airy with its higher ceiling and open window.

Inside, his room was newly tidy from the bedder’s ministrations. She was a good woman, neat and quick and pleasant.

He pulled out the appropriate papers and turned his attention to Sebastian’s. It was a translation from the Greek, lyrical, full of metaphor and imagery. Sebastian had made a beautiful thing of it, keeping the rhythm swift and light, an excellent mixture of words, long and short, complex and simple, all blending into a perfect whole. And there was the one phrase he remembered: “the bent-limbed trees crowding along the mountain ridge, bearing the burden of the sky upon their backs.”

He put it down on the desk and searched for Foubister’s translation of the same original. It was in the middle of the page: “the hunch-limbed trees, crawling along the mountain’s rim, carrying the sky upon their backs.”

The Greeks had described them only as misshapen, silhouetted against the sky. The idea of bearing or carrying was not there, nor the suggestion of human intent. They were too alike for coincidence.

Joseph sat still, the cold grief hardening inside him. He could not ask Sebastian how he had allowed his work to be imitated so closely, and surely there was little point in confronting Foubister. He had just sworn that he had never cheated. If Joseph faced him now with this, would he still deny it? Swear it was just chance? Joseph winced at the thought of seeing it. He liked Foubister and could only imagine what grief it would bring his parents if he were sent down in shame.

But if he had killed Sebastian, that was something that could not possibly be overlooked. He realized with surprise that using those words, even to himself, meant that he had considered ignoring the cheating.

What other explanation was there? Where could he look? Who was there to ask?

His thoughts went immediately to Beecher. He could at least depend on him to be both honest and kind. Perhaps he would even honor Joseph’s silence if he was asked to.

He caught up with Beecher on his way across the quad toward the dining hall.

Beecher squinted at him. “You look awful,” he said with a half smile. “Anticipating something disgusting in the soup?”

Joseph fell into step beside him. “You’ve been teaching far longer than I have,” he began without ceremony. “What explanation might there be for two students coming up with the same highly individual translation of a passage, other than cheating?”

Beecher looked at him with a frown. “Has this something to do with Sebastian Allard?” he asked as they walked into the shadow of the archway and turned into the dining hall. Bright patterns of colored light danced on the walls from the coats of arms on the windows. There was a buzz of conversation and expectancy.

Beecher sat down at a table apart from the others, nodding to one or two other people, but giving nothing to his glance to suggest he wished their company.

“Possibly a conversation,” he said at last, just as a steward appeared at his elbow to offer him soup. “An experience shared that began a train of thought. They might even have read the same source book for something.” He declined the soup, picking up bread instead and breaking it apart.

Joseph also declined the soup. He leaned forward a little across the table. “Have you ever had that happen?”

“You mean is it likely? Whom are we talking about?”

Joseph hesitated.

“For heaven’s sake!” Beecher said exasperatedly. “I can’t give you an opinion if you don’t tell me the facts.”

Was Joseph willing to put it to the test? Was it even inevitable now? “Sebastian and Foubister,” he said miserably.

Beecher chewed his upper lip. “Unlikely, I agree. Except that Sebastian didn’t need to cheat, and I can’t see Foubister doing it. He’s a decent chap, but he’s also not a fool. He’s been here long enough to know what it would cost if he were caught. And if he did want to cheat, he’d pick someone less idiosyncratic than Sebastian.”

“How do I find out?”

“Ask him! I don’t know of anything else.” Beecher grinned suddenly. “Logic, my dear fellow! That rigid goddess you admire so much.”

“Reason,” Joseph corrected. “And she’s not rigid—she just doesn’t bend very easily.”

He went back to Foubister, carrying the paper with him.

“That’s an excellent line,” he said, disliking the duplicity. “What made you think of it? It’s quite a long way from the original.”

Foubister smiled. “There’s a line of trees a good bit like that,” he answered. “Over there in the Gog Magog Hills.” He gestured roughly to the south. “Several of us went up that way one Sunday and we saw them, outlined against a clear sky, and then a summer storm came up. It was rather dramatic.”

“Good use of opportunity,” Joseph observed. “Do it when you can, as long as it doesn’t destroy the spirit of the author. The way you have it here, I think it adds to it. It was the right feel.”

Foubister beamed. It lit up his dark face, making him suddenly charming. “Thank you, sir.”

“Who else was there and saw it?”

Foubister thought for a moment. “Crawley, Hopper, and Sebastian, I think.”

Joseph found himself smiling back, an easy, genuine feeling full of warmth. “I should have told you earlier,” he said. “It’s very good.”

In the middle of the afternoon Connie sent Joseph a note inviting him to join Mary Allard and herself for a cold lemonade. He recognized it as a plea for help, and steeled himself to respond. He closed his book, walked across the quad, and went in through the Fellows’ Garden, where he found Mary Allard alone.

She turned as she heard his footsteps on the path. “Reverend Reavley,” she acknowledged him, but there was no welcome in her eyes or her voice.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Allard,” he replied. “I wish I had something helpful to tell you, but I’m afraid I know nothing of comfort.”

“There is nothing,” she said, her tone very slightly softening the abruptness of the words. “Unless you can stop them saying such things about my son. Can you do that, Reverend? You knew him as I did!”

“I didn’t know him as you did,” he reminded her. “For example, I did not know that he was engaged to be married. He never mentioned it.”

She looked up at him defiantly. “That is a personal matter. It had been arranged for some time, but obviously he would have completed all his studies first. What I meant was that you, of all people, knew his quality! You know he had a clarity of mind, of heart, that he was honest in a way most people do not even understand.” The anger and the hurt burned through her words. “You knew that he was nobler than ordinary men, his dreams were higher and filled with a beauty they will never see.” She looked him up and down as if seeing him clearly for the first time and finding it incomprehensible. “Doesn’t it hurt you unbearably that they are questioning his very decency now?” Her contempt was raw and absolute.

At that moment Elwyn came out of the sitting room door and walked toward them. Mary Allard did not turn.

“When you love someone, surely you must also find the courage within yourself to see them with honesty, the light and the darkness as well?” Joseph said to her. He saw her anger gathering to explode. “He was good, Mrs. Allard, and he had amazing promise, but he was not perfect. He had much growth of spirit yet to accomplish, and by refusing to see the shadows in him we reinforced them instead of helping him to overcome them. I am guilty as well, and I wish it were not too late to mend it.”

Mary’s face held no forgiveness. “Reverend Reavley—”

Elwyn took her by the arm, his eyes meeting Joseph’s. He knew his mother was wrong, but her weakness was something he did not know how to face, let alone to overcome. His eyes pleaded with Joseph not to be forced to.

“Let go of me, Elwyn!” Mary said sharply, leaning away from him.

“Mother, we can’t help what people are saying! Why don’t you come inside? It’s hot out here, especially in black.”

She whirled on him. “Are you suggesting I shouldn’t wear black for your brother? Do you imagine a little discomfort matters a jot to me?”

Elwyn looked as if he had been slapped, but also as if he was used to it. He did not let go of her. “I’d like you to come inside where it is cooler.”

She snatched her arm away. She was hurting too deeply to be kind, absorbed in her own pain and careless of his.

Joseph was suddenly angry with her. Her grief was unbearable, but it was also selfish. He turned to Elwyn. “Some pain is intolerable,” he said gently. “But it is generous of you to be more concerned for your mother than for yourself, and I admire you for it.”

Elwyn flushed deeply. “I loved Sebastian,” he said huskily. “We weren’t much alike—he was cleverer than I’ll ever be—but he always made me feel he respected what I could do, sports and painting. I think a lot of people cared for him.”

“I know they did,” Joseph agreed. “And I know he admired you, but more than that, he loved you also.”

Elwyn turned away, embarrassed by his emotion.

Joseph looked steadily at Mary until a deep stain of color worked up her cheeks. With a look of fury at him for having seen her weakness, she went after her younger son and caught up with him as he reached the steps to the garden door.

Joseph followed her inside, but she barely hesitated in the sitting room. Offering the briefest apology to those there, she hurried after Elwyn through the other door into the hall.

Joseph looked at Thyer, Connie, and Harry Beecher standing uncomfortably in the silence. “I can’t think of anything helpful to say,” Joseph confessed.

Thyer was by himself, nearest the garden doors, Connie and Beecher at the other side of the room, closer to each other, glasses of lemonade in their hands.

“No one can,” Connie said. “Please don’t blame yourself.”

Thyer smiled slightly. “Particularly her husband, poor devil, and he’s trying the hardest.” There was pity in his face, and a degree of irritation. “Strange how in times of severest grief some people move further from each other, not closer.” His eyes flickered toward Connie and then back to Joseph. “I would like to remind her of her husband’s loss as well as her own, but Connie says it would only make it worse.”

“Everything makes it worse,” Connie answered him. “It’s Elwyn I’m sorriest for. Mr. Allard is old enough to look after himself.”

“No, he isn’t.” Beecher contradicted her quietly. “No one is ever old enough to hurt alone. A little tenderness would help him face it, and then begin to recover enough to start again with something like normality.”

Connie smiled at him, the warmth filling her eyes, her face. “I don’t think Mary is going to see that for a long time. It’s a pity. In grieving for what she has lost, she risks forfeiting what she still has.”

Beecher’s face tightened.

Connie saw it, blushed a little, and looked away.

Joseph heard Thyer draw in his breath, and glanced across at him, but his face was expressionless.

Connie plunged into the silence, talking to Joseph. “We’ll do what we can, but I don’t think we’re going to make much difference. I’ve tried to reassure Elwyn, but I know a word or two from you now and then would matter to him more.”

“He’s in an impossible situation,” Thyer added. “Neither of them seems to give a damn about him.”

Connie put her glass down. “Sometimes what people are is so much woven into their nature and their lives that no outside force, however great, can change them. They were like this long before Sebastian was killed.”

It was later the same afternoon that Joseph caught up with Edgar Morel walking on the path along the river.

The conversation began badly.

“I suppose you think I killed him over Abigail!” he challenged Joseph as soon as he caught up with him.

Joseph felt pressed to find the truth before it did any more damage. “I hadn’t thought it,” he replied.

Morel’s face was hard and defensive. “Of course if Sebastian was killed, it has to have been because he knew something foul about someone else, doesn’t it?” he said bitterly. “It has to be envy of his brilliance, or his charm or some bloody thing! It couldn’t be that he was cheating someone, or stealing, or anything so grubby!” The sarcasm was too overwrought to be truly cutting. “He’s far too good for that.” Unconsciously he was mimicking Mary Allard’s voice. “Nothing’s ever his fault. To listen to his mother you’d think he’d been martyred in some holy cause and the rest of us were heretics dancing on his grave.”

“Try to have patience with her,” Joseph urged. “She has no means of coming to terms with her loss.”

“No one has,” Morel said with sudden fury. “My mother died last year, just about the time Abigail dumped me for Sebastian. I didn’t go around saying everybody else was heartless because they didn’t care! The world doesn’t stop for anyone’s death! And it doesn’t excuse making yourself a pain in the arse to everybody else!”

“Morel!” Joseph said sharply, putting out his hand to steady him.

Morel misunderstood the gesture and swung his arm back and let fly with a punch. It caught Joseph glancingly on the cheek, but it knocked him off balance, at least as much with surprise as from the weight of it. He staggered backward and just saved himself from falling.

Morel stood aghast.

Joseph straightened up, feeling painfully foolish. He hoped no one else had seen. He did not wish to pursue the matter, but it would be the end of his authority, and of Morel’s respect for him, if he simply let it go. Then the answer came to him instinctively. He took a step forward, and to Morel’s total stupefaction, he hit the young man back. Not very hard, but sufficiently to make Morel stagger. He was surprised by the skill he showed; a little more weight and he would have knocked him over.

“Don’t do that again,” he said as levelly as his pounding heart would allow. “And pull yourself together. Somebody shot Sebastian, and we need to keep our heads and find out who it was, not run around like a lot of schoolgirls getting hysterical.”

Morel took a shaky breath, rubbing his jaw. “Yes, sir,” he said obediently. “Yes, sir!”

Joseph knew he had handled the situation well, but he felt like a long walk and a drink by himself in some quiet pub where he could be surrounded by the warmth of laughter and friendship without having to participate in it. He was exhausted by other people’s emotions. He had more than a sufficient burden of his own. It was not yet a month since both his parents had been killed, and the loss was still raw.

Added to that, since Eleanor’s death had shattered his emotional world, taking the energy and the drive out of his faith, he had carefully rebuilt a strength out of reason, impersonal order, the sanity of the mind. It had seemed good, proof against the injuries of grief, loneliness, doubts of all kinds. It had cost him a great deal to create it, but the truth of it was a beauty sufficient to sustain him through anything.

Except that it wasn’t working. Everything he knew was still there, still true; it just had no soul. Perhaps hope is unreasonable? Trust is not built on facts. Dealing with man, it is wise not to leap where you cannot see. Dealing with God, it is the final step without which the journey has no purpose.

He dismissed the thoughts and returned to the present, more earthbound troubles. He seesawed between fear that his father had been right and the nagging, aching doubt that perhaps John Reavley had been deluded, losing his grip on reality. That thought hurt with an amazing fierceness.

Added to that, his cheek where Morel had hit him was scratched and definitely tender. He did not want to have to explain that to anyone, especially Beecher. Somehow or other the conversation would get around to the subject of Sebastian and end unpleasantly.

So instead of going to the Pickerel, with its familiar tables by the river and people he knew, he went along the Backs in the opposite direction, almost as far as Lammas Land. He found a small pub overlooking the fields and the millpond, and went into the bar. It was paneled with oak worn dark with time, and pewter tankards hung along the rail above the bar itself, gleaming in the sunlight through the open door. The floor was broad, rough beams and not long ago would have had sawdust over them.

It was early; there were only a couple of elderly men sitting in the corner, and a pretty, fair-skinned barmaid with a wealth of wavy hair tied in a careless knot on the back of her head.

She handed a foaming mug to one of the men, who thanked her for it with ease of habit. Then she turned to Joseph.

“Afternoon, sir,” she said cheerfully. She had a soft, pleasing voice, but distinctly broadened with a Cambridgeshire accent. “What can Oi get for you?”

“Cider, please,” he answered. “Half a pint.” He’d begin with a half, and perhaps have another half later. It was a pleasant place, and the sense of solitude was exactly what he wanted.

“Right y’are, sir.” She poured it for him, watching the clear, golden liquid till it stopped just short of the top of the glass. “Haven’t seen you here before, sir. We do a fair enough meal, if you’d loike a boite? Just plain, but it’s there if you fancy it.”

He had not thought he was hungry, but suddenly the idea of sitting here gazing at the flat water of the millpond and the sun setting slowly behind the trees was a far better prospect than going back to the dining hall. There he would have to make polite conversation while knowing perfectly well everyone was wondering what on earth he had done to his face, and making guesses. Sometimes tact was so loud it deafened one. “Thank you,” he said. “I probably will.”

“You’ll be from one of the colleges?” she asked conversationally as she handed him a card with a list of the possibilities for supper.

“St. John’s,” he replied, reading down the menu. “What sort of pickle?”

“Green tomato, sir. It’s homemade, an’ if Oi say so when maybe Oi shouldn’t, it’s the best Oi’ve ever had, an’ most folks agree.”

“Then that’s what I’ll have, please.”

“Roight, sir. What sort of cheese? We got Ely cheese, or a good local half an’ half.” She was referring to the half milk cheese, white and hard, half soft, yellow cream cheese. “Or do you like the French?” she added. “We moight have a bit o’ Brie.”

“Half and half sounds good.”

“It is. All fresh. Tucky Nunn brought it in this morning,” she agreed. She hesitated, as if to add something but uncertain if she should.

He waited.

“Did you say St. John’s, sir?” There was a faint color in her cheeks, and her soft face was suddenly a little tighter.

“Yes.”

“Did . . .” She swallowed. “Did you know Sebastian Allard?”

“Yes, quite well.” What could she know of him? “You did, too?” he asked.

She nodded, her eyes flooding with tears.

“I think I’ll have my meal outside,” he said. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to bring it to me?”

“Yes, sir, course Oi’ll do that,” and she turned away quickly, hiding her face.

He walked out into the sun again and found a table set for two. Less than five minutes later the barmaid came with a tray and put it down in front of him. The bread was thick-cut with sharp crusts, cracked where they had broken under the knife. The butter was cut in small chunks off the yard, with a bright sprig of parsley on it, the cheese rich and fresh. The pickle was not one he had seen before, but the pieces were large and the juice of it a dark, ripe color.

“Thank you,” he said, taking a moment to appreciate it before he looked up and met her eyes. She was still troubled, hesitant.

“Have they—do they know what happened yet?” she asked.

“No.” He gestured to the other chair. “I’m sure the men inside will manage without you for a few minutes. Sit and talk to me. I liked Sebastian very much, but I think I may not have known him as well as I imagined. Did he come along here often?”

