Hidden Agenda

by Anna Porter

  “Marsha.”

  She wheeled around. Peter stood in the doorway, one arm extended over his head, tilting against the door-frame. He wore a brown-check towel wrapped around his waist—it suited him.

  “You have remarkable energy,” he stated. “Quite remarkable.”

  “Well,” Marsha said. How long had he been standing there?

  “You are altogether a most remarkable woman, though a trifle stubborn, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  She didn’t.

  “Perhaps after all this,” he waved his hand to include the whole room, “even you might be tired enough to wish to have a rest?”

  “Are you an agent of some kind?” Marsha asked.

  “A what?”

  “A government agent—you know, James Bond and that sort of thing.”

  “Hardly. How would I have time, what with all the stuff I have to read? You do ask some strange questions for so early in the day.”

  “I wondered,” Marsha said. “You have such an unhealthy interest in war.”

  “Or peace,” he said. “You should check both sides of the coin.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  They stood for a while in silence.

  “You’re not going to explain, are you?”

  “Right again,” Peter said. “Shall we?” He tilted up his chin and looked in the general direction of the bedroom.

  “I’m sorry, Peter…”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “I understand. We’re both sorry, really. Another time…who knows?” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Maybe it would be simplest if you were to borrow my car. I assume you want to return to London right away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, well. The keys are in the ignition. Tomorrow, let me know where you parked it. Drive carefully,” he added as an afterthought. The towel slipped from his waist as he turned and walked upstairs.

  A perfect ass, Marsha thought.

  Twenty-Two

  THE ROOM WAS HAZY, threatening, unfamiliar. Judith walked around, forcing her stiff muscles to react, feeling her way around the bed, slowly, making every movement count. The blankets were crumpled and rolled in the center where she had left them, cold and still. On top of the tall, lopsided dresser, a row of thin gold frames from Black’s camera stores—Christmas gifts from her mother. They glistened in the sunlight, drawing her closer, till she stood leaning against the dresser, her hand reaching for the nearest frame. It held four photographs of the children, mementos of a holiday in Fort Lauderdale maybe ten years ago. Anne had built giant sand animals, and was posing over a short-tailed alligator with a downward smile. Jimmy, his chubby legs spread wide around a mound of sand, ate brown ice cream from a cone. His Circus World cap had slipped to one side.

  She shoved the frame back in its place and picked up another. All she could feel was a dull ache in her chest.

  The phone rang. She pounced on it, wrenched the receiver from its cradle.

  “Hello.”

  “Judith, it’s Ron at Saturday Night. I’ve read your Harris piece.”

  Oh god, please make him say it’s all right, I can’t…

  “Yes?” she whispered.

  “Something wrong? Did I catch you at a bad time? I can call later,” he offered.

  “It’s my throat. You were saying about the story?”

  “I wondered why you rushed the ending so. It starts great, all that stuff about his early life, how he took over from his father, and the first interview with him is just fine—I never knew he was such an inveterate optimist. Then it’s like you quit. No analysis. No conclusion. No final bow. I thought when we last talked you still insisted on developing a theory about his untimely death. And if not that, why not some assessment?”

  “I don’t know how…”

  “Come on, Judith, we gave you an extension of the deadline, now we’re up against it. Two good paragraphs is all we need. You can phone them in before the end of the day. Meanwhile we’ll give this a light copy-edit. All right?”

  “All right.”

  “Fine, then.”

  He hung up. She knelt on the floor by the phone, rested her head on the bed. Waiting. She had done as they told her. The show of faith was complete except for two paragraphs. She was afraid to turn and confront the photographs again. She picked up the phone and dialed, her hands steady but feeble, missing the numbers. Her thumb trailed blood where she had bitten the nail to a stump. Slowly, she dialed again.

  Five rings and her mother answered. She sounded annoyed.

  “Mother…” Judith said.

