For the Sake of Elena

8

Lynley was just tucking into his shepherd’s pie when Sergeant Havers came into the pub. The temperature had begun to fall outside and the wind to rise, and Havers had reacted to the weather accordingly, wrapping one of her scarves three times round her head and pulling up the other to cover her mouth and nose. She looked like a bandit from Iceland.

She paused in the doorway, eyes sweeping over the considerable-and boisterous- lunchtime crowd seated beneath the collection of antique scythes, hoes, and pitchforks which decorated the pub walls. She nodded in Lynley’s direction when she saw him and went to the bar, where she divested herself of her outer garments, ordered her meal, and lit a cigarette. Tonic water in one hand and a bag of vinegar crisps in the other, she wove her way through the tables and joined him in the corner. Her cigarette dangled between her lips, growing ash.

She dumped her coat and scarves next to his on the bench and slumped into a chair facing him. She shot a look of irritation at the stereo speaker directly above them which was currently offering “Killing Me Softly” by Roberta Flack at a disturbing volume. Havers was no lover of musical trips down memory lane.

Over the din created by music, conversation, and clattering crockery, Lynley said, “It’s better than Guns and Roses.”

“Only just,” Havers replied. Using her teeth for a start, she tore open her crisps and spent the next few moments munching, while her cigarette’s smoke wafted into Lynley’s face.

He looked at it meaningfully. “Sergeant…”

She scowled. “I wish you’d take it up again. We’d get on better if you did.”

“And I thought we were marching blissfully arm-in-arm towards retirement.”

“Marching, yes. I don’t know about bliss.” She moved the ashtray to one side. It began offering its smoke to a blue-haired woman with six noticeable hairs growing out of her chin. From the table she was sharing with a three-legged wheezing Corgi and a gentleman in only marginally better condition, she scathed Havers with a glare over the top of her gin and bitters. Havers muttered in defeat, took a final hit of the cigarette, and crushed it out.

“So?” Lynley said.

She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue. “She checks out completely with two of her neighbours. The woman next door”-she grabbed her notebook from her shoulder bag and flipped it open-“a Mrs. Stamford…Mrs. Hugo Stamford, she insisted, and spelled it out just in case I’d fluffed my O-levels. She saw her loading up the boot of her car sometime round seven yesterday morning. In a real hurry, Mrs. Stamford said. Preoccupied as well because when she went out for the morning milk, she called a hello but Sarah didn’t hear her. Then”-she turned the notebook to read it sideways-“a bloke called Norman Davies who lives across the road. He saw her fly by in her car round seven as well. He remembers because he was walking his collie and the dog was doing its business on the pavement instead of in the street. Our Norman was all in a flutter about that. He didn’t want Sarah to think he’d just blithely allow Mr. Jeffries-that’s the dog-to foul the footpath. He nattered on for a bit about her being in the car in the first place. Not good for her, he wanted me to know. She needs to get back to walking. She was always a walker. What’s happened to the g’el? What’s she doing in the car? He didn’t much like your motor, by the way. Gave it a bit of a sneer and said whoever drove it is sending the country straight to Arab-dominated oil hell, never mind the North Sea. Quite a talker. I’m lucky I got away before teatime.”

Lynley nodded but didn’t reply. “What’s up?” she asked him.

“Havers, I’m not sure.”

He said nothing more as a teenaged girl dressed like one of Richard Crick’s milkmaids delivered the sergeant’s meal to the table. It was cod, peas, and chips which Havers doused thoroughly with vinegar while she eyed the waitress and said, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I’m old for my looks,” the girl replied. She wore a large garnet stud through her right nostril.

Havers snorted. “Right.” She dug into her fish. The girl disappeared with a fl ounce of her petticoats. Havers said in reference to his last comment, “I don’t like the sound of that, Inspector. I’ve got the feeling you’re keyed in to Sarah Gordon.” She looked up from her food as if in the expectation of reply. When he said nothing, she went on with, “I expect it’s because of that St. Cecilia business. Once you found out she’s an artist, you decided that she arranged the body unconsciously.”

“No. It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“I’m sure I saw her last night at St. Stephen’s College. And I can’t account for it.”

Havers lowered her fork. She sipped some tonic water and scraped a paper napkin across her mouth. “Now that’s an interesting bit. Where was she?”

Lynley told her about the woman who had emerged from the shadows of the graveyard while he watched from his window. “I couldn’t get a clear look at her,” he admitted. “But the hair’s the same. So’s the profile. I’d swear to it.”

“What would she have been doing there? You’re nowhere near Elena Weaver’s room, are you?”

“No. Ivy Court’s used by the senior fellows. It’s mostly studies where professors do their work and hold supervisions.”

