“Oi never thought you gentlemen worked so hard, even in holiday times,” Perth observed, following Joseph in through the carved stone doorway and past the oak stairs, almost black with age, the middle of the steps hollowed by centuries of feet.
“Quite a few students choose to remain here and do some extra study,” Joseph replied, turning the bend and going on up. “And then there are always the undergraduates pursuing other studies.”
“Oh, yes, the undergraduates.”
They reached the landing and Joseph opened his own door. “Is there something I can do for you, Inspector?”
Perth smiled appreciatively. “Well, since you ask, sir, there is.” He stood expectantly on the step.
Joseph surrendered and invited him inside. “What is it?” he asked.
“Oi think it’d be true to say, sir, that you knew Mr. Allard better than any o’ the other gentlemen here?”
“Possibly.”
Perth put his hands in his pockets. “You see, Reverend, Oi’ve bin talking to Miss Coopersmith, Mr. Allard’s fiancee, as was, if you see what Oi mean? Nice young lady, very collected, no weeping an’ wailing, just a quiet sort o’ grief. Can’t help admiring it, can you?”
“No,” Joseph agreed. “She seems a fine young woman.”
“Did you know her before, sir? Seeing as you know the Allard family, and Mr. Sebastian especially. People tell me you were very close, gave him lots of advice in his studies, watched over him, as you might say.”
“Academically,” Joseph pointed out, acutely aware how true that was. “I knew very little of his personal life. I have a number of students, Inspector. Sebastian Allard was one of the brightest, but he was certainly not the only one. I would be deeply ashamed if I had neglected any of the others because they were less gifted than he. And to answer your question, no, I did not know Miss Coopersmith.”
Perth nodded, as if that corroborated something he already knew. He closed the door behind him but remained standing in the middle of the floor, as if the room made him uncomfortable. It was alien territory, with its silence and its books. “But you know Mrs. Allard?” he asked.
“A little. What is it you are looking for, Inspector?”
Perth smiled apologetically. “Oi’ll come to the point, sir. Mrs. Allard told me what time Sebastian left home to come back to college on Sunday the twenty-eighth o’ June. He’d been up in London on the Saturday, but he came home in the evening.” His face became very somber. “That were the day of the assassination in Serbia, although o’ course we didn’t know that then. An’ Mr. Mitchell, the porter at the gate, told me what time he got here.”
“The purpose?” Joseph reminded him. Since Perth did not, he felt unable to sit down either.
“Oi’m coming to that,” Perth said unhappily. “He told his mother as he’d got to come back for a meeting here . . . an’ so he had. Six people as’ll confirm that.”
“He wasn’t killed on the twenty-eighth,” Joseph pointed out. “It was several days after that—in fact, a week. I remember because it was after my parents’ funeral, and I was back here.”
Perth’s face registered his surprise and then his sympathy. “Oi’m sorry, sir. A dreadful thing. But my point is, like yourself, Mr. and Mrs. Allard live close by, not more’n ten miles. How long would you say it’d take to drive that far, for a young man with a fast car like his?”
“Half an hour,” Joseph replied. “Probably less, depending on the traffic. Why?”
“When he left home he told his parents he was going to see Miss Coopersmith for a couple of hours,” Perth replied. “But she says that he stayed barely ten minutes with her. He went, going through your village o’ St. Giles, an’ on toward Cambridge, about three o’clock.” He shook his head. He was still holding the pipe by its bowl. “That means he should’ve bin here by quarter to four, at the outside. Whereas he didn’t actually get here, Mr. Mitchell says, until just after six.”
“So he went somewhere else,” Joseph reasoned. “He changed his mind, met a friend, or stopped in the town before coming on to college. What does it matter?”
“Just an example, sir,” Perth said. “Bin asking around a bit. Seems he did things like that quite regular, couple of hours here, couple there. Oi thought as you might know where he spent that time, an’ why he lied to folks about it.”
