“Don’t you?” Perth left it as a question unanswered. He sat on the edge of the porter’s desk. “Why do you kill someone, then, Reverend? Young gentlemen like these, with every advantage in the world an’ their whole lives to look forward to?” He waved at the chair for Joseph to sit down. “What would make one o’ them take a gun an’ go into someone’s rooms afore six in the morning an’ shoot him in the head? Must’ve bin a powerful reason, sir, something for which there weren’t no other answer.”
Joseph’s legs were weak, and he sank into the chair.
“An’ it weren’t spur of the moment, like,” Perth continued. “Someone got up special, took a gun with ’em, an’ there was no quarrel, or Mr. Allard wouldn’t’ve bin sitting back all relaxed, with not a book out of place.” He stopped and waited, staring curiously at Joseph.
“I don’t know.” The full enormity of it was settling on him so heavily he could scarcely fill his lungs with air. His mind flickered over the other students closest to Sebastian. Whom could he have let in at that hour and remained seated talking to him instead of getting up and fairly robustly telling him to come back at a more civilized time? Elwyn, of course. And why had Elwyn gone to see him so early? Joseph had not asked him, but no doubt Perth would.
Nigel Eardslie. He and Sebastian had shared an interest in Greek poetry. Eardslie was the better language scholar, he had the vocabulary, but he had less feeling for the music and the rhythm of it, or for the subtlety of the culture. They collaborated well, and both enjoyed it, often publishing the results in one of the college magazines. If Eardslie had also been up early studying and found a particularly good line or phrase, one that he almost gripped but not quite, he would have disturbed Sebastian, even at that time.
But Joseph would not tell Perth that, at least not yet.
And there were Foubister and Morel, good friends to each other, with whom Sebastian and Peter Rattray often made a four for tennis. Rattray was keen on debate, and he and Sebastian had indulged in many all-night arguments, to the intense pleasure of both of them. Although that did not seem a reason for going to anyone’s rooms so early.
Who else was there? At least half a dozen others came to his mind, all of whom were still here in college for one reason or another, but he could not imagine any of them even thinking of violence, let alone acting it out.
Perth was watching him, content to wait, patient as a cat at a mousehole.
“I have no idea,” Joseph repeated helplessly, aware that Perth would know he was being evasive. How could any man who was trained in the spiritual care of people, living and working with a group of students, be totally blind to a passion so intense it ended in murder? Such terror or hatred does not spring whole into being in a day. How was it that he had not seen it?
“How long’ve you bin here, Reverend?” Perth asked.
Joseph felt himself blushing, the heat painful in his face. “A little over a year.” He had to have seen it, merely refused to recognize it for what it was. How stupid! How totally useless!
“An’ you taught Mr. Sebastian Allard? What about his brother, Mr. Elwyn? Did you teach him, too?”
“For a while, for Latin. He dropped it.”
“Why?”
“He found it difficult, and he didn’t think it was necessary for his career. He was right.”
“So he weren’t so clever as his brother?”
“Very few were. Sebastian was remarkably gifted. He would have . . .” The words stuck in his throat. Without any warning, the reality of death engulfed him again. All the golden promise he had seen ahead for Sebastian was gone, as if night had obstructed daylight. It took him a moment to regain control of himself so he could continue speaking. “He had a remarkable career ahead of him,” he finished.
“Doing what?” Perth raised his eyebrows.
“Almost anything he wanted.”
“Schoolmaster?” Perth frowned. “Preacher?”
“Poet, philosopher. In government if he wanted.”
“Government? Learning old languages?” Perth was utterly confused.
“A lot of our greatest leaders have begun with a degree in classics,” Joseph explained. “Mr. Gladstone is the most obvious example.”
“Well, I never knew that!” Perth clearly found it beyond his comprehension.
“You don’t understand,” Joseph went on. “At university there are always those who are more brilliant than you are, more spectacularly gifted in a particular area. If you didn’t know that when you came, you would certainly learn it very quickly. Every student here has sufficient talent and intellect to succeed, if he works. I know of no one foolish enough to carry anything more than a passing moment of envy for a superior mind.” He said it with absolute certainty, and it was only when he looked at Perth’s expression that he realized how condescending he sounded, but it was too late to retrieve it.
“So you didn’t notice anything at all?” Perth observed. It was impossible to tell if he believed that, or what he thought of a teacher and minister who could be so blind.
Joseph felt like a new student chastised for a stupid mistake. “Nothing I thought could lead to more than a passing stiffness, a distance,” he defended himself. “Young men are emotional, highly strung sometimes. Exams . . .” He tailed off, not knowing what else to add. He was trying to explain a culture and a way of life to a man for whom it was totally foreign. The gulf between a Cambridge student and a policeman was unbridgeable. How could Perth possibly understand the passions and dreams that impelled young men from backgrounds of privilege and in most cases a degree of wealth, men whose academic gifts were great enough to earn them places here? He must come from an ordinary home where learning was a luxury, money never quite enough, necessity a constant companion on the heels of labor.
A cold breath touched him—fear that Perth would inevitably come to wrong conclusions about these young men, misunderstand what they said and did, mistake motives, and blame innocence, simply because it was all alien to him. And the damage would be irretrievable.
And then the moment after, his own arrogance struck him like a blow. He belonged to the same world, he had known all of them for at least a year and seen them almost every day during term time, and he had not had even the faintest idea of hatred slowly building until it exploded in lethal violence.
There must have been signs; he had ignored them, misinterpreted them as harmless, and misread everything they meant. He would like to think it had been charity, but it wasn’t. To have been blind to the truth was stupidity at best; at worst it was also moral cowardice. “If I can help you, of course I will,” he said much more humbly. “I . . . I am as . . . shocked . . .”
“O’ course you are, sir,” Perth said with surprising gentleness. “Everybody is. No one expects anything like this to happen. Just tell me if you remember anything or if you see anything now. An’ no doubt you’ll be doing what you can to help the young gentlemen. Some of ’em look pretty frangled.”
“Yes, naturally. Is there . . .”
“Nothing, sir,” Perth assured him.
Joseph thanked him and left, going outside into the bright, hard sunlight of the quad. Almost immediately he ran into Lucian Foubister, his face white, his dark hair on end as if he had run his hands through it again and again.
“Dr. Reavley!” he gasped. “They think one of us did it! That can’t be true. Someone else must’ve . . .” He stopped in front of Joseph, blocking his way. He did not know how to ask for help, but his eyes were desperate. He was a northerner from the outskirts of Manchester, accustomed to rows of brick houses back to back with each other, cold water and privies. The Cambridge world of ancient, intricate beauty, space, and leisure had stunned and changed him forever. He could never truly belong here; neither could he return to what he had been before. Now he looked younger than his twenty-two years, and thinner than Joseph had remembered.
“It appears that it was,” Joseph said gently. “We may be able to find some other answer, but no one broke in, and Sebastian was sitting quite calmly in his chair, which suggests he was not afraid of whoever entered his room.”
“Then it must have been an accident,” Foubister said breathlessly. “And . . . and whoever it was is too scared to own up to it. Can’t blame him, really. But he’ll say, when he realizes the police are thinking it’s murder.” He stopped again, his eyes searching Joseph’s, begging to be reassured.
It was an answer Joseph longed to believe. Whoever had committed such an act would be devastated. To run away was cowardly, and he would be ashamed, but better that than murder. And it would mean Joseph had not
