Luxford didn’t seem pleased that the women had apparently settled in for the duration of the interview. He said, “This is a personal matter. It’s extremely confidential. I’m not willing—”
David St. James interposed. “These are the three people in the country least likely to sell your story to the media, Dennis. I dare say they don’t even know who you are.” And then to the others, “Do you, in fact? Never mind. I can see by your faces that you don’t.”
He went on to explain. He and Luxford, he said, had been together at Lancaster University, adversaries in the debating society and boozing mates after exams. They’d stayed in touch through the years since leaving the University, keeping tabs on each other’s successful career. “Dennis is a writer,” David said. “Damned finest writer I’ve ever known, truth to tell.” He’d come to London to make his mark in literature, David told them, but he’d got sidetracked into journalism and decided to stay there. He started out as a political correspondent for the Guardian. Now he was an editor.
“Of the Guardian?” St. James asked.
“The Source.” Luxford said it with a look that directed a challenge towards any of them who might choose to comment. To begin at the Guardian and end up at The Source might not exactly be considered a celestial ascent in one’s fortunes, but Luxford, it seemed, was not about to be judged.
David appeared oblivious of the look. He said with a nod in Luxford’s direction, “He took over The Source six months ago, Simon, after making the Globe number one. He was the youngest editor in Fleet Street history when he ran the Globe, not to mention the most successful. Which he still is. Even the Sunday Times admitted that. They did quite a spread on him in the magazine. When was that, Dennis?”
Luxford ignored the question and seemed to chafe under David’s encomium. He appeared to ruminate for a moment. “No,” he finally said to David. “This isn’t going to work. There’s too much at risk. I shouldn’t have come.”
Deborah stirred. “We’ll leave,” she said. “Helen. Shall we?”
But St. James was studying the newspaper editor, and something about him—was it a smooth ability to manipulate the situation?—made him say, “Helen works with me, Mr. Luxford. If you need my help, you’re going to end up with hers as well, even if that doesn’t appear to be the case at the moment. And I do share most of my work with my wife.”
“That’s it, then,” Luxford said and made a movement to depart.
David St. James waved him back. “You’re going to have to trust someone,” he said and went on to his brother. “The problem is, we’ve got a Tory career on the line.”
“I should think that would please you,” St. James said to Luxford. “The Source has never made a secret of its political leaning.”
“This is a rather special Tory career,” David said. “Tell him, Dennis. He can help you. It’s either him or a stranger who might not have Simon’s ethics. Or you can choose the police. And you know where that leads.”
As Dennis Luxford was considering his options, Cotter brought in the coffee and chocolate cake. He set the large tray on the coffee table in front of Helen and looked back to the door where a small long-haired dachshund hopefully watched the activity. “You,” Cotter said. “Peach. Didn’t I tell you to stop in the kitchen?” The dog wagged her tail and barked. “Likes chocolate, she does,” Cotter said in explanation.
“Likes everything,” Deborah amended. She moved to take cups from Helen as she poured the coffee. Cotter scooped the dog up and headed again towards the back of the house. In a moment they heard him climbing the stairs. “Milk and sugar, Mr. Luxford?” Deborah asked amiably, as if Luxford hadn’t been questioning her integrity a moment earlier. “Will you have some cake as well? My father made it. He’s an extraordinary cook.”
Luxford looked as if he knew the decision to break bread with them—or in this case cake—would be crossing a line he would prefer not to cross. Still, he accepted. He moved to the sofa, where he sat on the edge and brooded while Deborah and Helen continued passing round the cake and the coffee. He finally spoke. “All right. I can see that I have little choice.” He reached into his blazer’s inner pocket, revealing the paisley braces that had impressed Cotter. He brought out an envelope, which he passed to St. James with the explanation that it had come to him in the afternoon’s post.
St. James studied the envelope before removing its contents. He read the brief message. He went at once to his desk and rooted in the side drawer for a moment, bringing forth a plastic jacket into which he slipped the single piece of paper. He said, “Has anyone else handled this?”
“Only you and I.”
“Good.” St. James passed the plastic jacket to Helen. He said to Luxford, “Charlotte. Who is she? And who’s your firstborn child?”
“She is. Charlotte. She’s been kidnapped.”
“You’ve not phoned the authorities?”
“We can’t have the police, if that’s who you mean. We can’t run the risk of any publicity.”
“There won’t be publicity,” St. James pointed out. “Procedure calls for keeping kidnappings under wraps. You know that well enough, don’t you? I’d assume a newspaperman—”
“I know well enough that the police keep the newspapers up-to-date with daily briefings when they’re dealing with abduction,” Luxford said sharply. “With all parties understanding that nothing goes into print until the victim’s returned to the family.”
“So why’s that a problem, Mr. Luxford?”
“Because of who the victim is.”
“Your daughter.”
“Yes. And the daughter of Eve Bowen.”
Helen met St. James’s eyes as she passed the kidnapper’s letter back to him. He saw her eyebrows rise. Deborah was saying, “Eve Bowen? I’m not entirely familiar…. Simon? Do you know…?”
