A Traitor to Memory

“Let me have a go, then.”


“I'll come as well. Have you any further news of Malcolm? We haven't had word from the hospital since Randie phoned, which is good, I suppose. Because surely Randie would have phoned at once if … Is there no change, Tommy?”

“No change,” Lynley answered. “The heart complicates things. It's a waiting game.”

“Do you think they might have to decide …?” Helen paused on the stairway above him and looked back, reading in his expression the answer to her uncompleted question. “I'm so terribly sorry for all of them,” she said. “For you as well. I do know what he means to you.”

“Frances needs to be there. Randie can't be asked to do it alone, if it comes to that.”

“Of course she can't,” Helen said.

Lynley had never been above stairs in Webberly's home, so he allowed his wife to show him the way to the master bedroom. The first floor of the house was dominated by scents: potpourri from bowls on a three-tier stand that they passed at the top of the stairs, orange spice from a candle burning outside the bathroom door, lemon from polish used on the furniture. But the scents were not strong enough to cover the stronger odour of air overheated, overweighed with cigar smoke, and so long stale that it seemed only rainfall—violent and long—within the walls of the house would be enough to cleanse it.

“Every window is shut,” Helen said quietly. “Well, of course, it's November, so one wouldn't expect … But still … It must be so difficult for them. Not just for Malcolm and Randie. They can get away. But for Frances, because she must so want to be … to be cured.”

“One would think,” Lynley agreed. “Through here, Helen?”

Only one of the doors was closed and Helen nodded when he indicated it. He tapped on its white panels and said, “Frances? It's Tommy. May I come in?”

No reply. He called out again, a little louder this time, following that with another rap on the door. When she didn't respond, he tried the knob. It turned, so he eased the door open. Behind him, Helen said, “Frances? Will you see Tommy?”

To which Webberly's wife finally said, “Yes,” in a voice that was neither fearful nor resentful at the intrusion, just quiet and tired.

They found her not in the corner where Helen last had seen her but sitting on an undecorated straight-backed chair that she'd drawn up to look at her reflection in a mirror that hung above a dressing table. On the table she'd laid out hairbrushes, hair slides, and ribbons. She was running two ribbons through her fingers as they entered, as if studying the effect that their colour had against her skin.

She was undoubtedly wearing, Lynley saw, what she'd been wearing when she'd phoned her daughter on the previous night. She had on a quilted pink dressing gown belted at the waist, and an azure nightdress beneath it. She hadn't combed her hair despite the brushes laid out before her, so it was still asymmetrically flattened by her head's pressure into her pillow, as if an invisible hat were perched on it.

She looked so colourless that Lynley thought at once of spirits despite the hour of the day: gin, brandy, whisky, vodka, or anything else to bring some blood to her face. He said to Helen, “Would you bring up a drink, darling?” And to Webberly's wife, “Frances, you could do with a brandy. I'd like you to have one.”

She said, “Yes. All right. A brandy.”

Helen left them. Lynley saw that a linen chest extended across the foot of the bed, and he dragged this over to where Frances sat so that he could speak at her level rather than down at her like a lecturing uncle. He didn't know where to begin. He didn't know what would do any good. Considering the length of time that Frances Webberly had spent inside the walls of this house, paralysed by inexplicable terrors, it didn't seem likely that a simple declaration of her husband's peril and her daughter's need could convince her that her fears were groundless. He was wise enough to know that the human mind did not work that way. Common logic did not suffice to obliterate demons that lived within the tortuous caves of a woman's psyche.