A Traitor to Memory (103 page)

But there was another difference besides the obvious physical one, and Barbara thought about it as she surveyed the house. Inside had lived a terrible man, in Lynn Davies' words, a man who couldn't bear to be in the same room as a grandchild who was, in his eyes, not what she should have been. The child had been unwelcome in this house, she'd been an object of continual loathing, so her mother had taken her away forever. And old Jack Davies—terrible Jack Davies—had been appeased. More, he'd been gratified, as things turned out, because when his son got round to marrying again, Jack's next grandchild turned out to be a musical genius.

Delight all round at that one, Barbara thought. The kid picked up a fiddle, made his mark, and gave the name Davies the glory it deserved. But then came the
next
grandchild's birth, and old Jack Davies—terrible Jack Davies—was made to look imperfection in the face another time.

But on this second go with a defective child, things were more dicey for Jack. Because if old Jack Davies drove
this
mother off with his relentless demands to “keep her out of my sight, put that creature
away
somewhere,” chances were that this mother would take her other child with her. And that would mean goodbye Gideon and goodbye to basking vicariously in the glory of everything Gideon stood to accomplish.

When Sonia Davies was drowned in her bath, had the police even known about Virginia? Barbara wondered. And if they had, had the family managed to keep old Jack's attitude to her under wraps? Probably.

He'd gone through a horrific time in the war, he'd never recovered, he was a military hero. But he also sounded like a man who was five notes short of a full sonata, and how was anyone to know how far a man like that would go when he'd been thwarted?

Barbara went back to the pavement, closing the gate behind her. She flipped her cigarette into the street and retraced her steps to the Convent of the Immaculate Conception.

This time round, she found Sister Cecilia Mahoney in the enormous garden behind the main building. With another nun, she was raking up leaves from a mammoth sycamore tree that could have shaded an entire hamlet. They'd so far made five piles of leaves, which formed colourful mounds across the lawn. In the distance where a wall marked the end of the convent's property and protected it from the trains of the District line that rumbled above ground throughout the day, a man in a boiler suit and a knitted hat was tending a fire where some of the gathered leaves were burning.

“You need to have a care with that sort of thing,” Barbara said to Sister Cecilia as she joined her. “One wrong move and all of Kensington'll go up in smoke. I don't expect you want that.”

“With no Wren to build its replacement,” Sister Cecilia noted. “Yes. We're being quite careful, Constable. George doesn't leave the fire unattended. And I'm thinking it's George who's got the better bargain. We do the gathering and he makes the offering that God receives with pleasure.”

“Pardon?”

The nun drew her rake along the lawn, its tines snaring a cluster of leaves. “Biblical allusion, if you'll pardon me. Cain and Abel. Abel's fire produced smoke that went heavenward.”

“Oh. Right.”

“You don't know the Old Testament?”

“Just the lying, knowing, and begetting parts. And I've got most of those memorised.”

Sister Cecilia laughed and took her rake to lean it against a bench that encircled the sycamore at the garden's centre. She returned to Barbara, saying, “Sure there was a great deal of lying and begetting going on in those days, wasn't there, Constable? But then, they had to set about it, didn't they, since they'd been told to populate the world.”

Barbara smiled. “Could I have a word?”

“Of course. You'll be preferring to have it inside the convent, I expect.” Sister Cecilia didn't wait for a reply. She merely said to her companion, “Sister Rose, if I can leave you to this for a quarter of an hour …?” and when the other nun nodded, she led the way to a short flight of concrete stairs which took them to the back door of the dun brick building.

They walked down a lino-floored corridor to a door marked
visitors' room
. Here, Sister Cecilia knocked, and when there was no reply, she swung the door open, saying, “Would you like a cup of tea, Constable? A coffee? I think we've a biscuit or two.”

Barbara demurred. Just conversation, she told the nun.

