For the Sake of Elena

  “Interesting,” Lynley said, “because she’s not what one might call a modern artist, is she? One would think that the darling of the art world would have to be forging into some kind of new territory. But I’ve seen her work, and she doesn’t seem to be doing that.”

  “Painting soup tins, you mean?” Pen smiled. “Or shooting herself in the foot, making a film of the event, and calling it performance art?”

  “At the extreme, I suppose.”

  “What’s more important than coming up with the fad of the moment is having a style that catches the emotional fancy of collectors and critics, Tommy. Like Jurgen Gorg’s Venice carnival pieces. Or Peter Max’s early fantasy canvases. Or Salvador Dalí’s surrealistic art. If an artist has a personal style, then he is forging ahead. If that style gains international approbation, then his career is made.”

  “Hers is?”

  “I should say so, yes. Her style is distinct. It’s crisp. Very clear. According to whatever p.r. machine it was that orchestrated her bow to the art world years ago, she even grinds her own pigments like some sort of modern Botticelli—or at least she did at one time—so her colours in oil are wonderful as well.”

  “She talked about being a purist in the past.”

  “That’s always been part of her persona. As has the isolation. Grantchester, not London. The world comes to her. She doesn’t go to the world.”

  “You never worked with her canvases while you were at the museum?”

  “What need would I have? Her work’s recent, Tommy. It doesn’t need to be restored.”

  “But you’ve seen them. You’re familiar with them.”

  “Yes, of course. Why?”

  Lady Helen said, “Is her art at the root of this, Tommy?”

  He gave his attention to the spotted brown rug that partially covered the floor. “I don’t know. She said she hadn’t done anything artistically in months. She said she was afraid that she’d lost the passion to create. The morning of the murder was the day she’d designated to start painting—or sketching, or something—again. It seemed like a superstition of hers. Paint on this day, paint at this spot, or give it up forever. Is that possible, Pen? That someone would give over creating—would actually lose it somehow—and find the struggle to come back so enormous that it would end up tied in to exterior influences such as where one paints and what one paints and exactly at what time one paints?”

  Penelope stirred in her chair. “You can’t be that naive. Of course it’s possible. People have gone mad over the belief that they’ve lost the power to create. People have killed themselves over it.”

  Lynley raised his head. He saw that Lady Helen was watching him. Both of them had leaped to the same conclusion with Penelope’s final words. “Or kill someone else?” Lady Helen said.

  “Someone who got in the way of creativity?” Lynley asked.

  “Camille and Rodin?” Penelope said. “They certainly killed each other, didn’t they? At least metaphorically.”

  “But how could this University girl have got in the way of Sarah Gordon’s creativity?” Lady Helen asked. “Did they even know each other?”

  He thought of Ivy Court, her use of the name Tony. He dwelt on every conjecture he and Havers had developed to explain Sarah Gordon’s presence there on the previous night.

  “Perhaps it wasn’t the girl who got in her way,” he said. “Perhaps it was her father.” Yet even as he spoke, he could list the arguments against that conclusion. The call to Justine Weaver, the knowledge of Elena’s running, the entire question of time, the weapon that had been used to beat her, the disposal of that weapon. The relevant issues were motive, means, and opportunity. He couldn’t argue that Sarah Gordon had any of them.

  “I mentioned Whistler and Ruskin while I was talking to her,” he said pensively. “She reacted to that. So perhaps her failure to create over the last year grew out of some critic’s hatchet-job of her work.”

  “That’s a possibility, if she’d had negative criticism,” Penelope said.

  “But she hasn’t?”

  “Nothing major that I know of.”

  “So what stops the flow of creativity, Pen? What impedes passion?”

  “Fear,” she said.

  He looked at Lady Helen. She dropped her eyes from his. “Fear of what?” he asked.

  “Failure. Rejection. Offering something of the self to someone—to the world—and having it stomped to bits. That would do it, I should guess.”

  “But that didn’t happen to her?”

  “Not to Sarah Gordon. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that she isn’t afraid it might happen in the future. Lots of people are felled by their own success.”

