For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(115)

“When exactly was he with you?”

She looked at them earnestly, her grey eyes growing dark. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. “It’s so personal. He could get in such trouble if you were to tell anyone. You see, I’m the only undergraduate Lenny’s ever…” She rolled the corner of her paper napkin into a little tube and said with calm determination, “I’m the only one he’s ever allowed himself to get close to. And it’s been a struggle for him. His morals. His conscience. What would be right for us. What would be ethical. Because he’s my supervisor.”

“You’re lovers, I take it?”

“You need to know that we went absolute weeks without doing a thing. We fought it every time we were together. Right from the first we both felt the attraction. It was like electricity. Lenny was so open and honest about it. That’s the way he’s always fought it off in the past. Because he’s attracted to women. He does admit that. And in the past he’s simply talked it out. He’s let women know and they’ve worked past it—they’ve worked through it—together. And we tried that, the two of us. We really did try. But in this case, it was bigger than both of us.”

“Is that what Lenny said?” Havers asked. Her face was a study of bland, dispassionate interest.

Catherine seemed to hear something in her tone, however. She said a bit archly, “It was my decision to make love with him. Lenny didn’t push me. I was ready. And we talked about it for days. He wanted me to know him completely, inside and out, before I made the decision. He wanted me to understand.”

“To understand?” Lynley asked.

“Him. His life. What it had been like for him when he’d once been engaged. He wanted me to see him as he truly is so that I could accept him. All of him. Every bit. So that I wouldn’t ever be like his fiancée.” She turned in her chair and faced them squarely. “She rejected him sexually. She did that to him for all of four years because he was…Oh, it doesn’t matter. But you need to understand that he couldn’t bear it to happen again. He was nearly destroyed by the rejection and sorrow the first time. It’s taken him forever to get over the pain and to learn to trust a woman again.”

“Did he ask you to speak to us?” Lynley asked.

She cocked her pretty head to one side. “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m making this up.”

“Not at all. I’m just wondering if and when he asked you to speak to us.”

“He didn’t ask me to speak to you. He wouldn’t do that. It’s just that he told me this morning that you’d been to see him and taken some of his clothes and actually thought…” Her voice wavered momentarily and she reached for the tea, drinking this time. She kept the cup balanced on her small, white palm. “Lenny had nothing to do with Elena. He’s in love with me.”

Sergeant Havers gave a delicate cough. Catherine looked at her sharply.

“I can see what you’re thinking, that I’m just some simple-minded tart to him. But that’s not how it is. We’re going to be married.”

“Quite.”

“We are! When I’ve graduated.”

Lynley said, “What time did Mr. Thorsson leave you?”

“Six forty-five.”

“Was this from your room at St. Stephen’s?”

“I don’t live in college. I share a house with three other girls off Mill Road. Towards Ramsey Town.”

And not, Lynley thought, towards Crusoe’s Island. “Are you certain of the time?”

“I don’t have a doubt.”

Havers tapped her pencil against a page of her notebook. “Why?”

There was a fair degree of pride in Catherine’s answer. “Because I’d looked at the clock when he first woke me up and I looked once again when we finished. I wanted to see how long he lasted this time. Seventy minutes. He finished at 6:40.”

“A real marathon performer.” Havers nodded. “You must have felt like chopped meat.”

“Havers,” Lynley said quietly.

The girl got to her feet. “Lenny said you wouldn’t believe me. He said you especially”—this with a finger pointed at Havers—“wanted to make him pay. Pay for what, I asked him. You’ll see, he said, you’ll see when you talk to her.” She put on her beret and her scarf. She squeezed her gloves into balls. “Well, I see. I do. He’s a wonderful man. He’s tender. He’s loving and brilliant and he’s been hurt so badly in his life because he cares too much. He cared for Elena Weaver and she took it the wrong way. And then when he wouldn’t sleep with her, she went to Dr. Cuff with this despicable story…If you can’t see the truth—”

“Was he with you last night?” Havers asked.

The girl drew up, hesitated. “What?”

“Did he spend the night with you again?”

“I…No. He had a lecture he was working on. And a paper he’s been writing.” Her voice steadied, grew stronger. “He’s working on a study of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It’s a thesis about the tragic heroes. Victims of their time, he’s arguing, conquered not by their own tragic flaws but by the prevailing social conditions. It’s radical, brilliant. He was working on it last night and—”