A Traitor to Memory

Barbara said to her, “You're related to Eugenie Davies by marriage, I expect.”


To which Lynn Davies said, “Not quite. What's this about, Constable?” and her brow furrowed in apparent concern. “Has something happened to Eugenie?”

“You're not Richard Davies' sister?”

“I was Richard's first wife. Please. Tell me. I'm getting rather frightened. Has something happened to Eugenie?” She clasped her hands in front of her, tightly, so that her arms made a perfect V along her torso. “Something must have done, because why else would you be here?”

Barbara readjusted her thinking, from Richard's sister to Richard's first wife to everything implied by Richard's first wife. She watched Lynn closely as she explained the whys and wherefores of New Scotland Yard's visit.

Lynn was olive-skinned, with darker crescents like coffee stains under her deep brown eyes. This skin paled slightly when she learned about the details of the hit-and-run in West Hampstead. She said, “Dear God,” and walked to an ancient three-piece suite. She sat, staring in front of her but saying to Barbara, “Please …” then nodding to the armchair next to which stood a neat pile of children's books, How the Grinch Stole Christmas placed seasonably on the top.

“I'm sorry,” Barbara said. “I can see it's a shock.”

“I didn't know,” Lynn said. “And it must have been in the papers, mustn't it? Because of Gideon. And because of … of how you say she died. But I didn't see them—the papers—because I've not been coping as well as I thought I would and … Oh God. Poor Eugenie. To have it all end like this.”

This didn't seem at all to be the reaction of an embittered first wife thrown over for a second. Barbara said, “You knew her quite well, then.”

“I've known Eugenie for years.”

“When did you see her last?”

“Last week. She came to the service for my daughter. That's why I haven't seen … why I didn't know …” Lynn rubbed the palm of her right hand hard against her thigh, as if this action could quell something within her. “Virginia, my daughter, died quite suddenly last week, Constable. I knew it could happen at any time. I'd known that for years. But somehow one is never quite as prepared as one hopes to be.”

“I'm sorry,” Barbara said.

“She was painting as she did each afternoon. I was in the kitchen making our tea. I heard her fall. I came running out. And that was … What do they call it, Constable? It. The great, long-expected visitation arrived, and I wasn't with her. I wasn't even there to say goodbye.”

Like Tony, Barbara thought, and it jolted her to have her brother shoot into her mind when she hadn't prepared herself to greet him. It was just like Tony, who had died alone without a single member of the family at his bedside. She didn't like to think about Tony, about his lingering death or the hell that his death had brought into her family. She said only, “Kids aren't meant to die before their parents, are they,” and she felt an attendant tightness in her throat.

“The doctors said she was dead before she hit the floor,” Lynn Davies told her. “And I know they mean to comfort me. But when you've spent most of your life caring for a child like Virginia—always and forever a little one no matter how large she grew—your world is still wrenched to pieces when she's taken, especially if you've simply stepped out of the room to see to her tea. So I haven't been able to read a paper—much less a novel or a magazine—and I haven't turned on the telly or the radio because although I 'd like to distract myself, if I do that there's a chance I'll stop feeling and what I feel right now—at this moment, if you can understand what I'm saying—is how I stay connected to her. If you can understand.” Lynn's eyes filled as she spoke.

Barbara gave her a moment as she herself adjusted to what she was learning. Among the information she was indexing in her mind was the unimaginable fact that Richard Davies had apparently fathered not one but two disabled children. For what else could Lynn Davies possibly mean when she described her daughter as “forever a little one”? “Virginia wasn't—” There had to be a euphemism somewhere, Barbara thought with frustration, and if she were from America—that great land of political correctness—she would probably have known it. “She wasn't well?” she settled on saying.

“My daughter was retarded from birth, Constable. She had the body of a woman and the mind of a two-year-old child.”

“Oh. Hell. I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Her heart wasn't right. We knew from the first it would fail her eventually. But her spirit was strong, so she surprised everyone and lived thirty-two years.”

“Here at home with you?”