A Traitor to Memory

“Shall I fetch him for you?”


“I'll just go up if that's all right.”

She said that it was, of course it was, he knew the way. And she crossed back to the desk where she'd been working, set down her glass, and came back to him. He finished his whisky, thinking she meant to have his own glass back, but she squeezed his arm and kissed him on the cheek. “Lovely to see you. D'you need help with that computer?”

“I can manage,” he said. And he did just that, not feeling particularly proud of himself for accepting the escape route she offered, but telling himself that there was work to be done and work came first, which was certainly a fact that Deborah St. James understood.

Her husband was on the fourth floor of the house, where he had a work room that had long been called his laboratory, and Deborah had a darkroom adjacent to it. Lynley climbed to this floor, pausing at the top of the stairs to say, “Simon? Are you in the middle of something?” before he walked across the landing to the open door.

Simon St. James was at his own computer, where he appeared to be studying a complicated structure that resembled a three-dimensional graph. When he tapped a few keys, the graphic altered. When he tapped a few more, it revolved on its side. He murmured, “That's damn curious,” and then turned to the door. “Tommy. I thought I heard someone come in a few minutes ago.”

“Deb offered me a glass of your Lagavulin. She was seeking confirmation as to its quality.”

“And?”

“Pretty damn good. May I …?” He nodded down at the computer.

St. James said, “Sorry. Here. Let me move…. Well, something can be moved, I think.”

He rolled his chair back from his computer table and hit the side of his leg brace at the knee with a metal ruler when it didn't adjust properly as he rose. He said, “I've been having the most blasted trouble with this thing. It's worse than arthritis. As soon as the rain starts, the knee hinge doesn't want to work properly. It's time for an overhaul. That or a visit to Oz.” He spoke with an utter lack of concern that Lynley knew he felt but could not feel himself. Whenever St. James had taken a step in Lynley's line of vision in the last thirteen years, it had required every ounce of control he had not to avert his eyes in abject shame for having wreaked such physical devastation on his friend.

St. James cleared a space on the worktable nearest to the door by stacking up papers and manila folders and moving several scientific journals to one side. He said casually, “Is Helen all right? She was looking rather ill when she left this afternoon. All day, in fact, now that I think of it.”

“She was fine this morning,” Lynley said, and he told himself that the statement comprised the approximate if not the literal truth. She was fine. Morning sickness did not constitute illness in the usual sense. “Bit tired, I expect. We were out late at Web—” But that wasn't, he recalled, the story his wife had told Deborah and Simon earlier, was it? Blast Helen, he thought, for being so creative when it came to spinning tales. “No. Sorry. That was the other night, wasn't it. Christ. I can't keep anything straight. Anyway, she's fine. I expect it was a late night catching up with her.”

“Right. Well. Yes,” St. James said, but his examination of Lynley was rather too lengthy for Lynley's comfort. In the small silence that ensued, rain began to fall outside. It hit the window like timpani in miniature, and it was accompanied by a sudden gust of wind that rattled the casement like an unspoken accusation. St. James said, “What've you brought me?” with a nod at the computer.

“Some detective work.”

“That's your bailiwick, isn't it?”

“This requires a more delicate touch.”

St. James hadn't known Lynley for more than twenty years to find himself suddenly incapable of reading between the lines. He said, “Are we on thin ice, Tommy?”

Lynley said honestly, “A singular pronoun is all that's required. You're clean. If you'll help me, that is.”

“That's remarkably reassuring,” St. James said dryly. “Why do I picture myself in an unpleasant future scenario, sitting in the dock or standing in the witness box, but in either case sweating like a fat man in Miami?”

“That's your natural sense of fair play among men, a quality I deeply admire in you, by the way, if I've not mentioned the fact before. It's also, however, one of the first things that gets tossed out of the window after a few years dealing with the criminal element.”

“This is from a case, then?” St. James said.

“You didn't hear that from me.”