And for what reward? Just the nebulous hope that this lovely creature-this complete individual over whom one had absolutely no control-would somehow not make the same mistakes, repeat the same patterns, or know the same pain that the parents had lived through and inflicted on each other.
Outside, Justine was tying back her hair at the nape of her neck. Glyn took note of the fact that to do so she used a scarf that matched both the colour of her tracksuit and the colour of her shoes. Idly, she wondered if Justine ever left the house in anything less than a complete ensemble, and she chuckled at the sight of her.
Even if one wished to criticise the fact that Justine chose to go exercising just two days after her stepdaughter’s murder, one certainly couldn’t condemn her for her choice of colour. It was thoughtfully appropriate.
Such a hypocrite, Glyn thought, her lower lip curling. She turned from the sight of her.
Justine had left the house without a word, sleek and cool and utterly patrician, but no longer as controlled as she liked to be. Their confrontation this morning in the breakfast room had taken care of that, with the real woman smoked out from beneath the guise of dutiful hostess and professor’s perfect wife. So now she would run, to tone up that lovely, seductive body, to work up a fragrant rose-scented sweat.
But it was more than that. She had to run now. And she had to hide. Because the fact beneath the fiction that was Justine Weaver had finally been revealed in the breakfast room in that fleeting moment when her normally guileless, butter-wouldn’t-melt features became rigid with the culpability that lay beneath them. The truth was out.
She had hated Elena. And now that she was off for her run, Glyn was ready to search out the evidence which would prove that Justine’s facade of well-bridled feelings skilfully hid the desperation of a killer.
Outside the house, she heard the dog barking, a happy sound of excitement that rapidly faded towards Adams Road. They were off, the two of them. Whatever time she had until Justine’s return, Glyn was determined to use every moment.
She bustled to the master bedroom with its sleek Danish furniture and shapely brass lamps. She went to the long, low chest and began opening drawers.
“Georgina Higgins-Hart.” The weasel-faced constable squinted at his notebook, the cover of which bore a stain that looked suspiciously like pizza sauce. “A member of Hare and Hounds. Working on an M.Phil. in Renaissance Literature. Newcastle girl.” He snapped the notebook closed. “President of the College and the senior tutor had no trouble identifying the body, Inspector. They’ve both known her since she came up to Cambridge three years back.”
The constable stood posted outside the closed door of the girl’s bed-sitting room.
He was positioned like a guard, legs spread and arms folded across his chest, and his expression-flickering indecisively between smug judgement and outright derision- indicated the degree to which he considered the inadequacies of New Scotland Yard CID responsible for this latest Cambridge killing.
Lynley said only, “Do you have the key, Constable?” and took it from the man’s palm when he handed it over.
Georgina, he saw, had been a devotee of Woody Allen, and most of the bed-sit’s limited wall space was given over to posters celebrating his films. Bookshelves took up the rest of the space, and on them sat an eclectic display of the girl’s possessions, everything from a collection of ancient Raggedy Ann dolls to a seriously extensive selection of wine. She had lined up what few books she owned onto the mantel of the bricked-in fi replace. They were held in place on either end by a dispirited-looking miniature palm.
With the constable outside and the door closed upon him, Lynley sat on the edge of the single bed. A pink duvet covered it, with a large bouquet of yellow paeonies embroidered into its centre. His fingers traced the pattern of flowers and leaves as his mind traced the pattern of the two killings.
The outline comprised the most obvious details: a second runner from Hare and Hounds; a second girl; a second victim who was tall and lithe and long-haired and engaged-in the darkness-in an early morning’s workout. Those were the superficial similarities. But if the killings were connected, there had to be others.
And there were, of course. The most immediately apparent was the fact that Georgina Higgins-Hart, like Elena Weaver, had a relationship with the English Faculty. Although she was a postgraduate, Lynley could not overlook the fact that, in her fourth year at the University, she would have known many of the professors, most of the lecturers, and everyone associated with her own field of Renaissance Literature, those writings-both European and British-of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. He knew what Havers was going to make of this information when she learned of it, and he couldn’t deny the connection it suggested.
But he also couldn’t ignore the fact that Georgina Higgins-Hart was a member of Queens’ College. Nor could he deny the additional connection that Queens’ College implied.
He got to his feet and went to the desk which was tucked into an alcove whose walls were hung with a collection of framed stills from Sleeper, Bananas, and Take the Money and Run. He was reading the opening paragraph of an essay on The Winter’s Tale when the door opened and Sergeant Havers came into the room.
She joined him at the desk. “Well?”
“Georgina Higgins-Hart,” he said. “Renaissance Literature.” He could sense her smile as she matched the period of time with its most signifi cant author.
“I knew it. I knew it. We need to get back to his house and have a go at fi nding that shotgun, Inspector. I say we get some of Sheehan’s blokes to tear the place apart.”
“You can hardly think that a man of Thorsson’s intelligence would blast a young girl into oblivion and then simply replace the gun among his belongings. He knows he’s under suspicion, Sergeant. He isn’t a fool.”
“He doesn’t need to be a fool,” she said. “He just needs to be desperate.”
“Beyond that, as Sheehan pointed out, we’re standing on the threshold of the pheasant season. Shotguns abound. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the University itself has an outdoor society devoted to hunting. If there’s a student handbook on the mantel, you can check on that yourself.”
She didn’t move. “You can’t mean to suggest that these killings aren’t related.”
“I don’t mean to suggest that. I think they are. But not necessarily in the most obvious fashion.”
“Then how? What other connection is there but the most obvious ones which, by the way, we’ve been handed on a platter? Okay, I know you’re going to argue that she was a runner so there’s another connection for us to play with. And I know she had the same general appearance as the Weaver girl. But frankly, Inspector, trying to build a case on those two facts seems a lot shakier than building a case on Thorsson.” She seemed to sense his inclination to dispute the position she was taking. She went on more insistently. “We know there was some truth in what Elena Weaver claimed about Thorsson. He as much as demonstrated that this morning. So if he was harassing her, why not this girl as well?”
“There’s another connection, Havers. Beyond Thorsson. Beyond running.”
“What?”
“Gareth Randolph. He’s a member of Queens’.”
She didn’t look either pleased with or intrigued by this piece of information. She said, “Right. Quite. And his motive, Inspector?”
Lynley fingered through the items on Georgina’s desk. He catalogued them mentally and considered his sergeant’s question, trying to develop a hypothetical response that would fi t both murders.