by Anne Perry
“I know!” Matthew cut him off so sharply that Joseph realized that he had hit a nerve; it was precisely what Matthew feared and could not bear. He recognized it because it was within himself as well: the need to deny and at the same time protect. He could see his father’s face as vividly as if he had left the room minutes ago.
“I know,” Matthew repeated. He looked away. “I just want you to be careful!”
“I will.” This time the promise was made sincerely, with gentleness. “I’ve no particular desire to get shot. Anyway, one of us has got to keep Judith in some kind of check . . . and you aren’t going to!”
Matthew grinned suddenly. “Believe me, Joe, neither are you!”
Joseph picked up the wine bottle and for a few moments did not speak. “If Father was bringing the document to you in London, and whoever killed him took it from the car, what were they searching the house for?”
Matthew thought for a while. “If it really is a plot of some sort to kill the king, Irish or otherwise, perhaps there are at least two copies of it,” he replied. “They took the one Father was bringing, but they need the other as well. It’s far too dangerous to leave it where someone else might find it—especially if they actually put it into effect.”
It made perfect sense. At last there was something about it that fell into place. Intellectually it was a comfort, finally something reason could grasp. Emotionally it was a darkening of the shadows and a waking of a more urgent fear.
CHAPTER
NINE
Joseph returned to Cambridge the following morning, the twenty-second of July. The train pulled away from the streets and rooftops of the city and into the open country northward.
He felt an urgency to be back in college again, and to look with fresh and far more perceptive eyes at the people he knew. He was aware that he would see things he would prefer not to: weaknesses that were impinging on his consciousness, Morel’s anger and perhaps jealousy because Abigail had been in love with Sebastian. Had he taken his revenge for that, storing it up until it became unbearable? Or was it the insult to Abigail he avenged? Or was it nothing to do with either of them, but one of the other cruelties? Had someone cheated and been caught? Would a man kill to save his career? To be sent down for cheating was certainly the ruin of all future hope in a profession or society.
Matthew’s question about the gun came back again. Where had it come from? Perth had said it was a handgun. Joseph did not know a lot about guns; he disliked them. Even in the open countryside where he lived, close to woods and water, he knew of no one who kept handguns.
As soon as he reached the college, he went to his rooms. After he washed and changed, he started to review the situation. It was like taking the concealing bandages off a wound to find where the infection was, the unhealed part, and how deep it went. If he was to tell himself the truth, he knew it was to the bone.
And it was time he addressed the next issue he was aware of. Had someone cribbed from Sebastian or he from them? The suggestion had been that it was Foubister, and he knew why. Foubister came from a working-class family in the suburbs of Manchester. He had studied at Manchester Grammar School, one of the best in the country, and come to Cambridge on scholarship. His parents must have saved every penny simply to afford his necessities such as clothes and fare. The shock of coming from the narrow, back-to-back houses of the northern industrial city, to the broad countryside of Cambridge, the ancient city steeped in learning, the sheer wealth of centuries of endowment, was something he could not hide.
His mind was outstanding, quick, erratic, highly individual, but his cultural background was of poverty not only in material surroundings, but in art, literature, the history of Western thought and ideas. The leisure to create what was beautiful but essentially of no immediate practical use was as alien an idea to everyone he had known before coming here. It strained the imagination that he should have found the same felicitous phrase to translate a passage from the Greek or Hebrew as Sebastian Allard, whose background was so utterly different, nurtured in the classics from the day he started school.
Joseph stood up with a weariness inside and went to look for Foubister. He found him coming down the stairs from his own rooms. They met at the bottom, just inside the wide oak door open onto the quad.
“Morning, sir,” Foubister said unhappily. “That wretched policeman doesn’t know anything yet, you know?” His face was pale, his eyes defiant, as if he had already read Joseph’s intent. “He’s ferreting around in everyone’s affairs, asking questions about who said what. He’s even gone into past exam results, would you believe?”
So Perth was already pursuing the thought of a cheat! Did he understand that such a charge would follow a man all his life? The whisper of it would deny him a career, blackball him from clubs, even ruin him in society. Was that something a man like Perth would grasp?
Someone had killed Sebastian. If it were not for that, then it was something else equally ugly. Perhaps it would be even worse if it were for a trivial reason?
He looked at Foubister’s miserable face, the anger in it, the desperation. He had such a burden of trust, hope, and sacrifice on his shoulders. Added to that, even coming here had opened a world to him he would never forget. The family that had nurtured him and loved him so selflessly was already someplace to which he could never fully return. The gulf widened, every day. He had already lost most of his Lancashire accent; only the odd vowel sound appeared now and then. He must have worked terribly hard to achieve that.
As if he had spoken it aloud, Foubister sensed Joseph’s thought. “I didn’t crib!” he exclaimed, his face white, his eyes hurt and angry.
“It would be very foolish,” Joseph replied. “Your style is nothing like his.” Then in case it seemed like an insult he added, “You are quite individual. But do you think it is possible someone else has cribbed, and Sebastian knew it?”
