For the Sake of Elena

by Elizabeth George

  He was, Lynley thought, so different from his wife. Dark, his body thickening at the waist with advancing middle age, his hair beginning to show strands of scattered grey, his skin creasing on the forehead and webbing beneath the eyes. He wore a three-piece suit and a pair of gold cufflinks, but despite his rather formal attire, he managed to seem completely out of place in the cool, crafted elegance that surrounded him.

  “What can we tell you, Inspector?” Weaver’s voice was as unsteady as his hands. “Tell me what we can do to help. I need to know that. I need to find this monster. He strangled her. He beat her. Have they told you that? Her face was…She was wearing her gold chain with the little unicorn I’d given her last Christmas, so I knew it was Elena the moment I saw her. And even if she hadn’t been wearing the unicorn, her mouth was partly open and I saw her front tooth. I saw that much. I saw that tooth. The little chip in it. That tooth.”

  Justine Weaver lowered her eyes and clasped her hands in her lap.

  Weaver pulled his spectacles from his face. “God help me. I can’t believe that she’s dead.”

  Despite his presence in their home as a professional come to deal with the crime, Lynley was not untouched by the other man’s anguish. How many times had he witnessed this very scene played out in the last thirteen years? And still he felt no more able to assuage grief than he had as a detective constable, facing his first interview with the hysterical adult daughter of a woman who’d been bludgeoned to death by her own, drunk husband. In every case, he’d allowed grief free rein, hoping by this means to offer victims the meagre solace of knowing that someone shared their need to see justice done.

  Weaver continued to speak. As he did so, his eyes filled with tears. “She was tender. Fragile.”

  “Because she was deaf?”

  “No. Because of me.” When Weaver’s voice cracked, his wife looked his way, pressed her lips together, and once more lowered her eyes. “I left her mother when Elena was five, Inspector. You’re going to learn that eventually, so you may as well know it right now. She was in bed, asleep. I packed my bags and I left and I never went back. And I had no way to explain to a five-year-old child—who couldn’t even hear me—that I wasn’t leaving her, that it wasn’t her fault, that the marriage itself was so filled with unhappiness that I couldn’t bear to live in it any longer. And Glyn and I were at fault for that. Not Elena, never once Elena. But I was her father. I left her, betrayed her. And she struggled with that—and with the idea that somehow she was at fault—for the next fifteen years. Anger, confusion, lack of confidence, fear. Those were her demons.”

  Lynley didn’t even need to formulate a question to guide Weaver’s discourse. It was as if the man had only been waiting for an appropriate opportunity for self-flagellation.

  “She could have chosen Oxford—Glyn was determined she’d go to Oxford, she didn’t want her here with me—but Elena chose Cambridge instead. Can you know what that meant to me? All those years she’d been in London with her mother. I’d tried to be there for her as best I could, but she held me at a distance. She’d only let me be a father in the most superficial ways. Here was my chance to be a real father to her again, to mend our relationship, to bring to some sort of”—he searched for a word—“some sort of fulfillment the love I felt for her. And my greatest happiness was feeling the bond begin to grow between us over this last year and sitting here and watching while Justine helped Elena with her essays. When these two women…” He faltered. “These two women in my life…these two women together, Justine and Elena, my wife and my daughter…” And finally he allowed himself to weep. It was a man’s horrible, humiliated sobbing, one hand covering his eyes, the other clutching his spectacles.

  Justine Weaver didn’t stir in her chair. She looked incapable of movement, carved out of stone. Then a single breath eased from her and she raised her eyes and fastened them on the bright, artificial fire.

  “I understand Elena had difficulties in the University at first,” Lynley said as much to Justine as to her husband.

  “Yes,” Justine said. “The adjustment for her…from her mother and London…to here…” She glanced uneasily at her husband. “It took a bit of time for her to—”

  “How could she have made the change easily?” Weaver demanded. “She was struggling with her life. She was doing her best. She was trying to be whole.” He wiped his face with a crumpled handkerchief which afterwards he continued to grasp—crushed—in his hand. He placed his spectacles back on his nose. “But that didn’t matter. Not a bit of it to me. Because she was a joy. An innocent. A gift.”

