A Traitor to Memory

“I'll wait for Dad. He'll drive me back.”


“That could be hours. If he goes back to Jill's and she starts labour and then she has the baby, it could be days. Come on. I don't want to leave you hanging around this place alone.”

But she couldn't move him. He wouldn't have her there, and he wouldn't go with her. He would, however, speak with his father. “I don't care how long it takes,” he told her. “This time I don't really care at all.”

Reluctantly, then, she agreed to the plan, not liking it but also seeing that there wasn't much she could do about it. Besides, he seemed calmer after talking to Jill. Or at least he seemed moderately more himself. She said, “Will you call me, then, if you need anything?”

“I won't be needing a thing,” he replied.



Helen herself answered the door when Lynley knocked at Webberly's house in Stamford Brook. He said, “Helen, why are you still here? When Hillier told me you'd come over from the hospital, I couldn't believe it. You shouldn't be doing this.”

“Whyever not?” she asked in a perfectly reasonable voice.

He stepped inside as Webberly's dog came bounding from the direction of the kitchen, barking at full volume. Lynley backed towards the door while Helen took the dog by the collar and said, “Alfie, no.” She gave him a shake. “He doesn't sound like a friend, but he's quite all right. All bark and bluster.”

“So I noticed,” Lynley said.

She looked up from the animal. “Actually, I was talking about you.” She released the Alsatian once he'd settled. The dog sniffed round Lynley's trouser turn-ups, accepted the intrusion, and trotted back towards the kitchen. “Don't lecture me, darling,” Helen said to her husband. “As you see, I have friends in high places.”

“With dangerous teeth.”

“That's true.” She gave a nod to the door and said, “I didn't think it would be you. I was hoping for Randie.”

“She still won't leave him?”

“It's a stalemate. She won't leave her father; Frances won't leave the house. I thought when we got word about the heart attack … Surely, she'll want to go to him, I thought. She'll force herself. Because he may die, and not to be there if he dies … But no.”

“It's not your problem, Helen. And considering the kinds of days you've been having … You need to get some rest. Where's Laura Hillier?”

“She and Frances had a row. Frances more than Laura, actually. One of those don't-look-at-me-as-if-I-were-a-monster sort of conversations that start out with one party trying to convince the other party that she's not thinking what the other party is determined to believe she thinks she's thinking because at some level—would that be subconsciously?—she actually is thinking it.”

Lynley tried to wade through all this, saying, “Are these waters too deep for me, Helen?”

“They may require life belts.”

“I thought I might be of help.”

Helen had walked into the sitting room. There, an ironing board had been set up and an iron was sending steam ceilingward, which told Lynley—much to his astonishment—that his wife was actually in the process of seeing to the family laundry. A shirt lay across the board itself, one arm the subject of Helen's most recent ministrations. From the look of the wrinkles that appeared to have been permanently applied to the garment, it seemed that Lynley's wife hadn't exactly found a new calling in life.

She saw his glance and said, “Yes. Well. I'd hoped to be helpful.”

“It's brilliant of you. Really,” Lynley replied supportively.

“I'm not doing it properly. I can see that. I'm sure there's a logic to it—an order or something?—but I've not yet worked it out. Sleeves first? Front? Back? Collar? I do one part and the other part—which I've already done—wrinkles up again. Can you advise?”

“There must be a laundry nearby.”

“That's terrifically helpful, Tommy.” Helen smiled ruefully. “Perhaps I should stick to pillowcases. At least they're flat.”

“Where's Frances?”

“Darling, no. We can't possibly ask her to—”

He chuckled. “That's not what I meant. I'd like to talk to her. Is she upstairs?”

“Oh. Yes. Once she and Laura had their argument, it was tears all round. Laura dashed out, absolutely sobbing. Frances tore up the stairs looking grim-faced. When I checked on her, she was sitting on the floor in a corner of her bedroom, clutching onto the curtains. She asked to be left alone.”

“Randie needs to be with her. She needs to be with Randie.”

“Believe me, Tommy, I've made that point. Carefully, subtly, straightforwardly, respectfully, cajolingly, and every other way I could think of, save belligerently.”

“That could be what she needs. Bellicosity.”

“Tone might work—although I doubt it—but volume I guarantee will get you nowhere. She asks to be left alone each time I go up to see her, and while I'd rather not leave her alone, I keep thinking I ought to respect her wishes.”