A Traitor to Memory (10 page)

She knew that twenty-five years of marriage was something worth celebrating. She could count on the digits of her right hand the couples she knew who'd attained that hallmark of connubial longevity, and she wouldn't even have to use her thumb. But there was something about this particular couple that didn't strike her as right, and try as she had done from the moment she'd first stepped into the sitting room where yellow crepe paper and green balloons made a brave attempt to camouflage a shabbiness that had more to do with indifference than with poverty, she'd not been able to shake the feeling that the guests of honour and the company assembled were all taking part in a domestic drama for which she—Barbara Havers—had not been given a script.

At first she told herself that her disconnected feeling came from partying with her superior officers, one of whom had saved her neck from the professional noose nearly three months earlier and one of whom had attempted to knot the rope himself. Then she decided her discomfort came from arriving at the party in her usual state—dateless—while everyone else had a companion in tow, including her fellow and favourite detective constable, Winston Nkata, who'd brought along his mother, an imposing woman six feet tall and dressed in the Caribbean colours of her birth. Finally, she settled on the simple fact of celebrating
anyone's
marriage as the source of her uneasiness. Jealous cow, I am, Barbara finally told herself with some disgust.

But even that explanation couldn't withstand much serious scrutiny, because under normal circumstances Barbara wasn't given to wasting energy on envy. True, there were reasons aplenty all round for her to feel that barren emotion. She was standing in a crowd of chattering couples—husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and companions—and she herself was spouseless, partnerless, and childless without a single prospect on her horizon for changing those conditions. But having engaged in her usual reaction to this state of affairs by browsing the buffet table for edible distraction, she'd quickly won herself over to considering all the freedoms afforded her unattached status, and she'd dismissed any disquieting emotions that threatened to undermine her peace of mind.

Still, she didn't feel as bonhomous as she knew she ought to be feeling at an anniversary party, and as the guests of honour took an overlarge knife in their clasped hands and began to assail a cake whose icing was decorated with roses, ivy, twined hearts, and the words
Happy Twenty-fifth, Malcolm & Frances
, Barbara surreptitiously stole glances round the crowd to see if anyone besides herself was giving more attention to his wristwatch than to the waning moments of the celebration. No one was. Each and every person was focused on Detective Superintendent Malcolm Webberly and his uxorial companion of a quarter of a century, the redoubtable Frances.

This evening represented Barbara's first encounter with Superintendent Webberly's wife, and as she watched the woman feeding her husband a forkful of cake and laughingly accepting her own forkful in turn, Barbara realised that she'd been avoiding any prolonged consideration of Frances Webberly for the entire evening. They'd been introduced by the Webberlys' daughter Miranda in her rôle of hostess and they'd made the sort of polite conversation one always made with the spouse of a colleague.
How many years have you known Malcolm?
and
Do you find it difficult working in a world with so many men to contend with?
and
What drew you to homicide investigations in the first place?
Still, throughout this conversation, Barbara had found herself itching for an escape from Frances, despite the fact that the other woman's words were kindly spoken, her periwinkle eyes fixed pleasantly on Barbara's face.

But perhaps that was it, Barbara decided. Perhaps the source of her uneasiness lay in Frances Webberly's eyes and what was hidden behind them: an emotion, a concern, a sense of something not quite as it should be.

Yet exactly what that something was Barbara couldn't have said.
So she gave herself to what she earnestly hoped were the final moments of the shindig, and she applauded along with the rest of the company as the concluding “and so say all of us” was sung.

“Tell us how you've done it,” someone from the crowd called out as Miranda Webberly stepped in to relieve her parents at the cake.

“By having no expectations,” Frances Webberly said promptly and clasped both hands round her husband's arm. “I had to learn that early, didn't I, darling? Which is just as well since the only thing I actually
gained
from this marriage—aside from my Malcolm—is the two stone I've never been able to lose from carrying Randie.”

The company joined her lighthearted laughter. Miranda merely ducked her head and continued cutting the cake.

“That sounds a fair bargain.” This was said by Helen, the wife of DI Thomas Lynley. She'd just accepted a plate of cake from Miranda, and she touched the girl fondly on the shoulder.

“Spot on,” Superintendent Webberly agreed. “We've got the best daughter on earth.”

“Oh, you're right, naturally,” Frances said, shooting Helen a smile. “I would be nowhere without Randie. But just you wait, Countess, till the time arrives when that slender body of yours starts to bloat and your ankles swell. Then you'll know what I'm talking about. Lady Hillier, may I offer you cake?”

There it was, Barbara thought, that something not right.
Countess
. And
Lady
. She was several beats off, was Frances Webberly, giving those titles a public airing. Helen Lynley never used her title—her husband was an earl as well as a detective inspector, but he'd go to the rack before mentioning that fact and his wife was just as reticent—and while Lady Hillier might indeed be the wife of Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier—who himself would go to the rack before
failing
to make his knighthood known to anyone within hearing distance—she was also Frances Webberly's own sister, and using her title, which Frances had done all night, seemed to be an effort to underscore for everyone differences between them that might otherwise have gone unremarked.

It was all very strange, Barbara thought. Very curious. Very … off.

She gravitated towards Helen Lynley. It seemed to Barbara that the simple word
countess
had driven a subtle wedge between Helen and the rest of the party, and as a result the other woman was tucking into her cake alone. Her husband appeared oblivious of this—typical man—since he was engaged in conversation with two of his fellow DIs, Angus MacPherson, who was working on his weight problem by ingesting a piece of cake the size of a shoebox, and John Stewart, who
was compulsively arranging the remaining crumbs from his own piece of cake in a pattern that resembled a Union Jack. So Barbara went to Helen's rescue.

