No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [97]
“But?” Joseph prompted.
“When you were with him you saw something good,” Foubister said ruefully, “and you believed you could do something that mattered, too. But then sometimes he’d just forget you, or go ahead and do something so much better you felt crushed.”
Joseph tried to ignore his own feelings. Sebastian had still needed him, but one day when he didn’t, would he have treated Joseph with the same offhand arrogance? He would never know. It was all a matter of belief, and he ought to be able to have some control over that.
“Anyone in particular?” he said aloud.
Foubister’s eyes widened. “If you mean do I know who killed him, no, I don’t. You don’t get a gun and shoot someone because they hurt you or make you feel like a fool, not unless you’re mad! You might punch him, or—” He bit his lip. “No, you wouldn’t even do that, because you’d be showing everyone how much you hurt. You’d just wear a nice smile as long as anyone was looking at you, and wish you could find a place to hide. Depending on who you are, you either look for something spectacular to do yourself, to show you are just as good, or you take hell out of someone else. I don’t know, Dr. Reavley, maybe you do kill. I wish I did know, because it would mean at least that I could stop suspecting everyone else.”
“I understand,” Joseph said gently.
“Yes, I suppose you do. Thank you at least for saying that.” Foubister gave a tiny smile, then turned and walked away, shoulders still tight, his body angular, yet moving with a certain grace.
It was unavoidable now. Joseph must go back to the translations that gnawed at the back of his mind, the occasions when Foubister and Sebastian had struck the same brilliant and unexpected phrase. He hated the thought that Foubister had cheated, but it seemed more and more likely. Was it really only other people’s whispers that made Foubister so conscious of suspicion and so afraid, or was it guilt?
He might never know, but he was compelled to look. There were papers he could reread, compare, do all he could to satisfy his own mind. He knew Foubister’s work, and he knew Sebastian’s. If he had any skill at all, any feeling for the cadence of language, he would know if one man was copying another. If not, then he was no more than a mechanic.
He went back inside and climbed slowly back up the stairs, fingers touching the dark oak of the banister. The first floor up was cooler, airy with its higher ceiling and open window.
Inside, his room was newly tidy from the bedder’s ministrations. She was a good woman, neat and quick and pleasant.
He pulled out the appropriate papers and turned his attention to Sebastian’s. It was a translation from the Greek, lyrical, full of metaphor and imagery. Sebastian had made a beautiful thing of it, keeping the rhythm swift and light, an excellent mixture of words, long and short, complex and simple, all blending into a perfect whole. And there was the one phrase he remembered: “the bent-limbed trees crowding along the mountain ridge, bearing the burden of the sky upon their backs.”
He put it down on the desk and searched for Foubister’s translation of the same original. It was in the middle of the page: “the hunch-limbed trees, crawling along the mountain’s rim, carrying the sky upon their backs.”
The Greeks had described them only as misshapen, silhouetted against the sky. The idea of bearing or carrying was not there, nor the suggestion of human intent. They were too alike for coincidence.
Joseph sat still, the cold grief hardening inside him. He could not ask Sebastian how he had allowed his work to be imitated so closely, and surely there was little point in confronting Foubister. He had just sworn that he had never cheated. If Joseph faced him now with this, would he still deny it? Swear it was just chance? Joseph winced at the thought of seeing it. He liked Foubister and could only imagine what grief it would bring his parents if he were sent down in shame.
But if he had killed Sebastian, that was something that could not possibly be overlooked.