“Someone else?” Lynley repeated. “Randie, if you know something more-”
“I don’t know anything else absolutely for sure, Inspector. And I can’t tell you every little thing, can I, because something I tell you- some little detail-might not even mean anything. But if you took it to heart, people might get hurt, mightn’t they? Dad says that’s the biggest danger in policework.”
Lynley made a mental note to discourage Webberly from waxing philosophical with his daughter in the future. “That’s always possible,” he agreed. “But I’m not about to arrest someone just because you mention his name.” When she said nothing, he leaned across the table and tapped his finger against her coffee cup. “Word of honour, Randie. All right? Do you know something else?”
“What I know about Gareth and Adam and her father came from Elena,” she said. “That’s why I told you. Anything else in my head is nothing but gossip. Or something I maybe saw and didn’t understand. And that can’t be helpful. That could make things go wrong.”
“We’re not gossiping, Randie. We’re trying to get at the truth behind her death. The facts, not conjectures.”
She didn’t immediately respond. She stared at the bottle of whisky on the table. Its label bore a greasy fingerprint stain. She said, “Facts aren’t conclusions. Dad always says that.”
“Absolutely. Agreed.”
She hesitated, even looked over her shoulder as if to make sure they were still alone. “This is about seeing, nothing more,” she said.
“Understood.”
“All right.” She straightened her shoulders as if in preparation, but she still didn’t look as if she wanted to part with the information. “I think she had a row with Gareth on Sunday evening. Only,” she added in a rush, “I can’t know for sure because I didn’t hear them, they talked with their hands. I just caught a glimpse of them in Elena’s room before she shut the door and when Gareth left he was in quite a temper. He banged his way out. Only it could mean nothing because he’s so intense anyway that he’d be acting like that even if they’d been discussing the poll tax.”
“Yes. I see. And after their argument?”
“Elena left as well.”
“What time was this?”
“Round twenty to eight. I never heard her come back.” Miranda seemed to read heightened interest in his face, for she went on hastily. “I don’t think Gareth had anything to do with what’s happened, Inspector. He has a temper, true, and he’s on a tight string, but he wasn’t the only one…” She gnawed at her lip.
“Someone else was here?”
“Noooo…not exactly.”
“Randie-”
Her body slumped. “Mr. Thorsson then.”
“He was here?” She nodded. “Who is he?”
“One of Elena’s supervisors. He lectures in English.”
“When was this?”
“I saw him here twice, actually. But not on Sunday.”
“Day or night?”
“Night. Once probably round the third week of the term. Then again last Thursday.”
“Could he have been here more often?”
She looked reluctant to answer, but she said, “I suppose, yes. But I just saw him twice. Twice is all, Inspector.” Twice is the fact, her voice implied.
“Did she tell you why he came to see her?”
Miranda shook her head slowly. “I think she didn’t much like him because she called him Lenny the Lech. Lennart. He’s Swedish, see. And that’s all I know. Truly. Really.”
“That’s the fact, you mean.” Even as he said it, Lynley felt sure that Miranda Webberly- daughter of her father-could have produced half a dozen conjectures to go with it.
Lynley went through the gatehouse, stopping briefly in the porter’s lodge before stepping out into Trinity Lane. Terence Cuff had wisely seen to it that the rooms set aside for visitors to the college were in St. Stephen’s Court, which along with Ivy Court was across the narrow lane from the rest of the college.
And unlike the rest of the college, it had neither porter nor gatehouse, so it wasn’t locked at night, thereby giving visitors more freedom of movement than the junior members of the college had.
A plain wrought iron fence separated this part of the college from the street. It ran north to south, forming a line of demarcation that was interrupted by the west wall of St. Stephen’s Church. This random rubble building was one of the original parish churches in Cambridge, and its stone quoins, buttresses, and Norman tower seemed strangely at odds with the neat Edwardian brick building that partially encircled it.
Lynley pushed open the iron gate. A second fence inside marked the boundary of the churchyard. There, graves lay dimly illuminated by the same ground lights that shone cones of yellow against the walls of the church where moths fluttered weakly with sodden wings in the glow. The fog had grown even heavier during the time he had spent with Miranda, and it transformed sarcophagi, gravestones, tombs, bushes, and trees into colourless silhouettes laid against a slowly shifting background of mist. Along the wrought iron fence that separated St. Stephen’s Court from the churchyard, perhaps a hundred or more bicycles stood, their handlebars gleaming, slick with the damp.
Passing these, Lynley made his way to Ivy Court, where the porter had earlier shown him to his room at the top of O staircase. It was quiet inside the building itself. These rooms, the porter had told him, were used only by the senior members of the college. They comprised studies and conference rooms where supervisions took place, gyp rooms and smaller rooms with beds for kipping. Since most of the senior fellows lived away from the college, the building was largely unpopulated at night.
Lynley’s room encompassed one of the building’s Dutch gables, and it looked out into Ivy Court and St. Stephen’s graveyard. With brown carpet squares on the fl oor, stained yellow walls, and faded floral curtains at the window, it wasn’t a particularly uplifting environment. Clearly, St. Stephen’s did not expect visitors to embark upon an extended stay.
Left alone there earlier by the porter, he’d found himself slowly examining its contents, touching a musty-smelling armchair, opening a drawer, running his fingers along the empty, adjustable bookshelves that lined one wall. He ran water in the basin. He tested the strength of the single steel rod in a cupboard for holding clothes. He thought about Oxford.
The room had been different but the feeling was the same, that sensation of having the entire world opening up before him, revealing its mysteries even as it held out the promise of satisfactions to come. The blessing of relative anonymity had filled him with the sense of having been newly born. Empty shelves, blank walls, drawers that held nothing. Here, he had thought, he would make his mark. No one need know of his title and background, no one need know of his risible angst. The secret lives of one’s parents had no place in Oxford. Here, he had thought, he would be safe from the past.
He chuckled now to think of how tenaciously he had held on to that fi nal, adolescent belief. He had actually seen himself moving into a golden future in which he had to do absolutely nothing to deal with what had led up to it. How we flee our personal realities, he thought.
His suitcase was still on the desk in the recess made by the gable. It took him less than five minutes to unpack, after which he sat, feeling the room’s chill and his own restless need to be elsewhere. He sought distraction by writing out his fi rst day’s report, a job that would usually be completed by Sergeant Havers but one that he set upon automatically now, grateful for a diversion that would keep thoughts of Helen at bay, if only for an hour or so.
“One call. Yes, sir,” the porter had said as he passed through the lodge.
She’s phoned, Lynley thought. Harry’s come home. And his mood began to lift accordingly, only to plummet to earth when the porter handed him the message. Superintendent Daniel Sheehan of the Cambridge Constabulary would meet with him at half past eight in the morning.