“The point is finding her killer,” Havers said.
“You think it's me?”
“What sort of car do you drive?”
“A Mercedes. It's right there, in front of the shop.”
Havers looked to Lynley for direction, and he nodded. She went outside and the two men watched her giving the car's front end a thorough inspection. It was black, but the colour was inconsequential if there was no damage to report.
“I wouldn't have hurt her,” Wiley said quietly. “I loved her. I trust you lot understand what that means.”
And what it implies, Lynley thought. But he didn't speak, merely waiting till Havers had completed her inspection and returned to them. It's clean, her eyes told them. Lynley could see she was disappointed.
Wiley read the message. He allowed himself the pleasure of saying, “I hope that satisfies. Or do you want me on the rack as well?”
“I expect you want us to do our job,” Havers pointed out.
Wiley said, “Then do it. There's a photo gone missing from Eugenie's house.”
“What sort of photo?” Lynley said.
“The only one of the little girl alone.”
“Why didn't you tell us this yesterday?”
“Didn't realise it. Not till this morning. She had them lined up on the kitchen table. Three rows of four. But she had thirteen pictures of those kids in the house—twelve of both of them and one of the girl—and unless she'd taken that one back upstairs, it's gone missing.”
Lynley looked at Havers. She shook her head. There had been no picture in any of the three rooms she'd looked through on the first floor of Doll Cottage.
“When was the last time you saw that photo?” Lynley asked.
“Whenever I was there, I saw all of them. Not like they were yesterday—in the kitchen—but spread round. In the sitting room. And upstairs. On the landing. In her sewing room.”
“P'rhaps she'd taken that one to have a new frame,” Havers said. “Or thrown it away.”
“She wouldn't have done,” Wiley said, aghast.
“Or given it away or lent it somewhere.”
“A picture of her daughter? Who'd she give it to, then?”
It was a question, Lynley knew, that had to be answered.
Once again on the pavement in Friday Street, Havers offered another possibility. “She could have posted it somewhere. To the husband, d'you think? Did he have pictures of the girl in his flat when you spoke to him, Inspector?”
“None that I saw. There were only snapshots of Gideon.” “There you go, then. They'd been speaking, hadn't they? About Gideon's stage fright? Why not about the little girl as well? So he asked Eugenie for a picture of her, and she sent it along. That's easy enough to find out, isn't it?”
“But it's odd that he had no pictures of the daughter already, Havers.”
“Human nature's odd,” Havers said. “This long on the force, I'd think you'd know that.”
Lynley couldn't argue. He said, “Let's have another look at her house to make sure the photo's not there.”
It was a matter of only a few minutes to double-check and to prove Major Wiley right. The twelve photographs in the kitchen were all that were left in the house.
Lynley and Havers were standing in the sitting room, mulling this over, when Lynley's mobile began to ring. It was Eric Leach phoning from the Hampstead incident room.
“We've got a match,” he told Lynley without preamble, sounding pleased. “We've got the Brighton Audi and the Cellnet customer rolled into one pretty package.”
“Ian Staines?” Lynley said, recalling the name connected to the Cellnet number. “Her brother?”
“The same.” Leach recited the address and Lynley wrote it down on the back of one of his business cards. “Get on to him,” Leach said. “What've you got on Wolff?”
“Nothing.” Lynley reported briefly on their conversations with the Sixty Plus Club's members as well as with Major Wiley, and he went on to tell Leach of the missing photograph.
The DCI offered another interpretation. “She could have brought it with her to London.”
“To show someone?”
“That takes us back to Pitchley.”
“But why would she want to show him the picture? Or give it to him?”
“There's more to that story than we're hearing, I say,” Leach pointed out. “Dig up a picture of the Davies woman. There's got to be a snapshot somewhere in her house. Or Wiley'll have one. Take it to the Valley of Kings and the Comfort Inn. There's a chance that someone remembers her there.”
“With Pitchley?”
“He likes them older, doesn't he?”
