She was shaking her head. She was still shaking it as she sighed and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Now, Joyce, it’s got to be now.”
“Dominic, it’s not that simple.”
“Yes it is. Get the file, Joyce. Please.”
She looked at him, considering. “You always have to take shortcuts, don’t you?”
“Always.”
“You want her badly.”
“Very badly,” he agreed.
Joyce Parry sat for a moment, her eyes on her desk. “I’ll get the file,” she said at last.
Sitting in Joyce Parry’s office a little later, Michael Barclay looked decidedly grumpy. And not without cause. Everything he’d shown Dominique, from his computer to his wastepaper bin, had been received with a shrug and five short words: “We have better in France.” She’d been impressed by none of it. She sat beside him now, one leg crossed over the other, her foot waggling in the air, and looked around the room. Inwardly, she was still crackling. Her drive through the London streets had been exhilarating. They’d come so close to confronting the assassin. And yet in the end, it was reduced to this: sitting around in an office waiting for something to happen. She felt she would explode with the energy inside her. Why didn’t someone do something?
Dominic Elder knew what she was thinking. It was the sort of thing he’d have been thinking twenty-five years ago. Who needs patience? Let’s get out there and hunt. Only just over two years ago, that same instinct had led him straight to retirement and a scar that would never disappear.
“The gang’s all here,” said Joyce Parry, walking through the ever-open door. She paused inside the room, turned, and closed the door behind her. Then she went to her desk and sat down. She did not have a file with her.
“Nobody told me there was going to be a party,” she said to Elder, having first smiled a greeting towards Dominique.
“I thought, after what they’ve been through, Mr. Barclay and Miss Herault deserved not to be left out of anything at this late stage.”
It smacked of a prepared speech. Parry didn’t reply to it. Instead she said, “I’ve changed my mind.”
“Yes, so I see.”
“I’ve read the file, Dominic. There’s a lot in there that isn’t relevant to this case.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I can’t. So instead of reading the file, you can question me. I’ll answer anything. That way, whatever isn’t touched upon isn’t touched upon. It stays secret. Agreed?”
Elder shrugged. “It seems a long-winded way of —”
“Agreed?”
“Agreed,” he said. Barclay and Dominique were paying attention now, their own problems forgotten. Dominique burst in with the first question.
“Is the Home Secretary suspected of being a double agent?”
Joyce Parry smiled. “No,” she said.
“I think you’re on the wrong track,” Elder told Dominique gently. “What we have here is something altogether more... personal.” He turned to Parry. The idea, growing in his mind these past hours, was monstrous, almost unthinkable. Yet it had to be tested. “Did Jonathan Barker have an affair with his secretary?”
“Which secretary?”
“Marion Rose.”
Joyce Parry nodded. “That’s my understanding.”
“This was before his first wife died?”
“Yes.”
“Long before she died?”
“Probably, yes. A number of years.”
Elder nodded thoughtfully. Doyle had known something about it, had heard some rumor. Hence his nickname for Barker. “Did his wife know?”
“I shouldn’t think so. She wasn’t the type to keep that sort of knowledge to herself.”
Now Barclay interrupted. “There’s no suspicion surrounding her death?”
“No, the postmortem was meticulous. She died from natural causes.”
“To wit?”
“Lung cancer. She was a heavy smoker.”
“Yes,” said Elder, “so I seem to remember. What about Barker during this time?”
“What time?”
“The time he was having an affair with Marion Rose. How was his career shaping up?”
“Pretty well. He wasn’t quite in politics then, of course. But he was in the running for a candidacy. He got it, won the seat, and that was him into parliament.”
“At quite a young age.”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Yes, twenty-nine. No children by the first marriage?”
“No.”
“Did the first marriage have its problems then?”
“Not that we know of. Apart from the glaring fact that Barker was having at least one affair.”
“This was his second marriage — Marion’s first?”
“That’s right.”
“A quiet woman?”
“Yes, until recently. I mean, her profile increased.”
“Mmm, the image-men got their hands on her. Charitable good works and so on, but unassuming with it... the model MP’s wife.”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“He didn’t get into parliament at the first attempt, did he?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he lost.”
“Yes, but why did he lose?”
A shrug. “Swing to the —”
“But why, Joyce?”
She paused, swallowed. “There was a rumor he was a bit of a ladies’ man. A localized rumor, but it put enough voters off.”
“But by the second by-election?”
“He was cleaner than clean.”
“And has been since?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s risen and risen.”
“Not exactly meteoric, though.”
“No, slow, meticulous, I agree with you there. And there’ve been no scandals?”
“Not in parliament, no.”
“But outside parliament?”
“Just the one you referred to, and that was never public.”
“What? His fling with Marion? Mmm, wouldn’t have gone down well, though, would it? Wouldn’t go down well even now, even as ancient history — MP sleeping with secretary while wife’s dying of cancer. Bit of a black mark. He was a millionaire?”
“By the time he was twenty-one.”
“Father’s money?”
“Mostly, yes, but he put it to good use.”
“A wise investor.”
“A chain of record shops, actually, just in time to clean up on the Beatles and the Stones.”
“Like I say, a wise investor.” Elder rubbed at his forehead. “To get back to his affair with Marion, what do we know about it?”
“You tell me.”
“All right,” said Elder, “I will. What happened to the child?”
“Child?”
“There was a child, wasn’t there?”
Joyce Parry looked down at the desk. “We don’t know for sure.”
“No? But there were ‘localized rumors,’ yes?”
“Yes.”
“Dear me, a pregnant secretary, a wife dying of cancer, and he’s put himself forward as a constituency candidate. Maybe for the second and potentially the last time. I mean, the last time if he didn’t win.” Elder tutted and turned to Barclay. “What would you do, Michael?”
Barclay started at the mention of his name, then thought for a second. “If I was a millionaire... pay off the secretary. She could go and look after the kid in secret, a monthly allowance or something.”
“Mmm... what about you, Miss Herault?”
“Me?” Dominique looked startled. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I would perhaps persuade my lover to abort.”