For the Sake of Elena

by Elizabeth George

  Lynley followed the direction of the boy’s gaze to a table at the far end of the room where another senior member of the college sat in conversation with two younger men.

  “Drop the history drivel,” Petersen went on. “Save it for supervisions. Come on. Have a go. Troughton!”

  The man looked up. He waved off the call. The crowd urged him on. He ignored them.

  “Blast it, Troughtsie, come on. Be a man.” Petersen laughed.

  Someone else called, “Let’s do it, Trout.”

  And suddenly Lynley heard nothing more, just the name itself and all its variations, Troughton, Troughtsie, Trout. It was the eternal predeliction of students for giving their instructors some sort of affectionate appellation. He’d done it himself, first at Eton then at Oxford.

  And now for the first time, he wondered if Elena Weaver had done the same.

  19

  “What is it, Tommy?” Lady Helen asked when she came at his beckoning from the doorway to the JCR.

  “A premature ending to the concert. For us, at least. Come with me.”

  She followed him back to the bar where the crush of people was beginning to thin as the jazz audience wandered once again in the direction of the music. The man called Troughton was still sitting at the corner table, but one of his companions had left and the other was getting ready to do the same, donning a green anorak and a black and white scarf. Troughton himself stood and cupped his hand round his ear to hear something that the younger man was saying, and after a moment of further conversation, he too put on a jacket and started across the room to the door.

  As he approached, Lynley eyed the older man, taking his measure as the potential lover of a twenty-year-old girl. Although Troughton had a youthful, pixie-like face, he was otherwise perfectly nondescript, an ordinary man no more than five feet eight inches tall whose toast-coloured hair looked soft and was curly but was also decidedly thinning on the top. He appeared to be somewhere in his late forties, and aside from the width of his shoulders and the depth of his chest—both of which suggested that he was a rower—Lynley had to admit that he didn’t look at all the type of man to have attracted and seduced someone like Elena Weaver.

  As the other man began to pass by them on his way to the door, Lynley said, “Dr. Troughton?”

  Troughton paused, looked surprised to have a stranger addressing him by name. “Yes?”

  “Thomas Lynley,” he said and introduced Lady Helen. He reached into his pocket and produced his police identification. “May we go somewhere to talk?”

  Troughton didn’t appear the least bewildered by the request. Instead, he looked both resigned and relieved. “Yes. This way,” he said and led them out into the night.

  He took them to his rooms in the building that comprised the north range of the college garden, two courtyards away from the JCR. On the second floor, situated in the southwest corner, they overlooked the River Cam on one side and the garden on the other. They consisted of a small bedroom and a study, the former furnished only with an unmade single bed and the latter crowded with ancient, overstuffed furniture and a vast and undisciplined number of books. These lent to the room the sort of mouldy mustiness associated with paper too long exposed to air that is heavy with damp.

  Troughton picked up a sheaf of essays from one of the chairs and put it on his desk. He said, “May I offer you a brandy?” and when Lynley and Lady Helen accepted, he went to a glass-fronted cabinet to one side of the fireplace where he took out three plain balloon glasses and carefully held each one up to the light before pouring. He didn’t say anything until he had taken a seat in one of the heavy, overstuffed chairs.

  “You’ve come about Elena Weaver, haven’t you?” He spoke quietly, calmly. “I suppose I’ve been expecting you since yesterday afternoon. Did Justine give you my name?”

  “No. Elena herself did, after a fashion. She’d been making a curious mark on her calendar ever since last January,” Lynley said. “A small line drawing of a fish.”

  “Yes. I see.” Troughton gave his attention to his balloon glass. His eyes filled, and he pressed his fingers to them before he raised his head. “Of course, she didn’t call me that,” he said unnecessarily. “She called me Victor.”

  “But it was her shorthand method of noting when you’d meet, I should guess. And, no doubt, a way to keep the knowledge from her father should he ever happen to glance at her calendar on a visit to her room. Because, I imagine, you know her father quite well.”

  Troughton nodded. He took a swallow of his brandy, setting the balloon glass on the low table that separated his chair from Lady Helen’s. He patted the breast pocket of his grey tweed jacket and brought out a cigarette case. It was made of pewter, dented in one corner. It bore some sort of crest upon its cover. He offered it round and then lit up, the match flickering in his fingers like an uneasy beacon. He had large hands, Lynley noted, strong-looking with smooth, oval nails. They were his best feature.

  Troughton kept his eyes on his cigarette as he said, “The hardest part these last three days has been the pretence of it all. Coming to the college, seeing to my supervisions, taking my meals with the others. Having a glass of sherry before dinner last night with the Master and making small talk while all the time I wanted to throw my head back and howl.” When his voice wavered slightly on the last word, Lady Helen leaned forward in her chair as if she would offer him sympathy, but she stopped herself when Lynley lifted his hand in quick admonition. Troughton steadied himself by drawing in on his cigarette and placing it into a pottery ashtray on the table next to him where its smoke rose in a snaking plume. Then he went on.

  “But what right have I to any one of the externals of grief? I have duties, after all. I have responsibilities. A wife. Three children. I’m supposed to think of them. I ought to be engaged in picking up the pieces and going on and being thankful that my marriage and my career didn’t come crashing down round me because I’ve spent the last eleven months screwing a deaf girl twenty-seven years my junior. In fact, inside my ugly little soul where no one would ever know the feeling is even there, I ought to be secretly thankful Elena’s out of the way. Because there’ll be no mess now, no scandal, no titters and whispers behind my back. It’s completely over and I’m to go on. That’s what men my age do, isn’t it, when they’ve puffed themselves up with a successful seduction that, over time, grows just a little bit tedious. And it was supposed to grow tedious, wasn’t it, Inspector? I was supposed to start finding her a sexual millstone, living evidence of an ego-boosting peccadillo that promised to come back to haunt me if I didn’t take care of her in one way or another.”

