For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(156)

Barbara found her in the sitting room, in her husband’s tattered easy chair, lolling back into the greasy indentation which his head had made over the years. The television was roaring at a volume that accommodated Mrs. Gustafson’s failing hearing. It was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The film that had that line about whistling. Barbara had seen it at least a dozen times, and she shut it off just as Bacall made her final shimmy across the room in Bogart’s direction. Barbara had always liked that moment best. She’d always liked its veiled promise of the future.

“Now she’s all right, Barbie,” Mrs. Gustafson said anxiously from the doorway. “You can see she’s all right.”

Mrs. Havers was slumped to one side in the chair. Her mouth was slack. Her hands played with the hem of her dress which she’d drawn up to the height of her thighs. The air surrounding her was foetid with the odour of excrement and urine.

“Mum?” Barbara said.

She didn’t respond although she hummed four notes as if with the intention of beginning a song.

“See how quiet and nice she can get?” Mrs. Gustafson said. “She can be a real jewel, can your mum, when she wants.”

On the floor just inches from her mother’s feet, the hose of the vacuum cleaner was curled into a coil.

“What’s that doing here?” Barbara asked.

“Now, Barbie, it does help keep her—”

Barbara felt something inside her give way, like a dam that crumbles when it cannot contain the pressure-build of standing water any longer. “Didn’t you even notice that she’d messed herself?” she said to Mrs. Gustafson. She found it a miracle that her voice sounded so calm.

Mrs. Gustafson blanched. “Messed? Why, Barbie, you must be mistaken. I asked her twice. She didn’t want the loo.”

“Can’t you smell her? Haven’t you checked her? Have you left her alone?”

Mrs. Gustafson’s lips quivered with a hesitant smile. “I can see you’re feeling a bit put out, Barbie. But if you’ve spent some time with her—”

“I’ve spent years with her. I’ve spent my whole life with her.”

“I only meant to say—”

“Thank you, Mrs. Gustafson. You won’t be needed again.”

“Why, I—” Mrs. Gustafson clutched at the front of her dress, approximately in the location of her heart. “After all I’ve done.”

“That’s right,” Barbara said.

Now, she stirred restlessly on the back step, feeling the cold seeping through her trousers, trying to force from her mind the image of her mother as flaccid as a rag doll in that chair, reduced to inertia. Barbara had bathed her, feeling struck to sadness at the sight and the feeling of her withered flesh. She led her to bed, tucked in the covers, and turned out the light. Through it all, her mother did not say a word. She was like the living dead.

Sometimes the right thing to do is also the most obvious thing to do, Lynley had said. There was truth in that. She had known from the first what had to be done, what was right, what was best, what would serve her mother. It was in the fear of being judged as a callous and indifferent child—by what she knew was largely a callous and indifferent world—that Barbara had floundered, waiting for direction, instruction, or permission that wasn’t going to come. The decision rested with her, as it always had. What she hadn’t realised was that judgement rested with her as well.

She pushed herself off the step and went into the kitchen. The smell of mouldy cheese was in the air. There were dishes to be washed and a floor to be scrubbed and a dozen distractions to allow her to avoid the inevitable for at least another hour. But she’d been avoiding it since her father’s death in March. She couldn’t do so forever. She went to the phone.

Odd to think that she’d memorised the number. She must have known from the first that she’d be using it again.

The phone rang four times on the other end. A pleasant voice said, “Mrs. Flo here. Hawthorn Lodge.”

Barbara spoke on a sigh. “This is Barbara Havers. I wonder if you remember meeting my mother Monday night?”





24





Lynley and Havers arrived at St. Stephen’s College at half past eleven. They’d spent the early part of the morning assembling their reports, meeting with Superintendent Sheehan, and discussing what sort of charges might be filed against Anthony Weaver. Lynley knew that his hope for attempted murder was a futile one at best. Weaver was, after all, the originally injured party when one considered the case from a purely legal standpoint. No matter what intimacies, oaths, and lovers’ betrayals had led up to the killing of Elena Weaver, no real crime had been committed in the eyes of the law until Sarah Gordon had taken the girl’s life.

Driven by his grief, the defence would argue. Weaver himself—who would wisely not stand in his own defence and thus run the risk of cross-examination—would emerge as loving father, devoted husband, brilliant scholar, Cambridge man. If the truth about his affair with Sarah Gordon managed to work its way into the courtroom, how easily it could be dismissed as a sensitive, artistic man’s giving way to a lethal temptation in a moment of weakness or during a time of marital estrangement. How easily he could be depicted as having done his best—done everything in his power, in fact—to put the affair behind him and get on with his life once he became aware of the extent to which he was hurting his faithful and long-suffering wife.