For the Sake of Elena

by Elizabeth George

  “I’m done for,” he said, and lay down on his back across the plaid counterpane. He winced as if the position were uncomfortable for him. “Sit if you want.” He gestured to an easy chair and a matching sofa at the foot of the bed, both of them covered with material the colour of wet mud. His intention was clear. The interview that he wished to be conducted on his turf would also be conducted precisely on his terms.

  After nearly thirteen years on the force, Lynley was used to encountering displays of bravado, specious or otherwise. He ignored the invitation to sit and took a moment to inspect the collection of volumes in a breakfront bookcase at one side of the room. Poetry, classic fiction, literary criticism printed in English, French, and Swedish, and several volumes of erotica, one of which lay open to a chapter entitled “Her Orgasm.” Lynley smiled wryly. He liked the subtle touch.

  At the table, Sergeant Havers was opening her notebook. She produced a pencil from her shoulder bag, and looked at Lynley expectantly. On the bed, Thorsson yawned.

  Lynley turned from the bookcase. “Elena Weaver saw a lot of you,” he said.

  Thorsson blinked. “Hardly a cause for suspicion, Inspector. I was one of her supervisors.”

  “But you saw her outside of her supervisions.”

  “Did I?”

  “You’d been to her room. More than once, I understand.” Speculatively and as obviously as possible, Lynley ran his eyes the length of the bed. “Did she have her supervisions in here, Mr. Thorsson?”

  “Yes. But at the table. I find that young ladies do far better thinking on their bums than on their backs.” Thorsson chuckled. “I can see where you’re heading, Inspector. Let me put your mind at rest. I don’t seduce school girls, even when they invite seduction.”

  “Is that what Elena did?”

  “They come in here and sit with their pretty legs spread and I get the message. It happens all the time. But I don’t take them up on it.” He yawned again. “I admit I’ve had three or four of them once they’ve graduated, but they’re adults by then and they know the score proper. A bit of dirty hard cock for the weekend, that’s all. Then off they go, warm and tingly, with no questions asked and no commitments made. We have a good time—they probably have a far better time than I, to be frank—and that’s the end of it.”

  Lynley wasn’t blind to the fact that Thorsson hadn’t answered his question. The other man was continuing.

  “Cambridge senior fellows who have affairs with school girls fit a profile, Inspector, and it never varies. If you’re looking for someone likely to stuff Elena, look for middle-aged, look for married, look for unattractive. Look for generally miserable and outstandingly stupid.”

  “Someone completely unlike you,” Havers said from the table.

  Thorsson ignored her. “I’m not a madman. I’m not interested in being ruined. And that’s what’s in store for any djavlar typ who makes a mess of himself with an undergraduate—male or female. The scandal’s enough to make him miserable for years.”

  “Why do I have the impression that scandal wouldn’t bother you in the least, Mr. Thorsson?” Lynley asked.

  Havers added, “Did you actually harass her for sex, Mr. Thorsson?”

  Thorsson turned onto his side. He put his eyes on Havers and kept them there. Contempt drew down the corners of his mouth.

  “You went to see her Thursday night,” Havers said. “Why? To keep her from doing what she threatened she’d do? I don’t imagine you much wanted her to give your name over to the Master of the College. So what did she tell you? Had she already filed a formal complaint for harassment? Or were you hoping to stop her from doing that?”

  “You’re a fucking stupid cow,” Thorsson replied.

  Lynley felt quick anger shoot blood to his muscles. But Sergeant Havers, he saw, was not reacting. Instead, she twirled an ashtray slowly beneath her fingers, studying its contents. Her expression was bland.

  “Where do you live, Mr. Thorsson?” Lynley asked.

  “Off the Fulbourn Road.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Thank God, no. English women don’t exactly heat my blood.”

  “Are you living with someone?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone spend the night with you Sunday? Was anyone with you Monday morning?”

  Thorsson’s eyes danced away for a fractional instant. “No,” he said. But like most people he did not lie well.

