No Graves As Yet

by Anne Perry

  Joseph sat surrounded by murmuring voices, the clink of glass, and the occasional burst of laughter, and he felt alone. He had never realized before that Beecher did not like Sebastian. It was not only the dismissive words; it was the coldness in his face as he said them. Joseph felt distanced by it, cut off from a warmth he had expected.

  He did not stay long after that, but excused himself and walked slowly back through the near darkness to St. John’s.

  Joseph was tired, but he did not sleep well. He rose a little before six and dressed in old clothes, then went outside and down to the river. It was a breathless morning; even the topmost leaves of the trees were still against the blue of the sky. The clear, pale light was so sharp every blade of grass shone with the dew, and there was no mark at all on the shining surface of the water.

  He untied one of the small boats and got into it, unlashed the oars, and rowed out past Trinity and on eastward into the spreading light, feeling the warmth on his back. He threw his weight into it, pulling steadily. The rhythm was soothing, and he picked up speed all the way to the Mathematical Bridge before turning to come back. His mind was empty of every thought but the sheer physical pleasure of the effort.

  He was back in his rooms, stripped to the waist and shaving, when there was an urgent, almost hysterical banging on his door. He padded over barefoot and opened it wide.

  Elwyn Allard was standing on the threshold, his face contorted, his hair flopped over his brow, his right hand raised in a fist ready to hammer on the closed wood again.

  “Elwyn!” Joseph was horrified. “Whatever’s happened? Come in.” He stepped back to make room for him. “You look terrible. What is it?”

  Elwyn’s body was shuddering. He gasped for breath and started speaking twice before managing to get the words out coherently.

  “Sebastian’s been shot! He’s dead! I’m sure he’s dead. You’ve got to help!”

  It took a moment for Joseph to absorb the meaning of the words.

  “Help me!” Elwyn begged. He was leaning on the doorpost, needing it to support himself.

  “Of course.” Joseph reached for his dressing gown from the back of the door and ignored his slippers. To think of bothering with clothes would have been ridiculous. Elwyn must be wrong. There might be time to salvage something—everything. Sebastian was probably ill, or . . . or what? Elwyn had said he had been shot. People did not shoot each other in Cambridge. Nobody had guns! It was unthinkable.

  He ran down the steps behind Elwyn and across the silent courtyard, the dew on the grass nearly dry except where the buildings shadowed it. They went in at another door, and Elwyn started to scramble up the stairs, lurching from side to side. At the top he turned right and at the second door hurled his shoulder at it as if he could not turn the handle, although his hands grasped after it.

  Joseph passed him and opened it properly.

  The curtains were drawn back and the scene was bathed in the hard, clear light of the early sun. Sebastian sat in his chair, leaning back a little. The low table beside him was spread with books, not littered but lying carefully piled on top of each other in a neat stack, here and there a slip of paper in to mark a place. One book was open in his lap and his hands, slender and strong, brown from the sun, lay loosely on top of it. His head was fallen back, his face perfectly calm, no fear or pain in it. There were a couple of deep scratches on one of them. His eyes were closed. His fair hair seemed barely disturbed. He could have been asleep but for the scarlet wound on his right temple and the blood splattered on the chair arm and floor beyond from the gaping hole at the other side. Elwyn was right. With an injury like that, Sebastian had to be dead.

  Joseph went over to the young man, as if even the futile gesture of help were in some way still necessary. Then he stood still, the cold seeping through his body as he stared in sick dismay at the third person he had cared for shatteringly destroyed within the space of two weeks. It was as if he had awakened from one nightmare only to plunge into another.

  He reached down and touched Sebastian’s cheek. It was colder than life but not yet chill.

  A choked gasp from Elwyn tore Joseph out of his stupor. With an intense effort he submerged his own horror and turned to look at the younger man. He was ashen-skinned, the sweat standing out on his lip and brow, his eyes hollow with shock. His whole body trembled, and his breath came raggedly as he struggled to retain some control.

