For the Sake of Elena

by Elizabeth George

  If Rodger was surprised by her sudden vehemence, he did not react to it. He merely went back to the work top where he had been in the process of going through the collection of two days’ post. He held a letter up to the light, squinted at it, discarded it, picked up another.

  “What’s going on, Harry?” she demanded.

  He looked her way briefly before returning to the post. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you. I’m talking about my sister. She’s upstairs, by the way. You might want to look in on her before you trot back to the college. I take it that you are trotting back, aren’t you? Somehow this visit doesn’t quite have the aura of permanence round it.”

  “I’ve a lecture at two.”

  “And after that?”

  “I’m attending formal dinner tonight. And really, Helen, you are beginning to sound rather drearily like Pen.”

  Lady Helen marched to him, ripped the stack of letters from his hand, and threw them on the work top. “How dare you,” she said. “You egocentric little worm. Do you think we’re all of us here for your convenience?”

  “How astute you are, Helen.” Penelope spoke from the doorway. “I wouldn’t have thought it.” She halted her way into the room, one hand against the wall and the other folded into the throat of her dressing gown. Two streaks of damp from her swollen breasts discoloured the pink material, turning it fuchsia. Harry’s eyes fell on these before shifting away. “Don’t like the sight?” Penelope asked him. “Too real for you, Harry? Not quite what you wanted?”

  Rodger went back to his letters. “Don’t start, Pen.”

  She gave a wavering laugh. “I didn’t start this. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were the one. Wasn’t that you? All those days. All those nights. Talking and urging. They’re like a gift, Pen, our gift to the world. But if one of them should die…That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “And you won’t let me forget it, will you? For the last six months you’ve been taking your revenge. Well, fine then. Do it. I can’t stop you. But I can decide not to stay for the abuse.”

  Penelope laughed again, more weakly this time. She leaned for support against the refrigerator door. One hand climbed to her hair which lay, limp and oily, against her neck. “Harry, how amusing. If you want some abuse, climb into this body. Oh, but you did that, didn’t you? Any number of times.”

  “We’re not going to—”

  “Talk about it? Why? Because my sister’s here and you don’t want her to know? Because the children are playing in the other room? Because the neighbours might notice if I scream loud enough?”

  Harry slapped down his letters. Envelopes slithered across the work top. “Don’t put this on me. You made up your mind.”

  “Because you gave me no peace. I didn’t even feel like a woman any longer. You wouldn’t even touch me if I didn’t agree to—”

  “No!” Harry shouted. “God damn it, Pen. You could have said no.”

  “I was just a sow, wasn’t I? Fodder for the rut.”

  “That’s not quite accurate. Sows wallow in the mud, not in self-pity.”

  “Stop it!” Lady Helen said.

  In the sitting room, Christian shrieked. The thin wail of the baby joined in his cries. Something hit the wall with a tremendous clatter, suggesting the body of the puzzle being hurled in a rage.

  “Just look at what you’re doing to them,” Harry Rodger said. “Take a good long look.” He headed for the door.

  “And what are you doing?” Penelope shrilled. “Model father, model husband, model lecturer, model saint. Running away as usual? Working up your revenge? She hasn’t let me have it for the last six months so I’ll make her pay now when she’s weak and ill and I can get her a good one? Just the moment when I can best let her know what a nothing she is?”

  He whirled to face her. “I’ve had it with you. It’s time you decided what you want instead of constantly digging into me for what you have.” Before she could answer, he was gone. A moment later, the front door slammed. Christian howled. The baby cried. In response, fresh growing wet spots seeped through Penelope’s dressing gown. She began to weep.

  “I don’t want this life!”

  Lady Helen felt an answering rush of pity. Tears stung her eyes. Never had she felt so at a loss for something to say that might comfort.

  For the first time she understood her sister’s long silences, her vigils at the window, and her wordless weeping. But what she could not understand was the initial act that had brought Penelope to this point. It constituted a kind of surrender so foreign to her that she found herself recoiling from its significance.

