For the Sake of Elena

by Elizabeth George

  He did. Havers had ample reason to question his ability to remain objective. He sought to justify his leery feelings about the artist. “Sarah Gordon finds the body. She appears at Weaver’s rooms that night. I don’t like the coincidence.”

  “What coincidence? Why does it even have to be coincidence? She didn’t recognise the body. She went to see Weaver for other reasons. Maybe she wanted to woo him back to art. That’s a big deal to her. Maybe she wanted it to be a big deal to him.”

  “But she was trying not to be seen.”

  “According to your appraisal, Inspector. On a foggy night when she might only have been trying to stay warm.” Havers crumpled up her crisp bag and rolled it in her palm. She looked concerned and, at the same time, intent upon not showing the extent of that concern. “I think you’ve made a hasty decision here,” she said carefully. “I’m wondering why. You know, I had a fair good look at Sarah Gordon myself today. She’s dark, she’s thin, she’s attractive. She reminded me of someone. I wonder if she reminded you of someone as well.”

  “Havers—”

  “Inspector, listen to me. Look at the facts. We know Elena started running at a quarter past six. Her stepmother told you that. The porter confirmed it. From her own report—now verified by her neighbours—Sarah left her own house just round seven. And the police report has her popping into the station to report finding the body at twenty past. So please take a look at what you’re suggesting, all right? First, that for some reason, although she left St. Stephen’s at a quarter past six, it took Elena Weaver forty-five minutes to run from her college to Fen Causeway—what is it, less than a mile? Second, that when she got there, for reasons unknown, Sarah Gordon beat her in the face with something which she managed to get rid of, then strangled her, then covered her body with leaves, then got sick, and then dashed to the police station to divert suspicion. All in just over fifteen minutes. And we haven’t even addressed the question of why. Why would she kill her? What on earth was her motive? You’re always lecturing me on motive, means, and opportunity, Inspector. So tell me how Sarah Gordon fits in.”

  Lynley couldn’t do so. Nor could he argue that any part of what they knew had occurred was a wildly improbable coincidence illustrating undeniable culpability. For everything Sarah Gordon told them about her reasons for going to the island in the first place had the ring of veracity. And that she was committed to her art seemed easily understandable when one considered the quality of her work. This being the case, he forced himself to evaluate Sergeant Havers’ pointed questions.

  He wanted to argue that Sarah Gordon’s resemblance to Helen Clyde was purely superficial, a combination of dark hair, dark eyes, fair skin, a slender frame. But he couldn’t lie about the fact that he was drawn to her because of other similarities—a straightforward manner of speaking, a willingness to examine the self, a commitment to personal growth, the ability to be alone. And yet beneath it all, something frightened and vulnerable. He didn’t want to believe that his difficulties with Helen would once again result in a form of professional myopia in which he forged obdurately ahead, not to pin guilt upon a man with whom Helen was sleeping this time, but to concentrate on a suspect to whom he was drawn for reasons having nothing to do with the case, all the time ignoring signposts leading him elsewhere. Yet he had to admit that Sergeant Havers’ points about the time frame in which the crime was carried out obviated Sarah Gordon’s guilt immediately.

  He sighed, rubbing his eyes. He wondered if he had actually seen her at all the previous night. He had been thinking of Helen only moments before he walked to the window. Why not transport her through the means of imagination from Bulstrode Gardens to Ivy Court?

  Havers rustled through her shoulder bag to bring out a packet of Players which she flipped onto the table between them. Instead of lighting up, however, she looked at him.

  “Thorsson’s the stronger candidate,” she said. And when he started to speak, she cut him off with, “Hear me out, sir. You’re saying his motive’s too obvious. Fine. So apply a variation of that objection to Sarah Gordon. Her admitted presence at the crime scene is too obvious. But if we’re going to go with one of them—if only for the moment—my money’s on the man. He wanted her, she refused him, she turned him in. So why’s your money on the woman?”

  “It isn’t. Not entirely. It’s just her coincidental connection to Weaver that makes me uneasy.”

