For the Sake of Elena

by Elizabeth George

  “Then we’d have trace evidence. A splinter, a speck of varnish. Something left behind.”

  “But they’ve absolutely nothing?”

  “Not a sprat.”

  “That’s hell.”

  “Right. We’re nowhere with trace evidence if we’re hoping to build a case out of that. But there’s good news otherwise. Lovely news, in fact.” She brought forth several folded sheets of paper from her shoulder bag. “Sheehan fielded the autopsy results while I was there. We may not have trace, but we’ve got ourselves a motive.”

  “You’ve been saying that ever since we met Lennart Thorsson.”

  “But this is better than being turned in for sexual harassment, sir. This is the real thing. Turn him in for this and he’s had it for good.”

  “Turn him in for what?”

  She handed him the report. “Elena Weaver was pregnant.”

  10

  “Which naturally brings up the question of those unused birth control pills, doesn’t it?” Havers continued.

  Lynley fetched his spectacles from his jacket pocket, returned to the chair, and read the report. She’d been eight weeks pregnant. It was now the fourteenth of November. Eight weeks took them back to sometime during the third week of September, before Cambridge was in session. But, he wondered, was it also before Elena herself had come to the city?

  Havers was saying, “And once I told him about them, Sheehan waxed anachronistically eloquent on the subject for a good ten minutes.”

  Lynley roused himself. “What?”

  “The pregnancy, sir.”

  “What about it?”

  She dropped her shoulders in disgust. “Haven’t you been listening?”

  “I was wondering about the time line. Was she in London when she became pregnant? Was she in Cambridge?” He dismissed the questions momentarily. “What was Sheehan’s point?”

  “It sounded like a bit of Victoriana, but as Sheehan put it, in this environment we ought to be concentrating on archaic with a capital A. And his conjecture has a nice feel to it, sir.” She used a pencil to tap out each point against her knee. “Sheehan suggested that Elena had something going with a senior member of the college. She came up pregnant. She wanted marriage. He wanted his career. He knew he’d be ruined for advancement if the word got out that he’d made a student pregnant. And she threatened to let the word out, thinking that would bend him to her will. But it didn’t go as she planned. He killed her instead.”

  “You’re still hanging on to Lennart Thorsson, then.”

  “It fits, Inspector. And that address on Seymour Street that she’d written on her calendar? I checked it out.”

  “And?”

  “A health clinic. According to the staff doctor who was only too happy to ‘help the police with their enquiries,’ Elena was there on Wednesday afternoon for a pregnancy test. And we know Thorsson went to see her Thursday night. He was done for, Inspector. But it was worse than that.”

  “Why?”

  “The birth control pills in her room. The date on them was last February, but they hadn’t been taken. Sir, I think Elena was trying to get herself pregnant.” Havers took a sip of tea. “Your basic entrapment.”

  Lynley frowned at the report, removed his spectacles, and polished them on the tail of Havers’ scarf. “I don’t see how that follows. She merely might have stopped taking them because there was no reason to do so—no man in her life. When one came along, she was unprepared.”

  “Rubbish,” Havers said. “Most women know in advance if they’re going to sleep with a man. They generally know the moment they meet him.”

  “But they don’t know, do they, if they’re going to be raped.”

  “All right. Given. But you’ve got to see Thorsson’s in line for that as well.”

  “Certainly. But he’s not alone, Havers. And perhaps not even at the head of the queue.”

  A sharp double knock sounded on the door. When Lynley called out in acknowledgement, the St. Stephen’s day porter popped his head inside the room.

  “Message,” he said, holding out a folded slip of paper. “Thought it best to bring it over.”

  “Thank you.” Lynley got to his feet.

  The porter curled back his arm. “Not for you, Inspector,” he said. “It’s for the sergeant.”

  Havers took it from him with a nod of thanks. The porter withdrew. Lynley watched his sergeant read. Her face fell. She crumpled the paper, crossing back to the desk.

  He said easily, “I think we’ve done all we can for today, Havers.” He took out his watch. “It’s after…Good Lord, look at the time. It’s after half past three already. Perhaps you ought to think about—”

  She dropped her head. He watched her fumble with her shoulder bag. He didn’t have the heart to continue the pretence. They weren’t bankers, after all. They didn’t work businessmen’s hours.

  “It’s not working,” she said. She flung the bit of paper into the rubbish basket. “I wish someone would tell me why the hell nothing ever seems to work out.”

  “Go home,” he said. “See to her. I’ll handle things here.”

  “There’s too much for you to do. It’s not fair.”

  “It may not be fair. But it’s also an order. Go home, Barbara. You can be there by five. Come back in the morning.”

  “I’ll check out Thorsson first.”

  “There’s no need for that. He’s not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll check him out anyway.” She took up her shoulder bag and picked her coat off the floor. When she turned to him, he saw that her nose and cheeks had become quite red.

  He said, “Barbara, the right thing is sometimes the most obvious thing. You know that, don’t you?”

  “That’s the hell of it,” she replied.

  “My husband isn’t home, Inspector. He and Glyn have gone to make the funeral arrangements.”

  “I think you can give me the information I need.”