  “There’s nothing you can do to help him,” Joseph said, surprised at how steady his voice sounded in the silence of the room. There was still no one down in the quad, no feet on the stairs outside. “Go and fetch the porter.”

  Elwyn stood still. “Who . . . who could have done this?” he said, gulping air. “Who would . . . ?” He stopped, his eyes filling with tears.

  “I don’t know. But we must find out,” Joseph replied. There was no gun in Sebastian’s hand, nor did one lie on the floor where it would have slipped from his fingers. “Go and fetch the porter,” he repeated. “Don’t speak to anyone else.” He glanced around the room. His mind was beginning to regain some clarity. The clock on the mantel said three minutes to seven. They were one floor up from the ground. The windows were closed and locked, every pane whole. Nothing was forced or broken, nor had the door any marks on it. Already the hideous knowledge was on the edge of Joseph’s mind: This had been done by someone inside the college, someone Sebastian knew, and he must have let the person in.

  “Yes,” Elwyn said obediently. “Yes . . .” Then he turned on his heel and stumbled out, leaving the door open behind him, and Joseph heard his feet loud and clumsy going down.

  Joseph went over and closed the door, then turned and stared at Sebastian. His face was peaceful but very tired, as though he had at last shed some terrible burden and allowed sleep to overtake him. Whoever had stood there with a gun in his hand, Sebastian had not had time to realize what he was going to do, or perhaps to believe that he meant it.

  Pain was too crippling for anger yet. His mind could not accept it. Who would do such a thing? And why?

  Young men were intense, just at the beginning of life and everything was larger to them, more acute: first real love, the brink of ambition realized, triumph and heartbreak so sharp, the power of dreams incalculable, the soaring mind tasting the joy of flight. Passion of all kinds was coming into its own, but violence was only the occasional fistfight, a brawl when someone had had too much to drink.

  This had a darkness to it that was alien to everything Joseph knew and loved of Cambridge, to the whole of life here and all it meant. Like a blow, he remembered what Sebastian had said about the heart being changed by war, the beauty and the light of it being destroyed by those who did not understand. It was as if he had in those brief words written his own epitaph.

  The door opened behind him, and he turned to see the porter standing in the entrance, his hair ruffled and his face puckered with alarm. He glanced at Joseph, then stared past him at Sebastian, and the color drained from his skin. A gagging sound issued from his throat.

  “Mitchell, will you please lock the room here, then take Mr. Allard”—he nodded to indicate Elwyn, a couple of steps behind him on the landing—“and get him a cup of hot tea with a good stiff drop of brandy. Look after him.” He took a shivering breath. “We’ll have to call the police, so no one else should go up or down this stair, for the time being. Will you tell the other gentlemen who use this way to remain in their rooms until informed otherwise. Tell them there’s been an accident. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Dr. Reavley . . . I . . .” Mitchell was a good man who had served at St. John’s for over twenty years and was up to meeting most crises appropriately—from drunken brawls and the odd dislocated or broken bone to the occasional overzealous student stuck up on the roof. But the worst crimes had been the theft of a few pounds and, once, cheating at an examination. This was of a different nature, something intruding from outside his world.

  “Thank you,” Joseph said, stepping onto the lan
ding himself. He looked beyond Mitchell to Elwyn. “I’ll go see the master and do everything else that’s necessary. You go with Mitchell, stay with him.”

  “Yes . . . yes . . .” Elwyn’s voice tailed off, and he remained motionless until Mitchell locked the door. Then Joseph took him by the arm gently, forcing him to turn away, guiding him to the stairs and down them a step at a time.

  Once outside in the quad, Joseph walked briskly across the path to the next quad, which was smaller and quieter, with one slender tree asymmetrically planted to the left. At the farther side was the wrought-iron gate leading through to the Fellows’ Garden. At this hour it would be locked, as usual. The master’s lodgings had two doors, one from the Fellows’ Garden, one from this quad.

