No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [44]
“I don’t know,” he admitted. He saw the confusion in her face. That was not good enough. “You are right.” He forced himself to sound certain. “We need to do the ordinary things to help each other. I appreciate your good sense. The students who are here are going to be distressed. We shall need to keep our heads, for their sake. It will be unpleasant having the police here asking questions, but we must endure it with as much dignity as we can.”
Her face ironed out, and she smiled very slightly. “Of course. If such a hideous thing had to happen, I am so glad you were here. You always grasp the core of things. Other people only ever seem to touch the edges.”
He was embarrassed. She saw more in him than was there. But if it comforted her, he would not indulge in the honesty of denying it at her expense.
“It is good to have something to do, isn’t it?” she said wryly. “How wise you are. It will at least get us through the worst of it with some kind of honor. I had better get dressed. I dare say the police will be here almost immediately. The master will inform the poor young man’s family, but I should prepare their accommodation here in college, in case that is what they would like. Fortunately at this time of year there are plenty of rooms.” She gave a choking little laugh. “The practical and domestic again. I cannot imagine what to say to a woman whose son has been . . . murdered!”
Joseph thought of Mary Allard and how her grief would consume her. No mother can bear the death of her child, but Mary had loved Sebastian with a fierce, all-enveloping pride. She saw in him everything that fed her ambition and her dreams.
He could understand it so easily. Sebastian had possessed an energy of the spirit that lit not only his own vision, but that of others as well. He had touched their lives, whether they wished it or not. It was impossible to believe that his mind did not exist anymore. How could Mary Allard ever bear it?
“Yes,” he said, turning to her with sudden urgency. “You will have to look after them, and not be hurt or dismayed if they are in the kind of pain that unintentionally wounds others carelessly, or even on purpose. Sometimes when we are drowning in our own loss we lash out—anger is momentarily easier to cope with.” That was hideously true, and yet he was speaking not from his own passion but in the accustomed platitudes he had used for years. He was ashamed of himself, but he did not know what else to say. If he laid open his own feelings, he would allow her to see the rage and confusion inside him, and he could not afford that. She would be repelled by its savagery—and frightened.
“I know.” She smiled with great sweetness. “You don’t need to tell me . . . or to worry about them.” She spoke as if he had answered her need. “Thank you.” He had to escape before he broke the grace of her judgment. “Yes . . . thank you. I must see what else I can do.” And he excused himself and left, still barefoot and now feeling ridiculous in the broad daylight. He had given no answers at all, not from faith. He had simply provided the advice of common sense: Deal with what one can. At least do something.
He went under the archway into his own quad. Two students returning from early exercise stared at him in amusement and smothered laughter. Did they imagine he was coming back in his pajamas after an assignation? At another time he would have corrected them and left them in no doubt, but now the words died on his tongue. It was as if there were two realities, side by side, glittering, bright as shattered glass, one in which death was violent and terrible, the smell of blood was in the throat, and images floated before the eyes, even when they were closed—and another reality in which he merely looked absurd, wandering around in his dressing gown.
He did not trust himself to speak to the students in case he screamed the dreadful truth.