A Traitor to Memory

At this sight, Ted went numb from his feet to his earlobes. First that unfamiliar man at one in the morning, then last night's encounter between Eugenie and that same individual in the car park, and now these two strangers in possession of a key to the cottage … Ted knew he had to get over there at once.

He glanced round the shop to see if any more customers were considering purchases. There were two others. Old Mr. Horsham—Ted liked to call him Old Mr. Horsham because it was such a relief to find someone out and about who was older than he himself—had taken a volume about Egypt off the shelf and appeared to be weighing it rather than inspecting it. And Mrs. Dilday was, as usual, reading another chapter from a book she had no intention of purchasing. Part of her daily ritual was to select a best seller, carry it casually to the back of the shop, where the armchairs were, read a chapter or two, mark her place with a grocery receipt, and hide the book among secondhand volumes of Salman Rushdie, where—considering the tastes of the average citizen in Henley—it would not be noticed.

For nearly twenty minutes Ted waited for these two customers to remove themselves from the premises so that he could invent a reason to go across the road. When Old Horsham finally bought Egypt for a gratifying sum, saying, “Saw action there in the war,” as he handed over two twenty-pound notes, which he extricated from a wallet that looked old enough to have seen action with its owner, Ted then turned his hopes towards Mrs. Dilday. But this, he saw, was going to be fruitless. She was firmly ensconced in her favourite overstuffed armchair, and she'd brought a Thermos of tea with her as well. She was pouring, sipping, and reading quite happily, just as if she were in her own home.

Public libraries exist for a reason, Ted wanted to tell her. But instead he alternated between watching her, sending her mental messages about leaving at once, and peering out of the window for any kind of indication of who the people were in Eugenie's house.

In the midst of his mental imaging of Mrs. Dilday actually purchasing her novel and trotting off to read it, the telephone rang. His eyes still on Eugenie's house, Ted felt behind him for the receiver and picked it up on the fifth double ring.

He said, “Wiley's Books,” and a woman asked, “Who's this speaking, please?”

He said, “Major Ted Wiley. Retired. Who's this?”

“Are you the only person who uses this line, sir?”

“What …? Is this BT? Is there a problem?”

“Your phone number registers on one-four-seven-one as the last to have called this number that I'm speaking from, sir. It belongs to a woman called Eugenie Davies.”

“Right. I phoned her this morning,” Ted informed his caller, trying to keep his voice as steady as he could. “We've a dinner engagement.” And then because he had to ask it although he already knew the answer, “Is something wrong? Has something happened? Who are you?”

The receiver at the other end was covered for a moment as the woman spoke to someone else in the room. She said, “Metropolitan police, sir.”

Metropolitan … that meant London. And suddenly Ted could see it again: Eugenie driving into London last night with the rain beating down against the roof of the Polo and the spray from the tyres arcing out into the road. “London police?” he asked nonetheless.

“That's right,” the woman told him. “Where are you, exactly, sir?”

“Across from Eugenie's house. I've a bookshop …”

Another consultation. Then, “Would you mind stepping over here, sir? We've one or two questions we'd like to ask you.”

“Has something …” Ted could barely force himself to say the words, but they had to be said. If nothing else, the police would expect to hear them. “Has something happened to Eugenie?”

“We can come to you if that's more convenient.”

“No. No. I'll be there at once. I must close up first, but I'll—”

“Fine, Major Wiley. We'll be here for quite some time.”

Ted walked to the back, where he told Mrs. Dilday that an emergency required him to shut up shop for a time. She said, “Dear me. I hope it's not your mum?” because that was indeed the most rational emergency: his mother's death, although at eighty-nine it was only the stroke that was preventing her from taking up kick-boxing in her declining years.

He said, “No, no. Just … There's something I need to take care of.”

She peered at him intently but accepted the vague excuse. In a welter of nerves, Ted waited as she drank down the rest of her tea, donned her wool coat, thrust her hands into her gloves, and—without the least attempt to disguise her actions—put the novel she was reading behind a copy of The Satanic Verses.

Once she was gone, Ted hurried up the stairs to his flat. He found that his heart was alternately fluttering then pounding, and he was going rather light in the head. With the lightness came voices, so real that he swung round without thinking, anticipating a presence that was not there.

First the woman's voice again: “Metropolitan police. We've one or two questions we'd like to ask …”