by Anna Porter
To make sure she wasn’t followed by car, she had taken all the one-way streets. Though she glanced over her shoulder frequently, she saw no one. As an extra precaution, she had extended to her full speed around Berkeley Square and maintained it the rest of the way. At that pace, anyone following on foot would have been obvious. Not even an Olympic hurdler could dodge in and out of doorways that fast.
“The editorial department,” Jane MacIntyre was saying much too precisely, “is located on the first two stories. Our system is rather different from yours, in that our editors deal with the whole book. The entire process. They do not delegate to a copy department, or even to proofreaders. They do everything themselves. We think this gives them a feeling of direct responsibility for every word.”
Wonderful, Marsha thought—a lecture in British-style editing while your skin crawls with anxiety in case one of the editors is so overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility that she can’t wait till the office opens.
“When do they usually come in?” Marsha asked, peering down the stairs behind her as they rounded the corner toward Peter’s office.
“Not before 8:30. That gives us well over an hour. This is the first place to search,” said Jane. She walked directly into Peter Burnett’s office. “I think he took the manuscript with him.” She headed over to the side table near the desk where Peter’s incoming manuscripts lay. She sorted through them, careful to replace everything she touched.
Marsha lingered in the doorway, reluctant to invade his territory again. She remembered the last time she was here, the look of sheer delight on his face when he first saw her.
“You could help, Marsha,” Jane said over her shoulder. “Too late to change your mind now.” She pointed at Peter’s desk. “Why don’t you see what he has in the drawers?”
Some felt-tipped pens, the kind Marsha used herself, an assortment of memos, press releases, an old-fashioned letter opener, a comb. On the desk, near the telephone, a number of file folders with newspaper clippings of the kind she had found in his house, and a Washington study surveying how a random sampling of schoolchildren felt about the threat of nuclear war; a Time magazine story entitled “The Darkening War Clouds”; another study reporting on the possible use of the president’s Star Wars weaponry, and its lack of effectiveness in case of attack on the United States.
“What is he doing with these?” Marsha asked.
Jane MacIntyre peered at the clippings.
“He must be planning a book,” she said. “We’ve published a lot on nuclear war. He has a morbid preoccupation.” Quickly, she surveyed the bookshelves. When she was satisfied “Untitled” wasn’t there, she led the way to the end of the corridor, next to her own office. She inserted a key into a polished wooden door.
“Mr. Sandwell’s office,” she whispered deferentially as she entered the spacious, carpeted room, all antique wooden furniture, wide-backed club chairs. The windows were closed and the room smelled of yellowing papers and old cigars.
Mrs. MacIntyre headed over to the small, ornate safe in the far corner and began to turn the dial. The door opened almost as soon as she touched it.
“The executors must have been through all this,” she said. “Over the weekend, I suppose. Without asking me. Nothing here now of interest.” She made sure her prediction was correct, then turned her attention to the desk. “Here,” she said, “I’ll check on this side, you go through the other side. Too obvious, but one must be thorough.”
There was a file folder marked “Progress Reports Sydney” that seemed to relate to some market test Eric had been running in Australia. There were a series of different prices, book lengths, manufacturing estimates, sales figures by month and cumulatively. All in Eric’s own precise handwriting, filling several sheets of graph paper. As if to make up for this old-world zeal, there were also some fat computer printouts of sales by title and territory that, on another day, Marsha would have found riveting. There was an empty folder marked “Expenses, personal.” There were sheets of staff salary recommendations, memos about future remainders, parking tickets, and a copy of Stephen King’s The Stand. Marsha would never have guessed Eric had been a closet Stephen King fan.
There were two manuscripts, neither by X.
They checked the bookshelves, looking behind the books individually. Jane began from the floor up, getting down on her haunches after smoothing her skirt across the backs of her thighs. Marsha, being a good five inches taller, started from the top.
“He had some special places for very important manuscripts,” Jane said. “This was one of them. I suppose over the years you all develop different work habits…”
“Yes.” Marsha thought fondly of her bathroom cabinet where sometimes she put manuscripts she specially liked, for relaxed bathtub reading.
They checked the coffee table and its drawers, the top of the bar, under the couch, the magazine stand and the two lopsided wicker waste baskets. Nothing.
“I was so sure it would be in here,” Jane said. “Why else would he have made a copy for himself except to read it?”
“For safekeeping?” Marsha asked.
“Worth trying,” Jane said. She led the way to the top floor, past sales and marketing on the second and legal, accounting and administration on the third. At the end of the passageway there was a black fireproof door, some kind of metal, hand-painted with blue and yellow birds, and the numbers, “1887.”
“This has been here since Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Thornbush started the firm,” she said with pride. “We still use it for some legal documents, first editions, a few of the original manuscripts—they’re worth a fortune now. Naturally, we wouldn’t dream of selling them, but Mr. Sandwell wanted to give some to the museum before he died. I hope he put it in his will.”