  She went to her sister, took her into her arms.

  Penelope stiffened. “No! Don’t touch me. I’m leaking all over. It’s the baby…”

  Lady Helen continued to hold her. She tried to frame a question and wondered where to start and what she could ask that would not betray her growing anger. The fact that her rage was multi-directional served to make the act of concealing it only that much more difficult.

  She felt it first for Harry and for the needs of ego that would prompt a man to urge for the breeding of another child, as if what was being created were a demonstration of the father’s virility, and not an individual with decided needs of its own. She felt it also for her sister and for the fact that she had given in to that sense of duty inbred in women from the beginning of time, a duty which told them that the possession of a functioning womb necessarily served as a definition of self.

  The initial decision to have children—one which no doubt had been made with joy and commitment by both Penelope and her husband—had proved her sister’s undoing. For in leaving behind her career to care for the twins, she had, over time, allowed herself to become a dependent, a woman who believed she had to hold onto her man. So when he had made the request for another child, she had acquiesced. She had done her duty. After all, what better way to keep him than to give him what he wanted?

  That none of this had been necessary, that all of it rose from her sister’s inability or unwillingness to challenge the constrictive definition of womanhood to which she had decided to adhere, served to make her current situation even more untenable. For Penelope was wise enough at the heart of the matter to know that she was assenting to living a life in which she did not believe, and that was, undoubtedly, a large part of the wretchedness she was now experiencing. Her husband’s parting words had instructed her to make a decision. But until she learned to redefine herself, circumstances and not Penelope would do the deciding.

  Her sister sobbed against her shoulder. Lady Helen held her and tried to murmur comfort.

  “I can’t stand it,” Penelope wept. “I’m suffocating. I’m nothing. I don’t have an identity. I’m just a machine.”

  You’re a mother, Lady Helen thought, while in the next room, Christian continued to scream.

  It was noon when Lynley and Havers pulled to a stop on the twisting high street of the village of Grantchester, a collection of houses, pubs, a church, and a vicarage separated from Cambridge by the University’s rugby fields and a long stretch of farmland lying fallow for the winter behind a hawthorn hedgerow that was beginning to brown. The address on the police report had looked decidedly vague: Sarah Gordon, The School, Grantchester. But once they reached the village, Lynley realised that no further information was going to be necessary. For between a row of thatched cottages and the Red Lion Pub stood a hazel-coloured brick building with bright red woodwork and numerous skylights set into a pitched tile roof. From one of the pillars that stood on either side of the driveway hung a bronze-lettered sign that said merely The School.

  “Not bad digs,” Havers commented, shouldering open her door. “Your basic loving renovation of an historical property. I’ve always hated people with the patience for preservation. Who is she, anyway?”

  “An artist of some sort. We’ll find out the rest.”

  The space for the original front door now accommodated fo
ur panels of glass through which they could see lofty white walls, part of a sofa, and the blue glass shade of an arching brass floorlamp. When they slammed the car doors and started to walk up the drive, a dog came to these windows and began to yap wildly.

  The new front door was set towards the rear of the building, recessed into part of a low, covered passage which connected the house to the garage. As they approached, it was opened by a slender woman wearing faded jeans, a man-sized work shirt of ivory wool, and a rose-coloured towel like a turban on her head. One hand held this in place as with the other she restrained her dog, a scruffy mongrel with lopsided ears—one at attention and the other at ease—and a thatch of khaki hair flopping into its eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid. He never bites,” she said as the dog tried to lunge away from the hold she had on his collar. “He just likes visitors.” And to the dog, “Flame, sit,” a mild command which he blithely ignored. His tail wagged frantically.

  Lynley produced his warrant card, introducing himself and Havers. He said, “You’re Sarah Gordon? We’d like to talk to you about yesterday morning.”

