For the Sake of Elena

21

Lynley pulled the Bentley into a vacant space at the southwest corner of the Cambridge police station. He stared at the vaguely discernible shape of the glass-encased notice board in front of the building, feeling drained. Next to him, Havers fidgeted in her seat. She began to flip through her notebook. He knew she was reading what she’d just recorded from Rosalyn Simpson.

“It was a woman,” the Queens’ undergraduate had said.

She had walked them along the same route she had taken early Monday morning, through the thick, dun, cotton wool of fog in Laundress Lane where the open door to the Asian Studies Faculty shot a meagre light out into the gloom. Once someone slammed it shut, however, the mist seemed impenetrable. The universe became confined to the twenty square feet which comprised the boundary of what they could see.

“Do you run every morning?” Lynley asked the girl as they crossed Mill Lane and skirted the metal posts that kept vehicles off the pedestrian bridge which crossed the river at Granta Place. To their right, Laundress Green was obscured by the fog, an expanse of misty field intermittently disturbed by the hulking forms of crack willows. Beyond it, from across the pond, a single light winked from an upper floor in the Old Granary.

“Nearly,” she answered.

“Always the same time?”

“As close to a quarter past six as I can make it. Sometimes a bit later.”

“And on Monday?”

“Mondays are slower for me, getting out of bed. It was probably round six-twenty-five when I left Queens’ on Monday.”

“So you’d reach the island…”

“No later than half past.”

“You’re certain of that. It couldn’t have been later?”

“I was back in my room by half past seven, Inspector. I’m quick, it’s true, but I’m not that quick. And I did a good ten miles Monday morning, with the island at the start of it. It’s part of my training circuit.”

“For Hare and Hounds?”

“Yes. I fancy a blue this year.”

She hadn’t noticed anything unusual on the morning of her run, she told them. It was still quite dark when she left Queens’ College, and aside from overtaking a workman who was pushing a cart down Laundress Lane, she hadn’t seen another soul. Just the usual assortment of ducks and swans, some already fl oating on the river, others still placidly dozing on the bank. But the fog was heavy-“At least as heavy as it is today,” she said-so she had to admit that anyone might have been lurking in a doorway or waiting, hidden by the fog, on the green.

When they reached the island, they found a small fire burning, sending up weak puffs of acrid, soot-coloured smoke to melt into the fog. A man in a peaked cap, overcoat, and gloves was feeding autumn leaves, trash, and bits of wood into the blue-tipped fl ames. Lynley recognised him as Ned, the surlier of the two older boat repairmen.

Rosalyn indicated the footbridge that crossed not the Cam itself, but the secondary stream that the river became as it fl owed round the west side of the island. “She was crossing this,” she said. “I heard her because she stumbled against something-she might have lost her footing, everything was quite damp-and she was coughing as well. I assumed she was out running like me and was feeling worn out, and frankly I was a bit peeved to come upon her like that because she didn’t appear to be watching where she was going and I nearly bumped into her. And-” She seemed embarrassed. “Well, I suppose I have the University mind set about townees, don’t I? What was she doing, I thought, invading my patch?”

“What gave you the impression she was a local?”

Rosalyn looked thoughtfully at the footbridge through the mist. The damp air was catching on her eyelashes, spiking them darkly. Childlike curls of hair were forming against her brow. “It was something about her clothes, I should guess. And perhaps her age, although I suppose she could have been from Lucy Cavendish.”

“What about her clothes?”

Rosalyn gestured at her own mismatched sweat suit. “University runners generally wear their college colours somewhere, their college sweatshirts as well.”

“And she wasn’t wearing a sweat suit?” Havers asked sharply, glancing up from her notebook.

“She was-a tracksuit actually-but it wasn’t from a college. I mean, I don’t recall seeing a college name on it. Although, now I think of it, considering the colour, she might have been from Trinity Hall.”

“Because she was wearing black,” Lynley said.

Rosalyn’s quick smile indicated affi rmation. “You know the colleges’ colours, then?”

“It was just a good guess.”

He walked onto the footbridge. The wrought iron gate was partially open upon the south end of the island. The police line was gone now, the island available to anyone who wished to sit by the water, to meet surreptitiously, or-like Sarah Gordon-to attempt to sketch. “Did the woman see you?”

Rosalyn and Havers remained on the path. “Oh yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I nearly ran into her. She couldn’t have helped seeing me.”

“And you were wearing the same clothes you’re wearing now?”

