For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(63)

The description moulded perfectly to Weaver’s agonising on the previous night. It was so often the circumstance that grew from divorce. A parent partnered in an unremittingly bleak marriage feels caught between the needs of a child and the needs of self. If he stays in the marriage solely to meet the needs of the child, he reaps the benefits of society’s approval, but his self erodes. Yet if he leaves the marriage solely to meet the needs of self, the child is damaged. What is required is a masterful balancing act between these disparate needs, a balancing act in which a marriage can end, former partners can establish more productive lives, and the children can escape without irreparable harm in the process.

It was, Lynley thought, the Utopian ideal, utterly improbable because feelings were involved whenever a marriage came to an end. Even when people were acting in the only manner possible to preserve their peace of mind, it was in the very need for peace of mind that guilt lay its most virulent seeds. Most people—and he admitted he was one of them—invariably gave power to social condemnation, allowing their behaviour to be guided by guilt, living their lives dominated by a Judaeo-Christian tradition which taught them that they had no right to happiness or to anything else save a life in which considerations of self were secondary to complete devotion to others. The fact that men and women did indeed lead lives of quiet desperation as a result generally went ignored. For as long as they led their lives for others, they achieved the approval of everyone else who—in equally quiet desperation—was engaged in doing the very same thing.

The situation was worse for Anthony Weaver. To achieve peace of mind—which society told him was not his due in the first place—he had ended a marriage only to find that the guilt attendant to divorce was exacerbated by the fact that, in escaping unhappiness, he had not merely left behind a small child who loved and depended upon him. He had left behind a handicapped child as well. And what kind of society would ever forgive him that? He stood to lose no matter what he’d done. Had he stayed in his marriage and devoted his life to his daughter, he could have felt self-righteous and nobly miserable. In opting at a try for peace of mind, he had reaped the harvest of guilt whose seeds were planted within what he—and society—considered a base and selfish need.

Upon close examination, guilt was the prime mover behind so many kinds of devotion. Lynley wondered if it underlay Weaver’s devotion to his daughter. In his own mind, Weaver had sinned. Against his wife, Elena, and society itself. Fifteen years of guilt had grown out of his sin. Proving himself to Elena, smoothing the way for her, capturing her love, had apparently been the only expiation he saw for himself. Lynley felt a profound pity at the thought of the other man’s struggle to gain acceptance as what he already was: his daughter’s father. He wondered if Weaver had ever garnered the courage and taken the time to ask Elena if such extremes of behaviour and such torment of spirit were actually necessary to obtain her forgiveness.

“I don’t think he ever really knew her,” Adam said.

Lynley wondered if Weaver really knew himself. He got to his feet. “What time did you leave here last night after Dr. Weaver phoned you?”

“A bit after nine.”

“You locked the door?”

“Of course.”

“The same on Sunday night? Do you always lock it?”

“Yes.” Adam nodded his head towards the pine desk and its collection of equipment—word processor, two printers, floppy disks, and files. “That lot’s worth a fortune. The study door’s double bolted.”

“And the other doors?”

“The gyp and bedroom don’t have locks, but the main entry door does.”

“Did you ever use the Ceephone in here to contact Elena in her room? Or at Dr. Weaver’s home?”

“Occasionally, yes.”

“Did you know Elena ran in the morning?”

“With Mrs. Weaver.” Adam pulled a face. “Dr. Weaver wouldn’t let her run alone. She didn’t care for having Mrs. Weaver tag along, but the dog went as well, so it made the situation bearable. She loved the dog. And she loved to run.”

“Yes,” Lynley said thoughtfully. “Most people do.”

He nodded his goodbye and left the room. Two girls were sitting on the staircase outside the door, their knees drawn up, their heads together over an open textbook. They didn’t look up as he passed them, but their conversation ceased abruptly, only to resume once he reached the lower landing. He heard Adam Jenn’s voice call, “Katherine, Keelie, I’m ready for you now,” and went out into the chill autumn afternoon.

He looked across Ivy Court at the graveyard, thinking about his meeting with Adam Jenn, wondering what it must have been like to be caught between the father and the daughter, wondering most of all what that violent No! had meant when he asked the young man if he and Elena had been suited to each other. And still he knew nothing more about Sarah Gordon’s visit to Ivy Court than he had known before.

He glanced at his pocket watch. It was just after two. Havers would be a while with the Cambridge police. He had sufficient time to make the run to Crusoe’s Island. If nothing else, that would give him at least a modicum of information. He went to change his clothes.





9





Anthony Weaver stared at the discreet nameplate on the desk—P. L. Beck, Funeral Director—and felt overcome by a surge of simple-minded gratitude. This main business office of the mortuary was as unfunereal as good taste would allow it to be, and while its warm autumn colours and comfortable furniture did not alter the reality which had brought him here, at least it did not underscore the finality of his daughter’s death with sombre decorations, canned organ music, and lugubrious employees dressed in black.