Gwennap Pengelly breezed in, introduced herself-"Puh-leeze call me Gwenn, not Gwennap"-shook hands with both men, sat down, and gave them her London home and office addresses and no fewer than three phone numbers where she could be reached-all without being asked.
St. Just sized her up as she chirped on. She had a broad, angled face with an almost Asiatic cast to the eyes, and a head that appeared to be too large for her body. But that may have been an illusion caused by her fashionably emaciated frame. Her hair was parted in the center and fell to her shoulders in artfully cascading curves and twists. She had freshened her makeup: the lips of her pouty mouth glistened pinkly, and her eyes were heavily ringed in black. These enhancements didn't appear to be repairs to hide her grief, for the whites of her panda eyes shone with health and vitality. Rather, so might an actress prepare for her debut performance. In common with other media personalities he had met, and in the course of his career he had necessarily met a few, she was shorter than she appeared on television.
"My mobile is best, of course," she was saying now. "It's never turned off and I travel with three spare batteries. 'Breaking News Never Sleeps.' That's our motto at the station. Complete marketing bollocks, of course, but it sounds good, doesn't it?" She beamed brightly at both men in turn then, seeming to remember the gravity of the situation at hand, composed her features into a scowl of concern. It was a trick she'd picked up as a broadcaster, no doubt-that ability to organize facial features and tone of voice to suit the story. Much like an actress, thought St. Just. She wasn't particularly good at it but then, given her nightly recital of atrocities around the globe, she didn't have to be. The words spoke for themselves… so to speak.
"You'll want to know where I was-where everyone was, of course-and anything that happened leading up to the crime, especially anything of a suspicious nature. We-l-l-l, I spent the day mostly on my computer researching a story. I took a break for lunch at Fitzbillies. Then I came back and worked until six. Took a shower in one of those ghastly, germ-breeding, mold-infested stalls they subject us to here-I suppose to show the dire need for donations to renovate. The Master is no one's fool, let me tell you, and his sidekick the Bursar is twice as cunning. Anyway, down to dinner. The Master rolled out, I swear, the same speech he gave years ago in welcoming us to the college, only this time with a thicker overlay of the sense of the History of it all. And how we must preserve our great traditions, whatever the cost. Honestly, he might have lifted the whole thing from the Queen's Speech. Hermione Jax sat there lapping it up, of course. She's had a pash for the Master for years. Unrequited, needless to say. But that hasn't stopped him from cashing her cheques left and right. Fortunately, she's rolling in it, so little harm done, I would imagine. Her father was one of the Hanover-Forspeths, you know, on his mother's side. They're all barking, of course. Old Hermie escaped from a dreadful, doomed existence when her father died. Oh, I see you know about that?
"Anyway, we got through the dinner somehow-I think the main course was yak, I swear it, and a very elderly yak, at that. Some things never change-and the Master instructed us to reconvene in the SCR, where no doubt we were to be treated to yet more toasts and speeches and heavy-handed hints about the need for more funding. Imagine the crush to get in first-not! Anyway, I went to my room and fixed my face and wandered ever so slowly down. I wasn't in the room a minute when that tall young blonde came roaring in, blubbering."
Here, much to St. Just's relief, and Fear's, who was getting writer's cramp, she paused to draw breath and beam at them again. Before she could resume, St. Just cut in:
"Tell us about your time at St. Michael's, when you were a student here."
"Certainly. Well, to be frank, I loathed the place when I was here. Talk about a hotbed of misogyny. Any reasonably attractive woman"-and here she paused, eyelashes fluttering, clearly waiting for the requisite protest as to her remarkable beauty. None forthcoming, she went on rather sulkily, "Well, any attractive woman simply was not taken seriously. And even the Ms. Jaxes of this world had a difficult row to hoe. I just kept my head down and got through it, somehow. Finished with a decent second, before you ask. I never claimed to be a genius."
"Did you know Lexy at all well from that time?"
"I did at first-we hung about a bit together. We were much the same age, with some interests in common. We played tennis a few times, doubles. But she quickly took up with James and it was the usual story-no time for old girlfriends when a man comes on the scene. And I-well, I had my own fish to fry about then. Rather a dashing young man reading Renaissance Lit. He broke my heart, of course, but at least he did it poetically." She grinned again, that famous grin admired by viewers the width and breadth of Great Britain. She really was a good-looking woman, thought St. Just. Perhaps there had been some rivalry between Gwenn and Lexy?
She went on, "The whole place was a petri dish for this type of love affair thing, come to think of it."
"How did anyone get enough work done to finish their degree?" wondered St. Just.
