For the Sake of Elena

4

“It was always clear that Elena Weaver had the potential for a first,” Terence Cuff said to Lynley. “But I suppose we say that about most undergraduates, don’t we? What would they be doing here if they didn’t have the potential to take firsts in their subjects?”

“What was hers?”

“English.”

Cuff poured two sherries and handed one to Lynley. He nodded towards three over-stuffed chairs that were grouped round a gateleg table to the right of the library’s fireplace, a two-tiered demonstration of one of the more fl amboyant aspects of late Elizabethan architecture, deco rated with marble caryatids, Corinthian columns, and the coat of arms of Vincent Amberlane, Lord Brasdown, the college founder.

Before coming to the lodge, Lynley had taken a solitary evening stroll through the seven courts that comprised the western two-thirds of St. Stephen’s College, pausing in the fellows’ garden where a terrace overlooked the River Cam. He was a lover of architecture. He took pleasure in the evidence of each period’s individual caprice. And while he had always found Cambridge itself to be a rich source of architectural whimsies-from Trinity Great Court’s fountain to Queens’ Mathematical Bridge-St. Stephen’s College, he discovered, merited special attention. It spanned five hundred years of design, from the sixteenth-century Principal Court, with its buildings of red brick and freestone quoins, to the twentieth-century, triangular North Court, where the junior combination room, the bar, a lecture hall, and the buttery were contained in a series of sliding glass panels framed by Brazilian mahogany. St. Stephen’s was one of the largest colleges in the University, “bound by the Trinities” as University brochures described it, with Trinity College to its north, Trinity Hall to its south, and Trinity Lane bisecting its west and east sections. Only the river running along its western boundary kept the college from being entirely hemmed in.

The Master’s Lodge sat at the southwest end of the college grounds, abutting Garret Hostel Lane and facing the River Cam. Its construction dated from the 1600’s, and like its predecessors in Principal Court, it had escaped the ashlar refacing that had been so popular in Cambridge in the eighteenth century. Thus, it maintained its original brick exterior and contrasting stone quoins. And like much of the architecture of the period, it was a happy combination of classical and Gothic details. Its perfect balance spoke of the influence of classical design. Two bay windows jutted out on either side of the front door, while a row of dormer windows topped by semi-circular pediments rose from a pitched slate roof. A lingering love of the Gothic showed itself in that roof’s crenellation, in the pointed arch that comprised the building’s entry, and in the fan vaulting of that entry’s ceiling. It was here that Lynley came to keep his appointment with Terence Cuff, Master of St. Stephen’s and a graduate of Exeter College, Oxford, where Lynley himself had been a student.

Lynley watched Cuff settle his lanky frame into one of the over-stuffed chairs in the panelled library. He couldn’t remember having heard about Cuff during his own time at Oxford, but as the man was some twenty years Lynley’s senior, this fact could hardly constitute an indication of Cuff’s failure to distinguish himself as an undergraduate.

He seemed to wear confidence with the same ease with which he wore his fawn trousers and navy jacket. It was clear that while he was deeply-perhaps even personally-concerned about the murder of one of the junior members of the college, he did not look upon Elena Weaver’s death as a statement about his competence as college head.

“I’m relieved that the Vice Chancellor agreed to Scotland Yard’s coordinating the investigation,” Cuff said, setting his sherry on the gateleg table. “Having Miranda Webberly at St. Stephen’s helped. It was easy enough to give the Vice Chancellor her father’s name.”

“According to Webberly, there was some concern about the way a case was handled by the local CID last Easter term.”

Cuff rested his head against his index and forefinger. He wore no rings. His hair was thick and ash grey. “It was a clear-cut suicide. But someone from the police station leaked to the local press that it looked to him like a hushed-up murder. You know the sort of thing, an allegation that the University’s protecting one of its own. It developed into a small but nasty situation fanned by the local press. I’d like to avoid that happening again. The Vice Chancellor agrees.”

“But I understand the girl wasn’t killed on University property, so it stands to reason that someone from the city may have committed the crime. If that’s the case, you’re heading into a nasty situation of another sort no matter what anyone wants from New Scotland Yard.”

“Yes. Believe me, I know.”

“So the Yard’s involvement-”

Cuff stopped Lynley with the abrupt words: “Elena was killed on Robinson Crusoe’s Island. Are you familiar with it? A short distance from Mill Lane and the University Centre. It’s long been a gathering place for young people, somewhere they go to drink and smoke.”

“Members of the colleges? That seems a bit odd.”

“Quite. No. Members of college don’t need the island. They can drink and smoke in their common rooms. The graduates can go to the University Centre. Anyone who wants to get up to anything else can do as much in his own bed-sit. We’ve a certain number of rules, naturally, but I can’t say they’re enforced with any regularity. And the days of the proctors patrolling are gone.”

“Then I gather the island’s mostly used by the city.”

“The south end, yes. The north end’s used to repair rivercraft in the winter.”