  “Elena Weaver was on the cross country team,” Lynley went on. “Did you know that?”

  “I might have known. I don’t recall.”

  “She ran in the morning. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “She called you ‘Lenny the Lech.’ Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you go to see her Thursday night?”

  “I thought we could sort things out if we talked like two adults. I discovered I was wrong.”

  “So you knew she was intending to turn you in for harassing her. Is that what she told you Thursday night?”

  Thorsson hooted a laugh. He dropped his legs over the side of the bed. “I see the game now. You’re too late, Inspector, if you’re here to sniff up a motive for her murder. That one won’t do. The bitch had already turned me in.”

  “He’s got motive,” Havers said. “What happens to one of these University blokes if he gets caught with his hands in some pretty thing’s knickers?”

  “Thorsson was fairly clear on that. At the least, I imagine he finds himself ostracised. At the most, dismissed. No matter its politics, ethically the University’s a conservative environment. Academics won’t tolerate one of their fellows becoming entangled with a junior member of his college. Especially a student he’s seeing for supervisions.”

  “But why would Thorsson even care what they thought? When d’you think he’d ever find the need to go rubbing elbows with his fellow scholars?”

  “He may not need to rub social elbows with them, Havers. He may not even want to. But he’s got to rub academic elbows all the time, and if his colleagues cut him off, he’s ruined his chances for advancement here. That would be the case for all the senior fellows, but I imagine Thorsson has a finer line to walk to move along in his career.”

  “Why?”

  “A Shakespearean scholar who’s not even English? Here? At Cambridge? I dare say he’s fought hard to get where he is.”

  “And might fight even harder to keep himself there.”

  “True enough. No matter Thorsson’s superficial disdain for Cambridge, I can’t think he’d want to endanger himself. He’s young enough to have his eye on an eventual professorship, probably a chair. But that’s lost to him if he’s involved with a student.”

  Havers dumped some sugar into her coffee. She munched thoughtfully on a toasted teacake. At three other steel-legged tables in the airy buttery, seven junior members of the college huddled over their own mid-morning snacks with sunlight from the wall of windows streaking down their backs. The presence of Lynley and Havers did not appear to interest them.

  “He had opportunity as well,” Havers pointed out.

  “If we discount his claim that he didn’t know Elena ran in the morning.”

  “I think we can, Inspector. Look how many times her calendar indicates she met with Thorsson. Are we supposed to believe that she never once mentioned the cross country team to him? That she never talked about her running? What utter rot.”

  Lynley grimaced at the bitterness of his own coffee. It tasted cooked—like a soup. He added sugar and borrowed his sergeant’s spoon.

  “If an investigation was pending, he’d want to put an end to it, wouldn’t he?” Havers was continuing. “Because once Elena Weaver came forward to put the thumbscrews to him, what was to stop a dozen other sweet young things from doing the same?”

  “If a dozen other sweet young things even exist. If, in fact, he’s guilty at all. Elena may have charged him with harassing her, Sergeant, but let’s not forget that it remained
to be proved.”

  “And it can’t be proved now, can it?” Havers pointed a knowing finger at him. Her upper lip curled. “Are you actually taking the male position in this? Poor Lenny Thorsson’s been falsely accused of dandling some girl because he rejected her when she tried to get him to take off his trousers? Or at least unzip them?”

  “I’m not taking any position at all, Havers. I’m merely gathering facts. And the most cogent one is that Elena Weaver had already turned him in, and as a result an investigation was pending. Look at it rationally. He’s got motive spelled out in neon lights above his head. He may talk like an idiot, but he doesn’t strike me as a fool. He would have known he’d be placed at the top of the list of suspects as soon as we learned about him. So if he did kill her, I imagine he’d have set himself up with an ironclad alibi, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.” She waved her teacake at him. One of its raisins dropped with a plop into her coffee. She ignored it and continued. “I think he’s clever enough to know we’d be having a conversation just like this. He knew we’d be saying he’s a Cambridge don, he’s a far sight off dim, he’d never kill Elena Weaver and hand himself over to the rozzers on a platter now, would he? And look at us, will you. Playing right into his hands.” She bit into her teacake. Her jaws worked it furiously.

