A Traitor to Memory (61 page)

“None.” Wiley reached for more books. He checked the dust jackets of these, going so far as to open each one and to run his fingers along the inner flap as if he were looking for imperfections.

As he did so, Lynley reflected upon the fact that a man generally knows when the woman he loves does not reciprocate the emotion. A man also knows—he can't avoid knowing—when the passion within a woman he loves begins to wither. Sometimes he lies to himself about the fact, denying it till the moment comes when he can no
longer avoid it or escape it altogether. But he always knows even subconsciously when things aren't right. Openly admitting this is a form of torture, though. And some men can't cope with such torture, so they choose another route to deal with the matter.

Lynley said, “Major Wiley, you heard the messages on Mrs. Davies' answer machine yesterday. You heard the men's voices, so it can't be a surprise to you when I ask if Mrs. Davies might have been involved elsewhere besides with you, if that's what she might have wanted to tell you.”

“I've thought it,” Wiley said quietly. “Nothing else has been in my mind since … Damn. God
damn
.” He shook his head and shoved his hand into his trouser pocket. He brought out a handkerchief and honked into it loudly enough to disturb the reading of the woman in the armchair. She looked round, saw Lynley and Havers, and said, “Major Wiley? Is everything all right?”

He nodded, raised a hand as if to underscore his assent, and turned his shoulder so she couldn't see his face. She seemed to feel this was answer enough, for she went back to her reading as Wiley said to Lynley, “I feel a perfect fool.”

Lynley waited for more. Havers tapped her pencil against her notebook and frowned.

Wiley gathered himself together and told them the apparent worst there was for him to tell: about the nights he watched Eugenie Davies' cottage from his upstairs window and about one night in particular when his surveillance had finally been rewarded. “One A.M.,” he said. “It was that bloke with the Audi. And the way she touched him … Yes. Yes. I loved her and she was involved somewhere else. So was that what she wanted to tell me, Inspector? I don't know. I didn't want to know then, and I don't want to know now. What's the point?”

“The point is finding her killer,” Havers said.

“You think it's me?”

“What sort of car do you drive?”

“A Mercedes. It's right there, in front of the shop.”

Havers looked to Lynley for direction, and he nodded. She went outside and the two men watched her giving the car's front end a thorough inspection. It was black, but the colour was inconsequential if there was no damage to report.

“I wouldn't have hurt her,” Wiley said quietly. “I loved her. I trust you lot understand what that means.”

And what it implies, Lynley thought. But he didn't speak, merely
waiting till Havers had completed her inspection and returned to them. It's clean, her eyes told them. Lynley could see she was disappointed.

Wiley read the message. He allowed himself the pleasure of saying, “I hope that satisfies. Or do you want me on the rack as well?”

“I expect you want us to do our job,” Havers pointed out.

Wiley said, “Then do it. There's a photo gone missing from Eugenie's house.”

“What sort of photo?” Lynley said.

“The only one of the little girl alone.”

“Why didn't you tell us this yesterday?”

“Didn't realise it. Not till this morning. She had them lined up on the kitchen table. Three rows of four. But she had thirteen pictures of those kids in the house—twelve of both of them and one of the girl—and unless she'd taken that one back upstairs, it's gone missing.”

Lynley looked at Havers. She shook her head. There had been no picture in any of the three rooms she'd looked through on the first floor of Doll Cottage.

“When was the last time you saw that photo?” Lynley asked.

“Whenever I was there, I saw all of them. Not like they were yesterday—in the kitchen—but spread round. In the sitting room. And upstairs. On the landing. In her sewing room.”

“P'rhaps she'd taken that one to have a new frame,” Havers said. “Or thrown it away.”

“She wouldn't have done,” Wiley said, aghast.

“Or given it away or lent it somewhere.”

“A picture of her daughter? Who'd she give it to, then?”

It was a question, Lynley knew, that had to be answered.

Once again on the pavement in Friday Street, Havers offered another possibility. “She could have posted it somewhere. To the husband, d'you think? Did he have pictures of the girl in his flat when you spoke to him, Inspector?”

“None that I saw. There were only snapshots of Gideon.” “There you go, then. They'd been speaking, hadn't they? About Gideon's stage fright? Why not about the little girl as well? So he asked Eugenie for a picture of her, and she sent it along. That's easy enough to find out, isn't it?”

“But it's odd that he had no pictures of the daughter already, Havers.”

“Human nature's odd,” Havers said. “This long on the force, I'd think you'd know that.”

Lynley couldn't argue. He said, “Let's have another look at her house to make sure the photo's not there.”

It was a matter of only a few minutes to double-check and to prove Major Wiley right. The twelve photographs in the kitchen were all that were left in the house.

Lynley and Havers were standing in the sitting room, mulling this over, when Lynley's mobile began to ring. It was Eric Leach phoning from the Hampstead incident room.

“We've got a match,” he told Lynley without preamble, sounding pleased. “We've got the Brighton Audi and the Cellnet customer rolled into one pretty package.”

“Ian Staines?” Lynley said, recalling the name connected to the Cellnet number. “Her brother?”

“The same.” Leach recited the address and Lynley wrote it down on the back of one of his business cards. “Get on to him,” Leach said. “What've you got on Wolff?”

“Nothing.” Lynley reported briefly on their conversations with the Sixty Plus Club's members as well as with Major Wiley, and he went on to tell Leach of the missing photograph.

