No Graves As Yet Page 16

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

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

  “Mrs. Allard,” he said quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

  “What does he think?” he asked her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “It could be over a woman—” he began.

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

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

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

  Mary’s eyes narrowed at the sight of him.

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

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

  “My dear, you should—” he began.

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

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

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

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

  “Sebastian never mentioned her.”

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

  This time Joseph waited.

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

  “Is Mrs. Allard fond of her?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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