by Anne Perry
He stopped on the path and stood facing the college. As always, its beauty filled him with pleasure. From the Bridge of Sighs the fine brick was met by white stone sheer down into the water. Further on there was a short stretch of grass sloping to the river. The walls were smooth except for the windows, all the way up to the crenellated edge of the roof with its dormers and high chimneys.
But Perth’s men had been up there.
All except the master’s lodgings. In deference to the Allards, they had merely looked at it from the next roof over, from where they could see everything. The drainpipes down were wide at the neck, to catch the runoff from the roof behind. An idea stabbed his mind. Was it possible? It was the one place, so far as he knew, where no one had looked.
Could Beecher have put it there after killing Sebastian? And could he have retrieved it again in time to take his own life with it? But even if Joseph was right, there would be no way to prove it now.
Perhaps he could deduce it if he tried. Where should he begin? With everyone’s movements after the discovery of Sebastian’s body. Anyone climbing on the roof of the master’s lodgings would have risked being noticed, even at half past five in the morning. At this time of the year it was broad daylight.
He started to walk slowly.
Was it possible they had kept it somehow concealed temporarily and then put it in a safe place later? Had it been in the top of the downpipe, it would have taken only a few moments to place it: a quick visit to one of the attic rooms with a dormer window, open it wide, lean far out and drop the gun, perhaps wrapped in something. Even a scarf or a couple of handkerchiefs would disguise the outline, then a few leaves.
If that were the answer, then it could only have been done from the master’s lodgings. He could not imagine it was one of the servants. That reduced it to Aidan and Connie Thyer, Beecher if he had seen Connie there, and whoever else might have visited.
Whoever it was had to have concealed the gun very soon after Sebastian’s murder was committed, because the police had started the search within an hour of their arrival.
What would he have done were he in that situation? Hidden it in the undergrowth in the Fellows’ Garden until he was free to go back and get into the master’s lodgings unobserved.
And to retrieve it again? Perhaps much the same.
It came back to Connie and Aidan Thyer—and perhaps Beecher. He could not believe it was Connie, but the more he thought of it, the more likely did it become that it was Thyer. Perhaps it was he whom Sebastian had seen on the Hauxton Road. Perhaps it was even he who was behind the plot itself. He was a brilliant man with a position of far more power than most people realized. As master of a college in Cambridge, he had influence over many of the young men who would, in a generation’s time, be the leaders of the nation. He was sowing seeds the world would reap.
Now that the thought was in Joseph’s mind, he had to test it until it was proved one way or the other. And there was only one place to begin. He would hate doing it, but he could think of no alternative.
He walked slowly back to the Bridge of Sighs and into St. John’s, then across the inner quad to the master’s lodgings. Thyer himself would be in the library at this time in the early afternoon. He hoped Connie would be at home.
The parlor maid let him in, and he found Connie standing at the window staring out at the bright flowers in the Fellows’ Garden. She made an effort to smile at him. “Thank you for coming yesterday,” she said a little huskily. “It was kind of you.” She did not explain what she meant, and turned away again almost immediately. “I’m relieved the Allards have gone home and Elwyn has moved back to his own rooms. But the house is unnaturally quiet now. It seems like silence rather than peace. Is that absurd?”
“No,” he answered. He hated what he was about to do, the more so because if it proved anything at all, it might be something she would infinitely prefer not to know. “I need to ask you one or two questions. . . .” He hesitated, not sure how to address her. Her Christian name was too familiar; using it would be taking something of a liberty. And yet to address her as Mrs. Thyer was both cold and bitterly ironic.
She was only mildly curious. “About what?”
He must do it. He could feel his body stiff and he was standing awkwardly. “I found a photograph in Sebastian’s rooms.” He hated this. He saw her stiffen, and he knew instantly that she was aware of it and that it meant all that he had supposed. “You met Harry in Northumberland. I know the place it was taken. He and I walked there.”
