For the Sake of Elena

20

The fog lay heavily on the city the next morning, a grey blanket of mist that rose like a gas from the surrounding fens and billowed into the air in amorphous clouds that shrouded trees, buildings, roadways, and open land, changing everything from common and recognisable substance into mere shape. Cars, lorries, buses, and taxis inched their way along the damp pavements of the city streets. Bicyclists slowly swayed through the gloom. Pedestrians huddled into heavy coats and dodged the constant spattering of the drops of condensation that fell from roofl ines, window ledges, and trees. The two days of wind and sunshine might never have existed. Fog had returned like a pestilence in the night. This was Cambridge weather with a vengeance.

“Makes me feel like a case for the tubercular ward,” Havers said. Encased in her pea-soup coat with its hood pulled up and a pink knit cap on her head for additional protection, she beat her hands against her upper arms and stamped her feet as they walked to Lynley’s car. The heavy mist was creating a beadwork of damp on her clothing. Across her brow, her sandy fringe was beginning to curl as if exposed to steam. “No wonder Philby and Burgess went over to the Soviets while they were here,” she continued darkly. “They were probably looking for a better climate.”

“Indeed,” Lynley said. “Moscow in the winter. That’s certainly my idea of heaven on earth.”

He glanced at his sergeant as he spoke. She’d arrived nearly half an hour late and he’d been in the process of gathering his things to start without her when she’d clumped down the corridor to his room in Ivy Court and rapped on his door.

“Sorry,” she’d said. “Bleeding fog this morning. The M11 was a glorifi ed car park.” But despite the deliberately casual tone of her voice, he noted the fact that her face was drawn with weariness and she sauntered about the room restlessly as she waited for him to don his coat and his scarf.

“Rough night?” he asked her.

She settled the strap of her bag high on her shoulder in what seemed to be a metaphorical gathering of personal resources before she replied. “Just a bit of the old insomnia. I’ll survive it.”

“And your mother?”

“Her as well.”

“I see.” He draped his scarf round his neck and shrugged into his overcoat. At the mirror, he ran a brush through his hair, but it was just an excuse to observe Havers in refl ection rather than doing so directly. She was staring down at his open briefcase on the desk. She didn’t appear to be taking note of anything in it. He stood at the mirror, giving her time, saying nothing, wondering if she would speak.

He felt a mixture of guilt and shame, faced with the diversity of their positions. Not for the first time, he was forced to acknowledge that the differences between them were not confined to birth, class, and money. For her struggles took their definition from a range of circumstances that far exceeded the family into which she had been born and the manner in which she pronounced her words. These circumstances rose from simple ill-fortune, dominoes of bad luck that had tumbled one upon the other so quickly in the last ten months that she had not been able to stop their progress. That she could stop them now with a simple phone call was the single fact he wished her to acknowledge. Yet he had to admit that that very phone call, so easy for him to recommend, represented to her a sloughing off of responsibility, coveted salvation rather than obvious solution. And he could not deny that, in similar circumstances, he would not have found himself as equally tied to the idea of fi lial obligation.

When he reached the point that only narcissism could possibly explain why he was still admiring his own reflection, he set down his brush and turned to her. She heard his movement and looked up from her study of the briefcase.

“Look, sorry I was late,” she said in a rush. “I know you’re covering for me in all this, sir. I know you can’t do it indefi nitely.”

“That’s not the point, Barbara. We cover for each other when things get rough personally. That’s understood.”

She reached out for the back of an armchair, not so much for support, it seemed, but for something to do with her hands, because she watched her fingers pick at a frayed cord of its upholstery. She said, “The funny thing is she was right as rain this morning. Last night was a real horror, but this morning she was fi ne. I keep thinking that must mean something. I keep telling myself it’s a sign.”

“If you’re looking for signs, you can fi nd them in anything. They don’t tend to change reality, however.”

“But if there’s a chance she’s taken a turn for the better…”

“What about last night? And what about you? What sort of turns are you taking here, Barbara?”

She was working an entire section of the cording loose, twisting it round and round her fingers. “How can I move her from her home when she doesn’t understand what’s even going on? How can I do that to her? She’s my mother, Inspector.”

