A Traitor to Memory

  “And you don't know where everyone else was?”

  Richard Davies spoke. “Dad and I were in his sitting room. We were watching that … God, that infernal, stupid football game. We were actually watching football while Sosy was drowning upstairs.”

  It seemed the diminutive form of their daughter's name was what broke Eugenie. She finally began to weep in earnest.

  Richard Davies, caught up in his own grief and despair, didn't take his wife into his arms as Webberly would have had him do. He merely said her name, telling her uselessly that it was all right, that the baby was with God, who loved her as much as they did. And Eugenie herself above all people knew that, didn't she, she whose faith in God and God's goodness was absolute?

  Cold comfort, that, Webberly thought. He said, “I'll want to talk to everyone else, Mr. and Mrs. Davies.” And then to Richard Davies alone, “She might need a doctor,” in reference to his wife. “Better phone him.”

  The drawing room door opened as he spoke and DS Leach entered. He nodded to indicate he'd completed his list and sealed the bathroom off, and Webberly told him to set up the drawing room to conduct interviews with the residents of the house.

  “Thank you for helping us, Inspector,” Eugenie said.

  Thank you for helping us. Webberly thought about those words now as he lumbered to his feet. How curious it was that five simple words spoken in such a wretched voice had actually managed to transform his life: from detective to knight errant in the space of a single second.

  It was because of the kind of mother she was, he told himself now as he called to Alfie. The kind of mother that Frances—God forgive her—could never have hoped to be. How could anyone help admiring that? How could any man help wanting to be of service to such a mother?

  “Alfie, come!” he shouted as the Alsatian loped after a terrier with a Frisbee in his mouth. “Home. Come. We won't use the lead.”

  As if the dog actually understood this last promise, he dashed back to Webberly. He'd had an excellent run this morning, if his heaving sides and his dangling tongue were any indication. Webberly nodded towards the gate and the dog walked to it and sat obediently, eyes on Webberly's pockets for a treat to reward him for such a display of good manners.

  “You'll have to wait till we get home,” Webberly told him, and afterwards considered his own words.

  Indeed, that's the way life played out, didn't it? At the end of the day and for too many years, everything that mattered in Webberly's sorry little world had found itself put off till he got home.

  Lynley noted that Helen hadn't taken more than a mouthful of tea. She'd changed her position in bed, however, and she was observing him make a mess of his tie while he was watching her in the mirror.

  “So she's someone Malcolm Webberly knew?” Helen asked. “How dreadful for him, Tommy. And on his anniversary night.”

  “I wouldn't go so far as to say he knew her,” Lynley replied. “She was one of the principals in the first case he ran as a DI over in Kensington.”

  “That would have been years ago, then. It must have made an enormous impression on him.”

  “I dare say it did.” Lynley didn't want to tell her why. Indeed, he didn't want to tell her anything else about that long-ago death that Webberly had investigated. The drowning of a child was horrific enough to contemplate under any circumstances, but under these newly changed circumstances in their lives, it seemed to Lynley that a certain amount of discretion and delicacy was going to be in order now that his wife was carrying a child of her own.

  A child of our own, he corrected his thinking, a child to whom no harm would ever come. So elaborating on the harm that had befallen another child seemed like tempting fate. At least that was what Lynley told himself as he went about the rituals of dressing.

  In bed, Helen turned on her side, away from him, her knees drawn up and an extra pillow bunched into her stomach. “Oh Lord,” she moaned.

  Lynley went to her, sat on the edge of the bed, and smoothed her chestnut hair. “You've not touched much of your tea,” he said. “Would you like something different this morning?”

  “I'd like to stop feeling so wretched.”

  “What does the doctor say?”

  “She's a font of wisdom on that front: 'I spent the first four months of every pregnancy embracing the bowl of the loo. It'll pass, Mrs. Lynley. It always does.'”

  “Till then?”

  “Think positive thoughts, I suppose. Just don't make them of food.”

  Lynley studied her fondly: the curve of her cheek and the way her ear lay like a perfect shell against her head. There was a greenish cast to her skin, though, and the way she was clutching onto the pillow suggested another round of sickness was fast on its way. He said, “I wish I could do this for you, Helen.”

