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.
Lynley said, “Wolff is out of prison, Mr. Robson. Have you heard from her?”
Robson shook his head. “I can't think she'd want to talk to me.”
“Talking might not be what she has in mind,” Nkata said.
Robson looked from him to Lynley. “You're thinking Katja might have killed Eugenie.”
Lynley said, “The investigating officer from that period of time was hit last night as well.”
“Good God.”
“We're thinking everyone needs to have a care till we get to the bottom of what happened to Mrs. Davies,” Lynley said. “She had something to tell Major Wiley, by the way. He's told us that much. Would you have any idea what that was?”
“None at all,” Robson said, shaking his head but all the same saying the words far too quickly for Lynley's liking. As if realising that the speed of his reply was more revealing than the reply itself, Robson went on to say, “If there was something she wanted to reveal to Major Wiley, she didn't tell me. You see, Inspector.”
Lynley didn't see. At least he didn't see what Robson hoped he would see. Instead, he saw a man holding something back. He said, “As Mrs. Davies' close friend, I'd think there might be something you've not yet considered, Mr. Robson. If you reflect on your most recent meetings with her and especially the last one when the two of you rowed, I expect a detail like a chance remark might give us an indication of what she wanted to tell Major Wiley.”
“There's nothing. Really. I can't say …”
Lynley pressed on. “If what she had to tell Major Wiley is the reason she was killed—and we can't dismiss that possibility, Mr. Robson—anything you can remember is vital.”
“She might have wanted him to know about Sonia's death and what led up to her death. Perhaps she believed she needed to tell him why she'd left Richard and Gideon. She might have felt she needed his forgiveness for having done that before they could proceed with each other.”
“Would that have been like her?” Lynley asked. “The confessional bit before carrying on with a relationship, I mean.”
“Yes,” Robson said, and his affirmation seemed genuine. “Confession would have been exactly like Eugenie.”
Lynley nodded and thought this over. Part of it made sense, but he couldn't escape a simple fact that had announced itself through Robson's helpful revelation: They hadn't mentioned to Robson that Major Wiley had been in Africa twenty years ago and hence hadn't known the circumstances of Sonia Davies' death.
But if Robson knew that, he probably knew more. And whatever that more was, Lynley was willing to wager it led to the death in West Hampstead.
GIDEON
1 November
I object, Dr. Rose. I am not avoiding anything. You might question my pursuit of the truth with regard to my sister's death, you might remark that it serves the powerful interests of distraction for me to spend half a day to-ing and fro-ing round Cheltenham, and you might scrutinise my reasons for lolling round the Press Association office for another three hours, copying and reading the cuttings about the arrest and the trial of Katja Wolff. But you cannot accuse me of avoiding the very activity you yourself assigned me in the first place.
Yes, you told me to write what I remember, which is what I've done. And it seems to me that until I get beyond this business of my sister's death, it's going to throw up a roadblock to any other memories that I might have. So I may as well get through all this. I may as well learn what happened back then. If this endeavour is an elaborate subconscious foil to what I am supposed to remember—whatever the hell that is—then we'll know that eventually, won't we? And in the meantime, you'll be all the richer for the countless appointments that you and I shall have had together. I may even become your patient for life.
And don't tell me you sense my frustration, please, because I'm obviously frustrated, because just when I think I'm on to something, you sit there asking me to think about the process of rationalisation and to ponder what that could mean in my current pursuit.
I'll tell you what rationalisation means: It means that I am consciously or unconsciously side-stepping the reason for my loss of music. It means that I am setting up an elaborate maze to thwart your attempts to help me.
So you see? I am completely aware of what I might be doing. And now I ask you to let me do it.
I've been to Dad's. He wasn't there when I arrived, but Jill was. She's decided to paint his kitchen, and she'd brought a selection of paint cards with her, which she'd spread out on the kitchen table. I told her I'd
come by to go through some old paperwork that Dad keeps in the Granddad Room. She gave me one of those conspiratorial looks that suggest two people are in agreement on a subject that's going undiscussed, and from that I concluded that Dad's museum of devotion to his father is going to be packed away when he and Jill have a home of their own. She won't have told Dad this, naturally. Jill's way is not to be so direct.