  Justine Weaver looked beyond him to the drive where the fading afternoon light was winking along the right wing of his car. Brows drawn together, she appeared to be trying to decide what to do about him. She crossed her arms and pressed her fingers into the sleeves of her gabardine blazer. It might have been a gesture to keep herself warm, save for the fact that she didn’t move away from the door to get out of the wind.

  “I don’t see how. I’ve told you everything I know about Sunday night and Monday morning.”

  “But not, I dare say, everything you know about Elena.”

  Her eyes moved off the car to him. Hers, he saw, were morning glory blue, and their colour needed no heightening through an appropriate choice of clothes. Although her presence at home at this hour suggested that she hadn’t gone to work that day, she was dressed with nearly as much formality as she had been on the previous night, in a taupe blazer, a blouse buttoned to the throat and printed with the soft impression of small leaves, and slim wool trousers. She’d swept her long hair off her face with a single comb.

  She said, “I think you ought to speak with Anthony, Inspector.”

  Lynley smiled. “Indeed.”

  In the street, the double tin ringing of a bicycle bell was met by the answering honk of a horn. Closer by, three hawfinches swept in an arc from the roof to the ground, their distinctive call—tzik—like a repetitive, single-word conversation. They hopped on the drive and pecked at the gravel and, as one unit, shot into the air again. Justine followed their flight to a cypress on the edge of the lawn. Then she said:

  “Come in,” and stepped back from the door.

  She took his overcoat from him, smoothed it round the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, and led him into the sitting room where they had met on the previous night. Unlike the previous night, however, she made no offer of refreshment. Instead, she went to the glass tea table along the wall and made a small adjustment to its arrangement of silk tulips. That done, she turned to face him, hands clasped loosely in front of her. In that setting, dressed and posed
as she was, she looked like a mannequin. Lynley wondered what it took to fracture her control.

  He said, “When did Elena arrive in Cambridge for Michaelmas term this year?”

  “The term began the first week of October.”

  “I’m aware of that. I was wondering if she came here in advance, perhaps to stay with you and her father. It would take a few days to settle into the college, I should think. Her father would want to help her.”

  Her right hand slowly climbed her left arm, stopping just above the elbow where her thumbnail dug in and began to trace a circular pattern. “She must have arrived sometime towards the middle of September because we had a gathering for some of the history faculty on the thirteenth and she was here for the party. I remember that. Shall I check the calendar? Do you need the exact date when she came to us?”

  “She stayed here with you and your husband when she first came to town?”

  “As much as Elena could be said to stay anywhere. She was on the go, in and out most of the time. She liked to be active.”

  “All night?”

  Her hand climbed to her shoulder, then rested beneath the collar of her blouse like a cradle for her neck. “That’s a curious question. What is it you’re asking?”

  “Elena was eight weeks pregnant when she died.”

  A quick tremor passed across her face, like a frisson that was emotional rather than physical. Before he could assess it, she had dropped her eyes. Her hand, however, remained at her throat.

  “You knew,” Lynley said.

  She looked up. “No. But I’m not surprised.”

  “Because of someone she was seeing? Someone you knew about?”

  Her gaze went from him to the sitting room doorway as if she expected to see Elena’s lover standing there.

  “Mrs. Weaver,” Lynley said, “right now we’re looking directly at a possible motive for your stepdaughter’s murder. If you know something, I’d appreciate your telling me about it.”

  “This should come from Anthony, not from me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was her stepmother.” She returned her gaze to him. It was remarkably cool. “Do you understand? I don’t have the sort of rights you seem to think I have.”

  “Rights to speak ill of this particular dead?”

  “If you will.”

  “You didn’t like Elena. That’s obvious enough. But all things considered, you’re hardly in a unique situation. No doubt you’re one of millions of women who don’t much care for the children they’ve been saddled with through a second marriage.”

  “Children who generally aren’t murdered, Inspector.”

  “The stepmother’s secret hope transformed into reality?” He saw the answer in her instinctive shrinking away from him as he asked the question. Quietly, he said, “It’s no crime, Mrs. Weaver. And you’re not the first person to have your blackest wish granted beyond your wildest dreams.”

  She left the tea table abruptly and walked to the sofa, where she sat. Not leaning back against it, not sinking into it, but perched on the edge with her hands in her lap and her back like a rod. She said, “Please sit down, Inspector Lynley.” When he did so, taking a place in the leather armchair that faced the sofa, she continued. “All right. I knew that Elena was”—she seemed to be searching for an appropriate euphemism—“sexual.”

  “Sexually active?” And when she nodded, pressing her lips together as if with the intention of smoothing out the salmon lipstick she wore, Lynley said, “Did she tell you?”

  “It was obvious. I could smell it on her. When she had sex she didn’t always bother with washing herself afterwards, and it’s a rather distinctive odour, isn’t it?”

  “You didn’t counsel her? Your husband didn’t speak to her?”

  “About her hygiene?” Justine’s expression was mildly, if only distantly, amused. “I think Anthony preferred to remain oblivious of what his nose was telling him.”

  “And you?”

