“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 first 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.
But most of that constituted hopeful conjecture, Lynley thought. Only part of it skirted close to the truth. He tucked the canvas under his arm and went to the door.
Harry Rodger answered, Christian and Perdita at his heels. He said only, “It’s Pen you want?” to Lynley’s request, and then to his son, “Go fetch Mummy, Chris.”
When the little boy scampered up the stairway to do so, shouting “Mummy!” and bashing the worn head of a hobbyhorse against the balusters with additional cries of “Ker-blowey, Ker-blew!” Rodger nodded Lynley into the sitting room. He swung his daughter onto his hip and glanced without speaking at the canvas beneath Lynley’s arm. Perdita curled herself against her father’s chest.
Above them Christian’s footsteps thumped along the upstairs corridor. His hobbyhorse banged against the wall. “Mummy!” Small fists pounded on a door.
“You’ve brought her some work, haven’t you?” Rodger’s words were polite, his face deliberately impassive.
“I’d like her to look at this, Harry. I need her expertise.”
The other man’s lips offered a brief smile, one which accepted information without indicating that it was at all welcome. He said, “Excuse me, please,” and he walked into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.
A moment later, Christian preceded both his mother and his aunt into the sitting room. Somewhere in his sojourn through the house, he’d picked up a totsized vinyl holster, and he was wrestling it inexpertly round his waist, its companion toy gun dangling to his knees. “I shoot you, mister,” he said to Lynley, dragging on the gun’s handle and knocking himself into Lady Helen’s legs in his effort to get it out. “I shoot, Auntie Leen.”
“Those aren’t the wisest words to say to a policeman, Chris.” Lady Helen knelt in front of him, and saying, “Don’t be such a wiggle-worm,” she fastened the holster round his waist.
He giggled and shouted, “Ker-blang you, mister!” and ran to the sofa where he beat the pistol against the pillows.
“If nothing else, he has a fine future in crime,” Lynley noted.
Penelope raised both hands in futility. “It’s nearly his naptime. He gets a bit wild when he’s tired.”
“I’d hate to think what he’s like when he’s fully awake.”
“Ker-plough!” Christian yelled. He rolled onto the floor and began crawling in the direction of the hall, making shooting noises and taking aim at imaginary foes.
Penelope watched him and shook her head. “I’ve considered sedating him until his eighteenth birthday, but what would I do for laughs?” As Christian began an assault on the stairway, she said with a nod towards the canvas, “What have you brought?”
Lynley unrolled it along the back of the sofa, gave her a moment to observe it from across the room, and said, “What can you do with it?”
“Do?”
“Not a restoration, Tommy,” Lady Helen said doubtfully.
Penelope looked up from the canvas. She said, “Heavens. You must be joking.”
“Why?”
“Tommy, it’s a ruin.”
“I don’t need it repaired. I just need to establish what’s underneath the top layer of paint.”
“But how do you even know there’s something underneath it?”
“Look closer. There has to be. You can see it. And besides, it’s the only explanation.”
Penelope asked for no further details. She merely walked to the sofa for a closer look and touched her fingers to the surface of the canvas. “It would take weeks to clean this off,” she said. “You’ve no idea what it would entail. This sort of thing is done inches at a time across a canvas, a single layer at a time. One doesn’t just dump a bottle of solvent on it and wipe it off like a window being cleaned.”
“Blast,” Lynley muttered.
“Ker-blooey!” Christian yelled from his position of potential ambush on the stairs.
“Still…” Penelope tapped her index finger against her lip. “Let me take it into the kitchen and have a look under stronger light.”
Her husband was standing at the stove, flipping through the day’s post. His daughter leaned against him, one arm encircling his leg, one apple cheek pressed against his thigh. Sleepily, she said, “Mummy,” and Rodger raised his head from the letter he was perusing. His eyes took in the canvas that Penelope carried. His face was unreadable.
Penelope said, “If you’ll just clear off the work top,” and waited with the canvas in her hands while Lynley and Lady Helen moved aside the mixing bowls, lunch dishes, story books, and silverware. Then she flopped the canvas down and looked at it thoughtfully.
“Pen,” her husband said.
“In a moment,” she replied. She went to a drawer and took out a magnifying glass, fondly running her fingers through her daughter’s hair as she passed.