“So what would she-”

“My guess is that Anthony Weaver’s rooms are there, Havers.”

“And?”

“If that’s the case-and I’ll check it out after lunch-I should imagine that she went to see him.”

Havers forked up a generous portion of chips and peas, chewed on them thoughtfully before replying. “Are we doing some serious quantum leaping here, Inspector? Going from A to Z with twenty-four letters unaccounted for?”

“Who else would she have gone to see?”

“How about practically anyone in the college? Better yet, how about the possibility that it wasn’t Sarah Gordon? Just someone with dark hair. It could have been Lennart Thorsson if he didn’t get in the light. The colour’s not right but he’s got hair enough for two women.”

“But this was clearly someone who didn’t want to be seen. Even if it was Thorsson, why would he have been hiding?”

“Why would she, for that matter?” Havers returned to her fish. She took a bite, chewed, and pointed her fork in his direction. “Okay, I’m easy. Let’s play it your way. Let’s say Anthony Weaver’s study is there. Let’s say Sarah Gordon went to see him. She said he’d been her student, so we know she knew him. She was calling him Tony, so let’s say she knew him well. She admitted as much. What have we got, then? Sarah Gordon going to offer her former student-a friend-some words of comfort upon the death of his daughter.” She lowered her fork, rested it on the edge of her plate, and offered the counterpoint to her own argument. “Except that she didn’t know his daughter was dead. She didn’t know the body she’d found was Elena Weaver’s until we told her this morning.”

“And even if she did know who it was and lied to us about it for some reason, if she wanted to offer Weaver condolences, why didn’t she go to his house?”

Havers speared up a soaking chip. “All right. Let’s change the story. Perhaps Sarah Gordon and Anthony-Tony -Weaver have been boffing each other on an ongoing basis. You know the sort of thing. Mutual passion for art leading to mutual passion for each other. Monday night was one of their previously arranged assignations. There’s your reason for her stealth. She didn’t know it was Elena Weaver she’d found, and she was showing up for a bit of the regular go. All things considered, Weaver wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to phone her up and cancel their session, so she got to his rooms-if they are his rooms-only to find he wasn’t there.”

“If they had an assignation, wouldn’t she have waited for at least a few minutes? More importantly, wouldn’t she have a key to his rooms to let herself in?”

“How do you know she doesn’t have a key?”

“Because she was in and out in less than five minutes, Sergeant. I’d say two minutes at the very most. Does that suggest unlocking a door and having a bit of a wait for your lover? And why on earth would they meet in his rooms in the first place? On his own admission, he has a graduate student working there. Beyond that, he’s been short-listed for a prestigious chair in history which I don’t imagine he’d care to jeopardise by having at a woman who’s not his wife right there in the college.

Selection committees tend to be peculiar about that sort of thing. If a love affair’s at the heart of this, why wouldn’t Weaver just go to see her in Grantchester?”

“What are we saying here, Inspector?”

Lynley pushed his plate to one side. “How often does it happen that the finder of the body turns out to be the killer just trying to cover his tracks?”

“About as often as the killer turns out to be a member of the immediate family.” Havers forked up more fi sh, piled two chips on top of it. She regarded him shrewdly. “Perhaps you might tell me exactly where you’re heading. Because her neighbours have just got through clearing her no matter what you say, and I’m getting that Westerbrae feeling of discomfort with where you’re leading us. If you know what I mean.”

He did. Havers had ample reason to question his ability to remain objective. He sought to justify his leery feelings about the artist. “Sarah Gordon finds the body. She appears at Weaver’s rooms that night. I don’t like the coincidence.”

“What coincidence? Why does it even have to be coincidence? She didn’t recognise the body. She went to see Weaver for other reasons. Maybe she wanted to woo him back to art. That’s a big deal to her. Maybe she wanted it to be a big deal to him.”

“But she was trying not to be seen.”

“According to your appraisal, Inspector. On a foggy night when she might only have been trying to stay warm.” Havers crumpled up her crisp bag and rolled it in her palm. She looked concerned and, at the same time, intent upon not showing the extent of that concern. “I think you’ve made a hasty decision here,” she said carefully. “I’m wondering why. You know, I had a fair good look at Sarah Gordon myself today. She’s dark, she’s thin, she’s attractive. She reminded me of someone. I wonder if she reminded you of someone as well.”