Rosalyn nodded, and plunged her hands into the pockets of the anorak she’d taken from her room prior to their setting out into the fog. “Without this, of course,” she said with a lift of her shoulders to indicate the anorak. She added ingenuously, “One gets warm enough running. And”-her face brightened-“she didn’t have a coat or a jacket on, so that must have been another reason why I assumed she was a runner. Although…” A marked hesitation as she looked into the mist. “She might have been carrying one, I suppose. I can’t recall. But I think she was carrying something…I think.”

“What did she look like?”

“Look like?” Rosalyn frowned down at her gym shoes. “Slender. She wore her hair pulled back.”

“Colour?”

“Oh dear. It was light, I think. Yes, quite light.”

“Anything unusual about her? A feature perhaps? A mark on her skin? The shape of her nose? A large forehead? A pointed chin?”

“I can’t recall. I’m terribly sorry. I’m not much help, am I? You see, it was three days ago and I didn’t know at the time that I’d have to remember her. I mean, one doesn’t really study everyone one meets. One doesn’t expect to have to recall them.” Rosalyn blew out a breath of frustration before going on to say earnestly, “Perhaps if you’d like to hypnotise me the way they do sometimes when a witness can’t recall the details of a crime…”

“It’s fine,” Lynley said. He rejoined them on the path. “Do you think she got a clear look at your sweatshirt?”

“Oh, I dare say she did.”

“She would have seen the name?”

“Queens’ College, you mean? Yes. She would have seen that.” Rosalyn looked back in the direction of the college, although even had there been no fog, she wouldn’t have been able to see it in the distance. When she turned back to them, her face was sombre, but she didn’t say anything until a young man, coming across Crusoe’s Bridge from Coe Fen, descended the ten iron steps- shoes ringing loudly against the metal-and plodded past them, head bent into the mist which quickly enveloped him. “Melinda was right, then,” Rosalyn said quietly. “Georgina died in my place.”

A girl her age didn’t need to carry round that sort of responsibility for a lifetime, Lynley thought. He said, “You can’t know that for a certainty,” although he was fast arriving at the same conclusion.

Rosalyn reached for one of the tortoise shell combs in her hair. She pulled it out and grasped a long lock in her fi ngers. “There’s this,” she said, and then she unzipped her anorak and pointed to the emblem across her breast. “And this. We’re the same height, the same weight, the same colouring. We’re both from Queens’. Whoever followed Georgina yesterday morning thought she was following me. Because I saw. Because I knew. Because I might have told. And I would have, I should have…And if I had done-as by rights I should have and I know it, you don’t have to tell me, I know it-Georgina wouldn’t be dead.” She whipped her head away and blinked furiously at the cloudy mass of Sheep’s Green.

And he knew there was little or nothing he could say to lessen her guilt or lighten her burden of responsibility.

Now, more than an hour later, Lynley drew a deep breath and let it out, staring at the sign in front of the police station. Across the street, the wide green that was Parker’s Piece might not even have existed, hidden as it was by the mat-work of fog. A distant beacon blinked off and on in its centre, serving as a guide to those trying to find their way.

“So it had nothing to do with the fact that Elena was pregnant,” Havers said. And then, “What now?”

“Wait here for St. James. See what he’s able to conclude about the weapon. And let him have a go at eliminating the boxing gloves as well.”

“And you?”

“I’ll go to the Weavers’.”

“Right.” Still, she didn’t move from the car. He could feel her looking at him. “Everyone loses, don’t they, Inspector?”

“That’s always the case with a murder,” he said.

Neither of the Weaver cars was in the drive when Lynley pulled up to the front of the house. But the garage doors were closed and, assuming that the cars would be kept out of the damp, he went to ring the bell. From the back of the house, he could hear the dog’s answering bark of welcome. It was followed moments later by a woman’s voice calling for quiet behind the door. The bolt was drawn back.

Since she’d met him at the door on his two previous visits, Lynley had been expecting to see Justine Weaver when the broad oak panels slid soundlessly open. So he was taken aback when in her place stood a tall, somewhat beefy middle-aged woman carrying a plate of sandwiches. These gave off the distinct odour of tuna. They were surrounded by a substantial nest of crisps.

Lynley recalled his initial interview with the Weavers, and the information that Anthony Weaver had given him about his former wife. This, he realised, would be Glyn.

