Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

“She talked about being a purist in the past.”

“That’s always been part of her persona. As has the isolation. Grantchester, not London. The world comes to her. She doesn’t go to the world.”

“You never worked with her canvases while you were at the museum?”

“What need would I have? Her work’s recent, Tommy. It doesn’t need to be restored.”

“But you’ve seen them. You’re familiar with them.”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

Lady Helen said, “Is her art at the root of this, Tommy?” He gave his attention to the spotted brown rug that partially covered the fl oor. “I don’t know. She said she hadn’t done anything artistically in months. She said she was afraid that she’d lost the passion to create. The morning of the murder was the day she’d designated to start painting-or sketching, or something-again. It seemed like a superstition of hers. Paint on this day, paint at this spot, or give it up forever. Is that possible, Pen? That someone would give over creating-would actually lose it somehow-and find the struggle to come back so enormous that it would end up tied in to exterior influences such as where one paints and what one paints and exactly at what time one paints?”

Penelope stirred in her chair. “You can’t be that naive. Of course it’s possible. People have gone mad over the belief that they’ve lost the power to create. People have killed themselves over it.”

Lynley raised his head. He saw that Lady Helen was watching him. Both of them had leaped to the same conclusion with Penelope’s final words. “Or kill someone else?” Lady Helen said.

“Someone who got in the way of creativity?” Lynley asked.

“Camille and Rodin?” Penelope said. “They certainly killed each other, didn’t they? At least metaphorically.”

“But how could this University girl have got in the way of Sarah Gordon’s creativity?” Lady Helen asked. “Did they even know each other?”

He thought of Ivy Court, her use of the name Tony. He dwelt on every conjecture he and Havers had developed to explain Sarah Gordon’s presence there on the previous night.

“Perhaps it wasn’t the girl who got in her way,” he said. “Perhaps it was her father.” Yet even as he spoke, he could list the arguments against that conclusion. The call to Justine Weaver, the knowledge of Elena’s running, the entire question of time, the weapon that had been used to beat her, the disposal of that weapon. The relevant issues were motive, means, and opportunity. He couldn’t argue that Sarah Gordon had any of them.

“I mentioned Whistler and Ruskin while I was talking to her,” he said pensively. “She reacted to that. So perhaps her failure to create over the last year grew out of some critic’s hatchet-job of her work.”

“That’s a possibility, if she’d had negative criticism,” Penelope said.

“But she hasn’t?”

“Nothing major that I know of.”

“So what stops the flow of creativity, Pen? What impedes passion?”

“Fear,” she said.

He looked at Lady Helen. She dropped her eyes from his. “Fear of what?” he asked.

“Failure. Rejection. Offering something of the self to someone-to the world-and having it stomped to bits. That would do it, I should guess.”

“But that didn’t happen to her?”

“Not to Sarah Gordon. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that she isn’t afraid it might happen in the future. Lots of people are felled by their own success.”

Penelope looked towards the door as, in the other room, the refrigerator’s motor coughed and whirred. She got to her feet. The rocker creaked a final time with her movement.

“I’d not thought about art for at least this last year.” She brushed her hair back off her face and smiled at Lynley. “How odd. It was quite nice to talk about it.”

“You’ve got a lot to say.”

“Once. Yes. I did have once.” She headed towards the stairway and waved him back when he began to rise. “I’m going to check on the baby. Good night, Tommy.”

“Good night.”

Lady Helen said nothing until her sister’s footsteps sounded along the upper corridor, until a door opened and shut. Then she turned to Lynley.

“That was good for her. You must have known it would be. Thank you, Tommy.”

“No. Pure selfishness. I wanted information. I thought Pen could provide it. That’s all of it, Helen. Well, not quite. I wanted to see you. There doesn’t seem to be an end to that.”

She got to her feet. He did likewise. They headed for the front door. He reached for his overcoat, but turned to her impulsively before he took it from the stand.

He said, “Miranda Webberly’s playing jazz tomorrow night at Trinity Hall. Will you come?” When she glanced towards the stairs, he went on with, “A few hours, Helen. Pen can deal with them alone. Or we can collar Harry at Emmanuel. Or bring in one of Sheehan’s constables. That’s probably the best bet for Christian anyway. So will you come? Randie plays a mean trumpet. According to her father, she’s become a female Dizzy Gillespie.”

Lady Helen smiled. “All right, Tommy. Yes. I’ll come.”

He felt his heart lift, despite the probability that she was accommodating him only as a means of showing her gratitude for having taken Pen away from her malaise for a few minutes. “Good,” he said. “Half past seven, then. I’d suggest we have dinner as well, but I won’t push my luck.” He took his overcoat from the rack and slung it over his shoulder. The cold wouldn’t bother him. A moment of hope seemed enough protection against anything.

She knew what he was feeling, as she always did. “It’s just a concert, Tommy.”

He didn’t avoid her meaning. “I know that. Besides, we couldn’t possibly make it to Gretna Green and back in time for Christian’s breakfast, could we? But even if we could, doing the dread deed in front of the local blacksmith would never be my idea of a way to get married, so you’re relatively safe. For an evening, at least.”

Her smile widened. “That’s an enormous comfort.”

He touched her cheek. “God knows I want you to be comfortable, Helen.”

He waited for her to move, tried to make her do so through allowing himself if only for a moment to feel the sheer, telling force of his own desire. Her head tilted slightly, pressing her cheek against his hand.

He said, “You won’t fail this time. Not with me. I won’t let you.”

“I love you,” she said. “At the bottom of it all.”

“Barbara? Lovey? Have you gone to bed? Because the lights are out and I don’t want to disturb you if you’re asleep. You need your sleep. It’s your beauty sleep, I know. But if you’re still up, I thought we might talk about Christmas. It’s early, of course, but still one wants to be prepared with gift ideas and decisions about which invitations to accept and which to decline.”

Barbara Havers closed her eyes briefl y, as if by that activity she could shut out the sound of her mother’s voice. Standing in the darkness at her bedroom window, she looked down on the back garden where a cat was slinking along the top of the fence that separated their property from that of Mrs. Gustafson. Its attention was speared onto the snarl of weeds that grew in place of what once had been a narrow strip of lawn. He was hunting a rodent. The garden was probably swarming with them. Barbara saluted him silently. Have at them, she thought.

Near her face, the curtains gave off the odours of old cigarette smoke and heavy dust. Once a crisp, starched white cotton sprigged with clusters of forget-me-nots, they hung limp and grey, and against this background of grime the cheerful blue fl owers had long since given up the effort of contrast. Now they looked largely like smudges of charcoal set against an ever-darkening, bleak fi eld of ash.