She lowered her eyes for a moment before looking up at him with startling candor. “Yes, this summer.” She did not add that it was to see her; it was unnecessary. It needed no explaining, for any young man might well have. He wondered with a coldness that still hurt, in spite of his growing acceptance of the facts, if Sebastian had used her completely selfishly, without her having any idea of his engagement to Regina Coopersmith. But surely this charming barmaid could never have imagined she could marry Sebastian Allard. Or could she? Was it possible she had no real idea of the world he came from?

“I am Joseph Reavley,” he introduced himself. “I lecture at St. John’s in biblical languages.”

She smiled shyly. “Oi thought that was who you must be. Sebastian talked about you a lot. He said you made the people o’ the past and their ideas and dreams into a whole life that really happened, not like just a lot of words on paper. He said you made it matter. You joined up the past and the present so we’re all one, and that makes the future more important, too.” She blushed a little self-consciously, aware of using someone else’s words, although she obviously understood and believed them herself. “He told me you showed him how beauty lasts, real beauty, the sort of thing that’s inside you.” She took a ragged breath, controlling herself with difficulty. “And it really matters what you leave behind. He said as it’s your thanks to the past, your love of the present, and your gift to the future.”

He was surprised, and far more pleased than he wanted to be, because it awoke all the old emotions of friendship, the trust and the hope in Sebastian’s integrity that he feared now was slipping out of his hands.

“My name’s Flora Whickham,” she went on, suddenly aware of not having introduced herself.

“How do you do, Miss Whickham,” he replied graciously.

Her face became somber as she returned to the subject. “Do you think it was summink to do with the war?” she asked.

He was mystified. “War?”

“He was terribly scared there was going to be a war in Europe,” she explained. “He said everyone was on the edge of it. O’ course they still are, only it’s worse now since those people were shot in Serbia. But Sebastian said as it would come anyway. The Russians and the Germans want it, and so do the French. Oi hear people in there”—she moved her head slightly to indicate the bar inside—“saying that the bankers and factory owners won’t let it happen, there’s too much to lose. And they have the power to stop it.”

She lowered her eyes, and then looked up at him quickly. “But Sebastian said it would, ‘cause it’s the nature o’ governments, and the army, and they’re the ones who have the power. Their heads are stuffed with dreams about glory, and they haven’t any idea how it would be for real. He said they were loike a bunch o’ blind men tied together, runnin’ towards the abyss. He thought millions would die.” She searched his face, longing for him to tell her it would not happen.

“No sane person wants war,” he said carefully, but with the earnestness that her passion and intelligence deserved. “Not really. A few expeditions here and there, but not out-and-out war. And nobody would kill Sebastian because he didn’t, either.” He knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that they were of little use. Why could he not speak to the heart?

“You don’t understand,” she argued, embarrassed to be contradicting him, and yet her feeling was too strong to be overridden. “He meant to do something about it; he was a pacifist. Oi don’t mean he just didn’t want to foight—he was going to do something to stop it happening.” Her face pinched a little. “Oi know his brother didn’t loike that, and his mother would have hated it. She’d think it was cowardice. For her you’re loyal and you fight, or you’re disloyal, and that means you betray your own people. There’s no other way. At least that’s what he said.”

She looked down at her hands. “But he’d grown away from them. He knew that. His oideas were different, a hundred years after theirs. He wanted Europe to be all one and not ever to foight each other again like the Franco-Prussian War, or all the wars we’ve had with France.”

She raised her eyes and met his with intense seriousness. “That meant more to him than anything else in the world, Mr. Reavley. He knew summink about the Boer War and the way everybody suffered, women and children as well, horrible things. And not only the victims, but what it did to people when they foight like that.” Her face was tight and bleak in the soft light. The sun shimmered on the millpond like an old mirror tarnished by the weeds. Dragonflies hovered above it on invisible wings. The evening was so still a dog barking in the distance seemed close enough to touch.

“It changes them inside,” she went on, still searching his face to see how much he really understood. “Can you think how you’d feel if it was your brother or husband, someone you loved, who killed people like a butcher—all sorts, women, children, the old, just like your own family?”

Her voice was soft and a little ragged with the pain she could see. “Can you think o’ trying to feel like a good person again afterwards? Sitting over the breakfast table talking, just as if it all happened to somebody else and you’d never done all those things? Or telling your children a story, putting flowers in a jug, thinking what to make for dinner, and you were the same person who’d driven a hundred women and children into a concentration camp and let them starve? Sebastian would have done anything at all to stop that happening again—ever. But Oi can’t tell that to anybody else. His parents’d hate it; they wouldn’t understand at all. They’d see him as a coward.” Even saying the word hurt her; it was naked in the soft, sad lines of her face.

“No . . . ,” Joseph said slowly, knowing without question that she was right. He could imagine Mary Allard’s reaction to such a concept. She would have refused to believe it. No son of hers, especially her beloved Sebastian, could have espoused anything so alien to the kind of patriotism she had believed in all her life, with its devotion to duty, sacrifice, and the innate superiority of her own way of life, her own code of honor. “Did his brother know how he felt?” he added.

She shook her head. “Oi don’t think so. He’s idealistic, but in a different kind o’ way. For him war is all about great battles and glory, that kind of thing. He doesn’t think o’ being so tired you can’t hardly stand up, and hurting all over, and killing other people who are just like you are, and trying to break up their whole life.”

“That’s not what the Boer War was about,” he said quickly. “Is that what Sebastian really believed?”

“More’n anything else in the world,” she said simply.

He looked at her calm, tear-filled eyes, her mouth with jaw closed hard to control herself, her lips trembling, and he understood that she had known Sebastian better than he had, and immeasurably better than Mary Allard—or Regina Coopersmith, who probably knew nothing about him at all.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said honestly. “Perhaps it does have something to do with that. I really don’t know. It seems to make as much sense as anything else.”

He stayed in the westering sun and ate his supper, had another glass of cider and a slice of apple pie with thick clotted cream, spoke again with Flora, remembering happy things. Then in the dusk he walked back along the pale river’s edge to St. John’s. Perhaps he had discovered where Sebastian went in his unaccounted hours, and it was very easy to understand. He smiled as he thought how simple it was, and that given the same mother, the same imprisoning worship, he would have done so, too.

CHAPTER

TEN

Matthew did not immediately tell Shearing of his intent to continue pursuing Patrick Hannassey as well as Neill. There were too many uncertainties to make a justifiable case for using his time, and he still did not know whom he trusted. If there was a conspiracy to assassinate the king, he could not believe Shearing would be party to it.

And if it was something else—although the more he thought of this, the more did it seem to possess all the qualities of horror and betrayal—then he would be wasting time. He would have to abandon his investigation instantly and change course to pursue whatever new threat loomed. There was no time to waste in explanations.

Special Branch had been set up in the previous century, at the height of the Fenian violence, specifically to deal with Irish problems. Since then it had become involved in every area of threat to the safety or stability of the country—threats of anarchy, treason, or general social upheaval—but the Irish problem remained at the core. Matthew made one or two discreet inquiries among professional friends, and Wednesday lunchtime saw him walking casually across through Hyde Park beside a Lieutenant Winters, who had expressed himself willing to give him all the assistance he could. However, Matthew knew perfectly well that each branch of the intelligence community guarded its information with peculiar jealousy, and it would be easier to pry the teeth out of a crocodile than shake loose any fact they would rather keep to themselves. He cursed the necessity for secrecy that prevented him from telling them the truth. But his father’s voice rang in his ears with warning, and he dared not yet ignore it. Once given away, his own secret could never be taken back.

“Hannassey?” Winters said with a grimace. “Remarkably clever man. Sees everything and seems to have a memory like an elephant. What is more important, he can relate one thing to another and deduce a third.”

Matthew listened.

“An Irish patriot,” Winters went on, staring at the cheerful scene in the park ahead of them. Couples walked arm in arm, the women in high summer fashion, much of it nautical in theme. A hurdy-gurdy man played popular ballads and music hall tunes, smiling as passers-by threw him pennies and threepences. Several children, boys in darker suits, girls in lace-edged pinafores, threw sticks for two little dogs.

“Educated by the Jesuits,” Winters continued. “But the interesting thing about him is that to the eye or ear he is not obviously Irish. He has no accent, or at least when he wishes to he can sound like an Englishman. He also speaks fluent German and French, and has traveled very considerably over a great deal of Europe. He is reputed to have good connections with international socialists, although we don’t know if he sympathizes with them or merely uses them.”

“What about other nationalist groups?” Matthew asked, not sure in which direction he was driving, but thinking primarily of the Serbians because of their recent resort to assassination as a weapon.

“Probably,” Winters answered, his cadaverous face furrowed in thought. “Trouble is, he’s very difficult to trace because he’s so unremarkable to look at. I don’t know that he deliberately disguises himself. Nothing so melodramatic as wigs or false mustaches, but a change of clothes, parting the hair on the other side, a different walk, and suddenly you have a different person. No one remembers him or can describe him afterward.”

A young man in a Guard’s uniform walked past them whistling cheerfully, a smile on his face.

“So he has a sense of proportion, no theatrics,” Matthew observed, referring to Hannassey. “Clever.”

“He’s in it to win,” Winters affirmed. “He never loses sight of the main purpose.”

“And the main purpose is?”

“Independence for Ireland—first, last, and always. Catholics and Protestants together, willing or not.”

“Obsessive?”

Winters thought for a moment. “Not so as to lose balance, no. Why are you asking?”

“I’ve heard rumors of a plot,” Matthew said with studied casualness, adding, “Wondered if Hannassey could be involved.”

Winters stiffened slightly. “If it’s an Irish plot, you’d better tell me,” he said, keeping up his steady, easy pace as they passed an elderly gentleman stopping to light his cigar, cupping his hands around the flame of his match. The breeze was only a whisper, but it was sufficient to blow out the match.

The hurdy-gurdy man changed to a love song, and some of the young people started to sing with him.

“I don’t know that it is.” Matthew was sorely tempted to tell Winters all he knew. He desperately needed an ally. The loneliness of confusion and responsibility weighed on him almost suffocatingly. “It could be any of several things,” he said aloud.

Winters’s face was bleak. He was still looking straight ahead and avoiding Matthew’s eyes. “How much do you really know what you’re talking about, Reavley?”

It was the moment of decision. Matthew took the plunge. “Only that someone uncovered a document outlining a conspiracy that was profoundly serious, and he was killed before he could show it to me,” he answered. “The document disappeared. I’m trying to prevent a disaster without knowing what it is. But it seems to me that with the Curragh mutiny, the failure to get any Anglo-Irish agreement, and now the king coming out on the side of the Loyalists, a plot against him fills the outline too well to ignore.”

Winters walked in silence for at least fifty yards, which took them around the end of the Serpentine. The sun was hot, baking the ground. The air was still, carrying the sounds of laughter from the distance, and a thread of music again.

“I don’t think so,” he said at last. “It wouldn’t serve Irish purposes. It’s too violent.”

“Too violent!” Matthew said in amazement. “Since when has that stopped the Irish Nationalists? Have you forgotten the Phoenix Park murders? Not to mention a score of other acts of terror since! Half the dynamiters in London have been Fenians.” He barely refrained from telling Winters he was talking nonsense.

Winters seemed unperturbed. “The Catholic Irish want self-government, independence from Britain,” he said patiently, as if it were something he had been obliged to explain too many times, and to men who did not wish to understand. “They want to set up their own nation with its parliament, foreign office, and economy.”

“That’s impossible without violence. In 1912 over two hundred thousand Ulstermen, and even more women, signed the Solemn League and Covenant to use all means necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule parliament in Ireland! If anyone thinks they’re going to suppress Ulster without violence, they’ve never been within a hundred miles of Ireland!”

“Very much my point,” Winters said grimly. “To have any hope at all of succeeding, the Irish Nationalists will have to win the cooperation of as many other countries outside Britain as they can. If they assassinate the king, they will be seen as merely criminals and lose all support everywhere—support they know that they need.”

They passed an elderly couple walking arm in arm, and nodded politely to them, raising their hats.

“Hannassey is not a fool,” Winters continued when they were out of earshot. “If he didn’t know that before the assassination in Sarajevo, he certainly knows it now. Europe may not approve of Austria’s subjugation of Serbia, and they may get into such a violent and ill-balanced tangle of diplomatic fears and promises that it ends in war. But the one group who will not win will be the Serbian nationalists. That I can promise you. And one thing Hannassey is not is a fool.”

Matthew wanted to argue, but even as he drew breath to do so, he realized it was to defend his father rather than because he himself believed it. If Hannassey was as brilliant as Winters said, then he would not choose assassination of the king as a weapon—unless he could be certain it would be attributed to someone else.

“The Irish wouldn’t be blamed for it if it appeared to be . . .” He stopped.

Winters raised his eyebrows curiously. “Yes? Whom did you have in mind? Who wouldn’t be traced back or betray them, intentionally or not?”

There was no one, and they were both aware of it. It did not really even matter whether the Irish were behind it or not, for they would still be blamed. The whole idea of such a public crime was one they would abhor. They might be even as keen to prevent it as Matthew himself. He was at a dead end.

“I’m sorry,” Winters said ruefully. “You’re chasing a ghost with this one. Your informant is overzealous.” He smiled, perhaps to rob his words of some of their sting. “He’s an amateur at this, or he’s trying to make himself more important than he is. There are always whispers, bits of paper floating around. The trick is to sort out the real ones. This one’s trivial.” He gave a bleak little gesture of resignation. “I’m afraid I’ve got enough real threats to chase. I’d better get back to them. Good day.” He increased his pace rapidly, and within a few moments he was lost to sight among the other pedestrians.

Shearing called Matthew into his office the next day, his face grave.

“Sit down,” he ordered. He looked tired and impatient, his voice very carefully under control, but the rough edge to it was still audible. “What’s this Irish assassination plot you’re chasing after?” he demanded. “No, don’t bother to answer. If it’s not important enough for you to have told me, then you shouldn’t be wasting your time on it. Drop it! Do you understand me?”

“I have dropped it,” Matthew said tersely. It was the truth, but not all of it. If it was not Irish, then it was something else, and he would continue to investigate the matter.

“Very wise of you,” Shearing said. “There are strikes in Russia. Over a hundred and fifty thousand men out in St. Petersburg alone. And apparently on Monday there was another attempt to murder the czarina’s mad monk, Rasputin. We haven’t got time to chase after private ghosts and goblins.” He was still staring at Matthew. “I don’t consider you to be a glory seeker, Reavley, but if I find I am mistaken, you’ll be out of here so fast your feet will barely touch the ground on your way.” There was challenge in his face, and anger. Matthew was overcome for a moment by the chill realization that there was also a shred of fear in it as well, a knowledge that things were out of control.

“The situation in the Balkans is getting worse almost by the day,” Shearing went on harshly, glaring at him. “There are rumors that Austria is preparing to invade Serbia. If it does, there is a very real and serious danger that Russia will act to protect Serbia. They are allied in language, culture, and history.” His face was tight, and his hands, dark-skinned, immaculate, were clenched on the desk until the knuckles shone white. “If Russia mobilizes, it will be only a matter of days before Germany follows. The kaiser will see himself as ringed by hostile nations, all fully armed, and growing stronger every week. Unbalanced as he is, to a degree he is right. He will face Russia to the east, and inevitably France to the west. Europe will be at war.”

“But not us,” Matthew said. “We are no threat to anyone, and it’s hardly our concern.”

“God knows,” Shearing replied.

“Isn’t that exactly the time the Irish Nationalists would strike?” Matthew could not forget the document and the outrage in his father’s voice. He could not let go. “It would be if I were their leader.”

“I daresay God knows that, too,” Shearing said waspishly. “But you will leave it to the Special Branch. Ireland is their problem. Concentrate on Europe. That is an order, Reavley!” He picked up a small bundle of papers from the top of his desk and held it out. “By the way, C wants you in his office in half an hour.” He did not look up as he said it.

Matthew froze. Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming had been head of the Secret Intelligence Service since 1909. He had begun his career as a sublieutenant in the Royal Navy, serving in the East Indies, until he was placed on the inactive list for chronic seasickness. In 1898 he had been recalled and had undertaken many highly successful espionage duties for the Admiralty. Now the agency he led served all branches of the military and the high-level political departments.

“Yes, sir,” Matthew said hoarsely, his mind racing. Before Shearing could look up, he turned on his heel and went out into the corridor. He was shaking.

Precisely thirty minutes later Matthew was shown into Smith-Cumming’s inner office. Smith-Cumming looked up at him, his face unsmiling.

“Captain Reavley, sir,” Matthew said. “You sent for me.”

“I did,” C agreed.

Matthew waited, his heart pounding, his throat tight. He knew that his entire professional future lay in what he said, or omitted, in this interview.

“Sit down,” C ordered. “You are going to remain until you tell me all you know about this conspiracy you are chasing.”

Matthew was glad to sit. He pulled the nearest chair around to face C and sank into it.

“Obviously you do not have the documentary proof,” C began. “Neither, apparently, does the man who has been shadowing you, and occasionally me.”