  She laughed weakly. “That's just the sort of thing men say out of guilt when they know very well that the last thing on earth they would ever choose to do is to have a baby for anyone.” She reached for his hand. “I do appreciate the thought, though. Are you off, then? You will have breakfast, won't you, Tommy?”

  He assured her that he would have a meal. Indeed, he knew there was no escape from it. If Helen wasn't insisting upon his eating, then Charlie Denton—manservant, housekeeper, cook, valet, aspiring thespian, unrepentant Don Juan, or whatever else he was choosing to call himself on a given day—would bar the door until Lynley had downed a plate of something.

  “What about you?” he asked his wife. “What d'you have on? Are you working today?”

  “Frankly, I wish not, because I'd like to remain immobile for the next thirty-two weeks.”

  “Shall I phone Simon, then?”

  “No. He's got that acrylamide business to sort out. They need it in two days.”

  “Yes, I see. But does he need you?” Simon Allcourt-St. James was a forensic scientist, an expert witness whose specialities took him into the witness box regularly to confirm the Crown Prosecution's evidence or to bolster the position of the defence. In this particular instance, he was working on a civil case in which the litigation involved determining how much acrylamide—absorbed through the skin—constituted a toxic dose.

  “I like to think so,” she replied. “And anyway …” She gazed at him, a smile curving her mouth. “I'd like to tell him our news. I told Barbara last night, by the way.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah? Tommy, what's that supposed to mean?”

  Lynley rose from the bed. He went to the wardrobe, where the mirrored door illustrated the disaster he'd created with his tie. He un-knotted it and began again. “You did tell Barbara that no one else knows, didn't you, Helen?”

  Across from him, she struggled to sit up. The movement cost her, however, and she quickly sank back. “I told her that, yes. But now that she knows, I think we may as well tell—”

  “I'd rather not just yet.” The tie looked worse than the first time round. Lynley gave up on the effort, blamed it on the material, and fetched another. He was aware that Helen was watching him, and he knew she expected some very sound reasoning behind his decision. He said, “Superstition, darling. If we keep it to ourselves, there's less chance something might go wrong. It's silly, I know. But there you have it. I hadn't thought to tell anyone till … well, I guess till it took.”

  “Till it took.” She repeated the phrase thoughtfully. “Are you worried, then?”

  “Yes. Worried. Terrified. Nervous. Apprehensive. Preoccupied. And frequently incoherent. That's about it.”

  She smiled gently. “I love you, darling.”

  And that smile asked for a further admission. He owed her that much. “There's also Deborah to consider,” Lynley said. “Simon'll be able to cope with the news, but it's going to hurt Deborah like the devil when you tell her you're pregnant.”

  Deborah was Simon's wife, a young woman with so many miscarriages to her name that it seemed like a deliberate act of cruelty to mention a successful pregnancy in her hearing. Not that she wouldn't feign joy
for the couple. Not that she wouldn't feel that joy at some level. But at a deeper level where her own hopes lay, she would feel the hot brand of failure scorch the skin of dreams, and that skin had been scorched enough times already.

  “Tommy,” Helen said kindly, “Deborah's going to find out eventually. How much more hurtful is it going to be if she suddenly realises I've switched to maternity clothes without mentioning the fact that we're having a baby? She'll know why we haven't told her at that point. Don't you think that will hurt her even more?”

  “I'm not suggesting we let it go that long,” Lynley said. “Just for a while, Helen. For luck, actually, more than for Deborah. Will you do this for me?”

  Helen studied him as he'd studied her. He felt himself chafing under her scrutiny, but he didn't turn from it, waiting for her answer. She said, “Are you happy about this baby, darling? Are you truly happy?”

  “Helen, I'm delighted.”

  But even as he spoke, Lynley wondered why he did not feel that way. He wondered why what he actually felt was a duty he'd long left undone.

