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‘Prue is in Hertfordshire. She married.’
‘Good.’
‘And Nicky is at Anselm’s, teaching.’ He tried to say it without any particular weight, but Aaron was watching his face, and Jem could feel his cheeks warming. ‘I’m going to talk to them all.’
‘To what end?’ Aaron leaned back a little, frowning. ‘To learn if we are all being harassed by the same lunatic?’
‘Someone has written to at least three of us to accuse us of killing Toby,’ Jem said. ‘One of us did.’
Aaron went absolutely blank, the way he did when people said things he didn’t choose to hear, the way he had that first night in the buttery. After a moment he blinked, slowly. ‘You can’t say that.’
‘We all know. We all knew back then. After the row?—’
‘It was an argument. Nothing more.’
‘It was more. You know it was. Toby said some awful things. And someone killed him.’
Aaron blew out a long breath. ‘If someone had given Toby, or indeed Nicky, a good thrashing, it would have been understandable. I was tempted and I expect you were too. But we didn’t. We left, and then what? One of us came to Toby’s room afterwards and stabbed him in cold blood?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t mean to agree,’ Aaron said. ‘I mean, you are claiming that’s what happened.’
‘But you do agree, don’t you?’
‘No,’ Aaron said through his teeth. ‘No, I do not. I don’t think either Nicky or Prue stabbed Toby in a fit of thwarted passion. I don’t know any reason either you or Hugo would have wanted him dead, though you might have felt he deserved kicking. And it wasn’t Ella or myself.’
‘Because you were together?’
‘Because we were together.’
‘You’re a better liar than you used to be.’ Jem was quite impressed, in a distant way, with how level his voice sounded. ‘But you still aren’t marvellous.’
Aaron’s deep brown eyes were very steady on Jem’s. He didn’t speak. They looked at each other in silence, the moment stretching almost unbearably, and then Aaron rose. ‘I think you should go.’
‘I’m not accusing you,’ Jem said. ‘I’m not accusing anyone yet. But one of us is a murderer, and it’s past time we knew who. So I’m asking.’
‘And what if you ask us all and find no answer? If you upturn this rock and expose everything under it to the light, will you be happy?’
‘I haven’t been happy in ten years. Are you happy not knowing?’ He glanced at Aaron’s left hand, ringless. ‘Are you happy now?’
‘Happier than I was when I was refused a dozen posts because I was all but known as an unconvicted murderer,’ Aaron said savagely. ‘Do you think you’re the only sufferer here?’
‘Then why don’t you want to know the truth?’
Aaron strode to the door and jerked it open. ‘Please leave. I shan’t charge you for my wasted time but don’t repeat this. And I strongly advise you not to pursue this business, Jem. It will do no good to anyone.’
Jem made a somewhat shamefaced exit from the surgery and went to the nearest public house to scribble down what little he’d gleaned in his notebook. He wasn’t sure what to make of that conversation; he wasn’t even sure how he felt.
What if you ask us all and find no answer?
He didn’t want to consider that too closely. He had a goal for the first time in years. He wanted to pursue it because he had nothing else to do, and when it ended and left him with nothing to do again, with one more failure to his account…Well, perhaps it would just make things worse, but he would rather make things worse than do nothing any longer.
Jem had cut himself off from caring about anything, because an empty existence had seemed preferable to a pale shadow of his lost past, his lost future. Talking to Aaron and Hugo again, even so awkwardly, had been like a splash of water on the drought of his life.
He wondered what it would be like to talk to Ella. Jem had never been sure the Seven Wonders would have been the set of friends she’d have chosen for herself, with the raucous exchanges and constant bickering and foolery. Ella was the only one of them who hadn’t set to anything except work. She hadn’t been interested in sport, or university politics; hadn’t joined societies or taken up hobbies; only didCymbelinebecause Toby insisted. She’d always been at a little bit of a distance, happiest in the lecture rooms or the laboratory, or talking quietly to Aaron. Jem had never had a heart-to-heart with her.
She’d rarely spoken to Nicky.
