by Anne Perry
Normally Joseph would have accepted any apology, but not this time. “Made me think more deeply about reality,” he finished for her. “And see that no matter how much we love someone or regret lost opportunities to have given them more than we did, lies do not help, even when we would find them more comfortable.”
The color drained out of Mary’s face, and she looked at him with loathing. Even if she understood anything he said, she was not going to concede it now. “I have no idea what things you may regret,” she said coldly. “I do not know you well enough. I have heard no one speak ill of your parents, but if they have, then you should do all within your power to silence them. If you have not loyalty, above all to your own family, then you have nothing! I promise you I will do anything in my power to protect the name and reputation of my dead son from the envy and spite of anyone cowardly enough to attack him in death when they would not have dared to in life.”
“There are many loyalties, Mrs. Allard,” he answered, his voice grating with the intensity of his feelings: the misery and loneliness of too many losses of his own, the anger at God for hurting him so profoundly and at the dead for leaving him with such a weight to bear, the crush of responsibilities he was not ready for, and above all the fear of disillusion, of the disintegration of the love and beliefs dearest to him. “It is a matter of choosing which to place first. Loving someone does not make them right, and your family is no more important than mine or anyone else’s. Your first loyalty ought to be to honor, kindness, and some degree of truth.”
The hatred in her face was answer enough without words. She turned to Connie, her skin white, her eyes burning. “I am sure you will understand if I do not choose to remain for dinner. Perhaps you will be good enough to have a tray sent to my room.” And with that she swept out through the door in a rustle of black silk taffeta and the faintest perfume of roses.
Connie sighed. “I am sorry, Dr. Reavley. She is finding this investigation very hard indeed. Everyone’s nerves are a little raw.”
“She idealized him,” Gerald said, as much to himself as to anyone else. “It isn’t fair. No one could live up to that, nor can the rest of us protect her forever from the truth.” He glanced at Joseph, perhaps expecting him to read some apology in it, although Joseph had the feeling he was looking more for acceptance of his own silence. He was sorry for Gerald, a man floundering around in a hopeless task, but he felt far greater pity for Elwyn, trying to defend a brother whose flaws he knew while protecting his mother from truths she could not face and his father from looking impotent and sinking into self-loathing. It was more than anyone should have to do, let alone a young man who was himself bereaved and who should have been supported by his parents, not made to support them in their self-absorbed grief.
He glanced at Connie and saw a reflection of the same pity and anger in her face. But it was Joseph she was looking at, not her husband. Aidan Thyer was averting his gaze, perhaps in order to hide his distaste at Gerald’s excuses.
Joseph filled the silence. “Everyone’s nerves are a little raw,” he agreed. “We suspect each other of things that in our better moments would not even enter our thoughts. Once we know what happened, we will be able to forget them again.”
“Do you think so?” Aidan Thyer asked suddenly. “We’ve pulled off too many masks and seen what is underneath. I don’t think we’ll forget.” He looked momentarily at Connie, then back at Joseph, his pale eyes challenging.
“Perhaps not forget,” Joseph amended. “But isn’t the art of friendship very much the selecting of what is important and allowing some of the mistakes to drift away until we lose sight of them? We don’t forget so much as let the outlines blur, accept that a thing happened, and be sorry. This is how we are today, but it does not have to be tomorrow as well.”
“You forgive very easily, Reavley,” Thyer said coolly. “I wonder sometimes if you’ve ever had anything very much to forgive. Or are you too Christian to feel real anger?”
“You mean too anemic to feel anything with real passion,” Joseph corrected for him.
Thyer blushed. “I’m sorry. That was irredeemably rude. I do beg your pardon.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t weigh things so much before I speak,” Joseph said thoughtfully. “It makes me sound pompous, even a little cold. But I am too afraid of what I might say if I don’t.”
Thyer smiled, an expression of startling warmth.
Connie looked taken by surprise, and she turned away. “Please come in to dinner, Mr. Allard,” she invited Gerald, who was moving from one foot to the other and plainly at a total loss. “We will help no one by not eating. We shall need our strength, if only to support each other.”
