“It’s not working,” she said. She fl ung the bit of paper into the rubbish basket. “I wish someone would tell me why the hell nothing ever seems to work out.”
“Go home,” he said. “See to her. I’ll handle things here.”
“There’s too much for you to do. It’s not fair.”
“It may not be fair. But it’s also an order. Go home, Barbara. You can be there by fi ve. Come back in the morning.”
“I’ll check out Thorsson fi rst.”
“There’s no need for that. He’s not going anywhere.”
“I’ll check him out anyway.” She took up her shoulder bag and picked her coat off the floor. When she turned to him, he saw that her nose and cheeks had become quite red.
He said, “Barbara, the right thing is sometimes the most obvious thing. You know that, don’t you?”
“That’s the hell of it,” she replied.
“My husband isn’t home, Inspector. He and Glyn have gone to make the funeral arrangements.”
“I think you can give me the information I need.”
Justine Weaver looked beyond him to the drive where the fading afternoon light was winking along the right wing of his car. Brows drawn together, she appeared to be trying to decide what to do about him. She crossed her arms and pressed her fingers into the sleeves of her gabardine blazer. It might have been a gesture to keep herself warm, save for the fact that she didn’t move away from the door to get out of the wind.
“I don’t see how. I’ve told you everything I know about Sunday night and Monday morning.”
“But not, I dare say, everything you know about Elena.”
Her eyes moved off the car to him. Hers, he saw, were morning glory blue, and their colour needed no heightening through an appropriate choice of clothes. Although her presence at home at this hour suggested that she hadn’t gone to work that day, she was dressed with nearly as much formality as she had been on the previous night, in a taupe blazer, a blouse buttoned to the throat and printed with the soft impression of small leaves, and slim wool trousers. She’d swept her long hair off her face with a single comb.
She said, “I think you ought to speak with Anthony, Inspector.”
Lynley smiled. “Indeed.”
In the street, the double tin ringing of a bicycle bell was met by the answering honk of a horn. Closer by, three hawfinches swept in an arc from the roof to the ground, their distinctive call-tzik-like a repetitive, single-word conversation. They hopped on the drive and pecked at the gravel and, as one unit, shot into the air again. Justine followed their flight to a cypress on the edge of the lawn. Then she said:
“Come in,” and stepped back from the door.
She took his overcoat from him, smoothed it round the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, and led him into the sitting room where they had met on the previous night. Unlike the previous night, however, she made no offer of refreshment. Instead, she went to the glass tea table along the wall and made a small adjustment to its arrangement of silk tulips. That done, she turned to face him, hands clasped loosely in front of her. In that setting, dressed and posed as she was, she looked like a mannequin. Lynley wondered what it took to fracture her control.
He said, “When did Elena arrive in Cambridge for Michaelmas term this year?”
“The term began the first week of October.”
“I’m aware of that. I was wondering if she came here in advance, perhaps to stay with you and her father. It would take a few days to settle into the college, I should think. Her father would want to help her.”
Her right hand slowly climbed her left arm, stopping just above the elbow where her thumbnail dug in and began to trace a circular pattern. “She must have arrived sometime towards the middle of September because we had a gathering for some of the history faculty on the thirteenth and she was here for the party. I remember that. Shall I check the calendar? Do you need the exact date when she came to us?”
“She stayed here with you and your husband when she first came to town?”
“As much as Elena could be said to stay anywhere. She was on the go, in and out most of the time. She liked to be active.”
“All night?”
Her hand climbed to her shoulder, then rested beneath the collar of her blouse like a cradle for her neck. “That’s a curious question. What is it you’re asking?”
“Elena was eight weeks pregnant when she died.”
A quick tremor passed across her face, like a frisson that was emotional rather than physical. Before he could assess it, she had dropped her eyes. Her hand, however, remained at her throat.
“You knew,” Lynley said.
She looked up. “No. But I’m not surprised.”
“Because of someone she was seeing? Someone you knew about?”
Her gaze went from him to the sitting room doorway as if she expected to see Elena’s lover standing there.
“Mrs. Weaver,” Lynley said, “right now we’re looking directly at a possible motive for your stepdaughter’s murder. If you know something, I’d appreciate your telling me about it.”
“This should come from Anthony, not from me.”
“Why?”
“Because I was her stepmother.” She returned her gaze to him. It was remarkably cool. “Do you understand? I don’t have the sort of rights you seem to think I have.”
“Rights to speak ill of this particular dead?”
“If you will.”
“You didn’t like Elena. That’s obvious enough. But all things considered, you’re hardly in a unique situation. No doubt you’re one of millions of women who don’t much care for the children they’ve been saddled with through a second marriage.”
“Children who generally aren’t murdered, Inspector.”
“The stepmother’s secret hope transformed into reality?” He saw the answer in her instinctive shrinking away from him as he asked the question. Quietly, he said, “It’s no crime, Mrs. Weaver. And you’re not the first person to have your blackest wish granted beyond your wildest dreams.”
She left the tea table abruptly and walked to the sofa, where she sat. Not leaning back against it, not sinking into it, but perched on the edge with her hands in her lap and her back like a rod. She said, “Please sit down, Inspector Lynley.” When he did so, taking a place in the leather armchair that faced the sofa, she continued. “All right. I knew that Elena was”-she seemed to be searching for an appropriate euphemism-“sexual.”
“Sexually active?” And when she nodded, pressing her lips together as if with the intention of smoothing out the salmon lipstick she wore, Lynley said, “Did she tell you?”
“It was obvious. I could smell it on her. When she had sex she didn’t always bother with washing herself afterwards, and it’s a rather distinctive odour, isn’t it?”
“You didn’t counsel her? Your husband didn’t speak to her?”
“About her hygiene?” Justine’s expression was mildly, if only distantly, amused. “I think Anthony preferred to remain oblivious of what his nose was telling him.”
“And you?”
“I tried to talk to her several times. At fi rst I thought that she might not be aware of how she ought to be taking care of herself. I also thought it might be wise to find out if she was taking precautions against pregnancy. Frankly, I’d never got the impression that she and Glyn engaged in many mother-daughter conversations.”
“She didn’t want to talk to you, I take it?”
“On the contrary, she did talk. In fact, she was rather entertained by what I had to say. She informed me that she’d been on the pill since she was fourteen years old when she began fucking-her word, Inspector, not mine-the father of one of her school friends. Whether that’s true or not, I have no idea. As to her personal hygiene, Elena knew all about how to take care of herself. She went unwashed deliberately. She wanted people to know she was having sex. Particularly, I think, she wanted her father to know.”