“Anthony knows,” she said. “I expect you know as well. I expect that’s why you’ve come.
Will you arrest her today?” She sat down. Her chair’s willow strands creaked as they rubbed together. She picked up the sandwich and took a hefty bite, chewing with a pleasure that seemed only marginally related to the food.
He said, “Do you know where she’s gone, Mrs. Weaver?”
Glyn picked among the crisps. “At what point exactly do you make an arrest? I’ve always wondered that. Do you need an eyewitness? What about hard evidence? You’ve got to have something to give to the prosecutors, don’t you? You’ve got to have a case that solidly sticks.”
“Did she have an appointment?”
Glyn wiped her hands against her skirt and began to tick items off on her fi ngers. “There’s the Ceephone call that she claimed she received on Sunday night. There’s the fact that she ran without the dog on Monday morning. There’s the fact that she knew exactly where and how and what time to fi nd her. And there’s the fact that she hated her and wanted her dead. Do you need something more? Fingerprints? Blood? A single hair, a bit of skin?”
“Has she gone to see family?”
“People loved Elena. Justine couldn’t stand that. But mostly, she couldn’t stand that Anthony loved her. She hated his devotion, how he always tried to make things right between them. She didn’t want that. Because if things went right between Anthony and Elena, things would go wrong between Anthony and Justine. That’s what she thought. And she was sick with jealousy. You’ve fi nally come for her, haven’t you?”
Eagerness appeared in wet glimmers at the corners of her mouth. She reminded Lynley of the crowds that once gathered to watch public executions, revelling in the vengeful taking of a life. Had there been a possibility to see Justine Weaver drawn and quartered, he had no doubt that this woman would be more than willing to grasp the opportunity. He wanted to tell her that there was, in the end, no real taking of an eye for an eye and no real satisfaction to be found at any bar of justice. For even if the most barbarous kind of punishment were meted out against the perpetrator of a crime, the rage and grief of the victimised remained.
His eyes dropped to the mess on the table. Near the stacked plates and beneath a knife that was smeared with butter lay an envelope with the crest of the University Press on it and Justine’s name-but not her address-written in a firm, masculine hand.
Evidently, Glyn saw the direction of his gaze for she said, “She’s an important executive. You couldn’t really have thought she’d be hanging round here.”
He nodded and began to take his leave.
“Will you arrest her?” she asked again.
He responded with, “I want to ask her a question.”
“I see. Just a question. Quite. Well. Would you arrest her if you had the proof in your hand? If I gave you the proof?” She waited to see the reaction to her questions. She smiled like a perfectly satisfied cat when his steps faltered and he turned to face her. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Oh yes, indeed, Mister Policeman.”
She pushed away from the table and left the room. In a moment, he heard the Irish setter begin barking again and her answering shout from the back of the house: “Shut up, will you!” The dog persisted.
“Here,” she said, returning. She carried two manila folders and, under her arm, what appeared to be an artist’s canvas rolled up. “Anthony had these in the study, hidden at the back of a filing drawer. I found him snivelling over them an hour or so ago, just before he left. Have a look for yourself. I’ve no doubt what conclusion you’ll reach.”
She handed over the folders first. He fl ipped through the sketches that each contained. All of them were studies of the dead girl, all appeared done by the same hand. They were undeniably skilful, and he admired their quality. None, however, could possibly serve as a motive for murder. He was about to say this when Glyn thrust the canvas at him.
“Now look at this,” she said.
He unrolled it, squatting to place it on the floor because it was quite large and had been doubled over prior to being rolled and stored in the first place. It was, he saw, a spattered piece of canvas with two large rips moving diagonally towards the middle and a central, shorter rip meeting them there. The spattering on it had been created by large gobs of paint-mostly white and red-that looked as if they’d been smeared haphazardly onto the canvas with a palette knife and with no regard for artistic expression. Where they did not meet or overlap, the colours of another oil painting showed through. He stood up and gazed down at it, feeling the fi rst stirring of fi nal comprehension.
“And this,” Glyn said. “It was wrapped up in the canvas when I first unrolled it.”
She slapped into his hand a small brass plaque-perhaps two inches long and three quarters of an inch wide. He took it from his palm and held it to the light, knowing what it was that he would likely see. ELENA was engraved in fine script across it.
He looked up at Glyn Weaver and saw the exultant pleasure she was taking from the moment. He knew she was expecting him to comment upon the nature of the motive she’d just presented him. Instead, he asked, “Has Justine gone running while you’ve been in Cambridge?”
This didn’t seem to be the response she expected from him. But she answered well enough although her eyes narrowed with sharp suspicion as she did so. “Yes.”
“In a tracksuit?”
“Well, she wasn’t exactly dressed by Coco Chanel.”
“What colour, Mrs. Weaver?”
“Colour?” With a hint of outrage that he wasn’t keying into the ruined painting and what it implied.
“Yes. The colour.”
“It was black.”
“So just how much more proof do you want that Justine hated my daughter?” Glyn Weaver had followed him out of the breakfast room, leaving behind the smell of old eggs, tuna, butter, and crisps vying with one another in the air for domination. “What’s it going to take to convince you? How much more proof?”
She’d put a hand on his arm and pulled on him till he faced her, standing so close that he could feel her breath on his face and could smell the oily odour of fish each time she exhaled. “He sketched Elena, not his wife. He painted Elena, not his wife. Imagine watching that. Imagine hating each moment as it was going on before your eyes. Right here in this morning room. Because the light’s good here, and he would have wanted to paint her in light that was good.”
Lynley turned the Bentley into Bulstrode Gardens where the street-lamps did not so much cut through the mist as merely colour the top layer of it gold while the rest remained a mass of wet grey. He pulled directly into the semi-circular drive, through a mat of damp leaves fallen and blown from the stand of slim birches at the edge of the property. Without taking particular note of it, he gazed at the house before getting out of the car, considering the nature of the evidence he had with him, reflecting upon the sketches of Elena and what they suggested about the ruined canvas, thinking of the Ceephone, and, above all, playing with time. For it was time upon which the entire case hung.
She would have obliterated the image fi rst and, taking no real or lasting satisfaction in that, she would have moved on to the girl herself second, Glyn Weaver had asserted. She would have pounded her face just as she’d hacked and stabbed at the painting, brutalising and destroying, living out her rage.