“College boats?”

“Some.”

“So students and locals might have occasion to bump into one another there.”

Cuff didn’t disagree. “An unpleasant run-in between a member of a college and someone from the city? A few choice epithets, the word townee hurled like an execration, and a killing as revenge?”

“Was Elena Weaver likely to have had that sort of run-in?”

“You’re thinking of an altercation that led up to a lying-in-wait.”

“It’s a possibility, I should think.”

Cuff looked over the top of his glass to an antique globe standing in one of the library’s bay windows. The light from the room created the globe’s duplicate -slightly contorted-on the imperfect pane. “To be frank, that doesn’t sound at all like Elena. And even if that weren’t the case, if we’re talking about a killer who knew her and waited for her, I doubt it was someone from the city. As far as I know, she had no city relationship close enough to lead to murder.”

“An arbitrary killing then?”

“The night porter indicates she left the college grounds round a quarter past six. She was by herself. It would certainly be convenient to reach the conclusion that a young girl out running was victimised by a killer she didn’t know. Unfortunately, I tend to think that’s not the case.”

“Then you believe it was someone who knew her? A member of one of the colleges?”

Cuff offered Lynley a cigarette from a rosewood case on the table. When Lynley demurred, he lit one himself, looked away for a moment and said, “That seems more likely.”

“Have you any ideas?”

Cuff blinked. “None at all.”

Lynley noted the determined tone behind the words and led Cuff back to their original topic. “You mentioned that Elena had potential.”

“A telling statement, isn’t it?”

“It does tend to suggest failure rather than success. What can you tell me about her?”

“She was in Part IB of the English tripos. I believe her coursework concentrated on the history of literature this year, but the senior tutor would be able to tell you exactly, if you need to know. He’s been involved with Elena’s adjustment here in Cambridge from her fi rst term last year.”

Lynley raised an eyebrow. He knew the purpose of the senior tutor. It was far more personal than academic. So the fact that he had been involved with Elena Weaver suggested adjustment problems that went beyond a confused undergraduate’s learning to cope with the mysteries of the University’s system of education.

“There were troubles?”

Cuff took a moment to tap the ash from his cigarette into a porcelain ashtray before saying, “More so than most. She was an intelligent girl and a highly skilled writer, but quite soon into Michaelmas term last year she began missing supervisions, which sent the first red fl ag up.”

“And the other red fl ags?”

“She stopped attending lectures. She went to at least three supervisions drunk. She was out all night-the senior tutor could tell you how many times, if you feel it’s important- without signing out with the porter.”

“I take it that you wouldn’t have considered sending her down because of her father. Is he the reason why she was admitted to St. Stephen’s in the fi rst place?”

“Only partially. He’s a distinguished academic, and we’d naturally give his daughter serious consideration. But beyond that, as I said she was a clever girl. Her A-levels were good. Her entrance papers were solid. Her interview was-all things considered-more than adequate. And she certainly had good reason to find the life at Cambridge overwhelming at fi rst.”

“So when the fl ags came up…?”

“The senior tutor, her supervisors, and I met to develop a plan of action. It was simple enough. Other than attending to her studies, putting in appearances at lectures, and turning in signed chits that indicated she’d been to her supervisions, we insisted she have more contact with her father so that he could monitor her progress as well. She began spending her weekends with him.” He looked faintly embarrassed as he continued. “Her father suggested that it might be additionally helpful if we allowed her to keep a pet in her room, a mouse actually, in the hope it would develop her sense of responsibility and no doubt get her back to the college at night. Apparently she had quite a fondness for animals. And we brought in a young man from Queens’-a chap called Gareth Randolph-to act as an undergraduate guardian and, more importantly, to get Elena involved in an appropriate society. Her father didn’t approve of that last item, I’m afraid. He’d been dead set against it from the very fi rst.”

“Because of the boy?”

“Because of the society itself. DeaStu. Gareth Randolph’s its president. And he’s one of the more high-profile handicapped students in the University.”

Lynley frowned. “It sounds as if Anthony Weaver was concerned that his daughter might become romantically linked with a handicapped boy.” Here was potential for trouble indeed.

“I’ve no doubt of that,” Cuff said. “But as far as I was concerned, becoming involved with Gareth Randolph would have been the best thing for her.”

“Why?”

“For the obvious reason. Elena was handicapped as well.” When Lynley said nothing, Cuff looked perplexed. “Surely you know. You would have been told.”

“Told? No.”

Terence Cuff leaned forward. “I’m terribly sorry. I thought you’d been given the information. Elena Weaver was deaf.”

DeaStu, Terence Cuff explained, was the informal name given to the Cambridge University Deaf Students Union, a group that met weekly in a small, vacant conference room in the basement of Peterhouse Library at the bottom of Little St. Mary’s Lane. On the surface, they were a support group for the not insignificant number of deaf students who attended the University. Beyond that, they were committed to the idea of deafness being a culture in itself, rather than a handicap.

