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.
