Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 31

An average-looking, three-story, nineteenth-century house on a quiet side street in Soho, a short walk north of Leicester Square. From the sidewalk, there was nothing remarkable about the building, which made it the perfect place for her husband to stay in London. Nora stood on that sidewalk now, gazing up at the front door, hoping her guess about the manila envelope was correct. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to get inside.

She looked down at the three keys on the ring clutched in her hand. These keys had been found on the body in the wrecked car in Kensington, along with the wallet and the disposable camera. The camera was a mystery, but it was probably the item everyone wanted so badly. The wallet contained cash, in case she needed it, and she hoped the keys were for this place, Jeff’s secret London address. She’d dismissed the idea of coming here last night when she returned to London, but now she had no choice. Besides, she reasoned that her husband would only leave her his keys if he thought she’d be safe here.

She had to get inside undetected. Craig Elder had mentioned people-the people here had told Bill Howard that Jeff hadn’t shown up at his flat since his disappearance. Would these people be in the building? Inside the apartment itself? Or were they across the street, in that row of townhouses over there, watching her from one of the curtained windows? Nora glanced at those windows before hurrying up the steps to the entrance.

Now she faced the door. On her left, five houses down, was the corner where a much busier thoroughfare crossed this one. She could see cars and pedestrians down that way, milling among the kitschy new age shops and exotic restaurants-Indian, Chinese, Thai-that lined the streets in this part of town. The other end, on her right, was farther away; she couldn’t hear the traffic from here. This stretch of road was residential and very quiet at this early afternoon hour.

Two women with shopping bags passed by on the sidewalk behind her, and Nora could feel their curious gaze on her. She studied the four buzzers beside the doorframe as though she weren’t certain which apartment she wanted, but she knew immediately. The names were neatly printed beside each buzzer: B-RYDER; #1-PARKHURST; #2-JENNER; #3-NOONE. The women disappeared into a building two doors down, and she held up the three keys, studying them. Large, medium, small. The large one should open this door…

It did. In a flash, she was inside the building, shutting the door behind her. She was standing in a long, narrow, dimly lit foyer with a staircase against the wall on her right and a door on her left. This would be Parkhurst, the ground floor tenant, and someone named Ryder was in the basement flat. She needed to get to the top floor. NOONE-that name again. The same inside joke as in the apartment house in Paris where Solange had died. No one.

She climbed the stairs as swiftly and silently as she could, then waited a moment, listening, before moving lightly down the hall to the next staircase. In order to do this, she had to pass by the door of the resident of #2, Jenner. She didn’t hear anything from beyond the door as she passed, but just as she reached the next flight, it suddenly opened.

Nora pressed herself against the wall at the foot of the stairs, holding her breath, watching as a dark-haired young woman in a T-shirt and jeans came out into the hall and shut the door behind her. She turned around to lock the door, then headed for the other stairs, the ones Nora had just ascended. Nora moved quickly onto the steps to the next level, shielding herself from the woman’s view. She listened as the footsteps descended and crossed the foyer, and the street door opened and closed. Only then did she continue on her way.

The medium-size key opened the apartment on the top floor, and Nora was inside a dark, silent room. She shut the door and locked it before feeling along the wall for a light switch. Her hand came upon a cold metal panel, and she looked over to see a flashing red light. Of course: an alarm, triggered when she opened the door. She’d have fifteen, maybe twenty seconds before the earsplitting noise began.

Stifling the thrill of panic that rose up in her, she drew in a deep breath and squinted in the gloom at the keypad on the panel. Without hesitating, she stabbed it seven times with her index finger: D-A-N-A-L-E-E. The flashing red light stopped. It was their usual, all-purpose password, and she knew her husband as well as she knew herself. He’d left her these keys, knowing she might have to come here and face this alarm, so he’d only use a password she’d know. She turned off the device and reached for the light switch.

