In Their Footsteps & Thief of Hearts (25 page)

Anything to happen. So far, the evening had been a screaming bore. Daumier had made him a prisoner of his own hotel room. He’d watched two hours of telly, glanced through 230

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Paris Match,
and completed five crossword puzzles. What must I do to attract this assassin? he wondered. Send him an engraved invitation?

Sighing, he leaned back against the wall. “Is this the sort of thing you used to do, Wolf?” he murmured.

“A lot of waiting around. A lot of boredom,” said Richard.

“And every so often, a moment of abject terror.”

“What made you leave the business? The boredom or the terror?”

Richard paused. “The rootlessness.”

“Ah. The man longs for home and hearth.” Jordan smiled.

“So tell me, does my sister figure into the equation?”

“Beryl is…one of a kind.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“The answer is, I don’t know,” Richard admitted. He squared his shoulders to ease the tension in his muscles.

“Sometimes, it seems like the world’s worst possible match. Sure, I can put on a tuxedo, stand around swirling a snifter of brandy. But I don’t fool anyone, least of all myself. And certainly not Beryl.”

“You really think that’s what she needs? A fop in black tie?”

“I don’t know what she needs. Or what she wants. I know she probably thinks she’s in love. But how the devil can anyone know for certain, when things are so crazy?”

“You wait till things
aren’t
so crazy. Then you decide.”

“And live with the consequences.”

“You’re already lovers, aren’t you?” Richard looked at him in surprise. “Are you always so inquisitive about your sister’s love life?”

“I’m her closest male relative. And therefore responsible for defending her honor.” Jordan laughed softly.

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“Someday, Wolf, I may have to shoot you. That is, if I survive the night.”

They both laughed. And they settled back to wait.

At 1:00 a.m., they heard the faint click of a door closing in the hallway. Had someone just stepped out of the stairwell? Instantly Jordan snapped fully alert, his adrenaline kicking into overdrive. He whispered, “Did you hear—”

Richard was already rising to a crouch. Through the darkness, Jordan could sense the other man tensing for action. Where were Daumier’s agents? he wondered frantically. Were the two of them on their own?

A key grated slowly in the lock. Jordan froze, heart thundering, the sweat breaking out on his palms. The gun felt slippery in his grasp.

The door swung open; two figures slowly edged into the room. The first took aim at the bed. A single bullet was all the gunman managed to squeeze off before Richard flew at him sideways. The force of his assault sent both men thudding to the floor.

Jordan shoved his gun into the ribs of the second intruder and barked, “Freeze!”

To Jordan’s astonishment, the man didn’t freeze, but turned and fled from the room.

Jordan dashed after him into the hall, just in time to see the two French agents tackle the fugitive to the floor. They yanked him, kicking and squirming, back to his feet. In amazement, Jordan stared at the man.
“Anthony?”

“I’m bleeding!” spat Anthony Sutherland. “They broke my nose! I think they broke my nose!”

“Keep squealing, and they’ll break a lot more,” growled Richard.

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Jordan turned and saw Richard haul the gunman out of the room. He yanked his head back, so Jordan could see his face. “Take a good look. Recognize him?”

“Why, it’s my bogus attorney,” said Jordan. “M. Jarre.” Richard nodded and forced the balding Frenchman to the floor. “Now let’s find out his real name.”

“It’s extraordinary,” mused Reggie, “how very much you look like your mother.”

The butler had long since cleared away the coffee cups, and Helena had vanished upstairs to see to the guest room.

Beryl and Reggie sat alone together, enjoying a nip of brandy in his wood-paneled library. A fire crackled in the hearth—not for warmth on this July night, but for reassurance, the ancestral comfort of flames against the night, against the world’s evils.

Beryl cradled the brandy snifter in her hands and watched the reflection of firelight in the golden liquid.

She said, “When I remember her, it’s from a child’s point of view. So I remember only the things a child finds important. Her smile. The softness of her hands.”

“Yes, yes. That was Madeline.”

“I’ve been told she was quite enchanting.”

