For the Sake of Elena (42 page)

“Has she gone to see family?”

“People loved Elena. Justine couldn’t stand that. But mostly, she couldn’t stand that Anthony loved her. She hated his devotion, how he always tried to make things right between them. She didn’t want that. Because if things went right between Anthony and Elena, things would go wrong between Anthony and Justine. That’s what she thought. And she was sick with jealousy. You’ve finally come for her, haven’t you?”

Eagerness appeared in wet glimmers at the corners of her mouth. She reminded Lynley of the crowds that once gathered to watch public executions, revelling in the vengeful taking of a life. Had there been a possibility to see Justine Weaver drawn and quartered, he had no doubt that this woman would be more than willing to grasp the opportunity. He wanted to tell her that there was, in the end, no real taking of an eye for an eye and no real satisfaction to be found at any bar of justice. For even if the most barbarous kind of punishment were meted out against the perpetrator of a crime, the rage and grief of the victimised remained.

His eyes dropped to the mess on the table. Near the stacked plates and beneath a knife that was smeared with butter lay an envelope with the crest of the University Press on it and Justine’s name—but not her address—written in a firm, masculine hand.

Evidently, Glyn saw the direction of his gaze for she said, “She’s an important executive. You couldn’t really have thought she’d be hanging round here.”

He nodded and began to take his leave.

“Will you arrest her?” she asked again.

He responded with, “I want to ask her a question.”

“I see. Just a question. Quite. Well. Would you arrest her if you had the proof in your hand? If I gave you the proof?” She waited to see the reaction to her questions. She smiled like a perfectly satisfied cat when his steps faltered and he turned to face her. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Oh yes, indeed, Mister Policeman.”

She pushed away from the table and left the room. In a moment, he heard the Irish setter begin barking again and her answering shout from the back of the house: “Shut up, will you!” The dog persisted.

“Here,” she said, returning. She carried two manila folders and, under her arm, what appeared to be an artist’s canvas rolled up. “Anthony had these in the study, hidden at the back of a filing drawer. I found him snivelling over them an hour or so ago, just before he left. Have a look for yourself. I’ve no doubt what conclusion you’ll reach.”

She handed over the folders first. He flipped through the sketches that each contained. All of them were studies of the dead girl, all appeared done by the same hand. They were undeniably skilful, and he admired their quality. None, however, could possibly serve as a motive for murder. He was about to say this when Glyn thrust the canvas at him.

“Now look at this,” she said.

He unrolled it, squatting to place it on the floor because it was quite large and had been doubled over prior to being rolled and stored in the first place. It was, he saw, a spattered piece of canvas with two large rips moving diagonally towards the middle and a central, shorter rip meeting them there. The spattering on it had been created by large gobs of paint—mostly white and red—that looked as if they’d been smeared haphazardly onto the canvas with a palette knife and with no regard for artistic expression. Where they did not meet or overlap, the colours of another oil painting showed through. He stood up and gazed down at it, feeling the first stirring of final comprehension.

“And this,” Glyn said. “It was wrapped up in the canvas when I first unrolled it.”

She slapped into his hand a small brass plaque—perhaps two inches long and three quarters of an inch wide. He took it from his palm and held it to the light, knowing what it was that he would likely see.
ELENA
was engraved in fine script across it.

He looked up at Glyn Weaver and saw the exultant pleasure she was taking from the moment. He knew she was expecting him to comment upon the nature of the motive she’d just presented him. Instead, he asked, “Has Justine gone running while you’ve been in Cambridge?”

This didn’t seem to be the response she expected from him. But she answered well enough although her eyes narrowed with sharp suspicion as she did so. “Yes.”

“In a tracksuit?”

“Well, she wasn’t exactly dressed by Coco Chanel.”

“What colour, Mrs. Weaver?”

“Colour?” With a hint of outrage that he wasn’t keying into the ruined painting and what it implied.

“Yes. The colour.”

“It was black.”

“So just how much more proof do you want that Justine hated my daughter?” Glyn Weaver had followed him out of the breakfast room, leaving behind the smell of old eggs, tuna, butter, and crisps vying with one another in the air for domination. “What’s it going to take to convince you? How much more proof?”