Matthew sat motionless.

“You did not know that?” C observed.

“I knew someone was following me, sir,” Matthew said quickly, swallowing hard. “I did not know anyone had followed you.”

C’s eyebrows rose, softening a little of the sternness of his face. “Do you know who he is?”

“No, sir.” He thought of offering excuses and decided instantly against it.

“He is a German agent named Brandt. Unfortunately we don’t know much more about him than that. Where and when did you first hear of this document, and from whom?”

Matthew did not even consider the possibility of lying. “From my father, sir, on the telephone, on the evening of June twenty-seventh.”

“Where were you?”

“In my office, sir.” He felt his face grow hot as he said it. The crumpled car was sharp in his mind, his father’s face, the scream of tires. For a moment he felt sick.

C’s face softened. “What did he say to you?”

Matthew kept his voice level with difficulty, but he could not control the hoarseness in it. “That he had found a document in which was outlined a conspiracy that would ruin England’s honor forever, and change the world irreparably for the worse.”

“Had you heard anything of this before?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you find it hard to believe?”

“Yes. Almost impossible.” He was ashamed of it, but that was the truth.

“Did you repeat it, to make sure you had understood him?”

“No, sir.” Matthew felt the heat burn up his face. “But I did repeat the fact that he was bringing it to me the following day.” The admission was damning. The only thing more completely guilty would have been to lie about it now.

C nodded. There was compassion in his eyes. “So whoever overheard you already knew that the document was missing, and that your father had it. That tells us a great deal. What else do you know?”

“My father’s car was deliberately ambushed and sent off the road, killing both my parents,” Matthew answered. He saw the flash of pity in C’s face. He took a deep breath. “When I heard about it from the police, I went to Cambridge to pick up my elder brother, Joseph—”

“He didn’t know?” C interrupted. “He was closer, and older than you?”

“Yes, sir. He was at a cricket match. He lost his wife about a year ago. I don’t think the police wanted someone from college telling him. The master was at the match as well, and most of his friends.”

“I see. So you drove to Cambridge and told him. What then?”

“We identified our parents’ bodies, and I searched their effects, and then the wreckage of the car—to find the document. It wasn’t there. Then when we got home I searched there also, and asked the bank and our solicitor. When we returned from the funeral, the house had been searched by someone else.”

“Unsuccessfully,” C added. “They appear to be still looking for it. Presumably a second copy, which would suggest it is some kind of agreement. Your father indicated no names?”

“No, sir.”

C stared at him, frowning. For the first time Matthew sensed the depth of his anxiety. “You knew your father, Reavley. What was he interested in? Whom did he know? Where could he have found this document?”

“I’ve thought about it very hard, sir, and I’ve spoken to several of his closest friends, and as far as I can tell, they know nothing. When I mentioned plots, they all said Father was naive and out of touch with reality.” He was surprised how much that still hurt to say.

C smiled, the amusement reaching all the way to his eyes.

“It seems they did not know your father very well.” Then his face hardened. “Resist the temptation to prove that they are wrong, Reavley, whatever it cost you!”

Matthew swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“So you have no idea what this is about?”

“No, sir. I imagined it might be an Irish plot to assassinate the king, but—”

“Yes.” C waved his hand briefly, dismissing it. “I know that. Pointless. Hannassey is not a fool. It is European, not Irish. Mr. Brandt is not interested in the independence or otherwise of Ireland, except as it might affect our military abilities. But that is something to consider. If we are involved in civil war in Ireland, our limited resources will be strained to the maximum.”

He leaned forward a few inches. “Find it, Reavley. Find out who is behind it. Where did the document come from? For whom was it intended?” He pushed a piece of paper across the top of his desk. “This is a list of German agents in London of whom we know. The first is at the German embassy, the second is a carpet manufacturer, the third is a minor member of the German royal family presently living in London. Be extremely discreet. You should be aware by now that your life depends on it. Confide in no one at all.” He met Matthew’s eyes in a cold, level gaze. “No one! Not Shearing, not your brother—no one at all. When you have an answer, bring it to me.”

“Yes, sir.” Matthew stood up, reached for the paper, read it, and passed it back.

C took it and put it in a drawer. “I’m sorry about your father, Captain Reavley.”

“Thank you, sir.” Matthew stood to attention for a moment, then turned and left, his mind already racing.

In the upstairs sitting room of the house on Marchmont Street, the Peacemaker stood by the window. He watched as a younger man walked briskly along the pavement, glancing occasionally at the houses to this side. He was reading the numbers. He had been here before, twice to be exact, but on both occasions brought by car, and at night.

The man in the street stopped, glanced up, and satisfied himself that he had found what he was looking for.

The Peacemaker stepped back, just one pace. He did not wish to be seen waiting. He had recognized the man below even before he saw his thick dark hair or the broad brow and wide-set eyes. It was a powerful face, emotional, that of a man who follows his ideals regardless of where they led him . . . over the cliffs of reason and into the abyss, if need be. He knew his easy walk, the mixture of grace and arrogance. He was a northerner, a Yorkshireman, with all the pride and the aggressive stubbornness of the land from which he came.

The doorbell rang, and a moment later it was opened by the butler. There followed a short silence, then footsteps up the stairs—soft, light, those of a man used to climbing the fells and dales—then a tap on the door.

“Come,” he answered.

The door opened and Richard Mason came in. He was almost six feet tall, an inch or two less than the Peacemaker, but he was more robust, and his skin had the wind and sunburn of one who travels.

“You sent for me, sir?” he said. His voice was unusual, his diction perfect, as if he had been trained for drama and the love of words. It had a sibilance so slight one was not certain if it was there or not, and one listened to catch it again.

“Yes,” the Peacemaker assured him. They both remained standing, as if to be seated was too much a sign of ease for the situation that brought them together. “Events are moving very rapidly.”

“I am aware of that,” Mason said with only the merest touch of asperity. “Do you have the document?”

“No.” That was a tight, hard word carrying a burden of anger in it so great one expected to see his shoulders bend under it. But he remained upright, his face pale. “I’ve had men searching for it, but we have no idea where it went. It wasn’t in the car or on the bodies, and we’ve tried the house twice.”

“Could he have destroyed it?” Mason asked dubiously.

“No.” The answer was immediate. “He was”—he gave the merest shrug—“an innocent man in some ways, but he was not a fool. He knew the meaning of the document, and he knew no one would believe him without it. Under his calm manner, he was as stubborn as a mule.” His face tightened in the sunlight through the bay windows. “He would never deliberately have defaced it, let alone destroyed it.”

Mason stood still, his pulse beating hard. He had some idea of how much was at stake, but the enormities of it stretched into an unimaginable future. The sights of war still haunted his nightmares, but the blood, the pain, and the loss of the past would be no more than a foretaste of what could happen in Europe, and eventually the world. Any risk at all was worth the price in order to prevent that, even this price.

“We can’t waste any more time looking,” the Peacemaker went on. “Events are overtaking us. I have it from excellent sources that Austria is preparing to invade Serbia. Serbia will resist, we all know that, and then Russia will mobilize. Once Germany enters France it will be over in a matter of days, weeks at the most. Schlieffen has drawn up a plan of absolute exactitude, every move timed to perfection. The German army will be in Paris before the rest of the world has time to react.”

“Is there still a chance we will remain out of it?” Mason asked. He was a foreign correspondent. He knew Austria and Germany almost as well as the man who stood opposite him, with his background, his aristocratic connections stretching as high as the junior branches of the royal family on both sides of the North Sea, his brilliance with languages. They shared a rage at the slaughter and destruction of war. The highest goal a man could achieve would be to prevent that from ever happening again, by any means at all.

The Peacemaker chewed his lip, his face strained with tension. “I think so. But there are difficulties. I’ve got an SIS man breathing down my neck. Reavley’s son, actually. He’s not important, just a nuisance. I doubt it will be necessary to do anything about him. Don’t want to draw attention. Fortunately he’s looking in the wrong direction. By the time he realizes it, it won’t matter anymore.”

“Another copy of the document?” Mason asked. The idea in it was brilliant, more daring than anything he could have imagined. The sheer size of it dazzled him.

When the Peacemaker had first told him of it, it had taken his breath away. They had been walking slowly along the Thames Embankment, the lights dancing on the water, the smell of the incoming tide, the sounds of laughter across the river, the pleasure boats making their slow way upstream toward Kew. He had stood rooted to the spot, lost for words.

Slowly the plan had moved from a dream, lightly touched on, into a wish, and finally a reality. He still felt a little like a man who had created a unicorn in his imagination, only to walk into his garden one day and find one grazing there, milk-white, with cloven hooves and silver horn—a living and breathing animal.

“We haven’t found a second copy,” the Peacemaker answered grimly. “At least not yet. I’ve done a certain amount to discredit John Reavley. I wish it hadn’t been necessary.” He looked sharply at Mason as he saw the alarm in his eyes. “Nothing overt!” he snapped. “We need to give it time for the dust to settle.” His mouth pinched unhappily, a shadow in his eyes. “Sometimes the sacrifice is heavy,” he said softly. “But if he had understood, I think he would have paid it willingly. He was not an arrogant man, certainly not greedy, and not a fool, but he was simplistic. He believed what he wanted to, and there is no use arguing with a man like that. A pity. We could have used him otherwise.”

Mason felt a heaviness settle on him, too, an ache of regret inside him. But he had seen the devastation of war and human cruelty in the Balkans only a year ago, between Turkey and Bulgaria, and the memory of it still soaked his nightmares in horror and he woke trembling and drenched in sweat.

Before that, as a younger man he had gone east and reported the eyewitness accounts of the Japanese sinking of the entire Russian fleet in 1905. Thousands of men were buried in steel coffins under the trackless water, nothing remaining but the stunned loss, the grief of families from half a continent.

Earlier still, on the first foreign assignment of his career, he had watched the farmers on the veldt in Africa, the pitiable dispossessed, wending their slow way across the endless open plains. He had watched the women and children die.

None of it must happen again, Richard Mason vowed to himself. One should not permit such things to happen to other human beings. “A statesman has to think of individuals,” he said.

“We have other things to consider,” the Peacemaker said. “Without the document war may be inevitable. We must do what we can to make sure that it is quick and clean. There are many possibilities, and I have plans in place, at least on the home front. We can still have tremendous effect.”

“I imagine it will be brief,” Mason concurred. “Especially if Schlieffen’s plan works. But it will be bloody. Thousands will be slaughtered.” He used the word bitterly and deliberately.

The Peacemaker’s smile was thin. “Then it is even more important that we ensure it is as short as possible. I have been giving it a great deal of thought over the last few days—since the document was taken, in fact.” A sudden fury gripped him, clenching his body and draining the blood from his face until his skin was pallid and his eyes glittered. “Damn Reavley!” his voice choked on the name. “Damn him to hell! If he’d just kept out of it, we could have prevented this! Tens of thousands of lives are going to be lost! For what?” He flung his hand out, fingers spread wide enough to have played over an octave with ease. “It didn’t have to happen!” He gulped in air and carefully steadied himself, breathing in and out several times until his color returned and his shoulders relaxed.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t bear to think of the ruin of a way of life that is the culmination of millennia of civilization—all unnecessary! How many widows will there be? How many orphans? How many mothers waiting for their sons who will never come home from a war they didn’t ask for and didn’t want?”

“I know,” Mason said almost under his breath. “Why do you think I’m doing this? It’s like drinking poison, but the only alternative is a slow journey into hell from which we won’t come back.”

“You’re right,” the Peacemaker responded, turning toward the light streaming in through the window. “I know! I’m heartsick that we came so close and lost it through an idiotic piece of mischance—a German philosopher with good handwriting and an inquisitive ex-politician who was damned useless at it anyway, and all our plans are jeopardized. But it’s too early to despair.

“We must prepare for war, if it comes. And I have several ideas, with the groundwork already laid, just in case. Everything we value depends on our success.” He rubbed his hand over his brow. “Goddamn it! The Germans are our natural allies. We come from the same blood, the same language, the same heritage of nature and character!”

He stopped for a moment, regaining his composure. “But perhaps it is no more than a setback. We don’t have the document, but neither do they. If they did, Matthew Reavley wouldn’t still be looking for it and asking questions.” His face hardened again. “We have to see at all costs that he doesn’t obtain that document. If it fell into the wrong hands, it would be disastrous!”

“Is Matthew Reavley the only one?” Mason asked.

“Oh, there’s another brother, Joseph, but he’s completely ineffectual,” the Peacemaker replied with a smile. “A scholar, idealist, retreated from life and responsibility. Teaches at Cambridge—biblical languages, of all things! He wouldn’t acknowledge the truth if it leaped up and bit him. He’s a dreamer. Nothing is going to waken him, because he doesn’t want to be disturbed. Reality hurts, Mason, and the Reverend Reavley doesn’t like pain. He wants to save the world by preaching a good, carefully thought-out, and well-reasoned sermon to them. He doesn’t realize that nobody’s listening—not with their hearts or their guts, or willing to pay the price for it. It’s up to us.”

“Yes,” Mason said. “I know that.”

“Of course you do.” The Peacemaker pushed his hands through his hair. “Go back to your writing. You have a gift. We may need it. Stay with your newspaper. If we can’t prevent it and the worst happens, get them to send you everywhere! Every battlefield, every advance or retreat, every town or city that’s captured, or where there are negotiations for peace. Become the most brilliant, the most widely read war correspondent in Europe . . . in the world. Do you understand?”

“Oh, yes,” Mason said with a soft hiss of breath between his teeth. “Of course I understand.”

“Good. Then you’d better go, but keep in touch.”

Mason turned and walked slowly to the door and out of it. His footsteps barely sounded on the stairs.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

In Cambridge, Joseph felt that he was achieving something, but it was all a matter of exclusion. He was no nearer to knowing what had happened, as opposed to what had not. And if Inspector Perth had made progress, he was keeping it to himself. The tension was increasing with every day. Joseph was determined to continue in whatever way he could to discover more about Sebastian and who had had reason to hate or to fear him.

An opportunity came to him when he was discussing a problem of interpretation with Elwyn, who was finding a particular passage of translation difficult.

They had walked from the lecture rooms together, and rather than go inside had chosen to cross the bridge to the Backs. It was a quiet afternoon. As they turned on the gravel path to go toward the shade, bees drifted lazily among the spires of delphiniums and late pinks by the wall of the covered walk. Bertie was rolling on the warm earth in between the snapdragons.

Elwyn was still showing signs of the shock and grief of loss. Joseph knew better than others how one can temporarily forget a cataclysm in one’s life, then remember it again with surprise and the renewal of pain. Sometimes one floated in a kind of unreality, as if the disaster were all imagination and in a little while would disappear and life be as it was before. One was tired without knowing why; concentration slipped from the grasp and slithered away.

It was not surprising that Elwyn was wandering off the point again, unable to keep his mind in control.

“I ought to get back to the master’s house,” he said anxiously. “Mother may be alone.”

“You can’t protect her from everything,” Joseph told him.

Elwyn’s eyes opened abruptly, then his lips tightened and color flooded his face. He looked away. “I’ve got to. You don’t understand how she felt about Sebastian. She’ll get over this anger, then she’ll be all right. It’s just that—” He stopped, staring ahead at the flat, bright water.

Joseph finished the sentence for him. “If she knew who did it, and saw them punished, her anger would be satisfied.”

“I suppose so,” Elwyn conceded, but there was no conviction in his voice.

Joseph broached the subject he least wanted to. “But perhaps not?”

Elwyn said nothing.

“Why?” Joseph persisted. “Because to do so would force her to see something in Sebastian that she would not wish to?”

The misery in Elwyn’s face was unmistakable. “Everyone sees a different side of people. Mother doesn’t have any idea what Sebastian was like away from home, or even in it, really.”

Joseph felt intrusive, and certain that he, too, wanted to keep his illusions intact, but that was a luxury he could no longer afford. He was being offered a chance to learn, and he dared not turn away from it.

“Did she know about Flora Whickham?” he asked.

Elwyn stiffened, for an instant holding his breath. Then he let it out in a sigh. “He told you?”

“No. I discovered for myself, largely by accident.”

Elwyn swung around. “Don’t tell Mother! She wouldn’t understand. Flora’s a nice girl, but she’s . . .”

“A barmaid.”

Elwyn gave a rueful smile. “Yes, but what I was going to say was that she’s a pacifist, I mean a real one, and Mother wouldn’t begin to understand that.” There was confusion and distaste in his face, and a hurt too tender to probe. He looked away again toward the river, shielding his eyes from Joseph’s gaze. “Actually, neither do I. If you love something, belong to it and believe in it, how can you not fight to save it? What kind of a man wouldn’t?”

Perhaps he suspected Joseph of that same incomprehensible betrayal. If he did, there would be some truth in it. But then Joseph had read of the Boer War, and his imagination could re-create the unreachable pain, the horror that could not be eased or explained and never, with all the arguments on earth, be justified.

“He was not a coward,” Joseph said aloud. “He would fight for what he believed in.”