He produced his warrant card and introduced himself. She took her time about scrutinising it, giving him time to scrutinise her. Only in height was she like Justine Weaver. In every other way, she was Justine’s antithesis. Looking at her heavy tweed skirt that stretched wide across her hips, her line-weary face with its loose flesh on the jaw, her wiry hair liberally streaked with grey and pulled back into an unflattering chignon, Lynley found himself hearing once again Victor Troughton’s assessment of his wife’s middle age. And he felt a surge of mortifi cation when he realised that he too was in the process of judging and dismissing based upon what time had done to a woman’s body.

Glyn Weaver looked up from her perusal of his card. She held the door open. “Come in,” she said. “I was just having lunch. Would you like something?” She offered the plate in his direction. “You’d think there might be something other than tinned fish in the larder, but Anthony’s Justine likes to watch her weight.”

“Is she here?” Lynley asked. “Is Dr. Weaver here?”

Glyn led him into the morning room and fluttered a hand in dismissal. “Both out. One couldn’t really expect Justine to hang about the house for more than a day or two over something as inconsequential as a family death-and as for Anthony, I don’t know. He went off a while ago.”

“By car?”

“Yes.”

“To the college?”

“I have no idea. One moment he was here in the house talking to me. The next moment he was gone. I expect he’s out there somewhere in the fog, trying to think what he’s going to do next. You know how it is. Moral obligation versus cock-throbbing lust. He’s always had trouble when it comes to confl ict. In his case, I’m afraid, lust usually wins.”

Lynley didn’t respond. He would have had to be a complete dullard not to recognise what was roiling beneath the thin veneer of Glyn’s civility. Anger, hatred, bitterness, envy. And a terror of abjuring any of them in order to allow her heart to begin to feel the full strength of what had to be a multifurcate grief.

Glyn set her plate on the wicker table. Its breakfast dishes had not yet been removed. On the floor surrounding it, a noticeable patina of toast crumbs lay on the wood, and she walked right through this, either oblivious or unconcerned. She stacked the breakfast plates one upon the other, mindless of the cold and congealing food upon each. But rather than take them into the kitchen, she merely pushed them to one side, ignoring a dirty knife and teaspoon that fell from the table onto the crisp floral pillow that covered the seat of one of the chairs.

“Anthony knows,” she said. “I expect you know as well. I expect that’s why you’ve come.

Will you arrest her today?” She sat down. Her chair’s willow strands creaked as they rubbed together. She picked up the sandwich and took a hefty bite, chewing with a pleasure that seemed only marginally related to the food.

He said, “Do you know where she’s gone, Mrs. Weaver?”

Glyn picked among the crisps. “At what point exactly do you make an arrest? I’ve always wondered that. Do you need an eyewitness? What about hard evidence? You’ve got to have something to give to the prosecutors, don’t you? You’ve got to have a case that solidly sticks.”

“Did she have an appointment?”

Glyn wiped her hands against her skirt and began to tick items off on her fi ngers. “There’s the Ceephone call that she claimed she received on Sunday night. There’s the fact that she ran without the dog on Monday morning. There’s the fact that she knew exactly where and how and what time to fi nd her. And there’s the fact that she hated her and wanted her dead. Do you need something more? Fingerprints? Blood? A single hair, a bit of skin?”

“Has she gone to see family?”

“People loved Elena. Justine couldn’t stand that. But mostly, she couldn’t stand that Anthony loved her. She hated his devotion, how he always tried to make things right between them. She didn’t want that. Because if things went right between Anthony and Elena, things would go wrong between Anthony and Justine. That’s what she thought. And she was sick with jealousy. You’ve fi nally come for her, haven’t you?”

Eagerness appeared in wet glimmers at the corners of her mouth. She reminded Lynley of the crowds that once gathered to watch public executions, revelling in the vengeful taking of a life. Had there been a possibility to see Justine Weaver drawn and quartered, he had no doubt that this woman would be more than willing to grasp the opportunity. He wanted to tell her that there was, in the end, no real taking of an eye for an eye and no real satisfaction to be found at any bar of justice. For even if the most barbarous kind of punishment were meted out against the perpetrator of a crime, the rage and grief of the victimised remained.

His eyes dropped to the mess on the table. Near the stacked plates and beneath a knife that was smeared with butter lay an envelope with the crest of the University Press on it and Justine’s name-but not her address-written in a firm, masculine hand.

Evidently, Glyn saw the direction of his gaze for she said, “She’s an important executive. You couldn’t really have thought she’d be hanging round here.”