  “Fine. Be uneasy. Meanwhile, I vote we pursue Thorsson until we’ve a reason not to. I say we check out his neighbours to see if anyone saw him skipping out in the morning. Or returning for that matter. We see if the autopsy gives us anything else. We see what that address on Seymour Street is all about.”

  It was solid policework, Havers’ expertise. He said, “Agreed.”

  “That easily? Why?”

  “You handle that half of it.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll see if the rooms at St. Stephen’s are Weaver’s.”

  “Inspector—”

  He took a cigarette from the pack, handed it to her, and struck a match. “It’s called compromise, Sergeant. Have a smoke,” he said.

  When Lynley pushed open the wrought iron gate at the south entrance to Ivy Court, he saw that a wedding party was posing for photographs in the old graveyard of St. Stephen’s Church. It was a curious group, with the bride done up in whiteface and wearing what appeared to be part of a privet hedge on her head, her chief attendant swathed in a blood-red burnoose, and the best man looking like a chimney sweep. Only the groom wore conventional morning dress. But he was alleviating any concern this might have caused by drinking champagne from a riding boot which he’d apparently removed from the foot of one of the guests. The wind whipped everyone’s clothing about, but the play of colours—white, red, black, and grey—against the slick lichenous green of the old slate gravestones had its own distinct charm.

  This the photographer himself seemed to see, for he kept calling out, “Hold it, Nick. Hold it, Flora. Right. Yes. Perfect,” as he snapped away with his camera.

  Flora, Lynley thought with a smile. No wonder she was wearing a bush on her head.

  He dodged past a heap of fallen bicycles and walked across the court to the doorway through which he had seen the woman disappear on the previous night. Nearly hidden by a tangle of goldheart ivy, a sign, still fresh with having been recently hand-lettered, hung on the wall beneath an overhead light. It contained three names. Lynley felt that quick, brief rush of triumph which comes with having one’s intuition affirmed by fact. Anthony Weaver’s was the first name listed.

  Only one of the other two he recognised. A. Jenn would be Weaver’s graduate student.

  It was Adam Jenn, in fact, whom Lynley found in Weaver’s study when he climbed the stairs to the first floor. The door stood ajar, revealing an unlit triangular entry off of which opened a narrow gyp room, a larger bedroom, and the study itself. Lynley heard voices coming from within the study—low questions from a man, soft responses from a woman—so he took the opportunity to have a quick look at the two other rooms.

  To his immediate right, the gyp room was well-equipped with a stove, a refrigerator, and a wall of glass-fronted cupboards in which sat enough cooking utensils and crockery to set up housekeeping. Aside from the refrigerator and the stove, everything in the room appeared to be new, from the gleaming microwave to the cups, saucers, and plates. The walls were recently painted, and the air smelled fresh, like baby powder, a scent which he tracked to its source: a solid rectangle of room deodoriser hanging on a hook behind the door.

  He was intrigued by the perfection of the gyp, so at odds with what he envisaged Anthony Weaver’s professional environment would be, considering the state of his study at home. Curious to see if some stamp of the man’s individuality evidenced itself elsewhere, he flipped on the lightswitch of the bedroom across the entry and stood in the doorway surveying it.

  Above wainscoting painted the colour of forest mushrooms rose walls which were papered
in cream with thin brown stripes. Framed pencil sketches hung from these—a pheasant shoot, a fox hunt, a deer chased by hounds, all signed with the single name Weaver—while from the white ceiling a pentagonal brass fixture shed light on a single bed next to which stood a tripod table holding a brass reading lamp and a matching diptych frame. Lynley crossed the room and picked this up. Elena Weaver smiled from one side, Justine from the other, the first a candid snapshot of the daughter joyfully romping with an Irish setter puppy, the second an earnest studio portrait of the wife, her long hair carefully curled back from her face and her smile close-lipped as if she wished to hide her teeth. Lynley replaced it and looked around reflectively. The hand that had outfitted the kitchen with its chromium appliances and ivory china had apparently seen to the decoration of the bedroom as well. On impulse, he pulled back part of the brown and green counterpane on the bed to find only a bare mattress and unslipped pillow beneath it. The revelation was not the least surprising. He left the room.