“Probably.” There was no certainty in Elwyn’s voice or his face.

“Who else knew about Flora?” Joseph asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Regina Coopersmith?” Joseph asked.

Elwyn froze. “God! I hope not!”

“But you’re not certain?”

“No. But I don’t really know Regina well. I suppose”— he chewed his lip and looked awkwardly at Joseph—“I don’t know women very well. I would feel dreadful, but maybe—” He did not finish.

There were a few moments of silence as they walked side by side over the grass and onto the path under the trees.

“Sebastian had a row with Dr. Beecher,” Elwyn went on.

“When?” Joseph felt a sinking inside himself.

“A couple of days before he died.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

“No, I don’t.” He turned to face Joseph. “I thought it was odd, actually, because Dr. Beecher was pretty decent to him.”

“Wasn’t he to everyone?”

“Of course. I meant more than to the rest of us.”

Joseph was puzzled. He remembered Beecher’s dislike of Sebastian. “In what way?” he asked. He had meant to be casual, but he heard the harder edge in his voice, and Elwyn must have heard it also.

Elwyn hesitated, uncomfortable. He shuffled his feet on the gravel of the path and sighed. “We all behave badly sometimes—come to a lecture late, turn in sloppy work. You know how it is?”

“I do.”

“Well, usually you get disciplined for it—ticked off and made to look an ass in front of the others, or get privileges revoked, or something like that. Well, Dr. Beecher was easier on Sebastian than on most of us. Sebastian sort of took advantage, as if he knew Dr. Beecher wouldn’t do anything. He could be an arrogant sod at times. He believed in his own image. . . .” He stopped. Guilt was naked in his face, the stoop of his shoulders, the fidgeting of his right foot as it scuffed the stones. He had said only what was true, but convention decreed that one spoke no ill of the dead. His mother would have seen it as betrayal. “I never thought he liked Sebastian very much,” he finished awkwardly.

“But he favored him?” Joseph pressed.

Elwyn stared at the ground. “It makes no sense to me, because it isn’t a favor in the long run. You’ve got to have discipline or you have nothing. And other people get fed up if you keep on getting away with things.”

“Did other people notice?” Joseph asked.

“Of course. I think that’s what the row was about with Beecher, a day or two before Sebastian’s death.”

“Why didn’t you mention it before?”

Elwyn stared at him. “Because I can’t see Dr. Beecher shooting Sebastian for being arrogant and taking advantage of him. Those things are irritating as hell, but you don’t kill someone for them!”

“No,” Joseph agreed. “Of course you don’t.” He tried to think of the need to bring Mary Allard toward reality in a way she could manage. He wanted to help, but he could see her fragility, and nothing was going to ease the blow for her if something ugly was exposed in Sebastian. She might even refuse to believe it and blame everyone else for lying. “Try to be patient with your mother,” he added. “There is little on earth that hurts more than disillusion.”

Elwyn gave a twisted smile. Blinking rapidly to fight his emotion, he nodded and walked away, too close to tears to excuse himself.

Joseph went back to St. John’s to look for anyone who could either substantiate or deny what Elwyn had told him. Near the bridge he ran into Rattray.

“Favor him?” Rattray said curiously, looking up from the book he was reading. “I suppose so. Hadn’t thought about it much. I got rather used to everyone thinking Sebastian was the next golden poet and all that.” The wry, almost challenging look in his eyes very much included Joseph within that group, and Joseph felt the heat burn up his face.

“I was thinking of something a bit more definable than a belief,” he said rather tartly.

Rattray sighed. “I suppose he did let Sebastian get away with more than the rest of us,” he conceded. “There were times when I thought it was odd.”

“Didn’t you mind?” Joseph was surprised.

“Of course I minded!” Rattray said hotly. “Once or twice taking advantage of Beecher was clever, and we all thought it would make it easier for the rest of us to skip lectures if we wanted, or turn in stuff late, or whatever. Even came in blotto a couple of times, and poor old Beecher didn’t do a damn thing! Then I began to see it was all rather grubby, and in the end stupid as well. I told Sebastian what I thought of it and that I wasn’t playing anymore, and he told me to go to hell. Sorry. I’m sure that isn’t what you wanted to hear. But your beautiful Sebastian could be a pain in the arse at times.”

Joseph said nothing. Actually it was Beecher he was thinking of, and afraid for.

“When he was good, he was marvelous,” Rattray said hastily, as if he thought he had gone too far. “Nobody was more fun, a better friend, or honestly a better student. I didn’t resent him, if that’s what you think. You don’t when somebody’s really brilliant. You see the good, and you’re happy for it—just that it exists. He just changed a bit lately.”

“When is lately?”

Rattray thought for a moment. “Two or three months, maybe? And then after the Sunday of the assassination in Sarajevo, he got so wound up I thought he was going to snap. Poor devil, he really thought we were going to war.”

“Yes. He talked to me about it.”

“Don’t you think it’s possible, sir?” Rattray looked surprised. “A quick sort of thing, in and out. Settle it?”

“Perhaps,” Joseph said uncertainly. Had Sebastian been killed out of some stupid jealousy here, nothing to do with the document or John Reavley’s death?

Rattray gave a sudden grin. It lit his rather ordinary face and made it vivid and charming. “We don’t owe the Austrians anything, or the Serbs, either. But I wouldn’t find a spell in the army so terrible. Could be a wheeze, actually. Spot of adventure before the grind of real life!”

All kinds of warnings came into Joseph’s mind, but he realized he actually knew no more than Rattray did. They were both speaking in ignorance, fueled only by other men’s experiences.

Before dinner, when he was almost certain to find him alone, Joseph went to Beecher’s rooms, bracing himself for a confrontation that could break a friendship he had long valued.

Beecher was surprised to see him, and evidently pleased.

“Come in,” he invited him warmly, abandoning his book and welcoming Joseph, offering him the better chair. “Have a drink? I’ve got some fairly decent sherry.”

That was typical of Beecher’s understatement. “Fairly decent” actually meant absolutely excellent.

Joseph accepted, embarrassed that he was going to take hospitality in what might prove to be a false understanding.

“I could do with one myself.” Beecher went to the sideboard, took the bottle out of the cupboard, and set two elegant engraved crystal glasses on the table. He was fond of glass and collected it now and then, when he found something quaint or very old. “I feel as if I’ve been dogged by that wretched policeman all week, and God knows the news is bad enough. I can’t see any end to this Irish fiasco. Can you?”

“No,” Joseph admitted honestly, sitting down. The room had grown familiar over the time he had been here. He knew every book on the shelves and had borrowed many of them. He could have described the view out the window with his eyes closed. He could have named the various members of the family in each of the silver-framed photographs. He knew exactly where the different scenic paintings were drawn, which valley in the Lake District, which castle on the Northumberland coast, which stretch of the South Downs. Each held memories they had shared or recounted at one time or another.

“The police are not getting anywhere, are they?” he said aloud.

“Not so far as I know.” Beecher returned with the sherry. “Here’s to an end to the investigation, although I’m not sure if we’ll like what it uncovers.”

“And what might that be?” Joseph asked.

Beecher studied Joseph for some time before replying. “I think we’ll discover that somebody had a thoroughly good motive for killing Sebastian Allard, even though they may be hideously sorry now.”

Suddenly Joseph was cold, and the aftertaste of the sherry was bitter in his mouth. “What do you think a good motive could be?” he asked. “It was in cold blood. Whoever it was took a gun to his room at a quarter after five in the morning.” With a jolt of memory so violent it turned his stomach, Joseph recalled exactly the feel of Sebastian’s skin, already cool.

Beecher must have been watching him and seen his color bleach. He breathed out slowly. “I’d like to let you go on in your belief that he was as good as you wanted him to be, but he wasn’t. He had promise, but he was on the verge of being spoiled. Poor Mary Allard was at least in part responsible.”

Now was the moment. “I know,” Joseph conceded. “I was responsible as well.” He ignored Beecher’s look of amusement and compassion. “Elwyn protected him partly for his own sake, partly for his mother’s,” he went on. “And apparently you let him get away with being rude, late with work, and sometimes sloppy. And yet you didn’t like him. Why did you do that?”

Beecher was silent, but the color had paled from his face and his hand holding the sherry glass was trembling very slightly; the golden liquid in it shimmered. He made an effort to control it and lifted it to his lips to take a sip, perhaps to give himself time.

“It was hardly in your interest,” Joseph went on. “It was bad for your reputation and your ability to be fair to others and maintain any kind of discipline.”

“You favored him yourself!”

“I liked him,” Joseph pointed out. “I admit, my judgment was flawed. But you didn’t like him. You know the rules as well as I do. Why did you break them for him?”

“I didn’t know you had such tenacity,” Beecher said drily. “You’ve changed.”

“Rather past time, isn’t it?” Joseph said with regret. “But as you said, there is no point in dealing with anything less than the truth.”

“No. But I don’t propose to discuss it with you. I did not kill Sebastian, and I don’t know who did. You’ll have to believe that or not, as you wish.”

It was not as Joseph wished. He had liked Beecher profoundly almost since they had met. Everything he knew about him, or thought he knew, was decent. Beecher was the ideal professor, learned without being pompous. He taught for the love of his subject, and his students knew it. His pleasures seemed to be mild: old buildings, especially those with quaint or unusual history, and odd dishes from around the world. He had the courage and the curiosity to try anything: mountain climbing, canoeing, potholing, small-boat sailing. Beecher loved old trees, the more individual the better; he had jeopardized his reputation campaigning to save them, to the great annoyance of local authorities. He liked old people and their memories, and odd irrelevant facts. He had spoken of his family now and then. He was particularly fond of certain aunts, all of whom were marvelously eccentric creatures who espoused lost causes with passion and courage, and invariably a sense of humor.

Joseph realized with surprise, and sadness, that Beecher had never spoken of love. He had laughed at himself over one or two youthful fancies, but never anything you could call a commitment, nothing truly of the heart. It was a gaping omission, and the longer Joseph considered it the more it troubled him.

Guardedly he looked at Beecher now, sitting only a few feet away from him, effecting to be relaxed. He was not handsome, but his humor and intelligence made him unusually attractive. He had grace and he dressed with a certain flair. He took care of himself like a man who was not averse to intimate involvement.

And yet he had never spoken of women. If there was no one, why had he not ever mentioned that, perhaps regretted it? The most obvious answer was that had such an attachment existed, it was illicit. If so, he could not afford to tell even his closest friends.

The silence in the room, which would usually have been warm and comfortable, was suddenly distressing. Joseph’s thoughts raced in his head. Had Sebastian either stumbled on a secret or gone looking for it and unearthed it deliberately, then used it? It was a thought Joseph would much rather have put away as unworthy, but he could no longer afford to do that.

Whom was it Beecher loved? If he was telling the truth and had not killed Sebastian, nor know who had, then surely the natural person to consider after that would be whoever else was involved in the illicit romance. Or whoever was betrayed by it, if such a person existed.

At last he faced the ultimate ugliness: What if Beecher was lying? What if his illicit lover had been Sebastian himself? The thought was extraordinarily painful, but it fitted all the facts he knew—the undeniable ones, not the dreams or wishes. Perhaps Flora Whickham was merely a friend, a fellow pacifist, and an escape from the inevitable demands of his family?

There were people who could love men and women with equal ease. He had never before considered Sebastian as one such, but then he had not thought deeply about him in that regard at all. It was a private area. Now he was obliged to intrude into it. He would do it as discreetly as possible, and if it led nowhere with regard to Sebastian’s death, he would never speak of it. He was accustomed to keeping secrets; it was part of the profession he had chosen.

Beecher was watching him with his characteristic patience until Joseph should be ready to talk again.

Joseph was ashamed of his thoughts. Was this what everyone else was feeling—suspicion, ugly ideas racing through the mind and refusing to be banished?

“Sebastian had a friendship with a local girl, you know?” he said aloud. “A barmaid from the pub along near the millpond.”

“Well, that sounds healthy enough!” Then Beecher’s face darkened with something very close to anger. “Unless you’re suggesting he misused her? Are you?”

“No! No, I really mean a friend!” Joseph corrected him. “It seems they shared political convictions.”

“Political convictions!” Beecher was amazed. “I didn’t know he had any.”

“He was passionately against war.” Joseph remembered the emotion shaking Sebastian’s voice as he had spoken of the destruction of conflict. “For the ruin it would bring. Not only physically, but culturally, even spiritually. He was prepared to work for peace, not just wish for it.”

The contempt in Beecher’s face softened. “Then perhaps he was better than I supposed.”

Joseph smiled, the old warmth returning. This was the friend he knew. “He saw all the fear and the pain,” he said quietly. “The glory of our entire heritage drowned in a sea of violence until we became a lost civilization, and all our wealth of beauty, thought, human wisdom, joy, and experience as buried as Nineveh or Tyre. No more Englishmen, none of our courage or eccentricity, our language or our tolerance left. He loved it intensely. He would have given everything he had to preserve it.”

Beecher sighed and leaned backward, gazing up at the ceiling. “Then perhaps he is in some ways fortunate that he won’t see the war that’s coming,” he said softly. “Inspector Perth is sure it will be the worst we’ve even seen. Worse than the Napoleonic Wars. Make Waterloo look tame.”

Joseph was stunned.

Beecher sat up again. “Mind, he’s a miserable devil,” he said more cheerfully. “A regular Jeremiah. I’ll be glad when he finishes his business here and goes to spread alarm and despondency somewhere else. Would you like another glass of sherry? You didn’t take much.”

“It’s enough,” Joseph replied. “I can escape reality nicely on one, thank you.”

The following day Joseph began his investigation with the worst of all possibilities.

He must begin by learning all he did not already know about Beecher. And surely in this case discretion was the better part of honesty. Candor would ruin Beecher’s reputation, and unless it exposed Sebastian’s murderer, it was no one else’s concern.

The easiest thing to check without speaking to anyone else was with a record of all Beecher’s classes, lectures, tutorials, and other engagements for the last six weeks. It was time-consuming but simple enough and easily concealed by finding the same information for everyone and simply extracting that relating to Beecher.

Correlating times and figures was not Joseph’s natural talent, but with concentration he compiled a record of where Beecher had been, and with whom, for at least most of the previous month.

He sat back in his chair, ignoring the piles of papers, and considered what it proved and what he should search for next. How did one conduct a secret relationship? Either by meeting alone where no one at all would see you, or where all those who did would be strangers to whom you would mean nothing. Or else by meeting in plain sight, and with a legitimate reason no one would question.

In Cambridge there was no place where everyone would be strangers, nor in the nearby villages. It would be crazy to take such a risk.

Completely uninhabited places were few, and not easily reached. Beecher might bicycle to them, but what about a woman? Unless she was very young and vigorous, she would hardly bicycle far, and a woman who drove a car was very rare. Judith was an exception, not the rule.

That left the last possibility: They met openly, with natural reasons that no one would question. Sebastian knew of their feelings either because he had been more observant than others or because he had accidentally seen something acutely private. Either thought was distasteful.

Surely it would prove to be nonsense, his own overheated imagination. Perhaps Beecher was simply one of those scholarly men who do not form attachments. Such men existed. Joseph’s idea that he was not arose simply from his own nature. He failed to imagine living with no desire for intimacy. Possibly Beecher had loved once and could not commit himself again, nor speak of it even to someone like Joseph, who would surely have understood.

And yet even as the thoughts were in his mind, he did not believe them. Beecher was too alive, too physical to have removed himself from any of the richness of passion or experience. They had walked too far, climbed too high, laughed too hard together for him to be mistaken.

Joseph had been hoping to avoid Inspector Perth when he almost bumped into him walking along the path in the middle of the quad, his pipe clenched between his teeth.

He took it out. “Good afternoon, Reverend,” he said, this time not standing aside but remaining in front of Joseph, effectively blocking his way.

“Good afternoon, Inspector,” Joseph answered, moving a little to the right to go around him.

“Any luck with your questions?” Perth said with what looked like polite interest.

Joseph thought for a moment of denying it, then remembered how frequently he had passed Perth coming or going. He would be lying, but more importantly Perth would know it and then assume he was hiding something—both of which were true. “I keep thinking so, and then realizing it all proves nothing,” he answered evasively.

“Oi know exactly what you mean,” Perth sympathized, knocking his pipe out on his shoe, examining it to make certain it was empty, then putting it in his pocket. “Oi come up with bits an’ pieces, then it slips out o’ my hands. But then you know these people, which Oi don’t.” He smiled pleasantly. “You’d know, fer instance, why Dr. Beecher seems t’ve made an exception for Mr. Allard, letting him get away with all kinds o’ cheek an’ lateness an’ the loike, where he’d punish someone else.” He waited, quite obviously expecting an answer.

Joseph thought quickly. “Can you give me an example?”

Perth replied without hesitation. “Mr. Allard handed in a paper late, an’ so did Mr. Morel. He took a mark off Mr. Morel for it, but not off Mr. Allard.”