She’d put a hand on his arm and pulled on him till he faced her, standing so close that he could feel her breath on his face and could smell the oily odour of fish each time she exhaled. “He sketched Elena, not his wife. He painted Elena, not his wife. Imagine watching that. Imagine hating each moment as it was going on before your eyes. Right here in this morning room. Because the light’s good here, and he would have wanted to paint her in light that was good.”

Lynley turned the Bentley into Bulstrode Gardens where the street-lamps did not so much cut through the mist as merely colour the top layer of it gold while the rest remained a mass of wet grey. He pulled directly into the semi-circular drive, through a mat of damp leaves fallen and blown from the stand of slim birches at the edge of the property. Without taking particular note of it, he gazed at the house before getting out of the car, considering the nature of the evidence he had with him, reflecting upon the sketches of Elena and what they suggested about the ruined canvas, thinking of the Ceephone, and, above all, playing with time. For it was time upon which the entire case hung.

She would have obliterated the image first and, taking no real or lasting satisfaction in that, she would have moved on to the girl herself second, Glyn Weaver had asserted. She would have pounded her face just as she’d hacked and stabbed at the painting, brutalising and destroying, living out her rage.

But most of that constituted hopeful conjecture, Lynley thought. Only part of it skirted close to the truth. He tucked the canvas under his arm and went to the door.

Harry Rodger answered, Christian and Perdita at his heels. He said only, “It’s Pen you want?” to Lynley’s request, and then to his son, “Go fetch Mummy, Chris.”

When the little boy scampered up the stairway to do so, shouting “Mummy!” and bashing the worn head of a hobbyhorse against the balusters with additional cries of “Ker-blowey, Ker-
blew!
” Rodger nodded Lynley into the sitting room. He swung his daughter onto his hip and glanced without speaking at the canvas beneath Lynley’s arm. Perdita curled herself against her father’s chest.

Above them Christian’s footsteps thumped along the upstairs corridor. His hobbyhorse banged against the wall. “Mummy!” Small fists pounded on a door.

“You’ve brought her some work, haven’t you?” Rodger’s words were polite, his face deliberately impassive.

“I’d like her to look at this, Harry. I need her expertise.”

The other man’s lips offered a brief smile, one which accepted information without indicating that it was at all welcome. He said, “Excuse me, please,” and he walked into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

A moment later, Christian preceded both his mother and his aunt into the sitting room. Somewhere in his sojourn through the house, he’d picked up a totsized vinyl holster, and he was wrestling it inexpertly round his waist, its companion toy gun dangling to his knees. “I shoot you, mister,” he said to Lynley, dragging on the gun’s handle and knocking himself into Lady Helen’s legs in his effort to get it out. “I shoot, Auntie Leen.”

“Those aren’t the wisest words to say to a policeman, Chris.” Lady Helen knelt in front of him, and saying, “Don’t be such a wiggle-worm,” she fastened the holster round his waist.

He giggled and shouted, “Ker-blang you, mister!” and ran to the sofa where he beat the pistol against the pillows.

“If nothing else, he has a fine future in crime,” Lynley noted.

Penelope raised both hands in futility. “It’s nearly his naptime. He gets a bit wild when he’s tired.”

“I’d hate to think what he’s like when he’s fully awake.”

“Ker-plough!” Christian yelled. He rolled onto the floor and began crawling in the direction of the hall, making shooting noises and taking aim at imaginary foes.

Penelope watched him and shook her head. “I’ve considered sedating him until his eighteenth birthday, but what would I do for laughs?” As Christian began an assault on the stairway, she said with a nod towards the canvas, “What have you brought?”

Lynley unrolled it along the back of the sofa, gave her a moment to observe it from across the room, and said, “What can you do with it?”

“Do?”

“Not a restoration, Tommy,” Lady Helen said doubtfully.

Penelope looked up from the canvas. She said, “Heavens. You must be joking.”

“Why?”

“Tommy, it’s a ruin.”

“I don’t need it repaired. I just need to establish what’s underneath the top layer of paint.”

“But how do you even know there’s something underneath it?”

“Look closer. There has to be. You can see it. And besides, it’s the only explanation.”