“It’s not a punishment.”

“Then why does it feel like one? Worse, why do I feel like a criminal who’s getting away scot free while she takes the rap?”

“Because you want to do it in your heart, I expect. And what greater source of guilt could there be than the guilt that arises from fi nally trying to decide if what you want to do-which seems momentarily and superfi cially selfi sh- is also the right thing to do? How can you tell if you’re really being honest or just trying to talk yourself into dealing with the situation in a way that meets with your own desires?”

She looked utterly defeated. “That’s the question, Inspector. And I’ll never have the answer. The whole situation goes too far beyond me.”

“No, it doesn’t. It starts and stops with you. You hold the power. You can make the decision.”

“I can’t stand to hurt her. She won’t understand.”

Lynley snapped the briefcase closed. “And what does she understand as things are now, Sergeant?”

That put an end to it. As they walked to his car, which was shoe-horned into the same narrow space he’d used last night on Garret Hostel Lane, he told her about his conversation with Victor Troughton. When he was fi nished, she said before getting into the Bentley:

“D’you suppose Elena Weaver felt real love for anyone?”

He switched on the ignition. The heater sent out a stream of cold air on their feet. Lynley thought of Troughton’s final words about the girl-“Try to understand. She wasn’t evil, Inspector. She was merely angry. And I, for one, can’t condemn her for that.”

“Even though, in reality, you were little more than her choice of weapons?” Lynley had asked him.

“Even though,” he’d replied.

Now, Lynley said, “We can never really come to know any victim’s heart completely, can we, Sergeant? In this sort of job, we look at a life backwards, starting with death and working forward from there. We patch pieces together and try to make truth from them. And with that truth we can only hope for an understanding of who the victim was and what provoked her murder. But as to her heart-as to the real, lasting truth of her-we can never really get to that. In the end, we have only facts and whatever conclusions we draw from them.” The little street was too narrow to turn the Bentley around, so he slowly reversed towards Trinity Lane, braking for a shadowy, well-bundled group of students who came out the side gate of Trinity Hall. Beyond them, fog lapped eagerly at the college garden.

“But why would he want to marry her, Inspector? He knew she wasn’t faithful. She didn’t love him. How could he believe that a marriage between them would have ever worked out?”

“He thought his love would be enough to change her.”

Havers scoffed at this. “People never change.”

“Of course they do. When they’re ready to grow.” He headed the car past St. Stephen’s Church and on towards Trinity College. The headlamps fought with the heavy bank of fog, and their illumination bounced uselessly back into the car. They moved at the pace of a somnolent insect. “It would be a fine and certainly less complicated world if people only had sex with those they loved, Sergeant. But the reality is that people use sex for a variety of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with love, marriage, commitment, intimacy, procreation, or any other lofty motive. Elena was one of them. And Troughton, evidently, was willing to accept that.”

“But what kind of marriage could he have expected to have with her?” Havers asked in protest. “They were starting life with a lie.”

“Troughton wasn’t bothered by that. He wanted her.”

“And she?”

“No doubt she wanted that triumphant moment of seeing her father’s face when she broke the news to him. But there would have been no news to break if she hadn’t been able to manoeuvre Troughton into marrying her in the fi rst place.”

“Inspector.” Havers’ voice sounded thoughtful. “D’you think there’s a chance that Elena told her father? She got the news on Wednesday. She didn’t die till Monday morning. His wife was out running. He was home alone. D’you think…?”

“We certainly can’t discount it, can we?”

That appeared to be as close as the sergeant was willing to come to voicing her suspicions, for she went on in a more decided tone with, “They couldn’t have expected to be happy together, Elena and Troughton.”

“I think you’re right. Troughton was deluding himself about his ability to heal her anger and resentment. She was deluding herself into believing she’d get lasting pleasure from dealing her father such an excruciating blow. One can’t build a marriage on that sort of foundation.”

“Are you saying, in effect, that one can’t get on with living unless one puts ghosts from the past to rest?”

He glanced at her warily. “That’s a quantum leap, Sergeant. I think one can always muddle on through life. Most people do. I just couldn’t tell you how well they do it.”

