For the Sake of Elena (36 page)

The Bliss Tea Room—with its plain pine tables and woven grass mats—had been unoccupied by customers when Lynley and Havers entered. And the combination of the music from next door and the health food on the menu was evidence enough that the little restaurant wasn’t long for this world.

They’d made their phone call to Cambridge’s forensic department from a call box on Silver Street rather than from the junior combination room where Havers had started to direct him upon leaving Georgina Higgins-Hart’s bed-sit. He had stopped her, saying:

“I saw a call box on the street. If we’ve got a match on the fibres, I’d rather the news wasn’t overheard and put into the University’s gossip mill before we’ve had a chance to decide what to do with it.”

So they had left the college and headed towards Trumpington where an old chipped call box stood near the corner, with three of its front glass panels missing and a fourth taken up by a sticker featuring a drawing of a foetus in a rubbish bin and
Abortion is Murder
printed in crimson letters that dissolved into a garish pool of blood beneath them.

Lynley had made the call because he knew it was the next logical step in the case. But he wasn’t surprised by the information which the Cambridge forensic team relayed.

“No match,” he said to Havers as they returned to Queens’ College where they’d left the car. “They haven’t finished with everything yet. But so far, nothing.”

What remained to be tested were a coat, a pullover, a T-shirt, and two pairs of trousers. Sergeant Havers was giving her attention to these.

She dipped her carob-chip biscuit into her tea and took a bite before she spoke again, resuming her theme. “It makes perfect sense. The morning was cold. He’d have been wearing a pullover. I think we’ve got him.”

Lynley had chosen the apple tart. He took a bite. It wasn’t half-bad. He said, “I can’t agree. Not for the fibres we’re looking for, Sergeant. Rayon, polyester, and cotton make too light a blend for a pullover, especially one worn in November to cut the morning’s chill.”

“Okay. I’ll buy that. So he wore something over it. An overcoat. A jacket. He took that off before he killed her. Then he put it back on to hide the blood which he got all over himself when he beat in her face.”

“And then had it cleaned and ready in anticipation of our coming for it this morning, Sergeant? Because there were no stains on it. And if he anticipated our coming to pick it up, why would he just leave it with the rest of his clothes? Why wouldn’t he get rid of it?”

“Because he doesn’t quite know how an investigation works.”

“I don’t like it, Havers. It doesn’t feel right. It leaves too much unaccounted for.”

“Like what?”

“Like what was Sarah Gordon doing at the crime scene that morning and prowling round Ivy Court that night? Like why did Justine Weaver run without the dog Monday morning? Like what’s the connection between Elena Weaver’s presence and performance in Cambridge and her father’s attaining the Penford Chair?”

Havers took a second biscuit, broke it in half. “And I thought you had your heart newly set on Gareth Randolph. What happened to him, then? Have you scratched him off the roster? And if you do—if you put Sarah Gordon or Justine Weaver or anyone besides Thorsson, by the way, in his place—what’s the story behind the second killing?”

Lynley set his fork down, pushed the apple tart to one side. “I wish I knew.”

The tea room’s door opened. They both looked up. A girl stood hesitantly just inside. She was clear-skinned, with a mass of auburn hair swirling round her face like cirrus clouds at the last part of sunset.

“You’re..” She peered about as if to make sure that she was addressing the proper people. “You’re the police, aren’t you?” Assured of this, she came to their table. “My name’s Catherine Meadows. May I speak with you?”

She removed her navy beret, her matching scarf, and her gloves. She kept on her coat. She sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair, not at their table but at the one next to them. When the waitress approached, the girl looked confused for a moment before glancing at the menu and ordering a single cup of mint tea and a toasted, whole wheat cake.

“I’ve been trying to find you since half past nine,” she said. “The porter at St. Stephen’s couldn’t tell me where you were. It’s only luck that I saw you come in here at all. I was over at Barclay’s.”

“Ah,” Lynley said.

Catherine smiled fleetingly and worried the ends of her hair. She kept her shoulder bag on her lap and her knees pressed together. She said nothing else until the tea and the teacake were placed before her.

“It’s Lenny,” she said, her eyes on the floor.

Lynley saw Havers slide her notebook onto the table top and soundlessly open it. He said, “Lenny?”

“Thorsson.”