  “I tried to talk to her several times. At first I thought that she might not be aware of how she ought to be taking care of herself. I also thought it might be wise to find out if she was taking precautions against pregnancy. Frankly, I’d never got the impression that she and Glyn engaged in many mother-daughter conversations.”

  “She didn’t want to talk to you, I take it?”

  “On the contrary, she did talk. In fact, she was rather entertained by what I had to say. She informed me that she’d been on the pill since she was fourteen years old when she began fucking—her word, Inspector, not mine—the father of one of her school friends. Whether that’s true or not, I have no idea. As to her personal hygiene, Elena knew all about how to take care of herself. She went unwashed deliberately. She wanted people to know she was having sex. Particularly, I think, she wanted her father to know.”

  “What gave you that impression?”

  “There were times when she’d come by quite late and we were still up and she’d hang on her father and hug him and press her cheek against his and rub up against him and all the time she was reeking like..” Justine’s fingers felt for her wedding band.

  “Was she trying to arouse him?”

  “I thought so at first. Who wouldn’t have thought so with her carrying on like that? But then I began to think that she merely was trying to rub his face in normal.”

  It was a curious expression. “An act of defiance?”

  “No. Not at all. An act of compliance.” She must have seen the next query on his face, for she went on with, “I’m being normal, Daddy. See how normal I am? I’m partying and drinking and having regular sex. Isn’t this what you wanted? Didn’t you want a normal child?”

  Lynley saw how her words reaffirmed the picture which Terence Cuff had painted obliquely on the previous night about Anthony Weaver’s relationship with his daughter. “I know he didn’t want her to sign,” Lynley said. “But as for the rest—”

  “Inspector, he didn’t want her to be deaf. Nor did Glyn, for that matter.”

  “Elena knew this?”

  “How could she help knowing? They’d spent her entire life trying to shape her into a normal woman, the very thing she could never hope to be.”

  “Because she was deaf.”

  “Yes.” For the first time, Justine’s posture altered. She leaned forward fractionally to make her point. “Deaf—isn’t—normal—Inspector.” She waited for a moment before going on, looking as if she were gauging his reaction. And he did feel the reaction course swiftly through him. It was an aversion of the sort he always felt when someone made a comment that was xenophobic, homophobic, or racist.

  “You see,” she said, “you want to make her normal as well. You even want to call her normal and condemn me for daring to suggest that being deaf is different. I can see it on your face: Deaf is as normal as anything else. Which is exactly what Anthony wanted to think. So you can’t really judge him, can you, for wanting to describe his daughter in the very same way as you’ve just done?”

  There was sheer, cool insight behind the words. Lynley wondered how much time and reflection had gone into Justine Weaver’s being able to make such a detached evaluation. “But Elena could judge him.”

  “And she did just that.”

  “Adam Jenn told me he saw her occasionally, at your husband’s request.”

  Justine returned to her original, upright position. “Anthony had hopes that Elena might attach herself to Adam.”

  “Could he be the one who made her pregnant, then?”

  “I don’t think so. Adam only met her this past September, at the faculty party I mentioned earlier.”

  “But if she became pregnant shortly thereafter…?”

  Justine dismissed this by quickly raising her hand from her lap to stop his words. “She’d been having sex frequently since the previous December. Long before she knew Adam.” Once again, she seemed to anticipate his next question. “You’re wondering how I could know that so definitely.”

 
; “It was nearly a year ago after all.”

  “She’d come in to show us the gown she’d bought for the Christmas Ball. She undressed to try it on.”

  “And she hadn’t washed.”

  “She hadn’t washed.”

  “Who took her to the ball?”

  “Gareth Randolph.”

  The deaf boy. Lynley reflected upon the fact that Gareth Randolph’s name was becoming like a constant undercurrent, omnipresent beneath the flow of information. He evaluated the manner in which Elena Weaver might have used him as an instrument of revenge. If she was acting out of a need to rub her father’s face in his own desire that she be a normal, functioning woman, what better way to throw that desire back at him than to become pregnant. She’d be giving him what he ostensibly wanted—a normal daughter with normal needs and normal emotions whose body functioned in a perfectly normal way. At the same time, she’d be getting what she wanted—retaliation by choosing as the father of her child a deaf man. It was, at heart, a perfect circle of vengeance. He only wondered if Elena had been that devious, or if her stepmother was using the fact of the pregnancy to paint a portrait of the girl that would serve her own ends.

  He said, “Since January, Elena had marked her calendar periodically with the small drawing of a fish. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “A fish?”

  “A pencil drawing similar to the symbol used for Christianity. It appears several times each week. It’s on the calendar the night before she died.”

  “A fish?”

  “Yes. As I’ve said. A fish.”

  “I can’t think of what it might mean.”

  “A society she belonged to? A person she was meeting?”

  “You make her life sound like a spy novel, Inspector.”

  “It appears to be something clandestine, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Why?”

  “Why not just write out whatever the fish stood for?”

  “Perhaps it was too long. Perhaps it was easier to draw the fish. It can’t mean much. Why would she worry about someone else seeing something she was putting on her personal calendar? It was probably shorthand, a device she used to remind herself of something. A supervision, perhaps.”