“Where’s the baby?” Rodger asked.
Penelope bent over the work top and scrutinised first the individual blotches of paint and then the rips in the canvas itself. “Ultraviolet,” she said. “Perhaps infrared.” She looked up at Lynley. “Do you need the painting itself? Or would a photograph do?”
“Photograph?”
“Pen, I asked—”
“We have three options. An X-ray would show us the entire skeleton of the painting—everything that’s been painted on the canvas no matter how many layers have been used. An ultraviolet light would give us whatever work’s been done on top of the varnish—if there’s been repainting, for instance. An infrared photo would give us whatever comprised the initial sketch for the painting. And any doctoring that’s been done to the signature. If there is a signature, of course. Would any of that be helpful?”
Lynley looked at the lacerated canvas and considered the options. “I should guess an X-ray,” he said reflectively. “But if that doesn’t do it, can we try something else?”
“Certainly. I’ll just—”
“Penelope.” Harry Rodger’s face had mottled, although his voice was determinedly pleasant. “Isn’t it time that the twins had a lie down? Christian’s been acting like a madman for the past twenty minutes, and Perdita’s falling asleep on her feet.”
Penelope glanced at the wall clock that hung above the stove. She chewed on her lip and looked at her sister. Lady Helen smiled faintly, perhaps in acknowledgement, perhaps in encouragement. “You’re right, of course,” Penelope said with a sigh. “They do need to nap.”
“Good. Then—”
“So if you’ll see to them yourself, darling, the rest of us can pop this canvas round to the Fitzwilliam to see what can be done with it. The baby’s been fed. She’s already asleep. And the twins won’t give you much trouble so long as you read them something from Cautionary Verses. Christian’s quite partial to that poem about Mathilda. Helen must have read it to him half a dozen times before he dropped off yesterday.” She began rolling up the canvas. “I’ll just need a moment to dress,” she told Lynley.
When she’d left the room, Rodger lifted up his daughter. He looked at the doorway as if in the expectation of Penelope’s return. When that did not occur, when instead they heard her saying, “Daddy will help you have a lie down, Christian darling,” he gave his attention to Lynley for a moment as Christian pounded down the stairs and across the sitting room towards the kitchen.
“She isn’t well,” Rodger said. “You know as well as I that she shouldn’t be leaving this house. I hold you responsible—both of you, Helen—if anything happens.”
“We’re merely going to the Fitzwilliam Museum,” Lady Helen replied, sounding for all the world like a model of reason. “What on earth could possibly happen to her there?”
“Daddy!” Christian flung himself into the room and crashed euphorically against his father’s legs. “Read ’Tilda to me! Now!”
“I’m warning you, Helen,” Rodger said, and stabbing a finger in Lynley’s direction, “I’m warning the both of you.”
“Daddy! Read!”
“Duty appears to be calling, Harry,” Lady Helen replied serenely. “You’ll find their pyjamas beneath the pillows on their beds. And the book—”
“I know where the damn book is,” Rodger snapped and took his children from the room.
“Oh dear,” Lady Helen murmured. “I’m afraid there’s going to be hell to pay for this.”
“I don’t think so,” Lynley said. “Harry’s an educated man. At the very least we know he can read.”
“Cautionary Verses?”
Lynley shook his head. “The handwriting on the wall.”
“After an hour, we all managed to come to an agreement. The strongest likelihood is that it was glass. When I left, Pleasance was still holding out for his theory that it was a champagne or wine bottle—preferably full—but he’s fresh from graduate school and still attached to any opportunity to expatiate. Frankly, I expect he’s more attracted to the sound of his arguments than to their viability. No wonder the head of forensic—is it Drake?—wants his neck in a noose.”
Forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James joined Barbara Havers at her solitary table in the officers’ mess at Cambridge Police Station. For the past two hours, he’d been holed up at the regional police laboratory with the disputing parties of Superintendent Sheehan’s forensic team, examining not only the X-rays of Elena Weaver but the body itself and comparing his conclusions with those developed by the younger scientist in the Cambridge group. It was an activity that Barbara had begged off attending. The brief period during her police training that had been given to watching autopsies had more than sated whatever nugatory interest she may once have had in forensic medicine.