  4

  JILL FOSTER WAS grunting through the final series of pelvic tilts with her antenatal trainer counting them when Richard came into the flat. He looked more haggard than she'd expected, and she didn't like the way this made her feel. He'd been divorced from Eugenie for sixteen years. As far as she could see, the identification of his former wife's body should merely be an inconvenient exercise undertaken as a helpful member of society doing his duty to assist the police.

  Gladys, the antenatal trainer whom Jill had come to think of as a cross between an Olympic athlete and a fitness Nazi, said, “Ten more, Jill. Come along, now. You'll thank me when you're in labour, luv.”

  Jill grunted, “Can't.”

  “Nonsense. Take your mind off exhaustion. Think of that dress instead. You'll thank me at the end of the day. Do ten more.”

  The dress in question was a wedding gown, a Knightsbridge creation that had cost a small fortune and that hung from the sitting room door, where Jill had placed it to give her inspiration when the hungries came upon her and when the fitness Nazi was taking her through her sweating, miserable, and embarrassing paces. “I'm sending you Gladys Smiley, darling,” Jill's mother had announced upon being told of the grandchild to come. “She's the best antenatal specialist in the south and that's including London, mind you. She's generally booked up, but she'll fit you in for me. Exercise is crucial. Exercise and diet, of course.”

  Jill had cooperated with her mother, not because Dora Foster was her mother but because she'd delivered five hundred babies at five hundred successful home births. So she knew what she was talking about.

  Gladys counted down from ten. Jill was sweating like a race horse and feeling like a sow, but she managed a glowing smile for Richard. He'd argued against what he'd called “the unique absurdity” of Gladys Smiley from the first, and he was still standing firm against the idea of Dora Foster delivering her first granddaughter at the family home in Wiltshire. But since Jill had compromised on the wedding—agreeing to the more modern approach of postnatal connubiality rather than what she would have preferred: engagement, marriage, and childbirth in that order—she knew that Richard was ultimately going to have to give in to her desires. She was the one giving birth, after all. And if she wanted her mother to deliver her—her mother with thirty years of experience doing just that—then that's the way it was going to be. “You're not my husband yet, darling,” Jill informed him pleasantly each time he protested. “I haven't yet said a word in front of anyone about loving, honouring, and obeying you.”

  She had him there, and she knew it. So did he. Which was why she was going to have her way in the end.

  “Four … three … two … one … yes!” Gladys cried. “Excellent work. You keep this up and that little one'll slide right out of you. See if she doesn't.” She handed Jill a towel and nodded at Richard, where he stood in the doorway, looking grey round his mouth. “Settled on a name, then, have you?”

  “Catherine Ann,” Jill said firmly as Richard said just as firmly, “Cara Ann.”

  Gladys looked from one to the other, saying, “Yes. Well. Keep up the good work, Jilly. I'll see you day after tomorrow, yes? Same time?”

  “Hmm.” Jill remained on the floor as Richard saw Gladys out of the flat. She was still there—feeling like a beached whale—when he came back into the sitting room. She said, “Darling, there is no way on earth that I'm naming a child Cara. I'd be the laughing stock of every one of my friends. Cara indeed. Honestly, Richard. She's a child, not a character in a romance novel.”

  In the normal course of events, he'd have argued. He'd have said, “Catherine is far too ordinary, so if it's not to be Cara, then it's not to be Catherine, and we'll have to compromise on something else.”

  Which was what they'd been doing since the day that they'd met when she'd found herself going head-to-head with the man during a documentary the BBC had been filming about his son. “You may speak to Gideon about his music,” Richard Davies had informed her during the contract negotiations. “You may question him about the violin. But my son does not discuss his personal life or his history with the media, and I insist upon making that perfectly clear.”

  Because he doesn't have a personal life, Jill thought now. And what went for his history could have been summed up in four syllables: the violin. Gideon was music and music was Gideon. So it had been and always would be.

  Richard, on the other hand, was electricity. She'd liked matching wits and battling wills with him. She'd found that appealing and sexy, despite the enormous gap in their ages. Arguing with a man was such an aphrodisiac. And so few men in Jill's life were actually willing to argue. Especially English men, who generally decomposed into passive-aggression at the first sign of a row.

