“No doubt she wanted that triumphant moment of seeing her father’s face when she broke the news to him. But there would have been no news to break if she hadn’t been able to manoeuvre Troughton into marrying her in the first place.”
“Inspector.” Havers’ voice sounded thoughtful. “D’you think there’s a chance that Elena told her father? She got the news on Wednesday. She didn’t die till Monday morning. His wife was out running. He was home alone. D’you think…?”
“We certainly can’t discount it, can we?”
That appeared to be as close as the sergeant was willing to come to voicing her suspicions, for she went on in a more decided tone with, “They couldn’t have expected to be happy together, Elena and Troughton.”
“I think you’re right. Troughton was deluding himself about his ability to heal her anger and resentment. She was deluding herself into believing she’d get lasting pleasure from dealing her father such an excruciating blow. One can’t build a marriage on that sort of foundation.”
“Are you saying, in effect, that one can’t get on with living unless one puts ghosts from the past to rest?”
He glanced at her warily. “That’s a quantum leap, Sergeant. I think one can always muddle on through life. Most people do. I just couldn’t tell you how well they do it.”
Because of the fog, the traffic, and the capricious nature of Cambridge’s one-way streets, it took them just over ten minutes to drive to Queens’ College, the same time it would have taken them to walk it. Lynley parked in the same spot he had used the day before, and they entered the college through the turreted passage.
“So you think this is the answer to everything?” Havers asked, looking round Old Court as they walked across its central path.
“I think it may be one of them.”
They found Gareth Randolph in the college dining hall, a hideously unappealing combination of linoleum, long cafeteria tables, and walls panelled in what appeared to be mock golden oak. It was a modern architect’s salute to the utterly banal.
Although there were other students present, Gareth was at a table by himself, hunching disconsolately over the remains of a late breakfast which consisted of a half-eaten fried egg with its yolk punched out and a bowl of cornflakes and bananas grown, respectively, soggy and grey. A book was open on the table in front of him, but that seemed mostly for show since he wasn’t reading. Nor was he writing in the notebook next to it although he held a pencil poised as if to do so.
His head raised with a jerk when Lynley and Havers took seats across from him. He glanced round the hall as if for quick escape or assistance from the other members of the college who were present. Lynley took his pencil and dashed nine words across the top of the notebook: You were the father of her baby, weren’t you?
Gareth raised a hand to his forehead. He squeezed his temples, then brushed the lank hair from his brow. His chest heaved once before he seemed to draw himself together by standing and canting his head in the direction of the door. They were meant to follow.
Like Georgina Higgins-Hart’s, Gareth’s bed-sitting room was tucked into Old Court. On the ground floor, it was a perfectly square room of white walls upon which were hung four framed posters advertising the London Philharmonic and three photographic enlargements of theatrical performances: Les Miserables, Starlight Express, Aspects of Love. The former featured the name Sonia Raleigh Randolph prominently above the words at the piano. The latter featured an attractive young woman in appropriate costume, singing.
Gareth pointed first to the posters, then to the photographs. “Mutha,” he said in his strange guttural voice. “Sisser.” He watched Lynley shrewdly. He seemed to be waiting for a reaction to the irony of his mother’s and sister’s modes of employment. Lynley merely nodded.
On a wide desk beneath the room’s only window, a computer sat. It was also, Lynley saw, a Ceephone, identical to the others he had already seen in Cambridge. Gareth switched the unit on and drew a second chair to the desk. He gestured Lynley into it and quickly accessed a word processing programme.
“Sergeant,” Lynley said, when he saw how Gareth intended them to communicate, “you’re going to have to make notes from the screen.” He took off his coat and scarf and sat at the desk. Havers came to stand behind him, the hood of her coat thrown back, her pink cap removed, a notebook in her hand.
Were you the father? Lynley typed.
The boy looked long at the words before he replied with: Didn’t know she was pg. She never said. Told you already.
“Not knowing she was pregnant doesn’t mean sod-all,” Havers remarked. “He can’t take us for fools.”
“He doesn’t,” Lynley said. “I dare say he just takes himself for one, Sergeant.” He typed: You had sex with Elena, deliberately making it a statement, not a question.
Gareth answered by hitting one of the number keys: 1.
Once?
Yes.
When?
The boy pushed away from the desk for a moment. He remained in his chair. He looked not at the computer screen but at the floor, his arms on his knees. Lynley typed the word September and touched the boy’s shoulder. Gareth glanced up, read it, dropped his head again. A hollow sound, akin to a stricken bellow, rose from his throat.
Lynley typed: Tell me what happened, Gareth and touched the boy’s shoulder again.
Gareth looked up. He had begun to cry, and as if this display of emotion angered him, he drew his arm savagely across his eyes. Lynley waited. The boy moved back to the desk.
London, he typed. Just before term. I saw her for my birthday. She fucked me on the floor of the kitchen while her mum was out buying milk for tea. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU BLOODY STUPID BERK.
