by Anne Perry
Death in Focus is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical persons appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogue concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Anne Perry
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Headline Publishing Group, London, in 2019.
ISBN 9780525620983
Ebook ISBN 9780525620990
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Victoria Allen
Cover images: Richard Jenkins (woman), harmpeti/iStock/Getty Images Plus (camera); PeopleImages/iStock/Getty Images Plus (camera straps), RICOWde/Moment (Brandenburg Gate)
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Dedication
By Anne Perry
About the Author
CHAPTER
1
1933
Elena narrowed her eyes against the dazzling sunlight reflected off the sea. It was warm in the late May morning, the light so much softer here in Amalfi than it would have been at home, on the English coast. Brilliant sprays of bougainvillea arched against the sky, burning purples and magentas, vibrant with color but without perfume. They covered parts of the ancient walls; old, mellow stone houses; and flights of stairs down toward the whispering sea. There were glimpses of mosaic pavement, two thousand years old, and children playing marbles. Above them seagulls hovered on the wind, looking for scraps.
Elena was staring at a woman farther down the steep hill. She wore a scarlet dress and was dancing by herself, within her own imagination, perhaps lost in time in this exquisite town on the edge of the Mediterranean, which had lured the Caesars from the wealth and intrigue of Rome to dally here.
“Do you suppose she is real?” a man’s voice asked gently behind Elena, on the edge between pleasure and laughter. “Or could she be a figment of a fevered imagination?”
She turned to look at him. He was noticeably taller than she, and the sun caught the auburn lights in his thick hair. His face was in shadow, but she could see the outline of it, his strong bones.
“Oh, she’s real,” she replied with a wide smile. “Should I be sorry? Would a vision be better?”
“Only for a little while. Reality always comes back. If it didn’t, you’d be considered mad.”
“Oh dear,” she said, keeping a straight face with some difficulty. “And I thought dancing in a red dress was the ultimate sanity.”
He shrugged. “An old woman with a bag of onions would be more interesting than most of the delegates at the economics conference I’m attending!”
Elena laughed outright. “I will tell Margot you said that!”
“Margot? Is that her name?”
“A woman, dancing alone in a red dress? That could only be my sister Margot!” She meant both the implied praise and the exasperation, and yet fleetingly she wished that the figure could have been her.
The man looked startled, as if unsure for a moment whether to believe her or not.
She saw it and laughed again. “Really.”
Margot was her older sister, who had come to this very tedious conference on a whim. She was bored, and she had wanted to go to Amalfi anyway, so she had offered to accompany Elena, who was to photograph the delegates. “It will be more fun to go together,” Margot had insisted. “You can’t take photographs all the time,” she had added in the slightly disparaging way she always used when speaking of Elena’s photography.
For Margot, Elena’s photography was something to do and a way to make a moderate living, but she also knew it was a passion that she herself did not understand.
Elena could not argue. Margot could usually read her too well, at least when it came to uncomfortable things like self-protecting lies. Perhaps because she was four years older.
And of course Margot knew about Aiden Strother. Not all of it. Nobody but Elena knew that, although no doubt others had guessed. Elena had started out after university in a high position in the Foreign Office, due not only to her excellent academic record, but in large part to her father’s position over the years as British ambassador in several of the most important cities in Europe: Berlin, Paris, and Madrid in particular.
Elena had fallen in love with Aiden while working for him. It had been easy to do. He was charming, handsome in a wry, good-humored way, and clever. Very clever. He fooled them all utterly, even Elena. She was too in love to accept the signs, which in hindsight she now saw quite clearly. He had betrayed them all, and she had been stupid enough to help him, albeit unwittingly. Looking back, she burned with shame at her own stupidity. The only good thing was that nobody thought her guilty of complicity, only of being young and incredibly naïve.
All the same, she had been asked to leave, to the acute shame and embarrassment of her father, Charles. He had felt that, of his two daughters, she was the one to follow in his footsteps, perhaps rise as high as a woman could in the Foreign Office. Elena’s brief enchantment with Aiden was still an obstacle between her and her father. She was guilty of gross stupidity and had not denied it. It still hurt when anyone chose to mention it, not out of longing for a love lost—or even an illusion of it—but because she had been stupid and had let everyone down, especially herself.
