For the Sake of Elena

by Elizabeth George

  “Well?” Havers asked as Lynley searched through the months. She popped the last piece of clothing from the floor into the sack, twisted it closed, and wrote a few words on a label.

  “It looks fairly straightforward,” he said. “Except…Havers, tell me what you make of this.” When she joined him at the desk, he pointed out a symbol that Elena used repeatedly throughout the calendar, a simple pencil-sketch of a fish. It first appeared on the eighteenth of January and continued with regularity three or four times each week, generally on a weekday, only sporadically on a Saturday, rarely on a Sunday.

  Havers bent over it. She dropped the sack of clothes to the floor. “Looks like the Christianity symbol,” she said at last. “Perhaps she’d decided to be born again.”

  “That would have been a quick recovery from reprobation,” Lynley replied. “The University wanted her in DeaStu, but no one’s mentioned a word about religion.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “That’s clear enough. She didn’t want someone to know something. I’m just not sure it had anything to do with discovering the Lord.”

  Havers seemed willing to pursue another tack. “She was a runner, wasn’t she? Maybe it’s a diet. These are the days she had to eat fish. Good for the blood pressure, good for the cholesterol, good for the…what? Muscle tone or something? But she was thin anyway—you can tell that much from the size of her clothes—so she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know.”

  “Heading towards anorexia?”

  “Sounds good to me. Body weight. Something a girl like her—with everyone’s fingers in her personal pie—could control.”

  “But she would have had to cook it herself in the gyp room,” Lynley said. “Surely Randie Webberly would have noticed that and mentioned it to me. And anyway, don’t anorexics simply stop eating?”

  “Okay. It’s the symbol of some society then. A secret group that’s up to no good. Drugs, alcohol, stealing government data. This is Cambridge after all, alma mater of the UK’s most prestigious group of traitors. She may have been hoping to follow in their footsteps. Fish could have been an acronym for their group.”

  “Foolish Intellectuals Squashing Hedonism?”

  Havers grinned. “You’re a finer detective than ever I thought.”

  They continued flipping through the calendar. The notations were unchanging from month to month, tapering off in the summer when only the fish appeared—and that a mere three times. Its final appearance was the day before her murder, and the only other marking of any note was a single address written on the Wednesday before she died: 31 Seymour Street and the time 2:00.

  “Here’s something,” Lynley said, and Havers jotted it down in her notebook along with Hare and Hounds, Search and Pellet, and a rough copy of the fish. “I’ll handle it,” she said, and began to go through the drawers of the desk as he turned to the cupboard that housed the washbasin. This contained a cornucopia of possessions and illustrated the manner in which one usually stores belongings when space is at a minimum. There was everything from laundry detergent to a popcorn popper. But nothing revealed very much about Elena.

  “Look at this,” Havers said as he was closing the cupboard and moving on to one of the drawers built into the wardrobe next to it. He looked up to see that she was holding out a slim, white case decorated with blue flowers. A prescription label was affixed to its centre. “Birth control pills,” she said, sliding out the thin sheet still encased in its plastic cover.

  “Hardly something surprising to find in the room of a twenty-year-old college girl,” Lynley said.

  “But they’re dated last February, Inspector. And not one of them taken. Looks like there was no man in her life at the present. Do we eliminate a jealous lover as the killer?”

  This was, Lynley thought, certainly support for what both Justine Weaver and Miranda Webberly had said last night about Gareth Randolph: Elena hadn’t been involved with him. The pills, however, also suggested a consistent refusal to get involved with anyone, something which might have set the wheels of a killer’s rage in motion. But surely she would have talked about that with someone, looking to someone for support or advice if she had been having trouble with a man.

  Across the hall, the music ended. A few last wavering, live notes sounded on the trumpet before, after a moment of muffled activity, the squeak of a door replaced the other sounds.

  “Randie,” Lynley called.