Joseph felt a chill and stared fixedly at Perth, because he was suddenly more afraid of him. He did not want him poking around in Beecher’s private affairs. “People can be eccentric in marking sometimes,” he said, affecting an ease he was very far from feeling. “I have been guilty of it myself at times. Translation in particular can be a matter of taste as well as exactness.”

Perth’s eyes widened. “Is that what you think, Reverend?” he said curiously.

Joseph wanted to escape. “It seems probable,” he said, moving a little to the right again, intending to go around Perth and continue on his way. He wanted to end this conversation before Perth led him any further into the morass.

Perth smiled as if Joseph had met his prejudices exactly. “Dr. Beecher just loiked Mr. Allard’s style, did he? Poor Mr. Morel just ain’t in the same class, so when he’s late, he’s in trouble.”

“That would be unfair!” Joseph said hotly. “And it was not what I meant! The difference in mark would have had nothing to do with being late or early.”

“Or being cheeky or careless?” Perth persisted. “Discipline’s not the same for the clever students from what the way it is for the less clever. You know Mr. Allard’s family quite well, don’t you?”

It was not himself Joseph was afraid for, it was Beecher, and the thoughts that were darkening in his own mind.

“Yes, I do, and I never allowed him the slightest latitude because of it!” he said with considerable asperity. “This is a place of learning, Inspector, and personal issues have nothing to do with the way a student is taught or the marks given to his work. It is irresponsible and morally repugnant to suggest otherwise. I cannot allow you to say such a thing and be uncorrected. You are slandering a man’s reputation, and your office here does not give you immunity to do that!”

Perth did not seem in the least disconcerted. “Oi’ve just bin going around asking and listening like you have, Reverend,” he replied quietly. “And Oi’ve begun to see that some people thought Dr. Beecher really din’t like Mr. Allard very much. But that don’t seem to be true, because he bent over backwards to be fair to him, even done him the odd favor. Now why d’yer think that was?”

Joseph had no answer.

“You know these people better’n Oi do, Reverend,” Perth went on relentlessly. “Oi’d’ve thought you’d want the truth o’ this, because you can see just how hard everybody’s taking it. Suspicion’s an evil thing. Turns people against each other, even when there’s really no cause for it.”

“Of course I do,” Joseph responded, then had no idea what to say next.

Perth was smiling. It was amusement and a faint, rather sad compassion. “Hard, ain’t it, Reverend?” he said gently. “Discovering that a young man you thought so well of weren’t above using a spot o’ blackmail now an’ then?”

“I don’t know anything of the sort!” Joseph protested. It was literally true, but already morally a lie.

“O’ course not,” Perth agreed. “Because you stopped before you had any proof as you couldn’t deny. If you did, then you’d have to face it, and maybe even tell. But you’re an interesting man to follow, Reverend, an’ not nearly as simple as you’d have me think.” He ignored Joseph’s expression. “Good thing Dr. Beecher was way along the river when Mr. Allard was killed, or Oi’d have to suspect him, an’ of course Oi’d have to find out exactly what it was Mr. Allard knew, although Oi can think of it easy enough. A very handsome woman, Mrs. Thyer, an’ mebbe just a little bit lonely, in her own way.”

Joseph froze, his heart racing. Beecher and Connie? Could that be true? Images teemed through his mind becoming sharper and sharper—Connie’s face, beautiful, warm, vivid.

Perth shook his head. “Don’t look at me like that, Reverend. Oi haven’t suggested something improper. All men have feelings, an’ sometimes we don’t want ’em seen by others. Makes us feel kind of . . . naked. Oi wonder what else Mr. Allard’s sharp eyes noticed? You wouldn’t happen to know, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t!” Joseph snapped, feeling the heat in his face. “And as you say, Dr. Beecher was at least a mile away when Sebastian was shot. I told you that I can’t help you, Inspector, and it is the truth. Now would you be good enough to let me pass?”

“Course Oi would, Reverend. You be about your business. But Oi’m telling you, all of you here: You can go round an’ round the houses all you like, an’ Oi’m still going to find out who did it, whoever he is, no matter what his father paid to have him up here. An’ Oi’m going to find out why! Oi may not be able to argue all kinds o’ fancy logic like you can, Reverend, but Oi know people, an’ Oi know why they do things against the law. An’ Oi’ll prove it. Law’s bigger’n all of us, an’ you being a religious man, yer oughta know that!”

Joseph saw Perth’s antipathy and understood it. The inspector was out of his depth in surroundings he could never aspire to or be comfortable in. He was being patronized by a number of men considerably younger than he, and they were probably not even aware of what they were doing. The law was both his master and his weapon, perhaps his only one.

“I do know that, Inspector Perth,” Joseph said. “And we need you to find the truth. The uncertainty is destroying us.”

“Yes,” Perth agreed. “It does that to people. But Oi will!” At last he stepped aside, nodding graciously for Joseph to proceed.

Joseph walked on rapidly with the certain knowledge that he had come off second best and that Perth understood him far better than he wished. Once again he had misjudged somebody.

He was invited to dine at the master’s lodgings the following day, and accepted because he understood Connie Thyer’s desperation to escape the sole responsibility for looking after Gerald and Mary Allard under the weight of their grief. She could hardly offer them anything that could be construed as entertainment, and yet they were her guests. But their unalloyed presence at her table must be almost more than she could bear. Joseph at least was an old family friend, also mourning a close and almost equally recent loss. Also, his religious calling made him extremely suitable. He could hardly refuse.

He arrived a little before eight to find Connie in the drawing room with Mary Allard. As always, Mary was head to toe in black. He thought it was the same dress he had seen her in last time they met, but one black gown looked much like another to him. She certainly appeared even thinner, and there was no doubting the anger in her face. It did not soften in the slightest when she saw Joseph.

“Good evening, Reverend Reavley,” she said with polite chill. “I hope you are well?”

“Yes, thank you,” he replied. “And you?” It was an absurd exchange. She was obviously suffering intensely. She looked anything but well. One inquired because it was the thing to say.

“I am not sure why you ask,” she answered, catching him off guard. “Do I tell you how I feel? Not only has some murderer robbed me of my son, but now vicious tongues are fouling his memory. Or would you feel less guilty if I merely tell you that I am perfectly well, thank you? I have no disease, only wounds!”

Neither of them noticed that Gerald Allard had come into the room, but Joseph heard his swift intake of breath. He waited for Gerald to make some attempt to retrieve his wife’s naked rudeness.

The silence prickled as if on the brink of thunder.

Connie looked from one to the other of them.

Gerald cleared his throat.

Mary swung around to him. “You were going to say something?” she accused. “Perhaps to defend your son, since he is lying in his grave and cannot defend himself?”

Gerald flushed a dark red. “I don’t think it is fair to accuse Reavley, my dear—” he started.

“Oh, isn’t it?” she demanded, her eyes wide. “He is the one who is assisting that dreadful policeman to suggest that Sebastian was blackmailing people, and that is why someone murdered him!” She swiveled back to Joseph, her eyes blazing. “Can you deny it, Reverend?” She loaded the last word with biting sarcasm. “Why? Were you jealous of Sebastian? Afraid he was going to outshine you in your own field? He had more poetry in his soul than you will ever have, and you must realize that. Is that why you are doing this? God! How he’d have despised you for it! He thought you were his friend!”

“Mary!” Gerald said desperately.

She ignored him. “I’ve listened to him talk about you as if you were flawless!” she said, her voice shaking with contempt, tears glistening in her eyes. “He thought you were wonderful, an unparalleled friend! Poor Sebastian—” She stopped only because her voice was too thick with emotion to continue.

Connie was watching, white-faced, but she did not interrupt.

“Really—” Gerald tried again.

Joseph cut across him. “Sebastian knew I was his friend,” he said very clearly. “But I was not as good a friend to him as I would have been had I tried more honestly to see his faults as well as his virtues. I would have served him better had I tried to curb his hubris instead of being blind to it.”

“Hubris?” she said icily.

“His pride in his own charm, his feeling of invulnerability,” he started to explain.

“I know what the word means, Mr. Reavley!” she snapped. “I was questioning your use of it with reference to my son! I find it intolerable that—”

“You find any criticism of him intolerable.” Gerald managed to make himself heard at last. “But somebody killed him!”

“Envy!” she said with absolute conviction. “Some small person who could not endure being eclipsed.” She looked at Joseph as she finished.

“Mrs. Allard,” Connie said, “we all sympathize with your grief, but that does not excuse you for being both cruel and unjust to another guest in my house, a man who has also lost his closest family almost as recently as you have. I think perhaps in your own loss you had temporarily forgotten that.” It was said calmly, even gravely, but it was a bitter rebuke.

Aidan Thyer, who had entered the room during the exchange, looked startled, but he did not intervene, and his expression as he glanced at Connie was unreadable, as if stemming from emotions profound and conflicting. In that instant Joseph wondered if he knew that Beecher was in love with his wife, and if it hurt him or made him fear he could lose what he must surely value intensely. Or did he? What was there, really, behind the habitual courtesy? Joseph glimpsed with pain the possibility of a world of loneliness and pretense.

But the present hauled him back. Mary Allard was furious, but she was too clearly in the wrong to defend herself. She adopted Connie’s offer of escape.

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I had forgotten. I daresay your own loss has . . .” She had obviously been going to say something like “cramped your judgment,” but realized it made things no better. She left the sentence hanging in the air.

Normally Joseph would have accepted any apology, but not this time. “Made me think more deeply about reality,” he finished for her. “And see that no matter how much we love someone or regret lost opportunities to have given them more than we did, lies do not help, even when we would find them more comfortable.”

The color drained out of Mary’s face, and she looked at him with loathing. Even if she understood anything he said, she was not going to concede it now. “I have no idea what things you may regret,” she said coldly. “I do not know you well enough. I have heard no one speak ill of your parents, but if they have, then you should do all within your power to silence them. If you have not loyalty, above all to your own family, then you have nothing! I promise you I will do anything in my power to protect the name and reputation of my dead son from the envy and spite of anyone cowardly enough to attack him in death when they would not have dared to in life.”

“There are many loyalties, Mrs. Allard,” he answered, his voice grating with the intensity of his feelings: the misery and loneliness of too many losses of his own, the anger at God for hurting him so profoundly and at the dead for leaving him with such a weight to bear, the crush of responsibilities he was not ready for, and above all the fear of disillusion, of the disintegration of the love and beliefs dearest to him. “It is a matter of choosing which to place first. Loving someone does not make them right, and your family is no more important than mine or anyone else’s. Your first loyalty ought to be to honor, kindness, and some degree of truth.”

The hatred in her face was answer enough without words. She turned to Connie, her skin white, her eyes burning. “I am sure you will understand if I do not choose to remain for dinner. Perhaps you will be good enough to have a tray sent to my room.” And with that she swept out through the door in a rustle of black silk taffeta and the faintest perfume of roses.

Connie sighed. “I am sorry, Dr. Reavley. She is finding this investigation very hard indeed. Everyone’s nerves are a little raw.”

“She idealized him,” Gerald said, as much to himself as to anyone else. “It isn’t fair. No one could live up to that, nor can the rest of us protect her forever from the truth.” He glanced at Joseph, perhaps expecting him to read some apology in it, although Joseph had the feeling he was looking more for acceptance of his own silence. He was sorry for Gerald, a man floundering around in a hopeless task, but he felt far greater pity for Elwyn, trying to defend a brother whose flaws he knew while protecting his mother from truths she could not face and his father from looking impotent and sinking into self-loathing. It was more than anyone should have to do, let alone a young man who was himself bereaved and who should have been supported by his parents, not made to support them in their self-absorbed grief.

He glanced at Connie and saw a reflection of the same pity and anger in her face. But it was Joseph she was looking at, not her husband. Aidan Thyer was averting his gaze, perhaps in order to hide his distaste at Gerald’s excuses.

Joseph filled the silence. “Everyone’s nerves are a little raw,” he agreed. “We suspect each other of things that in our better moments would not even enter our thoughts. Once we know what happened, we will be able to forget them again.”

“Do you think so?” Aidan Thyer asked suddenly. “We’ve pulled off too many masks and seen what is underneath. I don’t think we’ll forget.” He looked momentarily at Connie, then back at Joseph, his pale eyes challenging.

“Perhaps not forget,” Joseph amended. “But isn’t the art of friendship very much the selecting of what is important and allowing some of the mistakes to drift away until we lose sight of them? We don’t forget so much as let the outlines blur, accept that a thing happened, and be sorry. This is how we are today, but it does not have to be tomorrow as well.”

“You forgive very easily, Reavley,” Thyer said coolly. “I wonder sometimes if you’ve ever had anything very much to forgive. Or are you too Christian to feel real anger?”

“You mean too anemic to feel anything with real passion,” Joseph corrected for him.

Thyer blushed. “I’m sorry. That was irredeemably rude. I do beg your pardon.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t weigh things so much before I speak,” Joseph said thoughtfully. “It makes me sound pompous, even a little cold. But I am too afraid of what I might say if I don’t.”

Thyer smiled, an expression of startling warmth.

Connie looked taken by surprise, and she turned away. “Please come in to dinner, Mr. Allard,” she invited Gerald, who was moving from one foot to the other and plainly at a total loss. “We will help no one by not eating. We shall need our strength, if only to support each other.”

Joseph spent a miserable night, twisting himself round and round in his bed, his thoughts preventing him from sleeping. Small recollections came back to his mind: Connie and Beecher laughing together over some trivial thing, but the sound of it so rich, so full of joy; Connie’s face as she had listened to him talking about some esoteric discovery in the Middle East; Beecher’s concern when she had a summer cold, his fear that it might be flu or even turn to pneumonia; other, more shadowy incidents that now seemed out of proportion to the casual friendship they claimed.

What had Sebastian known? Had he threatened Beecher openly, or simply allowed fear and guilt to play their part? Was it possible he had been innocent of anything more than a keener observation than others?

But Beecher had been with Connie and Thyer when the Reavleys had been killed—not that Joseph had ever suspected him of that. And Perth said he had been along the Backs when Sebastian was shot, so he could not be guilty.

What about Connie? He could not imagine Connie shooting Sebastian. She was generous, charming, quick to laugh, just as quick to see another’s need or loneliness, and to do all she could to answer it. But she was a woman of passion. She might love Beecher profoundly and be trapped by circumstance. If she was discovered in an affair with him and it were made public, he would lose his position, but she would lose everything. A woman divorced for adultery ceased to exist even to her friends, let alone to the rest of society.

Would Sebastian really have done that to her?

The young man Joseph knew would have found it a repulsive thought, cruel, dishonorable, destructive to the soul. But did that man exist outside Joseph’s imagination?

He fell asleep not sure of what was certain about anyone, even himself. He woke in the morning with his head pounding, and determined to learn beyond dispute, all the facts that he could. Everything he cared about was slithering out of his grasp; he needed something to hold on to.

It was barely six o’clock, but he would begin immediately. It was an excellent time to walk along the Backs himself and find Carter the boatman, who had apparently spoken with Beecher on the morning of Sebastian’s death. He shaved, washed, and dressed in a matter of minutes and set out in the cool clarity of the morning light.

The grass was still drenched with dew, giving it a pearly, almost turquoise sheen, and the motionless trees towered into the air in unbroken silence.

He found Carter down at the mooring, about a mile along the bank.

“Mornin’, Dr. Reavley,” Carter greeted him cheerfully. “Yer out early, sir.”

“Can’t sleep,” Joseph replied.

“Oi can’t these days neither,” Carter agreed. “Everybody’s frettin’. Newspapers flyin’ off the stands. Got to get ’em early to be sure o’ one. Never seen a toime loike it, ‘cepting when the old queen were ill.” He scratched his head. “Not even then, really.”

“It’s the best time of the morning,” Joseph said, glancing around him at the slow moving river shimmering in the sun.

“It is that,” Carter agreed.

“I thought I might see Dr. Beecher along here. He hasn’t been this way already, has he?”

“Dr. Beecher? No, sir. Comes occasional loike, but not very often.”

“He’s a friend of mine.”

“Nice gentleman, sir. Friend to a lot o’ folk.” Carter nodded. “Always got a good word. Talked a bit about them ole riverboats. Interested, ‘e is, though between you an’ me, Oi think ’e do it only to be agreeable. ’E knows Oi get lonely since moi Bessie died, an’ a bit of a chat sets me up for the day.”

That was the Beecher that Joseph knew, a man of great kindness, which he always masked as something else so there was never debt.

“You must have been talking together when young Allard was killed,” he remarked. How bare that sounded.

“Not that mornin’, sir,” Carter shook his head. “Oi tole the police gentleman it were, because Oi forgot, but that were the day Oi ’ad the bad puncture. Oi ’ad to fix it, an’ it took me an age ’cos it were in two places, an’ Oi didn’t see it at first. An hour late ’ome, Oi were. O’ course Dr. Beecher must’ve bin ’ere if ’e said so, but Oi didn’t see ’im ’cos Oi weren’t, if you get me?”