He nodded and began to take his leave.

“Will you arrest her?” she asked again.

He responded with, “I want to ask her a question.”

“I see. Just a question. Quite. Well. Would you arrest her if you had the proof in your hand? If I gave you the proof?” She waited to see the reaction to her questions. She smiled like a perfectly satisfied cat when his steps faltered and he turned to face her. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Oh yes, indeed, Mister Policeman.”

She pushed away from the table and left the room. In a moment, he heard the Irish setter begin barking again and her answering shout from the back of the house: “Shut up, will you!” The dog persisted.

“Here,” she said, returning. She carried two manila folders and, under her arm, what appeared to be an artist’s canvas rolled up. “Anthony had these in the study, hidden at the back of a filing drawer. I found him snivelling over them an hour or so ago, just before he left. Have a look for yourself. I’ve no doubt what conclusion you’ll reach.”

She handed over the folders first. He fl ipped through the sketches that each contained. All of them were studies of the dead girl, all appeared done by the same hand. They were undeniably skilful, and he admired their quality. None, however, could possibly serve as a motive for murder. He was about to say this when Glyn thrust the canvas at him.

“Now look at this,” she said.

He unrolled it, squatting to place it on the floor because it was quite large and had been doubled over prior to being rolled and stored in the first place. It was, he saw, a spattered piece of canvas with two large rips moving diagonally towards the middle and a central, shorter rip meeting them there. The spattering on it had been created by large gobs of paint-mostly white and red-that looked as if they’d been smeared haphazardly onto the canvas with a palette knife and with no regard for artistic expression. Where they did not meet or overlap, the colours of another oil painting showed through. He stood up and gazed down at it, feeling the fi rst stirring of fi nal comprehension.

“And this,” Glyn said. “It was wrapped up in the canvas when I first unrolled it.”

She slapped into his hand a small brass plaque-perhaps two inches long and three quarters of an inch wide. He took it from his palm and held it to the light, knowing what it was that he would likely see. ELENA was engraved in fine script across it.

He looked up at Glyn Weaver and saw the exultant pleasure she was taking from the moment. He knew she was expecting him to comment upon the nature of the motive she’d just presented him. Instead, he asked, “Has Justine gone running while you’ve been in Cambridge?”

This didn’t seem to be the response she expected from him. But she answered well enough although her eyes narrowed with sharp suspicion as she did so. “Yes.”

“In a tracksuit?”

“Well, she wasn’t exactly dressed by Coco Chanel.”

“What colour, Mrs. Weaver?”

“Colour?” With a hint of outrage that he wasn’t keying into the ruined painting and what it implied.

“Yes. The colour.”

“It was black.”

“So just how much more proof do you want that Justine hated my daughter?” Glyn Weaver had followed him out of the breakfast room, leaving behind the smell of old eggs, tuna, butter, and crisps vying with one another in the air for domination. “What’s it going to take to convince you? How much more proof?”

She’d put a hand on his arm and pulled on him till he faced her, standing so close that he could feel her breath on his face and could smell the oily odour of fish each time she exhaled. “He sketched Elena, not his wife. He painted Elena, not his wife. Imagine watching that. Imagine hating each moment as it was going on before your eyes. Right here in this morning room. Because the light’s good here, and he would have wanted to paint her in light that was good.”

Lynley turned the Bentley into Bulstrode Gardens where the street-lamps did not so much cut through the mist as merely colour the top layer of it gold while the rest remained a mass of wet grey. He pulled directly into the semi-circular drive, through a mat of damp leaves fallen and blown from the stand of slim birches at the edge of the property. Without taking particular note of it, he gazed at the house before getting out of the car, considering the nature of the evidence he had with him, reflecting upon the sketches of Elena and what they suggested about the ruined canvas, thinking of the Ceephone, and, above all, playing with time. For it was time upon which the entire case hung.

She would have obliterated the image fi rst and, taking no real or lasting satisfaction in that, she would have moved on to the girl herself second, Glyn Weaver had asserted. She would have pounded her face just as she’d hacked and stabbed at the painting, brutalising and destroying, living out her rage.

But most of that constituted hopeful conjecture, Lynley thought. Only part of it skirted close to the truth. He tucked the canvas under his arm and went to the door.

Harry Rodger answered, Christian and Perdita at his heels. He said only, “It’s Pen you want?” to Lynley’s request, and then to his son, “Go fetch Mummy, Chris.”