  As he did so, the study door swung open and he found himself face-to-face with the two young people whose murmured conversation he had heard a few moments earlier. The young man, his broad shoulders emphasised by an academic gown, reached out for the girl when he caught sight of Lynley, and he pulled her back against him protectively.

  “Help you with something?” His words were polite enough but the frigid tone conveyed an entirely different message, as did the young man’s features which quickly altered from the relaxed repose that accompanies friendly conversation to the sharpness that signals suspicion.

  Lynley glanced at the girl who was clutching a notebook to her chest. She wore a knitted cap from which bright blonde hair spilled. It was drawn low on her forehead, hiding her eyebrows but heightening the colour of her eyes which were violet and, at the moment, very frightened.

  Their responses were normal, admirable in the circumstances. An undergraduate in the college had been brutally murdered. Strangers would be neither welcomed nor tolerated. He produced his warrant card and introduced himself.

  “Adam Jenn?” he said.

  The young man nodded. He said to the girl, “I’ll see you next week, Joyce. But you’ve got to get on with the reading before you do the next essay. You’ve got the list. You’ve got a brain. Don’t be so lazy, okay?” He smiled as if to mitigate the negativity of the final comment, but the smile seemed rote, merely a quick curving of the lips that did nothing to alter the wariness in his hazel eyes.

  Joyce said, “Thank you, Adam,” in that breathy sort of voice which always manages to sound as if it’s extending an illicit invitation. She smiled her goodbye and a moment later they heard her clattering noisily down the wooden stairs. It wasn’t until the ground-floor staircase door opened and shut upon her departure that Adam Jenn invited Lynley into Weaver’s study.

  “Dr. Weaver’s not here,” he said. “If you’re wanting him, that is.”

  Lynley didn’t respond at once. Rather, he strolled to one of the windows which, like the sole window in his own room in the building, was set into one of the ornate Dutch gables overlooking Ivy Court. Unlike his room, however, no desk stood in the recess. Instead, two comfortably battered armchairs faced each other at an angle there, separated by a chipped piecrust table on which lay a copy of a book entitled Edward III: The Cult of Chivalry. Anthony Weaver was its author.

  “He’s brilliant.” Adam Jenn’s assertion had the distinct ring of defence. “No one in the country comes close to touching him in medieval history.”

  Lynley put on his spectacles, opened the volume, and leafed through a few of the densely worded pages. Arbitrarily, his eyes fell on the words but it was in the abysmal treatment of women as chattels subjugated to the political whims of their fathers and brothers that the age developed its reputation for a diplomatic manoeuvring far superseding any transitory—or spurious—demotic concerns it may have actively promulgated. Having not read university writing in years, Lynley smiled in amusement. He’d forgotten that tendency of the academician to voice his pronouncements with such egregious pomposity.

  He read the book’s dedication, For my darling Elena, and tapped the cover closed. He removed his spectacles.

  “You’re Dr. Weaver’s graduate student,” he said.

  “Yes.” Adam Jenn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Beneath his black academic gown, he wore a white shirt and freshly laundered jeans that had been carefully pressed with creases down the front. He drove his fists into the rear pockets of these and waited without speaking, standing next to an oval table across which were spread three open texts and half a dozen handwritten essays.

  “How do you come to be studying under Dr. Weaver?” Lynley removed his overcoat and placed it over the back of one of the old armchairs.

  “Decent luck for once in my life,” Adam said.

  It was a curious non-answer. Lynley raised an eyebrow. Adam read this as Lynley intended and continued.

  “I’d read two of his books as an undergraduate. I’d heard him lecture. When he was short-listed for the Penford Chair at the beginning of Easter term last year, I came to ask him if he’d direct my research. To have the Penford Chair as advisor..” He gazed round the room as if its jumble of contents would provide him with an adequate explanation of the importance of Weaver’s place in his life. He settled with, “You can’t go higher.”

