A Traitor to Memory (106 page)

She said hesitantly, “You didn't know about her, Gid?” And then, “Gideon?” again when he didn't reply. She reached out and touched his shoulder. He sat unmoving except for the fact that his whole frame was trembling. It was
vibrating
, almost, beneath his clothes.

He said, “Dead.”

She said, “Yeah. I read that in the note. Lynn must've been … Well, obviously, she says ‘our daughter,’ so she was her mom. Which means your dad was married before and you had a half sister as well. You didn't know?”

He took the card back from her. He heaved himself off the chair and clumsily shoved the card back into its envelope, stuffing this into the back pocket of his trousers. He said in a voice that was low, like
someone talking while hypnotised, “He lies to me about everything. He always has. And he's lying now.”

He walked through the litter he'd left on the floor, like a man without vision. Libby trailed him, saying, “Maybe he didn't lie at all,” not so much because she wanted to defend Richard Davies—who probably would have lied about the second coming of Christ if that was the way to get what he wanted—but because she couldn't stand the thought of Gideon having to deal with anything else. “I mean, if he never told you about Virginia, it wouldn't have necessarily been a lie. It might've just been one of those things that never came up. Like, maybe he never had the opportunity to talk about her or something. Maybe your mom didn't want her discussed. Too painful? All's I'm saying is that it doesn't have to mean—”

“I knew,” he said. “I've always known.”

He went into the kitchen with Libby on his heels, chewing on this one. If Gideon knew about Virginia, then what was with him? Freaked out because she'd died, too? Distraught because no one had told him she'd died? Outraged because he'd been kept from the funeral? Except it looked like Richard himself didn't go, if the note was an indication of anything. So what was the lie?

She said, “Gid—” but stopped herself when he began punching numbers into the phone. Although he stood with one hand pressed to his stomach and one foot tapping against the floor, his expression was grim, the way a man looks when he's made up his mind about something.

He said into the phone, “Jill? Gideon. I want to speak with Dad … No? Then where …? I'm at the flat. No, he's not here … I checked there. Did he give you any idea …?” A rather long pause while Richard's lover either wracked her brains or recited a list of possibilities, at the end of which Gideon said, “Right. MotherCare. Fine … Thanks, Jill,” and listened some more. He ended with, “No. No message. No message at all. If he rings you, in fact, don't tell him I phoned. I wouldn't want to … Right. Let's not worry him. He's got enough on his mind.” Then he rang off. “She thinks he's gone off to Oxford Street. Supplies, she says. He wants an intercom for the baby's room. She hadn't yet got one because she intended the baby to sleep with them. Or with her. Or with him. Or with
someone
. But she didn't intend her to be alone. Because if a baby gets left alone, Libby, if a child goes un-tended for a while, if the parents aren't vigilant, if there's a distraction when they don't expect one, if there's a window open, if someone
leaves a candle lit, if anything at all, then the worst can happen. The worst
will
happen. And who knows that better than Dad?”

“Let's go,” Libby said. “Let's get out of here, Gideon. Come on. I'll buy you a latte, okay? There's got to be a Starbucks nearby.”

He shook his head. “You go. Take the car. Go home.”

“I'm not going to leave you here. Besides, how would you get—”

“I'll wait for Dad. He'll drive me back.”

“That could be hours. If he goes back to Jill's and she starts labour and then she has the baby, it could be days. Come on. I don't want to leave you hanging around this place alone.”

But she couldn't move him. He wouldn't have her there, and he wouldn't go with her. He would, however, speak with his father. “I don't care how long it takes,” he told her. “This time I don't really care at all.”

Reluctantly, then, she agreed to the plan, not liking it but also seeing that there wasn't much she could do about it. Besides, he seemed calmer after talking to Jill. Or at least he seemed moderately more himself. She said, “Will you call me, then, if you need anything?”

“I won't be needing a thing,” he replied.

Helen herself answered the door when Lynley knocked at Webberly's house in Stamford Brook. He said, “Helen, why are you still here? When Hillier told me you'd come over from the hospital, I couldn't believe it. You shouldn't be doing this.”

“Whyever not?” she asked in a perfectly reasonable voice.

