For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(74)

“It was nearly a year ago after all.”

“She’d come in to show us the gown she’d bought for the Christmas Ball. She undressed to try it on.”

“And she hadn’t washed.”

“She hadn’t washed.”

“Who took her to the ball?”

“Gareth Randolph.”

The deaf boy. Lynley reflected upon the fact that Gareth Randolph’s name was becoming like a constant undercurrent, omnipresent beneath the flow of information. He evaluated the manner in which Elena Weaver might have used him as an instrument of revenge. If she was acting out of a need to rub her father’s face in his own desire that she be a normal, functioning woman, what better way to throw that desire back at him than to become pregnant. She’d be giving him what he ostensibly wanted—a normal daughter with normal needs and normal emotions whose body functioned in a perfectly normal way. At the same time, she’d be getting what she wanted—retaliation by choosing as the father of her child a deaf man. It was, at heart, a perfect circle of vengeance. He only wondered if Elena had been that devious, or if her stepmother was using the fact of the pregnancy to paint a portrait of the girl that would serve her own ends.

He said, “Since January, Elena had marked her calendar periodically with the small drawing of a fish. Does that mean anything to you?”

“A fish?”

“A pencil drawing similar to the symbol used for Christianity. It appears several times each week. It’s on the calendar the night before she died.”

“A fish?”

“Yes. As I’ve said. A fish.”

“I can’t think of what it might mean.”

“A society she belonged to? A person she was meeting?”

“You make her life sound like a spy novel, Inspector.”

“It appears to be something clandestine, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Why?”

“Why not just write out whatever the fish stood for?”

“Perhaps it was too long. Perhaps it was easier to draw the fish. It can’t mean much. Why would she worry about someone else seeing something she was putting on her personal calendar? It was probably shorthand, a device she used to remind herself of something. A supervision, perhaps.”

“Or an assignation.”

“Considering how Elena was telegraphing her sexual activity, Inspector, I hardly think she’d be disguising an assignation when it came to her own calendar.”

“Perhaps she had to. Perhaps she only wanted her father to know what she was doing but not with whom. And he’d have seen her calendar. He’d have been in her room, so she might not have wanted him to see the name.” Lynley waited for her to respond. When she did not do so, he said, “Elena had birth control pills in her desk. But she hadn’t taken them since February. Can you explain that?”

“Only in the most obvious way, I’m afraid. She wanted to get pregnant. But that doesn’t surprise me. It was, after all, the normal thing to do. Love a man. Have his baby.”

“You and your husband have no children, Mrs. Weaver?”

The quick change in subject, tagged logically onto her own statement, seemed to take her momentarily aback. Her lips parted briefly. Her gaze went to the wedding photograph on the tea table. She appeared to straighten her spine even further, but it may have been the result of the breath she took before she replied quite evenly, “We have no children.”

He waited to see if she would say more, relying upon the fact that his own silence had so often in the past proved more effective than the most pointed question in pressuring someone into disclosure. Moments ticked by. Outside the sitting room window, a sudden gust of wind tossed a spray of field maple leaves against the glass. They looked like a billowing, saffron cloud.

Justine said, “Will there be anything else?” and smoothed her hand along the perfect, knife-edged crease in her trousers. It was a gesture which eloquently declared her the victor, if only for an instant, in the brief battle of their wills.

He admitted defeat, standing and saying, “Not at the moment.”

She walked with him to the front door and handed him his overcoat. Her expression, he saw, was no different from what it had been when she first admitted him into the house. He wanted to marvel at the degree to which she had herself under control, but instead he found himself wondering whether it was a matter of mastering any revealing emotions or a matter of having—or experiencing—those emotions in the first place. He told himself it was to assess this latter possibility rather than to meet the challenge of cracking the composure of someone who seemed so invulnerable that he asked his final question.

“An artist from Grantchester found Elena’s body yesterday morning,” he said. “Sarah Gordon. Do you know her?”

Quickly, she bent to pick up the stem of a leaf which lay, barely discernible, on the parquet floor. She rubbed her finger along the spot where she had found it. Back and forth, three or four times as if the minuscule stem had somehow damaged the wood. When she had seen to it to her satisfaction, she stood again.

“No,” she said. She met his eyes directly. “I don’t know Sarah Gordon.” It was a bravura performance.

He nodded, opened the door, and walked out onto the drive. Round the corner of the house, an Irish setter bounded gracefully towards them, a dirty tennis ball in his mouth. He vaulted past the Bentley and hurtled onto the lawn, making a joyful racecourse of its perimeter before he leaped over a white wrought iron table and dashed across the drive to land in a happy heap at Lynley’s feet. He loosened his jaws and deposited the ball on the drive, tail wagging hopefully and silky coat rippling like soft reeds in the wind. Lynley picked up the ball and flung it beyond the cypress tree. With a yelp of delight, the dog hurtled after it. Once again, he raced round the edge of the lawn, once more he leaped over the wrought iron table, once more he landed in a heap at Lynley’s feet. Again, his eyes said, again, again.