For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(90)

She made no reply. But she didn’t look away from him, nor did she try to leave the room. He took hope from that.

“Why?” he said. “Won’t you tell me that much?”

“We’re fine where we are, as we are.” Her voice was low. “Why can’t that be enough for you?”

“Because it can’t, Helen. This isn’t about friendship. We aren’t chums. We aren’t mates.”

“We were once.”

“We were. But we can’t go back to that. At least I can’t do it. And God knows I’ve tried. I love you. I want you.”

She swallowed. A single tear slid from her eye, but she brushed it away quickly. He felt torn at the sight of her.

“I always believed it should be jubilation. But whatever it is, it shouldn’t be this.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No more than I.” He looked away from her. On the overmantel behind her stood a photograph of her sister and her family. Husband, wife, two children, life’s purpose defined. He said, “I still need to see Pen.”

She nodded. “Let me get her.”

As she left the room, he walked to the window. The curtains were drawn. There was nothing to see. He stared at the rapidly blurring floral pattern on the chintz.

Walk away from it, he told himself fiercely. Make the cut, make it surgical, make it permanent, walk away.

But he couldn’t do it. It was, he knew, the great irony of love. That it came out of nowhere, that it had no logic, that it could always be denied and ignored, but that one ultimately paid the price for fleeing it in coin that came from the spirit, from the soul. He’d been witness to the cycle of love and denial in other lives before, generally in womanisers and in men hot after the pursuit of their careers. Hearts were never touched in their cases, so pain was never felt. And why should it be otherwise? The womaniser sought only the conquest of the moment. The career man sought only the glories from his job. Neither was affected by love or sorrow. Either walked off without a backward glance.

His misfortune—if it could be called that—lay in not being of that ilk. Instead of sexual conquest or professional success, he knew only the desire for connection. For Helen.

He heard them on the stairway—quiet voices, slow footsteps—and turned back to the sitting room door. He had known from Helen’s words that her sister was not well, but still he was jarred by the sight of her. His face, he knew, was well enough controlled when she walked into the room. But his eyes apparently betrayed him, for Penelope smiled wanly as if in recognition of an unspoken fact and ran ringless fingers through her limp, dull hair.

“You aren’t exactly catching me at my best,” she said.

“Thank you for seeing me.”

Again, the wan smile. She shuffled across the room, Lady Helen at her side. She eased herself into a wicker rocker and drew her dusky pink dressing gown closed at the throat.

“May we offer you something?” she said. “A whisky? Brandy?”

He shook his head. Lady Helen went to the end of the sofa, the nearest spot to the rocking chair, and sat on the edge of it, leaning forward, her eyes on her sister, her hands extended as if to give her support. Lynley took the wingback chair opposite Pen. He tried to gather his thoughts without considering the changes that had come over her and what they meant and how they had to be striking every chord of her younger sister’s fear. Deep circles beneath her eyes, complexion mottled and spotty, an angry sore at the corner of her mouth. Unwashed hair, unwashed body.

“Helen tells me you’re in Cambridge on a case,” she said.

He told her the essentials of the murder itself. As he spoke, she rocked. The chair creaked companionably. He ended with:

“But it’s Sarah Gordon who intrigues me. I thought you might be able to tell me something about her. Have you heard of her, Pen?”

She nodded. Her fingers played with the cord of her dressing gown. “Oh yes. For any number of years. There was quite a splash in the local newspaper when she first moved to Grantchester.”

“When was this?”

“Some six years ago.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes. It was”—again the lifeless smile and a shrug—“before the children, and I was working at the Fitzwilliam then. Picture restoring. The museum had a large reception for her. And a showing of her work. Harry and I went. We met her. If you can call it met. It was more like being presented to the Queen although that feeling came mostly from the museum directors. Sarah Gordon herself, as I recall, was rather unassuming. Friendly, quite approachable. Not the sort of woman I’d gone expecting to meet, considering all I’d heard and read about her.”

“She’s that important an artist?”

“Generally speaking, yes. Each piece she creates is a bit of social commentary which usually results in a fair amount of press. At the time I met her, she’d just been named M.B.E., O.B.E., one of the two. I can’t recall. She’d done a portrait of the Queen that had been well-received by the critics—some of them were actually calling it ‘the conscience of the nation’ or some such critical nonsense. She’d had several successful showings at the Royal Academy. She was being touted as the new darling of art.”

“Interesting,” Lynley said, “because she’s not what one might call a modern artist, is she? One would think that the darling of the art world would have to be forging into some kind of new territory. But I’ve seen her work, and she doesn’t seem to be doing that.”