  “It wasn’t like that for you?”

  “I love her. I can’t even say loved because if I put it in the past tense, I’m going to have to face the fact that she’s gone and I can’t stand the thought of it.”

  “She was pregnant. Did you know that?”

  Troughton closed his eyes. The weak overhead light, which shone down from a cone-shaped shade, cast shadows from his eyelashes onto his skin. It glittered beneath the lashes on the crescent of tears which he appeared to be willing himself not to shed. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. When he could, he said, “I knew.”

  “I should think that offered the possibility of serious difficulties for you, Dr. Troughton. No matter how you felt about the girl.”

  “The scandal, you mean? The loss of life-long friendships? The damage to my career? None of that mattered. Oh, I knew I was likely to be ostracised by virtually everyone if I walked out on my family for a twenty-year-old girl. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realise that I simply didn’t care. The sorts of things that matter to my colleagues, Inspector—prestigious appointments, the building of a political base, a stellar academic reputation, invitations to speak at conferences and to chair committees, requests to serve the college, the University, even the nation—those things ceased mattering to me a long time ago when I reached the conclusion that connection to anot
her person is the only item of real value in life. And I felt I’d found that connection with Elena. I wasn’t about to give her up. I would have done anything to keep her. Elena.”

  The saying of her name seemed a necessity to Troughton, a subtle form of release that he had not allowed himself—that the circumstances of their relationship had not allowed him—since her death. But still he didn’t cry, as if he believed that to give in to sorrow was to lose control over the few aspects of his life that remained unshattered by the girl’s murder.

  As if she knew this, Lady Helen went to the cabinet by the fireplace and found the bottle of brandy. She poured a bit more into Troughton’s glass. Her own face, Lynley saw, was grave and composed.

  “When did you see Elena last?” Lynley asked the other man.

  “Sunday night. Here.”

  “But she didn’t spend the night, did she? The porter saw her leaving St. Stephen’s to go running in the morning.”

  “She left me…it must have been just before one. Before the gates close here.”

  “And you? Did you go home as well?”

  “I stayed. I do that most weeknights, and have done for some two years now.”

  “I see. Your home isn’t in the city, then?”

  “It’s in Trumpington.” Troughton appeared to read the expression on Lynley’s face, adding, “Yes, I know, Inspector. Trumpington’s hardly such a distance from the college to warrant having to spend the night here. Especially having to spend most weeknights over a two-year period. Obviously, my reasons for dossing here had to do with a distance of a very different sort. Initially, that is. Before Elena.”

  Troughton’s cigarette had burnt itself to nothing in the ashtray by his chair. He lit another and took more of the brandy. He appeared to have himself once more under control.

  “When did she tell you she was pregnant?”

  “Wednesday night, not long after she’d got the results of the test.”

  “But prior to that, she’d told you there was a possibility? She’d told you she suspected?”

  “She hadn’t said anything to me about pregnancy before Wednesday. I had no suspicion.”

  “Did you know she wasn’t taking precautions?”

  “It wasn’t something I felt we had to discuss.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lynley saw Lady Helen stir, turning to face Troughton, saying, “But surely, Dr. Troughton, a man of your education wouldn’t have left the sole responsibility of contraception to the woman with whom you intended to sleep. You would have discussed it with her before you took her to bed.”

  “I didn’t see the need.”

  “The need.” Lady Helen said the two words slowly.

  Lynley thought of the unused birth control pills which Sergeant Havers had found in Elena Weaver’s desk drawer. He recalled February’s date upon them and the conjectures he and Havers had developed regarding that date. He asked, “Dr. Troughton, did you assume she was using a contraceptive of some sort? Did she tell you she was?”

  “As entrapment, you mean? No. She never said a word about contraception one way or another. And she didn’t need to, Inspector. It wouldn’t have made any difference to me if she had.” He picked up his brandy glass and turned it on his palm. It seemed a largely meditative gesture.

  Lynley watched the play of uncertainty on his face. He felt irritated at the delicacy with which the circumstances suggested he probe for the truth. He said, “I have the distinct impression that we’re caught between talking at cross purposes and engaging in outright prevarication. Perhaps you’d care to tell me what you’re holding back.”

  In the silence, the distant sound of the jazz concert beat rhythmically against the windows in the room, the high wild notes of the trumpet improvising as Randie took another ride with the band. And then the drummer soloed. And then the melody resumed. When it did so, Victor Troughton raised his head, as if the music beckoned him to do so.

  He said, “I was going to marry Elena. Frankly, I welcomed the opportunity to do so. But her baby wasn’t mine.”

  “Wasn’t—”

  “She didn’t know that. She thought I was the father. And I let her believe it. But I wasn’t, I’m afraid.”

  “You sound certain of that.”

  “I am, Inspector.” Troughton offered a smile of infinite sadness. “I had a vasectomy nearly three years ago. Elena didn’t know. And I didn’t tell her. I’ve never told anyone.”

  Just outside the building in which Victor Troughton had his study and bedroom, a terrace overlooked the River Cam. It rose from the garden, partially hidden by a brick wall, and it held several planters of verduous shrubs and a few benches on which—during fine weather—members of the college could take the sun and listen to the laughter of those who tried their luck punting down the river towards the Bridge of Sighs. It was to this terrace that Lynley directed Lady Helen. Although he recognised his need to lay before her each singular realisation that the circumstances of the evening had forced upon him, he said nothing at the moment. Instead, he tried to give definition to what those realisations were causing him to feel.

  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.”