When the little boy scampered up the stairway to do so, shouting “Mummy!” and bashing the worn head of a hobbyhorse against the balusters with additional cries of “Ker-blowey, Ker-blew!” Rodger nodded Lynley into the sitting room. He swung his daughter onto his hip and glanced without speaking at the canvas beneath Lynley’s arm. Perdita curled herself against her father’s chest.

Above them Christian’s footsteps thumped along the upstairs corridor. His hobbyhorse banged against the wall. “Mummy!” Small fists pounded on a door.

“You’ve brought her some work, haven’t you?” Rodger’s words were polite, his face deliberately impassive.

“I’d like her to look at this, Harry. I need her expertise.”

The other man’s lips offered a brief smile, one which accepted information without indicating that it was at all welcome. He said, “Excuse me, please,” and he walked into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

A moment later, Christian preceded both his mother and his aunt into the sitting room. Somewhere in his sojourn through the house, he’d picked up a totsized vinyl holster, and he was wrestling it inexpertly round his waist, its companion toy gun dangling to his knees. “I shoot you, mister,” he said to Lynley, dragging on the gun’s handle and knocking himself into Lady Helen’s legs in his effort to get it out. “I shoot, Auntie Leen.”

“Those aren’t the wisest words to say to a policeman, Chris.” Lady Helen knelt in front of him, and saying, “Don’t be such a wiggle-worm,” she fastened the holster round his waist.

He giggled and shouted, “Ker-blang you, mister!” and ran to the sofa where he beat the pistol against the pillows.

“If nothing else, he has a fine future in crime,” Lynley noted.

Penelope raised both hands in futility. “It’s nearly his naptime. He gets a bit wild when he’s tired.”

“I’d hate to think what he’s like when he’s fully awake.”

“Ker-plough!” Christian yelled. He rolled onto the floor and began crawling in the direction of the hall, making shooting noises and taking aim at imaginary foes.

Penelope watched him and shook her head. “I’ve considered sedating him until his eighteenth birthday, but what would I do for laughs?” As Christian began an assault on the stairway, she said with a nod towards the canvas, “What have you brought?”

Lynley unrolled it along the back of the sofa, gave her a moment to observe it from across the room, and said, “What can you do with it?”

“Do?”

“Not a restoration, Tommy,” Lady Helen said doubtfully.

Penelope looked up from the canvas. She said, “Heavens. You must be joking.”

“Why?”

“Tommy, it’s a ruin.”

“I don’t need it repaired. I just need to establish what’s underneath the top layer of paint.”

“But how do you even know there’s something underneath it?”

“Look closer. There has to be. You can see it. And besides, it’s the only explanation.”

Penelope asked for no further details. She merely walked to the sofa for a closer look and touched her fingers to the surface of the canvas. “It would take weeks to clean this off,” she said. “You’ve no idea what it would entail. This sort of thing is done inches at a time across a canvas, a single layer at a time. One doesn’t just dump a bottle of solvent on it and wipe it off like a window being cleaned.”

“Blast,” Lynley muttered.

“Ker-blooey!” Christian yelled from his position of potential ambush on the stairs.

“Still…” Penelope tapped her index fi nger against her lip. “Let me take it into the kitchen and have a look under stronger light.”

Her husband was standing at the stove, fl ipping through the day’s post. His daughter leaned against him, one arm encircling his leg, one apple cheek pressed against his thigh. Sleepily, she said, “Mummy,” and Rodger raised his head from the letter he was perusing. His eyes took in the canvas that Penelope carried. His face was unreadable.

Penelope said, “If you’ll just clear off the work top,” and waited with the canvas in her hands while Lynley and Lady Helen moved aside the mixing bowls, lunch dishes, story books, and silverware. Then she fl opped the canvas down and looked at it thoughtfully.

“Pen,” her husband said.

“In a moment,” she replied. She went to a drawer and took out a magnifying glass, fondly running her fingers through her daughter’s hair as she passed.

“Where’s the baby?” Rodger asked.

Penelope bent over the work top and scrutinised first the individual blotches of paint and then the rips in the canvas itself. “Ultraviolet,” she said. “Perhaps infrared.” She looked up at Lynley. “Do you need the painting itself? Or would a photograph do?”

“Photograph?”

