A Traitor to Memory (32 page)

I think she means to go into the corridor where all the noise is, but she doesn't do that. Instead, she looks towards the bed, where I'm watching her, and she says, “I won't be leaving now, I expect.”

Leaving, Gideon? Had she been going somewhere? Was it time for her annual holiday?

No. I don't think that's what she's talking about. Somehow I think this leaving was to be permanent.

Perhaps she's been sacked as your home teacher?

That doesn't seem reasonable. If she's been sacked for incompetence, dishonesty, or some sort of malfeasance, what does Sonia's death have to do with keeping her on as my teacher? Which is what happens, Dr. Rose: Sarah-Jane Beckett remains my teacher until I'm sixteen, when she marries and moves to Cheltenham. So she was planning to leave for another reason, but that reason is cancelled with Sonia's death.

Does that make Sonia the reason that Sarah-Jane Beckett was leaving?

It seems so, doesn't it? But I can't think why.

6

D
OLL COTTAGE POSSESSED
an attic, which was the last stop D
C
Barbara Havers and her superior officer made in Eugenie Davies' house. It was a tiny garret tucked into the eaves. They gained access to it through a hatch in the ceiling just outside the bathroom. Once inside, they were reduced to crawling across an expanse of flooring whose dust-free condition suggested that someone made regular visits, either to clean or to look through the small room's contents.

“So what d'you think?” Barbara asked as Lynley pulled on a cord affixed to a light bulb in the ceiling. A cone of yellow illumination shone down on him, casting shadows from his forehead that hid his eyes. “Wiley
says
she wanted to talk to him, but all he would really have to do is play a little fast and loose with the time line he's given us, and Bob would definitely be your et cetera.”

“Is that your colourful way of indicating Major Wiley has a motive?” Lynley asked her. “There are no cobwebs in here, Havers.”

“Already noted. No dust either.”

Lynley ran his hand over a wooden sea chest that stood next to several large cardboard boxes. It had a hasp as a fastener, but there was no lock, so he lifted the top and peered inside as Barbara crawled to the first of the boxes. He said, “Three years of patient effort, establishing a relationship that he hoped would be more than what she had on
offer. She informs him, reluctantly, that there can never be more between them than there is because—”

“Because of some bloke driving a navy—or black—Audi with whom she has a row in a car park?”

“Possibly. In frustration he follows her to London—Major Wiley, this is—and runs her down. Yes. I suppose it could have happened that way.”

“But you don't think so?”

“I think it's early days yet. What've you got there?”

Barbara examined the contents of the box she'd opened. “Clothes.”

“Hers?”

Barbara lifted the first garment out and held it up: a small child's pair of corduroy dungarees, pink, embroidered with yellow flowers. “The daughter's, I expect.” She rustled downwards and scooped out an entire pile of clothing: dresses, jumpers, pyjamas, shorts, T-shirts, Babygros, shoes, and socks. All of it was thematically identical: The colours and the decorations indicated it had been used to dress the child who'd been murdered. Barbara packed it back into the box that had held it and turned to the next box as Lynley lifted out the contents of the wooden sea chest.

The second box contained what appeared to be the linens and the other objects that had been used on a baby's cot. Peter Rabbit sheets lay folded neatly inside, and what accompanied them were a musical mobile, a well-worn Jemima Puddleduck, six other stuffed animals in a condition that suggested they'd been less favoured than Jemima, and the padding that was used round the sides of a cot to prevent a small child from banging her head.

The third box held bathing accoutrements: everything from rubber duckies to a miniature dressing gown. Barbara was about to comment on the macabre nature of having kept this particular set of items—considering the end that the child had met—when Lynley said: “This is interesting, Havers.”

She looked up to see that he'd put on his glasses and was holding a stack of newspaper articles, the first of which he'd opened to peruse. Next to him on the floor he'd piled the rest of the sea chest's contents, which comprised a collection of magazines and newspapers and five leather albums suitable for photographs or scrapbooks. “What?” she asked him.

“She's kept a virtual library on Gideon.”

“From newspapers? For what?”

“For playing his violin.” Lynley lowered the magazine article he was looking at and said, “Gideon Davies, Havers.”

Barbara rested back on her heels, a washing mitt shaped like a cat in her hand. “Should I be swooning at this bit of news?”

“You don't know …? Never mind,” Lynley said. “I forget myself. Classical music isn't your forte. Were he the lead guitarist for Rotting Teeth—”

“Do I sense scorn for my musical preference?”

“—or some other group, no doubt you'd have leapt upon his name.”

“Right,” Barbara said. “So who is this bloke when he's at home in the shower?”

Lynley explained: a virtuoso violinist, a former child prodigy, the possessor of a worldwide reputation who'd made his professional debut before he was ten years old. “It appears that his mother kept everything associated with his career.”

“In spite of her estrangement from him?” Havers said. “That suggests he was the one who wanted it. Or the dad, perhaps.”

“Doesn't it, though,” Lynley agreed, sifting through the material. “She's got a treasure trove here. Everything from his latest appearance especially, tabloids included.”