  Elena’s door swung inward. Miranda stood there, bundled up for the outdoors in her heavy pea jacket and navy sweat suit with a lime-green beret perched rakishly on her head. She was wearing high-topped black athletic shoes. Socks decorated to look like slices of watermelon peeked out from the top of them.

  Glancing at her attire, Havers said meaningfully, “I rest my case, Inspector,” and then to the girl, “Good to see you, Randie.”

  Miranda smiled. “You got here early.”

  “Necessity. I couldn’t let his lordship muddle through on his own. Besides”—this with a sardonic look in Lynley’s direction—“he hasn’t quite got the flavour of modern university life.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Lynley said. “I’d be lost without you.” He indicated the calendar. “Will you look at this fish, Randie? Does it mean anything to you?”

  Miranda joined him at the desk and inspected the sketches on the calendar. She shook her head.

  “She hadn’t been doing any cooking in the gyp room?” Havers asked, obviously testing out her diet theory.

  Miranda looked incredulous. “Cooking. Fish, you mean? Elena cooking fish?”

  “You would have known it, right?”

  “I would have got sick. I hate the smell of fish.”

  “Then some society that she belonged to?” Havers was going for theory number two.

  “Sorry. I know she was in DeaStu and Hare and Hounds and probably one or two other societies as well. But I’m not sure which.” Randie looked through the calendar as they themselves had done, chewing absently on the edge of her thumb. “It’s too often,” she said when she’d gone back to January. “No society has this many meetings.”

  “A person, then?”

  Lynley saw her cheeks flush. “I wouldn’t know. Really. She never said that there was anyone that special. I mean special enough for three or four nights a week. She never said.”

  “You can’t know for certain, you mean,” Lynley said. “You don’t know for a fact. But you lived with her, Randie. You knew her far better than you think. Tell me the sorts of things Elena did. Those are merely facts, nothing more. I’ll build upon them.”

  Miranda hesitated a long moment before saying, “She went out a lot at night by herself.”

  “For entire nights?”

  “No. She couldn’t do that because after last December they made her check in and out with the porter. But she got back to her room late whenever she went out…I mean when it was one of those secret going-outs. She was never here when I went to bed on those nights.”

  “Secret going-outs?”

  Miranda’s ginger hair bobbed as she nodded. “She went by herself. She always wore perfume. She didn’t take books. I thought there must have been someone she was seeing.”

  “But she never told you who it was?”

  “No. And I didn’t like to pry. I don’t think she wanted anyone to know.”

  “That doesn’t suggest a fellow undergraduate, does it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “What about Thorsson?” Her eyes dropped to the calendar. She touched the edge of it reflectively. “What do you know about his relationship with Elena? There’s something to it, Randie. I can see that on your face. And he was here Thursday night.”

  “I only know…” Randie hesitated, sighed. “This is what she said. It’s only what she said, Inspector.”

  “All right. That’s understood.” Lynley saw Havers flip over a page of her notebook.

  Miranda watched the sergeant write. “She said he was trying t
o make it with her, Inspector. He’d been after her last term, she said. He was after her again. She hated him for it. She called him smarmy. She said she was going to turn him over to Dr. Cuff for sexual harassment.”

  “And did she do so?”

  “I don’t know.” Miranda twisted the button on her jacket. It was like a little talisman, infusing her with strength. “I don’t know that she ever got the chance, you see.”

  Lennart Thorsson was in the process of completing a lecture in the English Faculty on Sidgwick Avenue when Lynley and Havers finally caught him up. The popularity of both his material and his manner of presenting it was attested by the size of the hall in which he spoke. It held at least one hundred chairs. All of them were filled, mostly by women. Ninety percent of them appeared to be hanging upon Thorsson’s every word.

  There was much to hang on, all of it delivered in perfect, virtually unaccented English.

  The Swede paced as he talked. He didn’t use notes. He seemed to take inspiration from intermittently running his right hand through the thick, strawberry-blond hair which tumbled onto his forehead and round his shoulders in an appealing mess, a complement to the drooping moustache that curved round his mouth in a style that befitted the early 1970’s.

