A Traitor to Memory

  “You need to have a care with that sort of thing,” Barbara said to Sister Cecilia as she joined her. “One wrong move and all of Kensington'll go up in smoke. I don't expect you want that.”

  “With no Wren to build its replacement,” Sister Cecilia noted. “Yes. We're being quite careful, Constable. George doesn't leave the fire unattended. And I'm thinking it's George who's got the better bargain. We do the gathering and he makes the offering that God receives with pleasure.”

  “Pardon?”

  The nun drew her rake along the lawn, its tines snaring a cluster of leaves. “Biblical allusion, if you'll pardon me. Cain and Abel. Abel's fire produced smoke that went heavenward.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “You don't know the Old Testament?”

  “Just the lying, knowing, and begetting parts. And I've got most of those memorised.”

  Sister Cecilia laughed and took her rake to lean it against a bench that encircled the sycamore at the garden's centre. She returned to Barbara, saying, “Sure there was a great deal of lying and begetting going on in those days, wasn't there, Constable? But then, they had to set about it, didn't they, since they'd been told to populate the world.”

  Barbara smiled. “Could I have a word?”

  “Of course. You'll be preferring to have it inside the convent, I expect.” Sister Cecilia didn't wait for a reply. She merely said to her companion, “Sister Rose, if I can leave you to this for a quarter of an hour …?” and when the other nun nodded, she led the way to a short flight of concrete stairs which took them to the back door of the dun brick building.

  They walked down a lino-floored corridor to a door marked visitors' room. Here, Sister Cecilia knocked, and when there was no reply, she swung the door open, saying, “Would you like a cup of tea, Constable? A coffee? I think we've a biscuit or two.”

  Barbara demurred. Just conversation, she told the nun.

  “You don't mind if I …?” Sister Cecilia indicated an electric kettle, which stood on a chipped plastic tray along with a tin of Earl Grey tea and several mismatched cups and saucers. She plugged the kettle in and fetched from the top of a small chest of drawers a box of sugar cubes, three of which she plopped into a cup, saying serenely to Barbara, “Sweet tooth. But God forgives small vices in us all. I would feel less guilty, though, if you'd be taking a biscuit at least. They're Weight Watchers. Oh but sure, I don't mean to imply that you're needing to—”

  “No offence taken,” Barbara interrupted. “I'll have one.”

  Sister Cecilia looked mischievous. “They do come in packets of two, Constable.”

  “Hand them over, then. I'll cope.”

  With her tea made and her biscuits in their little packet on a separate saucer, Sister Cecilia was prepared to join Barbara. They sat on two vinyl-covered chairs next to a window that overlooked the garden where Sister Rose was still raking leaves. A low veneer table separated them, its surface holding a variety of religious magazines and one copy of Elle, heavily thumbed.

  Barbara told the nun that she'd met Lynn Davies and asked if Sister Cecilia knew about this earlier marriage and this additional child of Richard Davies.

  Sister Cecilia confirmed that she had long known, that she'd learned about Lynn and that “poor dear mite of hers” from Eugenie shortly after Gideon's birth. “It came as quite a shock to Eugenie, to be sure, Constable. She'd not known Richard was even divorced, and she spent some time reflecting on what it meant that he hadn't told her prior to their marriage.”

  “I expect she felt betrayed.”

  “Oh, it wasn't the personal side of the omission that concerned her. At least, if it was, she didn't discuss that part of it with me. It was the spiritual and religious implications that Eugenie wrestled with during those first years after Gideon's birth.”

  “What sort of implications?”

  “Well, the holy Church recognises marriage as a permanent covenant between a man and a woman.”

  “Was Mrs. Davies concerned that if the Church saw her husband's first marriage as his legitimate one, her own marriage would be considered bigamous? And the kids from that marriage illegitimate?”

