No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [48]
A cold breath touched him—fear that Perth would inevitably come to wrong conclusions about these young men, misunderstand what they said and did, mistake motives, and blame innocence, simply because it was all alien to him. And the damage would be irretrievable.
And then the moment after, his own arrogance struck him like a blow. He belonged to the same world, he had known all of them for at least a year and seen them almost every day during term time, and he had not had even the faintest idea of hatred slowly building until it exploded in lethal violence.
There must have been signs; he had ignored them, misinterpreted them as harmless, and misread everything they meant. He would like to think it had been charity, but it wasn’t. To have been blind to the truth was stupidity at best; at worst it was also moral cowardice. “If I can help you, of course I will,” he said much more humbly. “I . . . I am as . . . shocked . . .”
“O’ course you are, sir,” Perth said with surprising gentleness. “Everybody is. No one expects anything like this to happen. Just tell me if you remember anything or if you see anything now. An’ no doubt you’ll be doing what you can to help the young gentlemen. Some of ’em look pretty frangled.”
“Yes, naturally. Is there . . .”
“Nothing, sir,” Perth assured him.
Joseph thanked him and left, going outside into the bright, hard sunlight of the quad. Almost immediately he ran into Lucian Foubister, his face white, his dark hair on end as if he had run his hands through it again and again.
“Dr. Reavley!” he gasped. “They think one of us did it! That can’t be true. Someone else must’ve . . .” He stopped in front of Joseph, blocking his way. He did not know how to ask for help, but his eyes were desperate. He was a northerner from the outskirts of Manchester, accustomed to rows of brick houses back to back with each other, cold water and privies. The Cambridge world of ancient, intricate beauty, space, and leisure had stunned and changed him forever. He could never truly belong here; neither could he return to what he had been before. Now he looked younger than his twenty-two years, and thinner than Joseph had remembered.
“It appears that it was,” Joseph said gently. “We may be able to find some other answer, but no one broke in, and Sebastian was sitting quite calmly in his chair, which suggests he was not afraid of whoever entered his room.”
“Then it must have been an accident,” Foubister said breathlessly. “And . . . and whoever it was is too scared to own up to it. Can’t blame him, really. But he’ll say, when he realizes the police are thinking it’s murder.” He stopped again, his eyes searching Joseph’s, begging to be reassured.
It was an answer Joseph longed to believe. Whoever had committed such an act would be devastated. To run away was cowardly, and he would be ashamed, but better that than murder. And it would mean Joseph had not been blind to hatred. There had been none to see.
“I hope that’s true,” he answered, placing a hand on Foubister’s arm. “Wait and see what happens. And don’t leap to judgment yet.”
Foubister nodded, but he said nothing. Joseph watched as he hurried away to the opposite side. As clearly as if he had been told, Joseph knew he was going straight to see his friend Morel.
Gerald and Mary Allard arrived before noon. They had only to come from Haslingfield, about four miles to the southwest. The first shock of the news must have reached them after breakfast, almost certainly leaving them too stunned to react immediately. There may have been people to tell, perhaps a doctor or a priest, and other members of the family.
Joseph dreaded meeting them. He knew Mary’s grief would be wild and savage. She would feel all the pent-up, wounding rage that he did. The comforting words that she had said so sincerely to him at his parents’ funeral would mean nothing repeated back to her now, just as they had meant nothing to him at