He was intrigued by the perfection of the gyp, so at odds with what he envisaged Anthony Weaver’s professional environment would be, considering the state of his study at home. Curious to see if some stamp of the man’s individuality evidenced itself elsewhere, he flipped on the lightswitch of the bedroom across the entry and stood in the doorway surveying it.
Above wainscoting painted the colour of forest mushrooms rose walls which were papered in cream with thin brown stripes. Framed pencil sketches hung from these-a pheasant shoot, a fox hunt, a deer chased by hounds, all signed with the single name Weaver-while from the white ceiling a pentagonal brass fi xture shed light on a single bed next to which stood a tripod table holding a brass reading lamp and a matching diptych frame. Lynley crossed the room and picked this up. Elena Weaver smiled from one side, Justine from the other, the first a candid snapshot of the daughter joyfully romping with an Irish setter puppy, the second an earnest studio portrait of the wife, her long hair carefully curled back from her face and her smile close-lipped as if she wished to hide her teeth. Lynley replaced it and looked around reflectively. The hand that had outfitted the kitchen with its chromium appliances and ivory china had apparently seen to the decoration of the bedroom as well. On impulse, he pulled back part of the brown and green counterpane on the bed to fi nd only a bare mattress and unslipped pillow beneath it. The revelation was not the least surprising. He left the room.
As he did so, the study door swung open and he found himself face-to-face with the two young people whose murmured conversation he had heard a few moments earlier. The young man, his broad shoulders emphasised by an academic gown, reached out for the girl when he caught sight of Lynley, and he pulled her back against him protectively.
“Help you with something?” His words were polite enough but the frigid tone conveyed an entirely different message, as did the young man’s features which quickly altered from the relaxed repose that accompanies friendly conversation to the sharpness that signals suspicion.
Lynley glanced at the girl who was clutching a notebook to her chest. She wore a knitted cap from which bright blonde hair spilled. It was drawn low on her forehead, hiding her eyebrows but heightening the colour of her eyes which were violet and, at the moment, very frightened.
Their responses were normal, admirable in the circumstances. An undergraduate in the college had been brutally murdered. Strangers would be neither welcomed nor tolerated. He produced his warrant card and introduced himself.
“Adam Jenn?” he said.
The young man nodded. He said to the girl, “I’ll see you next week, Joyce. But you’ve got to get on with the reading before you do the next essay. You’ve got the list. You’ve got a brain. Don’t be so lazy, okay?” He smiled as if to mitigate the negativity of the fi nal comment, but the smile seemed rote, merely a quick curving of the lips that did nothing to alter the wariness in his hazel eyes.
Joyce said, “Thank you, Adam,” in that breathy sort of voice which always manages to sound as if it’s extending an illicit invitation. She smiled her goodbye and a moment later they heard her clattering noisily down the wooden stairs. It wasn’t until the ground-fl oor staircase door opened and shut upon her departure that Adam Jenn invited Lynley into Weaver’s study.
“Dr. Weaver’s not here,” he said. “If you’re wanting him, that is.”
Lynley didn’t respond at once. Rather, he strolled to one of the windows which, like the sole window in his own room in the building, was set into one of the ornate Dutch gables overlooking Ivy Court. Unlike his room, however, no desk stood in the recess. Instead, two comfortably battered armchairs faced each other at an angle there, separated by a chipped piecrust table on which lay a copy of a book entitled Edward III: The Cult of Chivalry. Anthony Weaver was its author.
“He’s brilliant.” Adam Jenn’s assertion had the distinct ring of defence. “No one in the country comes close to touching him in medieval history.”
Lynley put on his spectacles, opened the volume, and leafed through a few of the densely worded pages. Arbitrarily, his eyes fell on the words but it was in the abysmal treatment of women as chattels subjugated to the political whims of their fathers and brothers that the age developed its reputation for a diplomatic manoeuvring far superseding any transitory-or spurious-demotic concerns it may have actively promulgated. Having not read university writing in years, Lynley smiled in amusement. He’d forgotten that tendency of the academician to voice his pronouncements with such egregious pomposity.
He read the book’s dedication, For my darling Elena, and tapped the cover closed. He removed his spectacles.
“You’re Dr. Weaver’s graduate student,” he said.
“Yes.” Adam Jenn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Beneath his black academic gown, he wore a white shirt and freshly laundered jeans that had been carefully pressed with creases down the front. He drove his fi sts into the rear pockets of these and waited without speaking, standing next to an oval table across which were spread three open texts and half a dozen handwritten essays.
“How do you come to be studying under Dr. Weaver?” Lynley removed his overcoat and placed it over the back of one of the old armchairs.
“Decent luck for once in my life,” Adam said.
It was a curious non-answer. Lynley raised an eyebrow. Adam read this as Lynley intended and continued.
“I’d read two of his books as an undergraduate. I’d heard him lecture. When he was short-listed for the Penford Chair at the beginning of Easter term last year, I came to ask him if he’d direct my research. To have the Penford Chair as advisor…” He gazed round the room as if its jumble of contents would provide him with an adequate explanation of the importance of Weaver’s place in his life. He settled with, “You can’t go higher.”
“Then this is all a bit of a risk on your end, isn’t it, hooking yourself up with Dr. Weaver so soon? What if he doesn’t get the appointment?”
“It’s worth the risk as far as I’m concerned. Once he gets the Chair, he’ll be fl ooded with requests to direct graduates’ studies. So I got to him fi rst.”
“You seem relatively sure of your man. I’d always gathered these appointments are largely political. A change in the academic climate and a candidate’s fi nished.”
“That’s true enough. Candidates walk a tight-rope. Alienate the search committee, offend some muckety-muck, and they’re done for. But committee’d be fools not to award it to him. As I said, he’s the best medievalist in the country and they’re not going to fi nd anyone to argue with that.”
“I take it he’s unlikely to alienate or offend?”
Adam Jenn laughed boyishly. “Dr. Weaver?” was his reply.
“I see. When should the announcement take place?”
“That’s the odd thing.” Adam shook a heavy lock of sandy hair off his forehead. “It should have been announced last July, but the committee went on and on about extending the deadline, and they started checking everyone out like they were looking for red skeletons in somebody’s closet. Stupid, they are.”
“Perhaps merely cautious. I’ve been given to understand that the Chair’s a fairly coveted advancement.”
“It represents historical research at Cambridge. It’s the place they put the best.” Two thin lines of crimson ran along Adam’s cheekbone. No doubt he pictured himself in the Chair in the distant future when Weaver retired.