A Traitor to Memory

by Elizabeth George

  They kissed long and tenderly, and Yasmin didn't think as she'd thought at first, How bloody mad, I'm kissing a woman … she's touching me … I'm letting her touch me … Her mouth is here, it's there, it's tasting me where I want to be tasted … this is a woman and what she's doing is … yes, yes, I want this, yes. All she thought was what it felt like to be with her and what it felt like to be safe and sure.

  Now in the wig shop, she packed the make-up back into its case and threw into the rubbish the kitchen towels with which she'd wiped the work top at which the women had sat, one by one, and allowed her to make them beautiful. She smiled at the pictures she had of them in her mind, all of them laughing, giggling like schoolgirls, given for the morning a chance to be something more than what they'd chosen for themselves. Yasmin Edwards enjoyed her work. When she considered it, she had to shake her head in wonder that a stretch in prison had directed her not only to useful employment but also to a companion and to a life she loved. She knew this sort of conclusion to the kind of troubles she'd had was rare.

  Behind her, the shop door opened. That would be Mrs. Newland's oldest daughter Ashaki, coming right on time to pick up Mum's freshly washed wig.

  Yasmin turned to the door, offering a smile of welcome.

  “Can I have a word?” the black constable said.

  Major Ted Wiley was the last person in Henley-on-Thames to whom Lynley and Havers showed the photograph of Katja Wolff. They hadn't planned it that way. In the normal course of events, they would have shown him the picture first since, at least from his own account of it as Eugenie Davies' closest companion and neighbour across the street from Doll Cottage, he was the person most likely to have seen Katja Wolff in Henley had the woman come calling. But upon their arrival in Friday Street, they'd found Wiley's Books closed, with a be-right-back sign stating the time of the major's return. So they offered the photograph round every other establishment on Friday Street, having no luck anywhere.

  Havers wasn't surprised. “This is the wrong tree, Inspector,” she informed Lynley with martyred patience.

  “It's an institutional picture,” he replied, “as bad as a passport. It might not even resemble her. Let's try at the Sixty Plus Club before we count her out. If her other visitor waylaid her there, what's to say Katja Wolff didn't do likewise?”

  The Sixty Plus Club was reasonably populated even at that hour of the day. Most of the members present were engaged in what looked like a bridge tournament, although an intense group of four women were also playing a serious game of Monopoly, with dozens of red hotels and green houses littering the board. Additionally, in a narrow room that appeared to be a kitchen, three men and two women sat round a table, manila folders open in front of them. The fearsome red head of Georgia Ramsbottom bobbed among this latter group, and the sound of her voice rose higher than even the singing of Fred Astaire, who was dancing cheek to cheek—or at least claiming to do so—with Ginger Rogers on a television screen in an alcove set up with comfortable armchairs.

  “Recruiting internally is much more reasonable,” Georgia Ramsbottom was saying. “We ought to at least try it, Patrick. If someone amongst us wishes to direct the club now that Eugenie's gone—”

  One of the women interrupted her, but at a reduced volume.

  She countered with, “I find that highly offensive, Margery. Someone has to take the interests of the club to heart. I suggest we set aside our grief and deal with this now. If not today, then certainly before more messages stack up to be answered”—here she gestured with a small fan of Post-its on which the aforementioned messages were ostensibly written—“and more bills go asking to be paid.”

  There was a rumble of what might have been either assent or disapproval, something that wasn't fully clarified, because at that moment, Georgia Ramsbottom descried Lynley and Havers. She excused herself from the table and came to them. The Sixty Plus Club's Executive Committee were in a meeting, she announced, every bit as if the agenda that the committee were following were of national significance. The Sixty Plus Club could not long remain rudderless and directorless, although explaining that a “suitable period of mourning” for Eugenie Davies did not necessarily obviate the process of replacing her was proving to be quite a challenge, Georgia revealed.