  Lynley had to admit that there was a certain skewed logic to what Havers was suggesting. Still, he didn’t like the fire with which she suggested it. That hot edge of feeling nearly always implied a loss of objectivity, the bane of effective policework. He had encountered it too often in himself to let it go ignored in his partner.

  He knew the source of her anger. But to address it directly would be to give a distinction to Thorsson’s words that was undeserved. He sought another tack.

  “He would know about the Ceephone in her room. There’s that. And according to Miranda, Elena left the room prior to the time Justine received the call. If he’d been in her room before—and he admits that he had—then he probably knew how to use the phone as well. So he could have made the call to the Weavers.”

  “Now you’re onto something,” Havers said.

  “But unless Sheehan’s forensic team give us trace evidence that we can connect to Thorsson, unless we can pin down the weapon used to beat the girl before she was strangled, and unless we can connect that weapon to Thorsson, we’ve got nothing much more than our natural dislike of him.”

  “And we’ve plenty of that.”

  “In spades.” He shoved his coffee cup to one side. “What we need is a witness, Havers.”

  “To the killing?”

  “To something. To anything.” He stood. “Let’s look up this woman who found the body. If nothing else, at least we’ll find out what she was planning to paint in the fog.”

  Havers drained her coffee cup and wiped the greasy crumbs from her hands onto a paper napkin. She headed for the door, shrugging into her coat, with her two scarves dragging along the floor behind her. He said nothing else until they were outside on the terrace above North Court. And even then he chose his words carefully.

  “Havers, as to what Thorsson said to you.”

  She looked at him blankly. “What he said, sir?”

  Lynley felt an odd strip of sweat on the back of his neck. Most of the time he didn’t give a thought to the fact that his partner was a woman. At the moment, however, that fact couldn’t be avoided. “In his room, Havers. The…” He sought a euphemism. “The bovine reference?”

  “Bo…” Under her thick fringe of hair, her brow creased in perplexity. “Oh, bovine. You mean when he called me a cow?”

  “Ah…yes.” Even as he said it, Lynley wondered what on earth he could possibly come up with to soothe her feelings. He needn’t have worried.

  She chuckled quietly. “Don’t give it a thought, Inspector. When an ass calls me a cow, I always consider the source.”

  7

  “And what’s this one, Christian?” Lady Helen asked. She held up a piece of the large wooden puzzle that lay on the floor between them. Carved from mahogany, oak, fir, and birch, it was a softly hued map of the United States, a gift to the twins on their fourth birthday sent from America by their aunt Iris, Lady Helen’s oldest sister. The puzzle reflected Lady Iris’ taste more than it said anything about her devotion to her niece and nephew. “Quality and durability, Helen. That’s what one looks for,” she would say stolidly, as if in the expectation that Christian and Perdita would be playing with toys right into their dotage.

  Bright colours would have attracted the children more strongly. They certainly would have gone further to hold their attention. But after a few false starts, Lady Helen had managed to turn putting the puzzle together into a game which Christian was playing like a zealot as his sister watched. Perdita sat snugly against Lady Helen’s side, her thin legs splayed out in front of her, her scuffed shoes pointed northeast and northwest.

  “Cafilornia!” Christian announced triumphantly, after spending a moment studying the shape his aunt held for him. He beat his feet on the floor and crowed. He was always successful with the oddly shaped states. Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Utah. No problem there. But Wyoming, Colorado, and North Dakota were blatant invitations to a fit of temper.

  “Wonderful. And its capital is…?”

  “New York!”

  Lady Helen laughed. “Sacramento, silly face.”

  “Sackermenno!”

  “Quite. Now put it in. Do you know where it goes?”