  Penelope looked towards the door as, in the other room, the refrigerator’s motor coughed and whirred. She got to her feet. The rocker creaked a final time with her movement.

  “I’d not thought about art for at least this last year.” She brushed her hair back off her face and smiled at Lynley. “How odd. It was quite nice to talk about it.”

  “You’ve got a lot to say.”

  “Once. Yes. I did have once.” She headed towards the stairway and waved him back when he began to rise. “I’m going to check on the baby. Good night, Tommy.”

  “Good night.”

  Lady Helen said nothing until her sister’s footsteps sounded along the upper corridor, until a door opened and shut. Then she turned to Lynley.

  “That was good for her. You must have known it would be. Thank you, Tommy.”

  “No. Pure selfishness. I wanted information. I thought Pen could provide it. That’s all of it, Helen. Well, not quite. I wanted to see you. There doesn’t seem to be an end to that.”

  She got to her feet. He did likewise. They headed for the front door. He reached for his overcoat, but turned to her impulsively before he took it from the stand.

  He said, “Miranda Webberly’s playing jazz tomorrow night at Trinity Hall. Will you come?” When she glanced towards the stairs, he went on with, “A few hours, Helen. Pen can deal with them alone. Or we can collar Harry at Emmanuel. Or bring in one of Sheehan’s constables. That’s probably the best bet for Christian anyway. So will you come? Randie plays a mean trumpet. According to her father, she’s become a female Dizzy Gillespie.”

  Lady Helen smiled. “All right, Tommy. Yes. I’ll come.”

  He felt his heart lift, despite the probability that she was accommodating him only as a means of showing her gratitude for having taken Pen away from her malaise for a few minutes. “Good,” he said. “Half past seven, then. I’d suggest we have dinner as well, but I won’t push my luck.” He took his overcoat from the rack and slung it over his shoulder. The cold wouldn’t bother him. A moment of hope seemed enough protection against anything.

  She knew what he was feeling, as she always did. “It’s just a concert, Tommy.”

  He didn’t avoid her meaning. “I know that. Besides, we couldn’t possibly make it to Gretna Green and back in time for Christian’s breakfast, could we? But even if we could, doing the dread deed in front of the local blacksmith would never be my idea of a way to get married, so you’re relatively safe. For an evening, at least.”

  Her smile widened. “That’s an enormous comfort.”

  He touched her cheek. “God knows I want you to be comfortable, Helen.”

  He waited for her to move, tried to make her do so through allowing himself if only for a moment to feel the sheer, telling force of his own desire. Her head tilted slightly, pressing her cheek against his hand.

  He said, “You won’t fail this time. Not with me. I won’t let you.”

  “I love you,” she said. “At the bottom of it all.”

  13

  “Barbara? Lovey? Have you gone to bed? Because the lights are out and I don’t want to disturb you if you’re asleep. You need your sleep. It’s your beauty sleep, I know. But if you’re still up, I thought we might talk about Christmas. It’s early, of course, but still one wants to be prepared w
ith gift ideas and decisions about which invitations to accept and which to decline.”

  Barbara Havers closed her eyes briefly, as if by that activity she could shut out the sound of her mother’s voice. Standing in the darkness at her bedroom window, she looked down on the back garden where a cat was slinking along the top of the fence that separated their property from that of Mrs. Gustafson. Its attention was speared onto the snarl of weeds that grew in place of what once had been a narrow strip of lawn. He was hunting a rodent. The garden was probably swarming with them. Barbara saluted him silently. Have at them, she thought.

  Near her face, the curtains gave off the odours of old cigarette smoke and heavy dust. Once a crisp, starched white cotton sprigged with clusters of forget-me-nots, they hung limp and grey, and against this background of grime the cheerful blue flowers had long since given up the effort of contrast. Now they looked largely like smudges of charcoal set against an ever-darkening, bleak field of ash.

  “Lovey?”