  “So in the royalty plays, we examine the issues that Shakespeare himself was intent upon examining,” Thorsson was saying. “Monarchy. Power. Hierarchy. Authority. Dominion. And in our examination of these issues we cannot avoid a scrutiny of that which comprised the question of status quo. How far is Shakespeare writing from a perspective to conserve the status quo? How does he do it if he does it? And if he’s cleverly spinning an illusion in which he merely wears the guise of adherence to these social constrictions of his day—while all the time espousing an insidious subversion of the social order—how is he doing that?”

  Thorsson paused to let the furious note-takers catch up with the flow of his thoughts. He turned on his heel briskly and paced again. “And then we go further to begin our examination of the obverse position. We ask to what extent is Shakespeare openly contesting the existing social hierarchies? From what standpoint is he contesting them? Is he implying an alternative set of values—a subversive set of values—and if he is, what are they? Or”—Thorsson pointed a meaningful finger at his audience and leaned towards them, his voice more intense—“is Shakespeare doing something even more complex? Is he questioning and challenging the foundation of this country—his country—itself—authority, power, and hierarchy—in order to imply a refutation of the premise on which his entire society was founded? Is he projecting different ways of living, arguing that if possibility is circumscribed only by existing conditions, then man makes no progress and effects no change? Because is not Shakespeare’s real premise—present in every play—that all men share equality? And does not every king in every play reach that point at which his interests are in alignment with humanity at large and no longer with kingship? ‘I think the King is but a man, as I am.’ As…I…am. This, then, is the point we examine. Equality. The king and I are equals. We are but men. There is no defensible social hierarchy, here or anywhere. So we agree that it was possible for Shakespeare, as an imaginative artist, to store and dwell upon ideas which would not be talked about for centuries, projecting himself into a future he did not know, allowing us to see at last that the reason his works are valid today is simply because we have not yet even begun to catch up to his thinking.”

  Thorsson strode to the podium and picked up a notebook which he closed decisively. “Next week then. Henry V. Good morning.”

  For a moment, no one stirred. Paper crackled. A pencil dropped. Then, with what appeared to be reluctance, the audience roused itself with a collective sigh. Conversation rose as people headed for the exits while Thorsson stuffed his notebook and two texts into a haversack. As he removed his black academic gown and balled it up to join the textbooks, he spoke to a tousle-haired young woman still sitting in the front row. Then, after taking a moment to tap one finger against her cheek and laugh at something she’d said, he came up the aisle towards the door.

  “Ah,” Havers said, sotto voce. “Your basic Prince of Darkness.”

  It was a particularly apt sobriquet. Thorsson didn’t favour black, he wallowed in it, as if in the attempt to generate a deliberate contrast to his fair skin and hair. Pullover, trousers, herringbone jacket, overcoat, and scarf. Even his boots were black, with pointed toes and high heels. If he was intent upon playing the role of youthful, indifferent rebellion, he couldn’t have chosen a more successful costume. However, when he reached Lynley and Havers and began, with a sharp nod, to move past them, Lynley saw that while Thorsson might well have been a rebel, he wasn’t a youth. Crow’s feet shot out from the corners of his eyes, and a few grey strands wove through his abundant hair. Middle thirties, Lynley decided. He and the Swede were of an age.

  “Mr. Thorsson?” He offered his warrant card. “Scotland Yard CID. Do you have a few minutes?”

  Thorsson looked from Lynley to Havers and back to Lynley, who made the introductions. He said, “Elena Weaver, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  He slung his haversack over one shoulder and, with a sigh, roughly drove a hand through his hair. “We can’t talk here. Have you got a car with you?” He waited for Lynley’s nod. “Let’s go to the college.” He turned abruptly and walked out the door, flinging his scarf back over his shoulder.

  “Nice exit, that,” Havers said.

  “Why do I imagine he excels at them?”

