No Graves As Yet

someone with access to the master’s lodgings. Connie, in order to protect her reputation and thus all her marriage gave her? Or Aidan Thyer, because it was he whom Sebastian had seen on the Hauxton Road when the Lanchester crashed? Perhaps this was the last chance for Joseph to ask, and the moment when Elwyn had nothing left to lose and would tell him if he knew.

“Elwyn . . . ?”

Elwyn moved slightly in acknowledgment, but he did not look up.

“Elwyn, how did you find the gun?”

“What? Oh . . . I saw it.”

“Out of the upstairs window?”

“Yes. Why? What does it matter now?”

“It matters to me. Dr. Beecher didn’t put it there, did he? Was it Mr. Thyer—or Mrs. Thyer? Did you see?”

Joseph waited. It seemed almost a battle of wills.

“Yes, I did,” Elwyn said at last. “It was Dr. Beecher.”

“Then he did it for someone else,” Joseph told him, knowing the blow he was dealing him, but it was a truth he could not hide forever. “Dr. Beecher did not kill Sebastian. He couldn’t have. He was somewhere else, and he has a witness to prove it.”

Elwyn’s body was rigid, his eyes hollow, almost black in the fading light of the room. “Somewhere else?” he whispered in horror—but it was not disbelief. Joseph saw it in him the moment before he tried to mask it, and for an instant they saw in each other that terrible understanding that can never be taken back.

Then Joseph looked away, the knowledge burned into him. Elwyn had known Beecher had not killed Sebastian! Then why had he shot Beecher? To protect whom? Not Connie. Aidan Thyer? Had Sebastian seen Thyer on the Hauxton Road and told Elwyn before he was killed? Was that why Elwyn would not speak, even now? Was it even conceivable that he had killed Beecher on Thyer’s orders, rather than be killed himself? The thoughts whirled in Joseph’s mind like leaves in a storm—chaotic, battering. Was this all part of the plot John Reavley had discovered in Reisenburg’s document? And was it going to cost Elwyn Allard his life as well?

He closed his eyes. “I’ll help you if I can, Elwyn,” he said softly. “But so help me God, I don’t know how!”

“You can’t,” Elwyn whispered, covering his face with his hands. “It’s too late.”

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

Joseph woke up late on Sunday morning, his mind still consumed with Elwyn’s last words to him and with the picture of the young man’s utter despair. And yet Elwyn was determined to hide some secret of Sebastian’s death, even at this cost. Joseph had turned it over and over in his wakeful hours, grasping and losing, finding nothing that made sense.

It was the second of August, and he still did not know who had killed his parents, what the document was, or what had happened to it. He had tried, and every answer had evaporated the moment he framed it. But John and Alys Reavley were dead, and so were Sebastian Allard, the German Reisenburg, and now Harry Beecher. And poor Elwyn might well be, when the fullness of the law had run its course. Joseph knew of no way to help any of it.

Tomorrow was a bank holiday; he should go back to St. Giles and spend it with Judith. He had been too overwhelmed in the last few days even to write to her, or to Hannah.

He got up slowly, shaved, and dressed, but he did not go down to the dining hall for breakfast. He was not hungry, and certainly he did not want to face Moulton or any other of his colleagues. He was not going to explain about Elwyn or discuss the matter. It was a consuming tragedy, but it was a private one. The Allards had more than enough to bear without the added scourge of other people’s speculation.

He spent the morning tidying up various books and papers, then writing a long letter to Hannah, which he knew said little of any meaning—it was simply a way of keeping in touch. He went to the eleven o’clock service in the chapel, and found it washed over him without giving him any of the deep comfort he needed. But he had not honestly expected that it would. Perhaps he knew the words so well that he no longer heard them. Even the perfection of the music seemed irrelevant to the world of everyday life, the disillusion and all the loss he knew of around him.

He saw Connie Thyer briefly in the afternoon, but she had only a few minutes to talk. Again she was overtaken by the growing hysteria of Mary Allard and the futility of attempting to help, and yet she was obliged by circumstances and her own sense of pity to try.

Joseph walked out of the front gate and ambled aimlessly along the nearly deserted streets of the town. All the shops were closed in Sabbath decency. The few people he saw were soberly dressed and merely nodded to him respectfully as they passed.

Without intending to, he found himself on Jesus Lane, and instinctively turned right down Emmanuel Road. He strolled past Christ’s Pieces and eventually across St. Andrews Street, along to Downing Street toward Corpus Christi and the river again.

He was not really thinking so much as letting things run through his mind. It was still teeming with questions, and he had no idea where to find a thread to begin untangling even one answer. Perhaps it began with who had killed Sebastian, and why.

The longest day of summer was well past, and by half past six he was tired and thirsty, and the sun was lowering in the west. Maybe he had come to the pub near the millpond intentionally, even if it had not been consciously in his mind. He would be able to sit down here and have supper and a long, cool drink. In time he could make the opportunity to talk with Flora Whickham again. If Sebastian had known anything about the crash of the Lanchester, then she would be the one person he might have told, other than Elwyn, and there was no chance that Joseph could draw it out of him. He was locked inside his own misery and grief, and perhaps fear as well. If he held that lethal knowledge, it could be the catalyst for his own death if he spoke it aloud to anyone. And why should he trust Joseph? So far he had succeeded in nothing except proving that Beecher did not kill Sebastian or take his own life.

The pub was quiet—a few older men sitting over pints of ale, faces grim, voices subdued. The landlord moved among them quietly, filling tankards, wiping tables. Even for Flora there were no jokes.

Joseph had cold game pie with fresh tomatoes, pickles, and vegetables, then raspberries and clotted cream. The other tables were empty and the air was already hazed with gold when at last he was able to gain Flora’s attention undivided. It was deserted now, and the landlord granted her an early evening.

She seemed quite willing to walk along the Backs under the trees in the fading light. There was no one on the river, at least on this stretch, and the leaves flickered in the barest breeze. One minute they were green and shadowed, the next opaque gold. There was little sound but a whispering of the wind, no voices, no laughter.

“Is it true that Sebastian’s brother killed Dr. Beecher?” Flora asked him.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

“In revenge over Sebastian?”

“No. Dr. Beecher didn’t kill Sebastian, and Elwyn knew that.”

She frowned, the golden light making her hair a halo around her troubled face. “Then why?” she asked. “He loved Sebastian, you know.” She shook her head a little. “He din’t hero-worship him; he knew his faults, even though he didn’t understand him much. They was a lot different.” She stared ahead of her at the light across the smooth sweep of the grass, the tiny motes of dust swirling in the air, the sun gilding the flat surface of the water. “If there’s going to be a war, an’ it seems loike from what people say that there is, then Elwyn would have gone to fight. He would have thought it was his duty an’ honor. But Sebastian would have done anything on earth to prevent it.”

“Did Elwyn know that?”

“Oi think so.” She waited a moment or two before she continued. “He din’t understand how much Sebastian cared, though. No one else did.”

“Not even Miss Coopersmith?” he asked gently. He did not know if Flora knew of her, but even if she had not, she surely never hoped for more from Sebastian than friendship, at the very most. The least would have been