“Havers-”

“Inspector, listen to me. Look at the facts. We know Elena started running at a quarter past six. Her stepmother told you that. The porter confirmed it. From her own report- now verified by her neighbours-Sarah left her own house just round seven. And the police report has her popping into the station to report finding the body at twenty past. So please take a look at what you’re suggesting, all right? First, that for some reason, although she left St. Stephen’s at a quarter past six, it took Elena Weaver forty-five minutes to run from her college to Fen Causeway-what is it, less than a mile? Second, that when she got there, for reasons unknown, Sarah Gordon beat her in the face with something which she managed to get rid of, then strangled her, then covered her body with leaves, then got sick, and then dashed to the police station to divert suspicion. All in just over fifteen minutes. And we haven’t even addressed the question of why. Why would she kill her? What on earth was her motive? You’re always lecturing me on motive, means, and opportunity, Inspector. So tell me how Sarah Gordon fi ts in.”

Lynley couldn’t do so. Nor could he argue that any part of what they knew had occurred was a wildly improbable coincidence illustrating undeniable culpability. For everything Sarah Gordon told them about her reasons for going to the island in the first place had the ring of veracity. And that she was committed to her art seemed easily understandable when one considered the quality of her work. This being the case, he forced himself to evaluate Sergeant Havers’ pointed questions.

He wanted to argue that Sarah Gordon’s resemblance to Helen Clyde was purely superficial, a combination of dark hair, dark eyes, fair skin, a slender frame. But he couldn’t lie about the fact that he was drawn to her because of other similarities-a straightforward manner of speaking, a willingness to examine the self, a commitment to personal growth, the ability to be alone. And yet beneath it all, something frightened and vulnerable. He didn’t want to believe that his diffi culties with Helen would once again result in a form of professional myopia in which he forged obdurately ahead, not to pin guilt upon a man with whom Helen was sleeping this time, but to concentrate on a suspect to whom he was drawn for reasons having nothing to do with the case, all the time ignoring signposts leading him elsewhere. Yet he had to admit that Sergeant Havers’ points about the time frame in which the crime was carried out obviated Sarah Gordon’s guilt immediately.

He sighed, rubbing his eyes. He wondered if he had actually seen her at all the previous night. He had been thinking of Helen only moments before he walked to the window. Why not transport her through the means of imagination from Bulstrode Gardens to Ivy Court?

Havers rustled through her shoulder bag to bring out a packet of Players which she fl ipped onto the table between them. Instead of lighting up, however, she looked at him.

“Thorsson’s the stronger candidate,” she said. And when he started to speak, she cut him off with, “Hear me out, sir. You’re saying his motive’s too obvious. Fine. So apply a variation of that objection to Sarah Gordon. Her admitted presence at the crime scene is too obvious. But if we’re going to go with one of them-if only for the moment-my money’s on the man. He wanted her, she refused him, she turned him in. So why’s your money on the woman?”

“It isn’t. Not entirely. It’s just her coincidental connection to Weaver that makes me uneasy.”

“Fine. Be uneasy. Meanwhile, I vote we pursue Thorsson until we’ve a reason not to. I say we check out his neighbours to see if anyone saw him skipping out in the morning. Or returning for that matter. We see if the autopsy gives us anything else. We see what that address on Seymour Street is all about.”

It was solid policework, Havers’ expertise. He said, “Agreed.”

“That easily? Why?”

“You handle that half of it.”

“And you?”

“I’ll see if the rooms at St. Stephen’s are Weaver’s.”

“Inspector-”

He took a cigarette from the pack, handed it to her, and struck a match. “It’s called compromise, Sergeant. Have a smoke,” he said.

When Lynley pushed open the wrought iron gate at the south entrance to Ivy Court, he saw that a wedding party was posing for photographs in the old graveyard of St. Stephen’s Church. It was a curious group, with the bride done up in whiteface and wearing what appeared to be part of a privet hedge on her head, her chief attendant swathed in a blood-red burnoose, and the best man looking like a chimney sweep. Only the groom wore conventional morning dress. But he was alleviating any concern this might have caused by drinking champagne from a riding boot which he’d apparently removed from the foot of one of the guests. The wind whipped everyone’s clothing about, but the play of colours-white, red, black, and grey-against the slick lichenous green of the old slate gravestones had its own distinct charm.

This the photographer himself seemed to see, for he kept calling out, “Hold it, Nick. Hold it, Flora. Right. Yes. Perfect,” as he snapped away with his camera.

Flora, Lynley thought with a smile. No wonder she was wearing a bush on her head.

He dodged past a heap of fallen bicycles and walked across the court to the doorway through which he had seen the woman disappear on the previous night. Nearly hidden by a tangle of goldheart ivy, a sign, still fresh with having been recently hand-lettered, hung on the wall beneath an overhead light. It contained three names. Lynley felt that quick, brief rush of triumph which comes with having one’s intuition affirmed by fact. Anthony Weaver’s was the fi rst name listed.

Only one of the other two he recognised. A. Jenn would be Weaver’s graduate student.