The DCI offered another interpretation. “She could have brought it with her to London.”

“To show someone?”

“That takes us back to Pitchley.”

“But why would she want to show him the picture? Or give it to him?”

“There's more to that story than we're hearing, I say,” Leach pointed out. “Dig up a picture of the Davies woman. There's got to be a snapshot somewhere in her house. Or Wiley'll have one. Take it to the Valley of Kings and the Comfort Inn. There's a chance that someone remembers her there.”

“With Pitchley?”

“He likes them older, doesn't he?”

When the police departed, Ted Wiley left Mrs. Dilday watching over the shop. It had been a slow morning and was shaping up to be a slow afternoon, so he felt no compunction about putting his engrossed customer in charge of things. It was about time that she did something
to earn the privilege of reading every best seller without ever making a purchase other than a greeting card, so he rousted her from her favourite armchair and gave her instructions on working the till. Then he went upstairs to his flat.

There, he found P.B. snoozing in a patch of weak sunlight. He stepped over the retriever and put himself at Connie's old davenport beneath whose sloping surface he'd stowed the brochures from the forthcoming opera seasons in Vienna, Santa Fe, and Sydney. It had been his hope that one of those seasons would serve as a backdrop to his broadened relationship with Eugenie. They would travel to Austria, America, or Australia and enjoy Rossini, Verdi, or Mozart as they enriched the joy they took in each other's company and deepened the nature of their love. They'd moved slowly towards this destination for three long and careful years together, building a structure comprising tenderness, devotion, affection, and support. They'd told each other that everything else that went with a man and a woman linking themselves together—most particularly sex—would find its way into the equation with time.

It had been a relief for Ted after Connie's death, not to mention after the esurient pursuing by other women to which he'd been exposed, to find himself in the company of a woman who wanted to build a structure first before taking up residence within it. But now, after the police had left him, Ted finally forced himself to acknowledge the reality that he'd not been able to bear even thinking about before this moment: that Eugenie's hesitation, her gentle and always kind “I'm not ready yet, Ted,” were in actuality evidence that she was not ready for
him
. For what else could it mean that a man had phoned and left a message rife with desperation on her answer machine? that a man had left her house at one in the morning? that a man had accosted her in the car park of the Sixty Plus Club and pleaded with her the way a man pleads when everything—and most particularly his heart—is at stake? There was only one answer to these questions, and Ted knew what that answer was.

He'd been such a fool. Instead of being grateful for the blessed respite from performance that Eugenie's reserve had promised him, he should have suspected at once that she was involved elsewhere. But he hadn't because it had been such a relief after Georgia Ramsbottom's carnal demands.

She'd phoned last night. Her, “Teddy, I'm so sorry. I spoke to the police today and they said that Eugenie … Dearest Teddy, is there
anything
I can do?” had barely disguised the enthusiasm with which she'd made the call in the first place. “I'm coming over straightaway,” she'd said. “No ifs or buts, dear. You're not to be left alone with this.”

He'd not had a chance to protest and he'd not had the courage to decamp prior to her arrival. She'd swept in barely ten minutes later, bearing a baking dish in which she'd made him her speciality, which was shepherd's pie. She whipped off the aluminium foil that covered it, and he saw that the pie was depressingly perfect, with ornate little ridges like waves marking the mashed potatoes. She said, flashing a smile at him, “It's warmish, but if we pop it into the microwave, it'll be perfect. You must eat, Teddy, and I know that you haven't. Have you?” She hadn't waited for an answer. She'd marched to the microwave and shut its door smartly upon the shepherd's pie, whereupon she moved briskly round the kitchen, bringing forth plates and cutlery from cupboards and drawers with the unspoken authority of a woman showing that she was familiar with a man's domicile.

She said, “You're devastated. I can see it in your face. I am so sorry. I know what friends you two were. And to lose such a friend as Eugenie … You must let yourself feel the sorrow, Teddy.”

Friend, he thought. Not lover. Not wife. Not companion. Not partner. Friend and everything that friend suggested.

He hated Georgia Ramsbottom in that moment. He hated her not only for barging into his solitude like a ship breaking ocean ice but also for the acuity of her perception. She said without saying what he had not allowed himself even to think: His imagination and his longing had created the bond he'd believed he'd had with Eugenie.

Women who were interested in a man showed their interest. They showed it soon, and they showed it unabashedly. They could do no less at an age and in a society in which they so vastly outnumbered available males. He had the proof of this in Georgia herself and in the women who had preceded Georgia in his widowed years. They had their knickers off before a man could reassuringly say to them, “I'm no Jack the lad.” And if they kept their knickers on, it was only because their hands were busy in his crotch instead. But Eugenie had done none of that, had she? Demure Eugenie. Docile Eugenie. Damn Eugenie.

He'd felt such a swelling of anger that he couldn't reply at first to Georgia's comments. He wanted to pound his fist into something hard. He wanted to break it.

Georgia took his silence for stoicism, the stiff upper lip that was the proud achievement of every upstanding British male. She said, “I
know, I know. And it's ghastly, isn't it? The older we get, the more we have to bear witness to our friends' passing. But what I've discovered is the importance of nurturing the precious friendships that are left to us. So you mustn't cut yourself off from those of us who care deeply about you, Teddy. We won't have that.”