“Please note, officers,” the forensic pathologist had intoned as he stood before the draped cart under which was the corpse that would be their object lesson, “that the mark of the ligature used in strangling this woman can still be plainly observed although our killer made what he apparently believed would be an ingenious attempt at obfuscation. Step closer, please.”
Like idiots—or automatons—the probationary DC’s had done so. And three of them had fainted dead away when, with a tiny smile of malicious anticipation, the pathologist whipped back the sheet to display the grisly remains of a body that had been saturated with paraffin and set afire. Barbara herself had remained on her feet, but only just. And she had never been in a tearing hurry to stand in on an autopsy from that time forward. Just bring me the facts, she always thought when a body was carted away from a murder scene. Don’t make me watch you gather them.
“Tea?” she asked St. James as he lowered himself into one of the chairs, adjusting his position to make allowances for the brace he wore on his left leg. “It’s fresh.” She gave a glance to her watch. “Well, okay. Only moderately fresh. But it’s riddled with enough caffeine to paste your eyelids permanently open if you’re feeling clapped out.”
St. James accepted the offer and ministered to his cup with three overlarge spoonfuls of sugar. After a taste of it, he added a fourth, saying, “Falstaff is my only defence, Barbara.”
She lifted her cup to him. “Cheers,” she said, and watched him drink.
He was looking well, she decided. Still too thin and angular, still too lined about the face, but there was an appealing sheen to the undisciplined dark hair, and his hands on the table seemed utterly relaxed. A man at peace with himself, she thought, and she wondered how long it had taken St. James to achieve such psychic equilibrium. He was Lynley’s oldest and closest friend, an expert witness from London upon whose forensic services they had called more than once.
“If not a wine bottle—and there was one at the crime scene, by the way—and not a champagne bottle, then what was used to beat her?” she asked. “And why have the Cambridge people been scrapping over this issue in the first place?”
“A case of male posturing, to my way of thinking,” St. James replied. “The head of forensic is just over fifty. He’s been on the job for a good twenty-five years. Along comes Pleasance, twenty-six years old and acting the upstart crow. So what you have is—”
“Men,” Barbara said in simple conclusion. “Why don’t they just go outside and settle their dispute by seeing who can pee the farthest?”
St. James smiled. “Not a bad idea.”
“Ha! Women should run the world.” She poured herself more tea. “So why couldn’t it have been a wine or champagne bottle?”
“The shape doesn’t make a match. We’re looking for something with a slightly broader curve making the connection between bottom and sides. Like this.” He cupped his right palm to form half an oval.
“And the leather gloves wouldn’t work for that curve?”
“For the curve, perhaps. But leather gloves of that weight wouldn’t shatter a cheekbone in a single blow. I’m not sure a heavyweight could even do that, and from what you said, the boy who owns the gloves isn’t a heavyweight by any stretch of the imagination.”
“Then what?” Barbara asked. “A vase perhaps?”
“I don’t think so. Whatever was used had some sort of handgrip. And it was quite heavy, enough to do maximum damage with minimum effort. She’d only been struck three times.”
“A handgrip. That suggests the neck of a bottle.”
“Which is why Pleasance is continuing to propound his full-champagne-bottle theory despite compelling evidence to the contrary. Unless, of course, it’s the most oddly shaped champagne bottle on record.” St. James removed a paper napkin from the table dispenser and roughed out a sketch, saying, “What you’re looking for is flat on the bottom, with a broad curve on the sides, and, I imagine, a sturdy gripping neck.” He handed it over. Barbara studied the drawing.
“This looks like one of those ship’s decanters,” she said, pulling on her upper lip thoughtfully. “Simon, did someone cosh the girl in the face with the family Waterford?”
“It’s as heavy as crystal,” St. James replied. “But smooth-surfaced, not cut. Solid as well. And if that’s the case, it’s not a container of any sort.”
“What, then?”
He looked at the drawing which she placed between them. “I have no idea.”
“You won’t go for something metal?”
“Doubtful. Glass—especially if it’s smooth and heavy—is the likelier substance when there’s no trace evidence left behind.”
“Need I ask if you were able to find trace evidence where the Cambridge team found none?”
“You needn’t. I didn’t.”
“What a balls-up.” She sighed.
