For the Sake of Elena (38 page)

The wind of the previous two days had subsided considerably. All that remained of it was an occasional brief, weak gust of cold that puffed across the Backs, as if the night were sighing. But even those brief gusts would eventually dissipate, and the heaviness of the chill air suggested that fog would replace them tomorrow.

It was just after ten. The jazz concert had ended moments before they left Victor Troughton, and the voices of students calling to one another still rose and fell in the college grounds as the crowd dispersed. No one came in their direction, however. And considering both the hour and the temperature, Lynley knew it was unlikely that anyone would join or disturb them on the secluded river terrace.

They chose a bench at the south end of the terrace where a wall that separated the fellows’ garden from the rest of the grounds also afforded them protection from what remained of the wind. Lynley sat, pulling Lady Helen down next to him, drawing her into the curve of his arm. He pressed his lips to the side of her head in what was more a need of physical contact than an expression of affection, and in response her body seemed to yield to his, creating a gentle, constant pressure against him. She didn’t speak, but he had little doubt as to where her thoughts lay.

Victor Troughton had seemed to recognise an opportunity to speak for the first time about what had been his most closely guarded secret. And like most people who’ve lived a lie, when the opportunity presented itself to reveal reality, he was more than willing to do so. But as he began to tell his story, Lynley had seen Lady Helen’s initial sympathy towards Troughton—so characteristic of her, really—transform slowly. Her posture changed, drawing her fractionally away from the man. Her eyes grew cloudy. And despite the fact that he was in the midst of an interview crucial to a murder investigation, Lynley found himself watching Lady Helen as much as he was listening to Troughton’s story. He wanted to excuse himself to her—to excuse all men—for the sins against women which Troughton was listing without an apparent twinge of conscience.

The historian had lit a third cigarette from the smouldering butt of his second. He had taken more brandy, and as he spoke, he kept his eyes fixed on the liquor in the glass and on the small, swimming oval of yellow-gold that was the reflection in the brandy of the light that hung above him. He never spoke in anything other than a low, frank voice.

“I wanted a life. That’s really the only excuse I have, and I know it isn’t much of one. I was willing to stay in my marriage for my children’s sake. I was willing to be a hypocrite and keep up the pretence of happiness. But I wasn’t willing to live like a priest. I did that for two years, dead for two years. I wanted a life again.”

“When did you meet Elena?” Lynley asked him.

Troughton waved the question off. He seemed determined to tell the story in his own way, in his own time. He said, “The vasectomy had nothing to do with Elena. I’d merely made a decision about my life-style. These are the days of sexual profligacy, after all, so I decided to make myself available to women. But I didn’t want to run the risk of an unwanted pregnancy—or the risk of some scheming female’s entrapment—so I had myself fixed up. And I went on the prowl.”

He lifted his glass and smiled sardonically. “It was, I must admit, a rather rude awakening. I was just short of forty-five years old, in fairly good condition, in a somewhat admirable and ego-massaging career as a relatively well-known and well-respected academic. I had expectations of scores of women being more than willing to accept my attentions just for the sheer, intellectual thrill of knowing they’d been to bed with a Cambridge don.”

“I take it you found that wasn’t the case.”

“Not among the women I was pursuing.” Troughton looked long at Lady Helen, as if he were evaluating the opposing forces at battle within him: the wisdom of saying nothing more versus the overwhelming need to say it all at last. He gave in to need, turning back to Lynley. “I wanted a young woman, Inspector. I wanted to feel young, resilient flesh. I wanted to kiss breasts that were full and firm. I wanted unveined legs and feet without callosity and hands like silk.”

“And what about your wife?” Lady Helen asked. Her voice was quiet, her legs were crossed, her hands were folded and relaxed in her lap. But Lynley knew her well enough to imagine how her heart had begun to pound angrily—as any woman’s would—when Troughton calmly and rationally offered his list of sexual requirements: not a mind, not a soul, just a body that was young.