To me she said, “I hope you've got your gum boots with you.” I smiled but made no reply, instead taking myself to the Granddad Room and closing the door behind me.
I don't frequent this spot very often. It makes me uneasy to surround myself with such overwhelming evidence of my father's devotion to his father. I suppose I think that Dad's fervour for his father's memory is somewhat misguided. True, Granddad survived a prison camp, countless deprivations, forced labour, torture, and conditions suited more to an animal than a man, but he ruled my father's life with derision—if not with an iron fist—both before and after the war, and I have never been able to understand why Dad clings to his memory instead of burying him once and for all. It was because of Granddad, after all, that our lives were defined as they were in Kensington Square: Dad's superhuman employment history was because Granddad could not support himself, his own wife, and their standard of living; Mother's going out to work—despite having given birth to a handicapped child—was because the income Dad brought in to care for his own parents and the house and my music and my education was not sufficient; my own pursuit of music was encouraged and supported financially in the first place because Granddad decreed it would be so … And on top of all this always I can hear Granddad's accusation: Freaks, Dick! You produce nothing but freaks.
So within the room, I avoided the display of Granddad memorabilia. I went instead to the desk from which Dad had taken the picture of Katja Wolff and Sonia, and I opened the first of its drawers, which was filled to the top with papers and folders.
What were you looking for? you ask me.
Something to make me certain about what happened. Because I'm not certain, Dr. Rose, and with every piece of information I dig up, I find myself becoming that much less certain.
I've remembered something about my parents and Katja Wolff. It's been triggered by my conversation with Sarah-Jane Beckett and by what followed my conversation, which was those additional hours in the Press Association library. I found a diagram among those cuttings, Dr. Rose, a drawing of sorts that showed the previously healed injuries that Sonia had sustained over time. There was a fractured clavicle. A dislocated hip. An index finger had healed from a break, and a wrist showed evidence of a hairline fracture. I felt nausea overcome me when I read all this. In my mind one question rang out: How could Sonia have been injured by Katja—by anyone—without the rest of us knowing that something had happened to her?
The papers said that under cross-examination, the prosecution's expert witness—a physician specialising in child abuse cases—admitted that an infant's bones, more easily given to fractures, are also more easily given to healing from those fractures without the intervention of a doctor. He admitted that, as he was not a specialist in the skeletal anomalies of the Down's Syndrome child, he could not deny that the fractures and dislocations that Sonia had sustained might have been connected to her disability. But under re-examination by the prosecution, he drove home the point that was central to his testimony: A child whose body is undergoing trauma is going to react to that trauma. For that reaction to go unnoticed and for that trauma to go untreated, someone is being derelict in his duty.
And still Katja Wolff said nothing. Given an opportunity to rise to her own defence—even to talk about Sonia's condition, her operations, and all the attendant problems she had that made her difficult and fussy and a source of nearly constant and inconsolable crying—Katja Wolff remained silent in the dock as the prosecutor for the Crown savaged her “callous indifference to the suffering of a child,” her “single-minded self-interest,” and “the animosity that had sprung up between the German and her employer.”
And that's when I remembered, Dr. Rose.
We're having breakfast, which we eat in the kitchen and not the dining room. Only the four of us are present: Dad, my mother, Sonia, and I. I'm playing with my Weetabix, lining up slices of banana like cargo on a barge despite having been told to eat it and not to play, and Sonia is sitting in her high chair while Mother spoons baby food into her mouth.
Mother says, “We can't keep putting up with this, Richard,” and I look up from my Weetabix barge because I think she's cross that I'm still not eating and I think I'm about to be scolded. But Mother continues. “She was out till half past one again. We gave her a curfew, and if she can't adhere to it—”
“She has to have some evenings off,” Dad says.
“But not the following morning as well. We did have an agreement, Richard.”
