For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(43)
For a moment, no one stirred. Paper crackled. A pencil dropped. Then, with what appeared to be reluctance, the audience roused itself with a collective sigh. Conversation rose as people headed for the exits while Thorsson stuffed his notebook and two texts into a haversack. As he removed his black academic gown and balled it up to join the textbooks, he spoke to a tousle-haired young woman still sitting in the front row. Then, after taking a moment to tap one finger against her cheek and laugh at something she’d said, he came up the aisle towards the door.
“Ah,” Havers said, sotto voce. “Your basic Prince of Darkness.”
It was a particularly apt sobriquet. Thorsson didn’t favour black, he wallowed in it, as if in the attempt to generate a deliberate contrast to his fair skin and hair. Pullover, trousers, herringbone jacket, overcoat, and scarf. Even his boots were black, with pointed toes and high heels. If he was intent upon playing the role of youthful, indifferent rebellion, he couldn’t have chosen a more successful costume. However, when he reached Lynley and Havers and began, with a sharp nod, to move past them, Lynley saw that while Thorsson might well have been a rebel, he wasn’t a youth. Crow’s feet shot out from the corners of his eyes, and a few grey strands wove through his abundant hair. Middle thirties, Lynley decided. He and the Swede were of an age.
“Mr. Thorsson?” He offered his warrant card. “Scotland Yard CID. Do you have a few minutes?”
Thorsson looked from Lynley to Havers and back to Lynley, who made the introductions. He said, “Elena Weaver, I take it?”
“Yes.”
He slung his haversack over one shoulder and, with a sigh, roughly drove a hand through his hair. “We can’t talk here. Have you got a car with you?” He waited for Lynley’s nod. “Let’s go to the college.” He turned abruptly and walked out the door, flinging his scarf back over his shoulder.
“Nice exit, that,” Havers said.
“Why do I imagine he excels at them?”
They followed Thorsson down the hall, down the stairs, and into the open cloister which had been created by a well-intentioned modern architect who had designed the three-sided faculties building to stand upon columns of reinforced concrete round a rectangle of lawn. The resulting structure hovered above the ground, suggesting impermanence and offering no protection from the wind which at this moment was gusting through the columns.
“I’ve a supervision next hour,” Thorsson informed them.
Lynley smiled pleasantly. “I certainly hope we’re done by then.” He motioned Thorsson in the general direction of his car which he’d parked illegally at the northeast entrance to Selwyn College. They walked to it three abreast on the pavement, with Thorsson merely nodding indifferently to students who called out to him from passing bicycles.
It wasn’t until they reached the Bentley that the Shakespearean lecturer addressed them again. And then it was only to say, “This is what the British police are driving? Fy fan! No wonder the country’s going to hell.”
“Ah, but my motor makes up for it,” Havers replied. “Average a ten-year-old Mini with a four-year-old Bentley and you come up with seven years of equality, don’t you?”
Lynley smiled inwardly. Havers had taken Thorsson’s lecture directly into her caustic little heart. “You know what I mean,” she continued. “A car by any other name rolls down the street.”
Thorsson didn’t look amused.
They got into the car. Lynley headed up Grange Road to make the circuit that would take them back into the centre of the city. At the end of the street, as they waited to make the right turn onto the Madingley Road, a lone bicyclist rolled past them, heading out of town. It took more than a moment for Lynley to recognise the rider, Helen’s brother-in-law, the absent Harry Rodger. He was pedalling towards his home, his coat flapping like great woollen wings round his legs. Lynley watched him, wondering if he’d spent the entire night at Emmanuel. Rodger’s face seemed pasty, save for his nose which was red and matched the colour of his ears. He looked perfectly miserable. Seeing him, Lynley felt a quick surge of concern only indirectly related to Harry Rodger. It centred itself on Helen and a need to get her away from her sister’s home and back to London. He shoved the thought aside and made himself concentrate on the conversation between Havers and Lennart Thorsson.
“His writing illustrates the artist’s struggle to work out a utopian vision, Sergeant. A vision that goes beyond a feudal society and deals with all mankind, not just a select group of individuals who happen to be born with a silver spoon on which to suck. As such, the body of his work is prodigiously—no, miraculously—subversive. But most critical analysts don’t wish to see it that way. It scares them witless to think that a sixteenth-century writer might have had more social vision than they…who of course have no social vision at all.”
“Shakespeare was a closet Marxist then?”
Thorsson made a snort of derision. “Simplistic snobbery,” he responded. “And hardly what I’d expect from—”
Havers turned in her seat. “Yes?”
Thorsson didn’t finish his thought. There was no need. Someone of your class hung among them like an echo, four words that robbed his liberal literary criticism of virtually all of its meaning.
They rode the rest of the distance without conversation, threading through the lorries and taxis on St. John’s Street to make their way down the narrow gorge of Trinity Lane. Lynley parked near the end of Trinity Passage, just outside the north entrance to St. Stephen’s College. Unlocked and pushed open during the day, it offered immediate access to New Court.