Joseph spent a miserable night, twisting himself round and round in his bed, his thoughts preventing him from sleeping. Small recollections came back to his mind: Connie and Beecher laughing together over some trivial thing, but the sound of it so rich, so full of joy; Connie’s face as she had listened to him talking about some esoteric discovery in the Middle East; Beecher’s concern when she had a summer cold, his fear that it might be flu or even turn to pneumonia; other, more shadowy incidents that now seemed out of proportion to the casual friendship they claimed.
What had Sebastian known? Had he threatened Beecher openly, or simply allowed fear and guilt to play their part? Was it possible he had been innocent of anything more than a keener observation than others?
But Beecher had been with Connie and Thyer when the Reavleys had been killed—not that Joseph had ever suspected him of that. And Perth said he had been along the Backs when Sebastian was shot, so he could not be guilty.
What about Connie? He could not imagine Connie shooting Sebastian. She was generous, charming, quick to laugh, just as quick to see another’s need or loneliness, and to do all she could to answer it. But she was a woman of passion. She might love Beecher profoundly and be trapped by circumstance. If she was discovered in an affair with him and it were made public, he would lose his position, but she would lose everything. A woman divorced for adultery ceased to exist even to her friends, let alone to the rest of society.
Would Sebastian really have done that to her?
The young man Joseph knew would have found it a repulsive thought, cruel, dishonorable, destructive to the soul. But did that man exist outside Joseph’s imagination?
He fell asleep not sure of what was certain about anyone, even himself. He woke in the morning with his head pounding, and determined to learn beyond dispute, all the facts that he could. Everything he cared about was slithering out of his grasp; he needed something to hold on to.
It was barely six o’clock, but he would begin immediately. It was an excellent time to walk along the Backs himself and find Carter the boatman, who had apparently spoken with Beecher on the morning of Sebastian’s death. He shaved, washed, and dressed in a matter of minutes and set out in the cool clarity of the morning light.
The grass was still drenched with dew, giving it a pearly, almost turquoise sheen, and the motionless trees towered into the air in unbroken silence.
He found Carter down at the mooring, about a mile along the bank.
“Mornin’, Dr. Reavley,” Carter greeted him cheerfully. “Yer out early, sir.”
“Can’t sleep,” Joseph replied.
“Oi can’t these days neither,” Carter agreed. “Everybody’s frettin’. Newspapers flyin’ off the stands. Got to get ’em early to be sure o’ one. Never seen a toime loike it, ‘cepting when the old queen were ill.” He scratched his head. “Not even then, really.”
“It’s the best time of the morning,” Joseph said, glancing around him at the slow moving river shimmering in the sun.
“It is that,” Carter agreed.
“I thought I might see Dr. Beecher along here. He hasn’t been this way already, has he?”
“Dr. Beecher? No, sir. Comes occasional loike, but not very often.”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“Nice gentleman, sir.
Friend to a lot o’ folk.” Carter nodded. “Always got a good word. Talked a bit about them ole riverboats. Interested, ‘e is, though between you an’ me, Oi think ’e do it only to be agreeable. ’E knows Oi get lonely since moi Bessie died, an’ a bit of a chat sets me up for the day.”
That was the Beecher that Joseph knew, a man of great kindness, which he always masked as something else so there was never debt.
“You must have been talking together when young Allard was killed,” he remarked. How bare that sounded.
“Not that mornin’, sir,” Carter shook his head. “Oi tole the police gentleman it were, because Oi forgot, but that were the day Oi ’ad the bad puncture. Oi ’ad to fix it, an’ it took me an age ’cos it were in two places, an’ Oi didn’t see it at first. An hour late ’ome, Oi were. O’ course Dr. Beecher must’ve bin ’ere if ’e said so, but Oi didn’t see ’im ’cos Oi weren’t, if you get me?”
“Yes,” Joseph said slowly, his own voice sounding far away, as if it belonged to someone else. “Yes . . . I see. Thank you.” And he turned and walked slowly along the grass.