When the police departed, Ted Wiley left Mrs. Dilday watching over the shop. It had been a slow morning and was shaping up to be a slow afternoon, so he felt no compunction about putting his engrossed customer in charge of things. It was about time that she did something to earn the privilege of reading every best seller without ever making a purchase other than a greeting card, so he rousted her from her favourite armchair and gave her instructions on working the till. Then he went upstairs to his flat.
There, he found P.B. snoozing in a patch of weak sunlight. He stepped over the retriever and put himself at Connie's old davenport beneath whose sloping surface he'd stowed the brochures from the forthcoming opera seasons in Vienna, Santa Fe, and Sydney. It had been his hope that one of those seasons would serve as a backdrop to his broadened relationship with Eugenie. They would travel to Austria, America, or Australia and enjoy Rossini, Verdi, or Mozart as they enriched the joy they took in each other's company and deepened the nature of their love. They'd moved slowly towards this destination for three long and careful years together, building a structure comprising tenderness, devotion, affection, and support. They'd told each other that everything else that went with a man and a woman linking themselves together—most particularly sex—would find its way into the equation with time.
It had been a relief for Ted after Connie's death, not to mention after the esurient pursuing by other women to which he'd been exposed, to find himself in the company of a woman who wanted to build a structure first before taking up residence within it. But now, after the police had left him, Ted finally forced himself to acknowledge the reality that he'd not been able to bear even thinking about before this moment: that Eugenie's hesitation, her gentle and always kind “I'm not ready yet, Ted,” were in actuality evidence that she was not ready for him. For what else could it mean that a man had phoned and left a message rife with desperation on her answer machine? that a man had left her house at one in the morning? that a man had accosted her in the car park of the Sixty Plus Club and pleaded with her the way a man pleads when everything—and most particularly his heart—is at stake? There was only one answer to these questions, and Ted knew what that answer was.
He'd been such a fool. Instead of being grateful for the blessed respite from performance that Eugenie's reserve had promised him, he should have suspected at once that she was involved elsewhere. But he hadn't because it had been such a relief after Georgia Ramsbottom's carnal demands.
She'd phoned last night. Her, “Teddy, I'm so sorry. I spoke to the police today and they said that Eugenie … Dearest Teddy, is there anything I can do?” had barely disguised the enthusiasm with which she'd made the call in the first place. “I'm coming over straightaway,” she'd said. “No ifs or buts, dear. You're not to be left alone with this.”
He'd not had a chance to protest and he'd not had the courage to decamp prior to her arrival. She'd swept in barely ten minutes later, bearing a baking dish in which she'd made him her speciality, which was shepherd's pie. She whipped off the aluminium foil that covered it, and he saw that the pie was depressingly perfect, with ornate little ridges like waves marking the mashed potatoes. She said, flashing a smile at him, “It's warmish, but if we pop it into the microwave, it'll be perfect. You must eat, Teddy, and I know that you haven't. Have you?” She hadn't waited for an answer. She'd m
arched to the microwave and shut its door smartly upon the shepherd's pie, whereupon she moved briskly round the kitchen, bringing forth plates and cutlery from cupboards and drawers with the unspoken authority of a woman showing that she was familiar with a man's domicile.
She said, “You're devastated. I can see it in your face. I am so sorry. I know what friends you two were. And to lose such a friend as Eugenie … You must let yourself feel the sorrow, Teddy.”
Friend, he thought. Not lover. Not wife. Not companion. Not partner. Friend and everything that friend suggested.
He hated Georgia Ramsbottom in that moment. He hated her not only for barging into his solitude like a ship breaking ocean ice but also for the acuity of her perception. She said without saying what he had not allowed himself even to think: His imagination and his longing had created the bond he'd believed he'd had with Eugenie.