“They’re a group with a great deal of pride,” Cuff explained. “They’ve been instrumental in promoting tremendous self-esteem among the deaf students. No shame in signing rather than speaking. No dishonour in being unable to read lips.”

“Yet you say that Anthony Weaver wanted his daughter to stay away from them. If she herself was deaf, that hardly makes sense.”

Cuff got up from his chair and went to the fireplace, where he lit the coals that formed a small mound in a metal basket. The room was growing cold, and while the action was reasonable, it also bore the appearance of temporising. Once the fire was lit, Cuff remained standing near it. He sank his hands into his trouser pockets and studied the tops of his shoes.

“Elena read lips,” Cuff explained. “She spoke fairly well. Her parents-her mother especially-had devoted themselves to enabling her to function as a normal woman in a normal world. They wanted her to appear for all intents and purposes as a woman who could hear. To them, DeaStu represented a step backwards.”

“But Elena signed, didn’t she?”

“Yes. But she’d only begun that as a teenager when her secondary school called in Social Services after failing to convince her mother of the need to enroll Elena in a special programme to learn the language. Even then, she wasn’t allowed to sign at home. And as far as I know, neither of her parents ever signed with her.”

“Byzantine,” Lynley mused.

“To our way of thinking. But they wanted the girl to have a good chance to make her way in the hearing world. We might disagree with the way they went about it, but the fi nal result was that she ended up with lip-reading, speech, and ultimately signing. In effect, she had it all.”

“Those are the things she could do,” Lynley agreed. “But I wonder where she felt she belonged.”

The mound of coals shifted slightly as the fire took them. Cuff rearranged them deftly with a poker. “No doubt you can see why we were willing to make allowances for Elena. She was caught between two worlds. And as you yourself have pointed out, she wasn’t brought up to fit completely into either.”

“It’s such an odd decision for an educated person to make. What’s Weaver like?”

“A brilliant historian. A fine mind. A man of deep, committed professional integrity.”

Lynley didn’t miss the oblique nature of the answer. “I understand he’s in line for some sort of advancement as well.”

“The Penford Chair? Yes. He’s been short-listed for it.”

“What is it, exactly?”

“The University’s main chair in the area of history.”

“An offer of prestige?”

“More. An offer to do exactly what he wants for the rest of his career. Lecture when and if he wants, write when and if he wants, take on graduate students when and if he wants. Complete academic freedom along with national recognition, the highest possible honours, and the esteem of his fellows. If he’s selected, it shall be the finest moment of his career.”

“And would his daughter’s spotty record here at the University have impeded his chances of being selected?”

Cuff shrugged off both question and implication, saying, “I haven’t been a member of the search committee, Inspector. They’ve been reviewing potential candidates since last December. I can’t tell you exactly what they’re looking into.”

“But might Weaver have thought the committee would judge him in an ill light because of her problems?”

Cuff replaced the poker and ran his thumb over its dull, brass head. “I’ve always felt it’s wise to stay clear of the interior lives and beliefs of the senior fellows,” he replied. “I’m afraid I can’t be of any help to you in this direction of enquiry.”

Only after he finished speaking did Cuff look up from the handle of the poker. And once again in their interview, Lynley clearly read the other man’s reluctance to part with information.

“You’ll be wanting to see where we’ve put you, no doubt,” Cuff said politely. “Let me ring the porter.”

It was shortly after seven when Lynley rang the bell at Anthony Weaver’s home off Adams Road. With an expensive-looking metallic blue Citroën parked in its drive, the house was not a great distance from St. Stephen’s College, so he had walked, crossing the river on the modern concrete and iron crescent of Garret Hostel Bridge and passing beneath the horse chestnut trees that littered Burrell’s Walk with enormous yellow leaves sodden with the fog. The occasional bicycle rider passed him, muffled against the cold in knit hat, scarf, and gloves, but otherwise the path that connected Queen’s Road with Grange Road was largely deserted. Lampposts provided sporadic-illumination. Holly, fi r, and box hedgerows-broken up by intermittent fencing that ran the gamut from wood to brick to iron-served as boundaries for the walk. Beyond them stood the russet mass of the University Library, into which shadowy fi gures scurried for last minutes of work prior to its closing.

The houses in Adams Road were all set behind hedges. Trees surrounded them, leafless silver birches that stood like pencil sketches against the fog, poplars whose bark displayed every variation of the colour grey, alders not yet offering their leaves to the coming winter. It was quiet here. Only the gurgle of water pouring into an outdoor drain broke into the stillness. The night air was tinged with the friendly fragrance of wood-smoke, but at the Weaver house the only scent outdoors came from the dampening wool of Lynley’s own overcoat.

It was largely no different inside.