An overhead light came on, illuminating a big, carpeted living room lined with bookshelves, with a plain brown couch and armchair, a coffee table, and a television. Heavy drapes covered the windows, allowing no sunlight in. She explored the apartment: An archway led to the kitchen, and another arch began a hallway with three doors, two bedrooms and a bathroom. The curtains in these rooms were closed as well. Only one of the bedrooms was evidently in use, the larger one, and Nora recognized the clothes there. The faint scent of his aftershave hung in the still air. She actually smiled when she saw a copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls on the bedside table next to a framed photo of her. He was working his way through Hemingway again; he’d read the complete works at least twice already.

She went back out into the living room, brushing tears from her eyes. She knew without looking that there’d be fresh coffee beans and a grinder in the kitchen. The silence and darkness of the place closed in on her. Here, in his habitat, with familiar things all around her, she was overwhelmed by his absence.

His desk was in a corner of the main room, with a blotter, paper, pens, and pencils. His laptop wasn’t here, of course; he would have taken that with him when he went into hiding at Bill Howard’s country house.

Bill Howard.

In the bathroom, she removed her gray wig and washed the age makeup from her face. She found the coffee beans, grinder, and coffeemaker in the kitchen. While the pot brewed, she sat at the desk with a pen and a legal pad, writing down everything she remembered of the conversation in Leicester Square.

Andy Gilbert/Yussuf (sp?)

Copperfield

Cessna Cargomaster, 3 p.m. tomorrow

two people arrived Heathrow

Naseem (sp?)

Laura’s, noon tomorrow

She wondered who or what Copperfield was, and who Laura was, not to mention Naseem. The two men had spoken of this person with particular urgency; they didn’t know where he/she was, and that clearly worried them. Naseem, or possibly Nassim? Definitely an Eastern name, whichever way you spelled it.

But now she had a more pressing problem. The suspicion had been gnawing at her since she first saw the chauffeur join her quarry on the bench. She went into the kitchen and poured coffee in the oversize mug she found in the drainer. She smiled at the words on the cup: STOLEN FROM BUCKINGHAM PALACE. Back at the desk, she started a fresh page of the legal pad, a timeline of the actions as she understood them:

June 28: Car accident in Kensington. Jeff plants wallet, keys, camera on body; gives two notes to Solange with instructions; then goes to Bill Howard’s country house.

June 29: Phone call to me from Bill Howard.

June 30: I come to London. Yussuf already following me. Bill meets me. Morgue. Yussuf attempts robbery in Russell Square. Craig Elder in place, foils Yussuf. Craig calls Bill H., who calls Jeff. Jeff leaves house for train station, abducted by South Asian/Middle Eastern man. Solange gives me first note, leaves for Paris.

July 1: Solange killed in Paris. I go to Paris. Jacques Lanier in place. Museum, false second note from false courier. Yussuf (?) follows me from museum. Jacques loses tail. Pinède, sniper in place. Jacques kills sniper, injured. Chez Martine.

July 2: Craig arrives. Paris. Solange’s apt., real second note. Gray SUV follows us north. We lose tail, abandon car, assume disguises. Louis Reynard, Channel, Lucky Dolphin. New car to London.

July 3: Yussuf at hotel with flowers. Craig tails, loses Yussuf. Russell Square, Leicester Square. Andy Gilbert!!! Jeff being held somewhere. Plan to fly weapons (?) out of England tomorrow at 3 p.m.

Nora stared down at the page, reading and rereading the sequence of events, and one fact was clear to her. Someone was very much in charge of everything that was happening to her. It seemed almost staged, like a play. Someone was directing all the action, and she had a fair guess whom that someone must be. It was the only way to make sense of the whole scenario.