Because of the fog, the traffi c, and the capricious nature of Cambridge’s one-way streets, it took them just over ten minutes to drive to Queens’ College, the same time it would have taken them to walk it. Lynley parked in the same spot he had used the day before, and they entered the college through the turreted passage.

“So you think this is the answer to everything?” Havers asked, looking round Old Court as they walked across its central path.

“I think it may be one of them.”

They found Gareth Randolph in the college dining hall, a hideously unappealing combination of linoleum, long cafeteria tables, and walls panelled in what appeared to be mock golden oak. It was a modern architect’s salute to the utterly banal.

Although there were other students present, Gareth was at a table by himself, hunching disconsolately over the remains of a late breakfast which consisted of a half-eaten fried egg with its yolk punched out and a bowl of cornfl akes and bananas grown, respectively, soggy and grey. A book was open on the table in front of him, but that seemed mostly for show since he wasn’t reading. Nor was he writing in the notebook next to it although he held a pencil poised as if to do so.

His head raised with a jerk when Lynley and Havers took seats across from him. He glanced round the hall as if for quick escape or assistance from the other members of the college who were present. Lynley took his pencil and dashed nine words across the top of the notebook: You were the father of her baby, weren’t you?

Gareth raised a hand to his forehead. He squeezed his temples, then brushed the lank hair from his brow. His chest heaved once before he seemed to draw himself together by standing and canting his head in the direction of the door. They were meant to follow.

Like Georgina Higgins-Hart’s, Gareth’s bed-sitting room was tucked into Old Court. On the ground floor, it was a perfectly square room of white walls upon which were hung four framed posters advertising the London Philharmonic and three photographic enlargements of theatrical performances: Les Miserables, Starlight Express, Aspects of Love. The former featured the name Sonia Raleigh Randolph prominently above the words at the piano. The latter featured an attractive young woman in appropriate costume, singing.

Gareth pointed first to the posters, then to the photographs. “Mutha,” he said in his strange guttural voice. “Sisser.” He watched Lynley shrewdly. He seemed to be waiting for a reaction to the irony of his mother’s and sister’s modes of employment. Lynley merely nodded.

On a wide desk beneath the room’s only window, a computer sat. It was also, Lynley saw, a Ceephone, identical to the others he had already seen in Cambridge. Gareth switched the unit on and drew a second chair to the desk. He gestured Lynley into it and quickly accessed a word processing programme.

“Sergeant,” Lynley said, when he saw how Gareth intended them to communicate, “you’re going to have to make notes from the screen.” He took off his coat and scarf and sat at the desk. Havers came to stand behind him, the hood of her coat thrown back, her pink cap removed, a notebook in her hand.

Were you the father? Lynley typed.

The boy looked long at the words before he replied with: Didn’t know she was pg. She never said. Told you already.

“Not knowing she was pregnant doesn’t mean sod-all,” Havers remarked. “He can’t take us for fools.”

“He doesn’t,” Lynley said. “I dare say he just takes himself for one, Sergeant.” He typed: You had sex with Elena, deliberately making it a statement, not a question.

Gareth answered by hitting one of the number keys: 1.

Once?

Yes.

When?

The boy pushed away from the desk for a moment. He remained in his chair. He looked not at the computer screen but at the fl oor, his arms on his knees. Lynley typed the word September and touched the boy’s shoulder. Gareth glanced up, read it, dropped his head again. A hollow sound, akin to a stricken bellow, rose from his throat.

Lynley typed: Tell me what happened, Gareth and touched the boy’s shoulder again.

Gareth looked up. He had begun to cry, and as if this display of emotion angered him, he drew his arm savagely across his eyes. Lynley waited. The boy moved back to the desk.

London, he typed. Just before term. I saw her for my birthday. She fucked me on the floor of the kitchen while her mum was out buying milk for tea. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU BLOODY STUPID BERK.

“Great.” Havers sighed.

Loved her, Gareth went on. I wanted us special. To be-he dropped his hands to his lap, stared at the screen.