  He passed into the shadow where the dew was still wet, and suddenly remembered he was barefoot. His feet were cold. He had not even thought to go back to his own room for slippers. It was too late to matter now.

  He knocked on the door and ran his fingers through his hair to push it back off his face, suddenly conscious of how he looked if Connie Thyer should answer, not the master himself.

  As it was, he had to knock twice more before he heard footsteps. Then the lock turned, and Aidan Thyer stood blinking at him.

  “Good God, Reavley! Do you know what time it is?” he demanded. His long, pale face was still dazed with sleep, and his fair hair flopped forward over his brow. He looked at Joseph’s dressing gown and his bare feet, then up again quickly, a flicker of alarm shadowing his eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Sebastian Allard has been shot dead,” Joseph replied. The words somehow gave the nightmare a sickening reality. The very act of sharing it increased the number of those for whom it was true. He saw from Thyer’s confusion that he had not grasped that Joseph meant violence of the mind as well as of the hand. Joseph had not used the word murder, but it was what he meant. “Elwyn just came and told me,” he added. “I need to come in.”

  “Oh!” Thyer jerked to attention, embarrassed. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” He pulled the door wide and moved back.

  Joseph followed him, relieved to step onto carpet after the cold stone of the pathway. He had not realized it, but he was shivering.

  “Come into the study.” Thyer led the way.

  Joseph closed the front door and followed. He sat down in one of the big chairs while Thyer poured him a stiff brandy from the tantalus on the sideboard and passed it to him, then turned back and poured a second one for himself.

  “Tell me what happened,” he directed. “Where were they?” He glanced at the mahogany clock on the mantel. It was quarter past seven. “Poor Elwyn must be in a state. What about the others who were there?” He shut his eyes for a second. “For God’s sake, how did they manage to shoot anyone?”

  Joseph was not sure what he was imagining—target practice, a tragic piece of carelessness?

  “In his room,” he answered. “He must have got up very early to study. He’s . . . he was one of my best students.” He tried to steady himself. “He was in his chair, alone, apart from whoever shot him. The windows were closed and locked, and there are no marks of forced entry on the door. It was just one shot, to the side of the head, but the gun is not there.”

  Thyer’s face stiffened and his hands clasped the arm of his chair. He sat a little forward. “What are you saying, Joseph?” Unconsciously he slipped into familiarity.

  “That someone else shot him and then left, taking the gun with him,” Joseph answered. “I can’t think of any way to explain it except that.” How had he come in the space of two weeks to speak of murder as if he understood it?

  Thyer sat without moving for several moments. There was a rustle behind him, and Joseph turned to see Connie standing in the open doorway, her dark hair loose around her shoulders and a pale satin wrap covering her from neck to foot.

  Both men rose to their feet.

  “What is it?” she said quietly. Her face was full of concern, making her look younger and far more vulnerable than the beautiful, self-assured woman she usually was. It was the first time Joseph had seen her when she was not aware, before anything else, of being the master’s wife.

  “Dr. Reavley, are you all right?” she asked anxiously. “You don’t look well. I’m afraid this has been a terrible time for you.” She came into the room, ignoring the fact that she was really not dressed suitably to greet anyone. “If I am intruding, please tell me. But if there is anything I can do to help . . . at all?”

  Joseph was conscious of the warmth of her—not just her physical nearness, the slight perfume of her hair and skin and the slither of silk as she moved, but of a softness in her face, an understanding of what it is to be hurt.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Thyer,” Joseph said with an attempt at a smile that failed. “I am afraid something dreadful has happened. I—”

  “There is nothing you can do, my dear,” Thyer cut in, leaving Joseph feeling as if he had been clumsy. And yet there was no point in protecting her from it. Within a few hours everyone in St. John’s would have to know.

  “Nonsense!” she said abruptly. “There are always things to do, even if it is only seeing that the domestic arrangements continue. What is it that has happened?”