“Ah. Yes.”

“I saw you waiting for him after the Shakespeare lecture on Tuesday. I didn’t know who you were then, but he told me later that you’d talked to him about Elena Weaver. He said there was nothing for us to worry about at the time because..” She reached for the cup as if about to drink, but then apparently changed her mind. “That doesn’t matter, does it? You just need to know that he didn’t have anything at all to do with Elena. And he certainly didn’t kill her. He couldn’t have. He was with me.”

“When exactly was he with you?”

She looked at them earnestly, her grey eyes growing dark. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. “It’s so personal. He could get in such trouble if you were to tell anyone. You see, I’m the only undergraduate Lenny’s
ever…
” She rolled the corner of her paper napkin into a little tube and said with calm determination, “I’m the only one he’s ever allowed himself to get close to. And it’s been a struggle for him. His morals. His conscience. What would be right for us. What would be ethical. Because he’s my supervisor.”

“You’re lovers, I take it?”

“You need to know that we went absolute weeks without doing a thing. We fought it every time we were together. Right from the first we both felt the attraction. It was like electricity. Lenny was so open and honest about it. That’s the way he’s always fought it off in the past. Because he’s attracted to women. He does admit that. And in the past he’s simply talked it out. He’s let women know and they’ve worked past it—they’ve worked through it—together. And we tried that, the two of us. We really did try. But in this case, it was bigger than both of us.”

“Is that what Lenny said?” Havers asked. Her face was a study of bland, dispassionate interest.

Catherine seemed to hear something in her tone, however. She said a bit archly, “It was my decision to make love with him. Lenny didn’t push me. I was ready. And we talked about it for days. He wanted me to know him completely, inside and out, before I made the decision. He wanted me to understand.”

“To understand?” Lynley asked.

“Him. His life. What it had been like for him when he’d once been engaged. He wanted me to see him as he truly is so that I could accept him. All of him. Every bit. So that I wouldn’t ever be like his fiancée.” She turned in her chair and faced them squarely. “She rejected him sexually. She did that to him for all of four years because he was…Oh, it doesn’t matter. But you need to understand that he couldn’t bear it to happen again. He was nearly destroyed by the rejection and sorrow the first time. It’s taken him forever to get over the pain and to learn to trust a woman again.”

“Did he ask you to speak to us?” Lynley asked.

She cocked her pretty head to one side. “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m making this up.”

“Not at all. I’m just wondering if and when he asked you to speak to us.”

“He didn’t ask me to speak to you. He wouldn’t do that. It’s just that he told me this morning that you’d been to see him and taken some of his clothes and actually thought…” Her voice wavered momentarily and she reached for the tea, drinking this time. She kept the cup balanced on her small, white palm. “Lenny had nothing to do with Elena. He’s in love with me.”

Sergeant Havers gave a delicate cough. Catherine looked at her sharply.

“I can see what you’re thinking, that I’m just some simple-minded tart to him. But that’s not how it is. We’re going to be married.”

“Quite.”

“We are! When I’ve graduated.”

Lynley said, “What time did Mr. Thorsson leave you?”

“Six forty-five.”

“Was this from your room at St. Stephen’s?”

“I don’t live in college. I share a house with three other girls off Mill Road. Towards Ramsey Town.”

And not, Lynley thought, towards Crusoe’s Island. “Are you certain of the time?”

“I don’t have a doubt.”

Havers tapped her pencil against a page of her notebook. “Why?”

There was a fair degree of pride in Catherine’s answer. “Because I’d looked at the clock when he first woke me up and I looked once again when we finished. I wanted to see how long he lasted this time. Seventy minutes. He finished at 6:40.”

“A real marathon performer.” Havers nodded. “You must have felt like chopped meat.”

“Havers,” Lynley said quietly.

The girl got to her feet. “Lenny said you wouldn’t believe me. He said you especially”—this with a finger pointed at Havers—“wanted to make him pay. Pay for what, I asked him. You’ll see, he said, you’ll see when you talk to her.” She put on her beret and her scarf. She squeezed her gloves into balls. “Well, I see. I do. He’s a wonderful man. He’s tender. He’s loving and brilliant and he’s been hurt so badly in his life because he cares too much. He cared for Elena Weaver and she took it the wrong way. And then when he wouldn’t sleep with her, she went to Dr. Cuff with this
despicable
story…If you can’t see the truth—”

“Was he with you last night?” Havers asked.