  At the request, her dark eyes seemed to grow even darker for an instant, although it may have been the result of her movement into a shadow cast by the overhanging roof. “I don’t know what more I can add, Inspector. I told the police as much as I could.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve read the report. But I find it sometimes helps to hear everything firsthand. If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course. Please. Come in.” She stepped back from the door. Flame made a leap of happy greeting in Lynley’s direction, planting mitt-sized paws against his thighs. Sarah Gordon said, “No! Flame, stop it at once!” and pulled the dog back. She picked him up—he was a frantic, squirming, tail-wagging armful—and carried him into the room they had seen from the street, where she put him into a basket to one side of the fireplace, saying, “Stay,” and patting him on the head. His eager glance darted from Lynley to Havers to his mistress. When he saw that everyone intended to remain in the room with him, he gave one more delighted bark and settled his chin on his paws.

  Sarah went to the fireplace where a haphazard stack of wood was burning. It crackled and popped as the flames hit pockets of resin and sap. She threw on another piece before turning to face them.

  “Was this actually a school?” Lynley asked her.

  She looked surprised. Obviously, she had expected him to plunge directly into her discovery of Elena Weaver’s corpse on the previous morning. Nonetheless, she smiled, glanced around, and answered. “The village school, yes. It was quite a mess when I bought it.”

  “Did you remodel it yourself?”

  “A room here and there, when I could afford it and when I had the time. It’s largely finished now except for the back garden. This”—she extended her hand to indicate the room in which they stood—“was the last. A bit different from what one would expect to see inside a building of this age, I suppose. But that’s why I like it.”

  As Havers began unwrapping the first of her scarves from her throat, Lynley glanced around. The room was indeed an unexpected pleasure, with its extensive display of lithographs and oils. Their subjects were people: children, adolescents, old men playing cards, an elderly woman looking out a window. Their compositions were figurative and metaphorical at once; their colours were pure and bright and true.

  In combination with a bleached oak floor and an oatmeal sofa, the overall effect of a room filled with this much art should have been much like a museum and just about as friendly. But as if with the intention of easing the unwelcoming nature of her environment, Sarah Gordon had draped a red mohair blanket across the back of the sofa and covered the floor with a motley braided rug. If this were not enough to declare the room lived in, a copy of The Guardian was spread out in front of the fireplace, a sketch box and easel lay near the door, and the air—most unmuseumlike of all—bore the unmistakable, rich odour of chocolate. This seemed to be emanating from a thick green jug on the bar at one end of the room. It sat next to a mug. A trail of steam rose from both.

  Seeing the direction of his gaze, Sarah Gordon said, “It’s cocoa. An anti-depressant, I find. I’ve needed rather a lot of it since yesterday. May I offer you some?”

  He shook his head. “Sergeant?”

  Havers demurred and went to sit on the sofa, where she dropped her scarves, shed her coat, and wrestled her notebook from her shoulder bag. A large orange cat, materialising from behind the open front curtains, leaped agilely to join her and settled, paws working, directly on her lap.

  Sarah fetched her cup of cocoa and hurried to Havers’ rescue. “Sorry,” she said, scooping the cat under one arm. She herself took a place at the other end of the sofa, putting her back to the light. She buried her free hand in the cat’s thick fur. The other—raising the cocoa to her lips—trembled noticeably. She spoke as if with the need to excuse this.

  “I’ve never seen a dead body before. No, that’s not absolutely true. I’ve seen people in coffins but that’s after they’ve been scoured, washed, and painted by an undertaker. I suppose that’s the only way we can bear death, isn’t it, if it looks like a modestly altered state of life. But this other…I’d like to forget that I saw her, but she seems to be branded right into my brain.” She touched the towel wrapped round her head. “I’ve taken five showers since yesterday morning. I’ve washed my hair three times. Why am I doing that?”

  Lynley sat in an armchair opposite the sofa. He didn’t bother to try to frame an answer to the question. Everyone’s reaction to an exposure to violent death was peculiar to his individual personality. He’d known young detectives who wouldn’t bathe until a case was solved, others who wouldn’t eat, still others who wouldn’t sleep. And while the vast majority of them became immune to death over time, seeing a murder investigation merely as a job to be done, the layman never saw it that way. The layman took it personally, like a deliberate insult. No one wanted a sudden reminder of life’s grim and remarkable transiency.

