No Graves As Yet (40 page)

Perth lunged forward, crying out, although barely a sound escaped his lips.

Joseph thought he was going to be sick. Emotion—pity and relief—overwhelmed him with a crushing force. He barely felt the tears running down his face.

Perth was scrambling to untie Elwyn, fingers clumsy, tearing at the knots, breaking his nails, his breath rasping in his throat.

Joseph saw the letter on the cot and went to it. There was nothing he or anyone could do for Elwyn. The envelope was addressed to him. He opened it, before Perth or anyone else should tell him he couldn’t.

He read it:

Dear Dr. Reavley,

Sebastian was dead when I got to his room that morning; the gun was on the floor. I knew he had killed himself, but I thought it was because he was afraid of going to war. He always believed we would. It looks now as if he was right. But I didn’t read his letter until afterward, when it was too late. All I could think of was hiding his suicide. Mother could not have lived with the knowledge that he was a coward. You know that, because you know her.

I took the gun and hid it in the bucket at the top of the drainpipe in the master’s house. I never meant anyone to be blamed, but it all got away from me.

Dr. Beecher must have realized. You heard what he said on the landing, about Sebastian and courage. By then I’d read his letter, but it was too late. I’m so sorry, so terribly sorry. There is nothing left now. At least this is the truth,

Elwyn Allard

Wrapped inside it was another letter, on different paper, and in Sebastian’s hand:

Dear Dr. Reavley,

I thought I knew the answer. Peace—peace at any price. War in Europe could slaughter millions; what is one life or two to save so many? I believed that, and I would have given my own life gladly. I wanted to keep all the beauty. Perhaps it isn’t possible, and we’ll have to fight after all.

I was in London when I heard the document had been stolen. I came back to Cambridge that night. They gave me a gun, but I made the caltrops myself, out of fence wire. Then it would look like an accident. Much better. It wasn’t difficult, just tedious.

I went out on a bicycle the next day, left it in a field. It was all very simple—and more terrible than anything I could have imagined. You think of millions and the mind is devastated. You see two who lie broken, the spirit gone, and it tears the soul apart. The reality of blood and pain is so very different from the idea. I can’t live with who I am now.

I wish it hadn’t been your parents, Joseph. I’m so sorry, sorrier than anything will heal.

Sebastian

Joseph stared at the paper. It explained everything. In their own way Sebastian and Elwyn were so alike: blind, heroic, self-destructive, and in the end futile. The war would happen anyway.

Perth laid Elwyn on the floor, gently, a blanket under his head, as if it mattered. He was staring up at Joseph, his face gray.

“It’s not your fault,” Joseph said. “At least this way there doesn’t have to be a trial.”

Perth gasped. He tried to say something, but it ended in a sob.

Joseph put Elwyn’s letter back on the cot and kept Sebastian’s.

“I’ll go and tell them.” He found his mouth dry. What words could he possibly find? He walked out and back the short distance. Perth could send for somebody to help him.

As soon as he was in the room Mary stepped forward and drew in her breath to demand an explanation. Then she saw his face and realized with terror that there was something more hideously wrong.

Gerald moved behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said quietly. “Elwyn has admitted to killing Dr. Beecher, because Beecher realized the truth of Sebastian’s death.”

“No!” Mary said stridently, trying to raise her arms and snatch herself away from Gerald’s grip.

Joseph stood still. There was no way to avoid it. He felt as if he were pronouncing a sentence of death upon her. “Sebastian took his own life. No one murdered him. Elwyn did not want you to know that, so he took the gun and made it look like murder—to protect you. I’m sorry.”

She stood paralyzed. “No,” she said quite quietly. “That isn’t true. It’s a conspiracy!”

Gerald’s face puckered slowly as understanding broke something inside him. He let go of Mary and staggered backward to collapse onto one of the wooden chairs.

The solicitor looked totally helpless.

“No!” Mary repeated. “No!” Her voice rose.
“No!”

Perth appeared in the doorway. “I’ve sent for a doctor. . . .”

