A Traitor to Memory

“It's the end of my world,” he told her.

He went into the music room. She heard him stumble, hit against something, and curse. A light switched on, and as Libby saw to the tea—a recommendation on her part that she now recognised as the straw-grasping it most certainly was—Gideon listened to the message that had come in while he'd been trying to work in the shed.

“This is Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley,” a plush costume-drama baritone informed them. “I'm on the way up to London from Brighton. Will you phone me on my mobile when you get this message? I need to speak to you regarding your uncle.”

An uncle now? Libby wondered as the detective recited his cell phone number. What next? How much more was going to be heaped on Gideon and when would he finally shout, “Enough!”

She was about to say, “Wait till tomorrow, Gid. Sleep with me tonight. I'll make you not have nightmares. I promise,” when she heard Gideon punching in numbers on his telephone. A moment later he began to speak. She tried to sound busy with the tea, but she listened all the same, in Gideon's best interests.

“Gideon Davies here,” he said. “I got your message…. Thanks…. Yes, it was a shock.” He listened long to something that the detective was telling him. He finally said, “I'd prefer it on the phone, if it's all the same to you.”

Score one for our side, Libby thought. We'll have a quiet night and then we'll sleep. But as she took their tea cups to the table, Gideon went on, after another pause to listen to the cop.

“Very well, then. If there's no other way.” He recited his address. “I'll be here, Inspector.” And he hung up.

He came back to the kitchen. Libby tried to look as if she hadn't been eavesdropping. She went to a cupboard and opened it, searching for something to go with their tea. She settled on a bag of Japanese crackers. She ripped it open and dumped its contents into a bowl, searching out two peas and popping them into her mouth as she carried it back to the table.

“One of the detectives,” Gideon said unnecessarily. “He wants to talk to me about my uncle.”

“Something happen to your uncle, too?” Libby scooped a spoonful of sugar into her cup. She didn't really want the tea, but as she'd been the one to suggest it, she didn't see a way to get out of drinking it.

“I don't know,” Gideon told her.

“Think you should call him before the cops get here, then? Check out what's going on?”

“I've no idea where he is.”

“Brighton?” Libby felt her face get hot. “I overheard that guy say he was coming in from Brighton. On his message. When you played it.”

“It could be Brighton. But I didn't think to ask his name.”

“Whose?”

“My uncle's.”

“You don't know …? Oh. Well. Never mind, I guess.” It was just another twist in his family history, Libby thought. Lots of people didn't know their relatives. As her father would have said, it was a sign of the times. “You couldn't put him off till tomorrow?”

“I didn't want to put him off. I want to know what's happening.”

“Oh. Sure.” She was disappointed, seeing herself ministering to him throughout the long evening, figuring inanely that ministering to him now that he was at his lowest might lead to something more between them, making a final breakthrough somehow. She said, “If you can trust him, I guess.”

“Trust him how?”

“Trust him to tell you the truth. He's a cop, after all.” She shrugged and scooped up a handful of the Japanese mix.

Gideon sat. He pulled his tea cup towards him, but he didn't drink. He said, “It doesn't matter one way or another.”

“What doesn't?”

“Whether he tells me the truth or not.”

“No? Why not?” Libby asked.

Gideon looked her square in the face when he delivered the blow. “Because I can't trust anyone with the truth. I didn't know that before. But I know that now.”