Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 35

On Nora’s birthday last year, her daughter had taken her to see a Broadway show. It had been a limited engagement with two big stars in the leads, so tickets had been scarce, but Dana had managed it. They’d gone into town on the train for a matinée performance, just the two of them. The play had been excellent, a revival of one of Nora’s favorites, and Dana had loved it too. Afterward, they’d returned to Long Island and driven home from the station to find Jeff waiting there with everyone she knew. Aunt Mary, her friends, her colleagues, and many of her students had crowded into her darkened living room. Dana had switched on the lights as they entered the house, and in the sudden, blinding glare, fifty laughing people in party hats had leaped out before her, tossing streamers and shouting, “Surprise!”

The light was unbearable. Vivian had redone her bathroom in shades of white and gold, and the illumination bounced back at her from every surface. She was slumped on the tiled floor, her hot cheek pressed against the freezing wall tiles, wincing at the assault on her eyes. She flushed the toilet and pressed her hands against the walls, pulling herself to her feet. Then she switched off the light and made her way over to the sink, grateful for the soothing darkness. The faint glow from the back garden shining through the pebbled-glass window above the commode was enough for her. She made out the fixtures on the sink, but she couldn’t see her reflection in the mirror above it, which was probably a mercy. She figured she must look like absolute hell.

She didn’t know how long she knelt there, being sick, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. As the nausea and disorientation subsided, her mind swam with images of Jeff and Dana. The birthday party-why had she been thinking of that? Oh yes: the glare. She turned on the cold water and rinsed the perspiration from her clammy face. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the water had hissed as it touched her hot skin.

Better, much better. Her stomach had settled and the room had stopped spinning around her. She found her bag on the floor and felt inside for her traveling toothbrush kit. The minty toothpaste soon scrubbed away the foul taste in her mouth, and a gargle from the tiny bottle of mouthwash did the rest. She swallowed a Zantac and turned off the tap.

She was returning everything to her bag when she heard the bedroom door open. A spill of light from the upstairs hallway lit the dark space beyond the half-open bathroom door. Viv, of course, coming to check on her. She held her breath and clutched the cool porcelain sink, waiting. If she was very quiet, her well-meaning hostess would assume the darkened rooms were empty and Nora had gone downstairs, perhaps to the kitchen. The sliver of light behind her disappeared as the bedroom door closed. After a moment, Nora heard another door opening and closing farther down the hall.

Vivian was searching for her, and she couldn’t stay in here all night. Besides, now that she was feeling better, she was actually looking forward to Claudia’s Italian meal. Bill had to get back to his office, and she would ask Vivian if she could stay the night here. After Yussuf’s words in Leicester Square this afternoon about staking out the Byron Hotel, she didn’t want to chance showing up there, even as Mme. Blanche Williams, and someone had rifled her husband’s safe house the night he’d left for Norfolk. Yussuf and his associates couldn’t be fooled forever, and she wasn’t about to tempt fate again. She’d probably used up her quota of good luck.

But now she must rejoin her friends. She shut her eyes and switched on the bathroom light, then opened them and peered at herself in the mirror. Not as bad as she’d expected-not bad at all, in fact. She was pale, perhaps, and a bit disheveled, but a comb through her hair and lipstick would make her look good as new. She did these things quickly and professionally, imagining that she was in a theater dressing room at intermission and the stage manager had just ordered everyone to their places for act two. When something resembling the usual Nora Baron finally gazed back at her from the glass, she shouldered her bag and went back through the dark bedroom to the hallway.

Bill Howard had dozed off in her absence. She glanced over as she came down the stairs and saw him slumped against an arm of the flowery chair, his head resting on it, one hand dangling down, clearly asleep. He’d been working around the clock for four days now, ever since Jeff’s disappearance, and Nora wondered if he’d had any sleep at all. She smiled at the sight of him, feeling foolish for ever suspecting this dedicated man of criminal behavior. Then she moved farther down the staircase and stopped short, three steps from the bottom, staring.

Through the archway on her right, she saw a long, slender arm stretched out across the pale green carpet of the foyer. The red silk sleeve matched the bright lacquer on the perfectly sculpted fingernails of the smooth white hand. The hand lay palm up, the shiny nails bunched together in a loose fist. When she could move, Nora rushed down the stairs and through the archway, and now she saw the rest.

Vivian lay very still on her back, one arm outflung on the carpet, the other resting on her heart. Her lips were parted and her eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling in apparent surprise. Because of the deep scarlet color of the blouse, Nora didn’t see the blood at first. But there it was, saturating the material under the pale hand, slowly spreading outward. Even in death, she had landed gracefully, dramatically.

