No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [135]
“No more than chance?” Matthew said with a twist of his lips. The irony of it hurt.
“Perhaps he came this way because this was where Father lived,” Joseph suggested. “It seems he knew Cambridgeshire—he took the house here.”
“Whom was he intending to give it to?” Matthew stared ahead of him into the distance. “If only we could find that out!”
“I don’t know how,” Joseph replied. “Reisenburg is dead, and the house is let out to someone else. We drove past.”
“At least we know where Father got it.” Matthew sat back, relaxing his body at last. “That’s a lot. For the first time there’s a glimmer of sense!”
They stayed up another half hour, arguing more possibilities along with the chances of finding out more about Reisenburg, and then the family went to bed, as Matthew had to get up at six and drive early to London. Joseph was to go back to Cambridge at a much more agreeable hour.
Almost as soon as he entered the gate Joseph ran into Inspector Perth, looking pale, hunch-shouldered, and jumpy.
“Don’t ask me!” he said before Joseph had even spoken. “Oi don’t know who killed Mr. Allard, but so help me God, Oi mean to find out, if Oi have to take this place apart man by man!” And without waiting for a reply he strode off, leaving Joseph openmouthed.
He had left St. Giles before breakfast, and now he was hungry. He walked across the quad in the sun, and under the arch to the dining hall. The mood was sombre. No one was in the mood for talking. There were murmurs about Irish rebels in the streets of Dublin, and the possibility of sending in British troops to disarm them, perhaps even as soon as today.
Joseph was busy catching up on essay papers all morning, and when he had time for his own thoughts at all, it was for Reisenburg, lying in a Cambridgeshire grave, unknown to whoever loved or cared for him, murdered for a piece of paper. Could the document possibly be to do with some as yet unimagined horror in Ireland that would stain England’s honor even more deeply than its dealings with that unhappy country had done already? The more he thought of it, the less likely it seemed. It must be something in Europe, surely. Sarajevo? Or something else? A socialist revolution? A giant upheaval of values such as the revolutions that had swept the continent in 1848?
He did not wish to go to the hall for luncheon, and bought himself a sandwich instead. Early in the afternoon he was crossing the quad back to his rooms when he saw Connie Thyer coming from the shadow of the arch. She looked harassed and a little flushed.
“Dr. Reavley! How nice to see you. Did you have a pleasant weekend?”
He smiled. “In many ways, yes, thank you.” He was about to ask her if she had also, and stopped himself just in time. With Mary Allard still her guest, still waiting for justice and vengeance, how could she? “How are you?” he asked instead.
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if exhaustion had overtaken her. She opened them and smiled. “It gets worse,” she said wearily. “Of course this wretched policeman has to ask everyone questions: who liked Sebastian and who didn’t, and why.” Her face suddenly pinched with unhappiness, and her eyes clouded. “But what he is finding is so ugly.”
He waited. It seemed like minutes because he dreaded what she was going to say; he was prolonging the moment of ignorance, and yet he was pretending. He did know.
She sighed. “Of course he doesn’t say what he’s found, but one can’t help knowing, because people talk. The young men feel so guilty. No one wants to speak ill of the dead, especially when his family is so close by. And then they are angry because they are placed in a situation where they can’t do anything else.”
He offered her his arm, and they walked very slowly, as if intending to go somewhere.
“And because they have been cornered into doing something they are ashamed of,” she went on, “poor Eardslie is furious with himself, and Morel is furious with Foubister, who must have said something dreadful, because he is so ashamed he won’t look anyone