The girl drew up, hesitated. “What?”

“Did he spend the night with you again?”

“I…No. He had a lecture he was working on. And a paper he’s been writing.” Her voice steadied, grew stronger. “He’s working on a study of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It’s a thesis about the tragic heroes. Victims of their time, he’s arguing, conquered not by their own tragic flaws but by the prevailing social conditions. It’s radical, brilliant. He was working on it last night and—”

“Where?” Havers asked.

For a moment, the girl faltered again. She gave no response.

“Where?” Havers asked.

“He was at home.”

“He told you he was home all night?”

Her hand closed more tightly round her crumpled gloves. “Yes.”

“He wouldn’t have left sometime? Perhaps to see someone?”

“To see someone? Who? Who would he want to see? I was at a meeting. I got home quite late. He hadn’t been by, he hadn’t phoned. When I phoned, he didn’t answer, but I merely assumed…I was the
only
one he’d be seeing. The only one. So…” Her eyes dropped. She fumbled with putting on her gloves. “I was the only one…” She swung to the door, turned back once as if to say something to them, turned away. The door remained opened behind her when she left. The wind whipped in quickly. It was cold and damp.

Havers took up her teacup and lifted it in a salute to the girl’s departure. “Quite a chap, our Lenny.”

“He’s not the killer,” Lynley said.

“No. He’s not. At least not Elena’s.”

18

Penelope answered the door when Lynley rang the bell in Bulstrode Gardens at half past seven that evening. She was carrying the baby against her shoulder, and although she was still garbed only in a dressing gown and slippers, her hair had been washed and it fell round her shoulders in fine, soft waves. There was a scent of fresh powder in the air surrounding her.

She said, “Tommy. Hello,” and led him into the sitting room where several large volumes were open on the sofa, competing for space with a child-sized Colt .45, a cowboy hat, and a mound of clean laundry that seemed to consist mostly of pyjamas and nappies.

“You got me interested in Whistler and Ruskin last evening, “Penelope said in reference to the volumes which, he saw, were all art books. “The dispute between them is part of art history now, but I hadn’t thought about it in years. What a fighter Whistler was. No matter what one thinks of his work—and it
was
controversial enough at the time…just consider the Peacock Room in the Leyland house—one simply can’t help admiring him.”

She went to the sofa and made a nest of the laundry into which she placed the baby who gurgled happily and kicked her feet in the air. She unearthed one book from beneath the stack and said, “This actually has part of the trial transcript in it. Imagine taking on the most influential art critic of your time and suing him for libel. I can’t think of anyone who’d have the gumption to do that to a critic today. Listen to his assessment of Ruskin.” She picked up the book and ran her finger down the page. “Here it is. ‘It is not only when criticism is inimical that I object to it, but when it is incompetent. I hold that none but an artist can be a competent critic.”’ She laughed lightly and brushed her hair back from her cheeks. It was a gesture peculiarly like one of Helen’s. “Imagine saying that about John Ruskin. What an upstart Whistler was.”

“Was he speaking the truth?”

“I think what he said is true of all criticism, Tommy. In the case of painting, an artist bases his evaluation of a piece upon knowledge that’s grown from both his education and his experience. An art critic, or any critic for that matter, works from an historical frame of reference—what’s been done before—and from theory—how it ought to be done now. That’s all well and good: theory, technique, and being grounded in the basics. But, really, it takes an artist to truly understand another artist and his work.”

Lynley joined her at the sofa where one of the books was open to
Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket
. “I’m not that familiar with his work,” he said. “Other than the painting of his mother.”

She grimaced. “To be remembered for such a dreary piece instead of for these. But then, that’s not really fair of me, is it? His mother was a fine study in composition and colour—or actually the lack of primary colour and light—but the river pictures are splendid. Look at them. They have a certain glory, don’t they? What a challenge to paint the darkness, to see substance in shadows.”

“Or in fog?” Lynley asked.

Penelope looked up from the book. “Fog?”

“Sarah Gordon,” Lynley explained. “She was getting ready to paint in the fog when she found Elena Weaver’s body Monday morning. That’s been part of a stumbling block for me when it comes to evaluating her role in what happened. Would you say that painting the fog is the same as painting the darkness?”