“Yes,” Joseph said slowly, his own voice sounding far away, as if it belonged to someone else. “Yes . . . I see. Thank you.” And he turned and walked slowly along the grass.

Did he have a moral obligation to tell Perth? He had agreed that the law was above them all, and it was. But he needed to be sure. Right now he was certain of nothing at all.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

On Saturday afternoon Matthew dined with Joseph at the Pickerel, overlooking the river. There were just as many people there as always, sitting around the tables, leaning forward in conversation, but voices were lower than a week earlier, and there was less laughter.

Punts still drifted back and forth on the water, young men balancing in the sterns with long poles clasped, some with grace, others with precarious awkwardness. Girls, wind catching the gossamerlike sleeves of their pale dresses, lay half reclined on the seats. Some wore sweeping hats, or hats decked with flowers to shade their faces; others had parasols of muslin or lace, which dappled the light. One girl, bare-headed, with russet hair, trailed a slender arm into the river, her skin brown from the sun, her fingers shedding bright drops behind her in the golden light.

“One of us ought to go home,” Matthew said, reaching his knife into the Belgian pâté and spreading more of it onto his toast. “It ought to be you, and anyway I need to go and see Shanley Corcoran again. With things as they are, he’s about the only person I dare trust.”

“Are you any further?” Joseph asked, then immediately wished he hadn’t. He saw the frustration in Matthew’s face and knew the answer.

Matthew ate another mouthful and swallowed the last of his red wine, then poured himself more, before replying.

“Only ideas. Shearing doesn’t think it is an Irish plot. He seems to be trying to steer me away from it, although I have to admit his logic is pretty sound.” He reached for more butter. “But then of course I don’t know beyond any doubt at all that he isn’t the one behind it.”

“We don’t know that about anyone, do we?” Joseph asked.

“Not really,” Matthew agreed. “Except Shanley. That’s why I need to speak to him. There’s . . .” He looked across the river, narrowing his eyes against the brilliance of the lowering sun. “There’s a possibility it could be an assassination attempt against the king, although the more I consider it, the less certain I am that anyone would benefit from it. I don’t know what I think anymore.”

“There was a document,” Joseph said. “And whatever was in it, it was sufficient for someone to kill Father.”

Matthew looked weary. “Perhaps it was evidence of a crime,” he said flatly. “Simply a piece of ordinary greed. Maybe we were looking beyond the mark, for something wildly political involving the grand tide of history, and it was only a grubby little bank robbery or fraud.”

“Two copies of it?” Joseph said skeptically. Matthew lifted his head, his eyes widening. “It might make sense! Copies for different people? What if it were a stock market scandal or something of that nature! I’m going to see Shanley tomorrow. He’ll have connections in the City, and at least he would know where to start. If only Father had said more!” He leaned forward, his food forgotten. “Look, Joe, one of us has got to go and spend a little time with Judith. We’ve both been neglecting her. Hannah’s taken it all very hard, but at least she’s got Archie some of the time, and the children. Judith’s got nothing, really.”

“I know,” Joseph agreed quickly, guilt biting deep. He had written to both Judith and Hannah, but since he was only a few miles away, that was not enough.

There was a short burst of laughter from the next table and then a sudden silence. Someone rushed into speech, something completely irrelevant, about a new novel published. No one responded, and he tried again.

“Anything more on Sebastian Allard?” Matthew asked, his face gentle, sensing the slow discovery of ugliness, the falling apart of beliefs that had been held dear for so long.

Joseph hesitated. It would be a relief to share his thoughts, even if as soon as tomorrow he would wish he had not. “Actually . . . yes,” he said slowly, looking not at Matthew but beyond him. The light was fading on the river, and the firelike scarlet and yellow poured out across the flat horizon from the trees over by Haslingfield right across to the roofs of Madingley.

“I’ve discovered Sebastian was capable of blackmail,” he said miserably. Even the words hurt. “I think he blackmailed Harry Beecher over his love for the master’s wife. For nothing so obvious as money—just for favor, and I think maybe for the taste of power. It would have amused him to exert just a very subtle pressure, but one that Beecher didn’t dare resist.”

“Are you sure?” Matthew asked, his face puckering with doubt. There was not the denial in his voice Joseph hungered to hear. He had overstated the case deliberately, waiting for Matthew to say it was nonsense. Why didn’t he?

“No!” he replied. “No, I’m not sure! But it looks like it. He lied as to where he was. He’s engaged to a girl his mother probably picked out for him, but he’s got a girlfriend of his own in one of the pubs in Cambridge. . . .” He saw Matthew’s look of amusement. “I know you think that’s just natural youth,” he said angrily. “But Mary Allard won’t! And I don’t think Regina Coopersmith will, either, if she ever finds out.”

“It’s a bit shabby,” Matthew agreed, the flicker of humor still in his eyes. “A last fling before the doors of propriety close him in forever with Mother’s choice. Why hadn’t he the guts to say so?”

“I’ve no idea! I didn’t know anything about it! Anyway, he would never have married Flora, for heaven’s sake. She’s a barmaid. She’s also a pacifist.”

Matthew’s eyebrows shot up. “A pacifist? Or do you mean she agreed with whatever her current admirer happened to say?”

Joseph considered for only a moment. “No, I don’t think I do. She seemed to know quite a lot about it.”

“For God’s sake, Joe!” Matthew sat back with a jerk, sliding the chair legs on the floor. “She doesn’t have to be stupid just because she pulls ale for the local lads!”

“Don’t be so patronizing!” Joseph snapped back. “I didn’t say she was stupid. I said she knew more about pacifism and about Sebastian’s views on the subject than to have been merely an agreeable listener. He was drifting away from his roots at a speed that probably frightened him. His mother idolized him. To her he was all she wished her husband could have been—brilliant, beautiful, charming, a dreamer with the passion to achieve his goals.”

“Rather a heavy weight to carry—the garment of someone else’s dreams,” Matthew observed a great deal more gently, and with a note of sadness. “Especially a mother. There’d be no escaping that.”

“No,” Joseph said thoughtfully. “Except by smashing it, and there would be a strong temptation to do that!” He looked curiously at Matthew to see if he understood. His answer was immediate in the flash of knowledge in Matthew’s eyes. “It’s not always as simple as we think, is it?” he finished.

“Is that what you believe?” Matthew asked. “Somehow Sebastian was making a bid for freedom, and it went wrong?”

“I really don’t know,” Joseph admitted, looking away again, across the river. The girl with the bright hair was gone, as was the young man who had balanced with such grace. “But very little I’ve discovered fits the idea of him I had—which makes me wonder if I was almost as guilty as Mary Allard of building a prison for him to live in.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Matthew said gently. “He built his own image. It may have been in part an illusion, but he was the chief architect of it. You only helped. And believe me, he was happy to let you. But if he did see what happened on the Hauxton Road, why wouldn’t he say something?” His brow furrowed, his eyes shadowed and intense. “Do you think he was mad enough to try blackmail on someone he knew had already killed two people? Was he really such a complete fool?”

Put like that, it sounded not only extreme but dangerous beyond any possible profit. And surely he would have known the people concerned were Joseph’s parents—even if not at the time, then later.

“No,” he answered, but there was no conviction in his voice. Matthew would never have done such a thing, but he was accustomed to thinking in terms of danger. He was only a few years older than Sebastian, in fact, but in experience it was decades. To Sebastian, death was a concept, not a reality, and he had all the passionate, innocent belief in his own immortality that goes with youth.

Matthew was watching him.

“Be careful, Joe,” he warned. “Whatever the reason, someone in college killed him. Don’t go poking around in it, please! You aren’t equipped!” Anger and frustration flickered in his eyes, and fear. “You’re too hurt by it to see straight!”

“I have to try,” Joseph said, reasserting reason into its place. It was the one sanity to hold on to. “Suspicion is tearing the college to pieces,” he went on. “Everyone is doubting things, friendships are cracking, loyalties are twisted. I need to know for myself. It’s my world . . . I have to do something to protect it.”

He looked down. “And if Sebastian did see what happened on the Hauxton Road, there may be some way of finding out.” He met Matthew’s steady blue-gray eyes. “I have to try. Was he saying something to me that last evening on the Backs, and I wasn’t listening? The more I think of it, the more I realize he was far more distressed than I understood then. I should have been more sensitive, more available. If I’d known what it was, I might have saved him.”

Matthew clasped his hand over Joseph’s wrist for a moment, then let go again. “Possibly,” he said with doubt. “Or you might have been killed as well. You don’t know if it had anything to do with that at all. At least for this weekend, go and see Judith. She’s our world, too, and she needs someone, preferably you.” It was said gently, but it was a charge, not a suggestion.

Matthew offered to drive him, and no doubt Judith would have brought him back, but Joseph wanted the chance to be alone for the short while it would take him to ride there on his bicycle. He needed time to think before meeting Judith.

He thanked Matthew but declined. He walked briskly back to St. John’s to collect a few overnight things such as his razor and clean linen, then took his bicycle and set out.

As soon as he was beyond the town the quiet lanes enclosed him, wrapping him in the shadows of deep hedges, motionless in the twilight. The fields smelled of harvest, that familiar dry sweetness of dust, crushed stalks, and fallen grain. A few starlings were black dots against the blue of the sky, fading gray already to the east. The long light made the shadows of the hay stooks enormous across the stubble.

There was a hurt in the beauty of it, as if something were slipping out of his grip, and nothing he could do would prevent his losing it. Summer always drifted into autumn. It was as it should be. There would be the wild color, the falling of the leaves, the scarlet berries, the smell of turned earth, wood smoke, damp; then winter, stinging cold, freezing the earth, cracking and breaking the clods, ice on the branches like white lace. There would be rain, snow, biting winds, and then spring again, delirious with blossom.

But his own certainties had fallen away. The safety he had built so carefully after Eleanor’s death, thinking it the one indestructible thing, the path toward understanding the ways of God, even accepting them, was full of sudden weaknesses. It was a path across the abyss of pain, and it had given way under his weight. He was falling.

And here he was, almost home, where he was supposed to be the kind of strength for Judith that his father would have been. He had not watched closely enough, and John had never spoken of it, never shown him the needs and the words to fill them. He was not ready!

But he was in the main street. The houses were sleepy in the dusk, the windows lit. Here and there a door was open, the air still warm. The sound of voices drifted out. Shummer Munn was pulling weeds in his garden. Grumble Runham was standing on the street corner lighting his clay pipe. He grunted as Joseph passed him, and gave a perfunctory wave.

Joseph slowed. He was almost home. It was too late to find any answers to give Judith, or any wiser, greater strength.

He turned the corner and pedaled the final hundred yards. He arrived as the last light was fading, and put his bicycle away in the garage beside Judith’s Model T, finding the space huge and profoundly empty where the Lanchester should have been. He walked around the side and went past the kitchen garden, stopping to pick a handful of sharp, sweet raspberries and eat them, then went in through the back door. Mrs. Appleton was standing over the sink.

“Oh! Mr. Joseph, you give me such a start!” she said abruptly. “Not that Oi i’n’t pleased to see you, mind.” She squinted at him. “Have you had any supper? Or a glass o’ lemonade, mebbe? You look awful hot.”

“I cycled over from Cambridge,” he explained, smiling at her. The kitchen was familiar, full of comfortable smells.

“Oi’ll fetch you some from the pantry.” She dried her hands. “Oi dare say as you could eat some scones and butter, too? Oi made ’em today. Oi’ll fetch ’em to the sitting room for you. That’s where Miss Judith is. She in’t expecting you, is she? She din’t say nothing to me! But your bed’s all made up, loike always.”

He already felt the warmth of home settle around him, holding him in a kind of safety. He knew every gleam of the polished wood, just where the dents were, the thin patches worn into carpets by generations of use, the slight dips in the floorboards, which stairs creaked, where the shadows fell at what time of day. He could smell lavender and beeswax polish, flowers, hay on the wind from outside.

Judith was sitting curled up on the couch with her head bent over a book. Her hair was pulled up hastily, a little lopsided. She looked absorbed and unhappy, hunched into herself. She did not hear him come in.

“Good book?” he asked.

“Not bad,” she replied, uncurling herself and standing up, letting the book fall closed onto the small table. She looked at him guardedly, keeping her emotions protected. “I like my fairy tales with a little more reality,” she added. “This is too sweet to be believable—or I suppose any good, really. Who cares whether the heroine wins if there wasn’t any battle?”

“Only herself, I imagine.” He looked at her more closely. There were shadows of tiredness around her eyes and very little color in her skin. She was dressed in a pale green skirt, which was flattering because she moved with grace, but very ordinary. Her white cotton blouse was such as most young women choose in country villages: high to the neck, shaped to fit, and with minimum decoration. She was not interested in whether it pleased anyone else or not. He realized with a sense of shock the change in her in a few weeks. The regularity of her features was still there, the gentleness of her mouth, but the vitality that made her beautiful was gone.

“Mrs. Appleton’s bringing me some scones and lemonade. Would you like any?” He said it to break the silence; he was thinking how badly he had neglected her.

“No, thanks,” she replied. “I’ve already had some. Did you come home for anything in particular? I suppose they don’t know who killed Sebastian Allard yet? I’m sorry about that.” She met his eyes, trying to read if he was hurting.

He sat down, deliberately choosing his father’s chair. “Not yet. I’m not even sure if they’re getting any closer.”

She sat down also. “What about Mother and Father?” she asked. “Matthew doesn’t tell me anything. Sometimes I think he forgets I even know about it being murder, or about the document. We still get the papers, and the news is awful. Everyone in the village is talking about the possibility of war.”

Mrs. Appleton brought in his scones and lemonade, and he thanked her. When she had gone, he looked at Judith again and realized how little he knew her inner strengths and weaknesses. Could she bear the truth that they had no idea who had killed John Reavley, or that his whole judgment of the document could be flawed? He might have died for a simple crime of greed. Could she bear to know that war was a real possibility that nobody could measure? The whole future lay ahead clouded and uncertain—perhaps worse than that, even tragic.

A hard knot of anger clenched inside Joseph against his father. John Reavley should have had more sense than to tell Matthew he had a document that could rock the world, and then to drive unprotected along the road, for someone to kill . . . and not only him, but Alys as well!

“Well, are they right?” Judith demanded, breaking into his thoughts. “Are they right? Is there going to be a war? You can’t be so isolated in your ivory tower that you don’t know Austria and Serbia are on the brink!”

“I’m not.” He said it with the sharpness of his own anger and frustration. “Yes, they are, and I expect Austria will march into Serbia and conquer it again.”

“They’re talking about Russia getting involved as well if that happens,” she persisted.

“It’s possible all Europe could be involved,” he said, meeting her eyes. “It’s not likely, but if it does happen, then we may be drawn in. It’s also possible that they will come back from the brink, seeing what it will cost them.”

“And if they don’t?” She struggled to keep her voice level, but her face was white.

He stood up and walked over to the French windows opening onto the garden.

“Then we’ll have to conduct ourselves with honor and do what we’ve always done—send our armies to the battle,” he replied. “I daresay it won’t last very long. It’s not Africa, where there are vast stretches of open country to hide in.”

She must have risen to her feet also, because she spoke from just behind him. “I suppose not.” She hesitated a moment. “Joseph, do you think that was what Father knew about? I mean, something to do with the assassination in Sarajevo? Could he have stumbled onto the plan for that?”

Did she want to believe it? It would be far easier than supposing some new danger. It was a moment of judgment. Evasion, or the truth that he did not know? “Perhaps,” he agreed, walking out onto the grass. She followed him. The night was balmy and softly scented with the heavy sweetness of pinks and late lilies. “Maybe there was no date on it, and he didn’t realize it was planned for that day.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she said grimly. “That doesn’t have anything to do with England’s honor!” He heard the vibrancy in her voice. She was angry, alive again. “Don’t condescend to me, Joseph!” She caught his arm. “I hate it when you do that! Killing an Austrian archduke has got nothing to do with England.”

“It was your suggestion,” he pointed out, stung by her remark about his condescension, because he knew it was true. Evasion had been a mistake.

“And it was stupid,” she went on. “Why can’t you tell me I’m stupid honestly? Don’t always be so damn polite! I’m not your congregation, and you’re not my father! But I suppose you’re trying to be, and at least you’re somebody I can talk to properly.”

“Thank you,” he said drily. It was a backhanded compliment he had not deserved, and he was disturbed by how much it mattered to him.

They passed the border and were snared in the warm, sweet perfume. A barn owl swooped low between the trees and disappeared on soundless wings.

“Don’t you want to know what the document was?” she asked.

“Of course I do.” He said it automatically, and only afterward realized that if it was something their father had misjudged, then perhaps he would rather not.

He stopped at the edge of the lawn and she stood beside him, the moonlight on her face. “Then we ought to be able to find out where he got it, surely,” she said. “He can’t have had it very long, or he would have taken it to Matthew sooner.” Her voice was steady now, some inner resolve asserting itself.

