A Traitor to Memory (75 page)

By the time he'd understood that his wife's condition would not be something that was easily vanquished, too many months had passed and he could not bear the thought of seeing Eugenie again, only to have to tear himself from her permanently. Cowardice stilled the hand that might have held the pen or dialed the phone number. Better to tell himself that they'd really had nothing—just a few years of passionate interludes that wore the guise of loving unity—than to face her, to have to release her, and to recognise that the rest of his life would be without the meaning he longed to give it. So he just let things go, let them drift away, and he allowed her to think of him what she would.

She hadn't phoned him or sought him out, and he'd used those facts to assure himself that she'd not been as deeply affected as he by either the relationship itself or by the ending that had been thrust upon it. And having thus assured himself, he'd set about obliterating the image of her in his mind, as well as the memory of their afternoons, evenings, and nights together. In doing so, he'd been as unfaithful to her as he'd been to his wife. And he'd paid the price.

But she'd found a man, a widower, he'd learned, someone free to love her and to be to her all that she deserved. “A chap called Wiley,” Lynley had said over the phone. “He's told us she wanted to speak to
him about something. Something, apparently, that had been keeping them from carrying on in a relationship together.”

“You think she might have been murdered to prevent her from speaking to Wiley?” Webberly asked.

“That's only one of half a dozen possibilities,” Lynley had answered.

He'd gone on to catalogue the rest of them, taking the care of the gentleman that he was—rather than employing the heartless determination of the investigator he should have been—not to mention whether he'd unearthed anything that pointed to Webberly's own ties to the murdered woman. Instead, he spoke at length of the brother, of Major Ted Wiley, of Gideon Davies, of J. W. Pitchley, who was also James Pitchford, and of Eugenie's former husband.

“Wolff is out of prison,” Lynley said. “She's been on parole for just twelve weeks. Davies hasn't seen her, but that's not to say she hasn't seen him. And Eugenie gave evidence against her at the trial.”

“As did nearly everyone else associated with that time. Eugenie's evidence was no more damning than anyone else's, Tommy.”

“Yes. Well. I think everyone connected with that case would be wise to take care till we've got things sorted out.”

“Are you considering this a stalking?”

“That can't be dismissed.”

“But you can't think Wolff 's stalking everyone.”

“As I said, I'm thinking everyone should take a bit of care, sir. Winston phoned, by the way. He followed her earlier tonight to a house in Wandsworth. It looked like a rendezvous. She's more than she seems.”

Webberly had waited for Lynley to segue from Katja Wolff 's rendezvous—from the message of infidelity it implied—to his own infidelity. But the connection wasn't made. Instead, the DI said, “We're going through her e-mail and her internet usage. There's a message been left her—the morning of her death, and she read it because it was in the trash bin—from someone called
Jete
asking to see her. Begging her, incidentally. ‘After all this time.’ Those were the words.”

“On e-mail you say?”

“Yes.” Lynley paused on his end of the line before going on. “Technology's fast outpacing my ability to understand it, sir. Simon did the delving into her computer. He's given us all her e-mail and all her internet usage as well.”

“Simon? What's her computer doing with St. James? Bugger it, Tommy. You should have taken it straight—”

“Yes. Yes, I know. But I wanted to see …” He hesitated again,
then finally took the plunge. “There's no easy way to ask this, sir. Do you have a computer at home?”

“Randie's got a laptop.”

“Do you have access?”

“When it's here. But she keeps it in Cambridge. Why?”

“I think you probably know why.”

“You suspect that I'm
Jete
?”

“‘After all this time.’ It's more a matter of crossing
Jete
off the list if it's you. You can't have killed her—”

“For God's
sake
.”

“Sorry. I'm sorry. But it's got to be said. You can't have killed her because you were at home with two dozen witnesses celebrating your anniversary. So if you are
Jete
, sir, I'd like to know so that I don't waste time trying to track him down.”

“Or her, Tommy. ‘After all this time.’ It could be Wolff.”

“It could be Wolff. But it's not you?”

“No.”

“Thanks. That's all I need to know, sir.”

“You got to us quickly. To me and Eugenie.”

“I didn't get to you. Havers did.”

“Havers? How the hell …?”

“Eugenie'd kept your letters. They were all together in a drawer in her bedroom. Barbara found them.”

“Where are they now? Have you given them to Leach?”

“I didn't think they were germane to the case. Are they, sir? Because common sense tells me I shouldn't dismiss the possibility that Eugenie Davies wanted to talk to Ted Wiley about you.”

“If she wanted to talk to Wiley about me, it would have been only to confess past transgressions before getting on with her life.”

“Would that have been like her, Superintendent?”

“Oh yes,” Webberly breathed. “Just exactly like.”

She hadn't been brought up so, but she'd lived as a Catholic, with the Catholic's profound and powerful sense of guilt and remorse. That had coloured the way she'd lived in Henley, and that would have coloured the manner in which she faced the future. He was certain.

At his elbow, Webberly became aware of a gentle pressure. Alf, he saw, had lumbered up from his raggedy nighttime cushion by the stove and had come to join him, pressing the top of his head against his master's arm, perhaps sensing that canine solace was needed. The dog's presence reminded Webberly that he was late in taking the Alsatian for his regular nightly stroll.