It was Adam Jenn, in fact, whom Lynley found in Weaver’s study when he climbed the stairs to the fi rst floor. The door stood ajar, revealing an unlit triangular entry off of which opened a narrow gyp room, a larger bedroom, and the study itself. Lynley heard voices coming from within the study-low questions from a man, soft responses from a woman-so he took the opportunity to have a quick look at the two other rooms.

To his immediate right, the gyp room was well-equipped with a stove, a refrigerator, and a wall of glass-fronted cupboards in which sat enough cooking utensils and crockery to set up housekeeping. Aside from the refrigerator and the stove, everything in the room appeared to be new, from the gleaming microwave to the cups, saucers, and plates. The walls were recently painted, and the air smelled fresh, like baby powder, a scent which he tracked to its source: a solid rectangle of room deodoriser hanging on a hook behind the door.

He was intrigued by the perfection of the gyp, so at odds with what he envisaged Anthony Weaver’s professional environment would be, considering the state of his study at home. Curious to see if some stamp of the man’s individuality evidenced itself elsewhere, he flipped on the lightswitch of the bedroom across the entry and stood in the doorway surveying it.

Above wainscoting painted the colour of forest mushrooms rose walls which were papered in cream with thin brown stripes. Framed pencil sketches hung from these-a pheasant shoot, a fox hunt, a deer chased by hounds, all signed with the single name Weaver-while from the white ceiling a pentagonal brass fi xture shed light on a single bed next to which stood a tripod table holding a brass reading lamp and a matching diptych frame. Lynley crossed the room and picked this up. Elena Weaver smiled from one side, Justine from the other, the first a candid snapshot of the daughter joyfully romping with an Irish setter puppy, the second an earnest studio portrait of the wife, her long hair carefully curled back from her face and her smile close-lipped as if she wished to hide her teeth. Lynley replaced it and looked around reflectively. The hand that had outfitted the kitchen with its chromium appliances and ivory china had apparently seen to the decoration of the bedroom as well. On impulse, he pulled back part of the brown and green counterpane on the bed to fi nd only a bare mattress and unslipped pillow beneath it. The revelation was not the least surprising. He left the room.

As he did so, the study door swung open and he found himself face-to-face with the two young people whose murmured conversation he had heard a few moments earlier. The young man, his broad shoulders emphasised by an academic gown, reached out for the girl when he caught sight of Lynley, and he pulled her back against him protectively.

“Help you with something?” His words were polite enough but the frigid tone conveyed an entirely different message, as did the young man’s features which quickly altered from the relaxed repose that accompanies friendly conversation to the sharpness that signals suspicion.

Lynley glanced at the girl who was clutching a notebook to her chest. She wore a knitted cap from which bright blonde hair spilled. It was drawn low on her forehead, hiding her eyebrows but heightening the colour of her eyes which were violet and, at the moment, very frightened.

Their responses were normal, admirable in the circumstances. An undergraduate in the college had been brutally murdered. Strangers would be neither welcomed nor tolerated. He produced his warrant card and introduced himself.

“Adam Jenn?” he said.

The young man nodded. He said to the girl, “I’ll see you next week, Joyce. But you’ve got to get on with the reading before you do the next essay. You’ve got the list. You’ve got a brain. Don’t be so lazy, okay?” He smiled as if to mitigate the negativity of the fi nal comment, but the smile seemed rote, merely a quick curving of the lips that did nothing to alter the wariness in his hazel eyes.

Joyce said, “Thank you, Adam,” in that breathy sort of voice which always manages to sound as if it’s extending an illicit invitation. She smiled her goodbye and a moment later they heard her clattering noisily down the wooden stairs. It wasn’t until the ground-fl oor staircase door opened and shut upon her departure that Adam Jenn invited Lynley into Weaver’s study.

“Dr. Weaver’s not here,” he said. “If you’re wanting him, that is.”

Lynley didn’t respond at once. Rather, he strolled to one of the windows which, like the sole window in his own room in the building, was set into one of the ornate Dutch gables overlooking Ivy Court. Unlike his room, however, no desk stood in the recess. Instead, two comfortably battered armchairs faced each other at an angle there, separated by a chipped piecrust table on which lay a copy of a book entitled Edward III: The Cult of Chivalry. Anthony Weaver was its author.

“He’s brilliant.” Adam Jenn’s assertion had the distinct ring of defence. “No one in the country comes close to touching him in medieval history.”

Lynley put on his spectacles, opened the volume, and leafed through a few of the densely worded pages. Arbitrarily, his eyes fell on the words but it was in the abysmal treatment of women as chattels subjugated to the political whims of their fathers and brothers that the age developed its reputation for a diplomatic manoeuvring far superseding any transitory-or spurious-demotic concerns it may have actively promulgated. Having not read university writing in years, Lynley smiled in amusement. He’d forgotten that tendency of the academician to voice his pronouncements with such egregious pomposity.

