Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

She bustled to the master bedroom with its sleek Danish furniture and shapely brass lamps. She went to the long, low chest and began opening drawers.

“Georgina Higgins-Hart.” The weasel-faced constable squinted at his notebook, the cover of which bore a stain that looked suspiciously like pizza sauce. “A member of Hare and Hounds. Working on an M.Phil. in Renaissance Literature. Newcastle girl.” He snapped the notebook closed. “President of the College and the senior tutor had no trouble identifying the body, Inspector. They’ve both known her since she came up to Cambridge three years back.”

The constable stood posted outside the closed door of the girl’s bed-sitting room.

He was positioned like a guard, legs spread and arms folded across his chest, and his expression-flickering indecisively between smug judgement and outright derision- indicated the degree to which he considered the inadequacies of New Scotland Yard CID responsible for this latest Cambridge killing.

Lynley said only, “Do you have the key, Constable?” and took it from the man’s palm when he handed it over.

Georgina, he saw, had been a devotee of Woody Allen, and most of the bed-sit’s limited wall space was given over to posters celebrating his films. Bookshelves took up the rest of the space, and on them sat an eclectic display of the girl’s possessions, everything from a collection of ancient Raggedy Ann dolls to a seriously extensive selection of wine. She had lined up what few books she owned onto the mantel of the bricked-in fi replace. They were held in place on either end by a dispirited-looking miniature palm.

With the constable outside and the door closed upon him, Lynley sat on the edge of the single bed. A pink duvet covered it, with a large bouquet of yellow paeonies embroidered into its centre. His fingers traced the pattern of flowers and leaves as his mind traced the pattern of the two killings.

The outline comprised the most obvious details: a second runner from Hare and Hounds; a second girl; a second victim who was tall and lithe and long-haired and engaged-in the darkness-in an early morning’s workout. Those were the superficial similarities. But if the killings were connected, there had to be others.

And there were, of course. The most immediately apparent was the fact that Georgina Higgins-Hart, like Elena Weaver, had a relationship with the English Faculty. Although she was a postgraduate, Lynley could not overlook the fact that, in her fourth year at the University, she would have known many of the professors, most of the lecturers, and everyone associated with her own field of Renaissance Literature, those writings-both European and British-of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. He knew what Havers was going to make of this information when she learned of it, and he couldn’t deny the connection it suggested.

But he also couldn’t ignore the fact that Georgina Higgins-Hart was a member of Queens’ College. Nor could he deny the additional connection that Queens’ College implied.

He got to his feet and went to the desk which was tucked into an alcove whose walls were hung with a collection of framed stills from Sleeper, Bananas , and Take the Money and Run . He was reading the opening paragraph of an essay on The Winter’s Tale when the door opened and Sergeant Havers came into the room.

She joined him at the desk. “Well?”

“Georgina Higgins-Hart,” he said. “Renaissance Literature.” He could sense her smile as she matched the period of time with its most signifi cant author.

“I knew it. I knew it. We need to get back to his house and have a go at fi nding that shotgun, Inspector. I say we get some of Sheehan’s blokes to tear the place apart.”

“You can hardly think that a man of Thorsson’s intelligence would blast a young girl into oblivion and then simply replace the gun among his belongings. He knows he’s under suspicion, Sergeant. He isn’t a fool.”

“He doesn’t need to be a fool,” she said. “He just needs to be desperate.”

“Beyond that, as Sheehan pointed out, we’re standing on the threshold of the pheasant season. Shotguns abound. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the University itself has an outdoor society devoted to hunting. If there’s a student handbook on the mantel, you can check on that yourself.”

She didn’t move. “You can’t mean to suggest that these killings aren’t related.”

“I don’t mean to suggest that. I think they are. But not necessarily in the most obvious fashion.”

“Then how? What other connection is there but the most obvious ones which, by the way, we’ve been handed on a platter? Okay, I know you’re going to argue that she was a runner so there’s another connection for us to play with. And I know she had the same general appearance as the Weaver girl. But frankly, Inspector, trying to build a case on those two facts seems a lot shakier than building a case on Thorsson.” She seemed to sense his inclination to dispute the position she was taking. She went on more insistently. “We know there was some truth in what Elena Weaver claimed about Thorsson. He as much as demonstrated that this morning. So if he was harassing her, why not this girl as well?”

“There’s another connection, Havers. Beyond Thorsson. Beyond running.”

“What?”

“Gareth Randolph. He’s a member of Queens’.”

She didn’t look either pleased with or intrigued by this piece of information. She said, “Right. Quite. And his motive, Inspector?”

Lynley fingered through the items on Georgina’s desk. He catalogued them mentally and considered his sergeant’s question, trying to develop a hypothetical response that would fi t both murders.

“Perhaps we’re looking at a primary rejection that’s begun seeping into the rest of his life.”

“Elena Weaver brushed him off so he killed her and then finding that single killing not enough to wipe the rejection out of his memory, he’s bent on killing her again and again? Wherever he finds her?” Havers made no effort to hide her incredulity. She ran a restless hand back through her hair and grabbed onto a fi stful which she tugged at impatiently.

“I can’t even begin to swallow that, sir. The means are too different. The Weaver girl may have been killed in a well-planned attack, but attack is the watchword. There was real rage behind what happened to her, a need to hurt as well as to kill. This other-” She waved her hand over the top of the desk as if an indication of its scattering of books and papers would stand as symbol for the death of the second girl-“I think this other was the need to eliminate. Do it fast. Do it simple. But just do it.”

“Why?”

“Georgina was in Hare and Hounds. She probably knew Elena. And if that’s the case, it stands to reason that she probably also knew what Elena intended to do.”

“About Thorsson.”

“And perhaps Georgina Higgins-Hart was just the corroboration Elena needed to make that sexual harassment charge stick. Perhaps Thorsson knew it. If he went to argue with Elena about it on Thursday night, she might well have told him that she wasn’t the only one going to the authorities. And if that was the case, it wasn’t going to be her word against his any longer. It was going to be his against theirs. Those aren’t very sweet odds, are they, Inspector? And that wouldn’t have looked good to anyone.”

Lynley had to admit that Havers’ hypothesis was grounded more solidly in reality than was his. And yet unless they could come up with a viable piece of hard evidence, they were stymied. She seemed to realise this.

“We’ve got the black fibres,” she persisted. “If his clothes make a match, we’re on our way.”