The door was opened by a tall, blonde woman with a face of chiselled, refi ned composure. She looked far too young to be Elena’s mother, and she didn’t appear particularly struck by grief. Lynley thought, as he looked at her, that he’d never seen anyone with such perfect posture. Every limb, bone, and muscle seemed locked into position, as if an unseen hand had arranged her stance at the door just moments before he knocked upon it.

“Yes.” She said it as a statement, not a question. No part of her face moved other than her lips.

He produced his warrant card, introduced himself, and asked to see the dead girl’s parents.

At this the woman stepped back from the door. She said only, “I’ll fetch Anthony,” and left him standing on the bronze and peach Oriental carpet of a parquet-fl oored entrance hall. To his left a door opened into a sitting room. To his right a glass-enclosed morning room held a wicker table that was set with linen and china for breakfast.

Lynley took off his overcoat, laid it over the polished handrail of the stairway, and went into the sitting room. He paused, feeling unaccountably put off by what he saw. Like the hall, the sitting room was floored in parquet, and like the hall the parquet was covered with an Oriental carpet. On it sat grey leather furniture-a sofa, two chairs, and a chaise longue-and tables with pedestals of peach-veined marble and tops of glass. The watercolours on the walls had obviously been chosen, mounted, and framed to match the room’s colour scheme, and they hung precisely centred over the sofa: the first, a bowl of apricots on a windowsill behind which shone a sky of robin’s egg blue and the second, a slim grey vase of salmon-coloured oriental poppies with three blooms fallen to the ivory surface upon which the vase stood. Both of them were signed with the single word Weaver. Either husband, wife, or daughter had an interest in art. A slender glass tea table against one wall held an arrangement of silk tulips. Next to this was a single copy of Elle and a photograph in a silver frame. Other than these last two objects and the watercolours, there was nothing in the room to indicate that anyone actually lived in it. Lynley wondered what the rest of the house was like, and walked to the tea table to look at the photograph. It was a wedding portrait, perhaps ten years old, judging from the length of Weaver’s hair. And the bride- looking solemn and celestial and surprisingly young-was the woman who had just answered the door.

“Inspector?” Lynley turned from his perusal of the picture as the dead girl’s father came into the room. He walked quite slowly. “Elena’s mother is asleep upstairs. Shall I wake her for you?”

“She’s taken a pill, darling.” Weaver’s wife had come to the doorway where she hesitated, one hand touching the silver lily pinned to the lapel of her jacket.

“I’ve no need to see her at the moment if she’s asleep,” Lynley said.

“The shock,” Weaver said and added unnecessarily, “She’s just come up from London this afternoon.”

“Shall I make coffee?” Weaver’s wife asked. She’d ventured no further into the room.

“Nothing for me,” Lynley said.

“Nor for me. Thank you, Justine. Darling.” Weaver smiled at her briefly-the effort it cost him rode directly on the surface of the behaviour itself-and he held out a hand to indicate that she was to join them. She entered the sitting room. Weaver went to the fi replace where he lit a gas fire beneath an artful arrangement of artificial coals. “Please sit down, Inspector.”

As Weaver himself chose one of the two leather chairs and his wife took the other, Lynley observed the man who had lost his daughter that day and saw in him the subtleties that illustrate the manner in which men are permitted to face before strangers the worst of their grief. Behind his thick wire-rimmed spectacles, his brown eyes were blood-shot, with crescents of red lining their lower lids. His hands-rather small for a man of his height-trembled when he gestured, and his lips, which were partially obscured by a dark, clipped moustache, quivered as he waited for Lynley to speak.

He was, Lynley thought, so different from his wife. Dark, his body thickening at the waist with advancing middle age, his hair beginning to show strands of scattered grey, his skin creasing on the forehead and webbing beneath the eyes. He wore a three-piece suit and a pair of gold cufflinks, but despite his rather formal attire, he managed to seem completely out of place in the cool, crafted elegance that surrounded him.

“What can we tell you, Inspector?” Weaver’s voice was as unsteady as his hands. “Tell me what we can do to help. I need to know that. I need to find this monster. He strangled her. He beat her. Have they told you that? Her face was…She was wearing her gold chain with the little unicorn I’d given her last Christmas, so I knew it was Elena the moment I saw her. And even if she hadn’t been wearing the unicorn, her mouth was partly open and I saw her front tooth. I saw that much. I saw that tooth. The little chip in it. That tooth.”

Justine Weaver lowered her eyes and clasped her hands in her lap.

Weaver pulled his spectacles from his face. “God help me. I can’t believe that she’s dead.”

Despite his presence in their home as a professional come to deal with the crime, Lynley was not untouched by the other man’s anguish. How many times had he witnessed this very scene played out in the last thirteen years? And still he felt no more able to assuage grief than he had as a detective constable, facing his first interview with the hysterical adult daughter of a woman who’d been bludgeoned to death by her own, drunk husband. In every case, he’d allowed grief free rein, hoping by this means to offer victims the meagre solace of knowing that someone shared their need to see justice done.