He read the book’s dedication, For my darling Elena, and tapped the cover closed. He removed his spectacles.

“You’re Dr. Weaver’s graduate student,” he said.

“Yes.” Adam Jenn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Beneath his black academic gown, he wore a white shirt and freshly laundered jeans that had been carefully pressed with creases down the front. He drove his fi sts into the rear pockets of these and waited without speaking, standing next to an oval table across which were spread three open texts and half a dozen handwritten essays.

“How do you come to be studying under Dr. Weaver?” Lynley removed his overcoat and placed it over the back of one of the old armchairs.

“Decent luck for once in my life,” Adam said.

It was a curious non-answer. Lynley raised an eyebrow. Adam read this as Lynley intended and continued.

“I’d read two of his books as an undergraduate. I’d heard him lecture. When he was short-listed for the Penford Chair at the beginning of Easter term last year, I came to ask him if he’d direct my research. To have the Penford Chair as advisor…” He gazed round the room as if its jumble of contents would provide him with an adequate explanation of the importance of Weaver’s place in his life. He settled with, “You can’t go higher.”

“Then this is all a bit of a risk on your end, isn’t it, hooking yourself up with Dr. Weaver so soon? What if he doesn’t get the appointment?”

“It’s worth the risk as far as I’m concerned. Once he gets the Chair, he’ll be fl ooded with requests to direct graduates’ studies. So I got to him fi rst.”

“You seem relatively sure of your man. I’d always gathered these appointments are largely political. A change in the academic climate and a candidate’s fi nished.”

“That’s true enough. Candidates walk a tight-rope. Alienate the search committee, offend some muckety-muck, and they’re done for. But committee’d be fools not to award it to him. As I said, he’s the best medievalist in the country and they’re not going to fi nd anyone to argue with that.”

“I take it he’s unlikely to alienate or offend?”

Adam Jenn laughed boyishly. “Dr. Weaver?” was his reply.

“I see. When should the announcement take place?”

“That’s the odd thing.” Adam shook a heavy lock of sandy hair off his forehead. “It should have been announced last July, but the committee went on and on about extending the deadline, and they started checking everyone out like they were looking for red skeletons in somebody’s closet. Stupid, they are.”

“Perhaps merely cautious. I’ve been given to understand that the Chair’s a fairly coveted advancement.”

“It represents historical research at Cambridge. It’s the place they put the best.” Two thin lines of crimson ran along Adam’s cheekbone. No doubt he pictured himself in the Chair in the distant future when Weaver retired.

Lynley moved to the table, glancing down at the essays that were spread across it. “You share these rooms with Dr. Weaver, I’ve been told.”

“I put in a few hours most days, yes. I run my supervisions here as well.”

“And that’s been going on for how long?”

“Since the beginning of term.”

Lynley nodded. “It’s an attractive environment, far nicer than what I remember from my days at university.”

Adam looked round the study at the general mess of essays, books, furniture, and equipment. Obviously, attractive wouldn’t have been the first word to spring to his lips had he been asked to evaluate the room. Then he seemed to combine Lynley’s comment with his initial sight of him a few moments earlier. His head turned towards the door. “Oh, you mean the gyp and the bedroom. Dr. Weaver’s wife fi xed them up for him last spring.”

“In anticipation of the Chair? An elevated professor needs a proper set of rooms?”

Adam grinned ruefully. “That sort of thing. But she didn’t manage to get her way in here. Dr. Weaver wouldn’t let her.” He added this last as if to explain the difference between the study and its companion rooms and concluded with a mildly sardonic, “You know how it is,” in a brotherhood-of-men fashion in which the connotation was clear: Women need to have their fancies tolerated, men are the ones with the sainted toleration.

That Justine Weaver’s hand had not seen to the study was apparent to Lynley. And while it did not actually resemble the disordered sanctum at the rear of Weaver’s house, the similarities to it could not be ignored. Here was the same mild chaos, the same profusion of books, the same air of habitation which the Adams Road room possessed.

One form of academic work or another seemed to be in progress everywhere. A large pine desk served as the heart for labour, holding everything from a word processor to a stack of black binders. The oval table in the room’s centre had the function of conference area, and the gable recess acted as a retreat for reading and study, for in addition to the table which displayed Weaver’s own book, a small case beneath the window, within an arm’s length of both the chairs, held additional volumes. Even the fireplace with its cinnamon tiles served a purpose beyond providing heat from an electric fire, for its mantel functioned as a clearing house for the post, and more than a dozen envelopes lined up across it, all bearing Anthony Weaver’s name. A solitary greeting card stood like a bookend at the far side of the serried collection of letters, and Lynley picked it up, a humorous birthday card with the word Daddy written above the greeting and the round-lettered signature Elena beneath it.