Eve Bowen, David told her, was the Undersecretary of State for the Home Office, one of the Conservative Government’s most high-profile Junior Ministers. She was an up-and-comer who, with astonishing rapidity, was climbing the ladder to become the country’s next Margaret Thatcher. She was the Member of Parliament for Marylebone, and it was from Marylebone that her daughter had apparently disappeared.
“When I got this in the post”—Luxford gestured to the letter—“I phoned Eve at once. Frankly, I thought it was a bluff. I thought someone had somehow linked our names. I thought someone was trying to get me to react in a way that would betray the past relationship between us. I thought someone was in need of some sort of proof that Eve and I are connected through Charlotte, and the pretence that Charlotte had been abducted—plus my reaction to that pretence—would be the proof required.”
“Why would anyone want proof of your connection to Eve Bowen?” Helen asked.
“In order to sell the story to the media. I don’t need to tell you how it would play out in the press if it became known that I—of all people—am the father of Eve Bowen’s only child. Especially after the way she’s…” He seemed to search for a euphemism that eluded him.
St. James concluded the thought without resorting to a more pleasant way of expressing it. “The way she’s used the child’s illegitimacy to benefit her own ends in the past?”
“She’s made it her standard,” Luxford admitted. “You can imagine the field day the press would have with her once it was known that Eve Bowen’s great crime of passion involved someone like me.”
St. James could well imagine. The Marylebone MP had long portrayed herself as a fallen woman who’d made restitution, who’d eschewed an abortion as a solution reflecting the erosion of values in society, who was doing the right thing by her bastard child. The fact of her daughter’s illegitimacy—as well as the fact that Eve Bowen had nobly never named the father—was at least part of the reason she’d been elected to Parliament in the first place. She publicly espoused morality, religion, basic values, family solidarity, devotion to Monarch and country. She stood for everything that The Source derided among Conservative polit
icians.
“The story’s served her well,” St. James said. “A politician who’s admitted publicly to her imperfections. That’s hard for a voter to resist. Not to mention a Prime Minister seeking to bolster his Government with female appointees. Does he know the child’s been kidnapped, by the way?”
“No one in the Government’s been told.”
“And you’re certain she’s been kidnapped?” St. James indicated the letter that was lying on his knee. “This uses a form of block printing. It could well have been done by a child. Is there any chance that Charlotte herself could be behind this? Does she know about you? Could this be an effort to force her mother’s hand in some way?”
“Of course not. Good God. She’s only ten years old. Eve’s never told her.”
“Can you be sure of that?”
“Of course I can’t be sure. I can only go by what Eve’s told me.”
“And you’ve told no one? Are you married? Have you told your wife?”
“I’ve told no one,” he said firmly, without acknowledging the other two questions. “Eve says she hasn’t either, but she must have let something drop at one time or another—some reference, some chance remark. She must have said something to someone who bears a grudge against her.”
“And does no one bear a grudge against you?” Helen’s dark eyes were guileless and her expression bland, both implying that she had no idea that The Source’s primary philosophy was to dig up the dirt fast and publish it first.
“Half the country, I dare say,” Luxford admitted. “But it’s hardly going to ruin me professionally if word gets out that I’m the father of Eve Bowen’s illegitimate child. I’ll be a laughingstock briefly, considering my politics, but that’ll be the end of it. Eve, not I, is in the vulnerable position.”
“Then why send you the letter?” St. James asked.
“We both received one. Mine came in the post. Hers was waiting at home, hand delivered sometime during the day, according to her housekeeper.”
St. James re-examined the envelope in which Luxford’s letter had been mailed. It was postmarked two days previously.
“When did Charlotte disappear?” he asked.
“This afternoon. Somewhere between Blandford Street and Devonshire Place Mews.”
“Has there been a demand for money?”
“Just the demand for public acknowledgement of Charlotte’s paternity.”
“Which you’re unwilling to make.”
“I’m willing to make it. I’d rather not, it would cause me difficulties, but I’m willing. It’s Eve who won’t hear of it.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“Talked to her. After that I phoned David. I remembered his having a brother…I knew you were involved in criminal investigations somehow, or at least that you had been. I thought you might help.”
St. James shook his head and returned letter and envelope to Luxford. “This isn’t a matter for me to handle. It can be dealt with discreetly by—”
“Listen to me.” Luxford hadn’t touched either his cake or his coffee, but he reached for the coffee now. He gulped down a mouthful and replaced the cup in its saucer. Some of the coffee sloshed out, wetting his fingers. He didn’t make a move to dry them. “You don’t know how newspapers actually work. The cops will go to Eve’s house first and no one will hear of it, true. But they’ll need to speak to her more than once, and they won’t be willing to wait for an hour when she’s in seclusion in Marylebone. So they’ll go to see her at the Home Office because that’s near enough Scotland Yard, and God knows this particular kidnapping is going to be a Scotland Yard case unless we do something to head that off now.”