Women who were interested in a man showed their interest. They showed it soon, and they showed it unabashedly. They could do no less at an age and in a society in which they so vastly outnumbered available males. He had the proof of this in Georgia herself and in the women who had preceded Georgia in his widowed years. They had their knickers off before a man could reassuringly say to them, “I'm no Jack the lad.” And if they kept their knickers on, it was only because their hands were busy in his crotch instead. But Eugenie had done none of that, had she? Demure Eugenie. Docile Eugenie. Damn Eugenie.
He'd felt such a swelling of anger that he couldn't reply at first to Georgia's comments. He wanted to pound his fist into something hard. He wanted to break it.
Georgia took his silence for stoicism, the stiff upper lip that was the proud achievement of every upstanding British male. She said, “I know, I know. And it's ghastly, isn't it? The older we get, the more we have to bear witness to our friends' passing. But what I've discovered is the importance of nurturing the precious friendships that are left to us. So you mustn't cut yourself off from those of us who care deeply about you, Teddy. We won't have that.”
She'd reached across the table and placed on his arm her hand with its encrustation of rings. He'd thought fleetingly of Eugenie's hands and the contrast they made to this red-tipped snatcher. Ringless, they were, with the nails clipped short and slivers of moon showing at their bases.
“Don't turn away, Teddy,” Georgia had said, and her hand had tightened upon him. “From any of us. We're here to help you through this. We care for you. Truly and deeply. You'll see.”
Her own brief, unhappy past with Ted might not have existed for her. His failure and the contempt she'd felt being a witness to his failure were banished to a foreign land. The intervening manless years she'd lived through had obviously instructed her in what was important and what was not. She was a changed woman, as he would see once she wormed her way into his life again.
Ted read it all in the gesture of her placing her hand on his arm, and in the tender smile she directed at him. Bile rose in his throat, and his body burned. He needed air.
He rose abruptly. He said, “That old dog,” and called out roughly, “P.B.? Where've you taken yourself off to? Come.” And to Georgia, “Sorry. I was about to take the dog for her final nightly when you phoned.”
He'd made his escape that way, without inviting Georgia to accompany him and giving her no chance to make the suggestion herself. He called out once again, “P.B.? Come, girl. Time for a walk,” and he was gone before Georgia had the chance to regroup. He knew that she'd assume from his departure that she'd moved too quickly. He also knew that she wouldn't assume anything else. And that was important, Ted realised suddenly. That was crucial: to limit the woman's knowledge about him.
He'd walked rapidly, feeling it all again. Stupid, he told himself, stupid and blind. Hanging about like a schoolboy hoping for a go with the local tart, not seeing her as a tart at all because he was too young, too inexperienced, too eager, too … too limp. That's what it was, all right. Too limp.
He'd charged towards the river, dragging the poor dog behind him. He needed to put distance between himself and Georgia, and he wanted to be away from the flat long enough to ensure her departure in his absence. Even Georgia Ramsbottom would not throw all her chances away by playing her cards the first evening she was holding them. She would leave his flat; she would retire for a few days. Then, when she thought that he'd recovered from their initial skirmish, she would be back, offering a renewal of her sympathetic attention. Ted was certain he could depend upon that.
At the corner of Friday Street and the river, he'd turned left. He strode on the town side of the Thames. The lights along the street pooled buttermilk onto the pavement intermittently and the wind blew a heavy mist in sharp waves that felt as if they rose from the river itself. Ted turned up the collar of his waxed jacket and said, “Come on, girl,” to the dog, who was looking longingly at a sapling planted nearby, possibly with the hope of snoozing awhile underneath it. “P.B. Come.” A jerk on the choke chain did it, as usual. They hurried on.
They were in the church yard before Ted really thought about it. They were in the church yard before he recalled the vision he'd had there on the night Eugenie died. P.B. made for the grass like a horse to its stall before Ted actually knew she was doing so. She squatted wearily and let forth her stream before he had the chance to urge her somewhere else.
Without intending, without thinking, without even considering what the action implied, Ted felt his eyes drift from the dog to the almshouses at the far end of the path. He'd just take a quick glance that way, he told himself, in order to see that the woman who lived in the third house from the right had her curtains closed. If she hadn't and if a light was burning, he'd do her a service and let her know that any stranger passing by could look right in and … well, assess her valuables for a burglary.