“She was,” said Reggie softly. “She was the loveliest, most extraordinary woman I’ve ever known….” Beryl looked up and saw that he was staring at the fire as though seeing, in its flames, the faces of old ghosts. She gave him a fond look. “Mother told me once that you were her oldest and dearest friend.”

“Did she?” Reggie smiled. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.

Did you know we played together, as children. In Cornwall…” He blinked and she thought she saw the faint
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gleam of tears on his lashes. “I was the first, you know,” he murmured. “Before Bernard. Before…” Sighing, he sank back in his chair. “But that was a long time ago.”

“You still think of her a great deal.”

“It’s difficult not to.” He drained his brandy glass. Unsteadily he poured another—his third. “Every time I look at you, I think, ‘There’s Madeline, come back to life.’And I remember how much, how very much I miss her—” Suddenly he stiffened and glanced at the doorway. Helena was standing there, wearily shaking her head.

“You’ve had more than enough for tonight, Reggie.”

“It’s only my third.”

“And how many more will come after that one?”

“Bloody few, if you have your way.” Helena came into the room and took his arm. “Come, darling. You’ve kept Beryl up long enough. It’s time for bed.”

“It’s only one o’clock.”

“Beryl’s tired. And you should be considerate.” Reggie looked at their guest. “Oh. Oh, yes, perhaps you’re right.” He rose to his feet and moved on unsteady legs toward Beryl. She turned her face as he bent over to plant a kiss on her cheek. It was a wet, sloppy kiss, heavy with the smell of brandy, and she had to suppress the urge to pull away. He straightened, and once again she saw the sheen of tears in his eyes. “Good night, dear,” he murmured. “You’ll be perfectly safe with us.” With a sense of pity, Beryl watched the old man shuffle out of the library.

“He’s simply not able to tolerate spirits the way he used to,” said Helena, sighing. “The years pass, you know, and he forgets that things change. Including his capacity for 234

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liquor.” She gave Beryl a rueful smile. “I do hope he didn’t bore you too much.”

“Not at all. We talked about Mother. He said I remind him of her.”

Helena nodded. “Yes, you do resemble her. Of course, I didn’t know her nearly as well as Reggie did.” She sat down on the armrest of a chair. “I remember the first time I met her. It was at my wedding. Madeline and Bernard were there, practically newlyweds themselves. You could see it, just by the way they looked at each other. Quite a lovely couple…” Helena picked up Reggie’s brandy snifter, tidied the table. “When we met again in Paris, it was fifteen years later, and she hadn’t aged a bit. It was eerie how unchanged she was. When all the rest of us felt so acutely the passage of time.”

There was a long pause. Then Beryl asked, “Did she have a lover?” The question was asked softly, so softly it was almost swallowed in the gloom of that library.

The silence that followed stretched on so long, she thought perhaps her words had gone unnoticed. But then Helena said, “It shouldn’t surprise you, should it?

Madeline had that magic about her. That certain something the rest of us seem to lack. It’s a matter of luck, you know. It’s not something one achieves through effort or study. It’s in one’s genes. An inheritance, like a silver spoon in one’s mouth.”

“My mother wasn’t born with a silver spoon.”

“She didn’t need one. She had that magic, instead.” Abruptly Helena turned to leave. But in the doorway she caught herself and looked back at Beryl with a smile. “I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.” Beryl nodded. “Good night, Helena.”
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For a long time, Beryl frowned at the empty doorway and listened to Helena ascend the stairs. She went to the hearth and stared at the dying embers. She thought of her mother, wondered if Madeline had ever stood here, in this library, in this house.Yes, of course she would have. Reggie was her oldest friend. They would have visited back and forth, the two couples, as they had in England years before….

Before Helena had insisted Reggie accept the Paris post.

The question suddenly came to her:
Why?
Was there some unspoken reason the Vanes had suddenly left England? Helena had grown up in Buckinghamshire; her ancestral home was a mere two miles from Chetwynd.

Surely it must have been difficult to pack up her household, to leave behind all that was familiar, and move to a city where she couldn’t even speak the language. One didn’t blithely make such a move.

