by Anne Perry
His blue eyes flashed up and held Matthew’s with a storm of feeling that his casual, easy elegance had completely masked. “Civilization is thin, Captain Reavley, desperately thin, a veneer like a single coat of paint, but it is all we have between us and the darkness.” His long-fingered, almost delicate hands were clenched, the knuckles pale where the skin stretched. “We must hold on to it at any cost, because if we lose it, we face chaos.”
His voice was soft, but it contained a contempt he could not control. “Believe me, Captain Reavley, civilization can all be swept away and we can turn into savages so hideous it is a horror you can never wipe from your soul.” Now his voice was little more than a whisper. “You wake up sweating in the night, your skin crawling, but the nightmare is inside you, for the possibility that this is what we are all like . . . underneath the smiling masks.”
Matthew could offer no argument. Sandwell was speaking about something of which he had no knowledge. He had heard only fragments of accusation and denial, rumors of ugliness that belonged to another world and other, far different people.
Sandwell smiled, but it was a grimace, an attempt to conceal again a little of the passion he had allowed to show itself too nakedly. “We must grasp civilization, Reavley, pay any price to keep it for ourselves and those who come after us. Guard the gates of sanity so madness does not return. We can do that for each other . . . we must. If we can’t, there is nothing else worth doing. You want to find Hannassey, I’ll help you. If he assassinates the king, God only knows what hatred will follow! We could even end up with martial law, the persecution of thousands of totally innocent Irish people, simply by association. As it is, it’s going to take the effort of every good man in Europe to keep the lid on this Austro-Serbian affair, after the assassination of the archduke. Neither side can afford to back down, and they are both gathering allies everywhere they can: Russia for the Serbs, Germany for the Austrians—naturally.”
He reached for a black leather cigarette case and took out a cigarette so automatically he seemed unaware of doing it. He lit it and drew in a deep draft of smoke. “As well as the Irish, you might look toward some of the socialist groups,” he continued. “Men like Hannassey take their allies anywhere they find them. Socialist aspiration is far greater than many people think. There’s Jaurès, Rosa Luxemburg, Adler, unrest everywhere. I’ll give you what help I can—all the information this office has is at your disposal—but time is short . . . desperately so.”
“Thank you, sir,” Matthew said simply. He was profoundly grateful. Suddenly he was lurching forward with a frightening speed. From being alone he had moved to having one of the most discreetly powerful men in foreign affairs willing to listen to him and to share information. Perhaps the truth was only just beyond sight. In days, a week at most, he would face the truth of his parents’ death. John Reavley had been right—there was a conspiracy.
“Thank you, sir,” he repeated, rising to his feet. “I appreciate that very much.” Small words to convey the excitement and the apprehension inside him.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
On Monday, July 20, Joseph spent the morning in a lively albeit erratic discussion with half a dozen students in which he doubted anyone learned very much.
He found himself enervated by the exchange as he walked back across the quad toward his own room, eager for the peace of familiar books and pictures, and above all the silence. He was fourteen or fifteen years older than most of the young men he had been with, but today it seemed more than a generation. They were frightened, perhaps of the thought of war in Europe, even though it was distant and problematical.
Far more immediate was the continuing police investigation of Sebastian Allard’s murder. That could not be escaped. It was omnipresent as Sebastian’s grieving mother walked the Fellows’ Garden in black, waiting for justice, her rage and misery consuming her. She seemed in a self-chosen isolation from the rest of the world. Inspector Perth continued his interrogations, never telling anyone what he had concluded from their answers. And always was the knowledge that one of these gilded scholars, studying the collected thoughts of the ages, had fired the deliberate shot.
Joseph was almost at the door when he heard the light, rapid footsteps behind him and turned to find Perth a couple of yards away. As always, he wore a suit that fitted without elegance or grace. His hair was combed back straight and his mustache trimmed level. He was carrying a pipe by the bowl, as if he was undecided whether to light it or not.
“Oh! Good. Reverend Reavley . . . glad to catch up wi’ you, sir,” he said cheerfully. “Are you going inside?”
“Yes. I’ve just finished a debate with some of my students.”
“Oi never thought you gentlemen worked so hard, even in holiday times,” Perth observed, following Joseph in through the carved stone doorway and past the oak stairs, almost black with age, the middle of the steps hollowed by centuries of feet.
“Quite a few students choose to remain here and do some extra study,” Joseph replied, turning the bend and going on up. “And then there are always the undergraduates pursuing other studies.”
“Oh, yes, the undergraduates.”
They reached the landing and Joseph opened his own door. “Is there something I can do for you, Inspector?”
Perth smiled appreciatively. “Well, since you ask, sir, there is.” He stood expectantly on the step.
Joseph surrendered and invited him inside. “What is it?” he asked.
“Oi think it’d be true to say, sir, that you knew Mr. Allard better than any o’ the other gentlemen here?”
“Possibly.”
Perth put his hands in his pockets. “You see, Reverend, Oi’ve bin talking to Miss Coopersmith, Mr. Allard’s fiancée, as was, if you see what Oi mean? Nice young lady, very collected, no weeping an’ wailing, just a quiet sort o’ grief. Can’t help admiring it, can you?”