“Pen, I asked-”

“We have three options. An X-ray would show us the entire skeleton of the painting- everything that’s been painted on the canvas no matter how many layers have been used. An ultraviolet light would give us whatever work’s been done on top of the varnish-if there’s been repainting, for instance. An infrared photo would give us whatever comprised the initial sketch for the painting. And any doctoring that’s been done to the signature. If there is a signature, of course. Would any of that be helpful?”

Lynley looked at the lacerated canvas and considered the options. “I should guess an X-ray,” he said reflectively. “But if that doesn’t do it, can we try something else?”

“Certainly. I’ll just-”

“Penelope.” Harry Rodger’s face had mottled, although his voice was determinedly pleasant. “Isn’t it time that the twins had a lie down? Christian’s been acting like a madman for the past twenty minutes, and Perdita’s falling asleep on her feet.”

Penelope glanced at the wall clock that hung above the stove. She chewed on her lip and looked at her sister. Lady Helen smiled faintly, perhaps in acknowledgement, perhaps in encouragement. “You’re right, of course,” Penelope said with a sigh. “They do need to nap.”

“Good. Then-”

“So if you’ll see to them yourself, darling, the rest of us can pop this canvas round to the Fitzwilliam to see what can be done with it. The baby’s been fed. She’s already asleep. And the twins won’t give you much trouble so long as you read them something from Cautionary Verses. Christian’s quite partial to that poem about Mathilda. Helen must have read it to him half a dozen times before he dropped off yesterday.” She began rolling up the canvas. “I’ll just need a moment to dress,” she told Lynley.

When she’d left the room, Rodger lifted up his daughter. He looked at the doorway as if in the expectation of Penelope’s return. When that did not occur, when instead they heard her saying, “Daddy will help you have a lie down, Christian darling,” he gave his attention to Lynley for a moment as Christian pounded down the stairs and across the sitting room towards the kitchen.

“She isn’t well,” Rodger said. “You know as well as I that she shouldn’t be leaving this house. I hold you responsible-both of you, Helen-if anything happens.”

“We’re merely going to the Fitzwilliam Museum,” Lady Helen replied, sounding for all the world like a model of reason. “What on earth could possibly happen to her there?”

“Daddy!” Christian flung himself into the room and crashed euphorically against his father’s legs. “Read ’Tilda to me! Now!”

“I’m warning you, Helen,” Rodger said, and stabbing a finger in Lynley’s direction, “I’m warning the both of you.”

“Daddy! Read!”

“Duty appears to be calling, Harry,” Lady Helen replied serenely. “You’ll find their pyjamas beneath the pillows on their beds. And the book-”

“I know where the damn book is,” Rodger snapped and took his children from the room.

“Oh dear,” Lady Helen murmured. “I’m afraid there’s going to be hell to pay for this.”

“I don’t think so,” Lynley said. “Harry’s an educated man. At the very least we know he can read.”

“Cautionary Verses?”

Lynley shook his head. “The handwriting on the wall.”

“After an hour, we all managed to come to an agreement. The strongest likelihood is that it was glass. When I left, Pleasance was still holding out for his theory that it was a champagne or wine bottle-preferably full-but he’s fresh from graduate school and still attached to any opportunity to expatiate. Frankly, I expect he’s more attracted to the sound of his arguments than to their viability. No wonder the head of forensic-is it Drake?- wants his neck in a noose.”

Forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James joined Barbara Havers at her solitary table in the officers’ mess at Cambridge Police Station. For the past two hours, he’d been holed up at the regional police laboratory with the disputing parties of Superintendent Sheehan’s forensic team, examining not only the X-rays of Elena Weaver but the body itself and comparing his conclusions with those developed by the younger scientist in the Cambridge group. It was an activity that Barbara had begged off attending. The brief period during her police training that had been given to watching autopsies had more than sated whatever nugatory interest she may once have had in forensic medicine.

“Please note, officers,” the forensic pathologist had intoned as he stood before the draped cart under which was the corpse that would be their object lesson, “that the mark of the ligature used in strangling this woman can still be plainly observed although our killer made what he apparently believed would be an ingenious attempt at obfuscation. Step closer, please.”

Like idiots-or automatons-the probationary DC’s had done so. And three of them had fainted dead away when, with a tiny smile of malicious anticipation, the pathologist whipped back the sheet to display the grisly remains of a body that had been saturated with paraffin and set afire. Barbara herself had remained on her feet, but only just. And she had never been in a tearing hurry to stand in on an autopsy from that time forward. Just bring me the facts, she always thought when a body was carted away from a murder scene. Don’t make me watch you gather them.