The tears filled her eyes. “He told me,” she whispered, her voice choked. “I didn’t go there to meet him. It was almost by accident.” She gave an awkward, lopsided little shrug. “I should have stopped myself. I knew it was wrong, and I knew what it would lead to—but I wanted it so much! Just once to have . . .” She looked away from him. It was a moment before she was able to compose herself. “Some passer-by took the photograph. Harry kept it. It must have fallen out of his pocket when his coat was over the arm of the chair. He was frantic when he discovered it was gone. I didn’t know Sebastian had it.” Her face was touched with a rare, terrible anger. It frightened him.
“Connie . . .”
The expression vanished again, drowned in misery.
He had to go on; there were other things that he had to know. There was no more time to spend in patience. “About the morning Sebastian was murdered, and the day leading up to the time Harry died.”
“I don’t know anything useful.” Her voice was flat again, emotion buried far below in a sea of pain too deep to dare touch.
“And about Sunday, the day the archduke and duchess were shot in Sarajevo,” he went on.
She swung around. “Oh, God! You can’t think Harry had anything to do with that! That’s idiotic!”
“Of course I don’t!” He denied it vehemently, but his mind went to the yellow Lanchester mangled and broken, and his parents’ bodies covered with blood. Until the moment of saying it, the thought had not entered his mind that Beecher could be guilty of that, but now it was there, a tiny shard, like a dagger.
She was staring at him incredulously.
“No!” he said again, forcing a smile, this time in the face of the absurdity of Beecher being responsible for the assassination in Sarajevo. “I simply used that event to bring the day to your mind. If you remember, it was also the day my parents were killed.”
“Oh!” She was stunned and utterly contrite, her face crumpled in pity. “Joseph, I’m so sorry. I had completely forgotten! With—” She took a deep breath and held it a moment. “With murder”—she forced herself to use the word—“here in college, an accidental death, even two, seems so much . . . cleaner. What is it you need to know? If I can tell you, of course I will.”
Now was the moment to say what he had to. “I think someone may have seen what happened. Do you know where Harry was about noon that day?”
The color swept up her face. She must have felt its heat, because her eyes betrayed her as well. “Yes. It couldn’t have been he,” she said.
He could not let it go quite so delicately. “Are you certain, as a fact, not a belief?”
“Absolutely.” She looked down, away from him.
“And the morning Sebastian was killed?” He chose the slightly softer word, blunting it where he could.
She turned a little to look out of the window again. “I got up early and walked along the Backs. I was with Harry. I can’t prove it because we kept to the trees. We didn’t want to be seen, and there are quite often other people around, mostly students, even at five or six.”
“Then it is not possible that Harry could have killed Sebastian,” he said, watching for the slightest shadow in her eyes or alteration in the rigidity of her body that would betray that she was lying to protect him, even now that he was dead.
She turned to face him, her eyes wide, brilliant. “How can you be sure?” she said, not daring yet to grasp the hope. “We didn’t meet until nearly six. Sebastian co
uld have been killed before that, couldn’t he?” She was pale now, perhaps wondering if Beecher had come to her straight from having murdered the one man who threatened them both.
“Where did you meet?” he asked.
She was confused. “Where? I went over the Bridge of Sighs, because it’s enclosed and no one would have seen me, then walked to the beginning of the trees. He was there.”
“He didn’t come to the lodgings?”
Her dark eyes widened. “Good heavens, of course not! We’re not completely mad!”
“When was the next time he was there?”
“I don’t know. Why? About two days, I think. I had the Allards by then, and everything was a nightmare.”
A warmth began to ease inside him. Beecher had definitely not killed Sebastian, because he had had no time to hide the gun! Not if it had been on the master’s roof—and the more he thought of it, the more certain he became that that was where it had been. “And before he shot himself?” he asked.
She stiffened again, her face white. “I saw him in the Fellows’ Garden the evening before, just for a little while, almost fifteen minutes. Aidan was due home.”
“Did he go inside?”
“No. Why?”