Did he have a moral obligation to tell Perth? He had agreed that the law was above them all, and it was. But he needed to be sure. Right now he was certain of nothing at all.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
On Saturday afternoon Matthew dined with Joseph at the Pickerel, overlooking the river. There were just as many people there as always, sitting around the tables, leaning forward in conversation, but voices were lower than a week earlier, and there was less laughter.
Punts still drifted back and forth on the water, young men balancing in the sterns with long poles clasped, some with grace, others with precarious awkwardness. Girls, wind catching the gossamerlike sleeves of their pale dresses, lay half reclined on the seats. Some wore sweeping hats, or hats decked with flowers to shade their faces; others had parasols of muslin or lace, which dappled the light. One girl, bare-headed, with russet hair, trailed a slender arm into the river, her skin brown from the sun, her fingers shedding bright drops behind her in the golden light.
“One of us ought to go home,” Matthew said, reaching his knife into the Belgian pâté and spreading more of it onto his toast. “It ought to be you, and anyway I need to go and see Shanley Corcoran again. With things as they are, he’s about the only person I dare trust.”
“Are you any further?” Joseph asked, then immediately wished he hadn’t. He saw the frustration in Matthew’s face and knew the answer.
Matthew ate another mouthful and swallowed the last of his red wine, then poured himself more, before replying.
“Only ideas. Shearing doesn’t think it is an Irish plot. He seems to be trying to steer me away from it, although I have to admit his logic is pretty sound.” He reached for more butter. “But then of course I don’t know beyond any doubt at all that he isn’t the one behind it.”
“We don’t know that about anyone, do we?” Joseph asked.
“Not really,” Matthew agreed. “Except Shanley. That’s why I need to speak to him. There’s . . .” He looked across the river, narrowing his eyes against the brilliance of the lowering sun. “There’s a possibility it could be an assassination attempt against the king, although the more I consider it, the less certain I am that anyone would benefit from it. I don’t know what I think anymore.”
“There was a document,” Joseph said. “And whatever was in it, it was sufficient for someone to kill Father.”
Matthew looked weary. “Perhaps it was evidence of a crime,” he said flatly. “Simply a piece of ordinary greed. Maybe we were looking beyond the mark, for something wildly political involving the grand tide of history, and it was only a grubby little bank robbery or fraud.”
“Two copies of it?” Joseph said skeptically. Matthew lifted his head, his eyes widening. “It might make sense! Copies for different people? What if it were a stock market scandal or something of that nature! I’m going to see Shanley tomorrow. He’ll have connections in the City, and at least he would know where to start. If only Father had said more!” He leaned forward, his food forgotten. “Look, Joe, one of us has got to go and spend a little time with Judith. We’ve both been neglecting her. Hannah’s taken it all very hard, but at least she’s got Archie some of the time, and the children. Judith’s got nothing, really.”
“I know,” Joseph agreed quickly, guilt biting deep. He had written to both Judith and Hannah, but since he was only a few miles away, that was not enough.
There was a short burst of laughter from the next table and then a sudden silence. Someone rushed into speech, something completely irrelevant, about a new novel published. No one responded, and he tried again.
“Anything more on Sebastian Allard?” Matthew asked, his face gentle, sensing the slow discovery of ugliness, the falling apart of beliefs that had been held dear for so long.
Joseph hesitated. It would be a relief to share his thoughts, even if as soon as tomorrow he would wish he had not. “Actually . . . yes,” he said slowly, looking not at Matthew but beyond him. The light was fading on the river, and the firelike scarlet and yellow poured out across the flat horizon from the trees over by Haslingfield right across to the roofs of Madingley.
“I’ve discovered Sebastian was capable of blackmail,” he said miserably. Even the words hurt. “I think he blackmailed Harry Beecher over his love for the master’s wife. For nothing so obvious as money—just for favor, and I think maybe for the taste of power. It would have amused him to exert just a very subtle pressure, but one that Beecher didn’t dare resist.”
