For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(141)

“Daddy! Read!”

“Duty appears to be calling, Harry,” Lady Helen replied serenely. “You’ll find their pyjamas beneath the pillows on their beds. And the book—”

“I know where the damn book is,” Rodger snapped and took his children from the room.

“Oh dear,” Lady Helen murmured. “I’m afraid there’s going to be hell to pay for this.”

“I don’t think so,” Lynley said. “Harry’s an educated man. At the very least we know he can read.”

“Cautionary Verses?”

Lynley shook his head. “The handwriting on the wall.”



“After an hour, we all managed to come to an agreement. The strongest likelihood is that it was glass. When I left, Pleasance was still holding out for his theory that it was a champagne or wine bottle—preferably full—but he’s fresh from graduate school and still attached to any opportunity to expatiate. Frankly, I expect he’s more attracted to the sound of his arguments than to their viability. No wonder the head of forensic—is it Drake?—wants his neck in a noose.”

Forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James joined Barbara Havers at her solitary table in the officers’ mess at Cambridge Police Station. For the past two hours, he’d been holed up at the regional police laboratory with the disputing parties of Superintendent Sheehan’s forensic team, examining not only the X-rays of Elena Weaver but the body itself and comparing his conclusions with those developed by the younger scientist in the Cambridge group. It was an activity that Barbara had begged off attending. The brief period during her police training that had been given to watching autopsies had more than sated whatever nugatory interest she may once have had in forensic medicine.

“Please note, officers,” the forensic pathologist had intoned as he stood before the draped cart under which was the corpse that would be their object lesson, “that the mark of the ligature used in strangling this woman can still be plainly observed although our killer made what he apparently believed would be an ingenious attempt at obfuscation. Step closer, please.”

Like idiots—or automatons—the probationary DC’s had done so. And three of them had fainted dead away when, with a tiny smile of malicious anticipation, the pathologist whipped back the sheet to display the grisly remains of a body that had been saturated with paraffin and set afire. Barbara herself had remained on her feet, but only just. And she had never been in a tearing hurry to stand in on an autopsy from that time forward. Just bring me the facts, she always thought when a body was carted away from a murder scene. Don’t make me watch you gather them.

“Tea?” she asked St. James as he lowered himself into one of the chairs, adjusting his position to make allowances for the brace he wore on his left leg. “It’s fresh.” She gave a glance to her watch. “Well, okay. Only moderately fresh. But it’s riddled with enough caffeine to paste your eyelids permanently open if you’re feeling clapped out.”

St. James accepted the offer and ministered to his cup with three overlarge spoonfuls of sugar. After a taste of it, he added a fourth, saying, “Falstaff is my only defence, Barbara.”

She lifted her cup to him. “Cheers,” she said, and watched him drink.

He was looking well, she decided. Still too thin and angular, still too lined about the face, but there was an appealing sheen to the undisciplined dark hair, and his hands on the table seemed utterly relaxed. A man at peace with himself, she thought, and she wondered how long it had taken St. James to achieve such psychic equilibrium. He was Lynley’s oldest and closest friend, an expert witness from London upon whose forensic services they had called more than once.

“If not a wine bottle—and there was one at the crime scene, by the way—and not a champagne bottle, then what was used to beat her?” she asked. “And why have the Cambridge people been scrapping over this issue in the first place?”

“A case of male posturing, to my way of thinking,” St. James replied. “The head of forensic is just over fifty. He’s been on the job for a good twenty-five years. Along comes Pleasance, twenty-six years old and acting the upstart crow. So what you have is—”

“Men,” Barbara said in simple conclusion. “Why don’t they just go outside and settle their dispute by seeing who can pee the farthest?”

St. James smiled. “Not a bad idea.”

“Ha! Women should run the world.” She poured herself more tea. “So why couldn’t it have been a wine or champagne bottle?”

“The shape doesn’t make a match. We’re looking for something with a slightly broader curve making the connection between bottom and sides. Like this.” He cupped his right palm to form half an oval.

“And the leather gloves wouldn’t work for that curve?”

“For the curve, perhaps. But leather gloves of that weight wouldn’t shatter a cheekbone in a single blow. I’m not sure a heavyweight could even do that, and from what you said, the boy who owns the gloves isn’t a heavyweight by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Then what?” Barbara asked. “A vase perhaps?”

“I don’t think so. Whatever was used had some sort of handgrip. And it was quite heavy, enough to do maximum damage with minimum effort. She’d only been struck three times.”