Should he tell her? Caution said not . . . but she had loved Beecher, and the thought that he had committed murder and then suicide was a bleeding wound inside her.
Yet if he explained, then she would work out for herself the only terrible alternative: that it was someone who had access to the roof of her house, her husband. She would be a danger to him then, and would he kill her, too?
Would she work it out, even if he did not tell her? No. It all depended upon the gun having been hidden on the roof. He dared not let her deduce it.
“I’m not sure,” he lied. “When I’m certain, I’ll tell you.”
“Did Harry kill Sebastian?” Her voice was trembling, her face ashen.
Would she guess anyway? “No, he couldn’t have,” he answered. “But say nothing to anyone!” He made the warning sharp, a message of danger. “If he didn’t, Connie, then someone else did! Someone who may kill you. Please, say nothing at all, to absolutely anyone . . . including the master! I may be wrong.”
That, too, was a lie; Joseph had no doubt he was right. Aidan Thyer might kill, but he was certain in his heart that Harry Beecher had not. And if Connie had been out on the Backs early in the morning, then Aidan Thyer could have been anywhere; certainly he could have been in Sebastian’s rooms. And Thyer could have killed Sebastian for the same reason—because he was blackmailing any or all of them over exposing Connie’s affair.
Or it could have been Thyer Sebastian had seen on the Hauxton Road.
“Say nothing,” he repeated even more urgently, touching her arm. Her wrist was slender under his fingers. His mouth was dry, his hands sweating. “Please—remember it is murder we are dealing with.”
“Two murders?” she whispered.
“Perhaps,” he replied. He did not say it could be four—or, if Reisenburg had been murdered also, then five.
She nodded.
He stayed only to give her a few words of assurance, then walked slowly back in the bright sun, cold in his flesh and his bones.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Joseph walked slowly across the quad. The sun was hot in the early afternoon, but it felt airless. His clothes stuck to his skin. There were no clouds that he could see in the blue distance bounded by the crenellated tops of the walls, but it felt like thunder to come. The electricity of it was already inside him, an excitement and a fear that he was on the brink of the truth.
Where had Aidan Thyer been on the afternoon of Sunday, June 28? Whom could he ask that Thyer would not hear about it? Connie had been in the garden with Beecher. If Thyer had been on the Hauxton Road, where would he have told people he was? And who would remember now, over five weeks later?
He could not ask Connie; she would know why he was asking, and then no matter how hard she tried, it would surely be beyond her to conceal that knowledge from Thyer himself.
He was walking more and more slowly as he tried to make up his mind. Thyer had come late to the cricket match. Would Rattray, who had captained the St. John’s side, know where he had been before that? It was worth asking him. He turned and went rapidly back in through the door at the farther side and up to Rattray’s rooms. He was not there.
Ten minutes later Joseph found him in a corner of the library between the stacks, scanning the bottom shelf.
“Dr. Reavley! Are you looking for me, sir?” he asked, closing his place in the book in his hands.
“Yes, actually I was.” Joseph bent to the floor, looking along the row curiously. They were on warfare and European history. He regarded Rattray’s thin, anxious face.
Rattray bit his lip. “It looks pretty bad, sir,” he said quietly. “The kaiser warned the czar yesterday that if Russia didn’t stop within twenty-four hours, Germany would mobilize, too. Professor Moulton reckons they’ll probably close the world stock exchanges pretty soon. Maybe even by Monday.”
“It’s a bank holiday,” Joseph replied. “They’ll have all weekend to think about it.”
Rattray sat back on the floor, legs out in front of him. “Do you think so?” He rubbed the heel of his hand along his jaw. “God, it would be awful, wouldn’t it? Who could imagine five weeks ago that some lunatic in a town in Serbia, of all places, taking a potshot at an archduke—and Austria’s got loads of them—could blow up into this? Just a short time, barely more than a month, and the whole world’s changed.”