You thought the lovemaking meant more than Elena intended it to mean, Lynley typed. Is that what happened?

Fucking, Gareth answered. Not lovemaking. Fucking.

Is that what she called it?

Thought we build something. Last year. I took real care. To make it last. Didn’t want to rush anything. Never even tried with her. Wanted it to be real.

But it wasn’t?

Thought it was. Because if you do that with a woman it means like a pledge. Like you say something you wouldn’t say to anyone else.

Saying that you love each other?

Want to be together. Want to have a future. I thought that’s why she did it with me.

Did you know she was sleeping with someone else?

Not then.

When did you learn it?

She came up this term. I thought we’d be together.

As lovers?

She didn’t want that. Laughed when I tried to talk to her about it. Said what’s matter with you Gareth it was only a fuck we did it it felt good that’s the end of it right why you getting so moon-eyed over it it’s not a big deal.

But it was to you.

Thought she loved me that’s why she wanted to do it with me didn’t know-He stopped. He looked sapped of energy.

Lynley gave him a moment, glancing round the room. Over a hook on the back of the door hung his scarf, the distinctive blue of the University letterman. His boxing gloves-smooth, clean leather with a look of having been lovingly cared for-hung on a second hook beneath them. Lynley wondered how much of Gareth Randolph’s pain had been worked out against one of the punching bags in the small gymnasium on the upper fl oor of Fenners.

He turned back to the computer. The argument you had with Elena on Sunday. Is that when she told you she was involved with someone else?

I talked about us, he responded. But there was no us.

That’s what she told you?

How could there not be us. I said what about London.

That’s when she told you it hadn’t meant anything?

Just a poke for fun Gareth we were randy we did it don’t be such a twit and make it more than that.

She was laughing at you. I can’t imagine you liked it.

Kept trying to talk. How she acted London. What she felt London. But she wouldn’t listen. And then she told.

That there was someone else?

Didn’t believe her at first. I said she was scared. Said she was trying to be what her father wanted her to be. Said all sorts of things. Wasn’t even thinking. Wanted to hurt her.

“That’s a telling remark,” Havers noted.

“Perhaps,” Lynley said. “But it’s a fairly typical reaction to being hurt by someone you love: Measure still for measure.”

“And when the first measure is murder?” Havers asked.

“I haven’t discounted that, Sergeant.” He typed, What did you do when she’d convinced you there was another man?

Gareth lifted his hands but did not type. In a nearby room, a vacuum began to thunder as the building’s bedder made her daily rounds, and Lynley felt the answering urgency of concluding this interview before they were disturbed by anyone. He typed again: What did you do?

Hesitantly, Gareth touched the keys. Hung about at St. Stephen’s till she left. I wanted to know who.

You followed her to Trinity Hall? You knew it was Dr. Troughton? When the boy nodded, Lynley typed: How long did you hang about there?

Till she came out.

At one?

He nodded. He’d waited in the street for her to emerge, he told them. And when she’d come out, he’d confronted her again, furiously angry at her rejection of him, bitterly disappointed in the loss of his dreams. But most of all he was disgusted with her behaviour. For he thought he’d understood her intentions in involving herself with Victor Troughton. And he saw those intentions as an attempt to attach herself to a hearing world that would never fully accept or understand her. She was acting deaf. She wasn’t acting Deaf. They’d argued violently. He’d left her in the street.

Never saw her again, he fi nished.

“Doesn’t look good to me, sir,” Havers said.

Where were you Monday morning? Lynley typed.

When she was killed? Here. In bed.

But no one, of course, could verify that. He had been alone. And it would not have been an impossibility for Gareth simply to have failed to return to Queens’ College that night, going instead to Crusoe’s Island to lie in wait for Elena Weaver and to put a permanent end to the dispute between them.

“We need those boxing gloves, Inspector,” Havers said as she snapped her notebook closed. “He’s got motive. He’s got means. He’s got opportunity. He’s got a temper as well and the talent to channel it right through his fi sts.”

Lynley had to admit that a blue in boxing could not be overlooked when the murder victim had been beaten before she was strangled.

He typed, Did you know Georgina Higgins-Hart? And after Gareth nodded, Where were you yesterday morning? Between six and half past.

