Joseph realized with surprise, and sadness, that Beecher had never spoken of love. He had laughed at himself over one or two youthful fancies, but never anything you could call a commitment, nothing truly of the heart. It was a gaping omission, and the longer Joseph considered it the more it troubled him.
Guardedly he looked at Beecher now, sitting only a few feet away from him, effecting to be relaxed. He was not handsome, but his humor and intelligence made him unusually attractive. He had grace and he dressed with a certain flair. He took care of himself like a man who was not averse to intimate involvement.
And yet he had never spoken of women. If there was no one, why had he not ever mentioned that, perhaps regretted it? The most obvious answer was that had such an attachment existed, it was illicit. If so, he could not afford to tell even his closest friends.
The silence in the room, which would usually have been warm and comfortable, was suddenly distressing. Joseph’s thoughts raced in his head. Had Sebastian either stumbled on a secret or gone looking for it and unearthed it deliberately, then used it? It was a thought Joseph would much rather have put away as unworthy, but he could no longer afford to do that.
Whom was it Beecher loved? If he was telling the truth and had not killed Sebastian, nor know who had, then surely the natural person to consider after that would be whoever else was involved in the illicit romance. Or whoever was betrayed by it, if such a person existed.
At last he faced the ultimate ugliness: What if Beecher was lying? What if his illicit lover had been Sebastian himself? The thought was extraordinarily painful, but it fitted all the facts he knew—the undeniable ones, not the dreams or wishes. Perhaps Flora Whickham was merely a friend, a fellow pacifist, and an escape from the inevitable demands of his family?
There were people who could love men and women with equal ease. He had never before considered Sebastian as one such, but then he had not thought deeply about him in that regard at all. It was a private area. Now he was obliged to intrude into it. He would do it as discreetly as possible, and if it led nowhere with regard to Sebastian’s death, he would never speak of it. He was accustomed to keeping secrets; it was part of the profession he had chosen.
Beecher was watching him with his characteristic patience until Joseph should be ready to talk again.
Joseph was ashamed of his thoughts. Was this what everyone else was feeling—suspicion, ugly ideas racing through the mind and refusing to be banished?
“Sebastian had a friendship with a local girl, you know?” he said aloud. “A barmaid from the pub along near the millpond.”
“Well, that sounds healthy enough!” Then Beecher’s face darkened with something very close to anger. “Unless you’re suggesting he misused her? Are you?”
“No! No, I really mean a friend!” Joseph corrected him. “It seems they shared political convictions.”
“Political convictions!” Beecher was amazed. “I didn’t know he had any.”
“He was passionately against war.” Joseph remembered the emotion shaking Sebastian’s voice as he had spoken of the destruction of conflict. “For the ruin it would bring. Not only physically, but culturally, even spiritually. He was prepared to work for peace, not just wish for it.”
The contempt in Beecher’s face softened. “Then perhaps he was better than I supposed.”
Joseph smiled, the old warmth returning. This was the friend he knew. “He saw all the fear and the pain,” he said quietly. “The glory of our entire heritage drowned in a sea of violence until we became a lost civilization, and all our wealth of beauty, thought, human wisdom, joy, and experience as buried as Nineveh or Tyre. No more Englishmen, none of our courage or eccentricity, our language or our tolerance left. He loved it intensely. He would have given everything he had to preserve it.”
Beecher sighed and leaned backward, gazing up at the ceiling. “Then perhaps he is in some ways fortunate that he won’t see the war that’s coming,” he said softly. “Inspector Perth is sure it will be the worst we’ve even seen. Worse than the Napoleonic Wars. Make Waterloo look tame.”
Joseph was stunned.
Beecher sat up again. “Mind, he’s a miserable devil,” he said more cheerfully. “A regular Jeremiah. I’ll be glad when he finishes his business here and goes to spread alarm and despondency somewhere else. Would you like another glass of sherry? You didn’t take much.”
“It’s enough,” Joseph replied. “I can escape reality nicely on one, thank you.”
The following day Joseph began his investigation with the worst of all possibilities.
He must begin by learning all he did not already know about Beecher. And surely in this case discretion was the better part of honesty. Candor would ruin Beecher’s reputation, and unless it exposed Sebastian’s murderer, it was no one else’s concern.
The easiest thing to check without speaking to anyone else was with a record of all Beecher’s classes, lectures, tutorials, and other engagements for the last six weeks. It was time-consuming but simple enough and easily concealed by finding the same information for everyone and simply extracting that relating to Beecher.
Correlating times and figures was not Joseph’s natural talent, but with concentration he compiled a record of where Beecher had been, and with whom, for at least most of the previous month.
He sat back in his chair, ignoring the piles of papers, and considered what it proved and what he should search for next. How did one conduct a secret relationship? Either by meeting alone where no one at all would see you, or where all those who did would be strangers to whom you would mean nothing. Or else by meeting in plain sight, and with a legitimate reason no one would question.
In Cambridge there was no place where everyone would be strangers, nor in the nearby villages. It would be crazy to take such a risk.
Completely uninhabited places were few, and not easily reached. Beecher might bicycle to them, but what about a woman? Unless she was very young and vigorous, she would hardly bicycle far, and a woman who drove a car was very rare. Judith was an exception, not the rule.
That left the last possibility: They met openly, with natural reasons that no one would question. Sebastian knew of their feelings either because he had been more observant than others or because he had accidentally seen something acutely private. Either thought was distasteful.
Surely it would prove to be nonsense, his own overheated imagination. Perhaps Beecher was simply one of those scholarly men who do not form attachments. Such men existed. Joseph’s idea that he was not arose simply from his own nature. He failed to imagine living with no desire for intimacy. Possibly Beecher had loved once and could not commit himself again, nor speak of it even to someone like Joseph, who would surely have understood.
And yet even as the thoughts were in his mind, he did not believe them. Beecher was too alive, too physical to have removed himself from any of the richness of passion or experience. They had walked too far, climbed too high, laughed too hard together for him to be mistaken.
Joseph had been hoping to avoid Inspector Perth when he almost bumped into him walking along the path in the middle of the quad, his pipe clenched between his teeth.
He took it out. “Good afternoon, Reverend,” he said, this time not standing aside but remaining in front of Joseph, effectively blocking his way.
“Good afternoon, Inspector,” Joseph answered, moving a little to the right to go around him.
“Any luck with your questions?” Perth said with what looked like polite interest.
Joseph thought for a moment of denying it, then remembered how frequently he had passed Perth coming or going. He would be lying, but more importantly Perth would know it and then assume he was hiding something— both of which were true. “I keep thinking so, and then realizing it all proves nothing,” he answered evasively.
“Oi know exactly what you mean,” Perth sympathized, knocking his pipe out on his shoe, examining it to make certain it was empty, then putting it in his pocket. “Oi come up with bits an’ pieces, then it slips out o’ my hands. But then you know these people, which Oi don’t.” He smiled pleasantly. “You’d know, fer instance, why Dr. Beecher seems t’ve made an exception for Mr. Allard, letting him get away with all kinds o’ cheek an’ lateness an’ the loike, where he’d punish someone else.” He waited, quite obviously expecting an answer.
Joseph thought quickly. “Can you give me an example?”
Perth replied without hesitation. “Mr. Allard handed in a paper late, an’ so did Mr. Morel. He took a mark off Mr. Morel for it, but not off Mr. Allard.”
