No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [159]
“Yes, I did,” Elwyn said at last. “It was Dr. Beecher.”
“Then he did it for someone else,” Joseph told him, knowing the blow he was dealing him, but it was a truth he could not hide forever. “Dr. Beecher did not kill Sebastian. He couldn’t have. He was somewhere else, and he has a witness to prove it.”
Elwyn’s body was rigid, his eyes hollow, almost black in the fading light of the room. “Somewhere else?” he whispered in horror—but it was not disbelief. Joseph saw it in him the moment before he tried to mask it, and for an instant they saw in each other that terrible understanding that can never be taken back.
Then Joseph looked away, the knowledge burned into him. Elwyn had known Beecher had not killed Sebastian! Then why had he shot Beecher? To protect whom? Not Connie. Aidan Thyer? Had Sebastian seen Thyer on the Hauxton Road and told Elwyn before he was killed? Was that why Elwyn would not speak, even now? Was it even conceivable that he had killed Beecher on Thyer’s orders, rather than be killed himself? The thoughts whirled in Joseph’s mind like leaves in a storm—chaotic, battering. Was this all part of the plot John Reavley had discovered in Reisenburg’s document? And was it going to cost Elwyn Allard his life as well?
He closed his eyes. “I’ll help you if I can, Elwyn,” he said softly. “But so help me God, I don’t know how!”
“You can’t,” Elwyn whispered, covering his face with his hands. “It’s too late.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Joseph woke up late on Sunday morning, his mind still consumed with Elwyn’s last words to him and with the picture of the young man’s utter despair. And yet Elwyn was determined to hide some secret of Sebastian’s death, even at this cost. Joseph had turned it over and over in his wakeful hours, grasping and losing, finding nothing that made sense.
It was the second of August, and he still did not know who had killed his parents, what the document was, or what had happened to it. He had tried, and every answer had evaporated the moment he framed it. But John and Alys Reavley were dead, and so were Sebastian Allard, the German Reisenburg, and now Harry Beecher. And poor Elwyn might well be, when the fullness of the law had run its course. Joseph knew of no way to help any of it.
Tomorrow was a bank holiday; he should go back to St. Giles and spend it with Judith. He had been too overwhelmed in the last few days even to write to her, or to Hannah.
He got up slowly, shaved, and dressed, but he did not go down to the dining hall for breakfast. He was not hungry, and certainly he did not want to face Moulton or any other of his colleagues. He was not going to explain about Elwyn or discuss the matter. It was a consuming tragedy, but it was a private one. The Allards had more than enough to bear without the added scourge of other people’s speculation.
He spent the morning tidying up various books and papers, then writing a long letter to Hannah, which he knew said little of any meaning—it was simply a way of keeping in touch. He went to the eleven o’clock service in the chapel, and found it washed over him without giving him any of the deep comfort he needed. But he had not honestly expected that it would. Perhaps he knew the words so well that he no longer heard them. Even the perfection of the music seemed irrelevant to the world of everyday life, the disillusion and all the loss he knew of around him.
He saw Connie Thyer briefly in the afternoon, but she had only a few minutes to talk. Again she was overtaken by the growing hysteria of Mary Allard and the futility of attempting to help, and yet she was obliged by circumstances and her own sense of pity to try.
Joseph walked out of the front gate and ambled aimlessly along the nearly deserted streets of the town. All the shops were closed in Sabbath decency. The few people he saw were soberly dressed and merely nodded to him respectfully as they passed.
Without intending to, he found himself on Jesus Lane, and instinctively turned right down Emmanuel Road. He strolled past Christ’s Pieces and eventually across St. Andrews Street,