Weaver continued to speak. As he did so, his eyes filled with tears. “She was tender. Fragile.”

“Because she was deaf?”

“No. Because of me.” When Weaver’s voice cracked, his wife looked his way, pressed her lips together, and once more lowered her eyes. “I left her mother when Elena was fi ve, Inspector. You’re going to learn that eventually, so you may as well know it right now. She was in bed, asleep. I packed my bags and I left and I never went back. And I had no way to explain to a five-year-old child-who couldn’t even hear me-that I wasn’t leaving her, that it wasn’t her fault, that the marriage itself was so filled with unhappiness that I couldn’t bear to live in it any longer. And Glyn and I were at fault for that. Not Elena, never once Elena. But I was her father. I left her, betrayed her. And she struggled with that-and with the idea that somehow she was at fault-for the next fifteen years. Anger, confusion, lack of confidence, fear. Those were her demons.”

Lynley didn’t even need to formulate a question to guide Weaver’s discourse. It was as if the man had only been waiting for an appropriate opportunity for self-fl agellation.

“She could have chosen Oxford-Glyn was determined she’d go to Oxford, she didn’t want her here with me-but Elena chose Cambridge instead. Can you know what that meant to me? All those years she’d been in London with her mother. I’d tried to be there for her as best I could, but she held me at a distance. She’d only let me be a father in the most superfi cial ways. Here was my chance to be a real father to her again, to mend our relationship, to bring to some sort of”-he searched for a word-“some sort of fulfi llment the love I felt for her. And my greatest happiness was feeling the bond begin to grow between us over this last year and sitting here and watching while Justine helped Elena with her essays. When these two women…” He faltered. “These two women in my life…these two women together, Justine and Elena, my wife and my daughter…” And finally he allowed himself to weep. It was a man’s horrible, humiliated sobbing, one hand covering his eyes, the other clutching his spectacles.

Justine Weaver didn’t stir in her chair. She looked incapable of movement, carved out of stone. Then a single breath eased from her and she raised her eyes and fastened them on the bright, artifi cial fi re.

“I understand Elena had difficulties in the University at first,” Lynley said as much to Justine as to her husband.

“Yes,” Justine said. “The adjustment for her…from her mother and London…to here…” She glanced uneasily at her husband. “It took a bit of time for her to-”

“How could she have made the change easily?” Weaver demanded. “She was struggling with her life. She was doing her best. She was trying to be whole.” He wiped his face with a crumpled handkerchief which afterwards he continued to grasp-crushed-in his hand. He placed his spectacles back on his nose. “But that didn’t matter. Not a bit of it to me. Because she was a joy. An innocent. A gift.”

“Her troubles didn’t cause you embarrassment, then? Professional embarrassment?” Weaver stared at him. His expression altered in a single instant from ravaged sorrow to disbelief. Lynley found the sudden change disquieting, and despite the occasion for both grief and outrage, he found himself wondering if he was being entertained by a performance of some sort.

“My God,” Weaver said. “What are you suggesting?”

“I understand you’ve been short-listed for a rather prestigious position here at the University,” Lynley said.

“And what does that have to do with-”

Lynley leaned forward to interrupt. “My job is to obtain and evaluate information, Dr. Weaver. In order to do that, I have to ask questions you might otherwise prefer not to hear.”

Weaver worked this over, his fi ngers digging into the handkerchief balled into his fist. “Nothing about my daughter was an embarrassment, Inspector. Nothing. Not a single part of her. And nothing she did.”

Lynley tallied the denials. He refl ected upon the rigid muscles in Weaver’s face. He said, “Had she enemies?”

“No. And no one who knew her could have hurt Elena.”

“Anthony,” Justine murmured hesitantly, “you don’t think she and Gareth…Might they have had a falling out?”

“Gareth Randolph?” Lynley said. “The president of DeaStu?” When Justine nodded, he went on with, “Dr. Cuff told me he’d been asked to act as a guardian to Elena last year. What can you tell me about him?”

“If he was the one, I’ll kill him,” Weaver said.

Justine took up the question. “He’s an engineering student, a member of Queens’ College.”

Weaver said, more to himself than to Lynley, “And the engineering lab is next to Fen Causeway. He has his practicals there. His supervisions as well. What is it, a two-minute walk from Crusoe’s Island? Across Coe Fen, a one-minute run?”

“Was he fond of Elena?”

“They saw a great deal of each other,” Justine said. “But that was one of the stipulations set up by Dr. Cuff and her supervisors last year: attendance at DeaStu. Gareth saw to it that she went to the meetings. He took her to a number of their social functions as well.” She shot her husband a wary look before she finished carefully with, “Elena liked Gareth well enough, I dare say. But not, I imagine, the way he liked her. And he’s a lovely boy, really. I can’t think that he-”

“He’s in the boxing society,” Weaver continued. “He’s got a blue in boxing. Elena told me that.”