“Great.” Havers sighed.
Loved her, Gareth went on. I wanted us special. To be—he dropped his hands to his lap, stared at the screen.
You thought the lovemaking meant more than Elena intended it to mean, Lynley typed. Is that what happened?
Fucking, Gareth answered. Not lovemaking. Fucking.
Is that what she called it?
Thought we build something. Last year. I took real care. To make it last. Didn’t want to rush anything. Never even tried with her. Wanted it to be real.
But it wasn’t?
Thought it was. Because if you do that with a woman it means like a pledge. Like you say something you wouldn’t say to anyone else.
Saying that you love each other?
Want to be together. Want to have a future. I thought that’s why she did it with me.
Did you know she was sleeping with someone else?
Not then.
When did you learn it?
She came up this term. I thought we’d be together.
As lovers?
She didn’t want that. Laughed when I tried to talk to her about it. Said what’s matter with you Gareth it was only a fuck we did it it felt good that’s the end of it right why you getting so moon-eyed over it it’s not a big deal.
But it was to you.
Thought she loved me that’s why she wanted to do it with me didn’t know—He stopped. He looked sapped of energy.
Lynley gave him a moment, glancing round the room. Over a hook on the back of the door hung his scarf, the distinctive blue of the University letterman. His boxing gloves—smooth, clean leather with a look of having been lovingly cared for—hung on a second hook beneath them. Lynley wondered how much of Gareth Randolph’s pain had been worked out against one of the punching bags in the small gymnasium on the upper floor of Fenners.
He turned back to the computer. The argument you had with Elena on Sunday. Is that when she told you she was involved with someone else?
I talked about us, he responded. But there was no us.
That’s what she told you?
How could there not be us. I said what about London.
That’s when she told you it hadn’t meant anything?
Just a poke for fun Gareth we were randy we did it don’t be such a twit and make it more than that.
She was laughing at you. I can’t imagine you liked it.
Kept trying to talk. How she acted London. What she felt London. But she wouldn’t listen. And then she told.
That there was someone else?
Didn’t believe her at first. I said she was scared. Said she was trying to be what her father wanted her to be. Said all sorts of things. Wasn’t even thinking. Wanted to hurt her.
“That’s a telling remark,” Havers noted.
“Perhaps,” Lynley said. “But it’s a fairly typical reaction to being hurt by someone you love: Measure still for measure.”
“And when the first measure is murder?” Havers asked.
“I haven’t discounted that, Sergeant.” He typed, What did you do when she’d convinced you there was another man?
Gareth lifted his hands but did not type. In a nearby room, a vacuum began to thunder as the building’s bedder made her daily rounds, and Lynley felt the answering urgency of concluding this interview before they were disturbed by anyone. He typed again: What did you do?
Hesitantly, Gareth touched the keys. Hung about at St. Stephen’s till she left. I wanted to know who.
You followed her to Trinity Hall? You knew it was Dr. Troughton? When the boy nodded, Lynley typed: How long did you hang about there?
Till she came out.
At one?
He nodded. He’d waited in the street for her to emerge, he told them. And when she’d come out, he’d confronted her again, furiously angry at her rejection of him, bitterly disappointed in the loss of his dreams. But most of all he was disgusted with her behaviour. For he thought he’d understood her intentions in involving herself with Victor Troughton. And he saw those intentions as an attempt to attach herself to a hearing world that would never fully accept or understand her. She was acting deaf. She wasn’t acting Deaf. They’d argued violently. He’d left her in the street.
Never saw her again, he finished.
“Doesn’t look good to me, sir,” Havers said.
Where were you Monday morning? Lynley typed.
When she was killed? Here. In bed.
But no one, of course, could verify that. He had been alone. And it would not have been an impossibility for Gareth simply to have failed to return to Queens’ College that night, going instead to Crusoe’s Island to lie in wait for Elena Weaver and to put a permanent end to the dispute between them.
“We need those boxing gloves, Inspector,” Havers said as she snapped her notebook closed. “He’s got motive. He’s got means. He’s got opportunity. He’s got a temper as well and the talent to channel it right through his fists.”
Lynley had to admit that a blue in boxing could not be overlooked when the murder victim had been beaten before she was strangled.
He typed, Did you know Georgina Higgins-Hart? And after Gareth nodded, Where were you yesterday morning? Between six and half past.
Here. Asleep.
Can someone verify that?
He shook his head.
We need your boxing gloves, Gareth. We need to give them to the forensic lab. Will you let us take them?
The boy gave a slow howl. Didn’t kill her didn’t kill her didn’t didn’t didn’t didn’t did—
Gently, Lynley moved the boy’s hands to one side. Do you know who did?
Gareth shook his head once, but he kept his hands in his lap, balled into fists, as if they might betray him of their own volition should he raise them to the keyboard and allow them to type again.