  After a futile attempt to pound it into the spot left for Florida, Christian slid it across the board to the opposite coast. “’Nother, Auntie Leen,” he said. “I can do more.”

  She selected the smallest piece and held it up. Wisely, Christian squinted down at the map. He plunged his finger into the empty spot to the east of Connecticut.

  “Here,” he announced.

  “Yes. But can you name it?”

  “Here! Here!”

  “Are you stalling, darling?”

  “Auntie Leen! Here!”

  Next to Lady Helen, Perdita stirred. “Rose-ila,” she whispered.

  “Roads Island!” Christian shrieked. With a whoop of triumph, he lunged for the state which his aunt still held.

  “And the capital?” Lady Helen kept the puzzle piece away from him. “Come along. You knew it yesterday.”

  “Lantic Ocean!” he bellowed.

  Lady Helen smiled. “Close enough, I suppose.”

  Christian tugged the piece from her fingers and smashed it into the puzzle face downward. When it didn’t fit, he tried it upside down. He pushed his sister away when she leaned forward to help him, saying, “I c’n do it, Perdy,” and managing to get it right on a third clumsy, sticky-handed try.

  “’Nother,” he demanded.

  Before Lady Helen could accommodate him, the front door opened and Harry Rodger entered the house. He glanced into the sitting room, his eyes lingering on the baby who kicked and burbled on a heavy quilt next to Perdita on the floor.

  “Hullo, everyone,” he said as he took off his overcoat. “Got a kiss for Dad?”

  Squealing, Christian barrelled across the room. He flung himself against his father’s legs. Perdita didn’t move.

  Rodger swung his son up, kissed him noisily on the cheek, and set him back on the floor. He pretended to paddle him, demanding, “Have you been bad, Chris? Have you been a bad boy?” Christian shrieked with glee. Lady Helen felt Perdita shrink closer beside her and glanced down to see that she was sucking her thumb, eyes fixed on her sister, fingers kneading her palm.

  “We’re doing a puzzle,” Christian told his father. “Auntie Leen ’n me.”

  “And what about Perdita? Is she helping you?”

  “No. Perdita won’t play. But Auntie Leen and I play. Come see.” Christian dragged on his father’s hand, urging him into the sitting room.

  Lady Helen tried to feel neither anger nor aversion as her brother-in-law joined them. He hadn’t come home last night. He hadn’t bo
thered to phone. And those two facts eradicated whatever sympathy she might have felt upon looking at him and seeing that, whether the illness was of the body or the spirit, he was obviously unwell. His eyes looked yellow. His face was unshaven. His lips were chapped. If he wasn’t sleeping at home, he certainly didn’t look as if he were sleeping anywhere else.

  “Cafilornia.” Christian poked at the puzzle. “See, Daddy? Nevada. Puta.”

  “Utah,” Harry Rodger said automatically, and to Lady Helen, “How’s everything here, then?”

  Lady Helen was acutely aware of the presence of the children, especially of Perdita quivering against her. She was also aware of her own need to rail at her brother-in-law. But she said merely, “Fine, Harry. How lovely to see you.”

  He responded with a vague smile. “Right. I’ll leave you to it, then.” Patting Christian on the head, he left the room, escaping in the direction of the kitchen.

  Christian began to wail immediately. Lady Helen felt herself growing hot. She said, “It’s all right, Christian. Let me see about your lunch. Will you stay here with Perdita and little sister for a moment? Show Perdita how to put the puzzle together.”

  “I want Daddy!” he screamed.

  Lady Helen sighed. How well she had come to understand that fact. She turned the puzzle over and dumped it onto the floor, saying, “Look, Chris,” but he began flinging pieces into the fireplace. They splattered into the ashes under the grate and spewed clouds of debris out onto the carpet. His screams grew louder.

  Rodger stuck his head back into the room. “For God’s sake, Helen. Can’t you shut him up?”

  Lady Helen snapped. She sprang to her feet, stalked across the room, and shoved her brother-in-law back into the kitchen. She closed the door upon Christian’s wailing.