Here. Asleep.

Can someone verify that?

He shook his head.

We need your boxing gloves, Gareth. We need to give them to the forensic lab. Will you let us take them?

The boy gave a slow howl. Didn’t kill her didn’t kill her didn’t didn’t didn’t didn’t did-

Gently, Lynley moved the boy’s hands to one side. Do you know who did?

Gareth shook his head once, but he kept his hands in his lap, balled into fists, as if they might betray him of their own volition should he raise them to the keyboard and allow them to type again.

“He’s lying.” Havers paused in the doorway to drape Gareth’s boxing gloves round the strap of her shoulder bag. “Because if anyone ever had a motive to bag her, he’s the one, Inspector.”

“I can’t disagree with that,” Lynley said.

She pulled her cap firmly down over her forehead and drew up the hood of her coat. “But you can-and no doubt will-disagree with something else. I’ve heard that tone of yours before. What?”

“I think he knows who killed her. Or thinks he knows.”

“Of course he does. Because he did it himself. Directly after he pounded her face in with these.” She flipped the gloves in his direction. “What have we been looking for as a weapon all along? Something smooth? Have a feel of this leather. Something heavy? Imagine being on the receiving end of a boxer’s punch. Something capable of infl icting face-shattering damage? Look at a few post-prize-fight photos for the proof if you want it.”

He couldn’t disagree. The boy had all the necessary requirements. Save one.

“And the gun, Sergeant?”

“What?”

“The shotgun used on Georgina Higgins-Hart. What about that?”

“You said yourself that the University probably has a gun club. To which, I have no doubt, Gareth Randolph belongs.”

“So why follow her?”

She frowned, jabbing the toe of her shoe against the icy stone fl oor.

“Havers, I can understand why he would lie in wait at Crusoe’s Island for Elena Weaver. He was in love with her. She’d rejected him. She’d made it plain that their lovemaking was just a bit of sweaty frolic on her mother’s kitchen floor. She’d declared her attachment to another man. She’d teased and humiliated and made him feel a perfect fool. I agree with all that.”

“So?”

“What about Georgina?”

“George…” Havers only stumbled over the thought for a moment before going on stoutly. “Perhaps it’s what we thought before. Symbolically killing Elena Weaver again and again by seeking out all the young women who resemble her.”

“If that’s the case, why not go to her room, Havers? Why not kill her in the college? Why follow her all the way out past Madingley? And how did he follow her?”

“How…”

“Havers, he’s deaf.”

That stopped her.

Lynley pressed his advantage. “It’s the country, Havers. It was pitch dark out there. Even if he got a car and followed her at a distance until they were safely out of town and then drove beyond her to lie in wait in that field, wouldn’t he have had to hear something-her footfalls, her breathing, anything, Havers-in order to know exactly when to shoot? Are you going to argue that he went out there before dawn on Wednesday morning and blithely relied upon there being adequate starlight in this weather-which, frankly, would have been a fairly bad bet-to see a running girl well enough and soon enough to aim at her, discharge the weapon, and kill her? That’s not premeditated murder. That’s pure serendipity.”

She lifted one of the boxing gloves with the palm of her hand. “So what’re we doing with these, Inspector?”

“Making St. James work for his money this morning. As well as hedging our bets.”

She pushed open the door with a weary grin. “I just love a man who keeps his options open.”

They were heading towards the turreted passage and Queens’ Lane beyond it when a voice called out to them. They turned back into the court. A slender fi gure was coming along the path, the mist breaking before her like a curtain as she jogged in their direction.

She was tall and fair, with long silky hair that was held back from her face by two tortoise shell combs. These glittered with damp in the light that shone from one of the buildings. Beads of moisture clung to her eyelashes and skin. She was wearing only an unmatched sweatsuit whose shirt, like Georgina’s, was emblazoned with the name of the college. She looked terribly cold.

“I was in the dining hall,” she told them. “I saw you come for Gareth. You’re the police.”

“And you’re…?”

“Rosalyn Simpson.” Her eyes fell to the boxing gloves, and her brow furrowed in consternation. “You don’t think Gareth’s had anything to do with this?”

