She was confused. “Where? I went over the Bridge of Sighs, because it’s enclosed and no one would have seen me, then walked to the beginning of the trees. He was there.”
“He didn’t come to the lodgings?”
Her dark eyes widened. “Good heavens, of course not! We’re not completely mad!”
“When was the next time he was there?”
“I don’t know. Why? About two days, I think. I had the Allards by then, and everything was a nightmare.”
A warmth began to ease inside him. Beecher had definitely not killed Sebastian, because he had had no time to hide the gun! Not if it had been on the master’s roof—and the more he thought of it, the more certain he became that that was where it had been. “And before he shot himself?” he asked.
She stiffened again, her face white. “I saw him in the Fellows’ Garden the evening before, just for a little while, almost fifteen minutes. Aidan was due home.”
“Did he go inside?”
“No. Why?”
Should he tell her? Caution said not . . . but she had loved Beecher, and the thought that he had committed murder and then suicide was a bleeding wound inside her.
Yet if he explained, then she would work out for herself the only terrible alternative: that it was someone who had access to the roof of her house, her husband. She would be a danger to him then, and would he kill her, too?
Would she work it out, even if he did not tell her? No. It all depended upon the gun having been hidden on the roof. He dared not let her deduce it.
“I’m not sure,” he lied. “When I’m certain, I’ll tell you.”
“Did Harry kill Sebastian?” Her voice was trembling, her face ashen.
Would she guess anyway? “No, he couldn’t have,” he answered. “But say nothing to anyone!” He made the warning sharp, a message of danger. “If he didn’t, Connie, then someone else did! Someone who may kill you. Please, say nothing at all, to absolutely anyone . . . including the master! I may be wrong.”
That, too, was a lie; Joseph had no doubt he was right. Aidan Thyer might kill, but he was certain in his heart that Harry Beecher had not. And if Connie had been out on the Backs early in the morning, then Aidan Thyer could have been anywhere; certainly he could have been in Sebastian’s rooms. And Thyer could have killed Sebastian for the same reason—because he was blackmailing any or all of them over exposing Connie’s affair.
Or it could have been Thyer Sebastian had seen on the Hauxton Road.
“Say nothing,” he repeated even more urgently, touching her arm. Her wrist was slender under his fingers. His mouth was dry, his hands sweating. “Please—remember it is murder we are dealing with.”
“Two murders?” she whispered.
“Perhaps,” he replied. He did not say it could be four—or, if Reisenburg had been murdered also, then five.
She nodded.
He stayed only to give her a few words of assurance, then walked slowly back in the bright sun, cold in his flesh and his bones.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Joseph walked slowly across the quad. The sun was hot in the early afternoon, but it felt airless. His clothes stuck to his skin. There were no clouds that he could see in the blue distance bounded by the crenellated tops of the walls, but it felt like thunder to come. The electricity of it was already inside him, an excitement and a fear that he was on the brink of the truth.
Where had Aidan Thyer been on the afternoon of Sunday, June 28? Whom could he ask that Thyer would not hear about it? Connie had been in the garden with Beecher. If Thyer had been on the Hauxton Road, where would he have told people he was? And who would remember now, over five weeks later?
He could not ask Connie; she would know why he was asking, and then no matter how hard she tried, it would surely be beyond her to conceal that knowledge from Thyer himself.
He was walking more and more slowly as he tried to make up his mind. Thyer had come late to the cricket match. Would Rattray, who had captained the St. John’s side, know where he had been before that? It was worth asking him. He turned and went rapidly back in through the door at the farther side and up to Rattray’s rooms. He was not there.
Ten minutes later Joseph found him in a corner of the library between the stacks, scanning the bottom shelf.
“Dr. Reavley! Are you looking for me, sir?” he asked, closing his place in the book in his hands.
“Yes, actually I was.” Joseph bent to the floor, looking along the row curiously. They were on warfare and European history. He regarded Rattray’s thin, anxious face.
Rattray bit his lip. “It looks pretty bad, sir,” he said quietly. “The kaiser warned the czar yesterday that if Russia didn’t stop within twenty-four hours, Germany would mobilize, too. Professor Moulton reckons they’ll probably close the world stock exchanges pretty soon. Maybe even by Monday.”
“It’s a bank holiday,” Joseph replied. “They’ll have all weekend to think about it.”
Rattray sat back on the floor, legs out in front of him. “Do you think so?” He rubbed the heel of his hand along his jaw. “God, it would be awful, wouldn’t it? Who could imagine five weeks ago that some lunatic in a town in Serbia, of all places, taking a potshot at an archduke—and Austria’s got loads of them—could blow up into this? Just a short time, barely more than a month, and the whole world’s changed.”
“Six weeks ago, nearly.” Joseph found the thought strange, too. Then his parents had been alive. Six weeks ago tomorrow would be the Saturday John Reavley had driven the yellow Lanchester to Little Wilbraham and talked to Reisenburg—and found the document. That night he had telephoned Matthew in London. The next day he had been killed.
“We played cricket at Fenner’s Field,” he said aloud. “You captained the side. I remember being there, and Beecher, and the Master.”
Rattray nodded.
“Sebastian wasn’t,” Joseph continued. “He was late coming back home. I expect the master wasn’t pleased. He was one of our best bats.”
“Rotten bowler, though.” Rattray smiled. He looked close to tears, his voice a little thick. “No, the master was pretty cross when he did come, actually. Sort of caught him by surprise that Sebastian wasn’t playing.”
Joseph felt cold. “When he did come?”
“He was late, too!” Rattray pulled a slight face. “Don’t know where he’d been, but he arrived in a hell of a temper. He said he’d been stuck on the side of Jesus Lane with a puncture, but I know he wasn’t, because Dr. Beecher came that way and he’d have seen him.” He sighed and looked away, blinking hard. “Unless, of course, you can’t believe Dr. Beecher anymore. I just can’t—I can’t understand that!” He chewed painfully on his lower lip to stop it trembling. “Everything’s sort of . . . slipping apart, isn’t it? You know, I used to think Sebastian was pretty decent.” He looked at Joseph. “He had some odd ideas—used to waffle on about peace, and that war was a sin against mankind, and that there wasn’t anything in the world worth fighting for if it meant killing whole nations and filling the earth with hate.”
He rubbed his jaw again, leaving a smudge of dust on it. “A bit too much, but still sane, still all right! I never thought he would do something really squalid, like blackmail. That’s filthy! Beecher might have been doing something out of line, but he was a decent chap—I’d have staked anything you like on that.” He pushed his hair back off his forehead in a gesture of infinite weariness. “I’m beginning to wonder if I really know very much at all.”
Joseph understood his confusion profoundly. He was fighting his own way through the same desperation, trying to make sense of it and regain his own balance. But there was no time for the long, gentle conversations of comfort now. “Where do you think the master was?” he asked.
Rattray shrugged. “I’ve no idea. Or why he should say something that wasn’t true.”
