For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(134)

“I won’t listen to this,” Justine said.

Glyn tightened her grip. “Can’t you bear to hear the truth? You use sex as a weapon, and not merely against me.”

Glyn felt Justine’s muscles go rigid. She knew that her dagger had hit the mark. She drove it in farther. “Reward him when he’s been a good little boy, punish him when he’s bad. Is that how it is? So. How long will he pay for keeping you from the funeral?”

“You’re pathetic,” Justine said. “You can’t see beyond sex any more than—”

“Elena?” Glyn dropped Justine’s arm. She looked at Anthony. “Ah. There it is.”

Justine brushed at her sleeve as if to cleanse herself of the contact she’d had with her husband’s former wife. She picked up her briefcase.

“I’m off,” she said calmly.

Anthony stood, his eyes going from the briefcase to her, moving his gaze from her head to her feet as if he had only just become aware of the manner in which she had dressed for the day. “You can’t be intending—”

“To go back to work just three days after Elena was murdered? To expose myself to public censure for having done so? Oh yes, Anthony, that’s exactly what I intend.”

“No. Justine, people—”

“Stop it. Please. I’m not at all like you.”

For a moment, Anthony stared after her as she left the house, taking her coat from round the newel post on the stairway and closing the front door behind her. He watched her walk through the fog towards her grey Peugeot. Glyn kept her eyes on him warily, wondering if he would run out and try to stop her. But he seemed, if anything, too exhausted to care about changing anyone’s mind. He turned from the window and trudged towards the back of the house.

She went to the table upon which the breakfast things still lay: bacon congealing in slim jackets of grease, egg yolks drying and splitting like yellow mud. A piece of toast still stood in the silver rack, and Glyn reached for it thoughtfully. Dry and abrasive beneath her fingers, it crumbled easily, leaving a shower of dust upon the clean parquet floor.

From the back of the house, she could hear the metallic sound of file drawers sliding open. And over it, the high whine of Elena’s Irish setter, longing to be allowed into the house. Glyn walked to the kitchen from whose window she could see the dog sitting on the back step, his black nose pressed into the doorjamb, his feathery tail sweeping back and forth in innocent anticipation. He took a step backwards, looked up, and saw her watching him through the window. His tail picked up rhythm, he gave a joyful bark. She regarded him evenly—taking a small degree of pleasure in allowing his hopes to rise—before she turned and made her way to the rear of the house.

At the doorway to Anthony’s study, she paused. He was crouched by an open drawer of the filing cabinet. The contents of two manila folders lay on the floor, comprising perhaps two dozen pencil sketches. Next to them was a canvas rolled like a tube.

For a moment, Glyn watched as Anthony’s hand passed slowly over the drawings in a gesture like an incomplete caress. Then he began to go through them. His fingers seemed clumsy. Twice he gasped for breath. When he paused to remove his spectacles and wipe their lenses on his shirt, she realised that he was crying. She entered the room to get a better look at the drawings on the floor and saw that they were all sketches of Elena.

“Dad’s got himself into drawing these days,” Elena had told her. She’d pronounced it dawing, and she’d laughed about the idea. They’d often chuckled over Anthony’s attempts to find himself through one activity or another as he approached middle age. First it had been long distance running, after that he had begun to swim, then he’d taken up bicycling like a zealot, and finally he had learned to sail. But of all the activities which he had pursued, drawing amused them the most. “Dad t’inks he’s got the soul of Van Gogh,” Elena would say. And she’d mimic her father’s wide-legged stance with sketch pad in hand, eyes squinting towards the distance, hand shading her brow. She’d draw a moustache like his on her upper lip and pull her face into a contorted frown of concentration. “Doe move an inch, Glynnie,” she would command of her mother. “Hol’ that pose. Hol’—that—pose.” And they would laugh together.

But now Glyn could see that the sketches were quite good, that he had managed to achieve something far more in them than was depicted in the still lifes that hung in the sitting room, or the sailboats, the harbours, and the fishing villages here on the study walls. For in the series of drawings he’d spread out on the floor, she could see that he had managed to capture the essence of their daughter. Here were the exact tilt of her head, the elfin shape of her eyes, the wide chipped-tooth grin, the contour of a cheekbone, of nose, and of mouth. These were studies only, they were quick impressions. But they were lovely and true.

As she took a step closer, Anthony looked up. He gathered the drawings together and replaced them in their respective folders. Along with the canvas which fit into the back, he shoved them into the drawer.

“You don’t have any of them framed,” she said.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he closed the drawer and went to the desk, where he played restlessly with the computer, switching on the Ceephone and watching the screen. A series of menu instructions appeared. He stared at them but did nothing with the keyboard.