"That's quite a good question, actually."
"You say Lexy quickly got caught up with James. Was it your impression she was the pursuer, then, and not the pursued?"
She laughed. It was a squeaky laugh, like a pencil eraser rubbed across a glass window. Coquettishly, she gave her head what St. Just was certain she thought of as a saucy toss, setting the curls abounce. Twinkle. Smile. "Golly, yes," she said.
St. Just felt he'd had quite enough of this sort of thing. He was reminded why he seldom watched the news on telly. He preferred to get his information from people who had not first been coiffed and shellacked to within an inch of their lives, as if they were going to a dinner party. Radio had much to recommend it; print still more.
"Are you all right, Ms. Pengelly?"
"Whatever do you mean?" Toss, bounce. Smile. "Of course I'm all right."
"Sometimes neck pain can take people that way. A sharp spasm, following by twitching."
Coldly. "I said I'm all right."
"Good. Then, you were saying… "
"Yes. Well. James couldn't make a move, inside or outside the college, where he didn't run into Lexy, 'by accident.' She positively threw herself at him." Gwenn flexed her wrist in a dismissive motion. "He joined the chess club; she joined the chess club-just try to imagine Lexy, of all people, in a chess club. But of course, I'm forgetting, you didn't know her. Anyway, he joined the Student Union; she joined the Student Union. It's a wonder she didn't follow him into the men's loo. Lexy lived in a positive bubble of denial, you see-he was never all that keen, I don't think. Of course, he had reasonable looks and some old family money. One couldn't blame her. Is there a Type A-B personality? Then Lexy was it. All over the place. She still lives-lived-a somewhat rackety life in London, so I've heard. Never quite settled down."
"Did you? Blame her, I mean. Feel any resentment?"
The automatic smile froze, although the eyelashes continued to flutter.
"How do you mean?" she said at last.
"I mean, did you feel any resentment at their relationship?"
"Over a dried-up stick like James? Certainly not. James was an old man before he turned six years of age. Far too serious for my taste. Besides, as I told you, I had other fish to fry. Lexy was-I've just realized, I made her sound like some kind of man-eater. It wasn't like that at all. She was insecure, is all-one of the most insecure women I've met in my life. She loved James; rather, she seemed to need him rather desperately, which can be the same thing, can't it? Thank God, or maybe not, he reciprocated, at least for awhile. Then he met India and-pow.
"India had-what was it? A life force that Lexy lacked somehow. Like Lexy, if India wanted something, India went after it. But there was more-" and here, the eyelashes went into overdrive, "and it was this: India's presence somehow held the promise of unbridled sexuality, no strings attached. Have you ever met anyone like that?"
The two policemen, wide-eyed, remained diplomatically silent.
"But there are always strings-strings that entangle not one or two but several lives, even threatening to destroy everyone caught in the net. Still, what man could resist India, or even want to? Lexy, by way of contrast, was an ice princess. Lovely, seemingly untouchable."
Again she tossed her head in the coquettish manner that was apparently hard-wired into her character.
"There was a time I worried about Lexy's stability, during all that," she said. "We all did. She seemed headed for the loony bin. Then the Master got them all separated and that seemed to help. She was seeing a rower by the time we graduated. But she never gave up her pash for James."
"Even as late as this weekend?"
She nodded. "You only had to see her-her eyes, following him wherever he walked. That dishy Argentine was-what do you call it? A beard? Anyway, he was here just for show. That much was obvious."
"They seemed to get along, did they? Lexy and Geraldo?"
"Yes, I suppose. But again, it was all for show. He certainly wasn't along to provide thought-provoking commentary on the global economy, that's for certain. Now, Chief Inspector, you will be giving me an exclusive on this story, won't you?" She flashed her best, professionally whitened smile. Through some trick of genetic inheritance each of her front teeth was slightly and evenly gapped, in a not unattractive way, like a row of vertical fence slats.
"There will of course be a statement issued from communications at some point," he told her, knowing full well that wasn't what she wanted to hear. Too bad. "One further question: Did you see much of Lexy once both of you had left University?"
A shrug. "Here and there. She held down a few Sloane-y jobs, wrote a society column for a while. Our professional paths sometimes intersected over that-she had fantastic access to after-party tidbits of gossip. You know: who went home with whom, who was leaving whom. Then she retired from working to become, well, Lexy Laurant."
There seeming to be little more she could tell them, he bid her a good night. Sulkily, cheated of her "scoop," and leaving her audience less than dazzled, she left the room.
And DCI St. Just and Sergeant Fear called it a night soon after that.