  “Will you speak up, I can barely hear you.” She was brisk, busy, clearly she had been interrupted at something important.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Try some warm honey and lemon for your throat. Works every time. Always gave it to you when you were a child.”

  “Mother…”

  “Perhaps you should do that now, dear, and call me later when you can talk. I’m on my way to the Gallery for a committee meeting—we have to establish the principles for the Fall fund-raising drive—and I make a point of not being late. I do wish the others were as conscientious. Some days we wait for half an hour. Are the children all right?”

  “Could you come over?”

  “Not today, dear. Far too busy. I can be there tomorrow, though. Now be sensible, won’t you, and make that hot drink. Call me around 7:00. Sure to be finished by then. Bye, now.”

  ***

  The phone rang as she replaced it.

  “Mrs. Hayes?” The gentle, modulated tone.

  “Yes,” she said fast. “I’ve done the story… I’ve…”

  “Yes, we know. You will find your valuables at Brunswick and Dupont. They’re on their way home.”

  “Now?” she yelled, her voice back, jumping to her feet.

  “One more thing, though. As a small precaution. I would advise, for all our sakes, you consider a holiday. A change of pace for all three of you.”

  “Yes.” She waited till the line went dead, then ran down the stairs and out the door, her bare feet pounding along the pavement as she raced, leaped over the neighbors’ angry dachshund, swerved to avoid the postman. The young woman from across the street, strolling by with her baby carriage, stopped in her path and stared. Judith ran around her, out onto the road, ignoring the cars. Her breath came in short bursts, the pain in her side made her hunch over.

  Then there they were, rounding the comer, walking slowly and close together. They looked as normal as if they were on their way home from an average school day. Jeans, T-shirts half-pulled out of their pants, bomber jackets flapping off the shoulders, shoelaces trailing. When they saw her, they stood still, waiting for her to reach them. Jimmy’s face was so pale and drawn that the adolescent pimples on his forehead stood out like the spots on the back of a ladybug. Anne’s skin seemed almost transparent, blue-tinged around the staring eyes.

  “Don’t look behind us,” Anne hissed.

  “It’s all right now,” Judith said, holding onto them, feeling along their backs and shoulders, slowly coming out of her nightmare.

  “They said not to,” Anne insisted, her eyes filling with tears, propelling her mother to walk between them, their arms around one another.

  Jimmy blew his nose in his jacket sleeve as they jostled by the baby carriage, the woman staring at them still. Once inside the house he began to cry.

  Judith murmured every comforting word she knew. She had her arms around them both, as far as they would reach. She herself was crying with relief as she stroked their hair and their faces, brushed down their clothes.

  “We were so frightened.” Anne flopped into the couch, pulling up her knees. “I thought maybe we’d both be killed. One of them had a gun at my back. I could feel it. Did you get the police?” she asked.

  Judith shook her head.

  “I couldn’t,” she said. She drew Jimmy into the couch, next to her, cradling his shoulders, rocking him softly.

>   “Can we call them now?” Anne said. “They told us it was a case of mistaken identity. They were after some other kids, not us. That’s what they said, this morning when they let us go. We were blindfolded in the car. They left us on the street and the woman told us not to remove the blindfolds till we counted to fifty, then to start walking slowly toward home.”

  “What did she look like?” Judith asked.

  “We never saw her,” Jimmy said, wiping his eyes. “We only saw the man when he came to the door to tell us you’d been in an accident and had been taken to the hospital. He said he’d drive us there right away.”

  “That’s why we went with him. The woman was driving the car; she wore a hat, but we couldn’t see her. Soon as we were at the car door, he held a gun to my back, told us to get in and put on the blindfolds.”

  Once inside, the man had threatened to kill them unless they stayed still. He had secured their blindfolds, tied their hands behind their backs, stuffed handkerchiefs into their mouths and made them lie on the car floor. They had driven for a long time, around winding roads, up and down hills, then stopped in what Anne thought must have been a garage. They had both heard a door clang shut behind them and had been hustled out of the car, up some stairs and into a bedroom, where they were allowed to take off their blindfolds once the door was shut and locked.

