No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [60]
“If they don’t find anyone, what will happen?” Elwyn said when they had the chance to speak and be heard.
“I suppose they’ll give up,” Joseph answered. He looked sideways at his companion, seeing the anxiety in his face. He could imagine Mary Allard’s fury. Perhaps that was what Elwyn was thinking of, too, and afraid of. “But they will.” The instant the words were out, he knew they were a mistake. He saw the bleak pain in Elwyn. He stopped on the footpath, reaching for Elwyn’s arm and swinging him round to a standstill also. “Do you know anything?” he asked abruptly. “Are you afraid to say it, in case it would give somebody a motive for killing Sebastian?”
“No, I don’t!” Elwyn retorted, his face flushed, his eyes hot. “Sebastian wasn’t anything like as perfect as Mother thinks, but he was basically pretty decent. You know that! Of course he said some stupid things, and he could cut you to bits with his tongue, but so can lots of people. You have to live with that. It’s like being good at rowing, or boxing, or anything else. You win sometimes, and sometimes you lose. Even those who didn’t like Sebastian didn’t hate him!” His emotion was overwhelming. “I wish they . . . I wish they didn’t have to do this!”
“So do I,” Joseph said sincerely. “Perhaps it will turn out to be more of an accident than deliberate.”
Elwyn did not dignify that with an answer. “Do you think there’ll be war, sir?” he asked instead, beginning to walk again.
Joseph thought of the prime minister’s words in the newspaper. “We have to have an army, whether there’s war or not,” he reasoned. “And the mutiny in the Curragh has shown a few weaknesses.”
“I’ll say!” Elwyn pushed his hands into his pockets, his shoulders tense. He was broader, more muscular than Sebastian, but there was an echo of his brother in the fair hair and the warm tones of his skin. “He went to Germany in the spring, you know?” he continued.
Joseph was startled. “Sebastian? No, I didn’t know. He never mentioned it.”
Elwyn shot a glance at him, pleased to have known first. “He loved it,” he said with a little smile. “He meant to go back when he could. He was reading Schiller, when he had time. And Goethe, of course. He said you’d have to be a barbarian not to love the music! The whole of human history has produced only one Beethoven.”
“I knew he was afraid, of course,” Joseph answered him. “We spoke of it just the other day.”
Elwyn’s head jerked up, his eyes wide. “You mean worried, not afraid! Sebastian wasn’t a coward!”
“I know that,” Joseph said quickly and honestly. “I meant that he was afraid for the beauty that would be destroyed, not for himself.”
“Oh.” Elwyn relaxed again. In that single gesture Joseph could see a wealth of Mary’s passion, her pride and brittleness, her identification with her sons, especially the elder. “Yes, of course,” Elwyn added. “Sorry.”
Joseph smiled at him. “Don’t think of it. And don’t spend your time trying to imagine who hated Sebastian, or why. Leave it to Inspector Perth. Look after yourself . . . and your mother.”
“I am,” Elwyn answered him. “All that I can.”
“I know.”
Elwyn nodded unhappily. “Goodbye, sir.” He turned away toward the bookshop and left Joseph to continue on his way to the department store to look for socks.
Once inside, he wandered around the tables and the ceiling-high shelves. He was outside again, with a pair of black socks and a pair of dark gray ones, when he bumped into Edgar Morel.
Morel looked flustered. “Sorry, sir,” he apologized, stepping aside. “I . . . I was miles away.”
“Everyone’s upset,” Joseph responded, and was about to move when he realized that Morel was still looking at him.
A young woman passed them. She was wearing a navy and white dress, her hair swept up under a straw hat. She hesitated