  Barbara heard her mother tottering along the upstairs passage, her mules alternately shuffling and slapping against the bare floor. She knew she ought to call out to her, but instead she prayed that before she reached the bedroom, her mother’s fleeting attention would make the jump to something else. Perhaps to her brother’s bedroom which, although it long since had been cleared of his belongings, often still proved enough of a lure that Mrs. Havers would wander into it, talking to her son as if he were still alive.

  Five minutes, Barbara thought. Just five minutes of peace.

  She’d been home for some hours, arriving to find Mrs. Gustafson sitting erect on a kitchen chair at the foot of the stairs and her mother above in her bedroom, crumpled on the edge of the bed. Mrs. Gustafson was curiously armed with the hose of the vacuum cleaner, her mother was bewildered and frightened, a shrivelled figure in the darkness who had lost the simple knowledge of how to operate her bedroom lights.

  “We had ourselves a bit of a scuffle. She’s been wanting your father,” Mrs. Gustafson had said when Barbara came in the door. Her grey wig had been pulled slightly askew so that on the left its curls hung down too far below her ear. “She started looking through the house calling out for her Jimmy. Then she wanted the street.”

  Barbara’s eyes fell to the hose of the vacuum.

  “Now, I din’t hit her, Barbie,” Mrs. Gustafson said. “You know I wouldn’t hit your mum.” Her fingers first curled round the hose then caressed its worn covering. “Snake,” she said confidentially. “She does behave when she sees it, luv. I just wave it a bit. That’s all I have to do.”

  For a moment, Barbara felt as if her blood had congealed, rendering her immobile and incapable of speech. She felt wedged solidly between two conflicting needs. Words and actions were called for, some sort of castigation of the elderly woman for her blind stupidity, for resorting to terrorising instead of tending. But, far more important, placation was required. For if Mrs. Gustafson drew the line on what she was willing to endure, they were lost.

  So in the end, despising herself, creating a new, more capacious reservoir in her conscience to hold the guilt, she settled upon saying, “It’s hard when she gets confused, I know. But if you frighten her, don’t you think she gets worse?” and all the time she hated herself for the tone of reason she employed and the underlying plea for understanding and cooperation. This is your mother, Barbara, she told herself. This isn’t an animal we’re talking about. But it made no difference. She was talking about caretaking. She had long ago abjured the quality of life.

  “She does for a bit,” Mrs. Gustafson said, “which is why I phoned you, luv, because I thought she’d lost what few beans she has left. But she’s fine now, isn’t she? Not a peep out of her. You should have stayed in Cambridge.”

  “But you phoned for me to come home.”

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I? A bit of a panic that was, when she wanted her Jimmy and she wouldn’t drink her tea or eat the nice egg sandwich I’d made. But she’s fine now. Go on up. Have a look. She may even have dropped off for a bit of a kip. The way babies do, you know. Just cry themselves to sleep.”

  Which went a great distance to let Barbara know what the last few hours prior to her arrival had been like in the house. Except that this wasn’t a baby crying itself to physical exhaustion. This was an adult, whose exhaustion was one of the mind.

  She had found her mother hunched over on the bed, with her head on her knees and her face directed towards the chest of drawers next to the window. When Barbara crossed the room to her, she saw that her mother’s spectacles had slipped off her nose and lay on the floor, leaving her vague blue eyes looking even more detached than they normally did.

  “Mum?” she said. She hesitated about switching on the light on the bedside table, afraid it might frighten her mother in some further fashion. She touched the older woman’s head. Her hair felt very dry, but it was soft like wispy bits of cotton wool. It would be nice to get her a perm, Barbara thought. She’d like that, Mum would. If she didn’t forget where she was in the middle of the treatment and try to flee the hairdresser’s when she saw her head covered by lumpy coloured rods the purpose of which she no longer understood.

  Mrs. Havers stirred, just a small movement of her shoulders as if she were trying to rid herself of an unwanted burden. She said, “Doris and I played this afternoon. She wanted a tea party and I wanted jacks. We tiffed over it. But then we had both.”

