No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [41]
Joseph passed him and opened it properly.
The curtains were drawn back and the scene was bathed in the hard, clear light of the early sun. Sebastian sat in his chair, leaning back a little. The low table beside him was spread with books, not littered but lying carefully piled on top of each other in a neat stack, here and there a slip of paper in to mark a place. One book was open in his lap and his hands, slender and strong, brown from the sun, lay loosely on top of it. His head was fallen back, his face perfectly calm, no fear or pain in it. There were a couple of deep scratches on one of them. His eyes were closed. His fair hair seemed barely disturbed. He could have been asleep but for the scarlet wound on his right temple and the blood splattered on the chair arm and floor beyond from the gaping hole at the other side. Elwyn was right. With an injury like that, Sebastian had to be dead.
Joseph went over to the young man, as if even the futile gesture of help were in some way still necessary. Then he stood still, the cold seeping through his body as he stared in sick dismay at the third person he had cared for shatteringly destroyed within the space of two weeks. It was as if he had awakened from one nightmare only to plunge into another.
He reached down and touched Sebastian’s cheek. It was colder than life but not yet chill.
A choked gasp from Elwyn tore Joseph out of his stupor. With an intense effort he submerged his own horror and turned to look at the younger man. He was ashen-skinned, the sweat standing out on his lip and brow, his eyes hollow with shock. His whole body trembled, and his breath came raggedly as he struggled to retain some control.
“There’s nothing you can do to help him,” Joseph said, surprised at how steady his voice sounded in the silence of the room. There was still no one down in the quad, no feet on the stairs outside. “Go and fetch the porter.”
Elwyn stood still. “Who . . . who could have done this?” he said, gulping air. “Who would . . . ?” He stopped, his eyes filling with tears.
“I don’t know. But we must find out,” Joseph replied. There was no gun in Sebastian’s hand, nor did one lie on the floor where it would have slipped from his fingers. “Go and fetch the porter,” he repeated. “Don’t speak to anyone else.” He glanced around the room. His mind was beginning to regain some clarity. The clock on the mantel said three minutes to seven. They were one floor up from the ground. The windows were closed and locked, every pane whole. Nothing was forced or broken, nor had the door any marks on it. Already the hideous knowledge was on the edge of Joseph’s mind: This had been done by someone inside the college, someone Sebastian knew, and he must have let the person in.
“Yes,” Elwyn said obediently. “Yes . . .” Then he turned on his heel and stumbled out, leaving the door open behind him, and Joseph heard his feet loud and clumsy going down.
Joseph went over and closed the door, then turned and stared at Sebastian. His face was peaceful but very tired, as though he had at last shed some terrible burden and allowed sleep to overtake him. Whoever had stood there with a gun in his hand, Sebastian had not had time to realize what he was going to do, or perhaps to believe that he meant it.
Pain was too crippling for anger yet. His mind could not accept it. Who would do such a thing? And why?
Young men were intense, just at the beginning of life and everything was larger to them, more acute: first real love, the brink of ambition realized, triumph and heartbreak so sharp, the power of dreams incalculable, the soaring mind tasting the joy of flight. Passion of all kinds was coming into its own, but violence was only the occasional fistfight, a brawl when someone had had too much to drink.
This had a darkness to it that was alien to everything Joseph knew and loved of Cambridge, to the whole of life here and all it meant. Like a blow, he remembered what Sebastian had said about the heart being changed