“Six weeks ago, nearly.” Joseph found the thought strange, too. Then his parents had been alive. Six weeks ago tomorrow would be the Saturday John Reavley had driven the yellow Lanchester to Little Wilbraham and talked to Reisenburg—and found the document. That night he had telephoned Matthew in London. The next day he had been killed.
“We played cricket at Fenner’s Field,” he said aloud. “You captained the side. I remember being there, and Beecher, and the Master.”
Rattray nodded.
“Sebastian wasn’t,” Joseph continued. “He was late coming back home. I expect the master wasn’t pleased. He was one of our best bats.”
“Rotten bowler, though.” Rattray smiled. He looked close to tears, his voice a little thick. “No, the master was pretty cross when he did come, actually. Sort of caught him by surprise that Sebastian wasn’t playing.”
Joseph felt cold. “When he did come?”
“He was late, too!” Rattray pulled a slight face. “Don’t know where he’d been, but he arrived in a hell of a temper. He said he’d been stuck on the side of Jesus Lane with a puncture, but I know he wasn’t, because Dr. Beecher came that way and he’d have seen him.” He sighed and looked away, blinking hard. “Unless, of course, you can’t believe Dr. Beecher anymore. I just can’t—I can’t understand that!” He chewed painfully on his lower lip to stop it trembling. “Everything’s sort of . . . slipping apart, isn’t it? You know, I used to think Sebastian was pretty decent.” He looked at Joseph. “He had some odd ideas—used to waffle on about peace, and that war was a sin against mankind, and that there wasn’t anything in the world worth fighting for if it meant killing whole nations and filling the earth with hate.”
He rubbed his jaw again, leaving a smudge of dust on it. “A bit too much, but still sane, still all right! I never thought he would do something really squalid, like blackmail. That’s filthy! Beecher might have been doing something out of line, but he was a decent chap—I’d have staked anything you like on that.” He pushed his hair back off his forehead in a gesture of infinite weariness. “I’m beginning to wonder if I really know very much at all.”
Joseph understood his confusion profoundly. He was fighting his own way through the same desperation, trying to make sense of it and regain his own balance. But there was no time for the long, gentle conversations of comfort now. “Where do you think the master was?” he asked.
“But he was in his car?” Joseph persisted.
“Yes, I saw him drive up in it. I was waiting for him.”
“Thank you.”
Rattray looked curious. “Why? What does it matter now? It’s over. We were all wrong—you and me, everyone. Beecher’s dead, and our quarrels don’t amount to much if there’s going to be war and we’re all drawn into the biggest conflict in Europe. Do you suppose they’ll ask for volunteers, sir?”
“I can’t see that we’ll be involved,” Joseph replied. “It will be Austria, Russia, and perhaps Germany. It’s still possible they’re all just threatening, seeing who’ll be the first to back down.”
“Maybe,” Rattray said without conviction.
Joseph thanked him again and went out of the library and back to the first quad to see Gorley-Smith. There was a vital question to ask now, and he dreaded the answer. He was surprised how deeply it cut into his emotions to believe that Aidan Thyer was guilty of killing John and Alys Reavley. And for what? That was something he still did not know.
He knocked on Gorley-Smith’s door and stood impatiently until it was opened. Gorley-Smith looked tired and irritable. His hair was untidy, he had his jacket off, and his shirt was sticking to his body. It very obviously cost him some effort to be civil.
“If you came to apologize for dinner, it really doesn’t matter,” he said abruptly, and started to push the door shut again.
“I didn’t,” Joseph answered him. It was clear that there was going to be no opportunity for subtlety. “Beecher doesn’t seem to have left any note, or wishes of any kind. . . .”
Gorley-Smith suppressed his momentary annoyance. “No, I don’t suppose he did. Look, Reavley, I know he was a friend of yours, but he was obviously driven beyond his sanity by whatever it was that young Allard was pressuring him over, and I’d really rather not know the details. I don’t think we should speculate.” His face was filled with distaste and with the anxious desire to avoid embarrassment.
