A Traitor to Memory

He mounted the steps and rang the bell. Inside the house, the dog barked in response. She was still barking when Deborah St. James opened the door.

She said, “Tommy! Good Lord, you're soaked. What a night. Have you forgotten your umbrella? Peach, here. Stop it at once.” She scooped the barking little dachshund from the floor and tucked her under her arm. “Simon's not in,” she confided, “and Dad's watching a documentary about dormice, don't ask me why. So she's taking guard duty more seriously than usual. Peach, none of your growling, now.”

Lynley stepped inside and removed his wet coat. He hung it on the rack to the right of the door. He extended his hand to the dog for purposes of olfactory identification, and Peach ceased both barking and growling and indicated her willingness to accept his obeisance in the form of a few scratches behind her ears.

“She's impossibly spoiled,” Deborah said.

“She's doing her job. You shouldn't just open the door like that at night anyway, Deb. It's not very wise.”

“I always assume that if a burglar's calling, Peach will go for his ankles before he can get into the first room. Not that we have much worth taking, although I wouldn't mind seeing the last of that hideous thing with peacock feathers that sits on the sideboard in the dining room.” She smiled. “How are you, Tommy? I'm in here. Working.”

She led him into the study where, he saw, she was in the process of wrapping the pictures she'd selected for her December show. The floor was spread with framed photographs yet to be protected by plastic, along with a bottle of window cleaner that she'd been using to see to the glass that covered them, a roll of kitchen towels, myriad sheets of bubble-wrap, tape, and scissors. She'd lit the gas fire in the room, and Peach repaired to her ramshackle basket that stood before it.

“It's an obstacle course,” Deborah said, “but if you can find your way to the trolley, have some more of Simon's whisky.”

“Where is he?” Lynley asked. He worked his way round her photographs and went to the drinks trolley.

“He went to a lecture at the Royal Geographic Society: somebody's journey somewhere and a book signing to follow. I think there are polar bears involved. In the lecture, that is.”

Lynley smiled. He tossed down a hefty gulp of the whisky. It would do for courage. To give himself time for the spirits to work in his bloodstream, he said, “We've made an arrest in the case I've been working on.”

“It didn't take you long. You know, you're completely suited to police work, Tommy. Who would ever have thought it, the way you grew up?”

She rarely mentioned his upbringing. A child of privilege born to another child of privilege, he'd long chafed beneath the burdens of blood, family history, and his duties to both. The thought of it now—family, useless titles that were every year rendered more meaningless, velvet capes trimmed in ermine, and more than two hundred and fifty years of lineage always determining what his next move should be—served as a stark reminder of what he had come to tell her and why. Still, he stalled, saying, “Yes. Well. One always has to move quickly in a homicide. If the trail begins to cool, you stand less chance of making an arrest. I've come for that computer, by the way. The one I left with Simon. Is it still up in the lab? May I fetch it, Deb?”

“Of course,” she said, although she gave him a curious glance, either at his choice of subject—considering her husband's line of work, she was more than aware of the need for speed in a murder investigation—or the tone with which he spoke about it, which was too hearty to be at all believable. She said, “Go on up. You don't mind my carrying on down here, do you?”

He said, “Not at all,” and made his escape, taking his time to trudge up the stairs to the top floor of the house. There, he flipped on the lights in the lab and found the computer exactly where St. James had left it. He unplugged it, cradled it in his arms, and went back down the stairs. He placed it by the front door and considered calling out a cheerful goodnight and going on his way. It was late, after all, and the conversation that he needed to have with Deborah St. James could wait.

Just as he was thinking of another postponement, though, Deborah came to the study door and observed him. She said, “All's not right with your world. There's nothing wrong with Helen, is there?”

And Lynley found at last that he couldn't avoid it no matter how much he wanted to. He said, “No. There's nothing wrong with Helen.”

“I'm glad,” she said. “The first months of pregnancy can be awful.”

He opened his mouth to reply but lost the words. Then he found them again. He said, “So you know.”