Charles had never quite understood his elder daughter, Margot, though he had always adored and admired her. Everyone felt the consuming grief that had smothered her life when her husband of one week had been killed in the last month of the war.
Now, alone in the square below, Margot had stopped dancing and was beginning to walk slowly up the steps toward Elena and the young man, every now and again lost to sight by a bend in the walls or an overexuberant bower of colored bracts.
“Don’t tell me she’s an economist?” The young man spoke again, amusement still in his voice, but quieter, as if he were aware of her momentary emotional absence. Fifteen y
ears after the war, everyone still had their griefs: loss of someone, something, a hope or an innocence, if not more. And fear of the future. It was in the air, in the music, the humor, even the exquisite, now fading light.
“Certainly not.” Elena kept the lift in her voice with an effort. “And please don’t ask me if I am.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He held out his hand. “Ian Newton. Economic journalist. Sometimes.”
She took it. It was strong and warm, holding hers firmly. “Elena Standish. Photographer. Sometimes.”
“How do you do?” he replied, and then let go of her hand.
“And that is my sister, Margot Driscoll,” Elena said.
“Not Standish…she’s here with her husband?”
“Margot is a widow. Her husband, Paul, was killed in the war.”
Ian Newton nodded. Of course…This was a situation encountered every day, even now. He looked over to Margot, destined to dance alone in a world populated by superfluous women.
“Will you and Mrs. Driscoll dine with me tonight?”
“I’d like that,” Elena answered for both of them. “Thank you. We’re staying at the Santa Catalina.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Certainly. I followed you here.”
She did not know whether to believe him, but it was, surprisingly, a nice idea. “Eight o’clock? In the dining room?” she suggested.
“I’ll be waiting for you by the door,” he replied, then turned and walked away up the hill easily, straight-backed.
The next moment, Margot appeared on the steps from the square. She was as unlike Elena as sisters could be. Margot had dark eyes and hair like black silk. She was lean and elegant, no matter what she wore. Elena was the same height; she had a certain grace, but she could not match Margot’s. Her eyes were quite ordinary blue, and her hair was nearly blond. She felt insipid beside Margot’s drama.
“Daydreaming again?” Margot asked, exasperation thinly veiled in her voice. She hardly ever forgot her four years’ seniority. “If you want to be a serious photographer, you’ll have to take some decent pictures, which you won’t do standing here.”
“I don’t know,” Elena said patiently. She had been nagged many times before, and although she knew it was true, she also knew Margot said it out of frustration and affection. “I got a couple of a woman dancing alone in the square below, in a scarlet dress. A little crazy, but a nice study.”
Temper flashed in Margot’s eyes for an instant, and then vanished again. “I’ll have them, please.”
“Don’t be daft!” Elena said impatiently. “I’m not wasting film on you. I just like watching you enjoy yourself.” It was the truth.
Margot put her arm around Elena and silently they walked up the hill, toward the hotel.
* * *
—
After lunch, Elena went out to see if she could get any pictures that captured the beauty of Amalfi. The town was very old and had once been one of the biggest ports in the Mediterranean. There was an unfailing permanence about it that was an ironic backdrop to the frenetic happiness of the people holidaying, escaping reality for a brief season. The clinging grayness of the Depression melted in the sun here. The American music, with its haunting tunes and its clever, bittersweet words, emanated from the bars, encapsulating the emotions perfectly. In her imagination she danced to it in the arms of the young man whose hair was almost auburn in the sun.
But what picture would show the fragility of this place, the beauty that haunted it? You knew it, even as it wrapped its warmth around you. She had seen life-changing photographs of the faces of hunger and hopelessness, figures struggling against the overwhelming, and they had moved her to tears. But what could capture this? She really needed Vesuvius in the background, the sleeping disaster that hovered over Naples and could be seen on the skyline of every picture. It had been nearly two thousand years since it had buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in fire and gas and burning lava. But it was waiting!
She imagined a dragonfly in the sun. Something that lives exquisitely, for just a few days. She needed a face that would mirror that, except with a knowledge of its own briefness. There must be one, if she were imaginative enough to recognize it. How could the camera show in black and white, light and shadow, all the brilliance and nuance of color?
That was why she had not photographed Margot dressed in red, dancing by herself. It needed the splash of color to say what she meant. A woman dressed bravely in scarlet, dancing alone. It was the perfect image of a million women in Britain—nearly two million, actually. They were called “surplus.” That meant “surplus to requirements,” because there were no men for them to marry. Elena was another of them.