She unlocked the door and turned on the light to reveal a huge cavern of a safe full of shelves with black boxes, cartons on the floor, two filing cabinets, and a greenish-purple portrait of Eric.
“He hated that picture, but couldn’t bring himself to throw it out. One never knew when the royal artist might come to visit, and he would have to haul it out and put it up on his wall again.”
She started a systematic search in one corner of the room and instructed Marsha to do the same at the other.
“The confidential papers are all at this end. You needn’t worry about what you may come across down there. That’s the ancient books and manuscripts section.”
It was almost 8:05 when they finished. Marsha was covered in dust, her fingertips dry, her face coated in dirt. She had stopped close to Jane, so close she could smell the Madame Rochas hairspray and hear her quick, even breathing.
“Nothing here,” Marsha said. “Do you need a rest?”
“No time for that.” Jane shook her head. “We’ve come this far and I’m stubborn. The trick is to think the way he did, to imagine what must have crossed his mind, why he copied the manuscript for himself.”
“Had he felt threatened, what would he have done?”
“Threatened?”
“Maybe if he thought he was in some danger…”
“You don’t imagine Mr. Sandwell was suspecting Mr. Burnett?”
“I don’t think so.” Peter’s face soft in the moonlight, his long eyelashes fluttering in sleep. “But he may have.”
Jane stared at the green portrait.
“He trusted Mr. Burnett. The man most likely to succeed him. Never believed in leaving the firm to the family. Funny. He thought the children, though grown, would never forgive him. Nasty business, this.”
Marsha put a hand on her shoulder. The brown cloth felt cool to the touch, smooth like an eggshell, and very still.
Suddenly Jane straightened up, then ran down the corridor, the three flights of stairs, back to Eric’s office. She shouted something as she took off, but Marsha hadn’t understood. She flung the door open to Eric’s office and ran inside. Marsha followed, but stopped in the doorway and waited till Jane was ready to talk to her. The other woman was ly
ing on the floor, tugging at a tiny handle on the surface of the wood under the main bookcase in the room.
Slowly, a long narrow drawer appeared.
“It’s where he kept his personal letters…hadn’t had many of these in the last several years. Some pictures…” As Marsha came closer Jane shielded the contents with her body. “Please, these are personal.”
“I’m sorry.” Marsha backed away.
“Too late for that. Too damned late.” Jane wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve, pulled out a small sheaf of papers, and looked at them.
“Here,” she said. “Not everything you’re after, but some of it. Here, Marsha, for God’s sake do him justice.”
Jane handed over the sheaf of papers.
For a moment Marsha hesitated. Now the chase was over, was she still sure she wanted to read what was written here?
Then she glanced down at the top of the page of the faint but readable Xerox: “Untitled, by X.” And she knew she had no choice.
Twenty-Five
THREE CALLS LATER and Marsha was still not picking up the phone. Judith had pleaded with the receptionist at Green’s and succeeded in having her go to Marsha’s room. Later, she had convinced the bell captain that her friend was an occasional epileptic and persuaded him to check whether she was lying unconscious on the floor or had fainted in her bed. The dreadful truth was that Marsha had not returned to her room all night.
At 11:30 p.m., Toronto time, 4:30 a.m. in London, Marsha should have been in bed. Judith prowled around the house pondering the possibilities. The people who had kidnapped her children would have little hope of blackmailing Marsha into submission. But they might harm her directly. She would not allow herself to imagine that Marsha might even now be dead. She had to marshal whatever strength she still possessed to find a way to help Marsha, at least warn her.
Judith peered through the narrow window next to the door. The street was dark and still, as it had been last night. The amber light of the streetlamp glinted off the tops of cars parked across the street.
To the right of the door, the box of flowers had been left unattended. David. She had pretended she was busy, already late for appointments each time he had called. They had warned her not to talk to her “friend.”
She had been too distraught to respond to the hurt in his voice.
Now she opened the door just wide enough to reach the tall box and draw it inside. She opened it: twelve red roses surrounded by flat green fern. The card said, “Thinking of you, David.”
Gently, Judith lifted them out of the box. Their heads drooped, the petals had started to brown. She found an old vase in the kitchen, filled it with water and left it on the coffee table in the living room looking forlorn.
David. If only she could talk to David, he would know how to reach Marsha, perhaps even how to protect her.
She ran upstairs. In the dark, she changed into a black sweater and jeans, pulled on black socks and Anne’s black ballet slippers, tied her hair into a navy blue scarf she hadn’t worn in years, found some dark-brown summer make-up by feeling her way around the unfamiliar summer-holidays drawer, and spread it on her face. Her black gloves were in the hall closet.
She turned off the light in the living room and waited for her eyes to become accustomed to complete darkness.
Once more she checked that all the blinds were down, the curtains drawn, then she pinned a towel to the top of the little window by the door. No one could see in, now.
She checked the children were asleep in her bed, their even breathing the only sound in the house, then tiptoed to the bathroom and shut the door behind her. The window led to a ledge that had once shadowed a back porch.