  He said, “Tell me about yesterday morning.”

  Sarah placed the mug on a side table and buried her other hand in the cat’s fur. It didn’t seem so much a gesture of affection as a means of holding onto something for solace or support. With typical feline sensitivity, the cat apparently knew this, for his ears flattened and he gave a throaty growl which Sarah ignored. She began to pet him. He attempted to launch himself in the direction of the floor. She said, “Silk, be good,” and tried to hold onto him, but he yowled once, spit, and jumped off her lap. Sarah looked stricken. She watched the cat stroll over to the fire where, completely indifferent to his act of desertion, he settled himself on the newspaper and began to wash his face.

  “Cats,” Havers said in eloquent explanation. “Aren’t they just exactly like men.”

  Sarah appeared to evaluate the comment gravely for its merit. She sat as if she held the cat in her lap, slightly bent forward, her hands on her thighs. It was a particularly self-protective position. “Yesterday morning,” she said.

  “If you will,” Lynley said.

  She went through the facts quickly, adding very little to what Lynley had read in the police report. Unable to sleep, she had risen at a quarter past five. She had dressed, eaten a bowl of cereal. She had read most of the previous day’s paper. She had sorted through and gathered up her equipment. She had arrived at Fen Causeway shortly before seven. She had gone onto the island to do some sketches of Crusoe’s Bridge. She had found the body.

  “I stepped on her,” she said. “I…It’s awful to think about. I realise now that I should have wanted to help her. I should have tried to see if she was still alive. But I didn’t.”

  “Where was she exactly?”

  “At the side of a small clearing, towards the south end of the island.”

  “You didn’t notice her at once?”

  She reached for her cocoa and cradled the mug between her hands. “No. I’d gone there to do some sketching, and I was intent upon g
etting something done. I’d not worked—no, let me be truthful for once, I’d not produced anything of possible merit—in a number of months. I felt inadequate and paralysed, and I’d been harbouring a tremendous fear that I’d lost it altogether.”

  “It?”

  “Talent, Inspector. Creativity. Passion. Inspiration. What you will. Over time, I’d grown to believe it was gone. So I decided a number of weeks ago to stop procrastinating. I was determined to put an end to busying myself with projects round the house—being afraid of failure, really—and to start working again. I chose yesterday as the day.” She appeared to anticipate Lynley’s next question, for she went on with, “It was just an arbitrary choice of days, actually. I felt if I marked the calendar, I’d be making a commitment. I thought if I chose the date in advance, I could begin again without any further false starts. It was important to me.”

  Lynley looked round the room again, more carefully this time, studying the collection of lithographs and oils. He couldn’t help comparing them to the watercolours he had seen in Anthony Weaver’s house. Those had been clever, nicely executed, safe. These were a challenge, both in colour and design.

  “This is all your work,” he said, a statement, not a question, for it was obvious that everything had been created by the same gifted hand.

  She used her cocoa mug to point towards one of the walls. “This is all my work, yes. None of it recent. But all of it mine.”

  Lynley allowed himself to revel in an instant’s gratification which rose from the knowledge that he couldn’t have been handed a better potential witness. Artists were trained observers. They couldn’t create without observation. If there had been something to see on the island, an object out of kilter, a shadow worth noticing, Sarah Gordon would have seen it. Leaning forward, he said:

  “Tell me what you recall about the island itself.”

  Sarah looked into her cocoa as if replaying the scene there. “Well. It was foggy, very wet. Tree leaves were actually dripping. The boat repair sheds were closed. The bridge had been repainted. I remember noticing that because of the way it caught the light. And there was…” She hesitated, her expression thoughtful. “Near the gate, it was quite muddy, and the mud was…churned up. I’d call it furrowed, actually.”