No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [149]
Yet if he explained, then she would work out for herself the only terrible alternative: that it was someone who had access to the roof of her house, her husband. She would be a danger to him then, and would he kill her, too?
Would she work it out, even if he did not tell her? No. It all depended upon the gun having been hidden on the roof. He dared not let her deduce it.
“I’m not sure,” he lied. “When I’m certain, I’ll tell you.”
“Did Harry kill Sebastian?” Her voice was trembling, her face ashen.
Would she guess anyway? “No, he couldn’t have,” he answered. “But say nothing to anyone!” He made the warning sharp, a message of danger. “If he didn’t, Connie, then someone else did! Someone who may kill you. Please, say nothing at all, to absolutely anyone . . . including the master! I may be wrong.”
That, too, was a lie; Joseph had no doubt he was right. Aidan Thyer might kill, but he was certain in his heart that Harry Beecher had not. And if Connie had been out on the Backs early in the morning, then Aidan Thyer could have been anywhere; certainly he could have been in Sebastian’s rooms. And Thyer could have killed Sebastian for the same reason—because he was blackmailing any or all of them over exposing Connie’s affair.
Or it could have been Thyer Sebastian had seen on the Hauxton Road.
“Say nothing,” he repeated even more urgently, touching her arm. Her wrist was slender under his fingers. His mouth was dry, his hands sweating. “Please—remember it is murder we are dealing with.”
“Two murders?” she whispered.
“Perhaps,” he replied. He did not say it could be four—or, if Reisenburg had been murdered also, then five.
She nodded.
He stayed only to give her a few words of assurance, then walked slowly back in the bright sun, cold in his flesh and his bones.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Joseph walked slowly across the quad. The sun was hot in the early afternoon, but it felt airless. His clothes stuck to his skin. There were no clouds that he could see in the blue distance bounded by the crenellated tops of the walls, but it felt like thunder to come. The electricity of it was already inside him, an excitement and a fear that he was on the brink of the truth.
Where had Aidan Thyer been on the afternoon of Sunday, June 28? Whom could he ask that Thyer would not hear about it? Connie had been in the garden with Beecher. If Thyer had been on the Hauxton Road, where would he have told people he was? And who would remember now, over five weeks later?
He could not ask Connie; she would know why he was asking, and then no matter how hard she tried, it would surely be beyond her to conceal that knowledge from Thyer himself.
He was walking more and more slowly as he tried to make up his mind. Thyer had come late to the cricket match. Would Rattray, who had captained the St. John’s side, know where he had been before that? It was worth asking him. He turned and went rapidly back in through the door at the farther side and up to Rattray’s rooms. He was not there.
Ten minutes later Joseph found him in a corner of the library between the stacks, scanning the bottom shelf.
“Dr. Reavley! Are you looking for me, sir?” he asked, closing his place in the book in his hands.
“Yes, actually I was.” Joseph bent to the floor, looking along the row curiously. They were on warfare and European history. He regarded Rattray’s thin, anxious face.
Rattray bit his lip. “It looks pretty bad, sir,” he said quietly. “The kaiser warned the czar yesterday that if Russia didn’t stop within twenty-four hours, Germany would mobilize, too. Professor Moulton reckons they’ll probably close the world stock exchanges pretty soon. Maybe even by Monday.”
“It’s a bank holiday,” Joseph replied. “They’ll have all weekend to think about it.”
Rattray sat back on the floor, legs out in front of him. “Do you think so?” He rubbed the heel of his hand along his jaw. “God, it would be awful, wouldn’t it? Who could imagine five weeks ago that some lunatic in a town in Serbia, of all places, taking a potshot at an archduke