A Traitor to Memory (89 page)

Robson said, “Come with me. I want to show you something,” by way of answer. He took them from the house, out the same way they'd come in, out into the garden. He headed towards the building where he'd said the commune worked on their furniture.

The building comprised a single large room in which battered pieces stood in various stages of restoration. It smelled strongly of sawdust, turpentine, and wood stains, and a patina of the dust that comes from heavy sanding lay like a gauze veil on everything. Footprints tracked back and forth across the dirty floor, from a workbench above which a set of newly cleaned tools gleamed with oil to a three-legged wardrobe that listed tiredly, sanded down to bare walnut, disemboweled, and awaiting the next stage of rejuvenation.

“Here's my guess,” Robson said. “Tell me how it matches to reality. I did a wardrobe for her. Cherry wood, it was. First rate. Beautiful. Not the sort of thing you see every day. I did her a commode as well, early eighteenth century. Oak. And a washstand. Victorian. Ebony with a marble top. One of the drawer pulls is missing, but you wouldn't want to replace it because you couldn't match
it and anyway leaving it without the pull actually gives it more character. The wardrobe took the longest, because you don't ever want to refinish a piece unless there is no hope for it. You just want to restore it. So it was six months before I had it the way I wanted it and no one”—he nodded at the house to indicate his housemates—“was pleased that I was working on that instead of something we could get a profit from.”

Lynley frowned at this, knowing that there were lines upon lines being written by Robson and wondering how adept he himself could be to read between them in the time they had. He said, “You had a falling-out with Mrs. Davies because of a decision she'd made. But I can't think her decision was about selling the pieces of furniture you'd done for her. Am I right?”

Robson's shoulders dropped slightly, as if he'd been hoping that Lynley wouldn't be able to confirm what he himself suspected. He'd been clutching his handkerchief, and now he looked down at it as he said, “So she didn't keep them, did she? She didn't keep any of the pieces I gave to her. She sold them all and gave the money to charity. Or she just gave the furniture itself away. But she didn't keep it. That's what you're telling me.”

“She had no antiques in her house in Henley, if that's what you're wondering,” Lynley said. “Her furniture was—” He looked for the right word to convey the manner in which Eugenie Davies' house in Friday Street had been furnished. “Spartan,” he said.

“Just like a nun's cell, I expect.” Robson's words were bitter. “That's how she punished herself. But it wasn't enough, that sort of deprivation, so she was ready to take it to the next level.”

“What would that be?” Nkata had given up writing during Robson's recitation of the antiques he'd given to Eugenie Davies.
The next level
, however, clearly promised more.

“Wiley,” Robson said. “The bloke from the bookshop. She'd been seeing him for several years, but she'd decided it was time to …” Robson shoved his handkerchief into his pocket and gave his attention to the listing wardrobe. To Lynley's eyes, the piece didn't look even salvageable, with its missing leg and its gaping interior that showed a large jagged hole in its back, very much as if someone had taken an axe to it. “She was going to marry him if he asked her. She said that she believed—she
felt
, she said, with women's bloody intuition, she said—that they were heading towards it. I told her that if a man didn't bother to make an attempt … In three years, if he didn't try to make a move on her … God, I'm not talking about rape. Not
shoving her into a wall and feeling her up. But just … He hadn't even tried to get close to her. He hadn't even talked about
why
he hadn't tried. They just went on their picnics, took their walks, rode the bus on those stupid pensioners' days out…. And I tried to tell her that it wasn't normal. It wasn't red-blooded. So if she made it permanent with him, if she actually made herself his partner and took herself out of the
sodding
running …” Robson ran out of steam. His eyes became red-rimmed. “But I suppose that's what she wanted. To take up life with someone who couldn't begin to give her anything complete, who couldn't begin to give her what a man can give to a woman when she means everything to him.”

Lynley examined Robson as he spoke, saw the misery in the lines that etched their painful history on his patchy-skinned face. “When was the last time you saw Mrs. Davies?”

“A fortnight ago. Thursday.”

“Where?”

“Marlow. The Swan and Three Roses. Just outside of town.”

“And you didn't see her again? Did you speak to her?”