“Could he have known that she would be running this morning?”

“That’s just it,” Weaver said. “She wasn’t supposed to run.” He turned to his wife. “You told me she wasn’t going to run. You said that she’d phoned you.”

His words had the ring of an accusation. Justine’s body retreated fractionally, a reaction that was almost imperceptible considering her upright posture in the chair. “Anthony.” She said his name like a discreet entreaty.

“She phoned you?” Lynley repeated, perplexed. “How?”

“On a Ceephone,” Justine said.

“Some sort of visual phone?”

Anthony Weaver stirred, moved his eyes off his wife, and pushed himself out of his chair. “I’ve one in the study. I’ll show you.”

He led the way through the dining room, through a spotless kitchen fitted with an array of gleaming appliances, and down a short corridor that led to the rear of the house. His study was a small room that faced the back garden, and when he switched on the light, a dog began to whine beneath the window outside.

“Have you fed him?” Weaver asked.

“He wants to be let in.”

“I can’t face it. No. Don’t do that, Justine.”

“He’s just a dog. He doesn’t understand. He’s never had to-”

“Don’t do it.”

Justine fell silent. As before, she remained by the door while Lynley and her husband went into the room.

The study was quite different from the rest of the house. A worn fl oral carpet covered the floor. Books crowded onto sagging shelves of cheap pine. A collection of photographs leaned against a filing cabinet, and a set of framed sketches hung on the wall. Beneath the room’s single window stood Weaver’s desk, large, grey metal, and utterly hideous. Aside from a pile of correspondence and a set of reference books, on it rested a computer, its monitor, a telephone, and a modem. This, then, constituted the Ceephone.

“How does it work?” Lynley asked.

Weaver blew his nose and shoved his handkerchief into his jacket pocket. He said, “I’ll phone my rooms in the college,” and walked to the desk, where he switched on the monitor, punched several numbers on the telephone, and pressed a data key on the modem.

After a few moments, the monitor screen divided into two sections, split horizontally by a thin, solid band. On the bottom half appeared the words: Jenn here.

“A colleague?” Lynley asked.

“Adam Jenn, my graduate student.” Weaver typed quickly. As he did so, his message to the student was printed on the top half of the screen. Dr. Weaver phoning, Adam. I’m demonstrating the Ceephone for the police. Elena used it last night.

Right appeared on the bottom half of the screen. Shall I stand by then? Do they want to see something special?

Weaver cast Lynley a querying look. “No, that’s fine,” Lynley said. “It’s clear how it works.”

Not necessary, Weaver typed.

OK, the response. And then after a moment, I’ll be here the rest of the evening, Dr. Weaver. Tomorrow as well. And as long as you need me. Please don’t worry about anything.

Weaver swallowed. “Nice lad,” he whispered. He switched off the monitor. All of them watched as the messages on the screen slowly faded away.

“What sort of message did Elena send you last night?” Lynley asked Justine.

She was still at the door, one shoulder against the jamb. She looked at the monitor as if to remember. “She said only that she wasn’t going to run this morning. She sometimes had trouble with one of her knees. I assumed she wanted to give it a rest for a day or two.”

“What time did she phone?”

Justine frowned pensively. “It must have been a bit after eight because she asked after her father and he wasn’t yet home from the college. I told her he’d gone back to work for a while and she said she’d phone him there.”

“Did she?”

Weaver shook his head. His lower lip quivered, and he pressed his left index finger to it as if by that action he could control further displays of emotion.

“You were alone when she phoned?”

Justine nodded.

“And you’re certain it was Elena?”

Justine’s fine skin seemed to tauten across her cheeks. “Of course. Who else-?”

“Who knew the two of you ran in the morning?”

Her eyes went to her husband, then back to Lynley. “Anthony knew. I suppose I must have told one or two of my colleagues.”

“At?”

“The University Press.”

“Others?”

Again, she looked at her husband. “Anthony? Do you know of anyone?”

Weaver was still staring at the monitor of the Ceephone, as if in the hope that a call would come through. “Adam Jenn, probably. I’m sure I told him. Her friends, I should think. People on her staircase.”

“With access to her room, to her phone?”

“Gareth,” Justine said. “Of course she would have told Gareth.”

“And he has a Ceephone as well.” Weaver looked sharply at Lynley. “Elena didn’t make that call, did she? Someone else did.”

Lynley could feel the other man’s growing need for action. Whether it was spurious or genuine he could not tell. “It’s a possibility,” he agreed. “But it’s also a possibility that Elena simply preferred to create an excuse to run alone this morning. Would that have been out of character?”

“She ran with her stepmother. Always.”

Justine said nothing. Lynley looked her way. She averted her eyes. It was admission enough.

Weaver said to his wife, “You didn’t see her at all when you were out this morning. Why, Justine? Weren’t you looking? Weren’t you watching?”

“I had the call from her, darling,” Justine said patiently. “I wasn’t expecting to see her. And even if I had been, I didn’t go along the river.”

