Troughton paused, looked surprised to have a stranger addressing him by name. “Yes?”
“Thomas Lynley,” he said and introduced Lady Helen. He reached into his pocket and produced his police identifi cation. “May we go somewhere to talk?”
Troughton didn’t appear the least bewildered by the request. Instead, he looked both resigned and relieved. “Yes. This way,” he said and led them out into the night.
He took them to his rooms in the building that comprised the north range of the college garden, two courtyards away from the JCR. On the second floor, situated in the southwest corner, they overlooked the River Cam on one side and the garden on the other. They consisted of a small bedroom and a study, the former furnished only with an unmade single bed and the latter crowded with ancient, overstuffed furniture and a vast and undisciplined number of books. These lent to the room the sort of mouldy mustiness associated with paper too long exposed to air that is heavy with damp.
Troughton picked up a sheaf of essays from one of the chairs and put it on his desk. He said, “May I offer you a brandy?” and when Lynley and Lady Helen accepted, he went to a glass-fronted cabinet to one side of the fi replace where he took out three plain balloon glasses and carefully held each one up to the light before pouring. He didn’t say anything until he had taken a seat in one of the heavy, overstuffed chairs.
“You’ve come about Elena Weaver, haven’t you?” He spoke quietly, calmly. “I suppose I’ve been expecting you since yesterday afternoon. Did Justine give you my name?”
“No. Elena herself did, after a fashion. She’d been making a curious mark on her calendar ever since last January,” Lynley said. “A small line drawing of a fi sh.”
“Yes. I see.” Troughton gave his attention to his balloon glass. His eyes fi lled, and he pressed his fingers to them before he raised his head. “Of course, she didn’t call me that,” he said unnecessarily. “She called me Victor.”
“But it was her shorthand method of noting when you’d meet, I should guess. And, no doubt, a way to keep the knowledge from her father should he ever happen to glance at her calendar on a visit to her room. Because, I imagine, you know her father quite well.”
Troughton nodded. He took a swallow of his brandy, setting the balloon glass on the low table that separated his chair from Lady Helen’s. He patted the breast pocket of his grey tweed jacket and brought out a cigarette case. It was made of pewter, dented in one corner. It bore some sort of crest upon its cover. He offered it round and then lit up, the match flickering in his fingers like an uneasy beacon. He had large hands, Lynley noted, strong-looking with smooth, oval nails. They were his best feature.
Troughton kept his eyes on his cigarette as he said, “The hardest part these last three days has been the pretence of it all. Coming to the college, seeing to my supervisions, taking my meals with the others. Having a glass of sherry before dinner last night with the Master and making small talk while all the time I wanted to throw my head back and howl.” When his voice wavered slightly on the last word, Lady Helen leaned forward in her chair as if she would offer him sympathy, but she stopped herself when Lynley lifted his hand in quick admonition. Troughton steadied himself by drawing in on his cigarette and placing it into a pottery ashtray on the table next to him where its smoke rose in a snaking plume. Then he went on.
“But what right have I to any one of the externals of grief? I have duties, after all. I have responsibilities. A wife. Three children. I’m supposed to think of them. I ought to be engaged in picking up the pieces and going on and being thankful that my marriage and my career didn’t come crashing down round me because I’ve spent the last eleven months screwing a deaf girl twenty-seven years my junior. In fact, inside my ugly little soul where no one would ever know the feeling is even there, I ought to be secretly thankful Elena’s out of the way. Because there’ll be no mess now, no scandal, no titters and whispers behind my back. It’s completely over and I’m to go on. That’s what men my age do, isn’t it, when they’ve puffed themselves up with a successful seduction that, over time, grows just a little bit tedious. And it was supposed to grow tedious, wasn’t it, Inspector? I was supposed to start finding her a sexual millstone, living evidence of an ego-boosting peccadillo that promised to come back to haunt me if I didn’t take care of her in one way or another.”
“It wasn’t like that for you?”
“I love her. I can’t even say
“She was pregnant. Did you know that?”
Troughton closed his eyes. The weak overhead light, which shone down from a cone-shaped shade, cast shadows from his eyelashes onto his skin. It glittered beneath the lashes on the crescent of tears which he appeared to be willing himself not to shed. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. When he could, he said, “I knew.”
“I should think that offered the possibility of serious difficulties for you, Dr. Troughton. No matter how you felt about the girl.”
“The scandal, you mean? The loss of lifelong friendships? The damage to my career? None of that mattered. Oh, I knew I was likely to be ostracised by virtually everyone if I walked out on my family for a twenty-year-old girl. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realise that I simply didn’t care. The sorts of things that matter to my colleagues, Inspector-prestigious appointments, the building of a political base, a stellar academic reputation, invitations to speak at conferences and to chair committees, requests to serve the college, the University, even the nation-those things ceased mattering to me a long time ago when I reached the conclusion that connection to another person is the only item of real value in life. And I felt I’d found that connection with Elena. I wasn’t about to give her up.
I would have done anything to keep her. Elena.”
The saying of her name seemed a necessity to Troughton, a subtle form of release that he had not allowed himself-that the circumstances of their relationship had not allowed him-since her death. But still he didn’t cry, as if he believed that to give in to sorrow was to lose control over the few aspects of his life that remained unshattered by the girl’s murder.
As if she knew this, Lady Helen went to the cabinet by the fireplace and found the bottle of brandy. She poured a bit more into Troughton’s glass. Her own face, Lynley saw, was grave and composed.
“When did you see Elena last?” Lynley asked the other man.
“Sunday night. Here.”
“But she didn’t spend the night, did she? The porter saw her leaving St. Stephen’s to go running in the morning.”
“She left me…it must have been just before one. Before the gates close here.”
“And you? Did you go home as well?”
“I stayed. I do that most weeknights, and have done for some two years now.”
“I see. Your home isn’t in the city, then?”
“It’s in Trumpington.” Troughton appeared to read the expression on Lynley’s face, adding, “Yes, I know, Inspector. Trumpington’s hardly such a distance from the college to warrant having to spend the night here. Especially having to spend most weeknights over a two-year period. Obviously, my reasons for dossing here had to do with a distance of a very different sort. Initially, that is. Before Elena.”
Troughton’s cigarette had burnt itself to nothing in the ashtray by his chair. He lit another and took more of the brandy. He appeared to have himself once more under control.
“When did she tell you she was pregnant?”
“Wednesday night, not long after she’d got the results of the test.”
“But prior to that, she’d told you there was a possibility? She’d told you she suspected?”
“She hadn’t said anything to me about pregnancy before Wednesday. I had no suspicion.”
“Did you know she wasn’t taking precautions?”
“It wasn’t something I felt we had to discuss.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Lynley saw Lady Helen stir, turning to face Troughton, saying, “But surely, Dr. Troughton, a man of your education wouldn’t have left the sole responsibility of contraception to the woman with whom you intended to sleep. You would have discussed it with her before you took her to bed.”
“I didn’t see the need.”
“The need.” Lady Helen said the two words slowly.
Lynley thought of the unused birth control pills which Sergeant Havers had found in Elena Weaver’s desk drawer. He recalled February’s date upon them and the conjectures he and Havers had developed regarding that