“Are you sure?” Matthew asked, his face puckering with doubt. There was not the denial in his voice Joseph hungered to hear. He had overstated the case deliberately, waiting for Matthew to say it was nonsense. Why didn’t he?
“No!” he replied. “No, I’m not sure! But it looks like it. He lied as to where he was. He’s engaged to a girl his mother probably picked out for him, but he’s got a girlfriend of his own in one of the pubs in Cambridge. . . .” He saw Matthew’s look of amusement. “I know you think that’s just natural youth,” he said angrily. “But Mary Allard won’t! And I don’t think Regina Coopersmith will, either, if she ever finds out.”
“It’s a bit shabby,” Matthew agreed, the flicker of humor still in his eyes. “A last fling before the doors of propriety close him in forever with Mother’s choice. Why hadn’t he the guts to say so?”
“I’ve no idea! I didn’t know anything about it! Anyway, he would never have married Flora, for heaven’s sake. She’s a barmaid. She’s also a pacifist.”
Matthew’s eyebrows shot up. “A pacifist? Or do you mean she agreed with whatever her current admirer happened to say?”
Joseph considered for only a moment. “No, I don’t think I do. She seemed to know quite a lot about it.”
“For God’s sake, Joe!” Matthew sat back with a jerk, sliding the chair legs on the floor. “She doesn’t have to be stupid just because she pulls ale for the local lads!”
“Don’t be so patronizing!” Joseph snapped back. “I didn’t say she was stupid. I said she knew more about pacifism and about Sebastian’s views on the subject than to have been merely an agreeable listener. He was drifting away from his roots at a speed that probably frightened him. His mother idolized him. To her he was all she wished her husband could have been—brilliant, beautiful, charming, a dreamer with the passion to achieve his goals.”
“Rather a heavy weight to carry—the garment of someone else’s dreams,” Matthew observed a great deal more gently, and with a note of sadness. “Especially a mother. There’d be no escaping that.”
“No,” Joseph said thoughtfully. “Except by smashing it, and there would be a strong temptation to do that!” He looked curiously at Matthew to see if he understood. His answer was immediate in the flash of knowledge in Matthew’s eyes. “It’s not always as simple as we think, is it?” he finished.
“Is that what you believe?” Matthew asked. “S
omehow Sebastian was making a bid for freedom, and it went wrong?”
“I really don’t know,” Joseph admitted, looking away again, across the river. The girl with the bright hair was gone, as was the young man who had balanced with such grace. “But very little I’ve discovered fits the idea of him I had—which makes me wonder if I was almost as guilty as Mary Allard of building a prison for him to live in.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Matthew said gently. “He built his own image. It may have been in part an illusion, but he was the chief architect of it. You only helped. And believe me, he was happy to let you. But if he did see what happened on the Hauxton Road, why wouldn’t he say something?” His brow furrowed, his eyes shadowed and intense. “Do you think he was mad enough to try blackmail on someone he knew had already killed two people? Was he really such a complete fool?”
Put like that, it sounded not only extreme but dangerous beyond any possible profit. And surely he would have known the people concerned were Joseph’s parents—even if not at the time, then later.
“No,” he answered, but there was no conviction in his voice. Matthew would never have done such a thing, but he was accustomed to thinking in terms of danger. He was only a few years older than Sebastian, in fact, but in experience it was decades. To Sebastian, death was a concept, not a reality, and he had all the passionate, innocent belief in his own immortality that goes with youth.
Matthew was watching him.
“Be careful, Joe,” he warned. “Whatever the reason, someone in college killed him. Don’t go poking around in it, please! You aren’t equipped!” Anger and frustration flickered in his eyes, and fear. “You’re too hurt by it to see straight!”
“I have to try,” Joseph said, reasserting reason into its place. It was the one sanity to hold on to. “Suspicion is tearing the college to pieces,” he went on. “Everyone is doubting things, friendships are cracking, loyalties are twisted. I need to know for myself. It’s my world . . . I have to do something to protect it.”