Lynley said nothing. Havers crossed her arms. The girl continued.

“I would have come to you sooner, but I was in Oxford until Tuesday evening. And then… Well, it gets a bit complicated.” She cast a glance in the direction of Gareth Randolph’s room.

“You have some information?” Lynley asked.

“I went to see Gareth at first. It was the DeaStu handout he’d printed, you see. I saw it when I got back, so it seemed logical to talk to him. I thought he’d pass the information on. Besides, there were other considerations at the time that…Oh, what does it matter now? I’m here. I’m telling you.”

“What, exactly?”

Like Sergeant Havers, Rosalyn too crossed her arms, although it seemed more in a need to keep warm than a desire to project implacability. She said, “I was running along the river Monday morning. I went by Crusoe’s Island round half past six. I think I saw the killer.”

Glyn Weaver edged part way down the stairs, just far enough to hear the conversation between her former husband and his current wife. They were still in the morning room-although it had been some hours since breakfast-and their voices were just polite and formal enough to give a clear indication of the state of things between them. Cool, Glyn decided, frosting over into glacial. She smiled.

“Terence Cuff wants to give some sort of eulogy,” Anthony was saying. He spoke without any evident feeling, the information given like a recitation. “I’ve talked to two of her supervisors. They’ll also speak, and Adam’s said he’d like to read a poem she was fond of.” There was a clink of china, a cup being placed carefully into a saucer. “We might not have the body back from the police before tomorrow, but the funeral parlour will have a coffi n there all the same. No one will know the difference. And as everyone’s been told she’s to be buried in London, no one will be expecting an interment tomorrow.”

“As to the funeral, Anthony. In London…” Justine’s voice was calm. Glyn felt her spine tingle when she heard that tone of cool determination.

“There can’t be a change in the plans,” Anthony said. “Try to understand. I have no choice in the matter. I must respect Glyn’s wishes. It’s the least I can do.”

“I’m your wife.”

“As she was once. And Elena was our daughter.”

“She was your wife for less than six years. Six miserable years, as I recall your telling me. More than fifteen years ago at that. While you and I-”

“This situation has nothing to do with how long I was married to either of you, Justine.”

“It has everything to do with it. It has to do with loyalty, with vows I made and promises I’ve kept. I’ve been faithful to you in every way, while she slept around like a whore and you know it. And now you say that respecting her wishes is the least you can do? Respecting hers over mine?”

Anthony had begun to respond with, “If you still can’t see that there are times when the past-” when Glyn got to the doorway. She took only a moment to survey them before speaking. Anthony was sitting in one of the wicker chairs, unshaven, desiccated. Justine was at the bank of windows where the fog that shrouded the wide front garden pressed long streaks of moisture against the glass. She was dressed in a black suit and pearl grey blouse. A black leather briefcase leaned against her chair.

Glyn said, “Perhaps you’d like to say the rest, Justine. Like mother, like daughter. Or don’t you have the nerve to carry your special brand of honesty to its logical conclusion?”

Justine began to move towards her chair. She brushed a strand of blonde hair off her cheek. Glyn caught her arm, dug her fi ngers into the fine wool of her suit, and enjoyed a fleeting moment of delight when she saw Justine fl inch.

“I said why don’t you finish what you were saying?” she insisted. “Glyn put Elena through her paces, Anthony. Glyn turned your daughter into a little deaf whore. Elena gave a poke to anyone who wanted it, just like her mum.”

“Glyn,” Anthony said.

“Don’t try to defend her, all right? I was standing on the stairs. I heard what she said. My only child dead for just three days, myself struggling to make some kind of sense of it, and she can’t wait to tear into the both of us. And she chooses sex to do it. I find that most interesting.”

“I won’t listen to this,” Justine said.

Glyn tightened her grip. “Can’t you bear to hear the truth? You use sex as a weapon, and not merely against me.”

Glyn felt Justine’s muscles go rigid. She knew that her dagger had hit the mark. She drove it in farther. “Reward him when he’s been a good little boy, punish him when he’s bad. Is that how it is? So. How long will he pay for keeping you from the funeral?”