Lynley replaced it among the envelopes and turned to Adam Jenn, who still stood by the table, one hand in his pocket and the other curved round the shoulder rail of one of the chairs. “Did you know her?”

Adam pulled out the chair. Lynley joined him at the table, moving aside two essays and a cup of cold tea in which a thin, unappetising film was fl oating.

Adam’s face was grave. “I knew her.”

“Were you here in the study when she phoned her father Sunday night?”

His eyes went to the Ceephone which sat on a small oak desk next to the fi replace. “She didn’t phone here. Or if she did, it was after I left.”

“What time was this?”

“Round half past seven?” He looked at his watch as if for verification. “I had to meet three blokes at the University Centre at eight, and I stopped by my digs fi rst.”

“Your digs?”

“Near Little St. Mary’s. So it must have been somewhere round half past seven. It might have been a bit later. Perhaps a quarter to eight.”

“Was Dr. Weaver still here when you left?”

“Dr. Weaver? He wasn’t here at all Sunday evening. He’d been in for a while in the early afternoon, but then he went home for dinner and didn’t come back.”

“I see.”

Lynley reflected on this piece of information, wondering why Weaver had lied about his whereabouts on the night before his daughter’s death. Adam appeared to realise that for some reason this detail was important in the investigation, for he went on earnestly.

“He could have come in later, though. It’s out of line for me to claim that he didn’t come back in the evening. Actually, I might have missed him. He’s been working on a paper for about two months now-the role of monasteries in medieval economics-and he might have wanted to go over a bit of the research again. Most of the documents are in Latin. They’re hard to read. It takes forever to sort everything out. I imagine that’s what he was doing here Sunday evening. He does that all the time. He’s always concerned about getting the details right. He’d want to have them perfect. So if something was on his mind, he probably came back on the spur of the moment. I wouldn’t have known and he wouldn’t have told me.”

Outside of Shakespeare, Lynley couldn’t recall having heard anyone protest quite so much. “Then he usually didn’t tell you if he’d be coming back?”

“Well, now let me think.” The young man drew his eyebrows together, but Lynley saw the answer in the manner in which he pressed his hands nervously against his thighs.

He said, “You think a great deal of Dr. Weaver, don’t you?” Enough to protect him blindly remained unspoken, but there was no doubt that Adam Jenn recognised the implied accusation behind Lynley’s question.

“He’s a great man. He’s honest. He has more natural integrity than any half a dozen other senior fellows at St. Stephen’s College or anywhere else.” Adam pointed at the envelopes lining the mantelpiece. “All of those have come in since yesterday afternoon when the word went out about what happened to… what happened. People love him. People care. You can’t be a bastard and have people care about you so much.”

“Did Elena care for her father?”

Adam’s gaze flicked to the birthday card. “She did. Everyone does. He involves himself with people. He’s always here when someone has a problem. People can talk to Dr. Weaver. He’s straight with them. Sincere.”

“And Elena?”

“He worried about her. He took time with her. He encouraged her. He went over her essays and helped her with her studies and talked to her about what she was going to do with her life.”

“It was important to him that she be a success.”

“I can see what you’re thinking,” Adam said. “A successful daughter implies a successful father. But he’s not like that. He didn’t just take time with her. He took time with everyone. He helped me get my housing. He lined up my undergraduate supervisions. I’ve applied for a research fellowship and he’s helping me with that. And when I’ve a question with my work, he’s always here, ready. I’ve never got the feeling that I’m taking up his time. D’you know how valuable a quality that is in a person? The streets round here aren’t exactly paved with it.”

It wasn’t the panegyric to Weaver which Lynley found interesting. That Adam Jenn should so admire the man who was directing his graduate studies was reasonable. But what underlay Adam Jenn’s avowals was something far more telling: He’d managed to deflect every question about Elena. He’d even managed to avoid using her name.

Outside, faint laughter from the wedding party floated up from the graveyard. Someone shouted, “Give us a kiss!” and someone else, “Don’t you wish!” and the splintering sound of breaking glass suggested a champagne bottle’s abrupt demise.

Lynley said, “Obviously, you’re quite close to Dr. Weaver.”

“I am.”

“Like a son.”

Adam’s face took on more colour. But he looked pleased.

“Like a brother to Elena.”

Adam ran his thumb rapidly back and forth along the edge of the table. He reached up and rubbed his fingers along his jaw.

