For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(142)

“A handgrip. That suggests the neck of a bottle.”

“Which is why Pleasance is continuing to propound his full-champagne-bottle theory despite compelling evidence to the contrary. Unless, of course, it’s the most oddly shaped champagne bottle on record.” St. James removed a paper napkin from the table dispenser and roughed out a sketch, saying, “What you’re looking for is flat on the bottom, with a broad curve on the sides, and, I imagine, a sturdy gripping neck.” He handed it over. Barbara studied the drawing.

“This looks like one of those ship’s decanters,” she said, pulling on her upper lip thoughtfully. “Simon, did someone cosh the girl in the face with the family Waterford?”

“It’s as heavy as crystal,” St. James replied. “But smooth-surfaced, not cut. Solid as well. And if that’s the case, it’s not a container of any sort.”

“What, then?”

He looked at the drawing which she placed between them. “I have no idea.”

“You won’t go for something metal?”

“Doubtful. Glass—especially if it’s smooth and heavy—is the likelier substance when there’s no trace evidence left behind.”

“Need I ask if you were able to find trace evidence where the Cambridge team found none?”

“You needn’t. I didn’t.”

“What a balls-up.” She sighed.

He didn’t disagree. Rather, he shifted position in his chair and said, “Are you and Tommy still intent on connecting the two killings? That’s an odd approach when the means are so different. If you’re working with the same killer, why weren’t both victims gunned down?”

She picked at the gelatinous surface of a cherry tart that was doing service as the edible portion of her afternoon tea. “We’re thinking that the motive determined the means in each killing. The first motive was personal, so it required a personal means.”

“A hands-on means? Beating then strangling?”

“Yes. If you will. But the second murder wasn’t personal at all, just a need to eliminate a potential witness who could place the killer at Crusoe’s Island right at the time Elena Weaver was strangled. A shotgun sufficed to carry that out. Of course, what the killer didn’t know is that the wrong girl got shot.”

“A nasty business.”

“Quite.” She speared a cherry. It looked disturbingly like a large clot of blood. Shuddering, she tapped it onto her plate and tried another. “But at least we’ve got a tab on the killer now. And the Inspector’s gone to—” She stopped, brow furrowed, as Lynley came through the swinging doors, his overcoat slung over his shoulder and his cashmere scarf fluttering round him like carmine wings. He was carrying a large manila envelope. Lady Helen Clyde and another woman—presumably her sister—were right behind him.

“St. James,” he said by way of greeting his friend. “I’m in your debt again. Thank you for coming. You know Pen, of course.” He dropped his coat over the back of a chair as St. James greeted Penelope and brushed a kiss across Lady Helen’s cheek. He pulled extra chairs over to their table as Lynley introduced Barbara to Lady Helen’s sister.

Barbara watched him, perplexed. He’d gone to the Weaver house for information. As soon as he had it, his next step was supposed to be to make an arrest. But clearly, no arrest had been made. Something had taken him in another direction.

“You haven’t brought her with you?” she asked.

“I haven’t. Look at this.”

From the envelope, he took out a thin stack of photographs, telling them about the canvas and the set of sketches that Glyn Weaver had given him. “There was dual damage to the painting,” he said. “Someone had defaced it with great smears of colour and then finished the job with a kitchen knife. Weaver’s former wife assumed that the subject was Elena and that Justine had destroyed it.”

“She was wrong, I take it?” Barbara asked, picking up the photographs and flipping through them. Each of them showed a different section of the canvas. They were curious pieces, some of them looking like nothing so much as double exposures in which one figure was superimposed over another. They depicted various portraits of a female, from childhood up to young adulthood. “What are these?” Havers asked, passing each photograph on to St. James after she perused it.

“Infrared photographs and X-rays,” Lynley said. “Pen can explain. We did it at the museum.”

Penelope said, “They show what was originally on the canvas. Before it was smeared with paint.”

There were at least five head studies in the group, one of which was more than double the size of all the rest. Barbara puzzled her way through them, saying, “Odd sort of painting, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not when you assemble them,” Penelope said. “Here. I’ll show you.”

Lynley cleared away the tea debris, piling the stainless steel teapot, the cups, the plates, and the silverware onto a table nearby. “Because of its size, it could only be photographed in sections,” he explained to Barbara.

Pen went on. “When the sections are assembled, it looks like this.” She laid the photographs out to form an incomplete rectangle from whose right-hand corner a quadrilateral was missing. What Barbara saw on the table was a semi-circle of four head studies of a growing girl—depicted as a baby, a toddler, a child, an adolescent—and offset by the fifth and larger head study of the young adult.