He went upstairs first to check on Frances, compelled by the twinge of guilt he felt at having spent the last forty-eight hours dwelling in mind and in spirit, if not in body, with another woman. He found his wife in their double bed, snoring gently, and he stood, looking down at her. Sleep wiped the lines of anxiety from her face. While it did not render her youthful again, it served to provide her with an air of defencelessness that he'd never been able to ignore. How many times over the years had he done just this—stood looking down at his sleeping wife—and wondered how they'd come to this pass? how they'd gone so long just getting through days that turned into weeks that swiftly became months yet never once venturing each to understand what inner yearnings caused them to sing in their chains—faces held to the sky—when they were alone? But he had the answer to that question, at least on his own part, when he glanced at the window with its curtains shut tight, knowing that behind them the glass was locked and a wooden dowel lay on the floor for use as further security on the nights he wasn't at home.

They'd both been afraid from the start. It was just that Fran's fears had taken a form more readily apparent to the casual observer. Her fears had claimed him, making a plea for his constancy that was as eloquent as it was unspoken, and his own fears had bound him to her, terrified that he might have to become more than he'd lived his life as already.

A low whining from the foot of the stairs roused Webberly. He pulled the blankets over his wife's exposed right shoulder, whispered, “Sleep well, Frances,” and left the room.

Below, Alfie had moved to the front door where he sat on his haunches expectantly. He got to his feet as Webberly went back to the kitchen for his jacket and the dog's lead. He was circling round in anticipation when Webberly returned to him and clipped the lead on his collar.

Webberly's intention was to take the Alsatian on a shorter walk this night: just a circuit of the rectangle described by walking to the end of Palgrave Road, up to Stamford Brook Road, and back to Palgrave via Hartswood Road. He was tired; he didn't much feel like trailing Alfie across the green that was Prebend Gardens. He realised that this wasn't giving the Alsatian his due. The dog was nothing if not patience, tolerance, and fidelity incarnate, and all he asked in return for his devotion was food, water, and the chance to run with happy abandon round, through, and across Prebend Gardens twice each day. It was small enough consideration for him, but tonight Webberly didn't feel up to it.

“I'll give you twice the time tomorrow, Alf,” he said to the dog, and he vowed to do it.

At the corner of Stamford Brook Road, traffic trundled by, lighter now than at another hour but still coughing with the occasional noise of buses and cars. Alf sat obediently, as he'd been trained to do. But when Webberly would have turned to the left instead of crossing over to the garden, Alfie didn't move. He looked from his master to the gloomy expanse of trees, shrubs, and lawn across the street, wagging his tail urgently against the pavement.

“Tomorrow, Alf,” Webberly told him. “Twice as much time. I promise. Tomorrow. Come, boy.” He gave a tug on the lead.

The dog rose. But he looked over his shoulder at the garden in such a way that Webberly felt he could not commit yet another act of betrayal by pretending to ignore what the animal so patently wanted to do. He sighed. “All right. But just a few minutes. We've left Mum alone and she won't like it if she wakes up and finds neither one of us there.”

They waited for the traffic lights to change, the dog's tail flapping and Webberly finding his own spirits lifting at the animal's pleasure. He thought what ease there was in doghood: So little in life equated with a dog's contentment.

They crossed over and entered the garden, its iron gate creaking with autumn rust. With the gate closed behind them, Webberly released Alfie from the lead and in the dim light provided from Stamford Brook Road on one side and South Side on the other, he watched the dog lope happily across the lawn.

He'd not thought to bring a ball, but the Alsatian didn't seem to mind. There were plenty of nighttime smells to entice him, and he partook of them in his romp.

They spent a quarter of an hour like this, Webberly slowly pacing the distance from the west to the east side of the garden. The wind had come up earlier in the day, and he drove his hands into his pockets, regretting the fact that he'd come out without either gloves or scarf.

He shivered and crunched along the cinder path that bordered the lawn. Beyond the iron fence and the shrubbery, traffic whizzed by on Stamford Brook Road. Aside from the wind creaking the bare limbs of the trees, that was the only sound in the night.

At the far end of the garden, Webberly took the lead from his pocket and called to the dog, who'd run once again to the opposite
end of the green like a gamboling lamb. He whistled and waited as the Alsatian galloped the length of the lawn a final time, arriving in a happy heaving mass of damp fur hung with sodden leaves. Webberly chuckled at the sight of the animal. The night was far from over for them both. Alf would need brushing when they got home.

He clipped the lead back on. Outside the garden gate, they headed up the avenue towards Stamford Brook Road, where a zebra crossing marked a safe passage to Hartswood. They had the right of way here, although Alfie did again what he'd been trained to do: He sat and waited for the command that indicated it was safe to cross.

Webberly waited for a break in the traffic which, because of the hour, wasn't long in coming. After a bus trundled past, he and the dog stepped off the pavement. It was less than thirty yards across the street.

Webberly was a careful pedestrian, but for a moment his attention drifted to the pillar box that stood on the opposite side of the street. It had been there since the reign of Queen Victoria, and it was there that he'd dropped his letters to Eugenie over the years, including the final one that had ended things without ending things between them. His eyes fixed on it and he saw himself there as he'd been on a hundred different mornings, hurriedly stuffing a letter through the opening, casting a look over his shoulder in the unlikely event that Frances had come walking in his wake. Seeing himself as he'd been long ago, engaged by love and desire to act the apostate from vows that were asking the impossible of him, he was unprepared. He was unprepared just for a second, but a second was actually all it took.

To his right, Webberly heard the howl of an engine. At that same moment, Alfie began to bark. Then Webberly felt the impact. As the dog's lead flew up into the night, Webberly hurtled towards the pillar box that had been the receptacle of his countless outpourings of unending love.

A blow crushed his chest.

A flash of light pierced his eyes like a beacon.

And then it was dark.

GIDEON