Cambridge Spies - Close to Home
Guy came home in a fury. The door slammed behind him hard enough to make even Anthony look up from his book. He watched his friend as he made a drink, scotch with a dash of soda water, arched a brow slightly as he gulped it down all at once.
“What happened?”
The glass was slammed down on the table. “It’s Edward.”
Anthony’s jaw immediately tightened. “What happened?” he repeated, more evenly this time.
“The fucking bastard killed himself. Got a hold of a fucking cyanide tablet and fucking killed himself. Bloody bastard.”
Anthony’s face darkened, and for the moment he said nothing. For the moment there was nothing he could say. They had all been on tenterhooks about the case for weeks (oh subtly, always subtly, but anxious nonetheless), and for once ‘they’ did not imply the four carefully placed Cambridge friends, but a different circle. It was always a risk, imprisonment. Gross indecency, corruption of youth… they could call it a hundred different things, but it all came down to the same one – you fuck your own gender. You refuse to be shamed into nothingness on your own as you should be, so if we catch you, we will do it for you.
You didn’t think about it all the time, or you made it part of the game, because if you did otherwise you would go mad. But the reminder was always there to strike you full in the face. When Lord Edward Henley had been arrested, friends and family had fled from his side. Those he considered most loyal had melted away. He had been made an example of, because they could and why not? And once his prison sentence was finished, all that awaited him was shame and despair. But that did not give him the right to flee into death, to leave the rest of them to face the world that despised them.
They had failed him, perhaps. But he had taken the easy way out.
Anthony finally spoke, though it was only a single word.
“Coward.”
“Yes.”
And that was that.