  Sister Cecilia took a sip of tea. “Yes and no,” she replied. “The situation was complicated by the fact that Richard himself wasn't Catholic. He wasn't actually anything, poor man. He hadn't been married in any church in the first place, so Eugenie's real question was whether he'd lived in sin with Lynn and if the child from that union—who would thus be conceived in sin—bore the mark of God's judgement upon her. And if that were the case, did Eugenie herself run the risk of calling down God's judgement upon herself as well?”

  “For having married a man who'd ‘lived in sin,’ d'you mean?”

  “Ah no. For not herself having married him in the Church.”

  “The Church wouldn't allow it?”

  “It was never a question of what the Church would or would not allow. Richard didn't want a religious ceremony, so they never had one. Just the civil procedure at the register office.”

  “But as a Catholic, wouldn't Mrs. Davies have wanted a Church wedding as well? Wouldn't she have been obliged to have one? I mean, for everything to be on the up and up with God and the Pope.”

  “That's how it is, my dear. But Eugenie was Catholic only as far as it went.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that she received some sacraments but not others. She accepted some beliefs but not others.”

  “When you join up, aren't you supposed to swear on the Bible or something that you'll abide by the rules? I mean, we know that she wasn't brought up Catholic, so does the Church take on members who abide by some rules and not by others?”

  “You must remember that the Church has no secret police to make certain its members are walking the straight and narrow, Constable,” the nun replied. She took a bite from her biscuit and munched. “God has given us each a conscience so that we can monitor our own behaviour. Isn't it true, of course, that there are many topics on which individual Catholics part ways with Holy Mother the Church, but whether that puts their eternal salvation into jeopardy is something that only God could tell us.”

  “Yet Mrs. Davies seemed to believe that God gets even with sinners during their lifetimes, if she thought that Virginia was God's way of dealing with Richard and Lynn.”

  “Sure it is that when a misfortune befalls someone, people often interpret it that way. But consider Job. What was his sin that he was so tried by God?”

  “Knowing and begetting on the wrong side of the sheets?” Barbara asked. “I can't remember.”

  “You can't remember because there was no sin. Just the terrible trials of his faith in the Almighty.” Sister Cecilia took up her tea, wiping the biscuit crumbs from her fingers onto the nubby material of her skirt.

  “Is that what you told Mrs. Davies, then?”

  “I pointed out that had God wished to punish her, He certainly wouldn't have started out by giving her Gideon—a perfectly healthy child—as the first fruit of her marriage to Richard.”

  “But as to Sonia?”

  “Did she consider that child her punishment from God for her sins?” Sister Cecilia clarified. “She never said as much. But from the way she reacted when she was told about the wee one's condition … And then when she stopped attending church entirely once the baby died …” The nun sighed, brought her cup to her lips, and held it there as she considered how to reply. She finally said, “We can only surmise, Constable. We can only take the questions she asked with regard to Lynn and Virginia and infer from them how she herself might have felt and what she might have believed when she was faced with a similar trial.”

  “What about the rest of them?”

  “The rest?”

  “The rest of the family. Did she mention how they felt? About Sonia? Once they knew …?”

  “She never said.”

  “Lynn says she left in part because of Richard Davies' dad. She says he had a few cogs not working, but the one
s that did work were nasty enough for her to be glad the rest were misfiring. If a cog misfires. But I expect you know what I mean.”

  “Eugenie didn't talk about the household.”

  “She didn't mention anyone wanting to get rid of Sonia? Like Richard? Or his dad? Or anyone?”

  Sister Cecilia's blue eyes widened over the biscuit she'd raised to her lips. She said, “Mary and Joseph. No. No. This was not a house of evil people. Troubled people, perhaps, as we're all troubled from time to time. But to want to be rid of a baby so desperately that one of them might have …? No. I can't think that of any of them.”

  “But someone did kill her, and you told me yesterday that you didn't believe it was Katja Wolff.”

  “Didn't and don't,” the nun affirmed.

  “But someone had to have done the deed, unless you believe that the hand of God swept down and held that baby under the water. So who? Eugenie herself? Richard? Granddad? The lodger? Gideon?”