Unless one was fleeing
from
something.

Beryl’s head lifted. She found herself staring at a ridiculous statuette on the mantelpiece—a fat little man holding a rifle. It had the inscription: “Reggie Vane—most likely to shoot his own foot. Tremont Gun Club.” Lined up beside it were various knickknacks from Reggie’s past—a soccer medal, an old photo of a cricket team, a petrified frog.

Judging by the items on display, this must be Reggie’s private abode, the room to which he retreated from the world. The room that would hold his secrets.

She scanned the photos, and nowhere did she see a picture of Helena. Nor was there one on the desk or on the bookshelves—a fact she thought odd, for she remembered her father’s library and all the snapshots of Madeline he 236

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kept so conspicuously in view. She moved to Reggie’s cherry desk and quietly began to open the drawers. The first revealed the expected clutter of pens and paper clips.

She opened the second and saw only a sheaf of cream-colored stationery and an address book. She closed the drawers and began to circle the room, thinking,
This is
where you keep your most private treasures. The memories
you hide, even from your wife….

Her gaze came to rest on the leather footstool. It appeared to be a matched set with the easy chair, but it had been moved out of position, and instead sat at the side of the chair where it served no purpose…except to stand on.

She glanced directly up at the mahogany breakfront that stood against the wall. The shelves were filled with antique books, protected behind glass doors. The cabinet was at least eight feet tall, and on top was a matched pair of china bowls.

Beryl pushed the footstool over to the breakfront, climbed onto the stool, and reached up to retrieve the first bowl. It was empty and coated in dust. So was the second bowl. But as she slid the bowl back onto the cabinet, she met resistance. She reached back as far as she could, and her fingers met something flat and leathery. She grasped the edge and pulled it off the cabinet.

It was a photo album.

She took it over to the hearth and sat down by the dying fire. There she opened the cover to the first picture in the album. It was of a laughing, black-haired girl. The girl was twelve years old perhaps, and sitting on a swing, her skirt bunched up hoydenishly around her thighs, her bare legs dangling. On the next page was another photo—the same girl, a bit older now, dressed in May Day finery, flowers
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woven into her tangled hair. More photos, all of the black-haired girl: clad in waders and fishing in a stream, waving from a car, hanging upside down from a tree branch. And last—a wedding photo. It had been torn jaggedly in two, so that the groom was missing, and only the bride remained.

For an eternity, Beryl stared at the face she knew from her childhood—the face so very much like her own. She touched the smiling lips, traced the upswept tendrils of black hair. She thought about how it must be for a man to so desperately love a woman. To lose her to another man.

To flee from those memories of her to a foreign city, only to have her reappear in that same city. And to find that, even fifteen years later, the feelings remain, and there is nothing you can do to ease your anguish, nothing at all…so long as she is alive.

Beryl shut the album and went to the telephone. She didn’t know how to reach Richard, so she dialed Daumier’s number instead and was greeted by a recorded message, intoned in businesslike French.

After the beep, she said, “Claude, it’s Beryl. I have to speak to you at once. I think I’ve found some new evidence. Please, come get me! As soon as you—” She stopped, her hand suddenly frozen on the receiver. What was that click on the line?

She listened for other sounds, but heard only the pounding of her own heart—and silence. She hung up. The extension, she thought. Someone had been listening on the extension.

Quickly she rose to her feet.
I can’t stay here, not in this
house. Not under this roof. Not when I know he could have
been the one.

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Clutching the album firmly in her arms, she left Reggie’s library and hurried across the foyer. After disarming the security system, she stepped out the front door.

Outside, it was a cool night, the sky clear, the stars faintly twinkling against the distant haze of city light. She looked across the stone courtyard and saw that the iron gates were closed—no doubt locked, as well. As a bank executive in Paris, Reggie was a prime target for terrorists; he would install the very best security for his home.

I have to get out of here,
she determined.
Without
anyone knowing.

And then what? Thumb a ride to the nearest police station? Daumier’s flat?
Anywhere but here.