A Traitor to Memory

He didn't feel like eating, but he shoveled the food into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed without tasting much. Only the acidic tang of orange juice made the journey from his tongue to his brain.

Frances chatted. What did he think about Randie's weight? She hated to talk to their daughter about it, but didn't he think she was getting just a bit too chunky for a girl her age? And what of this recent plan of hers to have a year in Turkey? Turkey, of all places. She was always coming up with a new plan, so of course one didn't want to get oneself in a dither over something that she might not even do, but a girl her age … on her own … in Turkey …? It wasn't wise, it wasn't safe, it wasn't sensible, Malcolm. Last month she was talking about a year in Australia, which was bad enough … all that distance without her family. But this? No. They had to talk her out of this. And wasn't Helen Lynley looking lovely the other night? She's one of those women who can wear anything. Naturally, it's the expense of the clothes that tells the tale. Buy French and you look like a … well, just like a countess, Malcolm. And she can buy French, can't she? No one's watching to see who she buys from. Not like the poor old dowdy Queen, who's always dressed by some English upholsterer by the look of her. Clothes do so make a woman, don't they?

Chat. Chat. Chat. It filled a silence that might otherwise be used for a conversation too painful to be endured. It simultaneously wore the guise of warmth and of closeness, offering a portrayal of the long-married couple breaking their fast à deux.

Webberly shoved his chair back abruptly. He scrubbed the paper napkin across his mouth. “Alfie,” he commanded. “Come. Let's go.” He grabbed the lead from the hook near the door, and the dog padded after him, through the sitting room and out of the front door.

Alfie came to life as soon as paws hit pavement. His tail began to wag, and his ears perked up. He was all at once on the alert for his sworn enemies—cats—and as he and his master headed down the street to Emlyn Road, the Alsatian kept an eye out for anything potentially feline at which he could bark. He sat obediently, as he always did when they came to Stamford Brook Road. Here, the traffic could be heavy depending upon the time of day, and even a zebra crossing didn't guarantee a driver's seeing a pedestrian.

They crossed and made their way to the garden.

The night's rain had made the garden thoroughly sodden. The grass was heavily bent with moisture, tree limbs dripped, and the benches along the perimeter path were shining slickly with water. This was no matter to Webberly. He didn't want to sit beneath the trees, and he had no interest in the lawn across which Alfie gamboled as soon as Webberly had him off the lead. Instead, he took to the perimeter path. He walked determinedly, gravel crunching beneath his soles, but while his body was in the Stamford Brook neighbourhood in which he'd lived for more than twenty years, his mind was centred on Henley-on-Thames.

He'd come this far into his day without thinking once of Eugenie. It seemed something of a miracle to him. She hadn't left his thoughts for an instant during the previous twenty-four hours. He hadn't heard from Eric Leach yet, and he hadn't seen Tommy Lynley at the Yard. He accepted the latter's request for DC Winston Nkata as a sign that progress was being made, but he wanted to know what that progress was, because knowing something—anything at this point—was better than being left with nothing but images best forgotten from the past.

Without that contact with his fellow officers, though, the images came to him. Unprotected by the claustrophobic confines of his house, by Frances's chatter, by the duties that faced him once he got to work, he was assailed by mental pictures, pictures so distant now as to be fragments only, pieces of a puzzle he'd not been able to complete.

It was summer, sometime after the Regatta. He and Eugenie were rowing on the sluggish river.

Hers had not been the first marriage that had not survived the horror of a violent death in the family. It would not be the last that cracked irreparably under the combined weight of investigation-and-trial and the powerful load of guilt attendant to losing a child to someone in whom trust had been mistakenly placed. But Webberly had felt more at the dissolution of this particular marriage. It was many months before he admitted why.