  “I doubt this will take very long,” Lynley told her. “We'll just need a few moments alone. With everyone. One at a time. If you'd be so good as to organise that …”

  “Inspector,” Georgia said, and she managed just the appropriate amount of effrontery in her words, “the members of Henley's Sixty Plus Club are very private, decent, upstanding people. If you've come here thinking that one of them was involved in Eugenie's death—”

  “I come here thinking nothing in particular,” Lynley broke in pleasantly, but he didn't miss the third person pronoun that Georgia had used to differentiate between herself and the rest of the club's members. “So perhaps we can start with you, Mrs. Ramsbottom. In Mrs. Davies' office …?”

  All members' eyes followed them as Georgia stiffly led the way to the office door. It was open today, and Lynley noted as they entered that all items remotely related to Eugenie Davies had already been packed away in a cardboard box that sat forlornly on her desk. He wondered idly what Mrs. Ramsbottom considered a suitable period of mourning for the club's director. She certainly wasn't letting any grass grow when it came to sweeping the club clean of her.

  He wasted no time in small talk once Havers had shut the door and placed herself in front of it, notebook in hand. He took the seat behind the desk, gestured Georgia Ramsbottom into the chair in front of the desk, and brought out the photograph of Katja Wolff. Had Mrs. Ramsbottom seen this woman in the vicinity of the Sixty Plus Club or anywhere else in Henley, for that matter, in the weeks preceding Mrs. Davies' death?

  The production of the photograph seemed to prompt Georgia to say, “The killer …?” in the sort of reverential tone that would have done service in an Agatha Christie novel. She was suddenly all helpfulness, perhaps altered by the realisation that the police were not seeking the killer among the over-sixty crowd. She hastened to add, “I do know it was deliberate, Inspector, and not just an arbitrary hit-and-run. Dear Teddy told me when I rang him last evening.”

  Across the room, Havers mouthed Dear Teddy. Thwarted love among the ruins, her expression implied. She did some furious scribbling in her notebook. Georgia heard the sound of her pencil scritching across the paper. She glanced over her shoulder.

  Lynley said, “If you'd have a look at the picture, Mrs. Ramsbottom …”

  Georgia did so. She studied the photo. She held it close to her face. She held it at arm's length. She tilted her head. But no, she said at last, she'd never seen the woman in the picture. Not round Henley-on-Thames, at least.

  “Somewhere else?” Lynley asked.

  No, no. She didn't mean to imply that. Of course, she might have seen her in London—a stranger on the street, perhaps?—when she went up to visit her darling grandchildren. But if she had done, she couldn't remember.

  “Thank you,” Lynley said, and he prepared to dismiss her.

  But he found that Georgia wasn't inclined to be so easily disposed of. She crossed her legs, ran a hand along one of the pleats in her skirt, reached down to smooth her tights, and said, “You'll want to talk to Teddy, of course, won't you, Inspector?” It sounded more like a suggestion than a question. “He lives near Eugenie, dear Teddy does—but I expect you already know that, don't you?—and if this woman was hanging about or perhaps paying calls on her, he might well know. Indeed, Eugenie might have told him herself because they were great friends, weren't they, the two of them, Teddy and Eugenie. So she might have confided in him should this woman have …” Then Georgia hesitated, a heavily ringed finger tapping against her cheek. “But no. Nooo. Perhaps not, after all.”

  Lynley sighed inwardly. He wasn't about to engage in the information game with the woman. If she wanted to enjoy the power of playing out what she knew like a fishing line,
she was going to have to find someone else to swim in her river. He bluffed her with, “Thank you, Mrs. Ramsbottom,” and he nodded at Havers to usher her from the room.

  Georgia showed her hand. “All right. I spoke to dear Teddy,” she confided. “As I said earlier, I phoned him last night. After all, one does want to offer condolences when someone loses a loved one, even in situations in which the scales of devotion aren't as evenly balanced as one would hope to see in a dear friend's love life.”

  “The dear friend being Major Wiley,” Havers clarified with some impatience.

  Georgia treated her to an imperious glance. She said to Lynley, “Inspector, I do feel you might benefit from knowing … not that I wish to speak ill of the dead … But I don't think we can call it speaking ill, can we, if what I say is simply a fact?”