“No, I don’t.” It was an unpleasant thought that Sebastian had regularly done something he had wanted or needed to hide from his friends. But it was drowned in Joseph’s mind by another thought, sharp and clear as a knife in sudden light. If Perth was accurate about the time Sebastian had left his home, and that he had driven south to Cambridge through St. Giles, which was the natural and obvious way, then he would have passed the place on the Hauxton Road where John and Alys Reavley were killed, within a few minutes of it happening.
If it had been just before, then it meant nothing; it was merely a coincidence easily explained by circumstance. But if it had been just after, then what had he seen? And why had he said nothing?
Perth was staring at him, bland, patient, as if he could wait forever. Joseph forced himself to meet his eyes, uncomfortably aware of the intelligence in them; Perth was far more astute than he had appreciated until now. “I’m afraid I have no idea,” he said. “If I learn anything I shall tell you. Now if you will excuse me, I have an errand to run before my next tutorial.” That was not true, but he needed to be alone. He must sort out the turbulence of thought in his mind.
Perth looked a little surprised, as if the possibility had not occurred to him. “Oh. You sure you have no idea what he was doing? You know students better ’n Oi do, sir. What might it’ve bin? What do these young men do when they ain’t studying an’ attending lectures and the loike?” He looked at Joseph innocently.
“Talk,” Joseph replied. “Go boating sometimes, or to the pub, the library, walk along the Backs. Some go cycling or practice cricket at the nets. And of course there are papers to write.”
“Interesting,” Perth said, chewing on his pipe. “None of that seems worth lying about, does it?” He smiled, but it was not friendliness so much as satisfaction. “You have a very innocent view o’ young men, Reverend.” He took the pipe out again, as if suddenly remembering where he was. “Are those the things you did when you was a student? Maybe divinity students are a great deal more righteous-living than most.” If there was sarcasm in his voice, it was well concealed.
Joseph found himself uncomfortable, aware not only that he sounded like a prig, but that perhaps he had been as deliberately blind as that made him sound, and that Perth was not. He could remember his own student days perfectly well, and they were not as idealized as the picture he had just painted. Divinity students, along with medical, were among the heaviest drinkers of all, not to mention other even less salubrious pursuits.
“I started in medicine,” he said aloud. “But as I recall, none of us appreciated being obliged to account for our free time.”
“Really?” Perth was startled. “A medical student? You? Oi din’t know that. So you know some o’ the less admirable kinds of youthful carry-ons, then?”
“Of course I do,” Joseph said a trifle sharply. “You asked me what I know of Sebastian, not what I might reasonably suppose.”
“Oi see what you mean,” Perth replied. “Thank you for your help, Reverend.” He nodded several times. “Then Oi’ll just keep on.” He turned and went out of the door, at last pulling out a worn, leather tobacco pouch and filling the pipe as he went down the stairs, slipping a bit on the last and most uneven one.
Joseph left a few moments later and walked briskly across the quad and out of the main gate into St. John’s Street. But instead of turning right for the town, he went left for a few yards along Bridge Street, across it, along the main road, and eventually onto Jesus Green, looking over to Midsummer Common.
All the time his mind was struggling with the fact that Sebastian had passed by the place in the Hauxton Road where John and Alys Reavley had been killed. The question that burned in his head was this: Had Sebastian witnessed it and known that it was not an accident, possibly even seen whoever it was emerge from the ditch and go over and search the bodies? If so, then he had known too much for his own safety.
Since he too was in a car, he must have been seen by them, and they had to have realized he knew what had happened. Had they tried to follow him?
No, if they were on foot, their car hidden, then they would be unable to go after him. But with any intelligence at all, a few questions and they could have found who owned the car and where he lived. From there on it would be simple enough to trace him to Cambridge.
Had he been aware of that? Was that why he had been so tense, so full of dark thoughts and fears? Had it not really been anything to do with Austria or the destruction that a war in Europe would bring, but the knowledge that he had seen a murder?