Mary swung round. “He’s alive! I knew it!”

“No,” he said huskily. “For you. I’m sorry.”

She stood swaying.

Joseph reached to help her, and she lashed out at him as her legs buckled. She caught his face, but it was only a glancing blow.

“You’d better go, sir,” Perth said quietly. There was no anger in his face, only pity and an immense weariness.

Joseph understood and walked out into the cool, shrouding darkness and the protection of the night. He needed solitude.

The next day, August 3, Mitchell brought him the newspaper early.

“There’s going to be war, sir,” he said somberly. “No way we can help it now. Russia invaded Germany yesterday, and the Germans have gone into France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. Navy’s mobilized, and troops are guarding the rail lines and ammunition supplies and so on. Reckon it’s come, Dr. Reavley. God help us.”

“Yes, Mitchell, I suppose it has,” Joseph answered. The reality of it choked like an absence of air, heavy and tight in his lungs.

“You’ll be going home, sir?” It was a statement.

“Yes, Mitchell. There really isn’t anything to do here for the moment. I should be with my sister.”

“Yes, sir.”

Before leaving he called briefly on Connie. There was very little to say. He could not tell her about Sebastian, and anyway, when he looked at her, he thought of Beecher. He knew what it was like to lose the only person you could imagine loving, and exactly how it felt to face the endless stretch ahead. All he could do was smile at her and say something about the war.

“I suppose many of them will enlist as officers,” she said quietly, her eyes misted over, staring at the sunlight on the walls of the garden.

“Probably,” he agreed. “The best—if it comes to that.”

She turned to look at him. “Do you think there’s any hope it won’t?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

He stayed only a moment longer, wanting to say something about Beecher, but she understood it all. She had known him perhaps even better than he had, and would miss him even more. In the end he simply said goodbye and went to find the master to say goodbye to him for the time being.

Afterward he had barely reached the center of the outer quad when he met Matthew coming in through the main gate. He looked pale and tired, as if he had been up most of the night. His fair hair was a little sun-bleached across the front, and he was wearing uniform.

“Do you want a lift home?” he asked.

“Yes . . . please.” Joseph hesitated only a moment, wondering if Matthew wanted a cup of tea or anything else before he went on the last few miles. But the answer was in his face.

Ten minutes later they were on the road again. It hardly seemed different from any summer weekend. The lanes were thick with leaf, the harvest fields ripe, here and there stippled with the burning scarlet of poppies. The swallows were gathering.

With a heavy heart Joseph told Matthew what had happened the previous night. He could remember Elwyn’s letter, and he still had Sebastian’s. He read it as they drove. It needed no explanation, no added comments. When he had finished he folded it and put it back in his pocket. He looked at Matthew. His brother’s face was heavy with pain, and anger for the sorrow and the futility of it. He glanced sideways at Joseph for a moment. It was a look of compassion, wordless and deep.

“You’re right,” Matthew agreed quietly, swinging round the curve of the road into St. Giles and seeing the street ahead of them deserted. “There’s nothing either of us can do now. Poor devils. All so bloody pointless. I suppose you’ve still got no idea what happened to the document?”

“No,” Joseph said bleakly. “I’d have told you.”

“Yes, of course. And I still don’t know who’s behind it . . . unless it is Aidan Thyer, as you suggest. Damn! I liked him.”

“So did I. I’m beginning to realize how little that means,” Joseph said ruefully.

Matthew shot him a glance as he turned right off the main street toward the house. “What are you going to do now? Archie’ll stay at sea as usual. He won’t have a choice. And I’ll keep on with the SIS, naturally. But what about you?” His brow was furrowed slightly, concern in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Joseph admitted.

Matthew pulled the car up in front of the house, its tires crunching on the gravel. A moment later Judith opened the front door, relief flooding her face. She took the steps in two strides and hugged Joseph and then Matthew before turning to go back inside.

Walking out over the soft grass in the garden under the apple trees, they told her about Elwyn and Sebastian. She was stunned; rage, pity, confusion washed over her like storm waves, leaving her dizzy.