He stepped inside as Webberly's dog came bounding from the direction of the kitchen, barking at full volume. Lynley backed towards the door while Helen took the dog by the collar and said, “Alfie, no.” She gave him a shake. “He doesn't sound like a friend, but he's quite all right. All bark and bluster.”

“So I noticed,” Lynley said.

She looked up from the animal. “Actually, I was talking about you.” She released the Alsatian once he'd settled. The dog sniffed round Lynley's trouser turn-ups, accepted the intrusion, and trotted back towards the kitchen. “Don't lecture me, darling,” Helen said to her husband. “As you see, I have friends in high places.”

“With dangerous teeth.”

“That's true.” She gave a nod to the door and said, “I didn't think it would be you. I was hoping for Randie.”

“She still won't leave him?”

“It's a stalemate. She won't leave her father; Frances won't leave the house. I thought when we got word about the heart attack … Surely, she'll want to go to him, I thought. She'll force herself. Because he may die, and not to
be
there if he dies … But no.”

“It's not your problem, Helen. And considering the kinds of days you've been having … You need to get some rest. Where's Laura Hillier?”

“She and Frances had a row. Frances more than Laura, actually. One of those don't-look-at-me-as-if-I-were-a-monster sort of conversations that start out with one party trying to convince the other party that she's not thinking what the other party is determined to believe she thinks she's thinking because at some level—would that be subconsciously?—she actually
is
thinking it.”

Lynley tried to wade through all this, saying, “Are these waters too deep for me, Helen?”

“They may require life belts.”

“I thought I might be of help.”

Helen had walked into the sitting room. There, an ironing board had been set up and an iron was sending steam ceilingward, which told Lynley—much to his astonishment—that his wife was actually in the process of seeing to the family laundry. A shirt lay across the board itself, one arm the subject of Helen's most recent ministrations. From the look of the wrinkles that appeared to have been permanently applied to the garment, it seemed that Lynley's wife hadn't exactly found a new calling in life.

She saw his glance and said, “Yes. Well. I'd hoped to be helpful.”

“It's brilliant of you. Really,” Lynley replied supportively.

“I'm not doing it properly. I can see that. I'm sure there's a logic to it—an order or something?—but I've not yet worked it out. Sleeves first? Front? Back? Collar? I do one part and the other part—which I've already done—wrinkles up again. Can you advise?”

“There must be a laundry nearby.”

“That's terrifically helpful, Tommy.” Helen smiled ruefully. “Perhaps I should stick to pillowcases. At least they're flat.”

“Where's Frances?”

“Darling, no. We can't possibly ask her to—”

He chuckled. “That's not what I meant. I'd like to talk to her. Is she upstairs?”

“Oh. Yes. Once she and Laura had their argument, it was tears all
round. Laura dashed out, absolutely sobbing. Frances tore up the stairs looking grim-faced. When I checked on her, she was sitting on the floor in a corner of her bedroom, clutching onto the curtains. She asked to be left alone.”

“Randie needs to be with her. She needs to be with Randie.”

“Believe me, Tommy, I've made that point. Carefully, subtly, straightforwardly, respectfully, cajolingly, and every other way I could think of, save belligerently.”

“That could be what she needs. Bellicosity.”

“Tone might work—although I doubt it—but volume I guarantee will get you nowhere. She asks to be left alone each time I go up to see her, and while I'd rather not leave her alone, I keep thinking I ought to respect her wishes.”

“Let me have a go, then.”

“I'll come as well. Have you any further news of Malcolm? We haven't had word from the hospital since Randie phoned, which is good, I suppose. Because surely Randie would have phoned at once if … Is there no change, Tommy?”

“No change,” Lynley answered. “The heart complicates things. It's a waiting game.”

“Do you think they might have to decide …?” Helen paused on the stairway above him and looked back, reading in his expression the answer to her uncompleted question. “I'm so terribly sorry for all of them,” she said. “For you as well. I do know what he means to you.”

“Frances needs to be there. Randie can't be asked to do it alone, if it comes to that.”

“Of course she can't,” Helen said.

