For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(41)

Havers seemed willing to pursue another tack. “She was a runner, wasn’t she? Maybe it’s a diet. These are the days she had to eat fish. Good for the blood pressure, good for the cholesterol, good for the…what? Muscle tone or something? But she was thin anyway—you can tell that much from the size of her clothes—so she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know.”

“Heading towards anorexia?”

“Sounds good to me. Body weight. Something a girl like her—with everyone’s fingers in her personal pie—could control.”

“But she would have had to cook it herself in the gyp room,” Lynley said. “Surely Randie Webberly would have noticed that and mentioned it to me. And anyway, don’t anorexics simply stop eating?”

“Okay. It’s the symbol of some society then. A secret group that’s up to no good. Drugs, alcohol, stealing government data. This is Cambridge after all, alma mater of the UK’s most prestigious group of traitors. She may have been hoping to follow in their footsteps. Fish could have been an acronym for their group.”

“Foolish Intellectuals Squashing Hedonism?”

Havers grinned. “You’re a finer detective than ever I thought.”

They continued flipping through the calendar. The notations were unchanging from month to month, tapering off in the summer when only the fish appeared—and that a mere three times. Its final appearance was the day before her murder, and the only other marking of any note was a single address written on the Wednesday before she died: 31 Seymour Street and the time 2:00.

“Here’s something,” Lynley said, and Havers jotted it down in her notebook along with Hare and Hounds, Search and Pellet, and a rough copy of the fish. “I’ll handle it,” she said, and began to go through the drawers of the desk as he turned to the cupboard that housed the washbasin. This contained a cornucopia of possessions and illustrated the manner in which one usually stores belongings when space is at a minimum. There was everything from laundry detergent to a popcorn popper. But nothing revealed very much about Elena.

“Look at this,” Havers said as he was closing the cupboard and moving on to one of the drawers built into the wardrobe next to it. He looked up to see that she was holding out a slim, white case decorated with blue flowers. A prescription label was affixed to its centre. “Birth control pills,” she said, sliding out the thin sheet still encased in its plastic cover.

“Hardly something surprising to find in the room of a twenty-year-old college girl,” Lynley said.

“But they’re dated last February, Inspector. And not one of them taken. Looks like there was no man in her life at the present. Do we eliminate a jealous lover as the killer?”

This was, Lynley thought, certainly support for what both Justine Weaver and Miranda Webberly had said last night about Gareth Randolph: Elena hadn’t been involved with him. The pills, however, also suggested a consistent refusal to get involved with anyone, something which might have set the wheels of a killer’s rage in motion. But surely she would have talked about that with someone, looking to someone for support or advice if she had been having trouble with a man.

Across the hall, the music ended. A few last wavering, live notes sounded on the trumpet before, after a moment of muffled activity, the squeak of a door replaced the other sounds.

“Randie,” Lynley called.

Elena’s door swung inward. Miranda stood there, bundled up for the outdoors in her heavy pea jacket and navy sweat suit with a lime-green beret perched rakishly on her head. She was wearing high-topped black athletic shoes. Socks decorated to look like slices of watermelon peeked out from the top of them.

Glancing at her attire, Havers said meaningfully, “I rest my case, Inspector,” and then to the girl, “Good to see you, Randie.”

Miranda smiled. “You got here early.”

“Necessity. I couldn’t let his lordship muddle through on his own. Besides”—this with a sardonic look in Lynley’s direction—“he hasn’t quite got the flavour of modern university life.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Lynley said. “I’d be lost without you.” He indicated the calendar. “Will you look at this fish, Randie? Does it mean anything to you?”

Miranda joined him at the desk and inspected the sketches on the calendar. She shook her head.

“She hadn’t been doing any cooking in the gyp room?” Havers asked, obviously testing out her diet theory.

Miranda looked incredulous. “Cooking. Fish, you mean? Elena cooking fish?”

“You would have known it, right?”

“I would have got sick. I hate the smell of fish.”

“Then some society that she belonged to?” Havers was going for theory number two.

“Sorry. I know she was in DeaStu and Hare and Hounds and probably one or two other societies as well. But I’m not sure which.” Randie looked through the calendar as they themselves had done, chewing absently on the edge of her thumb. “It’s too often,” she said when she’d gone back to January. “No society has this many meetings.”

“A person, then?”

Lynley saw her cheeks flush. “I wouldn’t know. Really. She never said that there was anyone that special. I mean special enough for three or four nights a week. She never said.”