always the possibility that it was not a woman but a man. It happens, particularly in a place like Cambridge. An older man, a student who is full of vitality and dreams, hunger . . .” He stopped. Further explanation was unnecessary.
Joseph heard a sound in the doorway and swiveled around to see Connie standing behind him, her face grave, a flash of anger in her dark eyes.
“Good morning, Dr. Reavley.” She came in and closed the door behind her with a snap. She was wearing a deep lavender morning dress, suitable both for the heat and for the tragedy of her houseguests. The sweeping lines of it, impossibly slender at the knees, became her rich figure, and the color flattered her complexion. Even in these circumstances it was a pleasure to look at her.
“Really, Aidan, if you have to be so candid, you might at least do it with more discretion!” she said sharply, coming further into the room. “What if Mrs. Allard had overheard you? She can’t bear to hear anything but praise for him, which I suppose is natural enough in the circumstances. I don’t suppose the boy was a saint—few of us are— but that is how she needs to see him at the moment. And apart from unnecessary cruelty to her, I don’t want a case of hysteria on my hands.” She turned away from her husband, possibly without seeing the shadow in his face, as if he had received a blow he half expected. “Would you like some breakfast, Dr. Reavley?” she invited. “It won’t be the least difficulty to have Cook prepare you something.”
“No, thank you.” Joseph felt discomforted for having wanted Thyer to be candid, and a degree of embarrassment at having witnessed a moment of personal pain. “I am afraid the master’s comments were my fault,” he said to Connie. “I was asking him because I feel we need to have the truth, if possible before the police uncover every mistake of judgment by a student—or one of us, for that matter.” He was talking too much, explaining unnecessarily, but he could not stop.
Connie sat down at the head of the table, managing the restriction of her skirts with extraordinary grace, and Joseph was aware of the faint lily-of-the-valley perfume she wore. He felt a wave of loss for Alys that was momentarily overwhelming.
“I suppose you are right,” Connie conceded. “Sometimes fear is worse than the truth. At least the truth will destroy only one person. Or am I creating a fool’s paradise?”
A flicker of awareness crossed Thyer’s face, and he drew in his breath, then changed his mind and did not speak.
This time Joseph was honest. “Yes . . . I’m sorry, but I think you are,” he said to her. “Students have asked me whether they should tell the inspector what they know about Sebastian or be loyal to his memory and conceal it. I told them to tell the truth, and because of it Foubister and Morel, who have been friends ever since they came up, have quarreled so bitterly, both feel betrayed. And we have all learned things about each other we were far happier not knowing.”
Still not looking at her husband, she reached across and touched her fingers to Joseph’s arm. “It seems ignorance is a luxury we can no longer afford. Sebastian was very charming, and he was certainly gifted, but he had uglier sides as well. I know you would prefer not to have seen them, and your charity does you great credit.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he contradicted her miserably. “It was a matter of self-protection, not generosity of spirit. I rather think cowardice is the correct name for it.”
“You are too hard on yourself.” She was very gentle. There was a softness in her face he had always liked. Now he thought briefly, and with a respect that surprised him, how fortunate a man Aidan Thyer was.
In the evening, Joseph went as usual to the senior common room for a few moments’ quiet companionship and time to relax before dinner. Almost as soon as he entered he saw Harry Beecher sitting in a comfortable chair near the window, nursing a glass of what looked like gin and tonic.
Joseph walked toward him with a sudden lift of pleasure. He had shared many years of friendship with Beecher and never found in him meanness of spirit or that self-absorption that makes people blind to the feelings of others.
“Your usual, sir?” the steward asked, and Joseph accepted, sitting down with a deep sense of ease at the sheer luxurious familiarity of the surroundings, the people he had known and found so congenial over the last, difficult year. They thought largely as he did. They had the same heritage and the same values. Disagreements were minor and on the whole added interest to what might otherwise have become flat. The challenge of ideas was the savor of life. Always to be agreed with must surely become an intolerable loneliness in the end, as if anchored by endless mirrors of the mind, sterile of anything new.
“Looks as if the French president is going to Russia to speak to the czar,” Beecher remarked, sipping at his glass.
“About Serbia?” Joseph asked, although it was a rhetorical question.
“What a mess.” Beecher shook his head. “Walcott thinks there’ll be war.” Walcott was a lecturer in modern history they both knew moderately well. “I wish to hell he’d be a bit more discreet about his opinions.” A flicker of distaste crossed his face. “Everyone’s unsettled enough without that.”
Joseph took his glass from the steward and thanked him, then waited until the man was out of earshot. “Yes, I know,” he said unhappily. “Several of the students have spoken about it. You can hardly blame them for being anxious.”
“Even at the worst, I don’t suppose it would involve us.” Beecher dismissed the idea, taking another sip of his drink. “But if it did—if, say, we were drawn in to help?” His eyebrows lifted with faint humor. “But I don’t know whom. I can’t see us being overly concerned with the Austrians or the Serbs. Regardless, we don’t conscript to the army. It’s all volunteer.” He smiled lopsidedly. “I think they are rather badly upset about Sebastian Allard’s murder, and that’s what they are really worried about.” His mouth tightened momentarily. “Unfortunately, from the evidence, the murderer has to have been someone here in college.” He looked at Joseph with sudden, intense candor. “I suppose you haven’t got any idea, have you? You wouldn’t consider it your religious duty to protect them . . . ?”
Joseph was startled. “No, I wouldn’t!” The hot anger still welled up inside him at the thought of Sebastian’s vitality and dreams obliterated. “I don’t know anything.” He looked at Beecher earnestly. “But I feel I need to. I’ve gone over everything I can remember of the last few days I saw Sebastian, but I was away, because of my parents’ death, for a good while right before he was killed. I couldn’t have seen anything.”
“You think it was foreseeable?” There was surprise and curiosity sharp in Beecher’s eyes. He ignored his unfinished drink.
“I don’t know,” Joseph admitted. “It can’t have happened without some cause that built up over a while. Unless it was an accident—which would be the best possible answer, of course! But I can’t imagine how that could happen, can you?”
“No,” Beecher said with quiet regret. The evening light through the long windows picked out the tiny lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked more tired than he was admitting, and perhaps a lot more deeply worried. “No, I’m afraid that’s a fool’s paradise,” Beecher said with quiet regret. “Someone killed him because they meant to.” He reached out and picked up his drink again, sipping it and rolling it around his mouth, but it obviously gave him no pleasure. “Certainly his work was falling off over the last few weeks. And to be honest”—he looked up at Joseph apologetically—“I’ve seen a certain harder edge to it, and a lack of delicacy lately. I thought it might be a rather uncomfortable transition from one style to another, made without his usual grace.” That was half a question.
“But?” Joseph prompted. He knew Beecher did not like Sebastian, and he didn’t relish what his friend would say.
“But on looking back, it was more than just his work,” Beecher said. “His temper was fragile, far more than it used to be. I don’t think he was sleeping well, and I know of at least a couple of rather stupid quarrels he got involved in.”
“Quarrels about what? With whom?”
Beecher’s lips pulled tight in the mockery of a smile. “About war and nationalism, false ideas of honor. And with several people, anyone fool enough to get involved in the subject.”
“Why didn’t you mention it?” Joseph was startled. He had not seen anything of the sort. Had he been blind? Or had Sebastian hidden it from him deliberately? Why? Kindness, a desire not to concern him? Self-protection, because he wanted to preserve the image of him Joseph had, keep one person seeing only the good? Or had he simply not trusted him, and it was only Joseph’s imagination and vanity that they had been friends?