“You’re pathetic,” Justine said. “You can’t see beyond sex any more than-”

“Elena?” Glyn dropped Justine’s arm. She looked at Anthony. “Ah. There it is.”

Justine brushed at her sleeve as if to cleanse herself of the contact she’d had with her husband’s former wife. She picked up her briefcase.

“I’m off,” she said calmly.

Anthony stood, his eyes going from the briefcase to her, moving his gaze from her head to her feet as if he had only just become aware of the manner in which she had dressed for the day. “You can’t be intending-”

“To go back to work just three days after Elena was murdered? To expose myself to public censure for having done so? Oh yes, Anthony, that’s exactly what I intend.”

“No. Justine, people-”

“Stop it. Please. I’m not at all like you.”

For a moment, Anthony stared after her as she left the house, taking her coat from round the newel post on the stairway and closing the front door behind her. He watched her walk through the fog towards her grey Peugeot. Glyn kept her eyes on him warily, wondering if he would run out and try to stop her. But he seemed, if anything, too exhausted to care about changing anyone’s mind. He turned from the window and trudged towards the back of the house.

She went to the table upon which the breakfast things still lay: bacon congealing in slim jackets of grease, egg yolks drying and splitting like yellow mud. A piece of toast still stood in the silver rack, and Glyn reached for it thoughtfully. Dry and abrasive beneath her fingers, it crumbled easily, leaving a shower of dust upon the clean parquet fl oor.

From the back of the house, she could hear the metallic sound of file drawers sliding open.

And over it, the high whine of Elena’s Irish setter, longing to be allowed into the house. Glyn walked to the kitchen from whose window she could see the dog sitting on the back step, his black nose pressed into the doorjamb, his feathery tail sweeping back and forth in innocent anticipation. He took a step backwards, looked up, and saw her watching him through the window. His tail picked up rhythm, he gave a joyful bark. She regarded him evenly-taking a small degree of pleasure in allowing his hopes to rise-before she turned and made her way to the rear of the house.

At the doorway to Anthony’s study, she paused. He was crouched by an open drawer of the filing cabinet. The contents of two manila folders lay on the fl oor, comprising perhaps two dozen pencil sketches. Next to them was a canvas rolled like a tube.

For a moment, Glyn watched as Anthony’s hand passed slowly over the drawings in a gesture like an incomplete caress. Then he began to go through them. His fingers seemed clumsy. Twice he gasped for breath. When he paused to remove his spectacles and wipe their lenses on his shirt, she realised that he was crying. She entered the room to get a better look at the drawings on the floor and saw that they were all sketches of Elena.

“Dad’s got himself into drawing these days,” Elena had told her. She’d pronounced it dawing, and she’d laughed about the idea. They’d often chuckled over Anthony’s attempts to find himself through one activity or another as he approached middle age. First it had been long distance running, after that he had begun to swim, then he’d taken up bicycling like a zealot, and finally he had learned to sail. But of all the activities which he had pursued, drawing amused them the most. “Dad t’inks he’s got the soul of Van Gogh,” Elena would say. And she’d mimic her father’s wide-legged stance with sketch pad in hand, eyes squinting towards the distance, hand shading her brow. She’d draw a moustache like his on her upper lip and pull her face into a contorted frown of concentration. “Doe move an inch, Glynnie,” she would command of her mother. “Hol’ that pose. Hol’-that-pose.” And they would laugh together.

But now Glyn could see that the sketches were quite good, that he had managed to achieve something far more in them than was depicted in the still lifes that hung in the sitting room, or the sailboats, the harbours, and the fishing villages here on the study walls. For in the series of drawings he’d spread out on the floor, she could see that he had managed to capture the essence of their daughter. Here were the exact tilt of her head, the elfi n shape of her eyes, the wide chipped-tooth grin, the contour of a cheekbone, of nose, and of mouth. These were studies only, they were quick impressions. But they were lovely and true.

As she took a step closer, Anthony looked up. He gathered the drawings together and replaced them in their respective folders. Along with the canvas which fit into the back, he shoved them into the drawer.

