As he sipped his coffee, Hugo half expected to see Merlyn appear in front of him, her almond eyes laughing at him for thinking he could get away with making the trip alone. She’d been unhappy the whole way down from Hertfordshire to London, and they’d driven in almost total silence. After dropping her off, Hugo had called the office and sent two men to Pendrith’s address in Chelsea, getting a phone call twenty minutes later to tell him what he expected: no one home, and no sign anyone had been home. A quick look through his mail slot at the mail piled inside his door, using a handheld snake camera, had told them that.
So maybe, just maybe, the old man was in Paris.
Hugo left his table and checked in at the Eurostar terminal thirty minutes before the train’s departure time, picking up a paperback from an open kiosk en route. Not happy with his reading choices, he was pleased to get to his seat and find an almost-new copy of the Bookdealer, the trade journal for the book trade. A knowledgeable, if infrequent, collector of old books, Hugo sank into the thin pages of the magazine with the same delight his wife took in her shopping catalogues, the long articles and old-style ads from antiquarian dealers beckoning him into a world that was familiar and safe.
But Christine was on his mind, had been since they’d spoken a few hours earlier, just briefly, as he waited outside the embassy grounds for a taxi. She’d been busy and sounded happy, doing more talking than listening, and Hugo knew without asking that these were signs she had no immediate plans to return to London.
She was and always had been, without doubt, his most interesting study. Serial killers, psychopaths, and arsonists had always presented a challenge, held a fascination for him. But while their specific acts were different, they all had strings of similarity that tied them together, familiar tales of neglect as babies, abuse as children, abandonment as teens.
Christine, on the other hand, presented a multitude of contradictions that he’d yet to figure out, but that had initially attracted him to her. She’d been the Dallas socialite with a soft spot for the underprivileged, her charity work coming from the heart, not for show. She’d traveled, too, shown an interest in the world and perhaps from that she possessed a confidence in her place in it that was rare among her spoiled friends. Ultimately, Hugo knew that her place was in Dallas, near her family, her work, those same friends. She loved shopping and so should love London and Paris, at least that was the logic he applied to the situation, and one that he used to appeal to her. But logic and Christine were occasional friends, meeting up when the circumstances were right, not seeking each other out at the behest of others, including Hugo. She enjoyed London only a little, Paris even less.
He tried to keep his mind on the magazine, scanning the reviews and an article about French poet Arthur Rimbaud and his love affair with Paul Verlaine, a brief relationship fueled by passion, absinthe, and hashish. But Hugo couldn’t entirely escape the present, his eyes wandering to the platform outside his window, the soft hiss of the doors whispered reminders that Pendrith and Walton were out there somewhere, perhaps watching him or perhaps being watched by someone else, by some faceless person responsible for a growing list of dead and disappeared.
The voice of the station announcer echoed from the platform, giving his rendition of the traditional “All aboard!” Hugo looked over his shoulder as he heard chatter behind him and saw a handsome couple in their fifties checking their tickets for seat numbers.
All well in their world, he thought, suddenly conscious of where he was going, and why. With no sign of Pendrith or Walton, despite police inquiries into both men, that alarm bell ringing in the back of his mind had grown only louder. His chest tightened with a sudden and powerful unease. Maybe he should have let Merlyn come. What if she, for some reason he couldn’t yet fathom, was the next person in this bizarre case to disappear without a trace?
Hugo didn’t notice when the train began to move out of the station, so smooth, like the caress of a mother’s hand on her child’s sleeping brow, and he was momentarily disoriented by what he thought was movement on the platform.
Almost immediately, though, he felt the familiar nudge and pull as the train picked up speed, heading north out of the station before making a firm right-hand turn past the towering and unsightly gasometers behind the King’s Cross rail station, and then burrowing into a covered bridge that funneled the sleek train into the ground, lights flickering past the dark windows.
Hugo blinked at the sudden return to the surface, feeling like a mole, or better yet a long worm, appearing out of the earth into daylight. A disappointed worm, he thought, as the dirty brick and stone buildings of east London passed by, the view full of warehouses and run-down housing estates, depressing and drab until he spied the magnificent Queen Elizabeth II suspension bridge, which bore the M25 motorway, the road encircling the city, across the River Thames. The train dipped down, though, not up, burrowing again to get them under the Thames, bursting back out the other side into the countryside, trees and hedges now a blur and the motorway traffic beside them sluggish, unhurried.
As the train rocketed south through rural Kent, Hugo felt himself relax into his seat, the greens and browns of the countryside massaging his mood, the villages tucked into the chalky hills appearing and disappearing like reassuring mirages in the desert, but offering him real, not imagined, comfort.
Feeling better, Hugo set about putting his travel time to good purpose. He’d already phoned Bart Denum, his subordinate at the embassy, and given him some research. He wanted to know more about Ginny Ferro’s life and also get some background on Pendrith and Walton. In his experience, people’s actions were rooted in the past, their motives connected to events they might not even remember. Even though he was bemused by most of what was happening, Hugo thought maybe he could reach back in time and grasp one of those roots and grope his way to some solid answers.
While he waited for Bart’s return call, Hugo reached into his overnight bag for a pen and paper. If he’d had the resources, he would have created a literal jigsaw of the puzzle that had him stumped, squares of paper he could spread out and connect physically to build a picture of what was happening. And, more importantly, why it was happening. But for now, a few notes would have to do. The words he wrote were, for the most part, unimportant, acting as reminders of the major issues and questions, and also as triggers for his thought process. As he began, it struck him forcefully that the missing pieces were different for each case.
He began with Ginny Ferro. She was dead, but it was not clear why. Suicide seemed unlikely, but possible. Accident seemed equally unlikely, yet possible. And if it wasn’t either of those, he was left with murder.
But who would kill Ginny Ferro? And why?
Hugo skipped to Harper’s own death in the churchyard. Certainly, it could have been self-inflicted. Hugo had seen many suicides that looked just like that. And given the movie-star couple’s penchant for cemeteries, the place seemed ideal. But it didn’t feel right to Hugo, even though he couldn’t say exactly why.
And where the hell were Pendrith and Walton?
Hugo tapped his notebook in frustration, irritated that he was unable to make the right connections, really make any at all. He was interrupted by his phone, the number coming up as the embassy. He silently hoped it wasn’t Ambassador Cooper.
“Hugo, it’s Bart.”
“Hey, Bart, get some sleep?”
“Not much, you?”
“None. So what did you find?”
“You’re not going to like it, I’m afraid.”