No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [119]
“Good evening, Reverend Reavley,” she said with polite chill. “I hope you are well?”
“Yes, thank you,” he replied. “And you?” It was an absurd exchange. She was obviously suffering intensely. She looked anything but well. One inquired because it was the thing to say.
“I am not sure why you ask,” she answered, catching him off guard. “Do I tell you how I feel? Not only has some murderer robbed me of my son, but now vicious tongues are fouling his memory. Or would you feel less guilty if I merely tell you that I am perfectly well, thank you? I have no disease, only wounds!”
Neither of them noticed that Gerald Allard had come into the room, but Joseph heard his swift intake of breath. He waited for Gerald to make some attempt to retrieve his wife’s naked rudeness.
The silence prickled as if on the brink of thunder.
Connie looked from one to the other of them.
Gerald cleared his throat.
Mary swung around to him. “You were going to say something?” she accused. “Perhaps to defend your son, since he is lying in his grave and cannot defend himself?”
Gerald flushed a dark red. “I don’t think it is fair to accuse Reavley, my dear—” he started.
“Oh, isn’t it?” she demanded, her eyes wide. “He is the one who is assisting that dreadful policeman to suggest that Sebastian was blackmailing people, and that is why someone murdered him!” She swiveled back to Joseph, her eyes blazing. “Can you deny it, Reverend?” She loaded the last word with biting sarcasm. “Why? Were you jealous of Sebastian? Afraid he was going to outshine you in your own field? He had more poetry in his soul than you will ever have, and you must realize that. Is that why you are doing this? God! How he’d have despised you for it! He thought you were his friend!”
“Mary!” Gerald said desperately.
She ignored him. “I’ve listened to him talk about you as if you were flawless!” she said, her voice shaking with contempt, tears glistening in her eyes. “He thought you were wonderful, an unparalleled friend! Poor Sebastian—” She stopped only because her voice was too thick with emotion to continue.
Connie was watching, white-faced, but she did not interrupt.
“Really—” Gerald tried again.
Joseph cut across him. “Sebastian knew I was his friend,” he said very clearly. “But I was not as good a friend to him as I would have been had I tried more honestly to see his faults as well as his virtues. I would have served him better had I tried to curb his hubris instead of being blind to it.”
“Hubris?” she said icily.
“His pride in his own charm, his feeling of invulnerability,” he started to explain.
“I know what the word means, Mr. Reavley!” she snapped. “I was questioning your use of it with reference to my son! I find it intolerable that—”
“You find any criticism of him intolerable.” Gerald managed to make himself heard at last. “But somebody killed him!”
“Envy!” she said with absolute conviction. “Some small person who could not endure being eclipsed.” She looked at Joseph as she finished.
“Mrs. Allard,” Connie said, “we all sympathize with your grief, but that does not excuse you for being both cruel and unjust to another guest in my house, a man who has also lost his closest family almost as recently as you have. I think perhaps in your own loss you had temporarily forgotten that.” It was said calmly, even gravely, but it was a bitter rebuke.
Aidan Thyer, who had entered the room during the exchange, looked startled, but he did not intervene, and his expression as he glanced at Connie was unreadable, as if stemming from emotions profound and conflicting. In that instant Joseph wondered if he knew that Beecher was in love with his wife, and if it hurt him or made him fear he could lose what he must surely value intensely. Or did he? What was there, really, behind the habitual courtesy? Joseph glimpsed with pain the possibility of a world of loneliness and pretense.
But the present hauled him back. Mary Allard was furious, but she was too clearly in the wrong to defend herself. She adopted