“No,” Joseph agreed. “She seems a fine young woman.”
“Did you know her before, sir? Seeing as you know the Allard family, and Mr. Sebastian especially. People tell me you were very close, gave him lots of advice in his studies, watched over him, as you might say.”
“Academically,” Joseph pointed out, acutely aware how true that was. “I knew very little of his personal life. I have a number of students, Inspector. Sebastian Allard was one of the brightest, but he was certainly not the only one. I would be deeply ashamed if I had neglected any of the others because they were less gifted than he. And to answer your question, no, I did not know Miss Coopersmith.”
Perth nodded, as if that corroborated something he already knew. He closed the door behind him but remained standing in the middle of the floor, as if the room made him uncomfortable. It was alien territory, with its silence and its books. “But you know Mrs. Allard?” he asked.
“A little. What is it you are looking for, Inspector?”
Perth smiled apologetically. “Oi’ll come to the point, sir. Mrs. Allard told me what time Sebastian left home to come back to college on Sunday the twenty-eighth o’ June. He’d been up in London on the Saturday, but he came home in the evening.” His face became very somber. “That were the day of the assassination in Serbia, although o’ course we didn’t know that then. An’ Mr. Mitchell, the porter at the gate, told me what time he got here.”
“The purpose?” Joseph reminded him. Since Perth did not, he felt unable to sit down either.
“Oi’m coming to that,” Perth said unhappily. “He told his mother as he’d got to come back for a meeting here . . . an’ so he had. Six people as’ll confirm that.”
“He wasn’t killed on the twenty-eighth,” Joseph pointed out. “It was several days after that—in fact, a week. I remember because it was after my parents’ funeral, and I was back here.”
Perth’s face registered his surprise and then his sympathy. “Oi’m sorry, sir. A dreadful thing. But my point is, like yourself, Mr. and Mrs. Allard live close by, not more’n ten miles. How long would you
say it’d take to drive that far, for a young man with a fast car like his?”
“Half an hour,” Joseph replied. “Probably less, depending on the traffic. Why?”
“When he left home he told his parents he was going to see Miss Coopersmith for a couple of hours,” Perth replied. “But she says that he stayed barely ten minutes with her. He went, going through your village o’ St. Giles, an’ on toward Cambridge, about three o’clock.” He shook his head. He was still holding the pipe by its bowl. “That means he should’ve bin here by quarter to four, at the outside. Whereas he didn’t actually get here, Mr. Mitchell says, until just after six.”
“So he went somewhere else,” Joseph reasoned. “He changed his mind, met a friend, or stopped in the town before coming on to college. What does it matter?”
“Just an example, sir,” Perth said. “Bin asking around a bit. Seems he did things like that quite regular, couple of hours here, couple there. Oi thought as you might know where he spent that time, an’ why he lied to folks about it.”
“No, I don’t.” It was an unpleasant thought that Sebastian had regularly done something he had wanted or needed to hide from his friends. But it was drowned in Joseph’s mind by another thought, sharp and clear as a knife in sudden light. If Perth was accurate about the time Sebastian had left his home, and that he had driven south to Cambridge through St. Giles, which was the natural and obvious way, then he would have passed the place on the Hauxton Road where John and Alys Reavley were killed, within a few minutes of it happening.
If it had been just before, then it meant nothing; it was merely a coincidence easily explained by circumstance. But if it had been just after, then what had he seen? And why had he said nothing?
Perth was staring at him, bland, patient, as if he could wait forever. Joseph forced himself to meet his eyes, uncomfortably aware of the intelligence in them; Perth was far more astute than he had appreciated until now. “I’m afraid I have no idea,” he said. “If I learn anything I shall tell you. Now if you will excuse me, I have an errand to run before my next tutorial.” That was not true, but he needed to be alone. He must sort out the turbulence of thought in his mind.
Perth looked a little surprised, as if the possibility had not occurred to him. “Oh. You sure you have no idea what he was doing? You know students better ’n Oi do, sir. What might it’ve bin? What do these young men do when they ain’t studying an’ attending lectures and the loike?” He looked at Joseph innocently.
“Talk,” Joseph replied. “Go boating sometimes, or to the pub, the library, walk along the Backs. Some go cycling or practice cricket at the nets. And of course there are papers to write.”
“Interesting,” Perth said, chewing on his pipe. “None of that seems worth lying about, does it?” He smiled, but it was not friendliness so much as satisfaction. “You have a very innocent view o’ young men, Reverend.” He took the pipe out again, as if suddenly remembering where he was. “Are those the things you did when you was a student? Maybe divinity students are a great deal more righteous-living than most.” If there was sarcasm in his voice, it was well concealed.
Joseph found himself uncomfortable, aware not only that he sounded like a prig, but that perhaps he had been as deliberately blind as that made him sound, and that Perth was not. He could remember his own student days perfectly well, and they were not as idealized as the picture he had just painted. Divinity students, along with medical, were among the heaviest drinkers of all, not to mention other even less salubrious pursuits.