Lynley said, “Or perhaps not really like a brother. She was an attractive girl, after all. You would have seen a great deal of each other. Here in the study. At the Weavers’ house as well. And no doubt in the combination room from time to time. Or at formal dinner. And in her own room.”

Adam said, “I never went inside. Just to get her. That’s all.”

“I understand you took her out.”

“To foreign films at the Arts. We went to dinner occasionally. We spent a day in the country.”

“I see.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking. I didn’t do it because I wanted…I mean I couldn’t have… Oh hell.”

“Did Dr. Weaver ask you to take Elena out?”

“If you have to know. Yes. He thought we were suited.”

“And were you?”

“No!” The vehemence driving the word seemed to cause it to reverberate in the room for an instant. As if with the need to disguise the strength of his reply in some way, Adam said, “Look, I was like a hired escort to her. There was nothing more to it than that.”

“Did Elena want a hired escort?”

Adam gathered up the essays that lay on the table. “I’ve too much work here. The supervisions, my own studies. I’ve no time in my life for women at the moment. They add complications when one least expects it, and I can’t afford the distraction. I’ve hours of research every day. I’ve essays to read. I’ve meetings to attend.”

“All of which must have been diffi cult to explain to Dr. Weaver.”

Adam sighed. He crossed his ankle on his knee and picked at the lace of his gym shoe. “He invited me to his house the second weekend of term. He wanted me to meet her. What could I say? He’d taken me on as a graduate. He’d been so willing to help me. How could I not give him help in return?”

“In what way were you helping him?”

“There was this bloke he preferred she didn’t see. I was supposed to run interference between them. A bloke from Queens’.”

“Gareth Randolph.”

“That’s him. She’d met him through the deaf students’ union last year. Dr. Weaver wasn’t comfortable with them going about together. I imagine he hoped she might…you know.”

“Learn to prefer you?”

He dropped his leg to the fl oor. “She didn’t really fancy this bloke Gareth anyway. She told me as much. I mean, they were mates and she liked him, but it was no big deal. All the same, she knew what her father was worrying about.”

“What was that?”

“That she’d end up with…I mean marry…”

“Someone deaf,” Lynley fi nished. “Which, after all, wouldn’t be that unusual a circumstance since she was deaf herself.”

Adam pushed himself off his chair. He walked to the window and stared into the courtyard. “It’s complicated,” he said quietly to the glass. “I don’t know how to explain him to you. And even if I could, it wouldn’t make any difference. Whatever I’d say would just make him look bad. And it wouldn’t have anything to do with what happened to her.”

“Even if it did, Dr. Weaver can’t afford to look bad, can he? Not with the Penford Chair hanging in the balance.”

“That’s not it!”

“Then it really can’t hurt anyone if you talk to me.”

Adam gave a rough laugh. “That’s easy to say. You just want to find a killer and get back to London. It doesn’t make any difference to you whose lives get destroyed in the process.”

The police as Eumenides. It was an accusation he’d heard before. And while he acknowledged its partial accuracy-for there had to be a disinterested hand of justice or society crumbled-the convenience of the allegation afforded him a moment’s sour amusement. Pushed right to the edge of truth’s abyss, people always clung tenaciously to the same form of denial: I’m protecting someone else by withholding the truth, protecting someone from harm, from pain, from reality, from suspicion. It was all a variation of an identical theme in which denial wore the guise of self-righteous nobility.

He said, “This isn’t a singular death taking place in a void, Adam. It touches everyone she knew. No one stays protected. Lives have already been destroyed. That’s what murder does. And if you don’t know that, it’s time you learned.”

The young man swallowed. Even across the room, Lynley could hear him do so.

“She took it all as a joke,” he said fi nally. “She took everything as a joke.”

“In this case, what?”

“That her father was worried she’d marry Gareth Randolph. That he didn’t want her to hang round the other deaf students so much. But most of all, that he…I think it was that he loved her so much and that he wanted her to love him as much in return. She took it as a joke. That’s the way she was.”

“What was their relationship like?” Lynley asked, even though he knew how unlikely it was that Adam Jenn would say anything to betray his mentor.

Adam looked down at his fingernails and began to worry the cuticles by pushing his thumb against them. “He couldn’t do enough for her. He wanted to be involved in her life. But it always seemed-” He shoved his hands back into his pockets. “I don’t know how to explain.”

Lynley recalled Weaver’s description of his daughter. He recalled Justine Weaver’s reaction to the description. “Not genuine?”

“It was like he felt he had to keep pouring on the love and devotion. Like he had to keep showing her how much she meant to him so that maybe she’d come to believe it someday.”

“He would have wanted to take special pains with her because she couldn’t hear, I should think. She was in a new environment. He’d have wanted her to succeed. For herself. For him.”