  There had been boards on the only window. The room had two beds with matching bedcovers, and wallpaper a summery yellow-orange with white flowers, plank floors, a simple bathroom. They had been given warm milk on a tray slid through the partially open door by a man’s arm. They thought it might have been drugged because they both slept after that, though Jimmy had been crying and Anne had tried to pry loose the boards. They both lay down and hadn’t woken up till the next afternoon—or for all they knew the day after that. There had been dinner of hamburgers and eggs on the tray and more milk. The woman had said through the door that they shouldn’t be frightened. Had they slept well?

  “How did she sound?” Judith asked, thinking of the woman at F.A.O. Schwarz.

  “A little like Granny. Sort of imperious,” Anne said.

  “English?” Jimmy asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Anne said.

  “And the man who came to the door? What did he look like?”

  “About six foot, maybe taller. Balding. His face was all red. Maybe forty, maybe fifty. Older than your policeman. Wore glasses. A friendly sort of face…”

  She told them she’d call David, though she wasn’t sure she should yet. Let them believe the kidnapping had been a mistake. She wouldn’t scare them with the truth. They were home and they were safe. It was up to her to keep them that way.

  Anne wanted to have a long hot bath. She was still shivering and drowsy. Judith wrapped a blanket around Jimmy, who was asleep in moments.

  Judith drew all the curtains and blinds. The house seemed like a stranger, no longer her private place. It had been defiled. She recognized the fear building inside her, cold, mean. She would get double locks on the doors and grates for the windows. Poisonous blackmailing son-of-a-bitch who could grab their lives and twist them at will, who would use the children against her.

  She brushed Anne’s hair, and mopped the last bit of stubborn dirt from her neck. She put cream on her chapped lips and a pair of her own woolen socks on her feet, to help stop the shivers. She tucked Anne into her own bed, and went to bring Jimmy up to join her. He was too exhausted to pull off his jeans and T-shirt. Judith helped him into his old pyjamas and cried again when she saw how short they were.

  “We’ll buy new ones in New York,” she whispered in his ear, thinking of her bargain. New York is where Marsha would be.

  Suddenly she realized that she hadn’t thought much about Marsha since her own nightmare had begun. Marsha was in London trying to track that damned manuscript, and didn’t know her life might be in danger. She started to tiptoe out, she’d have to phone right away.

  Anne was already asleep. Jimmy half-lifted his head to see where Judith was going, smiled at her and fell back again.

  “I hate pyjamas,” he grumbled.

  Twenty-Three

  THE JAGUAR PROVED to be unlike Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or any other car Marsha had become used to since her MG—closer to the ground and a great deal more sensitive to the touch. Fortunately, there weren’t too many people about in Essex at 4:00 a.m. Several dogs, two cats and a red squirrel she had caught in the lights ran for cover with their eyes closed.

  She took the wrong exit off the highway—easy enough to do even if your mind wasn’t on something else. It was dawn when she maneuvered the traffic circle at Cumberland Gate, then down Park Lane, Piccadilly and up Old Bond Street, where she remembered having seen a parking lot.

  The uniformed doorman she woke out of his slumbers looked her over suspiciously when he let her into the hotel, but he was too well-mannered to smirk. He handed her two messages and a large box that had been delivered by Mr. Rubinstein’s office. It housed a fat, romantic family saga she had hoped to have read by the time she had lunch with Hilary that day. No chance of that now. One of the messages was from Judith. Urgent. No matter what time.

  She called Judith and talked to the answering service. It was 5:00 a.m. Too late to sleep, too early to call Jane MacIntyre. She drank a large orange juice from the hotel-room bar and went for a long walk in the park. The breeze had built to a gusty wind that whipped her face with long strands of hair loosened from the chignon at the nape of her neck. The first light played around Queen Victoria’s unforgiving forehead. She decided to run back—long easy strides until her shoulders relaxed and she no longer ached for Peter’s touch.