“Is her countess-ship thoroughly chuffed by the evening's festivities?” she asked quietly when she reached Helen's side. “Or haven't enough forelocks been tugged in her direction?”

“Behave yourself, Barbara,” Helen remonstrated, but she smiled as she said it.

“Can't do that. I've got a reputation to maintain.” Barbara accepted a plate of cake and tucked into it happily. “You know, your slenderness,” she went on, “you could at least
try
to look dumpy like the rest of us. Have you thought about wearing horizontal stripes?”

“There
is
that wallpaper I got for the spare room,” Helen said thoughtfully. “It's vertical, but I could wear it on its side.”

“You owe it to your fellow females. One woman maintaining her appropriate body weight makes the rest of us look like elephants.”

“I'm afraid I won't be maintaining it for long,” Helen said.

“Oh, I wouldn't go to Ladbrokes to put five quid—” Barbara suddenly realised what Helen was saying. She glanced at her in surprise and saw that Helen's face bore an uncharacteristically bashful half smile.

“Holy
hell
,” Barbara intoned. “Helen, are you really …? You and the inspector? Hell. That's bloody
brilliant
, that is.” She looked across the room at Lynley, his blond head cocked to listen to something that Angus MacPherson was saying to him. “The inspector hasn't said a word.”

“We've only just found out this week. No one actually knows yet. That seemed best.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah,” Barbara agreed, but she didn't know what to think about the fact that Helen Lynley had just confided in her. She felt a sudden warmth swell over her and a quick pulsing in the back of her throat. “Gosh. Hell. Well, never fear, Helen. Mum'll be the absolute word at this end till you tell me otherwise.” And as she realised her inadvertent pun, Helen did also, and they laughed together.

It was at this moment that Barbara caught sight of the caterer tiptoeing along the side of the dining room from the direction of the kitchen, a cordless phone in her hand.

“A call for the superintendent,” she announced, but she managed to sound apologetic about the fact, and she added, “Sorry,” as if there had actually been a chance in hell that she could have done something about it.

“Here comes trouble,” DI Angus MacPherson rumbled as “At
this
hour?” Frances Webberly asked. She said anxiously, “Malcolm, good heavens … You can't …”

A sympathetic murmur rose from the guests. They all knew either first-or secondhand what a phone call at one in the morning meant. So did Webberly. He said, “Can't be helped, Fran,” and he put a hand on her shoulder as he went to take the call.

Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley wasn't surprised when the superintendent excused himself from the party and climbed the stairs with the cordless receiver pressed to his ear. He
was
surprised, however, at the length of time that his superior officer was gone. At least twenty minutes passed during which the superintendent's guests finished their cake and coffee and made noises about heading for their respective homes. Frances Webberly protested at this, casting more than one vexed glance at the stairs. They couldn't leave just yet, she told them, not before Malcolm had the chance to thank them for being part of their anniversary party. Wouldn't they wait for Malcolm?

She didn't add what she would never say. If their guests left before her husband had completed his phone call, common courtesy suggested that Frances step into the front garden to bid farewell to the people who'd come to honour her marriage. And what had long gone unmentioned between Malcolm Webberly and most of his colleagues was the fact that Frances had not put a toe outside her house in more than ten years.

“Phobias,” Webberly had explained to Lynley on the single occasion when he'd spoken about his wife. “It began with simple things that I didn't notice. By the time they had a tight enough hold on her to get my attention, she was spending all day in the bedroom. Wrapped in a blanket, would you believe it? God forgive me.”

The secrets men live with, Lynley thought as he watched Frances fluttering among her guests. There was an edge to her gaiety that no one could miss, a hint of the determined and the anxious to her pleasure. Randie had wished to surprise her parents with an anniversary party at a local restaurant where there would be more room, even a dance floor for the guests. But that hadn't been possible considering Frances's condition, so the venue was restricted to the family's disintegrating old house in Stamford Brook.

Webberly finally descended the stairs as the company were making their farewells, ushered to the door by his daughter, who wrapped
her arm round her mother's waist. It was a fond gesture on Randie's part. It served the double purpose of reassuring Frances even as it prevented her from tearing away from the door.

“Not leaving?” Webberly boomed from the stairs, where he'd lit a cigar that was sending a blue cloud in the direction of the ceiling. “The night is young.”

“The night is morning,” Laura Hillier informed him, fondly pressing her cheek to her niece's and saying her farewells. “Lovely party, Randie. You did your parents proud.” Her hand clasped in her husband's, she went out into the night, where the rain that had been falling heavily all evening had finally stopped.

Assistant Commissioner Hillier's departure gave the rest of the company permission to go, and people began to do so, Lynley among them. He was waiting for his wife's coat to be unearthed from somewhere upstairs, when Webberly joined him at the door to the sitting room and said in a low voice, “Stay a moment, Tommy. If you will.”

There was a drawn quality to the superintendent's face that prompted Lynley to murmur, “Of course.” Next to him, his wife said spontaneously, “Frances, have you your wedding pictures anywhere at hand? I won't let Tommy take me home till I've seen you on your day of glory.”

Lynley shot Helen a grateful look. Within another ten minutes, the remaining guests had departed and while Helen occupied Frances Webberly and Miranda helped the caterer clear away dishes and serving platters, Lynley and Webberly repaired to the study, a cramped room barely large enough for a desk, an armchair, and the bookshelves that furnished it.

Perhaps in deference to Lynley's abstemious habits, Webberly went to the window and wrestled with it to give some respite from his cigar smoke. Cold autumn air, heavy with damp, floated into the room.