No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [148]
“Connie . . .”
The expression vanished again, drowned in misery.
He had to go on; there were other things that he had to know. There was no more time to spend in patience. “About the morning Sebastian was murdered, and the day leading up to the time Harry died.”
“I don’t know anything useful.” Her voice was flat again, emotion buried far below in a sea of pain too deep to dare touch.
“And about Sunday, the day the archduke and duchess were shot in Sarajevo,” he went on.
She swung around. “Oh, God! You can’t think Harry had anything to do with that! That’s idiotic!”
“Of course I don’t!” He denied it vehemently, but his mind went to the yellow Lanchester mangled and broken, and his parents’ bodies covered with blood. Until the moment of saying it, the thought had not entered his mind that Beecher could be guilty of that, but now it was there, a tiny shard, like a dagger.
She was staring at him incredulously.
“No!” he said again, forcing a smile, this time in the face of the absurdity of Beecher being responsible for the assassination in Sarajevo. “I simply used that event to bring the day to your mind. If you remember, it was also the day my parents were killed.”
“Oh!” She was stunned and utterly contrite, her face crumpled in pity. “Joseph, I’m so sorry. I had completely forgotten! With—” She took a deep breath and held it a moment. “With murder”—she forced herself to use the word—“here in college, an accidental death, even two, seems so much . . . cleaner. What is it you need to know? If I can tell you, of course I will.”
Now was the moment to say what he had to. “I think someone may have seen what happened. Do you know where Harry was about noon that day?”
The color swept up her face. She must have felt its heat, because her eyes betrayed her as well. “Yes. It couldn’t have been he,” she said.
He could not let it go quite so delicately. “Are you certain, as a fact, not a belief?”
“Absolutely.” She looked down, away from him.
“And the morning Sebastian was killed?” He chose the slightly softer word, blunting it where he could.
She turned a little to look out of the window again. “I got up early and walked along the Backs. I was with Harry. I can’t prove it because we kept to the trees. We didn’t want to be seen, and there are quite often other people around, mostly students, even at five or six.”
“Then it is not possible that Harry could have killed Sebastian,” he said, watching for the slightest shadow in her eyes or alteration in the rigidity of her body that would betray that she was lying to protect him, even now that he was dead.
She turned to face him, her eyes wide, brilliant. “How can you be sure?” she said, not daring yet to grasp the hope. “We didn’t meet until nearly six. Sebastian could have been killed before that, couldn’t he?” She was pale now, perhaps wondering if Beecher had come to her straight from having murdered the one man who threatened them both.
“Where did you meet?” he asked.
She was confused. “Where? I went over the Bridge of Sighs, because it’s enclosed and no one would have seen me, then walked to the beginning of the trees. He was there.”
“He didn’t come to the lodgings?”
Her dark eyes widened. “Good heavens, of course not! We’re not completely mad!”
“When was the next time he was there?”
“I don’t know. Why? About two days, I think. I had the Allards by then, and everything was a nightmare.”
A warmth began to ease inside him. Beecher had definitely not killed Sebastian, because he had had no time to hide the gun! Not if it had been on the master’s roof—and the more he thought of it, the more certain he became that that was where it had been. “And before he shot himself?” he asked.
She stiffened again, her face white. “I saw him in the Fellows’ Garden the evening before, just for a little while, almost fifteen minutes. Aidan was due home.”
“Did he go inside?”
“No. Why?”
Should he tell her? Caution said not . . . but she had loved Beecher, and the thought that he had committed murder and