“I started in medicine,” he said aloud. “But as I recall, none of us appreciated being obliged to account for our free time.”
“Really?” Perth was startled. “A medical student? You? Oi din’t know that. So you know some o’ the less admirable kinds of youthful carry-ons, then?”
“Of course I do,” Joseph said a trifle sharply. “You asked me what I know of Sebastian, not what I might reasonably suppose.”
“Oi see what you mean,” Perth replied. “Thank you for your help, Reverend.” He nodded several times. “Then Oi’ll just keep on.” He turned and went out of the door, at last pulling out a worn, leather tobacco pouch and filling the pipe as he went down the stairs, slipping a bit on the last and most uneven one.
Joseph left a few moments later and walked briskly across the quad and out of the main gate into St. John’s Street. But instead of turning right for the town, he went left for a few yards along Bridge Street, across it, along the main road, and eventually onto Jesus Green, looking over to Midsummer Common.
All the time his mind was struggling with the fact that Sebastian had passed by the place in the Hauxton Road where John and Alys Reavley had been killed. The question that burned in his head was this: Had Sebastian witnessed it and known that it was not an accident, possibly even seen whoever it was emerge from the ditch and go over and search the bodies? If so, then he had known too much for his own safety.
Since he too was in a car, he must have been seen by them, and they had to have realized he knew what had happened. Had they tried to follow him?
No, if they were on foot, their car hidden, then they would be unable to go after him. But with any intelligence at all, a few questions and they could have found who owned the car and where he lived. From there on it would be simple enough to trace him to Cambridge.
Had he been aware of that? Was that why he had been so tense, so full of dark thoughts and fears? Had it not really been anything to do with Austria or the destruction that a war in Europe would bring, but the knowledge that he had seen a murder?
Joseph walked across the grass. The sun was hot on his right cheek. There was no traffic on the Chesterton Road, and only a couple of young men in white trousers and cricket sweaters walking side by side a hundred yards away, probably students from Jesus College. They were involved in heated conversation and oblivious of anyone else.
Why had Sebastian said nothing? Even if he had not known at the time that it was John and Alys Reavley who had been killed, he must have known afterward. What was he afraid of? Even if he had weighed the chance of them tracing his car, since he had not recognized them, what threat was he?
Then the answer came to Joseph, ugly and jagged as broken glass. Perhaps Sebastian had known them.
If they were responsible for his death, then there was only one hideous and inescapable conclusion: it was someone here in college! No one had broken in. Whoever murdered Sebastian was one of those already here, someone they all knew and whose presence was part of daily life.
But why had Sebastian told no one? Was it somebody so close, so unbelievable, that he dared not trust anyone with the truth, not even Joseph, whose parents were the victims?
The sun burned in the silence of the mown turf. The traffic seemed to belong to another world. He walked without sense of movement, as if caught in an eddy of time, separate from everyone else.
Was it fear for himself that had kept Sebastian silent? Or defense of whoever it was? Why would he defend them?
Joseph came to the edge of Jesus Green and crossed the road onto Midsummer Common, walking south into the sun.
But if Sebastian thought it was an accident and he had been the one who had reported it, why hide that fact? If he had simply run away, why? Was he such a coward he would not go to the wreck, at least to see if he could help?
Or had he recognized whoever it was who had laid the caltrops and pulled them away afterward, and kept silent because it was someone he knew? To defend them? Or had they threatened him?
And had they killed him afterward anyway?
Was that why he had not come straight to college that day . . . fear?
But what about all the other occasions Perth spoke of? Joseph felt a strange sense of disloyalty even thinking such things. He had known Sebastian for years, met his straight-eyed, passionate gaze as they spoke of dreams and ideas, beauty of thought, music of rhythm and rhyme, the aspirations of men down the ages from the first stumbling recorded words in his
tory. Surely they had trusted each other better than this? Had they been no more than children playing with concepts of honor, as real children built towers of sand to be crashed away by the first wave of reality?
He had to believe it was more than that. Sebastian had come even earlier than Regina Coopersmith said, and passed along the Hauxton Road before the crash. Or he had gone somewhere else altogether, by another route. Whoever had killed him had done so for a reason that had nothing to do with John and Alys Reavley’s deaths. That was the only answer he could bear.
Joseph turned back toward St. Johns, increasing his pace. Enough had been said about Sebastian and the injuries people felt they had suffered at his hands that a closer look at some of them would lead either to proving them trivial or, if followed to the very end, to the reason for his death.
One episode that came to his mind first was the curious exchange with Eardslie when they were standing outside Eaden Lilley’s and the young woman who walked with such grace had appeared about to speak to them and then changed her mind. It had been suggested that Sebastian had intentionally taken someone else’s girl, simply to show that he could, and then cast her aside. Was that true?
It took Joseph half an hour to find Eardslie, who was sitting on the grass on the Backs, leaning against the trunk of a tree with books spread out around him. He looked up at Joseph in surprise and made as if to stand up.
“Don’t,” Joseph said quickly, sitting down on the ground opposite him, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable. “I wanted to talk to you. Do you remember the young woman who passed us outside Eaden Lilley’s the other day?”