For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(111)

“Why?”

“Georgina was in Hare and Hounds. She probably knew Elena. And if that’s the case, it stands to reason that she probably also knew what Elena intended to do.”

“About Thorsson.”

“And perhaps Georgina Higgins-Hart was just the corroboration Elena needed to make that sexual harassment charge stick. Perhaps Thorsson knew it. If he went to argue with Elena about it on Thursday night, she might well have told him that she wasn’t the only one going to the authorities. And if that was the case, it wasn’t going to be her word against his any longer. It was going to be his against theirs. Those aren’t very sweet odds, are they, Inspector? And that wouldn’t have looked good to anyone.”

Lynley had to admit that Havers’ hypothesis was grounded more solidly in reality than was his. And yet unless they could come up with a viable piece of hard evidence, they were stymied. She seemed to realise this.

“We’ve got the black fibres,” she persisted. “If his clothes make a match, we’re on our way.”

“Do you really think Thorsson would have handed his things over this morning—no matter his frame of mind—had he had even the slightest concern that forensic could match them to the fibres from Elena Weaver’s body?” Lynley closed an open text on the desk. “He knows he’s clear on that, Havers. We need something else.”

“The primary weapon used on Elena.”

“Did you get St. James on the phone?”

“He’ll be up sometime round noon tomorrow. He was in the middle of messing about with some sort of a polymorphic what-have-you, mumbling about isoenzymes and getting generally bleary-eyed from having looked through his microscopes for more than a week. He’ll be glad of the diversion.”

“That’s what he said?”

“No. Actually, he said, ‘Tell Tommy he owes me,’ but that’s pretty much par for the course with you two, isn’t it?”

“Quite.” Lynley was looking at Georgina’s engagement diary. She was less active than Elena Weaver had been, but like Elena she had kept a record of her appointments. Seminars and supervisions were listed, by subject and by name of supervisor. Hare and Hounds had its places as well. But it took only a moment for him to ascertain that Lennart Thorsson’s name appeared nowhere. Nor was there anything that resembled the small fish that Elena had regularly sketched upon her calendar. Lynley riffled through all the pages of the book to find something that suggested the sort of intrigue implied by that fish, but it was completely straightforward. If Georgina Higgins-Hart had secrets, she hadn’t hidden them here.

They had little enough to go on, he realised. Mostly a series of unprovable conjectures. Until Simon Allcourt-St. James arrived in Cambridge and unless he gave them something else to work with, they would have to rely on the evidence at hand.





17





With a heaviness of heart and a growing sense that the inevitable was fast approaching between them, Rosalyn Simpson watched as Melinda continued stuffing a mishmash of belongings into two rucksacks. She grabbed knee socks, underwear, stockings, three nightgowns from one drawer; a silk scarf, two belts, four T-shirts from another; her passport, a worn Michelin guide to France from a third. Then she went on to the wardrobe where she removed two pairs of blue jeans, a pair of sandals, and a quilted skirt. Her face was blotched from crying, and all the time she packed, she snuffled. Occasionally she withheld a fractured sob.

“Melinda.” Rosalyn tried to sound soothing. “You’re not being rational.”

“I thought it was you.” This had been her most frequent response for the last hour, an hour which had begun with her terrorised screaming, moved quickly on to wildly distraught weeping, and concluded with blind determination to leave Cambridge at once with Rosalyn in tow.

There had been no way to talk to her reasonably, and even if there had been, Rosalyn felt as if she lacked the energy to do it. She had spent a miserable night thrashing round in her bed while guilt spread like a prickly rash on the flesh of her conscience, and the last thing she wanted now was a scene of reproach, recrimination, and reassurance with Melinda. But she was wise enough not to mention any of that at the moment. Rather, she told Melinda only part of the truth: she hadn’t slept well the previous night; upon returning from a morning’s practical, she’d come to Melinda’s room with nowhere else to go to get a bit of rest when the porter had barred her from climbing her own staircase; she’d fallen asleep and hadn’t awakened until the door crashed against the wall and Melinda herself had begun screaming unaccountably. She hadn’t known that a runner had been shot that morning. The porter had said nothing, telling her only that the staircase would be closed for a while. And no word had yet gone out among the members of college about the murder, so no one was in front of the building at the time to pass on gossip or information. But if it was someone from her staircase who had been shot, she knew it had to be Georgina Higgins-Hart, the only other member of Hare and Hounds who lived in that part of the building.

“I thought it was you,” Melinda sobbed. “You promised you wouldn’t run alone but I thought you ran anyway to spite me because you were angry that I’d insisted you tell your parents about us so I thought it was you.”

Rosalyn realised that she did feel some anger. It was a bubbling bit of real resentment that promised to boil over into outright dislike. She tried to ignore it, saying, “Why would I want to spite you like that? I didn’t run alone. I didn’t run at all.”