No Graves As Yet (17 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Quarrels about what? With whom?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How is Mrs. Allard?” he asked.

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

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

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

Joseph was not surprised, but he was sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

“Mrs. Allard,” he said quietly.

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

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

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

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

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