A Traitor to Memory

“Of course. Will you look for her, Inspector?”


“I'll have a man track her down.” Lynley went through the rest of his questions, from which he learned only the identity of the Cecilia who'd written the note to Eugenie Davies: Sister Cecilia Mahoney, she was called, Eugenie Davies' close friend at the Convent of the Immaculate Conception. The convent itself was in Kensington Square, where the Davies family had long ago lived. “Eugenie was a convert to Catholicism,” Richard Davies said. “She hated her father—he was a raging maniac when he wasn't holier-than-thou from the pulpit—and it seemed the best way to get vengeance on him for a hellish childhood. At least that's what she told me.”

“Were your children baptised Catholics, then?” Lynley asked.

“Only if she and Cecilia did it in secret. My own dad would have had a stroke otherwise.” Davies smiled with fondness. “He was quite a tyrannical paterfamilias in his own way.”

And have you taken a page from that book, Lynley wondered, despite your air of helpfulness now? But that was something he'd have to learn from Gideon.

GIDEON





1 October





Where is this taking us, Dr. Rose? You ask me to consider my dreams now as well as my memories, and I wonder if you know what you're doing. You ask me to write my random thoughts, to free myself from worrying about how they connect or where they might lead or how they might produce the key that will fit into the lock of my mind, and my patience with this process is wearing thin.

Dad informs me that your previous work in New York was primarily with eating disorders. He's been doing his prep where you're concerned—a few phone calls to the States was all it took—because as he sees no progress, he's begun to question how much more time I want to devote to dredging up the past instead of dealing with the present. “For God's sake, she doesn't work with musicians,” he said when I spoke to him today. “She doesn't even work with other artists. So you can continue to fill her purse with money and get nothing in return—which is all that's been happening so far, Gideon—or you can try something else.”





“What?” I asked him.

“If you're so insistent upon psychiatry as the answer, then at least try someone who'll address the problem. And the problem is the violin, Gideon. The problem is not what you do or do not remember about the past.”





I said, “Raphael told me.”





“What?”





“That Katja Wolff drowned Sonia.”





There was silence at this, and as we were on the phone and not having the conversation in person, I could only guess at Dad's expression. His face would have hardened as the muscles tightened, and his eyes would have gone opaque. In telling me even as little as he told, Raphael had broken an agreement of twenty years' standing. Dad would not like that.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I won't discuss this.”





“It's why Mother left us, isn't it?”





“I've told you—”





“Nothing. You've told me nothing. If you're so intent on helping me, why won't you help me with this?”





“Because this has sod all to do with your problem. But digging it all up, dissecting every nuance, and dwelling on them ad infinitum are brilliant ways to side-step the real issues, Gideon.”





“I'm going at this the only way I can.”





“Bollocks. You're following her dance steps like a nancy boy.”





“That's bloody unfair.”





“Unfair is being asked to stand to one side and watch your son throw his life away. Unfair is having lived solely for that son's benefit for a quarter of a century so that he can become the musician he wishes to be, only to have him fall to pieces the first time he has a setback. Unfair is crafting a relationship with that son unlike any I could ever have had with my own father and then being asked to step back while the love and trust that I've had with him for years gets transferred to some female psychiatrist with nothing more to recommend her than having managed to hike to Machu Picchu without having to be carried to the top.”





“Jesus. How much nosing round have you done?”





“Enough to know how much time you're wasting. God damn it, Gideon”—but his voice wasn't hard when he said those words—“have you even tried?”





To play, naturally. That was what he needed to know. It was as if, to him, I'd ceased to be anything other than a music-making machine.

When I didn't reply, he said not unreasonably, “Don't you see, then, that this could be nothing more than a momentary blackout? A loose connection in your brain. But because you've never had the smallest blip in your career, you've panicked. Pick up the violin, for God's sake. Do it for yourself before it's too late.”





“Too late for what?”





“To overcome the fear. Don't let it drag you down. Don't dwell on it.”