Nora stood above the body, staring down at the staring eyes, filling her lungs to cry out, to call to Bill in the next room. But no, there was no need for that, and she knew it. She tore her gaze from her friend and went back to the archway, just to be sure.

Yes. She’d thought he was asleep, slumped over the arm of the chair, but it wasn’t sleep at all. His right arm dangled to the carpet, and beside it lay a small black gun. Judging from the blood she now saw on his shirt, the round that had killed him had struck him in the exact same spot as his wife. The gun on the floor was a revolver with no noise-reducing capability. If he’d been able to fire it, Nora would have heard the report from the upstairs bathroom. He obviously hadn’t had time to do more than draw it from the shoulder holster under his jacket; the silenced weapon had been too quick.

Yussuf? Andy Gilbert? Vivian wasn’t facing the front door; she was lying the other way. She’d answered the bell and let the person in, allowed him to walk past her into the hall, shut the door, and turned around to see the gun. Pfft. Perhaps from the living room Bill had heard the muffled sounds of the suppressed shot and his wife falling to the carpet, reached for his weapon, but the intruder had been too fast for him. He hadn’t even risen from the chair…

Nora stood in the archway, looking from one body to the other and back again, aware of the awful silence. She was also aware that her mind was working quickly and clearly. The snub-nosed LadySmith from her purse was already in her hand, raised to waist level, and her gaze now moved swiftly from the front door behind Vivian’s body (shut) to the front hall closet door (open and empty) to the powder room door (open and empty) to the dining room (empty) to the top of the staircase she’d just descended (empty) and at last to the main hallway behind her. She turned, bringing the gun up in front of her, and walked slowly toward the swinging door to the kitchen. She pressed her ear against the door, listening. Silence. She drew in a deep breath, pushed the door open, and crouched down, aiming directly into the room.

The bright ceiling lights of the sparkling white kitchen cast everything in harsh relief. Nora lowered the gun and slumped against the open door, staring. Claudia Bellini lay on her back in the center of the wet floor, her hands encased in bright yellow oven mitts, and she no longer had a face. She’d been in the act of lifting the big cast-iron pot of boiling spaghetti from the stove when this door had flown open behind her and a single shot had slammed through the back of her head. The pot lay on its side near the body, and steam was still rising from the pools of red-tinged water and the slithering clumps of pasta everywhere on the floor. On the white wall above the stove was a dripping red starburst, as bright red as the tomato sauce that still simmered there, filling the steamy kitchen with its rich aroma. Beyond the body, at the far end of the room, the door to the back garden stood wide open.

They’d left in a hurry, whoever they were; they hadn’t even bothered to shut the kitchen door behind them as they fled. Still, Nora wasn’t taking any chances. She reached up and switched off the kitchen light before getting up from the floor. Gun in hand, she moved swiftly to the open door and peered outside. The little patch of lawn and flower bushes surrounding the back patio was still, illuminated by soft blue area lights, enclosed in a spiked, six-foot, iron fence that separated the space from the adjacent properties and the service road that ran behind the houses. The iron gate back there stood open as well. Out this door, across the patio and lawn, and through that gate to the service road, then away in either direction.

She lowered the gun to her side, glancing to her left and right. The air outside was cold, and drops of rain were beginning to land on the patio. Lights shone from the windows of the nearest houses, but the proximity of other, living people was no comfort to her-quite the opposite. She shut the back door and crossed the darkened kitchen, careful to avoid the body and the water, stopping only to turn off the burner under the saucepot. Then she went back through the swinging door to the front hallway and the other bodies. Vivian and Bill, so still and silent. And Claudia, so proud of her collegiate son, her Vito. Minutes ago, they were three vital people, and now they were gone, just like that.

She probably wouldn’t be sick again-her trip upstairs had put paid to that-but she was aware of the possibility of shock. She must think, and she must move while she was still able to do so, before grief or numbness or hysteria set in. She was an actor, onstage in mid performance, a thousand paying customers watching and the cast and crew depending on her, and the show must go on. Her friends were dead; nothing could be done for them now. The police weren’t an option, any more than they’d been at Solange’s apartment in Paris, and for the same reason. They would detain her; they might even suspect her, accuse her, charge her. There wasn’t time for that; the clock was ticking. At three o’clock tomorrow afternoon her husband would die…

She thought, I was never here.

Nobody knew she’d come here tonight-nobody alive, at any rate. Even the killer, moving silently through the house while she stood at Vivian’s bathroom sink, had not detected her presence. He’d made a cursory check of the darkened bedrooms, gone back downstairs, and left through the kitchen. If she hadn’t switched off that glaring bathroom light mere moments before he’d opened the bedroom door, she’d be dead now.