“We’ve already tried to find out everywhere he went for several days before that,” he answered. “He saw the bank manager, Robert Isenham, and old Mr. Frawley, who keeps the curiosity shop up on the Cambridge Road.” He looked at her gently. “He and Frawley know each other pretty well. If Father had just discovered anything awful, Frawley would have known there was something wrong.”

“Mother went to see Maude Channery the day Father called Matthew,” she said seriously.

“Who is Maude Channery?” If he knew, he had forgotten.

“One of Mother’s good causes,” she answered, struggling for a moment to keep her voice level. “Father couldn’t bear her, said she was a fearful old fraud, but he drove Mother there anyway.”

“He’d have to, if it was far,” he pointed out. “Unless you did—and Mother would never go to visit anyone important in your Model T! Not if the Lanchester was available.”

“I could have driven her in the Lanchester,” she argued.

“Oh? Since when could you drive that?” he said, surprised. “Or more to the point, since when would Father have let you?”

“Since he couldn’t stand Maude Channery,” she retorted, a tiny flash of humor in her voice, there and then gone again. “But he didn’t. He took Mother. And when they came back he went straight to his study, and Mother and I had supper alone.”

He hesitated. The idea was absurd. “Surely you aren’t suggesting he got a document of international importance from an old woman who was one of Mother’s good causes?”

“I don’t know! Can you think of somewhere better to start? You haven’t got anything, and neither has Matthew.”

“We’ll go and see her tomorrow if you like,” he offered.

She gave him a wry look, and he knew it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him again not to be so condescending, but instead she simply accepted. She said that they would make it a morning call, before he could change his mind—and she would be ready at ten.

Joseph woke up early. It was a warm, blustery day, the wind full of the fine dust of the first crops being gathered. He walked down to the village and collected the Sunday papers from Cully Teversham at the tobacconists, and exchanged the usual pleasantries—a word about the weather, a spot of local gossip—and left to go home again. He passed a few neighbors on the way, and nodded good morning.

He intended not to open the papers until breakfast, but his curiosity overcame him. The news was worse than he had expected. Serbia had rejected Austrian demands, and diplomatic relations had been broken off. It seemed like the prelude to war. Russia had declared that it would act to protect Serbia’s interests. Who would win the Tour de France seemed like an issue from another era already sliding into the past, almost irretrievable even now, and a visit to Maude Channery was the last thing on his mind.

But he had promised Judith, and at least it would make up for some of the time he had been so absorbed with his own emotions that he had forgotten hers.

They set off at ten o’clock, but it took them until after half past to drive as far as Cherry Hinton. After making inquiries at the village shop, they found Fen Cottage on the outskirts, and parked the car just around the corner.

They had knocked twice on the front door before it swung open and they were faced by a short, elderly woman leaning heavily on a walking stick. It was not an elegant cane with a silver tip, but a plain, stout wooden affair, such as a man would use to bear his weight. Her face was set in irritation, and her frizzy white hair was pinned up in a style twenty years out of fashion. Her black skirts brushed the floor and looked as if she had inherited them from someone at least three inches taller.

“If yer lookin’ for the Taylors, they moved six months back, an’ Oi dunno where to,” she said abruptly. “An’ if it’s anyone else, ask Porky Andrews at the shop. He knows everythin’ an’ll likely tell you, whether you care or not.” She ignored Judith and looked Joseph up and down curiously.

“Mrs. Channery?” he asked. His days as a parish priest came back to his mind with cutting clarity. How often he had called on resentful people who were raw-tongued from pride, guilt, or the need to guard some pain they could neither accommodate nor share. “I’m Joseph Reavley, and this is my sister Judith. I believe you were a great friend of our mother’s.” He did not make it a question.

“Oh!” She was taken by surprise. The tart remark she had been going to make died on her lips. Something inside her softened. “Yes . . . well . . . well Oi suppose Oi were. Terrible thin’. Oi’m rale sorry. We’ll all miss her. Not much point in tellin’ you my sympathies. Won’t do no good.”

“I’d be glad to accept a cup of tea.” Joseph was not going to be put off.

“Then you’d better come on in,” Mrs. Channery responded. “Oi don’t serve on the doorstep.” And she turned around and led the way into a remarkably pleasant sitting room, beyond which lay a small, overcrowded garden backing onto the churchyard. He could clearly see a pale carved angel above the hedge, neatly outlined against the dark mass of yew trees.

Mrs. Channery followed his glance. “Humph!” she snorted. “On good days Oi think he’s watching over me . . . most times Oi say as he’s just snoopin’!” She pointed to the couch and another chair. “If you want tea, Oi et to put the kettle on, so you’d best sit down whoile Oi do. Oi’ve got biscuits. Oi’m not cuttin’ cake at this toime in the mornin’.”

Judith swallowed her temper with an effort that was visible, at least to Joseph. “Thank you,” she said meekly. “May I help you carry anything?”

“Great heavens, choild!” Mrs. Channery exclaimed. “What d’you think Oi’m bringin’? It’s only elevenses.”

Anger flushed up Judith’s face, but she bit back her response.

Mrs. Channery swiveled on her heel and disappeared into the kitchen.

Judith looked at Joseph. “Mother deserves to be canonized for putting up with her!” she said in a savage whisper.

“I can see why Father loathed her,” he agreed. “I wonder why he came.”

“With a sword, in case it was necessary, I should think!” Judith retorted. “Or a packet of rat poison!”

Joseph’s mind worried at the question. Why had John Reavley come here? Judith could quite easily have driven Alys, and Alys would consider it a useful lesson for her in charitable duty. John tended to avoid unpleasant people, and his tolerance of rudeness was low. He admired his wife’s patience, but he had no intention of emulating it.

Mrs. Channery returned, staggering a little under the weight of a large and very well set tea tray. She had kept her word that there was no cake, but there were three different kinds of biscuits, and homemade raisin scones with plenty of butter.

Joseph leaped to his feet to help her, taking the tray before she dropped it, and setting it down on the small table next to a floral jug filled with sweet williams. The ritual of pouring, accepting, passing around the food and making appropriate remarks was all observed to the letter. It was several minutes before Joseph could broach the subject for which they had come. He had given it some thought, but now it seemed foolish. The only thing to be gained by this visit was the time spent with Judith. On the way over they had spoken of odd, unimportant things, but she had seemed to be easier, and once or twice she had actually laughed.

“You have a lovely garden,” Joseph remarked.

“It’s all over tossled,” Mrs. Channery retorted. “Oi can’t be frabbed doin’ the work, an’ I can’t be payin’ that daft man what does Mrs. Copthorne’s. She pays him twice what he’s worth, the more fool her! An’ it’s still full o’ meece! I seen ’em!”

Joseph could sense Judith biting her tongue. “Perhaps that’s why I like it,” he replied, refusing to be put off.

“Makes yours look good, do it?” Mrs. Channery demanded.

“Yes, it does,” he agreed, smiling at her. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Judith’s expression of disgust. He noticed an enormous borage plant overtaking its neighbors. “And you have quite a few herbs.”

“Gardener, are you?” Mrs. Channery said drily. “Thought you was an airy-fairy sort o’ man up at the university.”

“One can be both,” he pointed out. “My father was, but I expect you know that.”

“No idea,” she responded. “Scarce saw him. Long enough to be civil, an’ then he were off again like Oi’d bit him.”

Judith sneezed—at least it sounded something like a sneeze.

“Really?” Joseph said, his attention suddenly held as if in a vise. “He didn’t stay with Mother the last time she was here?”

“Din’t even stay for tea.” She shook her head. Chocolate cake, Oi had. An’ Madeira, both. Looked at it loike he hadn’t eaten for a week, then went straight out o’ the door an’ got into that great big yellow car of his. Smelly things, cars,” she added. “An’ noisy. Dunno why a civilized man can’t use an horse an’ carriage. Good enough for the queen, God bless her memory.” Her lips thinned, and she blinked several times. “Don’t get horses goin’ mad an’ runnin’ all off the road into the trees an’ killing good folk!”

“Yes, you do!” Judith contradicted her. “Hundreds of horses have taken fright at something and bolted, taking carriages off the road, into trees, hedges, ditches, rivers even. You can’t spook a car. It doesn’t take fright at thunder, or lightning, or a flapping piece of cloth.” She drew in her breath. “And wheels fall off carriages just as often as off cars.”

“Thought you’d lost your tongue,” Mrs. Channery said with satisfaction. “Found it again, have you? Well, nothin’ you say’ll get me into one of them machines!”

“Then I shan’t try,” Judith answered, exactly as if it had been the next thing she had intended. “Do you know where he went?”

“Who? Your father? Do you think Oi asked him, Miss Reavley? That would be very ill-fatched up o’ me, now wouldn’t it?”

Judith’s eyes widened for a moment. “Of course you wouldn’t, Mrs. Channery. But he might have said. I imagine it wasn’t a secret.”

“Then you imagine wrong,” Mrs. Channery pronounced with immense pleasure. “It were a secret. Your dear ma asked him, an’ he went four wont ways about answerin’. Just said he’d be back for her in an hour . . . an’ he weren’t! Took him an hour and a half, but she never said a word.” She fixed Judith with an accusing eye. “Good woman, your ma was! No one left like her no more.”

“I know,” Judith said quietly.

Mrs. Channery grunted. “Shouldn’t have said that,” she apologized. “Not that it ain’t true. But it don’t do no good cryin’. Not what she’d have wanted. Very sensible woman, she were. Lots o’ patience with others what was all but useless, but none for herself. An’ she’d have expected you to be like her!”

Judith glared at her, angry not only at what she had said, but that she, of all people, should have known Alys well enough to have understood so much about her.

“You were very fond of her,” Joseph observed, to fill the silence more than anything else.

Mrs. Channery’s lips trembled for a moment. “O’ course Oi were!” she snapped at him. “She knew how to be kind without lookin’ down on folks, an’ there ain’t many what can do that! She never come by without askin’ first, an’ she ate my cake. Never brought any of her own, like needin’ to keep score. But she brought me jam now an’ then. Apricot. An’ Oi never told her as how the rhubarb jam was horrible. Like so much boiled string, it were. Oi gave it to Diddy Warner, her with the toddy-grass all up in the air like a gummidge. That surprised her. Should have seen the look on her face.” She smiled with satisfaction.

“With the hair like a scarecrow?” Judith clarified.

“In’t that what I just said?” Mrs. Channery asked.

“I can imagine!” Judith said frankly. “She was the one who gave it to Mother! It was disgusting.”

To Joseph’s amazement, Mrs. Channery burst into laughter. It was a deep, chesty guffaw of delight, and she laughed so hard he was afraid she was going to choke. The sound was so genuine and so infectious, he found himself joining in, and then after a moment, Judith did also. Suddenly he knew why his mother had bothered with Maude Channery.

They stayed another half hour, and left in surprisingly good spirits.

Walking back to the car, they were serious again.

“He went somewhere,” Judith said urgently, catching Joseph’s sleeve and forcing him to stop. “How can we find out where? He was different when he returned, and that night he called Matthew. It has to be where he got the document!”

“Perhaps,” he agreed, trying to keep his thoughts in check. They started working again. He wanted intensely to believe that there really had been a document of the importance his father had attached to it. And yet if there had been, the implications were enormous, stretching into an uncertain and dangerous future. And where was it now? Had John Reavley managed to put it somewhere safe before he was killed? If so, why had no one found it?

They reached the car.

“What are we going to do?” Judith demanded, slamming the door as Joseph cranked up the handle at the front and the engine jumped to life. He took the handle out and climbed in beside her, closing his own door more gently. The car moved away, and she changed gear with practiced ease.

“We’re going home to see what Appleton knows about where the car went,” Joseph replied.

“Father wouldn’t have told him.” She steered with panache around the corner and into the main road from Cherry Hinton back toward St. Giles.

“Doesn’t Appleton still clean the car?” he asked.

She glanced at him sideways and increased speed.

He put out a hand to steady himself.

“Of course he does,” she answered. “You think he’d have noticed something? Such as what?”

“We’ll ask him. And from what Mrs. Channery said, Mother was there an hour and a half, so he can only have gone a certain distance. We ought to be able to narrow it down. If we ask, someone will have seen him. The Lanchester was rather noticeable.”

“Yes!” she said exuberantly, pressing her foot down harder on the accelerator and sending the car forward at nearly fifty miles an hour.

Asking Appleton turned out to be a delicate matter. They found him in the garden staking up the last of the delphiniums, which were beginning to sag under their own weight.

“Alfred,” Joseph began, “when my father returned from taking Mother to visit Mrs. Channery at Cherry Hinton, did you clean the car afterward?”

Appleton straightened up, his face dark. “O’ course Oi cleaned the car, Mr. Joseph! An’ checked the brakes an’ the fuel an’ the tires! If you think Oi din’t—”

“I want to work out where he went!” Joseph said quickly, realizing what accusation Appleton had assumed. “I thought you might be able to help me, from anything you observed.”

“Went?” Appleton was confused. “He took Mrs. Reavley to Cherry Hinton.”

“Yes, I know. But he left her there and went somewhere else, then came back for her.”

Appleton tied up the last sky-blue delphiniums absentmindedly and stepped out of the flower bed onto the path. “You think summin’ happened to the car?”

“No, I think perhaps he saw someone, and I need to know who it was.” He did not intend to tell Appleton more than that. “It’s about three and a half miles from here to Cherry Hinton. Is there any way you can tell how much farther he went?”

“Course Oi can. Just got to look at the milometer. That’ll tell you pretty exact. Course it won’t say where to, only how far.”

Joseph felt the silence settle into the hot garden with its motionless flowers, gaudy splashes of color, butterflies pinned like precarious ornaments onto the lilies.

“Did you see anything at all that would help us to know where they went?”

Appleton screwed up his face.

“Dust?” Joseph suggested. “Gravel? Mud? Clay? Peat, maybe? Or manure? Tar?”

“Loime,” Appleton said slowly. “There was loime under the wheel arches. Et to wash it off.”

“Lime kilns!” Joseph exclaimed. “He was gone an hour and a half altogether. How fast does the Lanchester go? Forty . . . fifty-five?”

“Mr. Reavley was a very good driver,” Appleton said pointedly, looking at the path where Judith was coming toward them. “More loike thirty-five.”

“I see.”

Judith reached them and looked inquiringly from Joseph to Appleton and back again.

“Appleton found lime on the car,” Joseph said to her. “Where are the nearest lime kilns, close enough to the road that the lime itself would be tracked across, so someone would pick it up?”

“There are lime kilns on the roads south and west out of Cherry Hinton itself,” she answered. “Not east back to St. Giles or Cambridge, or north toward Teversham or Fen Ditton.”

“So what lies south or west?” he said urgently.

“Over the Gog Magog hills? Stapleford, Great Shelford,” she said thoughtfully, as if picturing the map in her mind. “To the west there’s Fulbourn, or Great and Little Wilbraham. Where shall we start?”

“Shelford’s only a couple of miles from here,” he replied. “We could start there and work our way north and west. Thank you, Appleton.”

“Yes, sir. Will there be anything else?” Appleton looked puzzled and faintly unhappy.

“No, thank you. Unless there’s anything he might have said about where he went?”

“No, sir, not that Oi can think. Will you be taking the car out again, Miss Judith? Or shall Oi put it away?”

“We’ll be going straight out, thank you,” she replied firmly, turning back toward the house without waiting for Joseph.

“What shall we say to the people if we find out where he got the document?” she asked when they were on their way out of St. Giles again on the road southward, climbing almost immediately up into the shallow hills. She kept her eyes on the road ahead. “They’ll know who we are, and they have to realize why we’ve come.” It was a question, but there was no hesitation in her voice, and her hands were strong and comfortable on the wheel. If there was tension in her, she masked it completely.

He had not thought of that in detail; all that weighed on his mind was the compulsion to know the truth and silence the doubts.

“I don’t know,” he answered her. “Mrs. Channery was easy enough; it seemed like following Mother’s footsteps. I suppose we could say he left something behind?”

“Like what?” she said with faint derision. “An umbrella? In the hottest, driest summer we’ve had in years! A coat? Gloves?”

“A picture,” he answered, the solution coming to him the instant before he spoke. “He had a picture he was going to sell. Are they the people he was going to show it to?”

“That sounds reasonable. Yes . . . good.” Unconsciously she increased the speed, and the car surged forward, all but clipping the edge of the grass on the side of the road.

“Judith!” he cried out involuntarily.

“Don’t be stuffy!” she retorted, but she did slow down. She had been almost out of control, and she knew it even better than he did. What it took him longer to realize, and he did it with surprise, was that it was exuberance that drove her, the feeling that at last she was able to do something, however slight the chances of success. It was not fear, either of the process or of the discovery of facts she might find painful.

He was looking at the profile of her face, seeing the woman in her and beginning to understand how far behind the child had become, when she turned and shot him a glance and then a quick smile.

He drew breath to tell her to concentrate on the road, then knew it would be wrong. He smiled back and saw her shoulders relax.

They stopped in Shelford and asked, but no one had seen John Reavley on the Saturday before his death, and the yellow Lanchester was a car they would have remembered.