  They followed Thorsson down the hall, down the stairs, and into the open cloister which had been created by a well-intentioned modern architect who had designed the three-sided faculties building to stand upon columns of reinforced concrete round a rectangle of lawn. The resulting structure hovered above the ground, suggesting impermanence and offering no protection from the wind which at this moment was gusting through the columns.

  “I’ve a supervision next hour,” Thorsson informed them.

  Lynley smiled pleasantly. “I certainly hope we’re done by then.” He motioned Thorsson in the general direction of his car which he’d parked illegally at the northeast entrance to Selwyn College. They walked to it three abreast on the pavement, with Thorsson merely nodding indifferently to students who called out to him from passing bicycles.

  It wasn’t until they reached the Bentley that the Shakespearean lecturer addressed them again. And then it was only to say, “This is what the British police are driving? Fy fan! No wonder the country’s going to hell.”

  “Ah, but my motor makes up for it,” Havers replied. “Average a ten-year-old Mini with a four-year-old Bentley and you come up with seven years of equality, don’t you?”

  Lynley smiled inwardly. Havers had taken Thorsson’s lecture directly into her caustic little heart. “You know what I mean,” she continued. “A car by any other name rolls down the street.”

  Thorsson didn’t look amused.

  They got into the car. Lynley headed up Grange Road to make the circuit that would take them back into the centre of the city. At the end of the street, as they waited to make the right turn onto the Madingley Road, a lone bicyclist rolled past them, heading out of town. It took more than a moment for Lynley to recognise the rider, Helen’s brother-in-law, the absent Harry Rodger. He was pedalling towards his home, his coat flapping like great woollen wings round his legs. Lynley watched him, wondering if he’d spent the entire night at Emmanuel. Rodger’s face seemed pasty, save for his nose which was red and matched the colour of his ears. He looked perfectly miserable. Seeing him, Lynley felt a quick surge of concern only indirectly related to Harry Rodger. It centred itself on Helen and a need to get her away from her sister’s home and back to London. He shoved the thought aside and made himself concentrate on the conversation between Havers and Lennart Thorsson.

  “His writing illustrates the artist’s struggle to work out a utopian vision, Sergeant. A vision that goes beyond a feudal society and deals wit
h all mankind, not just a select group of individuals who happen to be born with a silver spoon on which to suck. As such, the body of his work is prodigiously—no, miraculously—subversive. But most critical analysts don’t wish to see it that way. It scares them witless to think that a sixteenth-century writer might have had more social vision than they…who of course have no social vision at all.”

  “Shakespeare was a closet Marxist then?”

  Thorsson made a snort of derision. “Simplistic snobbery,” he responded. “And hardly what I’d expect from—”

  Havers turned in her seat. “Yes?”

  Thorsson didn’t finish his thought. There was no need. Someone of your class hung among them like an echo, four words that robbed his liberal literary criticism of virtually all of its meaning.

  They rode the rest of the distance without conversation, threading through the lorries and taxis on St. John’s Street to make their way down the narrow gorge of Trinity Lane. Lynley parked near the end of Trinity Passage, just outside the north entrance to St. Stephen’s College. Unlocked and pushed open during the day, it offered immediate access to New Court.

  “My rooms are this way,” Thorsson said, striding towards the west range of the court which was built on the river. He slid back a slat of wood to uncover his name, painted in white on a black sign by the door, and he entered to the left of the crenellated tower where woodbine grew thickly on the smooth stone walls. Lynley and Havers followed, Lynley having acknowledged Havers’ knowing look at L staircase directly across the lawn on the east range of the court.

  Ahead of them, Thorsson pounded up the stairs, his boots barking in staccato against the bare wood. When they caught him up, he was unlocking a door upon a room whose windows overlooked the river, the blazing autumn of the Backs, and Trinity Passage Bridge where at this moment a group of tourists were taking pictures. Thorsson crossed to the windows and dropped his haversack onto a table beneath them. Two ladder-back chairs faced each other there, and he draped his overcoat across the back of one of them and went to a large recess in one corner of the room where a single bed stood.