“I know what you’re getting at. You’re heading back towards the Chair. But it’s more than that. It went beyond her studies. It went beyond her being deaf. I think he believed he had to prove himself to her for some reason. But he was so intent on doing that that he never even saw her. Not really. Not entirely.”

The description moulded perfectly to Weaver’s agonising on the previous night. It was so often the circumstance that grew from divorce. A parent partnered in an unremittingly bleak marriage feels caught between the needs of a child and the needs of self. If he stays in the marriage solely to meet the needs of the child, he reaps the benefi ts of society’s approval, but his self erodes. Yet if he leaves the marriage solely to meet the needs of self, the child is damaged. What is required is a masterful balancing act between these disparate needs, a balancing act in which a marriage can end, former partners can establish more productive lives, and the children can escape without irreparable harm in the process.

It was, Lynley thought, the Utopian ideal, utterly improbable because feelings were involved whenever a marriage came to an end. Even when people were acting in the only manner possible to preserve their peace of mind, it was in the very need for peace of mind that guilt lay its most virulent seeds. Most people-and he admitted he was one of them-invariably gave power to social condemnation, allowing their behaviour to be guided by guilt, living their lives dominated by a Judaeo-Christian tradition which taught them that they had no right to happiness or to anything else save a life in which considerations of self were secondary to complete devotion to others. The fact that men and women did indeed lead lives of quiet desperation as a result generally went ignored. For as long as they led their lives for others, they achieved the approval of everyone else who-in equally quiet desperation-was engaged in doing the very same thing.

The situation was worse for Anthony Weaver. To achieve peace of mind-which society told him was not his due in the fi rst place-he had ended a marriage only to fi nd that the guilt attendant to divorce was exacerbated by the fact that, in escaping unhappiness, he had not merely left behind a small child who loved and depended upon him. He had left behind a handicapped child as well. And what kind of society would ever forgive him that? He stood to lose no matter what he’d done. Had he stayed in his marriage and devoted his life to his daughter, he could have felt self-righteous and nobly miserable. In opting at a try for peace of mind, he had reaped the harvest of guilt whose seeds were planted within what he-and society-considered a base and selfi sh need.

Upon close examination, guilt was the prime mover behind so many kinds of devotion. Lynley wondered if it underlay Weaver’s devotion to his daughter. In his own mind, Weaver had sinned. Against his wife, Elena, and society itself. Fifteen years of guilt had grown out of his sin. Proving himself to Elena, smoothing the way for her, capturing her love, had apparently been the only expiation he saw for himself. Lynley felt a profound pity at the thought of the other man’s struggle to gain acceptance as what he already was: his daughter’s father. He wondered if Weaver had ever garnered the courage and taken the time to ask Elena if such extremes of behaviour and such torment of spirit were actually necessary to obtain her forgiveness.

“I don’t think he ever really knew her,” Adam said.

Lynley wondered if Weaver really knew himself. He got to his feet. “What time did you leave here last night after Dr. Weaver phoned you?”

“A bit after nine.”

“You locked the door?”

“Of course.”

“The same on Sunday night? Do you always lock it?”

“Yes.” Adam nodded his head towards the pine desk and its collection of equipment- word processor, two printers, fl oppy disks, and files. “That lot’s worth a fortune. The study door’s double bolted.”

“And the other doors?”

“The gyp and bedroom don’t have locks, but the main entry door does.”

“Did you ever use the Ceephone in here to contact Elena in her room? Or at Dr. Weaver’s home?”

“Occasionally, yes.”

“Did you know Elena ran in the morning?”

“With Mrs. Weaver.” Adam pulled a face. “Dr. Weaver wouldn’t let her run alone. She didn’t care for having Mrs. Weaver tag along, but the dog went as well, so it made the situation bearable. She loved the dog. And she loved to run.”

“Yes,” Lynley said thoughtfully. “Most people do.”

He nodded his goodbye and left the room. Two girls were sitting on the staircase outside the door, their knees drawn up, their heads together over an open textbook. They didn’t look up as he passed them, but their conversation ceased abruptly, only to resume once he reached the lower landing. He heard Adam Jenn’s voice call, “Katherine, Keelie, I’m ready for you now,” and went out into the chill autumn afternoon.

He looked across Ivy Court at the graveyard, thinking about his meeting with Adam Jenn, wondering what it must have been like to be caught between the father and the daughter, wondering most of all what that violent No! had meant when he asked the young man if he and Elena had been suited to each other. And still he knew nothing more about Sarah Gordon’s visit to Ivy Court than he had known before.

He glanced at his pocket watch. It was just after two. Havers would be a while with the Cambridge police. He had sufficient time to make the run to Crusoe’s Island. If nothing else, that would give him at least a modicum of information. He went to change his clothes.