Troughton was not reluctant to answer her. “Three children,” he replied. “Three boys. Each time, Rowena let herself go a little more. First it was her clothes and her hair, then her skin, then her body.”

“What you mean to say is that a middle-aged woman who has borne three children no longer excited you.”

“I admit to the worst of it,” Troughton replied. “I felt an aversion when I looked at what was left of her stomach. I was mildly disgusted over the size of her hips, and I hated the drooping sacks that her breasts had become and the loose flesh hanging beneath her arms. But most of all I hated the fact that she didn’t intend to do a thing about herself. And that she was perfectly happy when I began to leave her alone.”

He got up and walked across the room to the window that overlooked the college garden. He pulled back the curtain and studied the outdoors, sipping his brandy.

“So I made my plans. I had the vasectomy to protect myself from any unexpected difficulties, and I began to go my own way. The only problem was that I found I really didn’t have the right…What do they call it? The right moves? The technique?” He chuckled derisively. “I’d actually thought it would be easy. I’d be joining the sexual revolution two decades too late, but I’d be joining it nonetheless. A middle-aged pioneer. What a nasty surprise it all was for me.”

“And then Elena Weaver came along?” Lynley asked.

Troughton stayed by the window, backdropped by the black glass of night. “I’ve known her father for years, so I’d met her before, on one visit or another when she was up from London. But it wasn’t until he brought her to my house last autumn to choose a puppy that I really thought of her as anything other than Anthony’s little deaf girl. And even then, it was just admiration on my part. She was lively, good-humoured, a mass of energy and enthusiasm. She got on well in life in spite of being deaf, and I found that—along with everything else about her—immensely attractive. But Anthony’s a colleague, and even if a score of young women hadn’t already given me sufficient evidence of my undesirability, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to approach a colleague’s daughter.”

“She approached you?”

Troughton made a gesture that encompassed the room. “She dropped by here several times during Michaelmas term last year. She’d tell me about how the dog was doing and chat in that odd-voiced way of hers. She’d drink tea, pinch a few cigarettes when she thought I wasn’t looking. I enjoyed her visits. I began to look forward to them. But nothing happened between us until Christmas.”

“And then?”

Troughton returned to his chair. He crushed out his cigarette but did not light another. He said, “She came to show me the gown she’d bought for one of the Christmas balls. She said, I’ll try it on for you, shall I, and she turned her back and began to undress right here in the room. Of course, I’m not entirely a fool. I realised later that she’d done it deliberately, but at the time, I was horrified. Not only at her behaviour but at what I felt—no, what I knew in an instant that I wanted to do—in the face of her behaviour. She was down to her underthings when I said, For God’s sake, what do you think you’re doing, girl? But I was across the room and her head was turned, so she couldn’t read my lips. She just kept undressing. I went to her, made her face me, and repeated the question. She looked me straight in the eye and said, I’m doing what you want me to do, Vittor. And that was that. We made love in the very chair you’re sitting in, Inspector. I was so desperate to have her that I didn’t even bother to lock the door.” He drank the rest of his brandy, set the balloon glass on the table. “Elena knew what I was after. I’ve no doubt she’d known the moment her father brought her to my house to see those dogs. If she was nothing else, she was brilliant at reading people. Or at least she was brilliant at reading me. She always knew what I wanted and when I wanted it and just exactly how.”

“So you’d found that resilient flesh you’d been seeking,” Lady Helen said. Cool condemnation comprised the undercurrent of the statement.

Troughton didn’t avoid admitting the worst. “I found it. Yes. But not the way I thought. I didn’t count on falling in love. I thought it would just be sex between us. Good, vigorous sex anytime we felt the urge. We were, after all, serving each other’s needs.”

“In what way?”

“She was accommodating my need to savour her youth and perhaps recapture a bit of my own. I was accommodating her need to hurt her father.” He poured himself more brandy and added to the other glasses as well. He looked from Lynley to Lady Helen as if gauging on their faces a response to his final statement. He went on with, “As I said, Inspector, I’m not a complete fool.”

“Perhaps you’re judging yourself too harshly.”