  “Her troubles didn’t cause you embarrassment, then? Professional embarrassment?”

  Weaver stared at him. His expression altered in a single instant from ravaged sorrow to disbelief. Lynley found the sudden change disquieting, and despite the occasion for both grief and outrage, he found himself wondering if he was being entertained by a performance of some sort.

  “My God,” Weaver said. “What are you suggesting?”

  “I understand you’ve been short-listed for a rather prestigious position here at the University,” Lynley said.

  “And what does that have to do with—”

  Lynley leaned forward to interrupt. “My job is to obtain and evaluate information, Dr. Weaver. In order to do that, I have to ask questions you might otherwise prefer not to hear.”

  Weaver worked this over, his fingers digging into the handkerchief balled into his fist. “Nothing about my daughter was an embarrassment, Inspector. Nothing. Not a single part of her. And nothing she did.”

  Lynley tallied the denials. He reflected upon the rigid muscles in Weaver’s face. He said, “Had she enemies?”

  “No. And no one who knew her could have hurt Elena.”

  “Anthony,” Justine murmured hesitantly, “you don’t think she and Gareth…Might they have had a falling out?”

  “Gareth Randolph?” Lynley said. “The president of DeaStu?” When Justine nodded, he went on with, “Dr. Cuff told me he’d been asked to act as a guardian to Elena last year. What can you tell me about him?”

  “If he was the one, I’ll kill him,” Weaver said.

  Justine took up the question. “He’s an engineering student, a member of Queens’ College.”

  Weaver said, more to himself than to Lynley, “And the engineering lab is next to Fen Causeway. He has his practicals there. His supervisions as well. What is it, a two-minute walk from Crusoe’s Island? Across Coe Fen, a one-minute run?”

  “Was he fond of Elena?”

  “They saw a great deal of each other,” Justine said. “But that was one of the stipulations set up by Dr. Cuff and her supervisors last year: attendance at DeaStu. Gareth saw to it that she went to the meetings. He took her to a number of their social functions as well.” She shot her husband a wary look before she finished carefully with, “Elena liked Gareth well enough, I dare say. But not, I imagine, the way he liked her. And he’s a lovely boy, really. I can’t think that he—”

  “He’s in the boxing society,” Weaver continued. “He’s got a blue in boxing. Elena told me that.”

  “Could he have known that she would be running this morning?”

  “That’s just it,” Weaver said. “She wasn’t supposed to run.” He turned to his wife. “You told me she wasn’t going to run. You said that she’d phoned you.”

  His words had the ring of an accusation. Justine’s body retreated fractionally, a reaction that was almost imperceptible considering her upright posture in the chair. “Anthony.” She said his name like a discreet entreaty.

  “She phoned you?” Lynley repeated, perplexed. “How?”

  “On a Ceephone,” Justine said.

  “Some sort of visual phone?”

  Anthony Weaver stirred, moved his eyes off his wife, and pushed himself out of his chair. “I’ve one in the study. I’ll show you.”

  He led the way through the dining room, through a spotless kitchen fitted with an array of gleaming ap
pliances, and down a short corridor that led to the rear of the house. His study was a small room that faced the back garden, and when he switched on the light, a dog began to whine beneath the window outside.

  “Have you fed him?” Weaver asked.

  “He wants to be let in.”

  “I can’t face it. No. Don’t do that, Justine.”

  “He’s just a dog. He doesn’t understand. He’s never had to—”

  “Don’t do it.”

  Justine fell silent. As before, she remained by the door while Lynley and her husband went into the room.

  The study was quite different from the rest of the house. A worn floral carpet covered the floor. Books crowded onto sagging shelves of cheap pine. A collection of photographs leaned against a filing cabinet, and a set of framed sketches hung on the wall. Beneath the room’s single window stood Weaver’s desk, large, grey metal, and utterly hideous. Aside from a pile of correspondence and a set of reference books, on it rested a computer, its monitor, a telephone, and a modem. This, then, constituted the Ceephone.

