Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

Lynley didn’t respond at once. Rather, he strolled to one of the windows which, like the sole window in his own room in the building, was set into one of the ornate Dutch gables overlooking Ivy Court. Unlike his room, however, no desk stood in the recess. Instead, two comfortably battered armchairs faced each other at an angle there, separated by a chipped piecrust table on which lay a copy of a book entitled Edward III: The Cult of Chivalry . Anthony Weaver was its author.

“He’s brilliant.” Adam Jenn’s assertion had the distinct ring of defence. “No one in the country comes close to touching him in medieval history.”

Lynley put on his spectacles, opened the volume, and leafed through a few of the densely worded pages. Arbitrarily, his eyes fell on the words but it was in the abysmal treatment of women as chattels subjugated to the political whims of their fathers and brothers that the age developed its reputation for a diplomatic manoeuvring far superseding any transitory-or spurious-demotic concerns it may have actively promulgated . Having not read university writing in years, Lynley smiled in amusement. He’d forgotten that tendency of the academician to voice his pronouncements with such egregious pomposity.

He read the book’s dedication, For my darling Elena , and tapped the cover closed. He removed his spectacles.

“You’re Dr. Weaver’s graduate student,” he said.

“Yes.” Adam Jenn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Beneath his black academic gown, he wore a white shirt and freshly laundered jeans that had been carefully pressed with creases down the front. He drove his fi sts into the rear pockets of these and waited without speaking, standing next to an oval table across which were spread three open texts and half a dozen handwritten essays.

“How do you come to be studying under Dr. Weaver?” Lynley removed his overcoat and placed it over the back of one of the old armchairs.

“Decent luck for once in my life,” Adam said.

It was a curious non-answer. Lynley raised an eyebrow. Adam read this as Lynley intended and continued.

“I’d read two of his books as an undergraduate. I’d heard him lecture. When he was short-listed for the Penford Chair at the beginning of Easter term last year, I came to ask him if he’d direct my research. To have the Penford Chair as advisor…” He gazed round the room as if its jumble of contents would provide him with an adequate explanation of the importance of Weaver’s place in his life. He settled with, “You can’t go higher.”

“Then this is all a bit of a risk on your end, isn’t it, hooking yourself up with Dr. Weaver so soon? What if he doesn’t get the appointment?”

“It’s worth the risk as far as I’m concerned. Once he gets the Chair, he’ll be fl ooded with requests to direct graduates’ studies. So I got to him fi rst.”

“You seem relatively sure of your man. I’d always gathered these appointments are largely political. A change in the academic climate and a candidate’s fi nished.”

“That’s true enough. Candidates walk a tight-rope. Alienate the search committee, offend some muckety-muck, and they’re done for. But committee’d be fools not to award it to him. As I said, he’s the best medievalist in the country and they’re not going to fi nd anyone to argue with that.”

“I take it he’s unlikely to alienate or offend?”

Adam Jenn laughed boyishly. “ Dr. Weaver? ” was his reply.

“I see. When should the announcement take place?”

“That’s the odd thing.” Adam shook a heavy lock of sandy hair off his forehead. “It should have been announced last July, but the committee went on and on about extending the deadline, and they started checking everyone out like they were looking for red skeletons in somebody’s closet. Stupid, they are.”

“Perhaps merely cautious. I’ve been given to understand that the Chair’s a fairly coveted advancement.”

“It represents historical research at Cambridge. It’s the place they put the best.” Two thin lines of crimson ran along Adam’s cheekbone. No doubt he pictured himself in the Chair in the distant future when Weaver retired.

Lynley moved to the table, glancing down at the essays that were spread across it. “You share these rooms with Dr. Weaver, I’ve been told.”

“I put in a few hours most days, yes. I run my supervisions here as well.”

“And that’s been going on for how long?”

“Since the beginning of term.”

Lynley nodded. “It’s an attractive environment, far nicer than what I remember from my days at university.”

Adam looked round the study at the general mess of essays, books, furniture, and equipment. Obviously, attractive wouldn’t have been the first word to spring to his lips had he been asked to evaluate the room. Then he seemed to combine Lynley’s comment with his initial sight of him a few moments earlier. His head turned towards the door. “Oh, you mean the gyp and the bedroom. Dr. Weaver’s wife fi xed them up for him last spring.”

“In anticipation of the Chair? An elevated professor needs a proper set of rooms?”

Adam grinned ruefully. “That sort of thing. But she didn’t manage to get her way in here. Dr. Weaver wouldn’t let her.” He added this last as if to explain the difference between the study and its companion rooms and concluded with a mildly sardonic, “You know how it is,” in a brotherhood-of-men fashion in which the connotation was clear: Women need to have their fancies tolerated, men are the ones with the sainted toleration.

That Justine Weaver’s hand had not seen to the study was apparent to Lynley. And while it did not actually resemble the disordered sanctum at the rear of Weaver’s house, the similarities to it could not be ignored. Here was the same mild chaos, the same profusion of books, the same air of habitation which the Adams Road room possessed.

One form of academic work or another seemed to be in progress everywhere. A large pine desk served as the heart for labour, holding everything from a word processor to a stack of black binders. The oval table in the room’s centre had the function of conference area, and the gable recess acted as a retreat for reading and study, for in addition to the table which displayed Weaver’s own book, a small case beneath the window, within an arm’s length of both the chairs, held additional volumes. Even the fireplace with its cinnamon tiles served a purpose beyond providing heat from an electric fire, for its mantel functioned as a clearing house for the post, and more than a dozen envelopes lined up across it, all bearing Anthony Weaver’s name. A solitary greeting card stood like a bookend at the far side of the serried collection of letters, and Lynley picked it up, a humorous birthday card with the word Daddy written above the greeting and the round-lettered signature Elena beneath it.

Lynley replaced it among the envelopes and turned to Adam Jenn, who still stood by the table, one hand in his pocket and the other curved round the shoulder rail of one of the chairs. “Did you know her?”

Adam pulled out the chair. Lynley joined him at the table, moving aside two essays and a cup of cold tea in which a thin, unappetising film was fl oating.

Adam’s face was grave. “I knew her.”

“Were you here in the study when she phoned her father Sunday night?”

His eyes went to the Ceephone which sat on a small oak desk next to the fi replace. “She didn’t phone here. Or if she did, it was after I left.”

“What time was this?”

“Round half past seven?” He looked at his watch as if for verification. “I had to meet three blokes at the University Centre at eight, and I stopped by my digs fi rst.”