“You don't mind if I …?” Sister Cecilia indicated an electric kettle, which stood on a chipped plastic tray along with a tin of Earl Grey tea and several mismatched cups and saucers. She plugged the kettle in and fetched from the top of a small chest of drawers a box of sugar cubes, three of which she plopped into a cup, saying serenely to Barbara, “Sweet tooth. But God forgives small vices in us all. I would feel less guilty, though, if you'd be taking a biscuit at least. They're Weight Watchers. Oh but sure, I don't mean to imply that you're needing to—”

“No offence taken,” Barbara interrupted. “I'll have one.”

Sister Cecilia looked mischievous. “They do come in packets of two, Constable.”

“Hand them over, then. I'll cope.”

With her tea made and her biscuits in their little packet on a separate saucer, Sister Cecilia was prepared to join Barbara. They sat on two vinyl-covered chairs next to a window that overlooked the garden
where Sister Rose was still raking leaves. A low veneer table separated them, its surface holding a variety of religious magazines and one copy of
Elle
, heavily thumbed.

Barbara told the nun that she'd met Lynn Davies and asked if Sister Cecilia knew about this earlier marriage and this additional child of Richard Davies.

Sister Cecilia confirmed that she had long known, that she'd learned about Lynn and that “poor dear mite of hers” from Eugenie shortly after Gideon's birth. “It came as quite a shock to Eugenie, to be sure, Constable. She'd not known Richard was even divorced, and she spent some time reflecting on what it meant that he hadn't told her prior to their marriage.”

“I expect she felt betrayed.”

“Oh, it wasn't the personal side of the omission that concerned her. At least, if it was, she didn't discuss that part of it with me. It was the spiritual and religious implications that Eugenie wrestled with during those first years after Gideon's birth.”

“What sort of implications?”

“Well, the holy Church recognises marriage as a permanent covenant between a man and a woman.”

“Was Mrs. Davies concerned that if the Church saw her husband's first marriage as his legitimate one, her own marriage would be considered bigamous? And the kids from that marriage illegitimate?”

Sister Cecilia took a sip of tea. “Yes and no,” she replied. “The situation was complicated by the fact that Richard himself wasn't Catholic. He wasn't actually anything, poor man. He hadn't been married in any church in the first place, so Eugenie's real question was whether he'd lived in sin with Lynn and if the child from that union—who would thus be conceived in sin—bore the mark of God's judgement upon her. And if that were the case, did Eugenie herself run the risk of calling down God's judgement upon herself as well?”

“For having married a man who'd ‘lived in sin,’ d'you mean?”

“Ah no. For not herself having married him in the Church.”

“The Church wouldn't allow it?”

“It was never a question of what the Church would or would not allow. Richard didn't want a religious ceremony, so they never had one. Just the civil procedure at the register office.”

“But as a Catholic, wouldn't Mrs. Davies have wanted a Church wedding as well? Wouldn't she have been obliged to have one? I mean, for everything to be on the up and up with God and the Pope.”

“That's how it is, my dear. But Eugenie was Catholic only as far as it went.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that she received some sacraments but not others. She accepted some beliefs but not others.”

“When you join up, aren't you supposed to swear on the Bible or something that you'll abide by the rules? I mean, we know that she wasn't brought up Catholic, so does the Church take on members who abide by some rules and not by others?”

“You must remember that the Church has no secret police to make certain its members are walking the straight and narrow, Constable,” the nun replied. She took a bite from her biscuit and munched. “God has given us each a conscience so that we can monitor our own behaviour. Isn't it true, of course, that there are many topics on which individual Catholics part ways with Holy Mother the Church, but whether that puts their eternal salvation into jeopardy is something that only God could tell us.”

“Yet Mrs. Davies seemed to believe that God gets even with sinners during their lifetimes, if she thought that Virginia was God's way of dealing with Richard and Lynn.”

“Sure it is that when a misfortune befalls someone, people often interpret it that way. But consider Job. What was his sin that he was so tried by God?”

“Knowing and begetting on the wrong side of the sheets?” Barbara asked. “I can't remember.”

“You can't remember because there was no sin. Just the terrible trials of his faith in the Almighty.” Sister Cecilia took up her tea, wiping the biscuit crumbs from her fingers onto the nubby material of her skirt.