“You ran this morning as well?” Lynley asked. “What time was this?”

“Our usual time. A quarter past six. But I took a different route.”

“You weren’t near Fen Causeway.”

A moment’s hesitation. “I was, yes. But at the end of the run, instead of the beginning. I’d made a circuit of the city and came across the causeway from east to west. Towards Newnham Road.” With a glance at her husband, she made a slight change of position as if she were girding herself with strength. “Frankly, I hate running along the river, Inspector. I always have. So when I had the opportunity to take another route, I did just that.”

It was, Lynley thought, the nearest thing to a revelation that Justine Weaver was likely to make in front of her husband about the nature of her relationship with his daughter Elena.

Justine let the dog into the house directly after the Inspector left. Anthony had gone upstairs. He wouldn’t know what she was doing. Since he wouldn’t come back down for the rest of the night, what could it hurt, Justine wondered, to let the dog sleep in his own wicker basket? She would get up early in the morning to let the animal out before Anthony even saw him.

It was disloyal to go against her husband this way. Justine knew her mother would never have done such a thing once her father had made his wishes known. But there was the dog to consider, a confused, lonely creature whose instincts told him something was wrong but who couldn’t know what or understand why.

When Justine opened the back door, the setter came at once, not bounding across the lawn as was usual, but hesitantly, as if he knew that his welcome was at risk. At the door with his auburn head lowered, the dog raised hopeful eyes to Justine. His tail wagged twice. His ears perked up, then drooped.

“It’s all right,” Justine whispered. “Come in.”

There was something comforting about the snick-snicking of the dog’s nails on the fl oor as he pursued the smells on the kitchen tiles. There was something comforting about all his sounds: the yelp and the growl when he played, the snarf when he dug and got soil in his nose, the long sigh when he settled into his bed at night, the low hum when he most wanted someone’s attention. He was in so many ways just like a person, a fact that Justine had found most surprising.

“I think a dog would be good for Elena,” Anthony had said prior to her arrival in Cambridge last year. “Victor Troughton’s bitch had a litter not long ago. I’ll take Elena by and let her have her pick of the lot.”

Justine hadn’t protested. Part of her had wanted to. Indeed, the protest was practically automatic since the dog-a potential source of mess and trouble-would be living in Adams Road, not in St. Stephen’s College with Elena. But another part of her had sparked alive to the idea. Other than a blue parakeet who had been mindlessly devoted to Justine’s mother, and a won-at-a-fête goldfish that on its first night in her possession had suicidally flung itself out of its overfilled bowl to become stuck on a wallpaper daffodil behind the sideboard when she was eight years old, Justine had never owned what she thought of as a real pet-a dog to tag along scruffily at her heels or a cat to curl at the foot of her bed or a horse to ride in the back lanes of Cambridgeshire. These weren’t deemed healthy by either of her parents. Animals carried germs. Germs were not appropriate. And propriety was everything once they’d come into her greatuncle’s fortune.

Anthony Weaver had been her break with all that, her permanent declaration of impropriety and adulthood. She could still see her mother’s mouth trembling round the words: “But what on earth can you possibly be thinking, Justine? He’s…well, he’s Jewish.” She could still manage to feel that searing, quite physical stab of satisfaction right between her breasts at the pale-cheeked consternation with which her mother greeted the news of her impending marriage. Her father’s reaction had been less of a pleasure.

“He’s changed his surname. He’s a Cambridge don. He’s got a solid future. That he’s been married before is a bit of a problem, and I’d be happier if he weren’t so much older than you. But, all things considered, he’s not a bad catch.” He crossed his legs at the ankles and reached for his pipe and the copy of Punch which he’d long ago decided was appropriate gentleman’s Sunday afternoon reading. “I’m damned glad about that surname, however.”

Anthony hadn’t been the one to change it. His grandfather had done so, altering just two letters. The original i-n became a-v, and there he was, born anew, not a Weiner from Germany, but a Weaver, an Englishman. Weaver, of course, was not exactly an upper-class name, but Anthony’s grandfather couldn’t have known or understood that at the time, any more than he could have understood the delicate sensibilities of the class to which he aspired, sensibilities that would prevent him from ever breaking through the barrier constructed by his accent and his choice of profession. The upper crust, after all, did not generally rub social elbows with their tailors, no matter the proximity of their tailors’ shops to Savile Row.

Anthony had told her all this, not long after they’d met at the University Press where as an assistant editor newly graduated from Durham University, she’d been assigned the task of shepherding a book on the reign of Edward III through the final stages of the publication process. Anthony Weaver had been the editorial force behind the volume, a collection of essays written by lofty medievalists from round the country. In the final two months of the project, they had worked closely together- sometimes in her small offi ce at the Press, more often in his rooms in St. Stephen’s College. And when they weren’t working, Anthony had talked, his conversation drifting round his background, his daughter, his former marriage, his work, and his life.

