Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

“But she wasn’t those things.”

“Would you still be saying it wasn’t an issue?”

“I don’t know. I can’t say. I can only say that Elena’s being deaf wasn’t an issue. Not for me.”

“You’re lying.”

“Sir.”

“You saw her as a freak.”

“I didn’t.”

“You were embarrassed by her voice and pronunciation, by the fact that she couldn’t ever tell how loud she was speaking so that when you were out in public together, people would hear that odd voice. They’d turn, they’d be curious. And you’d feel embarrassed with all those eyes on you. And ashamed, of her, of yourself, of being embarrassed in the first place. Not the great liberal that you once thought you were. Always wishing that she were normal because if she were-if she just could hear-then you really wouldn’t feel as if you owed her something more than you were able to give.”

Adam felt his body going cold, but he didn’t respond. He wanted to pretend that he hadn’t heard, or at the very least, to keep his face from revealing the extent to which he comprehended the underlying meaning of what the professor had said. He saw that he failed to do so on both scores, for Weaver’s own face seemed to crumble in on itself and he said, “Oh God.”

He walked to the mantel where Adam had continued to place the gathering collection of envelopes and messages. With what appeared to be a tremendous effort, he swept them up and carried them to his desk and sat down. He began to open them, slowly, ponderously, his movements weighted by twenty years of denial and guilt.

Adam cautiously lowered himself into his chair. He went back to his notes, but he saw this time even less than he had managed to see before. He knew that he owed Dr. Weaver some sort of reassurance, a reaching out in fellowship and love. But nothing in his twenty-six years of limited experience provided him with the words to tell the other man that there was no sin in feeling what he felt. The only sin was in running away from it.

He heard the professor quake with a convulsive sound. He turned in his chair.

Weaver, he saw, had been opening the envelopes. And although the contents of at least three of them lay on his lap and another was crumpled into his fist, he was looking at nothing. He had removed his spectacles and covered his eyes with his hand. He was weeping.

Melinda Powell was about to wheel her bicycle from Queens’ Lane into Old Court when a panda car pulled up less than half a block away. A uniformed policeman got out of it, as did the President of Queens’ College along with the senior tutor. The three of them stood talking in the cold, arms folded across their chests, breath clouding the air, faces grave and grim. The policeman nodded at something the President was saying to the senior tutor, and as they moved apart from one another, preparatory to the policeman’s taking his leave, a noisy Mini rumbled into the lane from Silver Street and parked behind them.

Two people emerged, a tall, blond man wearing a cashmere overcoat and a squat, square woman swathed in scarves and wool. They joined the others, the blond man producing some sort of identification and the President of the College following up by offering his hand. There was a great deal of earnest conversation, a gesture from the President towards the side entrance to the college, and what appeared to be some sort of direction given by the blond to the uniformed policeman. He nodded and came trotting back to where Melinda stood with her mittened hands curved round the handlebars of her bike, feeling the cold from the metal seeping through the knit wool like strips of damp. He said, “Sorry, miss,” as he scooted past her and stepped through the gateway into the college.

Melinda followed him. She’d been gone most of the morning, struggling with an essay she was rewriting for the fourth time in an effort to make her points clear prior to showing it to her supervisor, who would, with his usual bent for academic sadism, no doubt tear it to shreds. It was nearly noon. And although it was typical to see the occasional member of college strolling through Old Court at this time of day, when Melinda emerged from the turreted passage that led to Queens’ Lane, she found numerous small clumps of students having hushed conversations on the path between the two rectangles of lawn while a larger group gathered at the staircase door to the left of the north turret.

It was through this door that the policeman disappeared after he stopped for a moment to answer a question. Melinda faltered when she saw this. Her bicycle felt heavy, as if a rusting chain made it difficult to push, and she lifted her eyes to the top fl oor of the building where she tried to see through the windows of that misshapen room tucked under the eaves.

“What’s going on?” she asked a boy who was passing. He wore a sky blue anorak and matching knit cap with the words Ski Bulgaria blazed onto it in red.

“Some runner,” he said. “Got bagged this morning.”

“Who?”

“Another bird from Hare and Hounds, they said.”

Melinda felt dizzy. She heard him ask, “You all right?” but she didn’t respond. Instead, with every sense numbed, she pushed her bicycle towards the door of Rosalyn Simpson’s staircase.

“She promised ,” Melinda whispered to herself. And just for a moment the overwhelming nature of Rosalyn’s betrayal was even more devastating than was her death.

She hadn’t extracted the promise from her in bed when resolutions weaken in the face of desire. Nor had she engaged in a tear-fi lled confrontation in which she used Rosalyn’s past vulnerabilities as tools of successful manipulation. Instead, she had opted for dis-cussion-trying to remain calm and to avoid falling into the panic and hysteria which she knew would drive Rosalyn away eventually if she didn’t learn to get it under control-and she urged her lover to consider the dangers of continuing to run while a killer was at large. She expected a fight, especially since she knew how much Rosalyn regretted the earlier impulsive promise that had led her to Oxford on Monday morning. But instead of an argument or even a refusal to discuss the issue, Rosalyn agreed. She wouldn’t run again until the killer was found. Or if she ran, she would not run alone.

They had parted at midnight. Still a couple, Melinda thought, still in love…Although they hadn’t made love as she had hoped they might in what she’d imagined all Tuesday would be a celebration of Rosalyn’s coming forward and admitting her sexual preference to the world. It hadn’t worked out that way. Rosalyn had pleaded exhaustion, speaking of an essay she had to work on and expressing a need to be alone in order to come to terms with Elena Weaver’s death. All an excuse, Melinda realised now, all part of the beginning of the end between them.

And didn’t it always happen that way? The initial rapture of love. The encounters, the hopes. The growing intimacy. A prayer for shared dreams. Joyful communication. And, ultimately, disappointment. She had thought that Rosalyn was going to be different. But it was obvious now. She was a liar and a cheat like all the rest.

Bitch, she thought. Bitch. You promised and you lied what else did you lie about who else did you sleep with did you sleep with Elena?

She leaned her bicycle against the wall- indifferent to the fact that the college rules explicitly required that she take it elsewhere- and elbowed her way into the crowd. She saw that one of the porters stood just inside the entry, barring the doorway to the curious and looking one part grim and one part angry and several other parts disgusted. Over the murmur of voices, she heard him say, “Shotgun. Blasted her direct in the face.”