A Traitor to Memory

She knew that twenty-five years of marriage was something worth celebrating. She could count on the digits of her right hand the couples she knew who'd attained that hallmark of connubial longevity, and she wouldn't even have to use her thumb. But there was something about this particular couple that didn't strike her as right, and try as she had done from the moment she'd first stepped into the sitting room where yellow crepe paper and green balloons made a brave attempt to camouflage a shabbiness that had more to do with indifference than with poverty, she'd not been able to shake the feeling that the guests of honour and the company assembled were all taking part in a domestic drama for which she—Barbara Havers—had not been given a script.

At first she told herself that her disconnected feeling came from partying with her superior officers, one of whom had saved her neck from the professional noose nearly three months earlier and one of whom had attempted to knot the rope himself. Then she decided her discomfort came from arriving at the party in her usual state—dateless—while everyone else had a companion in tow, including her fellow and favourite detective constable, Winston Nkata, who'd brought along his mother, an imposing woman six feet tall and dressed in the Caribbean colours of her birth. Finally, she settled on the simple fact of celebrating anyone's marriage as the source of her uneasiness. Jealous cow, I am, Barbara finally told herself with some disgust.

But even that explanation couldn't withstand much serious scrutiny, because under normal circumstances Barbara wasn't given to wasting energy on envy. True, there were reasons aplenty all round for her to feel that barren emotion. She was standing in a crowd of chattering couples—husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and companions—and she herself was spouseless, partnerless, and childless without a single prospect on her horizon for changing those conditions. But having engaged in her usual reaction to this state of affairs by browsing the buffet table for edible distraction, she'd quickly won herself over to considering all the freedoms afforded her unattached status, and she'd dismissed any disquieting emotions that threatened to undermine her peace of mind.

Still, she didn't feel as bonhomous as she knew she ought to be feeling at an anniversary party, and as the guests of honour took an overlarge knife in their clasped hands and began to assail a cake whose icing was decorated with roses, ivy, twined hearts, and the words Happy Twenty-fifth, Malcolm & Frances, Barbara surreptitiously stole glances round the crowd to see if anyone besides herself was giving more attention to his wristwatch than to the waning moments of the celebration. No one was. Each and every person was focused on Detective Superintendent Malcolm Webberly and his uxorial companion of a quarter of a century, the redoubtable Frances.

This evening represented Barbara's first encounter with Superintendent Webberly's wife, and as she watched the woman feeding her husband a forkful of cake and laughingly accepting her own forkful in turn, Barbara realised that she'd been avoiding any prolonged consideration of Frances Webberly for the entire evening. They'd been introduced by the Webberlys' daughter Miranda in her r?le of hostess and they'd made the sort of polite conversation one always made with the spouse of a colleague. How many years have you known Malcolm? and Do you find it difficult working in a world with so many men to contend with? and What drew you to homicide investigations in the first place? Still, throughout this conversation, Barbara had found herself itching for an escape from Frances, despite the fact that the other woman's words were kindly spoken, her periwinkle eyes fixed pleasantly on Barbara's face.

But perhaps that was it, Barbara decided. Perhaps the source of her uneasiness lay in Frances Webberly's eyes and what was hidden behind them: an emotion, a concern, a sense of something not quite as it should be.

Yet exactly what that something was Barbara couldn't have said. So she gave herself to what she earnestly hoped were the final moments of the shindig, and she applauded along with the rest of the company as the concluding “and so say all of us” was sung.

“Tell us how you've done it,” someone from the crowd called out as Miranda Webberly stepped in to relieve her parents at the cake.

“By having no expectations,” Frances Webberly said promptly and clasped both hands round her husband's arm. “I had to learn that early, didn't I, darling? Which is just as well since the only thing I actually gained from this marriage—aside from my Malcolm—is the two stone I've never been able to lose from carrying Randie.”

The company joined her lighthearted laughter. Miranda merely ducked her head and continued cutting the cake.

“That sounds a fair bargain.” This was said by Helen, the wife of DI Thomas Lynley. She'd just accepted a plate of cake from Miranda, and she touched the girl fondly on the shoulder.

“Spot on,” Superintendent Webberly agreed. “We've got the best daughter on earth.”