Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

The police as Eumenides. It was an accusation he’d heard before. And while he acknowledged its partial accuracy-for there had to be a disinterested hand of justice or society crumbled-the convenience of the allegation afforded him a moment’s sour amusement. Pushed right to the edge of truth’s abyss, people always clung tenaciously to the same form of denial: I’m protecting someone else by withholding the truth, protecting someone from harm, from pain, from reality, from suspicion. It was all a variation of an identical theme in which denial wore the guise of self-righteous nobility.

He said, “This isn’t a singular death taking place in a void, Adam. It touches everyone she knew. No one stays protected. Lives have already been destroyed. That’s what murder does. And if you don’t know that, it’s time you learned.”

The young man swallowed. Even across the room, Lynley could hear him do so.

“She took it all as a joke,” he said fi nally. “She took everything as a joke.”

“In this case, what?”

“That her father was worried she’d marry Gareth Randolph. That he didn’t want her to hang round the other deaf students so much. But most of all, that he…I think it was that he loved her so much and that he wanted her to love him as much in return. She took it as a joke. That’s the way she was.”

“What was their relationship like?” Lynley asked, even though he knew how unlikely it was that Adam Jenn would say anything to betray his mentor.

Adam looked down at his fingernails and began to worry the cuticles by pushing his thumb against them. “He couldn’t do enough for her. He wanted to be involved in her life. But it always seemed-” He shoved his hands back into his pockets. “I don’t know how to explain.”

Lynley recalled Weaver’s description of his daughter. He recalled Justine Weaver’s reaction to the description. “Not genuine?”

“It was like he felt he had to keep pouring on the love and devotion. Like he had to keep showing her how much she meant to him so that maybe she’d come to believe it someday.”

“He would have wanted to take special pains with her because she couldn’t hear, I should think. She was in a new environment. He’d have wanted her to succeed. For herself. For him.”

“I know what you’re getting at. You’re heading back towards the Chair. But it’s more than that. It went beyond her studies. It went beyond her being deaf. I think he believed he had to prove himself to her for some reason. But he was so intent on doing that that he never even saw her. Not really. Not entirely.”

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 benefi ts 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 fi rst place-he had ended a marriage only to fi nd 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 selfi sh 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, fl oppy 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.