No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [112]
Elwyn’s eyes opened abruptly, then his lips tightened and color flooded his face. He looked away. “I’ve got to. You don’t understand how she felt about Sebastian. She’ll get over this anger, then she’ll be all right. It’s just that—” He stopped, staring ahead at the flat, bright water.
Joseph finished the sentence for him. “If she knew who did it, and saw them punished, her anger would be satisfied.”
“I suppose so,” Elwyn conceded, but there was no conviction in his voice.
Joseph broached the subject he least wanted to. “But perhaps not?”
Elwyn said nothing.
“Why?” Joseph persisted. “Because to do so would force her to see something in Sebastian that she would not wish to?”
The misery in Elwyn’s face was unmistakable. “Everyone sees a different side of people. Mother doesn’t have any idea what Sebastian was like away from home, or even in it, really.”
Joseph felt intrusive, and certain that he, too, wanted to keep his illusions intact, but that was a luxury he could no longer afford. He was being offered a chance to learn, and he dared not turn away from it.
“Did she know about Flora Whickham?” he asked.
Elwyn stiffened, for an instant holding his breath. Then he let it out in a sigh. “He told you?”
“No. I discovered for myself, largely by accident.”
Elwyn swung around. “Don’t tell Mother! She wouldn’t understand. Flora’s a nice girl, but she’s . . .”
“A barmaid.”
Elwyn gave a rueful smile. “Yes, but what I was going to say was that she’s a pacifist, I mean a real one, and Mother wouldn’t begin to understand that.” There was confusion and distaste in his face, and a hurt too tender to probe. He looked away again toward the river, shielding his eyes from Joseph’s gaze. “Actually, neither do I. If you love something, belong to it and believe in it, how can you not fight to save it? What kind of a man wouldn’t?”
Perhaps he suspected Joseph of that same incomprehensible betrayal. If he did, there would be some truth in it. But then Joseph had read of the Boer War, and his imagination could re-create the unreachable pain, the horror that could not be eased or explained and never, with all the arguments on earth, be justified.
“He was not a coward,” Joseph said aloud. “He would fight for what he believed in.”
“Probably.” There was no certainty in Elwyn’s voice or his face.
“Who else knew about Flora?” Joseph asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Regina Coopersmith?” Joseph asked.
Elwyn froze. “God! I hope not!”
“But you’re not certain?”
“No. But I don’t really know Regina well. I suppose”— he chewed his lip and looked awkwardly at Joseph—“I don’t know women very well. I would feel dreadful, but maybe—” He did not finish.
There were a few moments of silence as they walked side by side over the grass and onto the path under the trees.
“Sebastian had a row with Dr. Beecher,” Elwyn went on.
“When?” Joseph felt a sinking inside himself.
“A couple of days before he died.”
“Do you know what it was about?”
“No, I don’t.” He turned to face Joseph. “I thought it was odd, actually, because Dr. Beecher was pretty decent to him.”
“Wasn’t he to everyone?”
“Of course. I meant more than to the rest of us.”
Joseph was puzzled. He remembered Beecher’s dislike of Sebastian. “In what way?” he asked. He had meant to be casual, but he heard the harder edge in his voice, and Elwyn must have heard it also.
Elwyn hesitated, uncomfortable. He shuffled his feet on the gravel of the path and sighed. “We all behave badly sometimes—come to a lecture late, turn in sloppy work. You know how it is?”
“I do.”
“Well, usually you get disciplined for it—ticked off and made to look an ass in front of the others, or get privileges revoked, or something like that. Well, Dr. Beecher was easier on Sebastian than on most of us. Sebastian sort of took advantage, as if he knew Dr. Beecher wouldn’t do anything. He could be an arrogant sod at times. He believed in his own image. . . .” He stopped. Guilt was naked in his face, the stoop of his shoulders, the fidgeting of his right foot as it scuffed the stones. He had said only what was true, but