“I’d say it’s not much different.”

“But—like Whistler—it would mean a new style?”

“Yes. But a change in style isn’t uncommon among artists, is it? One merely has to consider Picasso. The blue period. Cubism. He was always stretching.”

“As a challenge?”

She pulled out another volume. It was open to
Nocturne in Blue and Silver
, Whistler’s nighttime depiction of the River Thames and Battersea Bridge. “Challenge, growth, boredom, a need for change, a momentary idea that bursts into a long-term commitment. Artists alter their style for all sorts of reasons.”

“And Whistler?”

“I think he saw art where other people saw nothing. But that’s the nature of the artist in the first place, isn’t it?”

To see art where other people see nothing. It was, he realised with some surprise, such a logical conclusion to draw from the facts, one he himself should have been capable of drawing.

Penelope was leafing through a few more pages. A car drew up on the drive outside. A door opened and closed. She raised her head.

“What happened to Whistler?” Lynley asked. “I can’t recall if he won his case against Ruskin.”

Her eyes were on the curtains which were closed. They shifted in the direction of the front door as footsteps approached it, crunching abrasively against the rough shards of gravel on the drive.

She said, “He won and he lost. The jury awarded him a farthing for contemptuous damages but he had to pay the court costs and ended up going bankrupt.”

“And then?”

“He went off to Venice for a bit, painted nothing, and tried to destroy himself with a vicious sort of wild life. Then he went back to London and continued to try to destroy himself there.”

“He didn’t succeed?”

“He didn’t.” She smiled. “Instead he fell in love. With a woman who also fell in love with him. And that tends to obviate past injustices, doesn’t it? One can hardly concentrate on destroying the self when the other becomes so much more important.”

The front door opened. There was a rustle of sound, as of a coat being removed and hung upon the rack. This was followed by a few more footsteps. Then Harry Rodger stopped short at the sitting room door.

He said, “Tommy. Hullo. I’d no idea you were in town,” but he remained where he was, looking ill-at-ease in a rumpled suit and a stained red tie. He clutched a worn athletic bag which was unzipped, with the cuff of a white shirt protruding from it. “You’re looking lively,” he said to his wife. He ventured a few steps into the room, dropped his eyes to the sofa, regarded the books. “Ah. I see.”

“Tommy was asking about Whistler and Ruskin last night.”

“Was he?” Rodger cast a cool look in Lynley’s direction.

“Yes.” She went eagerly on. “You know, Harry, I’d forgotten how interesting the situation between them—”

“Quite.”

Slowly, Penelope raised one hand as if to see to the state of her hair. Tiny lines etched their way from the corners of her mouth. She said to Lynley, “Let me get Helen for you. She was reading to the twins. She can’t have heard you come in.”

When she left them, Rodger went to stand before the sofa. He played the tips of his fingers against the baby’s forehead like a restless benediction. “I think we should name you Canvas,” he said, running his index finger along the infant’s smooth cheek. “Mummy would like that, wouldn’t she?” He looked at Lynley, his mouth curving with a sardonic smile.

Lynley said, “People generally have interests outside the sphere of their families, Harry.”

“Secondary interests. With their families coming first.”

“Life’s not that convenient. People don’t always fit into the most accommodating mould.”

“Pen’s a wife.” Rodger’s voice was smooth, but it had a rock’s smoothness, hard and determined. “She’s a mother as well. She made that decision more than four years ago. She chose to be the care-giver, the backbone of the family, not someone who leaves her baby in a pile of laundry while she leafs through her art books and dwells on the past.”

It was a condemnation that Lynley found particularly unfair, considering the circumstances of Penelope’s renewed interest in art. He said, “Actually, I set her off on this yesterday.”

“Fine. I understand. But it’s over for her, Tommy. That part of her life.”

“On whose determination?”

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re wrong. We both decided what was more important. But she won’t accept it now. She doesn’t want to adjust.”

“Why does she have to? The decision’s not written in concrete, is it? Why can’t she have both? Her career. Her family.”

“There aren’t any winners in a situation like that. Everyone suffers.”

“Instead of just Pen?”