“Scotland Yard and the Home Office live in each other’s pocket,” St. James pointed out. “You know that. Even if that weren’t the case, the investigators wouldn’t go to see her in uniform.”
“Do you actually think they need to be in uniform?” Luxford demanded. “There isn’t a journalist alive who can’t tell when he’s looking at a cop. So a cop shows up at the Home Office and asks for the Undersecretary of State. A correspondent for one of the papers sees him. Someone in the Home Office is willing to snout—a secretary, a filing clerk, a caretaker, a fifth-rank civil servant with too many debts and too much interest in money. However it happens, it happens. Someone talks to the correspondent. And his newspaper’s attention is now zeroed in on Eve Bowen. Who is this woman, the paper starts asking. What’s going on that the police have come to call? Who is the father of her child, by the way? It’s only a matter of time before they trace Charlotte to me.”
“If you haven’t told anyone, that’s unlikely,” St. James said.
“It doesn’t matter what I’ve told or not told,” Luxford said. “The point is that Eve’s told. She claims she hasn’t, but she must have done. Someone knows. Someone’s waiting. Bringing in the police—which is what the kidnapper expects us to do—is just the ticket to get the story into the press. If that happens, Eve’s finished. She’ll have to stand down as Junior Minister and I dare say she’ll lose her seat as well. If not now, because of this, then in the next election.”
“Unless she becomes a figure of public sympathy, in which case this entire affair serves her interests quite well.”
“That,” Luxford said, “is a particularly vile comment. What are you suggesting? She’s Charlotte’s mother, for God’s sake.”
Deborah turned to her husband. She’d been sitting on the ottoman in front of his chair, and she touched his good leg lightly and got to her feet. “Could I have a word, Simon?” she asked him.
St. James saw that she was flushed. He regretted at once allowing her to be part of the interview. The moment he’d heard it was about a child, he should have sent her from the room on some pretext. Children—and her inability to bear them—were her greatest vulnerability.
He followed her into the dining room. She stood by the table with her hands behind her, resting them against the polished wood. She said, “I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t that. You’ve no need to protect me.”
“I don’t want to get involved in this, Deborah. There’s too much risk. I don’t want it on my conscience if something happens to the girl.”
“This doesn’t appear to be a typical abduction though, does it? No demand for money, just a demand for publicity. And no threat of death. If you don’t help them, you know they’ll just go to someone else.”
“Or they’ll go to the police, which is where they should have gone in the first place.”
“But you’ve done this sort of work before. So has Helen. Not recently, of course. But you’ve done it in the past. And you’ve done it well.”
St. James made no reply. He knew what he ought to do: what he’d already done. Tell Luxford that he wanted no part of the situation. But Deborah was watching him, her face a mirror of the absolute faith she’d always had in him. To do the right thing, to be wise when necessary.
“You can put a time limit on it,” she said reasonably. “You can…What if you say that you’ll give it…what, one day? Two? To establish a trail. To talk to people who know her. To…I don’t know. To do something. Because if you do that much, at least you’ll know that the investigation is being handled properly. And that’s what you want, isn’t it? To be sure that everything’s handled properly?”
St. James touched her cheek. Her skin was hot. Her eyes seemed too large. She looked little more than a child herself despite her twenty-five years. He shouldn’t have let her listen to Luxford’s story in the first place, he thought again. He should have sent her off to work on her photographs. He should have insisted. He should have…St. James brought himself round abruptly. Deborah was right. He always wanted to protect her. He had a passion to protect her. It was the bane of their marriage, the largest disadvantage of being eleven years her senior and having known her since her birth.
“They need you,” she said. “I think you ought to help. At least talk to the mother. Hear what she has to say. You cou
ld do that much tonight. You and Helen can go to her. Right away.” She reached for his hand that still grazed her cheek.
“I can’t promise two days,” he said.
“That won’t matter, so long as you’re involved. Will you do it, then? I know you won’t regret it.”
I already do, St. James thought. But he nodded his assent.
Dennis Luxford had plenty of time to put his psychological house in order before returning home. He lived in Highgate, a considerable drive north from the St. James home near the river in Chelsea, and while he was guiding his Porsche through the traffic, he assembled his thoughts and constructed a facade that his wife, he hoped, would not be able to pierce.
He’d phoned her after talking to Eve. Estimated time of arrival had changed, he explained. Sorry, darling. Something’s come up. I’ve a photographer in South Lambeth waiting for Larnsey’s rent boy to come out of his parents’ house; I’ve a reporter ready when the boy makes his statement; we’re holding up the presses as long as possible to get it in the morning’s edition. I need to stand by here. Am I ballsing up your evening plans?
Fiona said no. She’d just been reading to Leo when the phone rang, or rather reading with Leo because no one read to Leo when Leo wanted to do the reading himself. He’d chosen Giotto, Fiona confided with a sigh. Again. I do wish his interest might be caught by another period of art. Reading about religious paintings quite puts me to sleep.