Best Kept Secret

by Jeffrey Archer

  ‘Or mine, but when he spoke about transport. . .’

  ‘Sounds riveting.’

  ‘It was,’ said Grace, ignoring her sarcasm, ‘especially when he touched on the future of shipping, now that the British Overseas Airways Corporation is planning to start a regular air service from London to New York.’

  Emma was suddenly aware of why her sister had rung. ‘Any hope of getting a transcript of the lecture?’

  ‘You can do better than that. His next port of call is Bristol, so you can go along and hear him in person.’

  ‘Perhaps I could have a word with him after the lecture. There’s so much I’d like to ask him,’ said Emma.

  ‘Good idea, but if you do, be warned. Although he’s one of those rare men whose brain is bigger than his balls, he’s on his fourth wife, and there was no sign of her last night.’

  Emma laughed. ‘You’re so crude, sis, but thanks for the advice.’

  Harry took the train from Edinburgh to Manchester the following morning and, after addressing a small gathering in the city’s municipal library, agreed to take questions.

  The first was inevitably from a member of the press. They rarely announced themselves, and seemed to have little or no interest in his latest book. Today it was the turn of the Manchester Guardian.

  ‘How is Mrs Clifton?’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Harry replied cautiously.

  ‘Is it true you’re both living in the same house as Sir Giles Barrington?’

  ‘It’s quite a big house.’

  ‘Do you feel any resentment about the fact that Sir Giles got everything in his father’s will, and you got nothing?’

  ‘Certainly not. I got Emma, which is all I ever wanted.’

  That seemed to silence the journalist for a moment, allowing a member of the public the chance to jump in.

  ‘When will William Warwick get Chief Inspector Davenport’s job?’

  ‘Not in the next book,’ said Harry with a smile. ‘I can assure you of that.’

  ‘Is it true, Mr Clifton, that you’ve lost seven nannies in less than three years?’

  Manchester clearly had more than one newspaper.

  In the car on the way back to the station, Harry began to grumble about the press, although the Manchester rep pointed out that all the publicity didn’t seem to be harming his sales. But Harry knew that Emma was becoming concerned about the endless press attention, and the effect it might have on Sebastian once he started school.

  ‘Little boys can be so brutal,’ she’d reminded him.

  ‘Well, at least he won’t be thrashed for licking his porridge bowl,’ said Harry.

  Although Emma was a few minutes early, Mitchell was already seated in the alcove when she walked into the hotel lounge. He stood up the moment she joined him. The first thing she said, even before she sat down, was, ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Mitchell?’

  ‘No, thank you, Mrs Clifton.’ Mitchell, not a man for small talk, sat back down and opened his note book. ‘It seems the local authority has placed Jessica Smith—’

  ‘Smith?’ said Emma. ‘Why not Piotrovska, or even Barrington?’

  ‘Too easy to trace, would be my bet, and I suspect the coroner insisted on anonymity following the inquest. The local authority,’ he continued, ‘sent a Miss J. Smith to a Dr Barnardo’s home in Bridgwater.’

  ‘Why Bridgwater?’

  ‘Probably the nearest home that had a vacancy at the time.’

  ‘Is she still there?’

  ‘As far as I can make out, yes. But I’ve recently discovered that Barnardo’s is planning to send several of their girls to homes in Australia.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘It’s part of Australia’s immigration policy to pay ten pounds to assist young people’s passage to their country, and they’re particularly keen on girls.’

  ‘I would have thought they’d be more interested in boys.’

  ‘It seems they’ve already got enough of them,’ said Mitchell, displaying a rare grin.

  ‘Then we’d better visit Bridgwater as soon as possible.’

  ‘Hold on, Mrs Clifton. If you appear too enthusiastic, they might put two and two together and work out why you’re so interested in Miss J. Smith, and decide you and Mr Clifton aren’t suitable foster parents.’

  ‘But what reason could they possibly have to deny us?’

  ‘Your name for a start. Not to mention that you and Mr Clifton weren’t married when your son was born.’

  ‘So what do you recommend?’ asked Emma quietly.

  ‘Make an application through the usual channels. Don’t appear to be in a rush, and make it look as if they are taking the decisions.’

  ‘But how do we know they won’t turn us down anyway?’

  ‘You’ll have to nudge them in the right direction, won’t you, Mrs Clifton.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘When you fill in the application form, you’re asked to put down any preferences you might have. It saves everyone a lot of time and trouble. So if you make it clear that you’re looking for a girl of around five or six, as you already have a son who’s a little older, it should help narrow the field.’

  ‘Any other suggestions?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Mitchell. ‘Under religion, tick the box marked no preference.’

  ‘Why will that help?’

  ‘Because Miss Jessica Smith’s registration form states mother Jewish, father unknown.’

  3

  ‘HOW DID A LIMEY ever get the Silver Star?’ asked the immigration officer at Idlewild as he studied Harry’s entry visa.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Harry, thinking it might not be wise to tell him that the last time he’d set foot in New York he’d been arrested for murder.