  “He was eight years old!”

  “And jealous that a second child had come to take the spotlight off him?”

  “She could hardly do that.”

  “But she could take everyone's attention from him. She could take up their time. She could take most of their money. She could tap the well till the well was dry. And if it went dry, where would that leave Gideon?”

  “No eight-year-old child thinks that far into the future.”

  “But someone else might have, someone who had a vested interest in keeping him front and centre in the household.”

  “Yes. Well. I don't know who that someone might be.”

  Barbara watched the nun place half of the biscuit onto the saucer. She watched as Sister Cecilia went to the kettle and switched it on for a second cup of tea. She weighed her preconceived notions about nuns with what information she'd gathered from this one and the air with which Sister Cecilia had parted with it. She concluded that the nun was telling her everything she knew. In their earlier interview, Sister Cecilia had said that Eugenie stopped attending church when Sonia died. So she—Sister Cecilia—would no longer have had the opportunity she'd once had for heart-to-heart chats of the sort that passed along crucial information.

  She said, “What happened to the other baby?”

  “The other …? Oh. Are you speaking of Katja's child?”

  “My DCI wants me to track him down.”

  “He's in Australia, Constable. He's been there since he was twelve years old. And as I told you when we first spoke, if Katja wished to find him, she'd have come to me at once upon her release. You must believe me. The terms of the adoption asked the parents to provide annual updates about the child, so I've always known where he was and I'd have provided Katja with that information any time she asked for it.”

  “But she didn't?”

  “She did not.” Sister Cecilia headed for the door. “If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'll fetch something you might want to see.”

  The nun left the room just as the electric kettle brought the water to a boil and clicked off. Barbara rose and brewed a second cup of Earl Grey for Sister Cecilia, scoring another packet of the biscuits for herself. She'd crammed these down her throat and added the three cubes of sugar to Sister Cecilia's tea when the nun returned, a manila envelope in her hand.

  She sat, knees and ankles together, and spread the contents of the envelope on her lap. Barbara saw they consisted of letters and photographs, both snapshots and studio portraits.

  “He's called Jeremy, Katja's son,” Sister Cecilia told her. “He'll be twenty in February. He was adopted by a family called Watts, along with three other children. They're in Adelaide now, all of them. He favours his mother, I think.”

  Barbara took the photos that Sister Cecilia offered her. In them she saw that the nun had maintained a pictorial record of the child's life. Jeremy was fair and blue-eyed, although the blond hair of his childhood had darkened to pine in his adolescence. He'd gone through a gawky period round the time his family had taken him and his siblings to Australia, but once he'd passed through that, he was handsome enough. Straight nose, square jaw, ears flat against his skull, he would do for an Aryan, Barbara thought.

  She said, “Katja Wolff doesn't know that you have these?”

  Sister Cecilia said, “As I told you, she wouldn't ever see me. Even when it came time to arrange for Jeremy's adoption, she wouldn't speak with me. The prison acted as our go-between: The warden told me Katja wanted an adoption and the warden told me when the time had arrived. Sure, I don't know if Katja ever saw the baby. All I know is that she wanted him placed with a family at once, and she wanted me to see to it as soon as was possible after the birth.”

  Barbara handed the pictures back, saying, “She didn't want him to go to the father?”

  “Adoption was what she wanted.”

  “Who was the dad?”

  “We didn't speak—”

  “Got that. I know. But you knew her. You knew all of them. So you must have had an idea or two. There were three men in the house that we know of: the Granddad, Richard Davies, and the lodger, who was a bloke called James Pitchford. There were four if you count Raphael Robson, the violin teacher. Five if you want to count Gideon and think Katja might have liked to have at them young. He was precocious in one way. Why not in another?”

  The nun looked affronted. “Katja was not a child molester.”

  “She might not have seen it as molestation. Women don't, do they, when they're initiating a male. Hell, there are tribes where it's customary for older women to take young boys in hand.”

