A Traitor to Memory

“Richard and I. Gideon's father.”


Somewhere in the house, a scherzo began. Dozens of energetic notes ran riot on what sounded like a harpsichord at first but then abruptly changed to an oboe and then just as abruptly altered to a flute. This was accompanied by an increase in volume and the sudden rhythmic pounding of several percussion instruments. Robson went to the door and shut it, saying, “Sorry. Janet's gone a bit mad over the electric keyboard. She's enthralled with anything a computer chip can do.”

“And you?” Lynley asked.

“I haven't the money for a keyboard.”

“I meant computer chips, Mr. Robson. Do you use this computer? I see it has a telephone connection.”

Robson's gaze flicked to it. He crossed the room and sat at a chair that he drew out from the sheet of plywood which served as a desk top. At this, Lynley and Nkata also sat, unfolding two metal chairs and swinging them into position so that, with Robson, they formed a triangle near the computer.

“We all use it,” Robson said.

“For e-mail? Chat rooms? Surfing the net?”

“I mostly use it for e-mail. My sister's in Los Angeles. My brother's in Birmingham. My parents have a house on the Costa del Sol. It's an easy way for us to stay in contact.”

“Your address is …?”

“Why?”

“Curiosity,” Lynley said.

Robson recited it, looking puzzled. Lynley heard what he'd suspected he'd hear when he saw the computer sitting in the room. Jete was Robson's on-line name and consequently part of his e-mail address.

“You've been fairly wrung out about Mrs. Davies, it seems,” he said to the violinist. “Your message on her answer machine was agitated, Mr. Robson, and the last e-mail you sent her looked a bit frantic as well. ‘I must see you. I'm begging.’ Had you had some sort of falling-out?”

Robson's seat was a desk chair that swiveled, and he used it to rotate, to examine the computer's empty staring screen as if he could see his last message to Eugenie Davies there. He said, “You'd be checking everything. Of course. I see that,” as if speaking to himself and not to them. Then he went on in a normal tone with, “We parted quite badly. I said some things that …” He removed a handkerchief from his pocket, pressing it to his forehead, where perspiration had begun to bead. “I expected I'd have a chance to apologise. Even as I drove away from the restaurant—and I was in a real fury, I admit it—I didn't drive off thinking, That's it, I'm done with this business forever, she's a blind silly cow and that's the end of it. What I thought was, Oh God, she looks rotten, she's thinner than ever, why can't she see what that means, for God's sake.”

“Which was what?” Lynley asked.

“That she'd made a decision in her head, yes, and it probably sounded like a sensible one to her. But her body was rebelling against that decision, which was her … I don't know … I suppose it was her spirit's way of trying to tell her to stop, to carry things not one inch farther. And you could see the rebellion in her. Believe me, you could actually see it. It wasn't just that she'd let herself go. God knows she'd done that years ago. She'd been quite lovely, but to see her—especially as she was in these last few years—you'd never have realised how men would at one time slow down on the street as they passed her.”

“What decision had she made, Mr. Robson?”

Robson said, “Come with me. I want to show you something,” by way of answer. He took them from the house, out the same way they'd come in, out into the garden. He headed towards the building where he'd said the commune worked on their furniture.

The building comprised a single large room in which battered pieces stood in various stages of restoration. It smelled strongly of sawdust, turpentine, and wood stains, and a patina of the dust that comes from heavy sanding lay like a gauze veil on everything. Footprints tracked back and forth across the dirty floor, from a workbench above which a set of newly cleaned tools gleamed with oil to a three-legged wardrobe that listed tiredly, sanded down to bare walnut, disemboweled, and awaiting the next stage of rejuvenation.