Troughton placed the bottle on the table next to his chair and drank deeply of the brandy, saying, “Not at all. Look at the facts. I’m forty-seven years old and on the downhill plunge. She was twenty, surrounded by hundreds of young men with their entire lives ahead of them. Why on earth would she decide to set her sights on me unless she knew it was the perfect way to strike out at her father? And it
was
perfect, after all. To choose one of his colleagues—indeed, to choose one of his friends. To choose a man who was even older than her father. To choose a man who was married. To choose a man with children. I couldn’t actually delude myself with the idea that Elena wanted me because she found me more attractive than any other man she knew, and I never did so. I knew from the first what she had in mind.”

“The scandal we were speaking of earlier?”

“Anthony always had too much of himself tied into Elena’s performance here in Cambridge. He involved himself in every aspect of her life. How she acted and dressed, how she took notes in her lectures, how she comported herself in her supervisions. These were weighty matters to him. I think he believed that he would be judged—as a man, a parent, an academic even—dependent upon her success or failure here.”

“Was the Penford Chair tied into all this?”

“In his mind, I should think so. In reality, no.”

“But if he thought judgement of himself was going to be connected to Elena’s performance and behaviour—”

“Then he would want to see to it that she performed and behaved as the daughter of a respected professor should. Elena knew that. She could sense that attitude in everything her father did, and she resented him for it. So you can imagine the vast and—to Elena—amusing possibilities for his humiliation and her revenge when it became known that his daughter was having it off on a regular basis with one of his close colleagues.”

“Didn’t you mind being used in this way?”

“I was living every fantasy I’d ever entertained about making love to a woman and having a woman make love to me. We met at least three times a week from Christmas on and I loved every moment of it. I didn’t care about her motives in the least as long as she kept coming round to see me and taking off her clothes.”

“You met here, then?”

“Generally. I managed to get to London several times during the summer break to see her as well. And on a few weekend afternoons and evenings at her father’s house during term.”

“When he was home?”

“Only once, during a party. She found that particularly exciting.” He shrugged although his cheeks had begun to flush. “I found it rather exciting as well. I suppose it was the sheer terror of thinking we might be caught going at it.”

“But you weren’t?”

“Never. Justine knew—she’d found out somehow, she may well have guessed or Elena may have told her—but she never actually caught us in the act.”

“She never told her husband?”

“She wouldn’t have wanted to bear that sort of witness against Elena, Inspector. As far as Anthony was concerned, it would have been a case of kill the messenger, and Justine knew that better than anyone. So she held her tongue. I imagine she was waiting for Anthony to find things out on his own.”

“Which he never did.”

“Which he never did.” Troughton shifted his position in his chair, crossing one leg over the other and pulling out his cigarette case once again. He merely played it from hand to hand, however. He didn’t open it. “Of course, he would have been told eventually.”

“By you?”

“No. I imagine Elena would have wanted that pleasure.”

Lynley found it hard to believe that Troughton had no conscience in the matter of Elena. He had obviously felt no need to guide her. He had seen no necessity for urging her to deal with her resentment towards her father in another way. “But, Dr. Troughton, what I don’t understand is—”

“Why I went along with the game?” Troughton set the cigarette case next to the balloon glass. He studied the picture they made, side by side. “Because I loved her. At first it was her body—the incredible sensation of holding and touching that beautiful body. But then it was her. Elena. She was wild and ungovernable, laughing and alive. And I wanted that in my life. I didn’t care about the cost.”

“Even if it meant posing as the father of her child?”

“Even that, Inspector. Once she told me she was pregnant, I nearly convinced myself that the vasectomy had gone wrong all those years ago and that the child was really mine.”

“Have you any idea who the father was?”

“No. But I’ve spent hours since last Wednesday wondering about it.”

“Where have your thoughts led you?”

“To the same conclusion again and again. If she slept with me to have revenge on her father, whomever else she slept with, it was for the same reason. It didn’t have anything to do with love.”

“Yet you were willing to take up a life with her in spite of knowing all this?”