  “Be that as it may, this was not a tribe. And Gideon was certainly not the father of that baby. I doubt”—and here the nun blushed hotly—“I doubt that he would have been capable of the act.”

  “Then whoever it was, he must have had reason to keep his part in it under wraps. Else why not come forward and lay claim to the kid once Katja got her twenty-year sentence? Unless, of course, he didn't want to be known as the man who put a killer in the club.”

  “Why does it have to be someone from the house at all?” Sister Cecilia asked. “And why is it important to know?”

  “I'm not sure it is important,” Barbara admitted. “But if the father of her baby is somehow involved with everything else that happened to Katja Wolff, then he might be in danger right now. If she's behind two hit-and-runs.”

  “Two … ?”

  “The officer who headed the investigation into Sonia's death was hit last night. He's in a coma.”

  Sister Cecilia's fingers reached for the crucifix she wore round her neck. They curled round it and held on fast as the nun said, “I cannot believe Katja had anything to do with that.”

  “Right,” Barbara said. “But sometimes we end up having to believe what we don't want to believe. That's the way of the world, Sister.”

  “It is not the way of my world,” the nun declared.

  GIDEON

  6 November

  I've dreamed again, Dr. Rose. I'm standing on the stage at the Barbican, with the lights blindingly bright above me. The orchestra is behind me, and the maestro—whose face I cannot see—taps on his lectern. The music begins—four measures from the cellos—and I lift my instrument and prepare to join in. Then from somewhere in the vast hall, I hear it: A baby has begun crying.

  It echoes through the hall, but I'm the only person who seems to notice. The cellos continue to play, the rest of the strings join them, and I know that my solo will be fast upon us.

  I cannot think, I cannot play, I cannot do anything but wonder why the maestro won't stop the orchestra, won't turn to the audience, won't demand that someone have the simple courtesy to take the screaming child out of the auditorium so that we can concentrate on our playing. There is a full measure's rest before I'm to begin my solo, and as I wait for it to arrive, I keep glancing out to the audience. But I can see nothing because of the lights, and they are far more blinding than lights ever are in an actual auditorium. Indeed, they're the sort of l
ights one imagines to be shined upon a suspect who is under interrogation.

  When the strings reach the full measure's rest, I count the time. I know somehow that I won't be able to play what I'm supposed to play while the distraction continues, but I feel that I must. I will thus have to do what I've never done before: As ludicrous as it sounds, I will have to fake it, to improvise if necessary, to maintain the same key but to play anything if I have to in order to get myself through the ordeal.

  I begin. Of course, it isn't right. It isn't in the right key. To my left, the concertmaster stands abruptly and I see that he's Raphael Robson. I want to say, “Raphael, you're playing! With an audience, you're playing!” but the rest of the violins follow his lead and leap to their feet as well. They begin to protest to the maestro, as do the cellos and the basses. I hear all their voices. I try to drown them out with my playing and I try to drown the baby out, but I cannot. I want to tell them that it's not me, it's not my fault, and I say, “Can't you hear? Can't you hear it?” as I continue to play. And I watch the maestro as I do so, because he's continuing to direct the orchestra as if they'd never stopped playing in the first place.

  Raphael then approaches the maestro, who turns to me. And he is my father. “Play!” he snarls. And I'm so surprised to see him there where he should not be that I back away and the darkness of the auditorium envelops me.

  I begin to search for the screaming baby. I go up the aisle, feeling my way in the dark, until I hear that the crying is coming from behind a closed door.

  I open this door. Suddenly, I am outside, in daylight, and in front of me is an enormous fountain. But this is not an ordinary fountain, because standing in the water are a minister of some sort dressed all in black and a woman in white who is holding the yowling infant to her bosom. As I watch, the minister submerges them both—the woman and the child that she holds—in the water, and I know that the woman is Katja Wolff and that she's holding my sister.

  Somehow, I know I must get to that fountain, but my feet become too heavy to lift. So I watch, and when Katja Wolff emerges from the water, she emerges alone.