  “How does it work?” Lynley asked.

  Weaver blew his nose and shoved his handkerchief into his jacket pocket. He said, “I’ll phone my rooms in the college,” and walked to the desk, where he switched on the monitor, punched several numbers on the telephone, and pressed a data key on the modem.

  After a few moments, the monitor screen divided into two sections, split horizontally by a thin, solid band. On the bottom half appeared the words: Jenn here.

  “A colleague?” Lynley asked.

  “Adam Jenn, my graduate student.” Weaver typed quickly. As he did so, his message to the student was printed on the top half of the screen. Dr. Weaver phoning, Adam. I’m demonstrating the Ceephone for the police. Elena used it last night.

  Right appeared on the bottom half of the screen. Shall I stand by then? Do they want to see something special?

  Weaver cast Lynley a querying look. “No, that’s fine,” Lynley said. “It’s clear how it works.”

  Not necessary, Weaver typed.

  OK, the response. And then after a moment, I’ll be here the rest of the evening, Dr. Weaver. Tomorrow as well. And as long as you need me. Please don’t worry about anything.

  Weaver swallowed. “Nice lad,” he whispered. He switched off the monitor. All of them watched as the messages on the screen slowly faded away.

  “What sort of message did Elena send you last night?” Lynley asked Justine.

  She was still at the door, one shoulder against the jamb. She looked at the monitor as if to remember. “She said only that she wasn’t going to run this morning. She sometimes had trouble with one of her knees. I assumed she wanted to give it a rest for a day or two.”

  “What time did she phone?”

  Justine frowned pensively. “It must have been a bit after eight because she asked after her father and he wasn’t yet home from the college. I told her he’d gone back to work for a while and she said she’d phone him there.”

  “Did she?”

  Weaver shook his head. His lower lip quivered, and he pressed his left index finger to it as if by that action he could control further displays of emotion.

  “You were alone when she phoned?”

  Justine nodded.

  “And you’re certain it was Elena?”

  Justine’s fine skin seemed to tauten across her cheeks. “Of course. Who else—?”

  “Who knew the two of you ran in the morning?”

  Her eyes went to her husband, then back to Lynley. “Anthony knew. I suppose I must have told one or two of my colleagues.”

  “At?”

  “The University Press.”

  “Others?”

  Again, she looked at her husband. “Anthony? Do you know of anyone?”

  Weaver was still staring at the monitor of the Ceephone, as if in the hope that a call would come through. “Adam Jenn, probably. I’m sure I told him. Her friends, I should think. People on her staircase.”

  “With access to her room, to her phone?”

  “Gareth,” Justine said. “Of course she would have told Gareth.”

  “And he has a Ceephone as well.” Weaver looked sharply at Lynley. “Elena didn’t make that call, did she? Someone else did.”

  Lynley could feel the other man’s growing need for action. Whether it was spurious or genuine he could not tell. “It’s a possibility,” he agreed. “But it’s also a possibility that Elena simply preferred to create an excuse to run alone this morning. Would that have been out of character?”

  “She ran with her stepmother. Always.”

  Justine said nothing. Lynley looked her way. She averted her eyes. It was admission enough.

  Weaver said to his wife, “You didn’t see her at all when you were out this morning. Why, Justine? Weren’t you looking? Weren’t you watching?”

  “I had the call from her, darling,” Justine said patiently. “I wasn’t expecting to see her. And even if I had been, I didn’t go along the river.”

  “You ran this morning as well?” Lynley asked. “What time was this?”

  “Our usual time. A quarter past six. But I took a different route.”

  “You weren’t near Fen Causeway.”

  A moment’s hesitation. “I was, yes. But at the end of the run, instead of the beginning. I’d made a circuit of the city and came across the causeway from east to west. Towards Newnham Road.” With a glance at her husband, she made a slight change of position as if she were girding herself with strength. “Frankly, I hate running along the river, Inspector. I always have. So when I had the opportunity to take another route, I did just that.”