“Is that what you told Mrs. Davies, then?”

“I pointed out that had God wished to punish her, He certainly wouldn't have started out by giving her Gideon—a perfectly healthy child—as the first fruit of her marriage to Richard.”

“But as to Sonia?”

“Did she consider that child her punishment from God for her sins?” Sister Cecilia clarified. “She never said as much. But from the way she reacted when she was told about the wee one's condition … And then when she stopped attending church entirely once the baby died …” The nun sighed, brought her cup to her lips, and held it there as she considered how to reply. She finally said, “We can only surmise, Constable. We can only take the questions she asked with regard
to Lynn and Virginia and infer from them how she herself might have felt and what she might have believed when she was faced with a similar trial.”

“What about the rest of them?”

“The rest?”

“The rest of the family. Did she mention how they felt? About Sonia? Once they knew …?”

“She never said.”

“Lynn says she left in part because of Richard Davies' dad. She says he had a few cogs not working, but the ones that did work were nasty enough for her to be glad the rest were misfiring. If a cog misfires. But I expect you know what I mean.”

“Eugenie didn't talk about the household.”

“She didn't mention anyone wanting to get rid of Sonia? Like Richard? Or his dad? Or anyone?”

Sister Cecilia's blue eyes widened over the biscuit she'd raised to her lips. She said, “Mary and Joseph. No.
No
. This was not a house of evil people. Troubled people, perhaps, as we're all troubled from time to time. But to want to be rid of a baby so desperately that one of them might have …? No. I can't think that of any of them.”

“But someone did kill her, and you told me yesterday that you didn't believe it was Katja Wolff.”

“Didn't and don't,” the nun affirmed.

“But someone had to have done the deed, unless you believe that the hand of God swept down and held that baby under the water. So who? Eugenie herself? Richard? Granddad? The lodger? Gideon?”

“He was eight years old!”

“And jealous that a second child had come to take the spotlight off him?”

“She could hardly do that.”

“But she could take everyone's attention from him. She could take up their time. She could take most of their money. She could tap the well till the well was dry. And if it went dry, where would that leave Gideon?”

“No eight-year-old child thinks that far into the future.”

“But someone else might have, someone who had a vested interest in keeping him front and centre in the household.”

“Yes. Well. I don't know who that someone might be.”

Barbara watched the nun place half of the biscuit onto the saucer. She watched as Sister Cecilia went to the kettle and switched it on for a second cup of tea. She weighed her preconceived notions about
nuns with what information she'd gathered from this one and the air with which Sister Cecilia had parted with it. She concluded that the nun was telling her everything she knew. In their earlier interview, Sister Cecilia had said that Eugenie stopped attending church when Sonia died. So she—Sister Cecilia—would no longer have had the opportunity she'd once had for heart-to-heart chats of the sort that passed along crucial information.

She said, “What happened to the other baby?”

“The other …? Oh. Are you speaking of Katja's child?”

“My DCI wants me to track him down.”

“He's in Australia, Constable. He's been there since he was twelve years old. And as I told you when we first spoke, if Katja wished to find him, she'd have come to me at once upon her release. You must believe me. The terms of the adoption asked the parents to provide annual updates about the child, so I've always known where he was and I'd have provided Katja with that information any time she asked for it.”

“But she didn't?”

“She did not.” Sister Cecilia headed for the door. “If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'll fetch something you might want to see.”

The nun left the room just as the electric kettle brought the water to a boil and clicked off. Barbara rose and brewed a second cup of Earl Grey for Sister Cecilia, scoring another packet of the biscuits for herself. She'd crammed these down her throat and added the three cubes of sugar to Sister Cecilia's tea when the nun returned, a manila envelope in her hand.

She sat, knees and ankles together, and spread the contents of the envelope on her lap. Barbara saw they consisted of letters and photographs, both snapshots and studio portraits.

“He's called Jeremy, Katja's son,” Sister Cecilia told her. “He'll be twenty in February. He was adopted by a family called Watts, along with three other children. They're in Adelaide now, all of them. He favours his mother, I think.”