date. He asked, “Dr. Troughton, did you assume she was using a contraceptive of some sort? Did she tell you she was?”
“As entrapment, you mean? No. She never said a word about contraception one way or another. And she didn’t need to, Inspector. It wouldn’t have made any difference to me if she had.” He picked up his brandy glass and turned it on his palm. It seemed a largely meditative gesture.
Lynley watched the play of uncertainty on his face. He felt irritated at the delicacy with which the circumstances suggested he probe for the truth. He said, “I have the distinct impression that we’re caught between talking at cross purposes and engaging in outright prevarication. Perhaps you’d care to tell me what you’re holding back.”
In the silence, the distant sound of the jazz concert beat rhythmically against the windows in the room, the high wild notes of the trumpet improvising as Randie took another ride with the band. And then the drummer soloed. And then the melody resumed. When it did so, Victor Troughton raised his head, as if the music beckoned him to do so.
He said, “I was going to marry Elena. Frankly, I welcomed the opportunity to do so. But her baby wasn’t mine.”
“Wasn’t-”
“She didn’t know that. She thought I was the father. And I let her believe it. But I wasn’t, I’m afraid.”
“You sound certain of that.”
“I am, Inspector.” Troughton offered a smile of infinite sadness. “I had a vasectomy nearly three years ago. Elena didn’t know. And I didn’t tell her. I’ve never told anyone.”
Just outside the building in which Victor Troughton had his study and bedroom, a terrace overlooked the River Cam. It rose from the garden, partially hidden by a brick wall, and it held several planters of verduous shrubs and a few benches on which-during fine weather-members of the college could take the sun and listen to the laughter of those who tried their luck punting down the river towards the Bridge of Sighs. It was to this terrace that Lynley directed Lady Helen. Although he recognised his need to lay before her each singular realisation that the circumstances of the evening had forced upon him, he said nothing at the moment. Instead, he tried to give defi nition to what those realisations were causing him to feel.
The wind of the previous two days had subsided considerably. All that remained of it was an occasional brief, weak gust of cold that puffed across the Backs, as if the night were sighing. But even those brief gusts would eventually dissipate, and the heaviness of the chill air suggested that fog would replace them tomorrow.
It was just after ten. The jazz concert had ended moments before they left Victor Troughton, and the voices of students calling to one another still rose and fell in the college grounds as the crowd dispersed. No one came in their direction, however. And considering both the hour and the temperature, Lynley knew it was unlikely that anyone would join or disturb them on the secluded river terrace.
They chose a bench at the south end of the terrace where a wall that separated the fellows’ garden from the rest of the grounds also afforded them protection from what remained of the wind. Lynley sat, pulling Lady Helen down next to him, drawing her into the curve of his arm. He pressed his lips to the side of her head in what was more a need of physical contact than an expression of affection, and in response her body seemed to yield to his, creating a gentle, constant pressure against him. She didn’t speak, but he had little doubt as to where her thoughts lay.
Victor Troughton had seemed to recognise an opportunity to speak for the first time about what had been his most closely guarded secret. And like most people who’ve lived a lie, when the opportunity presented itself to reveal reality, he was more than willing to do so. But as he began to tell his story, Lynley had seen Lady Helen’s initial sympathy towards Trough-ton-so characteristic of her, really-transform slowly. Her posture changed, drawing her fractionally away from the man. Her eyes grew cloudy. And despite the fact that he was in the midst of an interview crucial to a murder investigation, Lynley found himself watching Lady Helen as much as he was listening to Troughton’s story. He wanted to excuse himself to her-to excuse all men-for the sins against women which Troughton was listing without an apparent twinge of conscience.
The historian had lit a third cigarette from the smouldering butt of his second. He had taken more brandy, and as he spoke, he kept his eyes fixed on the liquor in the glass and on the small, swimming oval of yellow-gold that was the reflection in the brandy of the light that hung above him. He never spoke in anything other than a low, frank voice.
“I wanted a life. That’s really the only excuse I have, and I know it isn’t much of one. I was willing to stay in my marriage for my children’s sake. I was willing to be a hypocrite and keep up the pretence of happiness. But I wasn’t willing to live like a priest. I did that for two years, dead for two years. I wanted a life again.”
“When did you meet Elena?” Lynley asked him.
Troughton waved the question off. He seemed determined to tell the story in his own way, in his own time. He said, “The vasectomy had nothing to do with Elena. I’d merely made a decision about my life-style. These are the days of sexual profligacy, after all, so I decided to make myself available to women. But I didn’t want to run the risk of an unwanted pregnancy-or the risk of some scheming female’s entrapment-so I had myself fixed up. And I went on the prowl.”
He lifted his glass and smiled sardonically. “It was, I must admit, a rather rude awakening. I was just short of forty-five years old, in fairly good condition, in a somewhat admirable and ego-massaging career as a relatively well-known and well-respected academic. I had expectations of scores of women being more than willing to accept my attentions just for the sheer, intellectual thrill of knowing they’d been to bed with a Cambridge don.”
“I take it you found that wasn’t the case.”
“Not among the women I was pursuing.” Troughton looked long at Lady Helen, as if he were evaluating the opposing forces at battle within him: the wisdom of saying nothing more versus the overwhelming need to say it all at last. He gave in to need, turning back to Lynley. “I wanted a young woman, Inspector. I wanted to feel young, resilient flesh. I wanted to kiss breasts that were full and firm. I wanted unveined legs and feet without callosity and hands like silk.”
“And what about your wife?” Lady Helen asked. Her voice was quiet, her legs were crossed, her hands were folded and relaxed in her lap. But Lynley knew her well enough to imagine how her heart had begun to pound angrily-as any woman’s would-when Troughton calmly and rationally offered his list of sexual requirements: not a mind, not a soul, just a body that was young.
Troughton was not reluctant to answer her. “Three children,” he replied. “Three boys. Each time, Rowena let herself go a little more. First it was her clothes and her hair, then her skin, then her body.”
“What you mean to say is that a middle-aged woman who has borne three children no longer excited you.”
“I admit to the worst of it,” Troughton replied. “I felt an aversion when I looked at what was left of her stomach. I was mildly disgusted over the size of her hips, and I hated the drooping sacks that her breasts had become and the loose flesh hanging beneath her arms. But most of all I hated the fact that she didn’t intend to do a thing about herself. And that she was perfectly happy when I began to leave her alone.”
He got up and walked across the room to the window that overlooked the college garden. He pulled back the curtain and studied the outdoors, sipping his brandy.
“So I made my plans. I had the vasectomy to protect myself from any unexpected diffi culties, and I began to go my own way. The only problem was that I found I really didn’t have the right…What do they call it? The right moves? The technique?” He chuckled derisively. “I’d actually thought it would be easy. I’d be joining the sexual revolution two decades too late, but I’d be joining it nonetheless. A middle-aged pioneer. What a nasty surprise it all was for me.”
“And then Elena Weaver came along?” Lynley asked.
Troughton stayed by the window, back-dropped by the black glass of night. “I’ve known her father for years, so I’d met her before, on one visit or another when she was up from London. But it wasn’t until he brought her to my house last autumn to choose a puppy that I really thought of her as anything other than Anthony’s little deaf girl. And even then, it was just admiration on my part. She was lively, good-humoured, a mass of energy and enthusiasm. She got on well in life in spite of being deaf, and I found that-along with everything else about her- immensely attractive. But Anthony’s a colleague, and even if a score of young women hadn’t already given me sufficient evidence of my undesirability, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to approach a colleague’s daughter.”
“She approached you?”