“Tea?” she asked St. James as he lowered himself into one of the chairs, adjusting his position to make allowances for the brace he wore on his left leg. “It’s fresh.” She gave a glance to her watch. “Well, okay. Only moderately fresh. But it’s riddled with enough caffeine to paste your eyelids permanently open if you’re feeling clapped out.”

St. James accepted the offer and ministered to his cup with three overlarge spoonfuls of sugar. After a taste of it, he added a fourth, saying, “Falstaff is my only defence, Barbara.”

She lifted her cup to him. “Cheers,” she said, and watched him drink.

He was looking well, she decided. Still too thin and angular, still too lined about the face, but there was an appealing sheen to the undisciplined dark hair, and his hands on the table seemed utterly relaxed. A man at peace with himself, she thought, and she wondered how long it had taken St. James to achieve such psychic equilibrium. He was Lynley’s oldest and closest friend, an expert witness from London upon whose forensic services they had called more than once.

“If not a wine bottle-and there was one at the crime scene, by the way-and not a champagne bottle, then what was used to beat her?” she asked. “And why have the Cambridge people been scrapping over this issue in the fi rst place?”

“A case of male posturing, to my way of thinking,” St. James replied. “The head of forensic is just over fifty. He’s been on the job for a good twenty-five years. Along comes Pleasance, twenty-six years old and acting the upstart crow. So what you have is-”

“Men,” Barbara said in simple conclusion. “Why don’t they just go outside and settle their dispute by seeing who can pee the farthest?”

St. James smiled. “Not a bad idea.”

“Ha! Women should run the world.” She poured herself more tea. “So why couldn’t it have been a wine or champagne bottle?”

“The shape doesn’t make a match. We’re looking for something with a slightly broader curve making the connection between bottom and sides. Like this.” He cupped his right palm to form half an oval.

“And the leather gloves wouldn’t work for that curve?”

“For the curve, perhaps. But leather gloves of that weight wouldn’t shatter a cheekbone in a single blow. I’m not sure a heavyweight could even do that, and from what you said, the boy who owns the gloves isn’t a heavyweight by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Then what?” Barbara asked. “A vase perhaps?”

“I don’t think so. Whatever was used had some sort of handgrip. And it was quite heavy, enough to do maximum damage with minimum effort. She’d only been struck three times.”

“A handgrip. That suggests the neck of a bottle.”

“Which is why Pleasance is continuing to propound his full-champagne-bottle theory despite compelling evidence to the contrary. Unless, of course, it’s the most oddly shaped champagne bottle on record.” St. James removed a paper napkin from the table dispenser and roughed out a sketch, saying, “What you’re looking for is fl at on the bottom, with a broad curve on the sides, and, I imagine, a sturdy gripping neck.” He handed it over. Barbara studied the drawing.

“This looks like one of those ship’s decanters,” she said, pulling on her upper lip thoughtfully. “Simon, did someone cosh the girl in the face with the family Waterford?”

“It’s as heavy as crystal,” St. James replied. “But smooth-surfaced, not cut. Solid as well. And if that’s the case, it’s not a container of any sort.”

“What, then?”

He looked at the drawing which she placed between them. “I have no idea.”

“You won’t go for something metal?”

“Doubtful. Glass-especially if it’s smooth and heavy-is the likelier substance when there’s no trace evidence left behind.”

“Need I ask if you were able to fi nd trace evidence where the Cambridge team found none?”

“You needn’t. I didn’t.”

“What a balls-up.” She sighed.

He didn’t disagree. Rather, he shifted position in his chair and said, “Are you and Tommy still intent on connecting the two killings? That’s an odd approach when the means are so different. If you’re working with the same killer, why weren’t both victims gunned down?”

She picked at the gelatinous surface of a cherry tart that was doing service as the edible portion of her afternoon tea. “We’re thinking that the motive determined the means in each killing. The first motive was personal, so it required a personal means.”

“A hands-on means? Beating then strangling?”

“Yes. If you will. But the second murder wasn’t personal at all, just a need to eliminate a potential witness who could place the killer at Crusoe’s Island right at the time Elena Weaver was strangled. A shotgun suffi ced to carry that out. Of course, what the killer didn’t know is that the wrong girl got shot.”

“A nasty business.”

