A Traitor to Memory

“Where was everyone else?”


Richard looked to his wife for some sort of answer. She shook her head, saying only, “Mother Davies and I were in the kitchen, starting dinner. It was Sonia's bath time and …” She hesitated, as if saying her daughter's name made more real what she could not bear to think about.

“And you don't know where everyone else was?”

Richard Davies spoke. “Dad and I were in his sitting room. We were watching that … God, that infernal, stupid football game. We were actually watching football while Sosy was drowning upstairs.”

It seemed the diminutive form of their daughter's name was what broke Eugenie. She finally began to weep in earnest.

Richard Davies, caught up in his own grief and despair, didn't take his wife into his arms as Webberly would have had him do. He merely said her name, telling her uselessly that it was all right, that the baby was with God, who loved her as much as they did. And Eugenie herself above all people knew that, didn't she, she whose faith in God and God's goodness was absolute?

Cold comfort, that, Webberly thought. He said, “I'll want to talk to everyone else, Mr. and Mrs. Davies.” And then to Richard Davies alone, “She might need a doctor,” in reference to his wife. “Better phone him.”

The drawing room door opened as he spoke and DS Leach entered. He nodded to indicate he'd completed his list and sealed the bathroom off, and Webberly told him to set up the drawing room to conduct interviews with the residents of the house.

“Thank you for helping us, Inspector,” Eugenie said.

Thank you for helping us. Webberly thought about those words now as he lumbered to his feet. How curious it was that five simple words spoken in such a wretched voice had actually managed to transform his life: from detective to knight errant in the space of a single second.

It was because of the kind of mother she was, he told himself now as he called to Alfie. The kind of mother that Frances—God forgive her—could never have hoped to be. How could anyone help admiring that? How could any man help wanting to be of service to such a mother?

“Alfie, come!” he shouted as the Alsatian loped after a terrier with a Frisbee in his mouth. “Home. Come. We won't use the lead.”

As if the dog actually understood this last promise, he dashed back to Webberly. He'd had an excellent run this morning, if his heaving sides and his dangling tongue were any indication. Webberly nodded towards the gate and the dog walked to it and sat obediently, eyes on Webberly's pockets for a treat to reward him for such a display of good manners.

“You'll have to wait till we get home,” Webberly told him, and afterwards considered his own words.

Indeed, that's the way life played out, didn't it? At the end of the day and for too many years, everything that mattered in Webberly's sorry little world had found itself put off till he got home.



Lynley noted that Helen hadn't taken more than a mouthful of tea. She'd changed her position in bed, however, and she was observing him make a mess of his tie while he was watching her in the mirror.

“So she's someone Malcolm Webberly knew?” Helen asked. “How dreadful for him, Tommy. And on his anniversary night.”

“I wouldn't go so far as to say he knew her,” Lynley replied. “She was one of the principals in the first case he ran as a DI over in Kensington.”

“That would have been years ago, then. It must have made an enormous impression on him.”

“I dare say it did.” Lynley didn't want to tell her why. Indeed, he didn't want to tell her anything else about that long-ago death that Webberly had investigated. The drowning of a child was horrific enough to contemplate under any circumstances, but under these newly changed circumstances in their lives, it seemed to Lynley that a certain amount of discretion and delicacy was going to be in order now that his wife was carrying a child of her own.

A child of our own, he corrected his thinking, a child to whom no harm would ever come. So elaborating on the harm that had befallen another child seemed like tempting fate. At least that was what Lynley told himself as he went about the rituals of dressing.

In bed, Helen turned on her side, away from him, her knees drawn up and an extra pillow bunched into her stomach. “Oh Lord,” she moaned.

Lynley went to her, sat on the edge of the bed, and smoothed her chestnut hair. “You've not touched much of your tea,” he said. “Would you like something different this morning?”

“I'd like to stop feeling so wretched.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“She's a font of wisdom on that front: 'I spent the first four months of every pregnancy embracing the bowl of the loo. It'll pass, Mrs. Lynley. It always does.'”

“Till then?”