  ‘Have a great time while you’re in the States.’ The officer shook Harry by the hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Harry, trying not to look surprised as he passed through immigration and followed the signs to the baggage claim area. As he waited for his suitcase to appear, he once again checked his arrival instructions. He was to be met by Viking’s chief publicist, who would accompany him to his hotel and brief him on his schedule. Whenever he visited a city in Britain, he was always accompanied by the local sales rep, so he wasn’t quite sure what a publicist was.

  After retrieving his old school trunk, Harry made his way towards customs. An officer asked him to open the trunk, made a cursory check, then chalked a large cross on the side before ushering him through. Harry walked under a huge semi-circular sign that declared Welcome to New York, above a beaming photograph of the mayor, William O’Dwyer.

  Once he emerged into the arrivals hall, he was greeted by a row of uniformed chauffeurs holding up name cards. He searched for ‘Clifton’ and, when he spotted it, smiled at the driver and said, ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Mr Clifton. I’m Charlie.’ He grabbed Harry’s heavy trunk as if it was a briefcase. ‘And this is your publicist, Natalie.’

  Harry turned to see a young woman who had been referred to on his instructions simply as ‘N. Redwood’. She was almost as tall as him, with fashionably cut blonde hair, blue eyes, and teeth straighter and whiter than any he’d ever seen, except for on a billboard advertising toothpaste. If that wasn’t enough, her head rested on an hourglass figure. Harry had never come across anything like Natalie in post-war, ration-book Britain.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Miss Redwood,’ he said, shaking her hand.

  ‘And it’s good to meet you, Harry,’ she replied. ‘Do call me Natalie,’ she added as they followed Charlie out of the concourse. ‘I’m a huge fan. I just love William Warwick, and have no doubt your latest book is going to be another winner.’

  Once they reached the kerb, Charlie opened the rear door of the longest limousine Harry had ever seen. Harry stood aside to allow Natalie to get in first.

  ‘Oh, I do love the English,’ she said as he climbed in beside her, and the limo join
ed a stream of traffic making its slow progress into New York. ‘First, we’ll be going to your hotel. I’ve booked you into the Pierre, where you have a suite on the eleventh floor. I’ve left just enough time in your schedule for you to freshen up before you join Mr Guinzburg for lunch at the Harvard Club. By the way, he’s looking forward to meeting you.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Henry. ‘He published my prison diaries, as well as the first William Warwick novel, so I’ve a lot to thank him for.’

  ‘And he’s invested a great deal of time and money to make sure Nothing Ventured gets on to the bestseller list, and he asked me to brief you fully on how we plan to go about that.’

  ‘Please do,’ said Harry as he glanced out of the window to enjoy sights he’d last seen from the back of a yellow prison bus that was taking him off to a jail cell rather than a suite at the Pierre Hotel.

  A hand touched his leg. ‘There’s a lot we have to cover before you see Mr Guinzburg.’ Natalie handed him a thick blue folder. ‘Let me start by explaining how we intend to go about getting your book on to the bestseller list, because it’s very different from the way you do things in England.’

  Harry opened the folder and tried to concentrate. He’d never before sat next to a woman who looked as if she’d been poured into her dress.

  ‘In America,’ Natalie continued, ‘you’ve only got three weeks to make sure your book hits the New York Times bestseller list. If you don’t make it into the top fifteen during that time, the bookstores will pack up their stock of Nothing Ventured and return them to the publisher.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ said Harry. ‘In England once a bookseller has placed an order, as far as the publisher is concerned the book is sold.’

  ‘You don’t offer bookstores a sale or return option?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Harry, shocked by the idea.

  ‘And is it also true that you still sell books without offering a discount?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to find that’s the other big difference over here, because if you do make it into the top fifteen, the cover price will automatically be halved, and your book will be moved to the back of the store.’

  ‘Why? Surely a bestseller should be prominently displayed at the front of the shop, even in the window, and certainly not be discounted.’

  ‘Not since the advertising boys discovered that if a customer comes in looking for a particular bestseller, and they have to go to the back of the store to find it, one in five customers buys two more books on their way to the sales counter, while one in three picks up another one.’

  ‘Clever, but I’m not sure that will ever catch on in England.’

  ‘I suspect it will only be a matter of time, but at least you’ll now appreciate why it’s so important to get your book on the list as quickly as possible, because once the price is halved, you’re likely to stay in the top fifteen for several weeks. In fact, it’s harder to get off the list than to get on. But if you fail, Nothing Ventured will have disappeared from the bookshelves a month today, and we will have lost a great deal of money.’

  ‘I get the message,’ said Harry as the limousine passed slowly over Brooklyn Bridge and he was reunited with yellow cabs and their cigar-stub-smoking drivers.

  ‘What makes it even tougher is that we have to visit seventeen different cities in twenty-one days.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be holding your hand throughout the trip,’ she said casually. ‘I usually stay in New York and allow a local publicist in each city to look after visiting authors, but not this time, because Mr Guinzburg insisted I wasn’t to leave your side.’ She lightly touched his leg again, before turning a page of the folder on her lap.

  Harry glanced at her, and she gave a coquettish smile. Was she flirting with him? No, that wasn’t possible. After all, they’d only just met.