He didn’t disagree. Rather, he shifted position in his chair and said, “Are you and Tommy still intent on connecting the two killings? That’s an odd approach when the means are so different. If you’re working with the same killer, why weren’t both victims gunned down?”
She picked at the gelatinous surface of a cherry tart that was doing service as the edible portion of her afternoon tea. “We’re thinking that the motive determined the means in each killing. The first motive was personal, so it required a personal means.”
“A hands-on means? Beating then strangling?”
“Yes. If you will. But the second murder wasn’t personal at all, just a need to eliminate a potential witness who could place the killer at Crusoe’s Island right at the time Elena Weaver was strangled. A shotgun sufficed to carry that out. Of course, what the killer didn’t know is that the wrong girl got shot.”
“A nasty business.”
“Quite.” She speared a cherry. It looked disturbingly like a large clot of blood. Shuddering, she tapped it onto her plate and tried another. “But at least we’ve got a tab on the killer now. And the Inspector’s gone to—” She stopped, brow furrowed, as Lynley came through the swinging doors, his overcoat slung over his shoulder and his cashmere scarf fluttering round him like carmine wings. He was carrying a large manila envelope. Lady Helen Clyde and another woman—presumably her sister—were right behind him.
“St. James,” he said by way of greeting his friend. “I’m in your debt again. Thank you for coming. You know Pen, of course.” He dropped his coat over the back of a chair as St. James greeted Penelope and brushed a kiss across Lady Helen’s cheek. He pulled extra chairs over to their table as Lynley introduced Barbara to Lady Helen’s sister.
Barbara watched him, perplexed. He’d gone to the Weaver house for information. As soon as he had it, his next step was supposed to be to make an arrest. But clearly, no arrest had been made. Something had taken him in another direction.
“You haven’t brought her with you?” she asked.
“I haven’t. Look at this.”
From the envelope, he took out a thin stack of photographs, telling them about the canvas and the set of sketches that Glyn Weaver had given him. “There was dual damage to the painting,” he said. “Someone had defaced it with great smears of colour and then finished the job with a kitchen knife. Weaver’s former wife assumed that the subject was Elena and that Justine had destroyed it.”
“She was wrong, I take it?” Barbara asked, picking up the photographs and flipping through them. Each of them showed a different section of the canvas. They were curious pieces, some of them looking like nothing so much as double exposures in which one figure was superimposed over another. They depicted various portraits of a female, from childhood up to young adulthood. “What are these?” Havers asked, passing each photograph on to St. James after she perused it.
“Infrared photographs and X-rays,” Lynley said. “Pen can explain. We did it at the museum.”
Penelope said, “They show what was originally on the canvas. Before it was smeared with paint.”
There were at least five head studies in the group, one of which was more than double the size of all the rest. Barbara puzzled her way through them, saying, “Odd sort of painting, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not when you assemble them,” Penelope said. “Here. I’ll show you.”
Lynley cleared away the tea debris, piling the stainless steel teapot, the cups, the plates, and the silverware onto a table nearby. “Because of its size, it could only be photographed in sections,” he explained to Barbara.
Pen went on. “When the sections are assembled, it looks like this.” She laid the photographs out to form an incomplete rectangle from whose right-hand corner a quadrilateral was missing. What Barbara saw on the table was a semi-circle of four head studies of a growing girl—depicted as a baby, a toddler, a child, an adolescent—and offset by the fifth and larger head study of the young adult.
“If this isn’t Elena Weaver,” Barbara said, “then who—”
“It’s Elena all right,” Lynley said. “Her mother was dead on the money about that. Where she went wrong was in the rest of the scenario. She saw sketches and a painting hidden in Weaver’s study and reached a logical conclusion based upon her knowledge that he dabbled in art. But obviously this isn’t dabbling.”
Barbara looked up, saw that he was removing another photograph from the envelope. She held her hand out for it, put it into the empty spot at the bottom right-hand corner, and looked at the artist’s signature. Like the woman herself, it was not flamboyant. Just the simple word Gordon in thin strokes of black.
“Full circle,” he said.
“So much for coincidence,” she replied.
“If we can just connect her to some sort of weapon, we’re starting to fly home free.” Lynley looked at St. James as Lady Helen gathered the pictures into a neat stack and replaced them in the folder. “What did you come up with?” he asked.
“Glass,” St. James said.