  It was, Lynley thought, the nearest thing to a revelation that Justine Weaver was likely to make in front of her husband about the nature of her relationship with his daughter Elena.

  Justine let the dog into the house directly after the Inspector left. Anthony had gone upstairs. He wouldn’t know what she was doing. Since he wouldn’t come back down for the rest of the night, what could it hurt, Justine wondered, to let the dog sleep in his own wicker basket? She would get up early in the morning to let the animal out before Anthony even saw him.

  It was disloyal to go against her husband this way. Justine knew her mother would never have done such a thing once her father had made his wishes known. But there was the dog to consider, a confused, lonely creature whose instincts told him something was wrong but who couldn’t know what or understand why.

  When Justine opened the back door, the setter came at once, not bounding across the lawn as was usual, but hesitantly, as if he knew that his welcome was at risk. At the door with his auburn head lowered, the dog raised hopeful eyes to Justine. His tail wagged twice. His ears perked up, then drooped.

  “It’s all right,” Justine whispered. “Come in.”

  There was something comforting about the snick-snicking of the dog’s nails on the floor as he pursued the smells on the kitchen tiles. There was something comforting about all his sounds: the yelp and the growl when he played, the snarf when he dug and got soil in his nose, the long sigh when he settled into his bed at night, the low hum when he most wanted someone’s attention. He was in so many ways just like a person, a fact that Justine had found most surprising.

  “I think a dog would be good for Elena,” Anthony had said prior to her arrival in Cambridge last year. “Victor Troughton’s bitch had a litter not long ago. I’ll take Elena by and let her have her pick of the lot.”

  Justine hadn’t protested. Part of her had wanted to. Indeed, the protest was practically automatic since the dog—a potential source of mess and trouble—would be living in Adams Road, not in St. Stephen’s College with Elena. But another part of her had sparked alive to the idea. Other than a blue parakeet who had been mindlessly devoted to Justine’s mother, and a won-at-a-fête goldfish that on its first night in her possession had suicidally flung itself out of its overfilled bowl to become stuck on a wallpaper daffodil behind the sideboard w
hen she was eight years old, Justine had never owned what she thought of as a real pet—a dog to tag along scruffily at her heels or a cat to curl at the foot of her bed or a horse to ride in the back lanes of Cambridgeshire. These weren’t deemed healthy by either of her parents. Animals carried germs. Germs were not appropriate. And propriety was everything once they’d come into her great-uncle’s fortune.

  Anthony Weaver had been her break with all that, her permanent declaration of impropriety and adulthood. She could still see her mother’s mouth trembling round the words: “But what on earth can you possibly be thinking, Justine? He’s…well, he’s Jewish.” She could still manage to feel that searing, quite physical stab of satisfaction right between her breasts at the pale-cheeked consternation with which her mother greeted the news of her impending marriage. Her father’s reaction had been less of a pleasure.

  “He’s changed his surname. He’s a Cambridge don. He’s got a solid future. That he’s been married before is a bit of a problem, and I’d be happier if he weren’t so much older than you. But, all things considered, he’s not a bad catch.” He crossed his legs at the ankles and reached for his pipe and the copy of Punch which he’d long ago decided was appropriate gentleman’s Sunday afternoon reading. “I’m damned glad about that surname, however.”

  Anthony hadn’t been the one to change it. His grandfather had done so, altering just two letters. The original i-n became a-v, and there he was, born anew, not a Weiner from Germany, but a Weaver, an Englishman. Weaver, of course, was not exactly an upper-class name, but Anthony’s grandfather couldn’t have known or understood that at the time, any more than he could have understood the delicate sensibilities of the class to which he aspired, sensibilities that would prevent him from ever breaking through the barrier constructed by his accent and his choice of profession. The upper crust, after all, did not generally rub social elbows with their tailors, no matter the proximity of their tailors’ shops to Savile Row.