No Graves As Yet (33 page)

“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.

She smiled very slightly, and her voice was very gentle. “You didn’t do quite that, Joseph. You were his teacher, and you saw and encouraged the best in him. But you are an idealist. I daresay none of us are as fine as you think.”

Again her love for Beecher rushed into his mind, and the hard, abrasive thought that Sebastian had known of it and used it to manipulate Beecher into things painfully against his nature.

“No,” he agreed quietly. They had reached the shade of the next archway and he was glad of it. “I think I have learned that. I wish I could help you with Mary Allard, but I’m afraid she is too fragile to accept the truth without it breaking her. She is a hard, brittle woman who has built a shell around herself, and reality won’t intrude easily. But I’ll be here. And if that is any help at all, please turn to me whenever you wish.”

“Thank you, I fear I will,” she replied. “I can’t see the end of this, and I admit it frightens me. I look at Elwyn and I wonder how long he can go on. She doesn’t seem even to be aware of his presence, let alone do anything to comfort him! I admit, sometimes I am so angry I could slap her.” She colored faintly; it made her face vivid and uniquely lovely. He was aware of her perfume, which was something delicate and flowery, and of the depth of color in her hair. “I’m sorry,” she said under her breath. “It’s very un-Christian of me, but I can’t help it.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Sometimes I think we imagine Christ to be a lot less human than He was,” he replied with conviction. “I’m sure He must feel like slapping us on occasion—when we bring our grief not only upon ourselves, but upon everyone around us as well.”

She thanked him again with a sudden smile, then turned to walk away back into the sun toward the master’s lodgings.

Joseph sensed the tension mounting all afternoon. He saw Rattray carrying a pile of books. He walked quickly and carelessly, tripping on an uneven paving stone at the north side of the quad and dropping everything onto the ground. He swore with white-lipped fury, and instead of helping him, another student sniggered with amusement, and a third told him off for it sarcastically.

It was left to Joseph to bend down and help.

He met a junior lecturer and encountered several sarcastic remarks to which he replied calmly, and in his annoyance unintentionally snubbed Gorley-Brown.

The ill feeling finally erupted at about four o’clock, and unfortunately it was in a corridor just outside one of the lecture halls. It began with Foubister and Morel. Foubister had stopped to speak to Joseph about a recent translation he was unhappy with.

“I think it could have been better,” he complained.

“The metaphor was a little forced,” Joseph agreed.

“Sebastian said he thought it referred to a river, not the sea,” Foubister suggested.

Morel came by and had gone only a few steps beyond when he realized what he had overheard. He stopped and turned, as if waiting to see what Joseph would say.

“Do you want something?” Foubister asked abruptly.

Morel smiled, but it was more a baring of the teeth. “Sounds as if you didn’t hear Sebastian’s translation of that,” he replied. “That’s the trouble when you only get bits! It doesn’t fit together!”

Foubister went white. “Obviously you got it all!” he retaliated.

Now it was Morel’s turn to change color, only it was the opposite way, blood rushing to his cheeks. “I admired his work! I never pretended otherwise!” His voice was rising. “I still knew he was a manipulative swine when he wanted to be, and I’m not going to be hypocrite enough to go around saying he was a saint now that he’s dead. For God’s sake, somebody murdered him!”

There was a roll of thunder overhead and a sudden, wild drumbeat of rain. No one had heard footsteps approach, and they were all jolted into embarrassment when they saw Elwyn only a couple of yards away. He looked bowed with exhaustion, and there were dark smudges under his eyes, as if he were bruised inside.

“Are you saying that means he must have deserved it, Morel?” he asked, his voice tight in his throat and rasping with the effort of controlling it.

Foubister stared at Morel curiously.

Joseph started to speak, then realized that his intervention would only make it worse. Morel would have to answer for himself, if he could make his voice heard above the drumming of the rain on the windows and the gush of water leaping from the guttering.

Morel took a deep breath. “No, of course I’m not!” he shouted above the roar. “But whoever did it must have believed they had a reason. It would be much more comfortable to think it was a lunatic from outside who broke in, but we know it wasn’t. It was one of us—someone who knew him for at least a year. Face it! Somebody hated him enough to take a gun and shoot him.”

“Jealousy,” Elwyn said hoarsely.

Beecher emerged from the doorway of the lecture room, his face white. “For God’s sake, be quiet!” he shouted. “You’ve all said more than enough!” He did not appear to see Joseph. “Go on back to your work! Get out!”