  “Then this is all a bit of a risk on your end, isn’t it, hooking yourself up with Dr. Weaver so soon? What if he doesn’t get the appointment?”

  “It’s worth the risk as far as I’m concerned. Once he gets the Chair, he’ll be flooded with requests to direct graduates’ studies. So I got to him first.”

  “You seem relatively sure of your man. I’d always gathered these appointments are largely political. A change in the academic climate and a candidate’s finished.”

  “That’s true enough. Candidates walk a tight-rope. Alienate the search committee, offend some muckety-muck, and they’re done for. But committee’d be fools not to award it to him. As I said, he’s the best medievalist in the country and they’re not going to find anyone to argue with that.”

  “I take it he’s unlikely to alienate or offend?”

  Adam Jenn laughed boyishly. “Dr. Weaver?” was his reply.

  “I see. When should the announcement take place?”

  “That’s the odd thing.” Adam shook a heavy lock of sandy hair off his forehead. “It should have been announced last July, but the committee went on and on about extending the deadline, and they started checking everyone out like they were looking for red skeletons in somebody’s closet. Stupid, they are.”

  “Perhaps merely cautious. I’ve been given to understand that the Chair’s a fairly coveted advancement.”

  “It represents historical research at Cambridge. It’s the place they put the best.” Two thin lines of crimson ran along Adam’s cheekbone. No doubt he pictured himself in the Chair in the distant future when Weaver retired.

  Lynley moved to the table, glancing down at the essays that were spread across it. “You share these rooms with Dr. Weaver, I’ve been told.”

  “I put in a few hours most days, yes. I run my supervisions here as well.”

  “And that’s been going on for how long?”

  “Since the beginning of term.”

  Lynley nodded. “It’s an attractive environment, far nicer than what I remember from my days at university.”

  Adam looked round the study at the general mess of essays, books, furniture, and equipment. Obviously, attractive wouldn’t have been the first word to spring to his lips had he been asked to evaluate the room. Then he seemed to combine Lynley’s comment with his initial sight of him a few moments earlier. His head turned towards the door. “Oh, you mean the gyp and the bedroom. Dr. Weaver’s wife fixed them up for him last spring.”

  “In anticipation of the Chair? An elevated professor needs a proper set of rooms?”

  Adam grinned ruefully. “That sort of thing. But s
he didn’t manage to get her way in here. Dr. Weaver wouldn’t let her.” He added this last as if to explain the difference between the study and its companion rooms and concluded with a mildly sardonic, “You know how it is,” in a brotherhood-of-men fashion in which the connotation was clear: Women need to have their fancies tolerated, men are the ones with the sainted toleration.

  That Justine Weaver’s hand had not seen to the study was apparent to Lynley. And while it did not actually resemble the disordered sanctum at the rear of Weaver’s house, the similarities to it could not be ignored. Here was the same mild chaos, the same profusion of books, the same air of habitation which the Adams Road room possessed.

  One form of academic work or another seemed to be in progress everywhere. A large pine desk served as the heart for labour, holding everything from a word processor to a stack of black binders. The oval table in the room’s centre had the function of conference area, and the gable recess acted as a retreat for reading and study, for in addition to the table which displayed Weaver’s own book, a small case beneath the window, within an arm’s length of both the chairs, held additional volumes. Even the fireplace with its cinnamon tiles served a purpose beyond providing heat from an electric fire, for its mantel functioned as a clearing house for the post, and more than a dozen envelopes lined up across it, all bearing Anthony Weaver’s name. A solitary greeting card stood like a bookend at the far side of the serried collection of letters, and Lynley picked it up, a humorous birthday card with the word Daddy written above the greeting and the round-lettered signature Elena beneath it.

  Lynley replaced it among the envelopes and turned to Adam Jenn, who still stood by the table, one hand in his pocket and the other curved round the shoulder rail of one of the chairs. “Did you know her?”

  Adam pulled out the chair. Lynley joined him at the table, moving aside two essays and a cup of cold tea in which a thin, unappetising film was floating.

  Adam’s face was grave. “I knew her.”