A Traitor to Memory

He reversed into a parking space some thirty yards distant from Braemar Mansions, after which he switched off the engine and turned to her. “You can ask me for anything, Jill. And if it pleases you to offer your flat for sale before mine, then it pleases me. But I won't have any part of your moving house till you've had the baby and recovered from that, and I seriously doubt your mother would disagree with me.”


Jill herself couldn't disagree. She knew her mother would have a seizure at the thought of her packing up her belongings and trekking anywhere other than from kitchen to loo in less than three months after giving birth. “Childbirth puts the female body through a trauma, darling,” Dora Foster would have said. “Coddle yourself. It may be your only chance to do so.”

“Well?” Richard said, smiling at her fondly. “What's your reply?”

“You are so wretchedly logical and reasonable. How can I argue? What you've said makes such sense.”

He leaned towards her and kissed her. “You're ever gracious in defeat. And if I'm not mistaken”—he nodded towards the old Edwardian building as he came round her side of the car and eased her up and onto the pavement—“our estate agent is right on time. Which bodes well, I think.”

Jill hoped that was the case. A tall blond man was mounting the front steps of Braemar Mansions, and as Jill and Richard approached, he studied the line of bells and pushed what appeared to be Richard's.

“You're looking for us, I believe,” Richard called out.

The man turned, saying, “Mr. Davies?”

“Yes.”

“Thomas Lynley,” he said. “New Scotland Yard.”



Lynley always made it a habit to gauge reactions when he introduced himself to people who weren't expecting him, and he did so now as the man and woman on the pavement paused before mounting the front steps to what was a considerably down-at-heel building at the west end of Cornwall Gardens.

The woman looked as if she'd normally be quite small, although at the moment she was swollen in every conceivable way from pregnancy. Her ankles in particular were the size of tennis balls, giving undue emphasis to her feet, which were themselves large and out of proportion to her height. She walked with the rolling gait of someone trying to keep her balance.

Davies himself walked with a stoop that promised to worsen as he grew older. He had hair that was faded from its original colour—ginger or blond, it was difficult to tell—and he wore it swept straight back from his forehead with no effort made to disguise its thinness.

Both Davies and the woman appeared surprised when Lynley introduced himself, the woman perhaps more so because she looked at Davies and said, “Richard? Scotland Yard?” as if she either needed his protection or wondered why the police were coming to call.

Davies said, “Is this about …?” but changed course, perhaps with the realisation that a conversation on the front steps wasn't what he wanted to engage in with a police officer. He said, “Come in. We were expecting an estate agent. You've given us a surprise. This is my fiancée, by the way.”

He went on to say that she was called Jill Foster. She looked to be somewhere in her thirties—plain but with very good skin and hair the colour of currants, cut simply just beneath her ears—and Lynley had assumed upon seeing her that she was another of Richard Davies' children or perhaps a niece. He nodded to her, taking note of the tightness with which she clutched Davies' arm.

Davies let them into the building, where he led the way up the stairs to his first-floor flat. It had a sitting room that overlooked the street, a dim rectangle broken by a window that was at the moment covered by shutters. Davies went to fold these back, saying to his fiancée, “Sit down, darling. Put your feet up,” and to Lynley, “May I offer you something? Tea? Coffee? We're expecting an estate agent—as I said—and we haven't a great deal of time before he gets here.”

Lynley assured them that the visit wouldn't take long, and he accepted a cup of tea to buy time to have a look round the sitting room at its clutter of belongings. These took the form of amateur photographs of outdoor scenes, countless pictures of Davies' virtuoso son, and a collection of hand-carved walking sticks that formed a circular decoration over the fireplace in the fashion of weaponry found in Scottish castles. There was also a surfeit of prewar furniture, stacks of newspapers and magazines, and a display of other memorabilia related to his son's career as a violinist.

“Richard's a bit of a pack rat,” Jill Foster told Lynley as she lowered herself with some care into a chair whose need for re-stuffing and reupholstering was evidenced by the tufts of what looked like yellowish cotton wool pushing upwards like springtime's new growth. “You should see the other rooms.”

Lynley picked up a photograph of the violinist in childhood. He was standing attentively, his instrument in his hand, gazing up at Lord Menuhin, who was in turn gazing down at him, instrument also in hand, smiling beneficently. “Gideon,” Lynley said.

“The one, the only,” Jill Foster replied.

Lynley glanced at her. She smiled, perhaps to take the sting from her words. “Richard's joy and the centre of his life,” she said. “It's understandable but sometimes it does wear upon one.”