“On the phone twice. I was trying to … I'd reacted badly to what she'd told me about Wiley, and I knew it. I wanted to make things right between us. But it just got worse, because I still wanted to talk to her about it, about him, about what it meant that he never … never once in three years … But she didn't want to hear. She didn't want to see. ‘He's a good man, Raphael,’ she kept saying, ‘and it's time now.’”

“Time for what?”

Robson continued as if Nkata hasn't asked the question, as if he himself were a silent Cyrano who'd waited long for an opportunity to unburden himself. He said, “I didn't disagree that it was time. She'd punished herself for years. She wasn't in prison, but she may as well have been because she made her life a prison anyway. She lived one step away from solitary confinement, in complete self-denial, surrounding herself with people with whom she had nothing in common, always volunteering for the worst jobs, and all of it so that she could pay and pay and pay.”

“For what?” Nkata had been standing close to the door as he wrote, as if hoping a near contact with the outside environment might spare his fine wool charcoal suit from the worst of the dust that permeated the work room's air. But now he took a step closer to Robson, and he cast a glance towards Lynley, who indicated with his
hand that they would wait for the violinist to continue. Silence on their part was as useful a tool as silence on his part was revealing.

Robson finally said, “When she was born, Eugenie didn't love her instantly the way she thought she was supposed to love her. At first she was just exhausted because the birth had been difficult and all she wanted was to recover from it. And that's not unnatural, when a woman's been in labour so long—thirty hours, it was—and she's got nothing left in her even to cuddle a newborn. That is not a sin.”

“I wouldn't disagree,” Lynley said.

“And they didn't know at first anyway, about the baby. Yes, of course, there were signs, but the birth had been rough. She didn't come out pink and perfect like a birth that's been orchestrated for a Hollywood production. So the doctors didn't know till she was examined and then … Good God,
anyone
would be slaughtered by the news. Anyone would have to adjust and that takes time. But she thought she should have been different, Eugenie. She thought she should have loved her at once, felt like a fighter, had plans how to care for her, known what to do, what to expect, how to
be
. When she couldn't do that, she hated herself. And the rest of them didn't make it easier for her to accept the baby, did they, especially Richard's father—that mad bastard—who expected another prodigy from them, and when he got the reverse—there was just too much for Eugenie to cope with. Sonia's physical problems, Gideon's needs—which were mounting daily and what else could you expect when it comes to dealing with a prodigy?—mad Jack's raving, Richard's second failure—”

“Second failure?”

“Another damaged child, if you can believe it. He'd had an earlier one. From another marriage. So when a second one was born … It was terrible for all of them, but Eugenie couldn't see that it was normal to feel the anguish at first, to curse God, to do whatever one
has
to do to get through a bad time. Instead, she heard her bloody father's voice, ‘God speaks to us directly. There is no mystery in His message. Examine your soul and your conscience to read God's handwriting therein, Eugenie.’ That's what he wrote to her, if you can believe it. That was his blessing and comfort upon the birth of that pathetic little baby. As if an infant were a punishment from God. And there was no one to talk her out of feeling like that, do you see? Oh there was the nun, but she talked about God's will as if the entire situation were predetermined and Eugenie was meant to understand that, accept it, not to rage against it,
grieve about it, feel whatever despair she needed to feel and then just get
on
with life. So then when the baby died … and the way she died … I expect there were moments when Eugenie had actually thought, ‘better she be dead than have to live like this, with doctors and operations and lungs going bad and heart barely beating and stomach not working and ears not hearing and not even being able to shit properly for the love of God … Better she be dead.’ And then, she actually was dead. It was as if someone had heard her and granted a wish that wasn't a real wish at all but just an expression of one moment's despair. So what was she to feel but guilt? And what was she to do to make reparation but deny herself everything that might mean comfort?”

“Until Major Wiley came along,” Lynley noted.

“I suppose so.” Robson's words were hollow. “Wiley was a new beginning for her. Or at least that's how she said she thought of it.”

“But you disagreed.”

“I think he was just another form of imprisonment. But worse than before because he'd be wearing the guise of something new.”

“So you argued about it.”

“And then I wanted to apologise,” Robson added. “I was desperate to apologise—don't you see—because we'd shared years of friendship, the two of us, Eugenie and I, and I couldn't see sending them down the drain because of Wiley. I wanted her to know that. That's all. For whatever it was worth.”