“I suppose it is,” Foubister admitted reluctantly, shifting from one foot to the other. “But it would be stupid. You’d have known one style from another, the pattern of thinking, the words, the phrases, the kind of ideas. Even if you weren’t sure, you’d suspect.”
It was true. Joseph knew each voice as uniquely as the brush stroke of an artist or the musical phrase of a composer.
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “I’m just looking for a reason.”
“We all are,” Foubister said tensely, holding the book in his hand more tightly. “We’re all wandering around tearing ourselves to pieces. He doesn’t understand!” He jerked his arm backward to indicate Perth, somewhere in the college behind him. “He doesn’t really know anything about us! How could he? He’s never been in a world like this.” He said it without condescension, but with impatience for those who had placed Perth out of his depth, a feeling he himself must taste every day, even if it was lessening, at least on the surface. But surely, deeper into thought, he must have understood that the thread of it ran through everything—class, manner, words chosen, even dreams.
Joseph drew breath to interrupt, then silenced himself. He should listen. Unguarded talk was exactly what he needed to hear—and weigh. He forced himself to relax and lean a little against the doorjamb.
“Someone mentions an argument, and he thinks it’s a fight!” Foubister went on, his wide eyes on Joseph’s, expecting understanding. “That’s what university is all about, exploring ideas! If you don’t question it, try to pick it to pieces, you never really know whether you believe it or not.”
Joseph nodded.
“We don’t argue to prove a point!” Foubister went on, his voice rising in desperation. “We argue to prove that we exist! Differences of opinion don’t mean hate, for heaven’s sake—exactly the opposite! You can’t be bothered to waste time arguing with someone you don’t respect. And respect is about the same thing as liking, isn’t it?”
“Almost,” Joseph agreed, thinking back to his own college days.
They heard a clatter of feet on a stairway above them, and
a moment later a student excused himself and ran past, clutching a pile of books. He glanced at Joseph and Foubister. His eyes were wide with question and suspicion. It was clear in his expression that he thought he understood something. He turned away and sprinted across the quad and through the archway.
“You see?” Foubister challenged, fear rising sharply in his voice. “He thinks I cheated and you’re calling me out on it!”
“You can’t stop people leaping to conclusions. If you deny it, you’ll make it worse,” Joseph warned. “He’ll find out he’s wrong.”
“Will he? When? What if they never find out who killed Sebastian? They’re not doing very well so far!”
“You said people were arguing and Perth didn’t understand,” Joseph said levelly. “Who was he thinking of in particular?”
“Morel and Rattray,” Foubister answered. “And Elwyn and Rattray, because Rattray doesn’t think there’ll be war, and Elwyn does. Sometimes he sounds as if he almost looks forward to it! All heroic sort of stuff, like the Charge of the Light Brigade, or Kitchener at Khartoum.” His voice betrayed not only fear but disgust. “Sebastian thought there would be war, and that it would be catastrophic, which seems to be what Perth thinks. Got a face like an undertaker! Elwyn is only afraid it’ll all be over before he has a chance to do his bit! But it was just argument!”
He stared at Joseph, his eyes begging for agreement. “You don’t kill someone because they disagree with you! Might kill myself if nobody did!” A smile flashed across his face and vanished. “That would be a sure sign I was talking such rubbish nobody cared enough about it, or me, to be bothered contradicting. Either that or I was in hell.” He stood motionless, his cotton shirt hanging limply on his body. “Imagine it, Dr. Reavley! Total isolation—no other mind there but your own, echoing back to you exactly what you said! Oblivion would be better. Then at least you wouldn’t know you were dead!”
Joseph heard the note of hysteria in his voice.
“Foubister,” he said gently. “Everyone is frightened. Something terrible has happened, but we have to face it, and we have to learn the truth. It won’t go away until we do.”
Foubister steadied a little bit.
“But you should have seen some of the things people have come up with!” He shivered in spite of the breathless heat in the sheltered doorway. “Nobody looks at anyone the way they used to. It’s a sort of poison. One of us here actually took a gun, walked into Sebastian’s room, and for some dreadful reason shot him in the head.” He shrugged, and Joseph noticed how much thinner he was than a month ago.
“We have our faults, and I’ve seen that in the last couple of weeks more than I ever wanted to.” Foubister’s face was white with misery, and he hunched as if even in this dazzling summer he could be cold. “I look at fellows I’ve worked with, sat with at the pub all evening, and wondered if any of them could have killed Sebastian.”
Joseph did not interrupt him.
“And even worse than that,” Foubister went on, speaking more and more rapidly, “people look at me—all sorts of people, even Morel—and I can see the same thoughts in their eyes, and the same embarrassment afterward. What’s going to happen when it’s over and we know who it was? Will we ever go back to how we were before? I won’t forget who thought it could be me! How can I feel the same about them as I used to? And how could they forgive me, because I, too, have wondered . . . about lots of people!”
“It won’t be the same,” Joseph said frankly. “But it may still be bearable. Friendships change, but that doesn’t have to be bad. We all make mistakes. Think how much you would like your own buried and forgotten, and then do the same for others—and for yourself.” He was afraid he sounded trite, because he dared not say what was really in his mind: What if they never found who had shot Sebastian? What if the suspicion and the doubt remained here working their erosion forever, dividing, spoiling, tearing apart?
