“Because she was wearing black,” Lynley said.
Rosalyn’s quick smile indicated affi rmation. “You know the colleges’ colours, then?”
“It was just a good guess.”
He walked onto the footbridge. The wrought iron gate was partially open upon the south end of the island. The police line was gone now, the island available to anyone who wished to sit by the water, to meet surreptitiously, or-like Sarah Gordon-to attempt to sketch. “Did the woman see you?”
Rosalyn and Havers remained on the path. “Oh yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I nearly ran into her. She couldn’t have helped seeing me.”
“And you were wearing the same clothes you’re wearing now?”
Rosalyn nodded, and plunged her hands into the pockets of the anorak she’d taken from her room prior to their setting out into the fog. “Without this, of course,” she said with a lift of her shoulders to indicate the anorak. She added ingenuously, “One gets warm enough running. And”-her face brightened-“she didn’t have a coat or a jacket on, so that must have been another reason why I assumed she was a runner. Although…” A marked hesitation as she looked into the mist. “She might have been carrying one, I suppose. I can’t recall. But I think she was carrying something…I think.”
“What did she look like?”
“Look like?” Rosalyn frowned down at her gym shoes. “Slender. She wore her hair pulled back.”
“Colour?”
“Oh dear. It was light, I think. Yes, quite light.”
“Anything unusual about her? A feature perhaps? A mark on her skin? The shape of her nose? A large forehead? A pointed chin?”
“I can’t recall. I’m terribly sorry. I’m not much help, am I? You see, it was three days ago and I didn’t know at the time that I’d have to remember her. I mean, one doesn’t really study everyone one meets. One doesn’t expect to have to recall them.” Rosalyn blew out a breath of frustration before going on to say earnestly, “Perhaps if you’d like to hypnotise me the way they do sometimes when a witness can’t recall the details of a crime…”
“It’s fine,” Lynley said. He rejoined them on the path. “Do you think she got a clear look at your sweatshirt?”
“Oh, I dare say she did.”
“She would have seen the name?”
“Queens’ College, you mean? Yes. She would have seen that.” Rosalyn looked back in the direction of the college, although even had there been no fog, she wouldn’t have been able to see it in the distance. When she turned back to them, her face was sombre, but she didn’t say anything until a young man, coming across Crusoe’s Bridge from Coe Fen, descended the ten iron steps- shoes ringing loudly against the metal-and plodded past them, head bent into the mist which quickly enveloped him. “Melinda was right, then,” Rosalyn said quietly. “Georgina died in my place.”
A girl her age didn’t need to carry round that sort of responsibility for a lifetime, Lynley thought. He said, “You can’t know that for a certainty,” although he was fast arriving at the same conclusion.
Rosalyn reached for one of the tortoise shell combs in her hair. She pulled it out and grasped a long lock in her fi ngers. “There’s this,” she said, and then she unzipped her anorak and pointed to the emblem across her breast. “And this. We’re the same height, the same weight, the same colouring. We’re both from Queens’. Whoever followed Georgina yesterday morning thought she was following me. Because I saw. Because I knew. Because I might have told. And I would have, I should have…And if I had done-as by rights I should have and I know it, you don’t have to tell me, I know it-Georgina wouldn’t be dead.” She whipped her head away and blinked furiously at the cloudy mass of Sheep’s Green.
And he knew there was little or nothing he could say to lessen her guilt or lighten her burden of responsibility.
Now, more than an hour later, Lynley drew a deep breath and let it out, staring at the sign in front of the police station. Across the street, the wide green that was Parker’s Piece might not even have existed, hidden as it was by the mat-work of fog. A distant beacon blinked off and on in its centre, serving as a guide to those trying to find their way.
“So it had nothing to do with the fact that Elena was pregnant,” Havers said. And then, “What now?”
“Wait here for St. James. See what he’s able to conclude about the weapon. And let him have a go at eliminating the boxing gloves as well.”
“And you?”
“I’ll go to the Weavers’.”
“Right.” Still, she didn’t move from the car. He could feel her looking at him. “Everyone loses, don’t they, Inspector?”
“That’s always the case with a murder,” he said.
Neither of the Weaver cars was in the drive when Lynley pulled up to the front of the house. But the garage doors were closed and, assuming that the cars would be kept out of the damp, he went to ring the bell. From the back of the house, he could hear the dog’s answering bark of welcome. It was followed moments later by a woman’s voice calling for quiet behind the door. The bolt was drawn back.
Since she’d met him at the door on his two previous visits, Lynley had been expecting to see Justine Weaver when the broad oak panels slid soundlessly open. So he was taken aback when in her place stood a tall, somewhat beefy middle-aged woman carrying a plate of sandwiches. These gave off the distinct odour of tuna. They were surrounded by a substantial nest of crisps.
Lynley recalled his initial interview with the Weavers, and the information that Anthony Weaver had given him about his former wife. This, he realised, would be Glyn.
He produced his warrant card and introduced himself. She took her time about scrutinising it, giving him time to scrutinise her. Only in height was she like Justine Weaver. In every other way, she was Justine’s antithesis. Looking at her heavy tweed skirt that stretched wide across her hips, her line-weary face with its loose flesh on the jaw, her wiry hair liberally streaked with grey and pulled back into an unflattering chignon, Lynley found himself hearing once again Victor Troughton’s assessment of his wife’s middle age. And he felt a surge of mortifi cation when he realised that he too was in the process of judging and dismissing based upon what time had done to a woman’s body.
Glyn Weaver looked up from her perusal of his card. She held the door open. “Come in,” she said. “I was just having lunch. Would you like something?” She offered the plate in his direction. “You’d think there might be something other than tinned fish in the larder, but Anthony’s Justine likes to watch her weight.”
“Is she here?” Lynley asked. “Is Dr. Weaver here?”
Glyn led him into the morning room and fluttered a hand in dismissal. “Both out. One couldn’t really expect Justine to hang about the house for more than a day or two over something as inconsequential as a family death-and as for Anthony, I don’t know. He went off a while ago.”
“By car?”
“Yes.”
“To the college?”
“I have no idea. One moment he was here in the house talking to me. The next moment he was gone. I expect he’s out there somewhere in the fog, trying to think what he’s going to do next. You know how it is. Moral obligation versus cock-throbbing lust. He’s always had trouble when it comes to confl ict. In his case, I’m afraid, lust usually wins.”
Lynley didn’t respond. He would have had to be a complete dullard not to recognise what was roiling beneath the thin veneer of Glyn’s civility. Anger, hatred, bitterness, envy. And a terror of abjuring any of them in order to allow her heart to begin to feel the full strength of what had to be a multifurcate grief.
Glyn set her plate on the wicker table. Its breakfast dishes had not yet been removed. On the floor surrounding it, a noticeable patina of toast crumbs lay on the wood, and she walked right through this, either oblivious or unconcerned. She stacked the breakfast plates one upon the other, mindless of the cold and congealing food upon each. But rather than take them into the kitchen, she merely pushed them to one side, ignoring a dirty knife and teaspoon that fell from the table onto the crisp floral pillow that covered the seat of one of the chairs.