She’d never known a man so capable of sharing himself in words. From a world in which communication constituted a single lift of the eyebrows or a twitch of the lips, she’d fallen in love with his willingness to speak, with his quick warm smile, with the way he engaged her directly with his eyes. She wanted nothing more than to listen to Anthony, and for the last nine years, she’d managed just that, until the circumscribed world of Cambridge University had no longer been enough for him.

Justine watched as the Irish setter rooted in his toy box and brought out a worn black sock for a game of tug-of-war on the kitchen tiles. “Not tonight,” she murmured. “In your basket. Stay here.” She patted the dog’s head, felt the soft caress of a warm, loving tongue on her fingers, and left the kitchen. She paused in the dining room to remove a loose thread that dangled from the tablecloth, and once again in the sitting room to turn off the gas fi re and watch the flames’ quick, sucking disappearance between the coals. Then, nothing more to keep her from doing so, she went upstairs.

In the half-darkened bedroom, Anthony was lying on the bed. He’d removed his shoes and his jacket, and Justine went automatically to place the former in their rack, the latter on its hanger. That done, she turned to face her husband. The light from the corridor glittered on the snail-track of tears that forked across his temple and disappeared into his hair. His eyes were closed.

She wanted to feel pity or sorrow or compassion. She wanted to feel anything save a recurrence of the anxiety that had fi rst gripped her when he’d driven away from the house that afternoon, abandoning her to deal with Glyn.

She walked to the bed. Gleaming Danish teak, it was a modern platform with side tables attached. On each of these, mushroom-shaped brass lamps squatted, and Justine switched on the one by her husband’s head. He brought his right arm up to cover his eyes. His left hand reached out, seeking hers.

“I need you,” he whispered. “Be with me. Stay here.”

She didn’t feel her heart open as it would have a year ago. Nor did she feel her body stir and awaken to the implicit promise behind his words. She wished she could have used the moment as other women in her position would have done, by opening the little drawer in his side table, taking up the box of condoms, and saying, “Throw these away, if you need me so much.” But she didn’t do that. Whatever self-assurance powered that kind of behaviour, she’d used up her stock of it long ago. What she had left was what remained once all the positives were gone. For an age, it seemed, she had been filled with outrage, distrust, and a need for vengeance that nothing had yet been able to satiate.

Anthony turned on his side. He pulled her down to sit on the bed and laid his head in her lap, his arms round her waist. In a rote reaction, she stroked his hair.

“It’s a dream,” he said. “She’ll be here this weekend and the three of us will be together again. We’ll take a drive to Blakeney. Or practise shooting for the pheasant hunt. Or just sit and talk. But we’ll be a family. Together.” Justine watched the tears slide across his cheek and drop onto the fine grey wool of her skirt. “I want her back,” he whispered. “Elena. Elena.”

She said the only thing which she knew to be the single, absolute truth at this point. “I’m sorry.”

“Hold me. Please.” His hands slid beneath her jacket and tightened against her back. After a moment, she heard him breathe her name. He held her closer and eased her blouse from the waistband of her skirt. His hands were warm on her back. They smoothed the way to unfasten her bra. “Hold me,” he said again. He pushed the jacket from her shoulders and lifted his mouth to nuzzle her breasts. Through the thin silk of her blouse, she felt first his breath, then his tongue, then his teeth on her nipple. She felt her nipple harden. “Just hold me,” he whispered. “Just hold me. Please.”

She knew that making love was one of the most normal, life-affirming reactions to a grievous loss. The only thing she couldn’t keep herself from wondering was whether her husband had already engaged in a life-affi rming reaction to his grievous loss today.

As if he sensed her resistance, he backed away from her. His spectacles were on the bedside table, and he put them on. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t even know what I’m doing any longer.”

She stood. “Where did you go?”

“You didn’t seem to want-”

“I’m not talking about right now. I’m talking about this afternoon. Where did you go?”

“For a drive.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He looked away from her, to the teak chest of drawers with its sleek, cool lines.

“It’s starting again. You went to see her. You went to make love. Or did you just communicate-how was it between you?-soul to soul?”

He returned his gaze to her. His head shook slowly. “You choose your moments, don’t you?”

“That’s avoidance, Anthony. That’s a play for guilt. But it’s not going to work, not even tonight. Where were you?”

“What do I have to do to convince you it’s over? You wanted it that way. You named your terms. You got them. All of them. It’s over.”

“Is it?” She played her trump card smoothly. “Then where were you last night? I phoned your rooms in the college, right after I spoke to Elena. Where were you, Anthony? You lied to the Inspector, but surely you can tell your wife the truth.”

“Lower your voice. I don’t want you to wake Glyn.”

“I don’t care if I wake the dead.”

She recoiled from her words as immediately as he did. They served to throw water onto the fire of her anger, as did her husband’s broken response.

“If only you could, Justine.”