The light was on. Time to do his good deed for the day. Ted pulled P.B. away from the tipped gravestone round which she was sniffing and urged her as quickly as he could along the path. It was essential that he get to the almshouse before the woman within it did anything that could embarrass them both. Because if she began to undress, as she had the other night, he could hardly knock on her door, caution her about her indiscretion, and thereby admit to having watched her, could he?
“Hurry, P.B.,” he said to the dog. “Come along.”
He was just fifteen seconds too late. Five yards from the almshouse and she had begun. And she was quick about it, so very quick that before he had time to avert his eyes, she'd whisked her jersey off, shaken back her hair, and removed her brassiere. She bent to something—was it her shoes? her stockings? her trousers? what?—and her breasts hung heavily downward.
Ted swallowed. He thought two words—Dear God—and he felt the first throb of his body's answer to the sight before him. He'd watched her once, he'd stood here once, he'd traced with his eyes those sumptuous full curves. But he couldn't—couldn't—allow himself the guilty pleasure of doing so again. She had to be told. She had to be warned. She had to … had to know? he wondered. What woman didn't know? What woman had never learned about caution and nighttime windows? What woman threw her clothes off at night in a room fully lit without curtains or blinds without knowing that someone on the other side of those few millimeters of glass was probably watching, longing, fantasising, hardening … She knew, Ted realised. She knew.
So he'd watched the unknown woman in that almshouse bedroom a second night. He'd stayed longer this time, mesmerised by the sight of her smoothing lotion on her neck and her arms. He heard himself moan like a pre-adolescent having his first glimpse at Playboy when she used that same lotion on her succulent breasts.
There in the church yard, he'd wanked off surreptitiously. Beneath his waxed jacket as the rain began to fall, he worked his cock like a man pumping spray onto garden insects. He got about as much satisfaction from the resulting orgasm as one would get from using a garden sprayer, and in the aftermath of his release what he felt wasn't exultation and release. It was bitter shame.
He felt it again now in his sitting room, wave after wave of black humiliation, building and cresting as he sat at Connie's old davenport. He looked at the glossy photo of the Sydney Opera House, moved from it to a picture of the outdoor theatre in Santa Fe where The Marriage of Figaro was sung under the stars, set that to one side, and picked up a picture of a narrow antique street in Vienna. He stared at this last with a darkness of spirit enveloping him and hearing within him a voice that he recognised as the voice of his mother hovering over him so many years in the past, so eager to judge, even more eager to condemn, if not him then someone else: “What a waste of time, Teddy. Don't be such a little fool.”
But he was, wasn't he? He'd spent so many good hours imagining himself and Eugenie in one location or another, like actors moving on a strip of celluloid that did not allow for a single blemish in either the moment or the individuals. In his mind's eye, there had been no harsh glare of sunlight upon skin that was ageing, no hair out of place on either of their heads, no breath wanting freshening, no sphincter tightening to prevent an embarrassing explosion of intestinal wind at an inopportune time, no thickened toenails, no sagging flesh, and most of all no failure on his part when the time was finally right. He'd pictured the two of them eternally young in each other's vision if not in the world's. And that was all that had mattered to Ted: the way they saw each other.
But for Eugenie, things had been different. He understood that now. Because it wasn't natural for a woman to hold a man at a distance for so many months that bled inexorably into so many years. It wasn't natural. It also wasn't fair.
She'd used him as a front, he concluded. There was no other explanation for the phone calls she'd received, the nocturnal visits to her house, and her inexplicable trip to London. She was using him as a front, because if their mutual friends and acquaintances in Henley—not to mention the board of directors at the Sixty Plus Club who employed her—believed that she was keeping chaste company with Major Ted Wiley, they'd be far less likely to speculate that she was keeping unchaste company with someone else.
A Traitor to Memory Page 40