“Do you think so?” Foubister asked earnestly. He shrugged again and pushed his hands into his pockets. “I doubt it. We’re all too damned scared to be idealistic.”
“Did you like Sebastian?” Joseph said impulsively, just as Foubister turned to walk away.
“I’m not sure,” Foubister replied with painful honesty. “I used to be certain I did. I wouldn’t even have questioned it. Everyone liked him, or it seemed that way. He was funny and clever, and he could be extraordinarily kind. And once you start liking someone, it becomes a habit. You don’t change, even if they do.”
“But?” Joseph prompted.
“When you were with him you saw something good,” Foubister said ruefully, “and you believed you could do something that mattered, too. But then sometimes he’d just forget you, or go ahead and do something so much better you felt crushed.”
Joseph tried to ignore his own feelings. Sebastian had still needed him, but one day when he didn’t, would he have treated Joseph with the same offhand arrogance? He would never know. It was all a matter of belief, and he ought to be able to have some control over that.
“Anyone in particular?” he said aloud.
Foubister’s eyes widened. “If you mean do I know who killed him, no, I don’t. You don’t get a gun and shoot someone because they hurt you or make you feel like a fool, not unless you’re mad! You might punch him, or—” He bit his lip. “No, you wouldn’t even do that, because you’d be showing everyone how much you hurt. You’d just wear a nice smile as long as anyone was looking at you, and wish you could find a place to hide. Depending on who you are, you either look for something spectacular to do yourself, to show you are just as good, or you take hell out of someone else. I don’t know, Dr. Reavley, maybe you do kill. I wish I did know, because it would mean at least that I could stop suspecting everyone else.”
“I understand,” Joseph said gently.
“Yes, I suppose you do. Thank you at least for saying that.” Foubister gave a tiny smile, then turned and walked away, shoulders still tight, his body angular, yet moving with a certain grace.
It was unavoidable now. Joseph must go back to the translations that gnawed at the back of his mind, the occasions when Foubister and Sebastian had struck the same brilliant and unexpected phrase. He hated the thought that Foubister had cheated, but it seemed more and more likely. Was it really only other people’s whispers that made Foubister so conscious of suspicion and so afraid, or was it guilt?
He might never know, but he was compelled to look. There were papers he could reread, compare, do all he could to satisfy his own mind. He knew Foubister’s work, and he knew Sebastian’s. If he had any skill at all, any feeling for the cadence of language, he would know if one man was copying another. If not, then he was no more than a mechanic.
He went back inside and climbed slowly back up the stairs, fingers touching the dark oak of the banister. The first floor up was cooler, airy with its higher ceiling and open window.
Inside, his room was newly tidy from the bedder’s ministrations. She was a good woman, neat and quick and pleasant.
He pulled out the appropriate papers and turned his attention to Sebastian’s. It was a translation from the Greek, lyrical, full of metaphor and imagery. Sebastian had made a beautiful thing of it, keeping the rhythm swift and light, an excellent mixture of words, long and short, complex and simple, all blending into a perfect whole. And there was the one phrase he remembered: “the bent-limbed trees crowding along the mountain ridge, bearing the burden of the sky upon their backs.”
He put it down on the desk and searched for Foubister’s translation of the same original. It was in the middle of the page: “the hunch-limbed trees, crawling along the mountain’s rim, carrying the sky upon their backs.”
The Greeks had described them only as misshapen, silhouetted against the sky. The idea of bearing or carrying was not there, nor the suggestion of human intent. They were too alike for coincidence.
Joseph sat still, the cold grief hardening inside him. He could not ask Sebastian how he had allowed his wo
rk to be imitated so closely, and surely there was little point in confronting Foubister. He had just sworn that he had never cheated. If Joseph faced him now with this, would he still deny it? Swear it was just chance? Joseph winced at the thought of seeing it. He liked Foubister and could only imagine what grief it would bring his parents if he were sent down in shame.
But if he had killed Sebastian, that was something that could not possibly be overlooked. He realized with surprise that using those words, even to himself, meant that he had considered ignoring the cheating.
What other explanation was there? Where could he look? Who was there to ask?
His thoughts went immediately to Beecher. He could at least depend on him to be both honest and kind. Perhaps he would even honor Joseph’s silence if he was asked to.
He caught up with Beecher on his way across the quad toward the dining hall.
Beecher squinted at him. “You look awful,” he said with a half smile. “Anticipating something disgusting in the soup?”
Joseph fell into step beside him. “You’ve been teaching far longer than I have,” he began without ceremony. “What explanation might there be for two students coming up with the same highly individual translation of a passage, other than cheating?”
Beecher looked at him with a frown. “Has this something to do with Sebastian Allard?” he asked as they walked into the shadow of the archway and turned into the dining hall. Bright patterns of colored light danced on the walls from the coats of arms on the windows. There was a buzz of conversation and expectancy.
Beecher sat down at a table apart from the others, nodding to one or two other people, but giving nothing to his glance to suggest he wished their company.