They had sandwiches and a glass of cider on the village green outside the pub at Stapleford.

He was not quite sure what to say, afraid in case his voice unintentionally carried disappointment. While he was still considering, she began the conversation, talking about various things, interesting but inconsequential. He felt himself gradually enjoying it, his mind following hers as she spoke of Russian theater, then Chinese pottery. She was full of opinions. He did not appreciate how hasty they were until it dawned on him that she was speaking to reassure him, to lend him the strength of normality and of not being the leader for a little while. It amazed him and embarrassed him a little, and yet there was a warmth to it that for an instant brought a sharp prickle to his eyes, and he was obliged to turn away.

If she noticed it, she affected not to.

Afterward they drove north again. They turned right on the Works Causeway, past the gravel pits and the clunch pit—named for the peculiar sticky local clay—and drove into the village of Fulbourn. It was nearly three o’clock, a bright afternoon with the heat shimmering up from the road. Even the cows in the fields sought the shade, and the dogs lying on the grass under the trees and hedges were panting contentedly.

They swung into the main village street and drew to a stop. It was almost deserted. Two boys of about seven or eight stared at them curiously. One of them had a ball clutched in a grubby hand, and he smiled, showing a gap where his front tooth was still growing in. He was obviously more interested in the car than in either of its occupants.

“Ever seen a yellow car?” Joseph asked him casually.

The boy stared at him.

“Do you want to look inside?” Judith offered.

The other boy backed away, but the gap-toothed one was braver or more curious. He nodded.

“Come on, then,” she encouraged.

Step by step he came toward the car and then finally was persuaded to peer inside the open door while she explained to him what everything was and what it did. Finally she asked again if he had seen a yellow car.

He nodded slowly. “Yes, miss. Bigger’n this, but Oi never seed inside it.”

“When was that?”

“Donno,” he answered, still wide-eyed. “Way back.”

And no matter how she tried, that was all he knew. She thanked him and reluctantly he allowed her to close the door. He gave her a beaming smile, then turned and ran away and disappeared into a crack between two cottages, closely followed by his companion.

“Hopeful,” Judith said with more courage than belief. “We’ll ask again.”

They found an elderly couple out walking, and a man with a dog, strolling in a side lane, thoughtfully sucking at his pipe. None of them remembered a yellow car. Neither did anyone else in Fulbourn.

“We’ll have to try Great and Little Wilbraham,” Joseph said flatly. “Not very far.” He glanced at her and saw the anxiety in her eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Of course!” she answered, staring back at him levelly. “Are you?”

He smiled at her, nodding, then started up the car again and climbed in. They headed back into Fulbourn and from there north across the railway line east to Great Wilbraham. The streets were quiet, towering trees motionless except for the topmost leaves flickering gently in the breeze. A flock of starlings swirled up in the sky. A tabby cat blinked sleepily on top of a flat gatepost. The peal of church bells sounded clear and mellow in the warm air, familiar, gentle as the smell of hay or the sunlight on the cobbles.

“Evensong,” Joseph observed. “We’ll have to wait. Would you like something to eat?”

“It’s early for dinner,” she answered.

“Tea?” he suggested. “Scones, raspberry jam, and clotted cream?”

They found a tea shop willing to serve them at this hour. Afterward they went back into the street and walked up toward the church just as the congregation was leaving.

It was not easy to approach someone gracefully, and Joseph was awaiting an opportunity when the vicar saw him and walked over, smiling at Judith and then speaking to Joseph.

“Good evening, sir. Another beautiful day. Sorry you’re just too late for the service, but if I can be of any help?”

“Thank you.” Joseph looked around with genuine appreciation at the ancient building, the worn gravestones leaning a little crookedly in the earth. The grass between was neatly mowed, here and there fresh flowers laid in love. “You have a beautiful church.”

“We have,” the vicar agreed happily. He looked to be in his forties, a round-faced man with a soft voice. “Lovely village. Would you care to look around?” His glance included Judith.

“Actually, I think my late father may have come here a little while ago,” Joseph replied. “His car was rather distinctive, a yellow Lanchester.”

“Oh, yes!” the vicar said with obvious pleasure. “Delightful gentleman.” Then his face clouded. “Did you say ‘late’? I’m so sorry. Please accept my sympathies. Such a nice man. Looking for a friend of his, a German gentleman. I directed him to Frog End, where he had just rented the house.” He shook his head, biting his lip a little. “Really very sad. Takes a lot of faith sometimes, it really does. Poor gentleman was killed in an accident just after that himself.”

Joseph was stunned. He was aware of Judith beside him drawing in her breath in a gasp. Her fingers dug into his arm. He tried to keep himself steady.

“Out walking about in the evening and must have slipped and fallen into Candle Ditch,” the vicar went on sorrowfully. “Up where it meets the river near Fulbourn Fen.” He shook his head a little. “He wouldn’t know the area, of course. I suppose he hit his head on a stone or something. And you say your poor father died recently as well. I’m so sorry.”

“Yes.” Joseph found it difficult to gather his feelings in the face of this sudden very real compassion. Indifference woke anger, or a sense of isolation, and that was in some ways easier. “Did you know this German gentleman?”

An elderly couple passed; the vicar smiled at them but turned back to Joseph and Judith to indicate he was engaged, and the couple moved on.

“I did not know him closely, I regret to say,” the vicar shook his head. They were still standing out on the road in the sun. “But it was actually I who rented him the house, on behalf of the owner, you know. An elderly lady who lives abroad now. Herr Reisenburg was a very clever gentleman, so I’m told, a philosopher of some sort—kept largely to himself. Melancholy sort of person.” Grief filled his mild face. “Not that he wasn’t very pleasant, but I sensed a certain trouble within him. At least that’s what I thought. My wife tells me I imagine too much.”

“I think perhaps you were correct, and it was sensitivity rather than imagination,” Joseph said gently. “Did you say his name was Reisenburg?”

The vicar nodded. “Yes, that’s right, Reisenburg. Very distinguished-looking gentleman he was, tall and a little stooping, and soft-spoken. Excellent English. He said he liked it here. . . .” He stopped with a sigh. “Oh, dear. So much pain sometimes. I gathered from the gentleman in the yellow car that they were friends. Corresponded with each other for years, he said. He thanked me and drove toward Frog End. That was all I saw of him.” He looked a little shyly at Judith. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.” Joseph swallowed, the tightness almost choking his throat. “My father was killed in a car accident the next day . . . and my mother along with him.”

“How very terrible,” the vicar said in little more than a whisper. “If you would like to be alone in the church for a while, I can see that no one disturbs you.” His invitation included both of them, but it was Joseph he reached out to touch, placing his hand on Joseph’s arm. “Trust in God, my dear friend. He knows our path and has walked every step before us.”

Joseph hesitated. “Did Herr Reisenburg have any other friends that you are aware of? Someone I might speak to?”

The man’s face crumpled in regret. “None that I saw. As I said, he kept very much to himself. One gentleman asked for him, apart from your father, at least so I am told, but that’s all.”

“Who was that?” Judith asked quickly.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” the vicar replied. “It was the same day as your father, and frankly I rather think it was just someone else he must have spoken to. I’m sorry.”

Joseph found himself too filled with grief to answer. But he also believed that in Herr Reisenburg he had found the source of the document, and that he too had paid for it with his life. There was now no possibility whatever that John Reavley was mistaken as to its importance. But where was it now, and who was behind it?

“Don’t you have any idea what that document was?” Judith asked when they were in the car again and turning toward home. “You must have thought about it.”

“Yes, of course I have, and I don’t know,” he replied. “I can’t remember Father ever mentioning Reisenburg.”

“Neither can I,” she agreed. “But obviously they know each other, and it was really important, or he wouldn’t have gone looking for him while Mother was with Maude Channery. Why do you think Reisenburg had the document?” She negotiated a long curve in the road with considerable skill, but Joseph found himself gripping his seat. “Do you suppose he stole it from someone?”

“It looks like it,” he replied.

She gave a shudder. “And they murdered him for it, only he’d already given it to Father—so they murdered Father. What do you suppose they’re going to do with it? If they got it back then, it’s four weeks ago now, so why hasn’t anything happened?” Her voice dropped. “Or has it, and we just don’t know?”

He wanted to be able to answer her, but he had no idea what the truth would be.

She was waiting; he knew it by the turn of her head, the concentration in her face.

“Matthew thinks there may have been two copies,” he said quietly. “It isn’t that they need one so much as they can’t let the other one be roaming around, in case it falls into the wrong hands. That’s why they’re still looking.” Fear for her seized him with an almost physical pain. “For God’s sake, Judith, be careful! If anyone—”

“I won’t!” she cut across him. “Don’t fuss, Joseph. I’m perfectly all right, and I’ll stay all right. It isn’t in the house, and they know that! For heaven’s sake, they’ve looked thoroughly enough. Are you staying tonight? And I’m not asking because I’m afraid—I’d just like to talk to you, that’s all.” She gave a gentle, almost patient little smile and avoided looking at him. “You’re not much like Father most of the time, but now and then you are.”

“Thank you,” he said as unemotionally as he could, but he found he could not add anything. His throat was tight, and he needed to look away from her at the long slope of the fields and compose himself.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Joseph waited up alone for Matthew to return from seeing Shanley Corcoran. It was almost midnight.

“Nothing,” Matthew replied to the unspoken question. He looked tired, his fair hair blown by the wind, but under the brief flush of travel he was pale. “He can’t help.” He sat down in the chair opposite Joseph.

“Want anything to drink?” Joseph asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he told Matthew what he and Judith had discovered about Reisenburg.

Matthew seized on it. “That must be it!” he said, enthusiasm lifting his voice. He sat forward eagerly, his eyes bright, attention suddenly focused again. “Poor devil! It looks as if they killed him for it as well. No proof, of course.” He rubbed his hand over his face, pushing his hair back. “It looks as if it must be as dangerous as Father said. I wonder how Reisenburg got it, and where from!”

Joseph had been thinking about that all evening. “He might have been the courier for it,” he said dubiously. “But I think it’s far more likely he stole it, don’t you?”

“But where was he taking it when they caught up with him?” Matthew inquired. “Not to Father, surely? Why? If he’d been in any sort of intelligence service, I’d know!” He made it a statement, but Joseph could see in his eyes that it was a question. The yellow lamplight cast shadows on his face, emphasizing the uncertainty in him.

Joseph crushed his own doubts with an effort of will. “I think he just knew Father,” he replied. “The people he stole it from knew he had it and were after him. He passed it to the only honorable person he could. Father was here. There was no time to get to London, or to whoever he meant to deliver it.”

“No more than chance?” Matthew said with a twist of his lips. The irony of it hurt.

“Perhaps he came this way because this was where Father lived,” Joseph suggested. “It seems he knew Cambridgeshire—he took the house here.”

“Whom was he intending to give it to?” Matthew stared ahead of him into the distance. “If only we could find that out!”

“I don’t know how,” Joseph replied. “Reisenburg is dead, and the house is let out to someone else. We drove past.”

“At least we know where Father got it.” Matthew sat back, relaxing his body at last. “That’s a lot. For the first time there’s a glimmer of sense!”

They stayed up another half hour, arguing more possibilities along with the chances of finding out more about Reisenburg, and then the family went to bed, as Matthew had to get up at six and drive early to London. Joseph was to go back to Cambridge at a much more agreeable hour.

Almost as soon as he entered the gate Joseph ran into Inspector Perth, looking pale, hunch-shouldered, and jumpy.

“Don’t ask me!” he said before Joseph had even spoken. “Oi don’t know who killed Mr. Allard, but so help me God, Oi mean to find out, if Oi have to take this place apart man by man!” And without waiting for a reply he strode off, leaving Joseph openmouthed.

He had left St. Giles before breakfast, and now he was hungry. He walked across the quad in the sun, and under the arch to the dining hall. The mood was sombre. No one was in the mood for talking. There were murmurs about Irish rebels in the streets of Dublin, and the possibility of sending in British troops to disarm them, perhaps even as soon as today.

Joseph was busy catching up on essay papers all morning, and when he had time for his own thoughts at all, it was for Reisenburg, lying in a Cambridgeshire grave, unknown to whoever loved or cared for him, murdered for a piece of paper. Could the document possibly be to do with some as yet unimagined horror in Ireland that would stain England’s honor even more deeply than its dealings with that unhappy country had done already? The more he thought of it, the less likely it seemed. It must be something in Europe, surely. Sarajevo? Or something else? A socialist revolution? A giant upheaval of values such as the revolutions that had swept the continent in 1848?

He did not wish to go to the hall for luncheon, and bought himself a sandwich instead. Early in the afternoon he was crossing the quad back to his rooms when he saw Connie Thyer coming from the shadow of the arch. She looked harassed and a little flushed.

“Dr. Reavley! How nice to see you. Did you have a pleasant weekend?”

He smiled. “In many ways, yes, thank you.” He was about to ask her if she had also, and stopped himself just in time. With Mary Allard still her guest, still waiting for justice and vengeance, how could she? “How are you?” he asked instead.

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if exhaustion had overtaken her. She opened them and smiled. “It gets worse,” she said wearily. “Of course this wretched policeman has to ask everyone questions: who liked Sebastian and who didn’t, and why.” Her face suddenly pinched with unhappiness, and her eyes clouded. “But what he is finding is so ugly.”

He waited. It seemed like minutes because he dreaded what she was going to say; he was prolonging the moment of ignorance, and yet he was pretending. He did know.

She sighed. “Of course he doesn’t say what he’s found, but one can’t help knowing, because people talk. The young men feel so guilty. No one wants to speak ill of the dead, especially when his family is so close by. And then they are angry because they are placed in a situation where they can’t do anything else.”

He offered her his arm, and they walked very slowly, as if intending to go somewhere.

“And because they have been cornered into doing something they are ashamed of,” she went on, “poor Eardslie is furious with himself, and Morel is furious with Foubister, who must have said something dreadful, because he is so ashamed he won’t look anyone in the face, especially Mary Allard.” She glanced at him, and away again. “And I think Foubister is afraid Morel had something to do with it, or at the very least may be suspected. Rattray is just as afraid, but I think for himself, and Perth won’t leave him alone. The poor boy looks wilder every day. Even I am beginning to think he must know something, but whether it is something that matters or not, I have no idea.”

They moved from the temporary shade of the archway out into the next quad.

“What about Elwyn?” he asked. He was concerned for them all, but Elwyn particularly. He was a young man with far too much weight to bear.

“Oh, dear,” she said softly, but her voice was full of emotion. “That is the one thing for which I really dislike Mary. I never had children of my own.”

Was it pain in her voice, masked over the years, or simply a mild regret? He did not turn to look at her—that would be unpardonably intrusive—but he thought of her love affair with Beecher with a new clarity. Perhaps there was more to understand than he had imagined.

“I cannot know what her loss is,” she went on, looking at the sunlight on the grass ahead of her, and the castellated roof against the blue of the sky. “But Elwyn is her son also, and she is indulging her own grief without any thought for him. Gerald is useless! He mopes around, most of the time saying nothing beyond agreeing with her. And I’m afraid he is helping himself to rather too much of Aidan’s port! He is glassy-eyed more often than not, and it is not simply out of grief or exhaustion. Although Mary would be enough to exhaust anyone!”

Joseph kept step with her.

“Poor Elwyn is left to try to comfort his mother,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s attempting to shield her from the less pleasant truths that are emerging about Sebastian, who has reached the proportions of a saint in her mind. Anyone would think he had been martyred for a great cause rather than killed by some desperate person, in all likelihood goaded beyond endurance.” She stopped, turning to face Joseph, her eyes wretched. “It isn’t going to last. It can’t!”

He was startled.

“She’s going to find out one day, she has to!” she said so softly he had to lean toward her to catch the words. Her voice was tight with fear. “And then what can we do for her?” Her eyes searched his. “For any of them? She’s built her whole world around Sebastian, and it’s not real!” Then she sounded surprised at herself. “Sometimes I feel desperately sorry for him. How could anyone live up to what she believed of him? Do you suppose the pressure of it, his own knowledge of what he was really like, drove him to some of the ugly things he seems to have done? Is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. They were walking very slowly. “Perhaps. He was remarkably gifted, but he had flaws like any of us. Maybe they now look the greater because we hadn’t known they were there.”

“Was that our fault?” she asked earnestly. “I thought he was . . . golden. That he was superbly clever, and that his character was as beautiful as his face.”

“And his dreams,” he added. His own voice was hoarse for a second as grief overcame him for the loss not only of Sebastian, but for a kind of innocence in himself, for the lost comfort it carried with it. “And yes, it was my fault, certainly,” he added. “I saw him as I wanted him to be, and I loved him for that. If I were less selfish, I would have loved him for what he was.” He avoided meeting her eyes. “Perhaps you can destroy people by refusing to see their reality, offering love only on your own terms, which is that they be what you need them to be—for yourself, not for them.” It was true, gouging out the last pretence inside him, leaving him raw.