Lynley set these words against what he'd learned from both Gideon and Richard Davies. “She ended contact with her family long ago, but not with you, then? Were you once lovers with Mrs. Davies, Mr. Robson?”

Colour flared into Robson's face, an unattractive smearing of crimson that battled with the various patches of his damaged skin. “We met twice a month,” he said in answer.

“Where?”

“In London. In the country. Wherever she wanted. She asked for news of Gideon, and I provided it. That was the extent of what she and I had together.”

The pubs and hotels in her diary, Lynley thought. Twice each month. But it didn't make sense. Her meetings with Robson didn't follow the pattern that Robson himself described as being the path of Eugenie Davies' life. If she had been intent upon punishing herself for the transgression of human despair, for the unspoken wish—so horribly granted—to be delivered from the struggle to care for a fragile daughter, why had she even allowed herself news of her son, news
that might comfort her, might keep her in touch? Wouldn't she have denied herself that?

There was a piece missing somewhere, Lynley concluded. And his instincts told him that Raphael Robson knew exactly what that missing piece was.

He said, “I can understand part of her behaviour, but I can't understand all of it, Mr. Robson. Why cut out contact with her family but maintain contact with you?”

“As I said. It was how she punished herself.”

“For something she'd thought but never acted on?”

It seemed that the answer to this simple question should have come easily to Raphael Robson. Yes or no. He'd spent years knowing the dead woman, after all. He'd engaged in regular meetings with her. But Robson didn't answer at first. He took a plane from among the tools instead, and he appeared to examine it with his long and thin musician's hands.

“Mr. Robson?” Lynley said.

Robson moved across the room to a window so covered in dust that it looked nearly opaque. He said, “She'd sacked her. It was Eugenie's decision. That began everything. So she blamed herself.”

Nkata looked up. “Katja Wolff?”

Robson said, “Eugenie was the one who said the German girl had to go. If she hadn't made that decision … if they hadn't rowed …” He made an aimless gesture. “We can't relive a single moment, can we? We can't unsay things, and we can't undo things. We can only sweep up the pieces of the mess we make of our miserable lives.”

True enough, Lynley thought, but the statements were also useful generalities that weren't going to take them one inch closer to the truth. He said, “Tell me about that time, before the baby was murdered. As you remember it, Mr. Robson.”

“Why? What's that got to do with—”

“Humour me.”

“There isn't much to tell. It's a grubby little story. The German girl got herself pregnant, and she was badly out of sorts. She was sick each morning and half the time sick at noon and at night. Sonia demanded someone's full-time attention, but Katja couldn't give it. She couldn't eat without sicking everything up. She was up with Sonia night after night, and she was trying to sleep when she got the chance. But she slept when she was meant to be doing something else once too often, and Eugenie sacked her. She snapped, then, the German. Sonia fussed too much one evening. And that was that.”

“Did you give evidence at the Wolff woman's trial?” Nkata asked.

“Yes. I was there. Yes. I gave evidence.”

“Against her?”

“I just testified to what I'd seen, where I'd been, what I knew.”

“For the prosecution?”

“Ultimately. I suppose. Yes.” Robson shifted on his feet and waited for another question, his gaze on Lynley as Nkata wrote. When Lynley said nothing and the silence among them lengthened, Robson finally spoke. “What I'd seen was practically nothing. I'd been giving Gideon some instruction, and the first I knew that something was wrong was when Katja began screaming from the bathroom. People came charging from all corners of the house, Eugenie phoned emergency, Richard tried the kiss of life.”

“And the fault went down to Katja Wolff,” Nkata noted.

“There was too much chaos to find fault anywhere at first,” Robson said. “Katja was screaming that she hadn't left the baby alone, so it seemed as if she'd had some sort of seizure and died in an instant when Katja's back was turned, when she was reaching for a towel. Something like that. Then she said she'd been on the phone for a minute or two. But that fell through when Katie Waddington denied it. Then came the post-mortem. It became clear how Sonia died and that there had been earlier … earlier incidents that no one knew about and …” He opened his hands as if saying, The rest is as it was.