  Arguing, however, was not what Richard had in mind at the moment: arguing about the name of their daughter, the location of the freehold they had yet to purchase, the choice of wallpaper once that freehold was theirs, or the size and the date of their future wedding. All those had been subjects of past rows between them, but she could see he hadn't the heart for a heated discussion now.

  His colourless face was an advertisement for what he'd undergone in the past few hours, and despite the fact that his clinging to the idea of Cara was rather more maddening than she'd anticipated it might be when he first suggested the name five months ago, Jill wanted to appear sympathetic to his recent experiences. No matter that she felt like saying, “What on earth's wrong? For God's sake, Richard, the beastly woman walked out on you nearly twenty years ago.” She knew the wisdom of saying instead, “Was it bad, darling? Are you quite all right?” in the gentlest of tones.

  Richard went to the sofa and sat, his scoliosis looking worse for the dejection that drooped his shoulders. He said, “I couldn't tell them.”

  She frowned. Couldn't tell them …? “What, darling?”

  “Eugenie. I couldn't tell them if the woman was actually Eugenie.”

  “Oh.” In a small voice. Then, “She'd changed that much? Well, I suppose it's not that odd, is it, Richard? So long since you've seen her. And perhaps she's had a rough time …”

  He shook his head. He dug two fingers into his eyebrows and rubbed. “It isn't that, although I couldn't have told them even if it was.”

  “Then what?”

  “She was hit quite badly. They wouldn't say exactly what happened, even if they knew. But she looked as if a lorry had run over her. She was … She was mangled, Jill.”

  “My God.” Jill struggled into a sitting position. She put a supportive hand on his knee. This was something to go all grey in the face about. “Richard, I'm so terribly sorry. What an ordeal for you.”

  “They showed me a Polaroid first, which was good of them. But when I couldn't identify her from that, they showed me her body. They asked if there were distinguishing marks somewhere on her that might identify her. But I couldn't remember.” His voice was dull, like an old c
opper coin. “All I could tell them was the name of her dentist twenty years ago and think of that, Jill. I could remember the name of her dentist but not if she had a birthmark somewhere that might tell the police that she is—that she was—Eugenie, my wife.”

  Former wife, Jill wanted to add. Deserting wife. Wife who selfishly left behind a child whom you raised to adulthood alone. Alone, Richard. Let's not forget that.

  “But I could remember the name of her bloody dentist,” he was saying. “And only because he's mine as well.”

  “What will they do?”

  “Use the x-rays to make sure it's Eugenie.”

  “What do you think?”

  He looked up. He seemed so tired. With an unaccustomed sense of guilt, Jill thought of how little sleep he was managing to get on her sofa and how kind and solicitous it was of him to stay the nights with her now when her time was drawing near. Since Richard had already had two children—although only one of them was actually still alive—Jill hadn't honestly expected him to be as lovingly concerned for her welfare as he'd been during most of the pregnancy. But from the moment her stomach had started to swell and her breasts had begun to grow heavier, he'd treated her with a tenderness she'd found rather poignant. It served to open her heart to him and to bind them more closely together. This unit they were forming was something she warmed to. It was what she'd longed for and dreamed of having and despaired of finding among men her own age.

  “What I think,” Richard said in answer to her question, “is that the likelihood of Eugenie's having had the same dentist since our marriage ended—”

  Since she deserted you, Jill corrected him silently.

  “—is fairly remote.”

  “I still don't understand how they connected you with her. And how they tracked you down.”

  Richard stirred on the sofa. In front of him on the large plump ottoman that served as a coffee table, he fingered the latest copy of Radio Times. Its cover featured a toothy American actress who'd agreed to simulate what would undoubtedly be a wildly imperfect English accent so she could play the part of Jane Eyre in yet another resurrection of that eponymous and utterly implausible Victorian melodrama. Jane Eyre indeed, Jill thought with a scoff, she who fostered within the soft brains of more than one hundred years of mentally pliable female readers the nonsensical belief that a man with a past as dark as licorice could be elevated by the love of a decent woman. What utter nonsense.