  Back in her room, she ordered sausages and eggs—a hearty American breakfast, ready for anything…the phone rang.

  “Miss Hillier?”

  “Uhhum.” Chewing on the last of the toast.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you. I simply had to speak with you before you went out. This is Jane MacIntyre.”

  “Is there something wrong, Jane?”

  “Yes, well, there is rather. It’s that manuscript you asked me about yesterday. I think it’s caused me to be fired.”

  “What?”

  “He called it early retirement, but it means the same thing. He said he thought I’d been working too hard and Mr. Sandwell’s death had been particularly upsetting to me. Besides, he said, I wouldn’t have very much to do now that Mr. Sandwell was gone. I have to agree, but I was more than willing to take on some of his work, only he hadn’t asked. I have four years left before retirement, and I haven’t made plans at all…”

  “You’re talking about Peter Burnett?”

  “Of course I am… He’s in charge now, you know.”

  “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with the manuscript?”

  “I’m so sorry. I should have started at the beginning. This has been rather unsettling. After you left yesterday, I became, well, somewhat concerned that I shouldn’t perhaps have discussed Mr. Sandwell’s business with you. Not like me to do that, but there seemed no harm in it then. To be safe, though, I went and told Mr. Burnett of your asking me questions. I explained what I’d told you, and that I’d showed you my book. He asked me to show him, and I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing, really. He’d had no idea I kept a record of all manuscripts coming in to Mr. Sandwell’s attention. I doubt he’s paid much attention to me over the years. He’s a strange one, he is.” She sighed. “Later on, though, he came to my office and said I should take early retirement. Just like that. I’ve been thinking a great deal since then. One thing I think is that you were behaving strangely when you asked me all those questions about a manuscript that shouldn’t have concerned you at all. Then I found out Mr. Burnett was having dinner with you last night. You might have kept some of the questions for him. But you didn’t.” She paused. Then she said, “Marsha, I believe you owe me an explanation.”

  She was right about that,
and moreover Jane MacIntyre might be an ally, so Marsha said she was convinced Eric Sandwell had been murdered and, for verisimilitude, related the tale of the other deaths—all caused, she believed, by the manuscript that Jane had innocently booked in on April 8th.

  Jane MacIntyre interrupted only once. She asked why Marsha and her friend in Canada hadn’t gone to the police.

  “We have,” Marsha said, “and in Toronto there’s going to be an investigation. Here we have no evidence.” That took another ten minutes to explain.

  “Would the manuscript supply the evidence?”

  “We think it would.”

  “And Mr. Burnett won’t let you see it?”

  “He won’t.”

  “He’s a strange one, he is,” Jane MacIntyre repeated. That was as far as she allowed herself to be disloyal. “You think if you were to find that manuscript you’d be able to point the finger at whoever killed Mr. Sandwell, if he was killed as you say, God rest his soul?”

  “If you would help…”

  Marsha waited.

  “You don’t work for a man as long as I did for Mr. Sandwell and not learn a great deal about him,” Jane said with some pride. “Tell you what, why don’t you meet me in front of Number 37 South Audley at 7:00 a.m. I have the key. You’ll be gone before anyone else arrives.”

  Twenty-Four

  JANE MACINTYRE LOOKED as though she had been put into a doll’s box overnight and taken out again in the morning, completely unruffled. Her French roll was sculpted into a flawless cone, her tailored brown dress was exactly the same pattern as the blue one she had worn the day before, even to the white cotton collar buttoned high under her chin. She stood, waiting, outside Hamilton, Thornbush’s ornate front door. She held her short white lace gloves clutched in front of her, as if to ensure the formality of the occasion.

  Instinctively, Marsha understood. In insane situations formality might help preserve sanity. Marsha had put on her blue running suit and jogged from the hotel. She thought it a fair diversionary tactic in case someone was following her.