“Quite.” She speared a cherry. It looked disturbingly like a large clot of blood. Shuddering, she tapped it onto her plate and tried another. “But at least we’ve got a tab on the killer now. And the Inspector’s gone to-” She stopped, brow furrowed, as Lynley came through the swinging doors, his overcoat slung over his shoulder and his cashmere scarf fl uttering round him like carmine wings. He was carrying a large manila envelope. Lady Helen Clyde and another woman-presumably her sister-were right behind him.

“St. James,” he said by way of greeting his friend. “I’m in your debt again. Thank you for coming. You know Pen, of course.” He dropped his coat over the back of a chair as St. James greeted Penelope and brushed a kiss across Lady Helen’s cheek. He pulled extra chairs over to their table as Lynley introduced Barbara to Lady Helen’s sister.

Barbara watched him, perplexed. He’d gone to the Weaver house for information. As soon as he had it, his next step was supposed to be to make an arrest. But clearly, no arrest had been made. Something had taken him in another direction.

“You haven’t brought her with you?” she asked.

“I haven’t. Look at this.”

From the envelope, he took out a thin stack of photographs, telling them about the canvas and the set of sketches that Glyn Weaver had given him. “There was dual damage to the painting,” he said. “Someone had defaced it with great smears of colour and then fi nished the job with a kitchen knife. Weaver’s former wife assumed that the subject was Elena and that Justine had destroyed it.”

“She was wrong, I take it?” Barbara asked, picking up the photographs and flipping through them. Each of them showed a different section of the canvas. They were curious pieces, some of them looking like nothing so much as double exposures in which one fi gure was superimposed over another. They depicted various portraits of a female, from childhood up to young adulthood. “What are these?” Havers asked, passing each photograph on to St. James after she perused it.

“Infrared photographs and X-rays,” Lynley said. “Pen can explain. We did it at the museum.”

Penelope said, “They show what was originally on the canvas. Before it was smeared with paint.”

There were at least five head studies in the group, one of which was more than double the size of all the rest. Barbara puzzled her way through them, saying, “Odd sort of painting, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not when you assemble them,” Penelope said. “Here. I’ll show you.”

Lynley cleared away the tea debris, piling the stainless steel teapot, the cups, the plates, and the silverware onto a table nearby. “Because of its size, it could only be photographed in sections,” he explained to Barbara.

Pen went on. “When the sections are assembled, it looks like this.” She laid the photographs out to form an incomplete rectangle from whose right-hand corner a quadrilateral was missing. What Barbara saw on the table was a semi-circle of four head studies of a growing girl-depicted as a baby, a toddler, a child, an adolescent-and offset by the fi fth and larger head study of the young adult.

“If this isn’t Elena Weaver,” Barbara said, “then who-”

“It’s Elena all right,” Lynley said. “Her mother was dead on the money about that. Where she went wrong was in the rest of the scenario. She saw sketches and a painting hidden in Weaver’s study and reached a logical conclusion based upon her knowledge that he dabbled in art. But obviously this isn’t dabbling.”

Barbara looked up, saw that he was removing another photograph from the envelope. She held her hand out for it, put it into the empty spot at the bottom right-hand corner, and looked at the artist’s signature. Like the woman herself, it was not flamboyant. Just the simple word Gordon in thin strokes of black.

“Full circle,” he said.

“So much for coincidence,” she replied.

“If we can just connect her to some sort of weapon, we’re starting to fly home free.” Lynley looked at St. James as Lady Helen gathered the pictures into a neat stack and replaced them in the folder. “What did you come up with?” he asked.

“Glass,” St. James said.

“A wine bottle?”

“No. Not the right shape.”

Barbara went to the table where Lynley had stacked their tea things and rooted through them to find the drawing St. James had made. She pulled it from beneath the teapot and tossed it their way. It fell to the fl oor. Lady Helen picked it up, looked at it, shrugged, and handed it to Lynley.

“What is it?” he asked. “It looks like a decanter.”

“My thought as well,” Barbara said. “Simon says no.”

“Why?”

“It needs to be solid, heavy enough to shatter a bone with one blow.”

“Damn and blast,” Lynley said and fl ipped it to the table.

Penelope leaned forward, drew the paper towards her. “Tommy,” she said thoughtfully, “you know, I can’t be certain, but this looks awfully like a muller.”

“A muller?” Lynley asked.

Havers said, “What the dickens is that?”

“A tool,” Penelope said. “It’s what an artist first uses when he’s making his own paint.”