It was a late and somber lunch, eaten in an agreed silence, each willing to be alone with his or her thoughts. It was one of those strange, interminable occasions when time stands still. The sound of cutlery on the china of a plate was deafening.

Today, tomorrow, one day soon, Joseph would have to make his decision. He was thirty-five. He did not have to fight. He could claim all kinds of exemptions and no one would object. Life had to continue at home: there were sermons to be preached, people to be christened or married or buried, the sick and the troubled to be visited.

There were raspberries for dessert. He ate his slowly, savoring the sweetness of them, as if he would not have them again. He felt as if Matthew and Judith expected him to say something, but he had no idea what, and he was saved by Matthew interrupting his indecision.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what armaments we have, not in detail. I do know it’s not enough. We may be asked to give up anything we have that works. I don’t know if anyone will want them, but they might.”

“It’s not going to be that bad! Is it?” Judith looked very pale, her eyes frightened. “I mean . . .”

“No, of course it isn’t!” Joseph rushed in. He glared warningly at Matthew.

“They may ask us for guns,” Matthew said stiffly. “I shan’t be home, and I don’t know whether you will or not.” He looked at Joseph, pushing his chair back as he spoke, and standing up. “There are at least two shotguns, one new one and an old one that may not be up to much. And there’s the punt gun.”

“You could stop an elephant with that!” Judith said wryly. “But only if it was coming at you across the fens and you just happened to be out punting at the time.”

Matthew pushed the chair back in at the table. “I’ll get it out anyway. It’ll probably be of use to someone.”

Joseph went with him, not out of any interest in guns—he loathed them—but for something to do. “You don’t need to frighten her like that!” he criticized. “For God’s sake, use some sense!”

“She’s better off knowing,” was all Matthew replied.

The guns were kept in a locked cupboard in the study. Matthew took the key from his ring and opened it. Inside were the three guns he had mentioned, and a very old target pistol. He looked at them one by one, breaking the shotguns and examining them.

“Have you decided yet what you’re going to do?” he asked, squinting down one of the barrels.

Joseph did not answer. The thoughts in his head had been forming into immovable shapes for far longer than he had realized. They had already cut off every line of retreat from the inevitable. Now he was forced to acknowledge it.

Matthew looked down the other barrel, then straightened the gun again. He picked up the second gun and broke it. “You haven’t much time, Joe,” he said gently. “It won’t be more than another day or two.”

Joseph hoped he might be guessing. It was a last grasp at innocence, and it failed. He understood Sebastian’s fear. Perhaps that was what he had seen in him that had found the deepest echo within himself, the helpless pity for suffering he could not reach, even to ease. It overwhelmed him. The anger of war horrified him, the ability to hate, to make one’s life’s aim the death of another . . . for any cause at all. If he became part of it, it would drown him.

Matthew picked up the big punt gun. It was an awkward thing, long-barreled and muzzle-loaded. It did not break in the middle like a shotgun, but it was lethal over the short distances at which it could be aimed and used.

“Damn!” he said irritably, peering up the barrel. “I can’t see a thing! Whoever designed these bloody guns should be made to look after them. I don’t know whether it’s working or not. Do you remember the last time anybody used it?”

Joseph was not listening. His mind was back in the hospital where he had started his medical training—the injuries, the pain, the deaths he could not prevent.

“Joe!” Matthew said savagely. “Damn it! Pay attention! Pass that rod and let me see if this is clean or not!”

Joseph passed over the rod obediently, and Matthew rammed it up the barrel of the punt gun.

“There’s something up here,” he said impatiently. “It’s . . .” Very slowly he lowered his hands, still holding the gun. “It’s paper,” he said huskily. “It’s a roll of paper.”

Joseph felt the sweat break out on his skin and go cold. “Hold the gun!” he ordered him, taking the rod from Matthew and beginning to tease very gently. He found his hands were shaking, as was the barrel of the punt gun in Matthew’s grip.