“Well, if he's famous …” Barbara pulled out a smaller box from among the bathing items. She opened it to discover a collection of prescription medicines, all made out to the same person: Sonia Davies.

“No. This was something of a fiasco,” Lynley told her. “A piece of music for a trio. At Wigmore Hall, this was. He refused to play. He left the platform at the start of the piece, and he hasn't played in public since.”

“Got his knickers in a twist about something?”

“Perhaps.”

“Stage fright?”

“Also possible.” Lynley held up the newspapers: tabloids and broadsheets. “She appears to have collected every article that made mention of it, no matter how small.”

“Well, she
was
his mum. What's in the albums?”

Lynley opened the first of these as Barbara moved to look over his shoulder. More newspaper articles had been preserved inside the leather volumes. These were accompanied by concert programmes,
publicity pictures, and brochures for an organisation called East London Conservatory.

“I wonder exactly why they were estranged,” Barbara asked, seeing all of this.

“That's certainly the question,” Lynley replied.

They sorted through the rest of the contents of the boxes and the chest and found that everything inside was associated with either Gideon or Sonia Davies. It was as if, Barbara thought, Eugenie Davies had herself not existed before her children had. It was as if she had ceased to exist when she'd lost them. Except, of course, she'd actually lost only one of them.

“I expect we're going to have to track down Gideon,” Barbara noted.

“He's on the list,” Lynley agreed.

They replaced everything and lowered themselves back into the cottage proper. Lynley pulled the hatch's cover into position. He said, “Fetch those letters from the bedroom, Havers. Let's go over to the Sixty Plus Club. We might be able to fill in some gaps there.”

Outside, they headed up Friday Street, away from the river, passing opposite Wiley's Books where, Barbara noted, Major Ted Wiley made no effort to hide the fact that he was watching them through the front window, standing just behind a display of picture books. He raised a handkerchief to his face as they moved along the pavement. Crying? Pretending to cry? Or just honking his nose? Barbara couldn't help wondering. Three years was a long time to wait for a commitment, only to be foiled at the end.

Friday Street was a mixed bag of businesses and residences. It gave way to Duke Street, where Henley Piano Galleries featured a display of violins and violas—along with a guitar, a mandolin, and a banjo—in the window. Lynley said, “Hang on a moment, Barbara,” and sauntered over to study them. Barbara took the opportunity to light a fag, and she gazed at the instruments in collegial cooperation, wondering what she and Lynley were supposed to be seeing.

She finally said, “What?
What?
” to Lynley when he continued gazing, his fingers pulling meditatively at his chin.

He said, “He's like Menuhin. There are all sorts of similarities in their early careers. But one wonders if the family is similar. Menuhin had his parents' complete devotion from the first. If Gideon hadn't—”

“Menu-who?”

Lynley glanced her way. “Another prodigy, Havers.” He folded his arms and shifted his weight, preparatory—it seemed—to settling in for a confab on the topic. “It's something to think about: what happens to the parents' lives when they discover they've produced a genius. A set of responsibilities falls upon them entirely different to those faced by the parents of average children. Now take that set of responsibilities and to them add the responsibilities faced by the parents of a different sort of child.”

“A child like Sonia,” Havers said.

“Those responsibilities are equally challenging, equally demanding, and equally difficult but in an entirely different way.”

“But are they equally rewarding to the parents? And if they aren't, how do the parents cope? And what does the daily act of coping do to their marriage?”

Lynley nodded, looking to the violins again. Considering his words, Barbara wondered how far into his own future he was gazing as he studied the instruments. She hadn't yet mentioned to him the conversation she'd had with his wife on the previous evening. Now didn't seem like the time to do it. But on the other hand, he'd given her an entrée that was tough to ignore. And wouldn't it benefit him to have a friendly ear he could speak his potential concerns into during the months of Helen's pregnancy? He would hardly want to do so with his wife.

She said, “Bit worried, sir?” and dragged on her Player with marginal apprehension because, although she'd worked in partnership with Lynley for three years, they rarely ventured into the realm of their personal lives in conversation.

“Worried, Havers?”

She blew smoke from the side of her mouth, the better to avoid hitting him in the face with it when he turned back to her. She said, “Helen told me last night about … you know. I expect there're worries connected with that. Everyone now and again would have them. You know. I mean …” She rustled her hair and fastened the top button of her pea jacket, which she immediately then unfastened when it felt like a noose.

Lynley said, “Ah. The baby. Yes.”

“Scary moments connected with that, I expect.”

“Moments indeed,” he replied evenly. Then he said, “Let's move on,” and headed round the corner from the piano gallery, the conversation between them dismissed.

Odd answer, Barbara thought. Odd reaction. And she realised
how stereotypical she'd expected to find his response to impending fatherhood. The man had a distinguished family tree. He had a title—no matter how anachronistic it was to have a title in the first place—and a family estate that he'd inherited in his early twenties. Wasn't he supposed to produce an heir to all that in fairly short order after marrying? And shouldn't he be delighted at the prospect of a duty fulfilled within a few months of having taken the marital plunge?

She frowned, then tossed the dog end of her fag into the street, where it landed in a puddle at the kerb. The volumes one didn't know about men, she thought.