She moved to the hall closet and put on her gray coat. Then she steeled herself and went back into the living room. She picked up her martini glass from the coffee table and dropped it in her bag. She winced at the sight of Bill Howard and then focused on the cellphone he’d left lying on the table. She was debating whether to risk using it to make a call when it began to vibrate. It moved slightly on the tabletop, the low sound almost inaudible. Nora stared, fascinated, then abruptly snatched it up and checked the readout: Elder.

Craig Elder was finally returning Bill’s calls. A wave of pure relief was immediately replaced by trepidation. Did she dare answer it? They might be listening, whoever they were: Maurice Dolin and his creatures? Think! she commanded herself. I must give him a message without actually saying anything…

Another vibration. He wouldn’t wait much longer, and then he’d be gone. She snapped the phone on, raised it to her ear, and instantly became Dame Maggie Smith. She spoke in a low, cultured British accent.

“Mr. Howard’s office. Ms. Hughes speaking. May I help you?”

There was a slight pause, an intake of breath. She heard clattering and muffled conversations and soft, atonal Eastern music in the background, samisens and woodblocks. A Japanese restaurant? Then she heard, “Um, hello, Ms. Hughes. This is Craig Elder, returning Mr. Howard’s call. Is he available?”

Good. He was playing along. “Hello, Mr. Elder. I’m afraid Mr. Howard is OC at the moment, but he said to tell you he’ll send the package to you as soon as he’s free. Are you at home now?”

Another sharp intake of breath from the other end of the line. She’d often heard Jeff use that term, OC, meaning out of commission, and Craig would certainly know what it implied in their profession. He recovered quickly and said, “No, I’m not home now, I’m getting takeaway, but I’m on my way there as soon as my order is ready. Please ask him to send the package there. Do you understand, Ms. Hughes? My address is in his phone, if he’s forgotten it. I’ll be waiting.”

“I understand. I’ll give him the message, and he’ll deliver it to you directly, Mr. Elder. Goodbye.”

She broke the connection, then peered down at the phone, looking for the correct buttons. A bit of trial and error finally produced Bill’s electronic address list. It was the fifth entry, after Vivian, Solange, the main office of MI6, and the current prime minister. A flat on the first floor-second floor, Nora the American reminded herself-of an apartment house on Queensway in Bayswater.

She memorized the address, wiped the phone clean with a tissue from her bag, and dropped it back on the coffee table. She stared at Bill Howard in the chair, his forehead pressed into the bright fabric, his arm dangling to the carpet. The silence of the house closed in on her, a palpable presence. She must go, she must get away from all this death, she must breathe fresh air. She wanted to run and run until she couldn’t run anymore. She moved swiftly back through the archway to the front hall.

The doorbell rang, a sudden, shrill noise in the quiet house. Nora froze, staring over at the front door ten feet away, beyond Vivian’s body. They couldn’t have come back, not so soon. Why would they? As far as they knew, they’d killed everyone in the-

The bell rang again, followed by a soft knocking. Then came a tiny voice through the wood. “Missus? Missus Bellini? ’Ello? It’s Shine Gahs’n f’m t’mahkit. ’Ello?”

Shane Garson from the market. With the cream. Dear God! She couldn’t open the door, couldn’t let him see her, couldn’t let him see Vivian lying there in plain sight. But the lights were on, and he’d wonder. More to the point, his mother would wonder a few minutes from now, when the boy returned to the grocery store with the undelivered package. An anxious phone call to Claudia’s number, then Vivian’s number, and then the woman-Bessie?-would come here herself. When she saw the lights and received no answer at the door…

The ringing and knocking continued for a few more moments, then abruptly stopped. He was going away now, back to the shop. Nora figured that she had ten, maybe fifteen minutes before this house, this street, this entire neighborhood would be swarming with police.

A last glance at her friend, dear Vivian, and she was off down the hall, through the swinging door, past the faceless body in the dark, wet kitchen, and out into the rainy night. She bundled the gun back into the shawl and dropped it into her bag, then fished around for the foldaway umbrella and popped it open, but it did little to shield her from the downpour. The patio, the lawn, the back gate. She was weeping now, the hot tears mingling with the icy drops that lashed at her face, blinding her. The martini glass was discarded in a trash can a few doors down, shattered beyond recognition. She hurried away down the long, dark service road, soaking wet and freezing, half running, half staggering, lurching toward the distant lights, biting back sobs as she listened for the imminent shriek of approaching sirens.