“People will say what they wish to say, Mrs. Allard,” he said stiffly, his mouth dry. “Or what they believe to be true. I cannot stop them, nor would I, any more than I can stop you saying whatever you wish to about Dr. Beecher, who was also my friend.”
“Then you are unfortunate in your choice of friends, Dr. Reavley,” she snapped. “You are naive, and think too well of many people, but not well enough of others. I think you would be better served by some long and deep contemplation of your own powers of judgment.” She lifted her chin a trifle higher. “It was civil of you to come to wish us goodbye. No doubt you considered it your duty. Please accept that it is done, and feel no need to call upon us further. Good day.”
“Thank you,” Joseph said with unaccustomed sarcasm. “That puts my mind greatly at ease.”
She swung round and glared at him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I shall feel free not to call upon you again,” he answered. “I am obliged to you.”
She opened her mouth to make some reply, and to her fury the tears flooded her eyes. She swung around and marched out, black silk skirts crackling, shoulders stiff.
Joseph felt guilty, and angry, and thoroughly miserable.
“Don’t,” Connie whispered. “She deserved that. She has been behaving for three weeks as if she were the only person in the world who has ever been bereaved. My heart aches for her, but I can’t like her!” She took in a long, deep breath and let it out in a sob. “Even less now.”
He looked at her. “Nor I,” he said gently, and they both stood there, smiling and blinking, trying not to weep.
Joseph spent the rest of the day in a haze of misery. At night he slept poorly and rose late, grief washing back over him like a returning tide. He missed breakfast altogether, and forced himself to go back to the dining hall for luncheon. He had expected the conversation still to be about Beecher’s death. He was startled to find instead that it was about yesterday’s newspaper headlines, added to by this morning’s. Somehow he had not taken any notice until now.
“Troops?” he said, turning from one colleague to another. “Where?”
“Russia,” Moulton replied to his left. “Over a million men. The czar mobilized them yesterday.”
“For the love of heaven, why?” Joseph was stunned. A million men! It was shattering and absurd.
Moulton stared at him dourly. “Because two days ago Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia,” he replied. “And yesterday they bombed Belgrade.”
“Bombed . . . !” The coldness went through Joseph as if someone had opened a door onto a freezing night. “Bombed Belgrade?”
Moulton’s face was tight. “I’m afraid so. I suppose with poor Beecher’s death no one mentioned it. Ridiculous, I know, but the death of someone we know seems worse than dozens or even hundreds of deaths of people we don’t—poor devils. God only knows what’ll happen next. It seems we can’t stop it now.”
“I’m afraid it looks as if war in Europe is inevitable,” Gorley-Smith said from the other side, his long face very grave, the light shining on his bald head. “Can’t say whether it’ll drag us in or not. Don’t see why it should.”
Joseph was thinking of a million Russian soldiers and the czar’s promise to support Serbia against Austria- Hungary.
“Makes our troops in the streets of Dublin look like a very small affair, doesn’t it?” Moulton said wryly.
“What!” Joseph exclaimed.
“On Monday,” Moulton told him, raising his wispy eyebrows. “We sent the troops in to disarm the rebels.” He frowned. “You’ll have to pull yourself together, Reavley. It seems Allard was a bit of a wrong ’un after all. And poor old Beecher lost his head completely. Woman’s reputation, I suppose, or something of the sort.”
“Of the sort,” Addison said sourly from the other side of the table. “Never saw him with a woman, did you?”
Joseph jerked up and glared at him. “Well, if it were something worth blackmailing him about, you wouldn’t, would you!” he snapped.
Gorley-Smith raised his glass. “Gentlemen, we have far larger and graver issues to concern ourselves with than one man’s tragedy and a young man who, it appears, was not as good as we wished to believe. It seems that Europe is on the brink of war. A new darkness threatens us, unlike anything we have seen before. Perhaps in a few weeks young men all over the land will be facing a far different future.”
“It won’t touch England!” Addison said with contempt. “It’ll be Austria-Hungary and east, or north if you count Russia.”
“Since they’ve just mobilized over a million men, we can hardly discount them!” Gorley-Smith retorted.
“Still a long way from Dover,” Moulton said with assurance, “let alone London. It won’t happen. For one thing, think of the cost of it! The sheer destruction! The bankers will never let it come to that.”
Addison leaned back, holding his wineglass in his hand, the light shining through the pale German white wine in it. “You’re quite right. Of course they won’t. Anyone who knows anything about international finance must realize that. They’ll go to the brink, then reach some agreement. It’s all just posturing. We’re past that stage of development now. For God’s sake, Europe is the highest civilization the world has ever seen. It’s all saber rattling, nothing more.”
The conversation swirled on around Joseph, but he barely listened. In his mind he saw not the oak-beamed dining hall, the windows with their centuries of stained-glass coats of arms, but instead the evening sun shining long and golden across the river. He saw Sebastian staring at the beauty of Cambridge—the architecture as well as the glories of the mind and the heart treasured down the centuries—and dreading the barbarity of war and all it would break in the spirit of mankind.
Joseph still found it impossible to believe that Sebastian had really been a grubby blackmailer. And Harry Beecher. How could he have killed Sebastian?
And was any of it tied to the murders of John and Alys Reavley? Had Sebastian witnessed their deaths and known who was responsible? Or was that only a hideous coincidence? How could it have anything to do with Reisenburg and whoever had killed him?
Or the worst thought of all: Was Sebastian blackmailing Beecher not over Connie but over the Reavleys’ deaths?
Or was there someone else who had taken advantage of Beecher’s love affair to hide the fact that it was he whom Sebastian was blackmailing? Someone Sebastian had seen lay that string of caltrops across the road?
Or was Joseph simply trying, yet again, to avoid a truth he found too painful to believe? For all his proclaimed love of reason, the faith in God he professed aloud, was he a moral coward, without the courage to test the truth, or the real belief in anything but the facts he could see? Did he trust God at all? Was it a relationship of spirit to spirit? Or just an idea that lasted only until he tried to make it carry the weight of pain or despair?
He laid down his napkin and rose to his feet. “Excuse me. I have duties I must attend to. I’ll see you at dinner.” He did not wait for their startled response, but walked quickly across the floor and out of the door into the sun.
It was time he looked at Sebastian’s murder without any evasion or protection for his own feelings. He must have at least that much honesty. Perhaps he had not really accepted it until now. His emotions were still trying to absorb the death of his parents.
He was walking aimlessly, but swiftly enough to distract anyone from speaking to him.
Sebastian had been shot early in the morning, before most people were up. According to Perth, it had been with a Webley revolver, probably like the one that had killed Beecher. No one had admitted ever seeing such a gun in college. So where had it come from? Whose was it?
Surely the fact of having such a thing indicated intent to kill. Where did one buy or steal a gun? It was certain beyond any reasonable doubt that the same gun had been used both times, so where had it been that the police had not found it?
He walked over the Bridge of Sighs and out into the sun again. He knew St. John’s better than the police possibly could. Surely if he applied his mind to the problem, he could deduce where the gun had been.
He passed a couple of students strolling, deep in conversation. A man and a young woman in a punt drifted lazily along the river. Three young men sat on the grass, absorbed in conversation. Another sat alone, lost in a book. Peace soaked into the bones like the heat of the sun. If they had read the same news as Moulton and