Rodger’s face became chiselled in reaction to the affront. His voice, however, remained perfectly reasonable. “I’ve seen this sort of thing among my colleagues, Tommy, even if you haven’t. Wives go their own way and the family dissolves. And even if that weren’t the case—even if Pen could juggle the roles of wife, mother, homemaker, and art conservationist without driving us all mad, which she can’t, by the way, which is why she quit her job at the Fitzwilliam when the twins were two—she has everything she needs right here. A husband, a fair income, a decent home, three healthy children.”

“That’s not always enough.”

Rodger laughed sharply. “You sound just like her. She’s lost her
self
, she says. She’s just an extension of everyone else. What absolute rubbish. What she’s lost is
things
. What her parents provided her. What we used to have when both of us worked. Things.” He dropped his athletic bag next to the sofa, wearily rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve spoken to her doctor. Give her time, he says. It’s that post-partum business. She’ll be back to herself in a few more weeks. Well, as far as I’m concerned, it had better happen soon. I’m just about at the end of my patience with her.” He nodded at the baby. “Watch her for me, will you? I’ve got to get something to eat.”

That said, he left the room, disappearing through the door that led into the kitchen. The baby gurgled once again and clutched at the air. She made a sound like “uh puh” and grinned with happy, toothless pleasure at the ceiling.

Lynley sat down next to her laundry nest and took hold of one of her hands. It wasn’t much larger than the pad of his thumb. Her nails teased his skin—odd to think that he’d never once considered the fact that babies
have
nails—and he felt a rush of tenderness towards her. Unprepared to feel anything more than bemusement when left alone with her, he pulled over one of Penelope’s art books. Although the words were out of focus because he didn’t want to bother—couldn’t really bother—with his spectacles, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into distraction with an account of James McNeill Whistler’s earliest days in Paris and the typically stuffy, academic revelation of his relationship with his first mistress, who was both introduced and dismissed from Whistler’s life within the confines of a single gerund phrase: “He began by assuming a life style he deemed appropriate to a bohemian and by going so far as to attract a young milliner—nicknamed
La Tigresse
with the joyful hyperbolic propensity of the period—to live with and pose for him for a period of time.” Lynley read on, but there was nothing more of the milliner. To the academic who had written the volume, she merited one sentence in an account of Whistler’s life, no matter what she may have been to him, no matter the way in which she may have influenced or inspired his work.

Lynley reflected on the veiled implication behind that simple group of words.
Nonentity
, they declared, someone he painted and took to his bed. She was consigned to history as Whistler’s mistress. If she’d ever had a self, it was long forgotten.

He got up restlessly, walked across the room to the fireplace with its display of photographs lined up on the mantel. They depicted Penelope with Harry, Penelope with the children, Penelope with her parents, Penelope with her sisters. But there was not a single picture of Penelope alone.

“Tommy?”

He turned to see that Helen had come into the room. She stood near the door, dressed in brown wool and ivory silk with a trim camel jacket slung over her arm. Penelope was just behind her.

He wanted to say to them both, “I think I understand. Now. In this moment. I think I finally understand.” But instead, feeling the depth and breadth of his own inadequacy defined and conditioned by the fact that he was male, he said, “Harry’s getting himself something to eat. Thanks for your help, Pen.”

Her acknowledgement of this was tentative and brief: a movement of her lips that might have passed for a smile, a quick bob of the head. Then she walked to the sofa and began closing her books. She stacked them on the floor and picked up the baby.

“She’s due to be fed,” Penelope said. “I can’t think why she hasn’t begun to fuss.” She wandered from the room. They heard her climbing the stairs.

They didn’t say anything until they were in the car, driving the short distance to Trinity Hall where the jazz concert was scheduled to be performed in the junior combination room. And then it was Lady Helen who broke the silence between them.

“She actually came to life, Tommy. I can’t tell you what a relief it’s been.”

“Yes. I know. I could see the difference.”

“All day she was involved in something beyond the scope of that house. It’s what she needs. She knows it. They both do. They must.”

“Have you talked to her about it?”

“‘How can I leave them?’ she asks me. ‘They’re my children, Helen. What kind of mother am I if I want to leave them?’”

Lynley glanced at her. Her face was averted. “You can’t solve this problem for her, you know.”

“I don’t see how I can leave her if I don’t.”