Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

She cocked her pretty head to one side. “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m making this up.”

“Not at all. I’m just wondering if and when he asked you to speak to us.”

“He didn’t ask me to speak to you. He wouldn’t do that. It’s just that he told me this morning that you’d been to see him and taken some of his clothes and actually thought…” Her voice wavered momentarily and she reached for the tea, drinking this time. She kept the cup balanced on her small, white palm. “Lenny had nothing to do with Elena. He’s in love with me.”

Sergeant Havers gave a delicate cough. Catherine looked at her sharply.

“I can see what you’re thinking, that I’m just some simple-minded tart to him. But that’s not how it is. We’re going to be married.”

“Quite.”

“We are! When I’ve graduated.”

Lynley said, “What time did Mr. Thorsson leave you?”

“Six forty-fi ve.”

“Was this from your room at St. Stephen’s?”

“I don’t live in college. I share a house with three other girls off Mill Road. Towards Ramsey Town.”

And not, Lynley thought, towards Crusoe’s Island. “Are you certain of the time?”

“I don’t have a doubt.”

Havers tapped her pencil against a page of her notebook. “Why?”

There was a fair degree of pride in Catherine’s answer. “Because I’d looked at the clock when he first woke me up and I looked once again when we finished. I wanted to see how long he lasted this time. Seventy minutes. He finished at 6:40.”

“A real marathon performer.” Havers nodded. “You must have felt like chopped meat.”

“Havers,” Lynley said quietly.

The girl got to her feet. “Lenny said you wouldn’t believe me. He said you especially”- this with a finger pointed at Havers-“wanted to make him pay. Pay for what, I asked him. You’ll see, he said, you’ll see when you talk to her.” She put on her beret and her scarf. She squeezed her gloves into balls. “Well, I see. I do. He’s a wonderful man. He’s tender. He’s loving and brilliant and he’s been hurt so badly in his life because he cares too much. He cared for Elena Weaver and she took it the wrong way. And then when he wouldn’t sleep with her, she went to Dr. Cuff with this despicable story…If you can’t see the truth-”

“Was he with you last night?” Havers asked.

The girl drew up, hesitated. “What?”

“Did he spend the night with you again?”

“I…No. He had a lecture he was working on. And a paper he’s been writing.” Her voice steadied, grew stronger. “He’s working on a study of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It’s a thesis about the tragic heroes. Victims of their time, he’s arguing, conquered not by their own tragic flaws but by the prevailing social conditions. It’s radical, brilliant. He was working on it last night and-”

“Where?” Havers asked.

For a moment, the girl faltered again. She gave no response.

“Where?” Havers asked.

“He was at home.”

“He told you he was home all night?”

Her hand closed more tightly round her crumpled gloves. “Yes.”

“He wouldn’t have left sometime? Perhaps to see someone?”

“To see someone? Who? Who would he want to see? I was at a meeting. I got home quite late. He hadn’t been by, he hadn’t phoned. When I phoned, he didn’t answer, but I merely assumed…I was the only one he’d be seeing. The only one. So…” Her eyes dropped. She fumbled with putting on her gloves. “I was the only one…” She swung to the door, turned back once as if to say something to them, turned away. The door remained opened behind her when she left.

The wind whipped in quickly. It was cold and damp.

Havers took up her teacup and lifted it in a salute to the girl’s departure. “Quite a chap, our Lenny.”

“He’s not the killer,” Lynley said.

“No. He’s not. At least not Elena’s.”

Penelope answered the door when Lynley rang the bell in Bulstrode Gardens at half past seven that evening. She was carrying the baby against her shoulder, and although she was still garbed only in a dressing gown and slippers, her hair had been washed and it fell round her shoulders in fine, soft waves. There was a scent of fresh powder in the air surrounding her.

She said, “Tommy. Hello,” and led him into the sitting room where several large volumes were open on the sofa, competing for space with a child-sized Colt.45, a cowboy hat, and a mound of clean laundry that seemed to consist mostly of pyjamas and nappies.

“You got me interested in Whistler and Ruskin last evening, “Penelope said in reference to the volumes which, he saw, were all art books. “The dispute between them is part of art history now, but I hadn’t thought about it in years. What a fighter Whistler was. No matter what one thinks of his work-and it was controversial enough at the time…just consider the Peacock Room in the Leyland house-one simply can’t help admiring him.”

She went to the sofa and made a nest of the laundry into which she placed the baby who gurgled happily and kicked her feet in the air. She unearthed one book from beneath the stack and said, “This actually has part of the trial transcript in it. Imagine taking on the most influential art critic of your time and suing him for libel. I can’t think of anyone who’d have the gumption to do that to a critic today. Listen to his assessment of Ruskin.” She picked up the book and ran her finger down the page. “Here it is. ‘It is not only when criticism is inimical that I object to it, but when it is incompetent. I hold that none but an artist can be a competent critic.”’ She laughed lightly and brushed her hair back from her cheeks. It was a gesture peculiarly like one of Helen’s. “Imagine saying that about John Ruskin. What an upstart Whistler was.”

“Was he speaking the truth?”

“I think what he said is true of all criticism, Tommy. In the case of painting, an artist bases his evaluation of a piece upon knowledge that’s grown from both his education and his experience. An art critic, or any critic for that matter, works from an historical frame of reference-what’s been done before-and from theory-how it ought to be done now. That’s all well and good: theory, technique, and being grounded in the basics. But, really, it takes an artist to truly understand another artist and his work.”

Lynley joined her at the sofa where one of the books was open to Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket . “I’m not that familiar with his work,” he said. “Other than the painting of his mother.”

She grimaced. “To be remembered for such a dreary piece instead of for these. But then, that’s not really fair of me, is it? His mother was a fine study in composition and colour- or actually the lack of primary colour and light-but the river pictures are splendid. Look at them. They have a certain glory, don’t they? What a challenge to paint the darkness, to see substance in shadows.”

“Or in fog?” Lynley asked.

Penelope looked up from the book. “Fog?”

“Sarah Gordon,” Lynley explained. “She was getting ready to paint in the fog when she found Elena Weaver’s body Monday morning. That’s been part of a stumbling block for me when it comes to evaluating her role in what happened. Would you say that painting the fog is the same as painting the darkness?”

“I’d say it’s not much different.”

“But-like Whistler-it would mean a new style?”

“Yes. But a change in style isn’t uncommon among artists, is it? One merely has to consider Picasso. The blue period. Cubism. He was always stretching.”