Penelope asked for no further details. She merely walked to the sofa for a closer look and touched her fingers to the surface of the canvas. “It would take weeks to clean this off,” she said. “You’ve no idea what it would entail. This sort of thing is done inches at a time across a canvas, a single layer at a time. One doesn’t just dump a bottle of solvent on it and wipe it off like a window being cleaned.”

“Blast,” Lynley muttered.

“Ker-blooey!” Christian yelled from his position of potential ambush on the stairs.

“Still…” Penelope tapped her index finger against her lip. “Let me take it into the kitchen and have a look under stronger light.”

Her husband was standing at the stove, flipping through the day’s post. His daughter leaned against him, one arm encircling his leg, one apple cheek pressed against his thigh. Sleepily, she said, “Mummy,” and Rodger raised his head from the letter he was perusing. His eyes took in the canvas that Penelope carried. His face was unreadable.

Penelope said, “If you’ll just clear off the work top,” and waited with the canvas in her hands while Lynley and Lady Helen moved aside the mixing bowls, lunch dishes, story books, and silverware. Then she flopped the canvas down and looked at it thoughtfully.

“Pen,” her husband said.

“In a moment,” she replied. She went to a drawer and took out a magnifying glass, fondly running her fingers through her daughter’s hair as she passed.

“Where’s the baby?” Rodger asked.

Penelope bent over the work top and scrutinised first the individual blotches of paint and then the rips in the canvas itself. “Ultraviolet,” she said. “Perhaps infrared.” She looked up at Lynley. “Do you need the painting itself? Or would a photograph do?”

“Photograph?”

“Pen, I asked—”

“We have three options. An X-ray would show us the entire skeleton of the painting—everything that’s been painted on the canvas no matter how many layers have been used. An ultraviolet light would give us whatever work’s been done on top of the varnish—if there’s been repainting, for instance. An infrared photo would give us whatever comprised the initial sketch for the painting. And any doctoring that’s been done to the signature. If there is a signature, of course. Would any of that be helpful?”

Lynley looked at the lacerated canvas and considered the options. “I should guess an X-ray,” he said reflectively. “But if that doesn’t do it, can we try something else?”

“Certainly. I’ll just—”

“Penelope.” Harry Rodger’s face had mottled, although his voice was determinedly pleasant. “Isn’t it time that the twins had a lie down? Christian’s been acting like a madman for the past twenty minutes, and Perdita’s falling asleep on her feet.”

Penelope glanced at the wall clock that hung above the stove. She chewed on her lip and looked at her sister. Lady Helen smiled faintly, perhaps in acknowledgement, perhaps in encouragement. “You’re right, of course,” Penelope said with a sigh. “They do need to nap.”

“Good. Then—”

“So if you’ll see to them yourself, darling, the rest of us can pop this canvas round to the Fitzwilliam to see what can be done with it. The baby’s been fed. She’s already asleep. And the twins won’t give you much trouble so long as you read them something from
Cautionary Verses
. Christian’s quite partial to that poem about Mathilda. Helen must have read it to him half a dozen times before he dropped off yesterday.” She began rolling up the canvas. “I’ll just need a moment to dress,” she told Lynley.

When she’d left the room, Rodger lifted up his daughter. He looked at the doorway as if in the expectation of Penelope’s return. When that did not occur, when instead they heard her saying, “Daddy will help you have a lie down, Christian darling,” he gave his attention to Lynley for a moment as Christian pounded down the stairs and across the sitting room towards the kitchen.

“She isn’t well,” Rodger said. “You know as well as I that she shouldn’t be leaving this house. I hold you responsible—both of you, Helen—if anything happens.”

“We’re merely going to the Fitzwilliam Museum,” Lady Helen replied, sounding for all the world like a model of reason. “What on earth could possibly happen to her there?”

“Daddy!” Christian flung himself into the room and crashed euphorically against his father’s legs. “Read ’Tilda to me! Now!”

“I’m warning you, Helen,” Rodger said, and stabbing a finger in Lynley’s direction, “I’m warning the both of you.”

“Daddy! Read!”

“Duty appears to be calling, Harry,” Lady Helen replied serenely. “You’ll find their pyjamas beneath the pillows on their beds. And the book—”