  ‘I’ve already got you booked on to several of the major radio stations, including the Matt Jacobs Show, which has eleven million listeners every morning. No one’s more effective than Matt when it comes to moving books out of the stores.’

  Harry had several questions he would like to have asked, but Natalie was like a Winchester rifle, a bullet was fired every time you raised your head.

  ‘Be warned,’ she continued, not drawing breath, ‘most of the big shows won’t give you more than a few minutes – it’s not like your BBC. “In depth” is not a concept they understand. During that time remember to repeat the title of the book as often as possible.’

  Harry began to turn the pages of his tour schedule. Each day seemed to begin in a new city, where he would appear on an early-morning radio show, followed by countless broadcast and print interviews before dashing off to the airport.

  ‘Do all your authors get this kind of treatment?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Natalie, the hand back on the leg again. ‘Which brings me to the biggest problem we have with you.’

  ‘You have a problem with me?’

  ‘We sure do. Most of the interviewers will want to ask you about your time in prison, and how an Englishman came to win the Silver Star, but you must always switch the subject back to the book.’

  ‘In England, that would be considered rather vulgar.’

  ‘In America, vulgar is what gets you on to the bestseller list.’

  ‘But won’t the interviewers want to talk about the book?’

  ‘Harry, you must assume that none of them will have read it. A dozen new novels land on their desks every day, so you’ll be lucky if they’ve read more than the title. It’ll be a bonus if they even remember your name. They’ve only agreed to have you on their shows because you’re an ex-con who won the Silver Star, so let’s turn that to our advantage and plug the book like crazy,’ she was saying as the limousine drew up outside the Pierre Hotel.

  Harry wished he was back in England.

  The driver leapt out and opened the boot as a hotel porter walked across to the car. Natalie led Harry into the hotel and across the lobby to the reception desk, where all he had to do was show his passport and sign the registration form. Natalie appeared to have prepared the way of the Lord.

  ‘Welcome to the Pierre, Mr Clifton,’ said the desk clerk as he handed him a large key.

  ‘I’ll see you back here in the lobby –’ Natalie checked her watch – ‘in an hour. Then the limo will take you to the Harvard Club for your lunch with Mr Guinzburg.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Harry, and watched as she walked back across the lobby and disappeared through the revolving doors and out on to the street. He couldn’t help noticing that he wasn’t the only man whose eyes never left her.

  A porter accompanied him to the eleventh floor, showed him into his suite and explained how everything worked. Harry had never stayed in a hotel that had a bath and a shower. He decided to make notes so he could tell his mother all about it when he returned to Bristol. He thanked the porter, and parted with the only dollar he had.

  The first thing Harry did, even before unpacking, was to pick up the phone by the bed and place a person-to-person call to Emma.

  ‘I’ll call you back in around fifteen minutes, sir,’ said the overseas operator.

  Harry stayed too long in the shower, and once he had dried himself on the largest towel he’d ever seen, he had only just started to unpack when the phone rang.

  ‘Your overseas call is on the line, sir,’ said the operator. The next voice he heard was Emma’s.

  ‘Is that you, darling? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Sure can, honey,’ said Harry, smiling.

  ‘You sound like an American already. I can’t imagine what you’ll be like after three weeks.’

  ‘Ready to come back to Bristol would be my bet, especially if the book doesn’t get on to the bestseller list.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’

  ‘I may be coming home early.’

  ‘That sounds good to me. So where are you calling from?’

  ‘The Pier
re, and they’ve put me in the biggest hotel room I’ve ever seen. The bed could sleep four.’

  ‘Just make sure it only sleeps one.’

  ‘It’s got air-conditioning, and a radio in the bathroom. Mind you, I still haven’t worked out how to turn everything on. Or off.’

  ‘You should have taken Seb with you. He would have mastered it by now.’

  ‘Or taken it apart and left me to put it back together again. But how is the boy?’

  ‘He’s fine. In fact he seems more settled without a nanny.’

  ‘That’s a relief. And how’s your search for Miss J. Smith coming along?’

  ‘Slowly, but I’ve been asked to go for an interview at Dr Barnardo’s tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘That sounds promising.’

  ‘I’m meeting Mr Mitchell in the morning, so I know what to say and, perhaps more important, what not to say.’

  ‘You’ll be fine, Emma. Just remember it’s their responsibility to place children in good homes. My only worry is how Seb will react when he finds out what you’re up to.’

  ‘He already knows. I raised the subject with him last night just before he went to bed, and to my surprise he seemed to love the idea. But once you involve Seb, a separate problem always arises.’

  ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘He expects to have a say when it comes to who we pick. The good news is that he wants a sister.’

  ‘That could still be tricky if he takes against Miss J. Smith and sets his heart on someone else.’

  ‘I don’t know what we’ll do if that happens.’

  ‘We’ll just have to convince him somehow that Jessica was his choice.’

  ‘And how do you propose we do that?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Just remember not to underestimate him. If we do, it could easily backfire.’

  ‘Let’s talk about it when I get back,’ said Harry. ‘Must rush, darling, I have a lunch appointment with Harold Guinzburg.’

  ‘Give him my love, and remember, he’s another man you can’t afford to underestimate. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to ask him what happened to—’