But maybe that was better than being locked in the arms of someone who marched to a different tune.
* * *
—
In the slanted light of the lowering sun, Elena saw exactly the picture she wanted to take. A young woman, younger than herself, perhaps twenty, was standing half-facing the light. The light was soft, almost gilded, and it touched her gently, catching her youth, the totally unlined face. She had a mane of tawny-colored hair, and the light reflected in her pale, hazel eyes. All the lines around her were straight, angular, classical. Only the smoke from her cigarette curled up in front of her, vague and wandering, but she did not see it.
Elena had her Leica out of her camera bag and found the focus, steadied a moment, then took the picture.
The girl heard the faint click of the shutter and turned. The moment was gone.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Elena apologized. “You’re lovely, and you fit the scene so perfectly…”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t care.” She gave a half smile and walked away.
* * *
—
Elena was still thinking about that picture when she went up to the room she shared with Margot. It was time to change for dinner. She was looking forward to dining with Ian Newton, more than she had with anyone for quite a while. Margot was ready for the evening. She had changed the red dress for a sequined gown in purple. It clung to her outrageously, and yet it was flattering. On someone else, it might have been vulgar, but she was so slender that it suggested her shape rather than revealed it. She looked gorgeous, and she was clearly aware of it, but then Margot always was.
“Where have you been?” she asked as Elena came in. “There can’t possibly be an economist all that interesting.”
“I got a picture of a girl in the fading light, which could be really good. The shadows caught and heightened the lines of her face,” Elena replied. “For a moment, she was truly beautiful…and young…and hopeless. It was as if she could see time rushing by in front of her, disappearing even as she put her hand out to touch it.”
“And so it is,” Margot said briskly. “We’ll be late for dinner if you don’t get a move on.”
Ten minutes later, Elena was out of the bathroom, washed and changed, her hair brushed and her face lightly made up, no jewelry but the ring she always wore on her right hand.
Margot looked at her critically. “For heaven’s sake, Elena! Everything about that blue dress says ‘stick in the mud’! ‘Don’t challenge me,’ it says. ‘I’m a watcher, not a player. I’m safe, don’t disturb me.’ ” Margot walked right up to her. “You could be buried in it, and no one would be afraid you were still alive!”
“That’s unkind,” Elena protested.
“It’s true. You’d look about twelve if you didn’t have such a bosom. Take my black dress; I haven’t worn it yet. And be quick.”
“It won’t fit me,” Elena protested. She did not mean that. It would fit her rather too well.
“Oh, shut up complaining and just do it!” Margot ordered. “It’ll wake a few people up! You might even get a decent photograph. I take it you won’t be apart
from your camera for the evening?”
Elena obeyed. She knew Margot was right about the blue dress. It was safe; she’d been trying to be safe ever since Aiden. It was obliquely tactful of Margot not to say that. Another few minutes and she would have.
They went downstairs and into the dining room. Elena felt self-conscious in Margot’s dress and was aware of several heads turning, but whether any were staring at her she was uncertain. Margot’s purple was just as startling.
Ian was waiting by the door, as he’d said he would be. He had his back half toward them, talking to a dark-haired man about his own age, tall and pleasant-looking. It was he who saw Elena and his eyes widened.
Ian turned and, recognizing her, came toward them. “You look marvelous,” he said simply. “And you must be Margot.” He did not mention having seen her dancing in the red dress. He held out his hand. “Ian Newton, how do you do?”
Margot smiled. “Margot Driscoll. How do you do, Mr. Newton?”
Ian turned to the other man. “Walter Mann, Margot Driscoll and Elena Standish.”
Walter Mann took a moment or two to regain his composure.
Elena was surprised and amused. Was the black dress so breathtaking? “How do you do, Mr. Mann?”
“Miss Standish,” he replied, scrambling to catch up with the moment. He had level brows and very dark eyes. He turned to Margot. “Miss Driscoll.”
“Mrs. Driscoll,” Margot corrected, but with a smile. Widows of Margot’s age were too many to count.
Ian took Elena’s arm very lightly. “I have taken the liberty of reserving a table for four.” He looked at Elena and Margot. “I hope that’s all right?”