Very quietly she squeezed out the window and onto the ledge. She listened. Again, the baby was crying across the street. In the distance, the steady hum of traffic. Softly she dropped into the neighbor’s flowerbed. Her feet sank into the mud. The dachshund barked, half-heartedly, for a minute—more like a complaint than an attempt to wake his owners—then stopped.
Judith walked around the back of the neighbor’s house, through the patch of early grass, over the low picket fence and into the next yard, and the next, circumnavigating electric barbeques, climbing over sandboxes and wooden fences, working around the elevated swimming pool four houses down. She climbed six sets of link fences and a hedge, and thanked her good luck she had not met another dog before she reached the end of the street. No one watching her house could have seen her. Waiting for two cars to pass, she climbed over the last fence—this one of stylish wrought iron with useful gaps for her toes.
She crossed over into Sibelius Park, where the dogs barked, but not particularly at her. They wagged their tails as she made her way to the phone booth under the big Norway maple. With its door open, the booth was dark. She didn’t risk shutting the door and dialed by counting the numbers, glad she had memorized them well.
“David?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” came the sleepy reply. Thank God he’s home.
“It’s Judith. I have to see you right away.”
“Judith!” Suddenly he sounded cheerful and wide awake. “I’m so glad you called. I couldn’t imagine what I’d…”
“Can you please come and meet me in Sibelius Park, now. The telephone booth.”
“Anywhere you say, Judith, but can’t it wait till tomorrow? I’ve had a lousy day and…”
“No it can’t. Please come now.”
“If you say so… I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Fine,” Judith said and hung up. She wasn’t going to waste precious time explaining on the phone. She was already risking too much by calling him.
The expedition through the neighbors’ back yards had lasted fifteen minutes. Now she couldn’t return to the house before David came. Judith walked around the park, across the street and to the corner of Brunswick. From here she could see the cars parked on the street, but she couldn’t see her house. A man and a woman strolled by on the other side of the park, laughing and talking. They didn’t notice her, or if they did, they paid no attention. She stood in the shadow of the big Norway maple and waited. No cars stopped on Brunswick. At this time of night there wasn’t much traffic in the neighborhood.
She waited.
One car drove by, its radio blaring country music. Two men walked past her house; neither stopped.
In one of the parked cars near the house there was a flicker of light, perhaps somebody striking a match. She was too far away to identify the make of car: something long with a slanting back. She was almost relieved to be able to focus on the car as the enemy. Already certain they were watching the house, now she thought she knew where they were.
It was half an hour since she had called David and her hands and her feet were numb from the cold. She snuggled closer to the tree.
Another car came up Brunswick. It slowed as it drew parallel with the house, crawling by so slowly she thought it was going to stop. But it speeded up again and headed in her direction. Once it rounded the corner, it slowed again, stopped, the door opened on the passenger side. It was David. She recognized him only after he turned to lean back into the car, the door still open. He said something to the other person, shut the door quietly and began to walk into the park. The car moved toward her.
Judith could see into the driver’s side as it passed. For a second the light from the street lamp caught the driver’s face. She recognized it instantly—the friendly, rumpled face of the man she had seen in the rooftop lounge of the Park Plaza when she drank martinis with Max Grafstein; the man she had seen at La Guardia; she was sure he had also been at George’s funeral.
Oh, David.
The car crawled up Brunswick toward Dupont, pulled up at the curb before the main street, turned off its lights.
David was walking through the park, his hands in his pockets, kicking at something in his path, casual, as though he was out for a late-night stroll. He approached the telephone booth, walked around it, looked inside
leaning forward from the waist with a motion of exaggerated interest, then turned and made for the closest park bench and wandered around that too before strolling back toward the swings. Judith watched him as though she was seeing him for the first time.
He had known where she went the day she had tracked the witnesses. She had thought then he’d had her trailed, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it. And she had been under surveillance before then. That man could even have been on the plane to New York. Had he planted the green-ink note on her seat? And David had seemed so surprised when she showed it to him.
David.
Judith rubbed her hands up and down her arms for warmth as she walked over to the playground.
David was sitting on one of the swings, swaying back and forth, his head almost touching the horizontal bar. He jumped up when he saw Judith approaching and strode quickly toward her, his arms encircling her shoulders. Her face brushed against the rough cloth of his jacket. She swallowed hard.
“Judith,” he whispered, his hands on her shoulders still. He stepped back from her and looked into her face. “Will you please tell me what’s happening. What’s wrong?”
She composed her face into a welcoming smile.
“Wrong?” she asked ingenuously. “Why should anything be wrong?”
“You called me down here in the middle of the night…you wanted to see me urgently…didn’t you?”
“I did want to see you. Of course I wanted to see you. I haven’t talked to you since you left in such a hurry you didn’t even collect your socks.”
Was he going to tell her about the other man in the car?
“But why now?” He was peering into her face. “There must be some reason… And why here? There’s something the matter, isn’t there? You’re scared? You think your house is being watched? For God’s sake tell me what’s going on.”