  Thyer’s face tightened. “Sebastian Allard has been killed. Apparently it could not have been an accident.” He looked at her apologetically, seeing the color drain from her skin.

  Joseph stepped toward her, all but losing his own balance as he put out his hands to steady her, and felt the muscles in her arms lock with surprising strength.

  “Thank you, Dr. Reavley,” she said very quietly but with almost complete control. “I am quite all right. How very dreadful. Do you know who was responsible?”

  Thyer moved toward her as well but stopped short of touching her. “No. That is rather what Joseph expects us to do, I imagine—call the police? Isn’t it?”

  “It is unavoidable, Master,” Joseph answered, dropping his hands to his sides. “And if you will excuse me, I must go and see what I can do to help Elwyn. The dean . . .” He did not finish.

  Thyer walked from the room to the hall, where there was a telephone on the small table. He lifted it, and Joseph heard him asking the operator to ring the police station for him.

  Connie looked at Joseph, her dark eyes searching his, trying to find some answer to the fear that he could see was already beginning inside her.

  “I . . . ,” he began, and realized he had no idea how to go on. She was expecting him, as a man professing a faith in God, to explain it to her in some terms that at least made sense to him. Idiotic phrases came into his mind that people had said to him after Eleanor’s death—things about God’s will being beyond the human mind to grasp, that obedience lay in accepting. They had been meaningless to him then, and were even more so now when the violence was deliberate and personal.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. He saw the confusion in her face. That was not good enough. “You are right.” He forced himself to sound certain. “We need to do the ordinary things to help each other. I appreciate your good sense. The students who are here are going to be distressed. We shall need to keep our heads, for their sake. It will be unpleasant having the police here asking questions, but we must endure it with as much dignity as we can.”

  Her face ironed out, and she smiled very slightly. “Of course. If such a hideous thing had to happen, I am so glad you were here. You always grasp the core of things. Other people only ever seem to touch the edges.”

  He was embarrassed. She saw more in him than was there. But if it comforted her, he would not indulge in the honesty of denying it at her expense.

  “It is good to have something to do, isn’t it?” she said wryly. “How wise you are. It will at least get us through the worst of it with some kind of honor. I had better get dressed. I dare say the police will be here almost immediately. The master will inform the poor young man’s family, but I should prepare their accommodation here in college, in ca
se that is what they would like. Fortunately at this time of year there are plenty of rooms.” She gave a choking little laugh. “The practical and domestic again. I cannot imagine what to say to a woman whose son has been . . . murdered!”

  Joseph thought of Mary Allard and how her grief would consume her. No mother can bear the death of her child, but Mary had loved Sebastian with a fierce, all-enveloping pride. She saw in him everything that fed her ambition and her dreams.

  He could understand it so easily. Sebastian had possessed an energy of the spirit that lit not only his own vision, but that of others as well. He had touched their lives, whether they wished it or not. It was impossible to believe that his mind did not exist anymore. How could Mary Allard ever bear it?

  “Yes,” he said, turning to her with sudden urgency. “You will have to look after them, and not be hurt or dismayed if they are in the kind of pain that unintentionally wounds others carelessly, or even on purpose. Sometimes when we are drowning in our own loss we lash out—anger is momentarily easier to cope with.” That was hideously true, and yet he was speaking not from his own passion but in the accustomed platitudes he had used for years. He was ashamed of himself, but he did not know what else to say. If he laid open his own feelings, he would allow her to see the rage and confusion inside him, and he could not afford that. She would be repelled by its savagery—and frightened.

  “I know.” She smiled with great sweetness. “You don’t need to tell me . . . or to worry about them.” She spoke as if he had answered her need. “Thank you.” He had to escape before he broke the grace of her judgment. “Yes . . . thank you. I must see what else I can do.” And he excused himself and left, still barefoot and now feeling ridiculous in the broad daylight. He had given no answers at all, not from faith. He had simply provided the advice of common sense: Deal with what one can. At least do something.