  “What are you getting at, Mrs. Ramsbottom?”

  “It's just that I'm wondering if I should tell you something if it may not actually be germane to your case.” She waited for some sort of reply or reassurance. When Lynley said nothing, she was forced to continue. “But then again, it may be germane. It probably is. And if I hold back … It's poor dear Teddy I'm thinking of, you see. The thought of something becoming public knowledge, something that might hurt him … That's difficult for me to bear.”

  Lynley thought that unlikely. He said, “Mrs. Ramsbottom, if you have information about Mrs. Davies that might lead to her killer, it's in your best interests to tell us directly.”

  It's in our interests as well, Havers' expression said. She looked as if she'd have liked to throttle the maddening woman.

  “Otherwise,” Lynley added, “we have work to do. Constable, if you'll assist Mrs. Ramsbottom in organising the others for interviews …?”

  “It's about Eugenie, then,” Georgia said hastily. “I hate to say it. But I will. It's this: She didn't reciprocate, not completely.”

  “Reciprocate what?”

  “Teddy's feelings. She didn't share the strength of his feelings for her, and he didn't realise that.”

  “But you did,” Havers said from the door.

  “I'm not blind,” Georgia said over her shoulder to Havers. And then to Lynley, “I'm also not a fool. There was someone else, and Teddy didn't know. He still doesn't know, poor man.”

  “Someone else?”

  “Some people might argue that there was something permanently on Eugenie's mind and that's what kept her from getting close to Teddy. But I say it was someone on her mind and she hadn't yet got round to dropping the bomb on the poor man.”

  “You saw her with someone?” Lynley asked.

  “I didn't need to see her with someone,” Georgia said. “I saw what she did when she was here: the phone calls that she took behind closed doors, the days when she left at half past eleven and never returned. And she drove her car to the club on those days, Inspector, though the rest of the time she walked here from Friday Street. And she wasn't doing her volunteer work at the nursing home on those days she drove, because she volunteered at Quiet Pines on Mondays and Wednesdays.”

  “And the days she left at half past eleven?”

  “Thursday or Friday. Always. Once a month. Sometimes twice. What does that suggest to you, Inspector? It suggests an assignation to me.”

  It could well suggest anything, Lynley thought, from a doctor's appointment to a session with the hairdresser. But while what Georgia Ramsbottom was telling them was coloured by her obvious dislike of Eugenie Davies, Lynley could not ignore the fact that her information matched up with what they'd seen in the dead woman's diary.

  After thanking her for her cooperation—no matter how much he'd had to wrest it from her—Lynley sent the woman back to her committee and had Havers assist her in organising the rest of the club members present for individual examinations of the photograph of Katja Wolff. He could tell that everyone wanted to be helpful, but no one was able to attest to having ever seen the pictured woman in the environs of the club.

  They headed back to Friday Street, where Lynley had left his car in front of Eugenie Davies' tiny house. As they walked, Havers said, “Satisfied, Inspector?”

  “About what?”

  “The Wolff angle. Are you satisfied now?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “But you can't still be considering her for the killer. Not after that.” This, with a cock of her thumb back in the direction of the Sixty Plus Club. “If Katja Wolff ran over Eugenie Davies, she would have had to know where she was going that night in the first place, right? Or she would have had to follow her into London from here. Do you agree?”

  “That seems obvious.”

  “So in either case, she would have had to establish some kind of contact with her once she got out of prison. Now, we may get some joy from those telephone records, and we may find out that Eugenie Davies and Katja Wolff were spending their evenings nattering like schoolgirls on the phone for the last twelve weeks for reasons that're completely obscure. But if we don't get something from those BT records, then what we're left with is someone following her up to town from here. And we both know which someone would have had an easy time of that, don't we?” She indicated the door of the bookshop where the be-right-back sign had been removed.

  Lynley said, “Let's see what Major Wiley has to say about things,” and he opened the door.

  They found Ted Wiley unpacking a box of new books and arranging them on a table top that bore a hand-lettered sign reading new releases. He wasn't alone in the shop. At the far end a woman in a paisley headscarf sat in a comfortable armchair, happily sipping from a Thermos top with a book open upon her knees.