  Doris was her mother’s older sister. She’d died as a teenager during the Blitz. She’d not had the courtesy of adding to the family history by being eliminated by a German bomb, however. Instead, it was an inglorious but nonetheless appropriate finish to a life that had been characterised by unfailing rapacity: She’d choked to death on a piece of black market pork which she’d whipped off her brother’s plate at Sunday dinner when he left the table to make an adjustment to the wireless out of which, like a saviour, Winston Churchill was due to speak.

  Barbara had heard the story often enough as a child. Chew everything forty times, her mother would say, else you’ll end up stiff like your auntie Doris.

  “I’ve prep to do for school, but I don’t like prep,” her mother went on. “I played instead. Mummy won’t like that. She’ll ask. And I don’t know what to say.”

  Barbara bent over her. “Mum,” she said. “It’s Barbara. I’m home. I’m going to turn on the light. It won’t scare you, will it?”

  “But the blackout. We must be very careful. Have you drawn the curtains?”

  “It’s all right, Mum.” She switched on the lamp and sat on the bed at her mother’s side. She put her hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Okay, Mum? That better?”

  Mrs. Havers’ eyes went from the window to Barbara. She squinted. Barbara reached for her spectacles, polished away a grease spot on one of the lenses by rubbing it against her own trouser leg, and slipped them back on her mother’s nose.

  “She has a snake,” Mrs. Havers said. “Barbie, I don’t like snakes and she’s brought one with her. She brings it out and she holds it and she tells me what it wants me to do. She says snakes crawl up you. She says they crawl inside. But it’s so big and if it gets inside me, I’ll—”

  Barbara put her arm round her mother. She crouched to duplicate her mother’s position. They were face-to-face, heads resting on knees. “There’s no snake, Mum. It’s the vacuum cleaner. She’s trying to frighten you. But she wouldn’t do that if you’d just manage to do what she says. She wouldn’t even bother. Can you try to behave?”

  Mrs. Havers’ face clouded. “Vacuum cleaner? Oh no, Barbie, it was a snake.”

  “But where could Mrs. Gustafson have got a snake?”

  “I don’t know, lovey. But she has it. I’ve seen it. She holds it and waves it.”

  “She’s holding it now, Mum. Downstairs. It’s the vacuum cleaner. Would you like to go down and have a look at it with me?”

  “No!” Barbara felt her mother’s back go rigid. Her voice began to rise.
“Because I don’t like snakes, Barbie. I don’t want them crawling up me. I don’t want them inside. I don’t—”

  “Okay, Mum, okay.”

  She saw that she couldn’t pit her mother’s frail coping skills in psychological warfare against Mrs. Gustafson. It’s just the vacuum, Mum, isn’t Mrs. Gustafson silly to try to scare you with it was not going to work to maintain the fragile peace in the house. Their peace was too volatile, especially when it rested on her mother’s failing ability to stay firmly grounded in the here and now.

  She wanted to say, “Mrs. Gustafson’s as afraid as you are, Mum, that’s why she resorts to frightening you when you get a bit wild,” but she knew her mother would not understand. So she said nothing. She merely drew her mother close to her and thought with longing and loss of that studio in Chalk Farm where she had stood beneath the false acacia and allowed herself a moment to dream of hope and independence.

  “Lovey? Are you still up?”

  Barbara turned from the window. Moonlight made the room a place of silver and shadow. It fell in a band across her bed and pooled round the odd, ball-and-claw legs on the chest of drawers. The full-length mirror that hung on the door of the built-in clothes cupboard—“Look at these, Jimmy,” her mother had said. “What a nice touch! We won’t need wardrobes here.”—reflected the light in a shaft of white against the opposite wall. She’d hung a cork board there when she’d turned thirteen years old. It was supposed to hold all the souvenirs of her adolescence: programmes from the theatre, invitations to parties, mementoes from school dances, a dried flower or two. It held nothing at all for the first three years. And then she’d come to realise it never would unless she pinned to it something more than unrealistic dreams. So she’d clipped newspaper articles, first human interest stories about babies and animals, then intriguing pieces about small acts of violence, and finally sensational columns on murder.