Lynley had never been above stairs in Webberly's home, so he allowed his wife to show him the way to the master bedroom. The first floor of the house was dominated by scents: potpourri from bowls on a three-tier stand that they passed at the top of the stairs, orange spice from a candle burning outside the bathroom door, lemon from polish used on the furniture. But the scents were not strong enough to cover the stronger odour of air overheated, overweighed with cigar smoke, and so long stale that it seemed only rainfall—violent and long—within the walls of the house would be enough to cleanse it.

“Every window is shut,” Helen said quietly. “Well, of course, it's November, so one wouldn't expect … But still … It must be so difficult for them. Not just for Malcolm and Randie. They can get away. But for Frances, because she must so want to be … to be cured.”

“One would think,” Lynley agreed. “Through here, Helen?”

Only one of the doors was closed and Helen nodded when he indicated it. He tapped on its white panels and said, “Frances? It's Tommy. May I come in?”

No reply. He called out again, a little louder this time, following that with another rap on the door. When she didn't respond, he tried the knob. It turned, so he eased the door open. Behind him, Helen said, “Frances? Will you see Tommy?”

To which Webberly's wife finally said, “Yes,” in a voice that was neither fearful nor resentful at the intrusion, just quiet and tired.

They found her not in the corner where Helen last had seen her but sitting on an undecorated straight-backed chair that she'd drawn up to look at her reflection in a mirror that hung above a dressing table. On the table she'd laid out hairbrushes, hair slides, and ribbons. She was running two ribbons through her fingers as they entered, as if studying the effect that their colour had against her skin.

She was undoubtedly wearing, Lynley saw, what she'd been wearing when she'd phoned her daughter on the previous night. She had on a quilted pink dressing gown belted at the waist, and an azure nightdress beneath it. She hadn't combed her hair despite the brushes laid out before her, so it was still asymmetrically flattened by her head's pressure into her pillow, as if an invisible hat were perched on it.

She looked so colourless that Lynley thought at once of spirits despite the hour of the day: gin, brandy, whisky, vodka, or anything else to bring some blood to her face. He said to Helen, “Would you bring up a drink, darling?” And to Webberly's wife, “Frances, you could do with a brandy. I'd like you to have one.”

She said, “Yes. All right. A brandy.”

Helen left them. Lynley saw that a linen chest extended across the foot of the bed, and he dragged this over to where Frances sat so that he could speak at her level rather than down at her like a lecturing uncle. He didn't know where to begin. He didn't know what would do any good. Considering the length of time that Frances Webberly had spent inside the walls of this house, paralysed by inexplicable terrors, it didn't seem likely that a simple declaration of her husband's peril and her daughter's need could convince her that her fears were groundless. He was wise enough to know that the human mind did not work that way. Common logic did not suffice to obliterate demons that lived within the tortuous caves of a woman's psyche.

He said, “Can I do anything, Frances? I know you want to go to him.”

She'd raised one of the ribbons against her cheek, and she lowered
this slowly to the top of the table. “Do you know that,” she said, not a question but a statement. “If I had the heart of a woman who knows how to love her husband properly, I would have gone to him already. Directly they phoned from Casualty. Directly they said, ‘Is this Mrs. Webberly? We're phoning you from Charing Cross Hospital. Casualty. Is this a relative of Malcolm Webberly that I'm speaking to?’ I would have gone. I wouldn't have waited to hear a word more. No woman who loves her husband would have done that. No real woman—no adequate woman—would have said, ‘What's happened? Oh God.
Why's
he not here? Please tell me. The dog came home but Malcolm wasn't
with
him and he's left me, hasn't he? He's left me, he's left me at last.’ And they said, ‘Mrs. Webberly, your husband's alive. But we would like to speak to you. Here, Mrs. Webberly. Can we send a taxi for you? Is there someone who can bring you down to the hospital?’ And that was good of them, wasn't it, to pretend like that? To ignore what I'd said. But when they rang off, they said, ‘We've got a real nutter here. Poor bloke, this Webberly. No wonder the old sod was out on the streets. Probably
threw
himself in front of the car.’” Her fingers curled round a navy ribbon, and her nails sank into it, making gullies in the satin.