For the Sake of Elena

“She never touched you or hurt you. She never even knew-”

“That you and I were lovers? No, she never knew. I was good about that. I kept my promise. I never told her. She died thinking you were devoted to Justine. And that’s what you wanted her to think, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you wanted everyone to think?”

Although enormously weary, her voice was more clearly defined than his. She would, Lynley thought, be facing the door. He pressed on it gently. It swung inward a few more inches. He could see the edge of Weaver’s tweed coat. He could see the gunstock resting at his waist.

“How could you bring yourself to it? You met her, Sarah. You knew her. She sat in this room and let you sketch her and pose her and talk to her and…” His voice caught on a sob.

“And?” she said. “And, Tony? And?” She gave a small, pain-stricken laugh when he didn’t respond. “And paint her. That’s how the story goes. But it doesn’t end there. Justine made certain of that.”

“No.”

“Yes. My creation, Tony. The only copy. Just like Elena.”

“I tried to tell you how sorry-”

“Sorry? Sorry?” For the first time, her own voice broke.

“I had to accept her terms. Once she knew about us. I had no choice.”

“Neither did I.”

“So you murdered my daughter-a human being, flesh and blood, not a lifeless piece of canvas-to get your revenge.”

“I didn’t want revenge. I wanted justice. But I wasn’t going to get it in a court of law because the painting was yours, my gift to you. What did it matter how much of myself I’d put into it because it no longer belonged to me. I had no case. So I had to balance the scales myself.”

“As I’m about to do now.”

There was movement in the room. Sarah Gordon passed in line with the door. Her hair matted, her feet bare, she was wrapped in a blanket. Her face was colourless, even to her lips. “Your car’s in the drive. No doubt someone saw you arrive. How do you intend to get away with killing me?”

“I don’t particularly care.”

“About the scandal? Oh, but there won’t be much of one, will there? You’re the grieving father driven to violence by his daughter’s death.” She straightened her shoulders and faced him directly. “You know, I think you ought to thank me for killing her. With public opinion so much on your side, you’re guaranteed the Chair now.”

“Damn you-”

“But how on earth will you manage to pull the trigger without Justine here to steady the gun?”

“I’ll manage it. Believe me. I will. With pleasure.” He took a step towards her.

“Weaver!” Lynley shouted and at the same instant threw open the door.

Weaver whirled in his direction. Lynley dived for the floor. The gun discharged. A deafening explosion roared through the room. The stench of gunpowder filled the air. A cloud of blue-black smoke seemed to rise out of nowhere. Through it, he could see Sarah Gordon’s crumpled form not five feet away from him, prone on the fl oor.

Before he could go to her, he saw rather than heard the click and slither of metal once again as Weaver reloaded. He surged to his feet a moment before the history professor turned the gun awkwardly on himself. Lynley leapt at the other man, shoving the gun to one side. It discharged a second time just as the front door to the house was kicked open. Half a dozen men from the police firearms unit stormed down the corridor and into the studio, guns extended, ready to fi re.

“Hold off,” Lynley shouted over the tremendous ringing in his ears.

And indeed there was no need for further violence. For Weaver sank dully onto one of the stools. He removed his spectacles and dropped them to the floor. He crushed their lenses.

“I had to do it,” he said. “For Elena.”

It was the same crime-scene team that had done the honours at Georgina Higgins-Hart’s death. They arrived only minutes after the ambulance had roared off towards the hospital, cutting a wide path through the curious who had gathered in a cluster at the foot of the drive where Mr. Davies and Mr. Jeffries were holding court, proud to name themselves fi rst at the scene, proud to be able to announce to all listeners that they’d known something was wrong the minute they’d seen that plump little lady leading Flame towards the pub.

“Sarah’d never give Flame to just anyone,” he said. “And him not even on his lead. I knew there was something wrong the minute I saw that, didn’t I, Mr. Jeffries?”

In other circumstances, Mr. Davies’ continued presence might have been irksome to Lynley. But as it was, the man was a godsend, for Sarah Gordon’s dog knew him, recognised his voice, and was willing to go with him even when his owner was carried out of the house, swathed in temporary bandages, with a pressure pack applied to stop arterial bleeding.

“I’ll take the cat as well,” Mr. Davies said as he shuffled down the drive with Flame in tow. “Not much for cats, Mr. Jeffries and I, but we won’t want to see the poor thing go begging for somewhere to lodge till Sarah comes home.” He gazed uneasily in the direction of her house where several members of the fi rearms unit stood talking together. “She’s coming home, Sarah is, isn’t she? She’ll be all right?”

“She’ll be all right.” But she’d taken the shot straight on in her right arm, and from the look the ambulance attendants had given the extent of the damage, Lynley wondered how all right would be defined. He walked back to the house.

From the studio, he could hear the sound of Sergeant Havers’ sharp questions and Anthony Weaver’s deadened responses. He could hear the crime-scene team gathering evidence. A cupboard closed and St. James said to Superintendent Sheehan: “This is the muller.” But Lynley didn’t join them.

Instead, he went into the sitting room and studied a few of the pieces of Sarah Gordon’s work that hung on the walls: five young blacks-three crouched, two standing-round a doorway in one of London’s most disastrous tower blocks; an old chestnut seller hawking his product outside the underground in Leicester Square as well-furred and well-garbed theatre-goers passed him by; a miner and his wife in the kitchen of their tumbledown Welsh cottage.

Some artists, he knew, make their work a mere showcase for a clever technique in which little is risked and less is communicated. Some artists merely become experts in their medium, working clay or stone or wood or paint as proficiently and effortlessly as an ordinary craftsman. And some artists try to make something out of nothing, order out of chaos, demanding of themselves that they ably communicate structure and composition, colour and balance, and that each piece they create serve to communicate a predetermined issue as well. A piece of art asks people to stop and look in a world of moving images. If people take the time to pause before canvas, bronze, glass, or wood, a worthy effort is one which does something more than act as nonverbal panegyric to the talents of its creator. It doesn’t call for notice. It calls for thought.

Sarah Gordon, he saw, was that kind of artist. She had played her passions out on canvas and stone. It was only when she had tried to play them out in life that she had failed.

“Inspector?” Sergeant Havers entered the room.

With his eyes on the painting of Pakistani children, he said, “I don’t know if he really intended to shoot her, Barbara. He was threatening her, yes. But the gun may well have gone off accidentally. I’ll have to say that in court.”

“It won’t look pretty for him no matter what you say.”

“His culpability is moot. All he needs is a decent lawyer and public sympathy.”

“Perhaps. But you did the best that you could.” She extended her hand. In it she held a folded piece of white paper. “One of Sheehan’s men found a shotgun in the boot of her car. And Weaver, he had this thing with him. He wouldn’t talk about it, though.”

Lynley took the paper from her and unfolded it to see a sketch, a beautifully rendered tiger pulling down a unicorn, the unicorn’s mouth opened in a soundless scream of terror and pain.

Havers went on. “All he said was that he found it in an envelope in his rooms at the college when he went by yesterday to talk to Adam Jenn. What do you make of it, sir? I remember that Elena had posters of unicorns all over her walls. But the tiger? I don’t get it.”

Lynley returned the paper to her. “It’s a tigress,” he said and fi nally understood why Sarah Gordon had reacted