“You don’t have any of them framed,” she said.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he closed the drawer and went to the desk, where he played restlessly with the computer, switching on the Ceephone and watching the screen. A series of menu instructions appeared. He stared at them but did nothing with the keyboard.

“Never mind,” Glyn said. “I know why you hide them.” She went to stand behind him.

She spoke near his ear. “How many years have you lived like this, Anthony? Ten? Twelve? How on earth have you managed?”

His head lowered. She studied the back of his neck, remembering unexpectedly how soft his hair was and how, when overlong, it curled like a child’s against his skin. It was greying now, with scattered strands like white threads woven against black.

“What did she hope to gain? Elena was your daughter. She was your only child. What on earth did she hope to gain?”

His reply was a whisper. He spoke as if answering someone not in the room. “She wanted to hurt me. There was nothing else she could do to make me understand.”

“Understand? What?”

“How it felt to be devastated. How I’d devastated her. Through cowardice. Selfi shness. Egocentricity. But mostly through cowardice. You want the Penford Chair only for your ego, she said. You want a beautiful house and a beautiful wife and a daughter who’ll be your marionette. So that people will look at you with admiration and envy. So that people will say the lucky bloke’s got it all. But you don’t have it all. You have practically nothing. You have less than nothing. Because what you have is a lie. And you don’t even have the courage to admit it.”

A sudden fist of knowledge squeezed at Glyn’s heart as the full meaning of his words slowly dawned upon her, even though he spoke them in a fugue. “You could have prevented it. If only you’d given her what she wanted. Anthony, you could have stopped her.”

“I couldn’t. I had to think of Elena. She was here in Cambridge, in this home, with me. She was starting to come round, to be free with me at last, to let me be her father. I couldn’t run the risk of losing her again. I couldn’t take the chance. And I thought I would lose her if I-”

“You lost her anyway!” she cried, shaking his arm. “She’s not going to walk through that door. She’s not going to say Dad, I understand, I forgive you, I know you did your best. She’s gone. She’s dead. And you could have prevented it.”

“If she had a child, she might have understood what it felt like to have Elena here. She might have known why I couldn’t face the thought of doing anything that might have resulted in losing her again. I’d lost her once. How could I face that agony again? How could she expect me to face it?”

Glyn saw that he wasn’t really responding to her. He was ruminating. He was speaking in tongues. Behind a barrier that shielded him from the worst of the truth, he was talking in a canyon where an echo exists, but throws back different words. Suddenly, she felt the same degree of anger towards him that she’d felt during the worst years of their marriage when she’d greeted his blind pursuit of his career with pursuits of her own, waiting for him to notice the late nights she was keeping, wanting him to notice the nature of the bruises on her neck, her breasts, and her thighs, anticipating the moment when he would finally speak, when he’d give an indication that he really did care.

“This is all about you, isn’t it?” she asked him. “It always has been. Even having Elena here in Cambridge was for your benefi t, not for herself. Not for her education, but to make you feel better, to give you what you want.”

“I wanted to give her a life. I wanted us to have a life together.”

“How would that have been possible? You didn’t love her, Anthony. You only loved yourself. You loved your image, your reputation, your wonderful accomplishments. You loved being loved. But you didn’t love her. And even now you can stand here and look at your daughter’s death and think about how you caused it and how you feel about it now and how devastated you are and what kind of statement it all makes about you. But you won’t do anything about any of it, will you, you won’t make any declaration, you won’t take any stand. Because how might that refl ect upon you?”

Finally, he looked at her. The rims of his eyes appeared bloody and sore. “You don’t know what happened. You don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly. You plan to bury your dead, lick your wounds, and go on. You’re as much a coward as you were fi fteen years ago. You ran out on her then in the middle of the night. You’ll run out on her now. Because it’s the easiest thing to do.”

“I didn’t run out on her,” he said carefully. “I stood firm this time, Glyn. That’s why she died.”

“For you? Because of you?”

“Yes. Because of me.”

“The sun rises and sets on the same horizon in your world. It always has.”

He shook his head. “Perhaps once,” he said. “But it only sets now.”