Now she remembered something else. The phony second note, the one the creepy man had given her in Musée Rodin: GOOT! Dix roses pour Grand-tante J ce soir. She recalled a night, a dinner in a beautiful London restaurant some ten or eleven years ago. She and Jeff had been the guests of Bill and Vivian Howard, and Jeff had told their hosts about his most recent trip to France. He’d explained about his regular pilgrimages to Pinède, placing a dozen roses on Grand-tante Jeanette’s grave. Vivian had said she thought that was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard, and her husband had agreed…

Something was wrong with Nora’s timeline, something that nagged at her. She looked back at the earliest notes at the top of the page. And there it was:

June 28: Car accident in Kensington. Jeff plants wallet, keys, camera on body; gives two notes to Solange with instructions; then goes to Bill Howard’s country house.

That wasn’t possible, was it? Jeff arranged the accident, yes, that much was true. But the notes from Solange were only necessary later, after Nora had been knocked down in Russell Square Gardens. That’s when Jeff decided to get Nora out of England to France, to Charles de Gaulle Airport. He wouldn’t have written the two notes until then, June 30, two days after the accident. If he had been already hiding out in the house in East Anglia-on the other side of England-on June 30, how had he managed to get two handwritten notes to Solange in London? And how on earth had Solange managed to get there so fast, waiting in the hotel lobby when Nora arrived, less than an hour after the attempted robbery in the park?

Unless…

Unless Solange had been a backup, plan B, a contingency plan in case Nora was in danger at any time after she was given the manila envelope. That’s the only way Jeff could have written the notes two days beforehand. He knew there might be trouble, so he had Craig Elder follow her, and he had Solange waiting to take over the babysitting duties in the hotel. Solange had the notes, if necessary; otherwise, she was simply supposed to guard Nora until Nora flew back to New York the next day.

But Nora had disrupted the schedule, getting out of the limousine and heading into the park instead of going straight back to the Byron as expected. Craig Elder had followed her there, and the terrorist, Yussuf, had been following her ever since she’d boarded the plane at Kennedy. When he showed himself and tried to steal her purse, plan B had immediately gone into play.

Now it all became clear. Except for one thing…

Solange had been Bill Howard’s new girlfriend. He was divorcing his wife of twenty-five years to marry her. He’d even bought the country house for her. If they had been so much in love, how could Bill Howard be the arms dealer?

That was what Nora now suspected. When the arms dealer had learned that Nora was being sent to France, he’d come up with a diversion, a phony but plausible way to get her to an isolated place, kill her, and bury her. The note instructing her to go to Pinède: Dix roses pour Grand-tante J ce soir. Aside from herself and Jeff, Bill Howard and his wife were the only people who knew about Pinède. And it was Bill Howard’s driver, Andy Gilbert, who’d met the terrorist in Leicester Square. He’s planning to move it out tomorrow. He was Bill Howard. Who else?

But Solange had been murdered, probably by the same assassin who’d waited for Nora in the cemetery. Could Bill Howard really be that cold-blooded? Could he have ordered the killing of his own lover, fiancée, future wife? No, it didn’t make any sense. Which left only one possibility.

Vivian.

Vivian Howard, Nora’s chic, funny, scatterbrained friend of fifteen years, a criminal mastermind? That was patently absurd. Vivian, bless her heart, could barely negotiate a white sale at Fortnum & Mason, let alone an illegal arms deal. She thought Red China was what you used with a black tablecloth, and she probably couldn’t find Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan on a map. If she ever met an Al Qaeda operative face-to-face, she’d ask him who designed his lovely kaffiyeh. No, Vivian was definitely not involved in this.

Nora had to assume that Bill was Mr. X. She had to assume that he’d had Solange killed. The people on the other end of the deal were presumably paying millions, much more than Bill Howard would ever see from Her Majesty’s government payroll, and that was a good motive. Untold wealth was always a good motive for just about anything.

She had to find Craig Elder.

There was no telephone in the apartment. Jeff had taken his cell with him, along with his computer. Craig had given her his phone number, so she decided to risk a trip outside, to find a pay phone in the neighborhood.

She was standing up from her husband’s desk, reaching for her coat, when she heard the sudden sound of a key in the lock of the apartment door. She froze, staring, as the door slowly swung open.