And I understand from this that Katja is meant to be with us at breakfast, is meant to be feeding Sonia. She has failed to get up and go to my sister, so Mother is doing Katja's job.
“We're paying her to care for the baby,” Mother says. “Not to go dancing, not to go to the cinema, not to watch television, and certainly not to advance her love life under our roof.”
That's what I've remembered, Dr. Rose, that remark about Katja's love life. And I've also remembered what my parents said next.
“She's not interested in anyone in this house, Eugenie.”
“Please don't expect me to believe that.”
I look between them—first at Dad then at my mother—and I feel something in the air that I can't identify, perhaps a sense of unease. And into this unease comes Katja in a rush. She is filled with apologies for having slept through her morning alarm.
“I please to feed the little one,” she says in her English which must become more broken whenever she's under stress.
My mother says, “Gideon, would you take your cereal to the dining room, please?” and because of the undercurrents in the kitchen, I obey. But I pause to listen just out of sight and I hear my mother say, “We've already had one talk about your morning duties, Katja,” and Katja says, “Please to let me feed the baby, Frau Davies,” in a clear, firm voice.
It is the voice of someone unafraid of her employer, I realise now, Dr. Rose. And that voice suggests there are very good reasons for Katja not to be afraid.
So I went to my father's flat. I said my hellos to Jill. I dodged certificates, display cases, and trunks containing my grandfather's belongings, and I homed in on my grandmother's desk, which Dad has used as his for years.
I was looking for something that could confirm the connection between Katja and the man who'd made her pregnant. Because I'd finally come to see that if Katja Wolff maintained silence, she could have done so for only one possible reason: to protect someone. And that someone had to be my father, who had kept her photo for more than twenty years.
1 November, 4:00 P.M.
I did not progress far in my search.
In the drawer that I'd opened, I discovered an accordion file of correspondence. Among the letters therein—most of which comprised subjects having to do with my career—there was one from a solicitor with a North London address. Her client Katja Veronika Wolff had authorised Harriet Lewis, Esq., to contact Richard Davies with regard to monies owed her. Since the terms of her parole forbade her to contact any member of the Davies family personally, Miss Wolff was using this legal channel as a conduit through which the matter could be satisfactorily settled. If Mr. Davies would be so kind as to phone Ms. Lewis at the above-listed number at his earliest convenience, this matter of money could be handled expeditiously and to everyone's satisfaction. Ms. Lewis remained yours truly, et cetera.
I studied this letter. It was less than two months old. The language in it did not appear to contain the sort of veiled threat one would expect from a solicitor with future litigation on her mind. It was all straightforward, pleasant, and professional. As such, it fairly screamed the question Why?
When he opened the door, I was still sitting there with the accordion file open on the floor at my feet and the letter from Harriet Lewis in my hand. I made no attempt to hide the fact that I was going through my father's belongings, and when he crossed the room, saying sharply, “What are you doing, Gideon?” my reply was to hand him the letter and say, “What's behind this, Dad?”
He flicked his gaze over it. He returned it to the accordion file and returned the file to the drawer before he replied.
“She wanted to be paid for the time she spent in remand prior to the trial,” he said. “The first month of the remand period constituted the notice we'd given her, and she wanted her money for that month as well as interest on it.”
“All these years later?”
“Perhaps a more pertinent remark would be: ‘After she murdered Sonia?’” He pushed the desk drawer shut.
“She was very sure of her place with our family, wasn't she? She never expected to be sacked.”
“You've no idea what you're talking about.”
“Have you answered that letter, then? Have you phoned that solicitor as requested?”
“I've no intention of doing anything to revisit that period, Gideon.”
I nodded at the drawer where he'd returned the letter. “Someone apparently doesn't think so. Not only that, but despite what someone's supposed to have done to devastate your life, someone apparently has no compunction about re-entering it even via a solicitor. I don't understand why, unless there was something more between you than employer and employee. Because don't you think a letter like that indicates a sense of confidence that someone in Katja Wolff 's position ought not to have with regard to you?”
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