No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [145]
“Troops?” he said, turning from one colleague to another. “Where?”
“Russia,” Moulton replied to his left. “Over a million men. The czar mobilized them yesterday.”
“For the love of heaven, why?” Joseph was stunned. A million men! It was shattering and absurd.
Moulton stared at him dourly. “Because two days ago Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia,” he replied. “And yesterday they bombed Belgrade.”
“Bombed . . . !” The coldness went through Joseph as if someone had opened a door onto a freezing night. “Bombed Belgrade?”
Moulton’s face was tight. “I’m afraid so. I suppose with poor Beecher’s death no one mentioned it. Ridiculous, I know, but the death of someone we know seems worse than dozens or even hundreds of deaths of people we don’t—poor devils. God only knows what’ll happen next. It seems we can’t stop it now.”
“I’m afraid it looks as if war in Europe is inevitable,” Gorley-Smith said from the other side, his long face very grave, the light shining on his bald head. “Can’t say whether it’ll drag us in or not. Don’t see why it should.”
Joseph was thinking of a million Russian soldiers and the czar’s promise to support Serbia against Austria-Hungary.
“Makes our troops in the streets of Dublin look like a very small affair, doesn’t it?” Moulton said wryly.
“What!” Joseph exclaimed.
“On Monday,” Moulton told him, raising his wispy eyebrows. “We sent the troops in to disarm the rebels.” He frowned. “You’ll have to pull yourself together, Reavley. It seems Allard was a bit of a wrong ’un after all. And poor old Beecher lost his head completely. Woman’s reputation, I suppose, or something of the sort.”
“Of the sort,” Addison said sourly from the other side of the table. “Never saw him with a woman, did you?”
Joseph jerked up and glared at him. “Well, if it were something worth blackmailing him about, you wouldn’t, would you!” he snapped.
Gorley-Smith raised his glass. “Gentlemen, we have far larger and graver issues to concern ourselves with than one man’s tragedy and a young man who, it appears, was not as good as we wished to believe. It seems that Europe is on the brink of war. A new darkness threatens us, unlike anything we have seen before. Perhaps in a few weeks young men all over the land will be facing a far different future.”
“It won’t touch England!” Addison said with contempt. “It’ll be Austria-Hungary and east, or north if you count Russia.”
“Since they’ve just mobilized over a million men, we can hardly discount them!” Gorley-Smith retorted.
“Still a long way from Dover,” Moulton said with assurance, “let alone London. It won’t happen. For one thing, think of the cost of it! The sheer destruction! The bankers will never let it come to that.”
Addison leaned back, holding his wineglass in his hand, the light shining through the pale German white wine in it. “You’re quite right. Of course they won’t. Anyone who knows anything about international finance must realize that. They’ll go to the brink, then reach some agreement. It’s all just posturing. We’re past that stage of development now. For God’s sake, Europe is the highest civilization the world has ever seen. It’s all saber rattling, nothing more.”
The conversation swirled on around Joseph, but he barely listened. In his mind he saw not the oak-beamed dining hall, the windows with their centuries of stained-glass coats of arms, but instead the evening sun shining long and golden across the river. He saw Sebastian staring at the beauty of Cambridge—the architecture as well as the glories of the mind and the heart treasured down the centuries—and dreading the barbarity of war and all it would break in the spirit of mankind.
Joseph still found it impossible to believe that Sebastian had really been a grubby blackmailer. And Harry Beecher. How could he have killed Sebastian?
And was