  “Saw your motor when I got back,” Wiley said in reference to the Bentley as he lifted three books from the box. He dusted each with a cloth before setting it on the table. “What've you come up with, then?”

  The man appeared to have an interesting capacity to direct and demand, Lynley thought. He seemed to assume that the London detectives had come to Henley-on-Thames with the intention of reporting to him. He said, “It's too early in the investigation to reach a conclusion about anything, Major Wiley.”

  “What I know is this,” Wiley said. “The longer things drag on, the less likely it is that you'll catch the bastard. You must have leads. Suspicions. Something.”

  Lynley offered the photograph of Katja Wolff. “Have you seen this woman? In the neighbourhood, perhaps. Or somewhere else round town.”

  Wiley fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket and brought out a pair of heavy-looking horn-rimmed spectacles, which he flipped open with one hand and fixed on his large and florid nose. He squinted at Katja Wolff 's likeness for a good fifteen seconds before saying, “Who is she?”

  “She's called Katja Wolff. She's the woman who drowned Eugenie Davies' daughter. Do you recognise her?”

  Wiley examined the picture again, and it was apparent from his expression that he very much wanted to recognise her, possibly to put an end to the anxiety of not knowing who had struck down and killed the woman he loved, possibly for another reason altogether. But ultimately, he shook his head and thrust the picture back at Lynley. “What about that bloke?” he asked. “The Audi. He was raging, he was. Bent on hurting someone. I could feel it. And the way he drove off … He was just the sort of bastard who blows. Doesn't get what he wants, so he makes a statement and the statement is usually a body. Or bodies. You know what I mean. Hungerford. Dunblane.”

  “We haven't ruled him out,” Lynley said. “Constables back in town are working through a list of Audis from Brighton. We should know something at that end soon.”

  Wiley grunted and removed his glasses. He shoved them into his jacket pocket.

  Lynley said, “You mentioned that Mrs. Davies wanted to talk to you, that she said specifically that she had something to tell you. Have you any idea what that was, Major Wiley?”

  “None.” Wiley reached for more books. He checked the dust jackets of these, going so far as to open each one and to run his fingers along the
inner flap as if he were looking for imperfections.

  As he did so, Lynley reflected upon the fact that a man generally knows when the woman he loves does not reciprocate the emotion. A man also knows—he can't avoid knowing—when the passion within a woman he loves begins to wither. Sometimes he lies to himself about the fact, denying it till the moment comes when he can no longer avoid it or escape it altogether. But he always knows even subconsciously when things aren't right. Openly admitting this is a form of torture, though. And some men can't cope with such torture, so they choose another route to deal with the matter.

  Lynley said, “Major Wiley, you heard the messages on Mrs. Davies' answer machine yesterday. You heard the men's voices, so it can't be a surprise to you when I ask if Mrs. Davies might have been involved elsewhere besides with you, if that's what she might have wanted to tell you.”

  “I've thought it,” Wiley said quietly. “Nothing else has been in my mind since … Damn. God damn.” He shook his head and shoved his hand into his trouser pocket. He brought out a handkerchief and honked into it loudly enough to disturb the reading of the woman in the armchair. She looked round, saw Lynley and Havers, and said, “Major Wiley? Is everything all right?”

  He nodded, raised a hand as if to underscore his assent, and turned his shoulder so she couldn't see his face. She seemed to feel this was answer enough, for she went back to her reading as Wiley said to Lynley, “I feel a perfect fool.”

  Lynley waited for more. Havers tapped her pencil against her notebook and frowned.

  Wiley gathered himself together and told them the apparent worst there was for him to tell: about the nights he watched Eugenie Davies' cottage from his upstairs window and about one night in particular when his surveillance had finally been rewarded. “One A.M.,” he said. “It was that bloke with the Audi. And the way she touched him … Yes. Yes. I loved her and she was involved somewhere else. So was that what she wanted to tell me, Inspector? I don't know. I didn't want to know then, and I don't want to know now. What's the point?”