In Their Footsteps / Stolen: In Their Footsteps / Stolen

There was a knock on the study door. Helena poked her head in. “All right for me to come in?”

“Of course,” said Beryl.

Helena entered, carrying a tray of tea and biscuits, which she set down on the end table. “I’m always careful to ask first,” she said with a smile as she poured out four cups, “before I trespass in Reggie’s private abode.” She handed Beryl a cup. “Have we made any headway, then?”

From the silence that greeted her question, Helena knew the answer. She looked at once apologetic. “Oh, Beryl. I’m so sorry. Isn’t there something you can do, Reggie?”

“I’m already doing it,” said Reggie, with more than a hint of impatience. Turning his back to her, he took a pipe down from the mantelpiece and lit it. For a moment, there was only the sound of the teacups clinking on saucers and the soft put-putput of Reggie’s lips on the pipe stem.

“Reggie?” ventured Helena again. “It seems to me that calling an attorney is merely being reactive. Isn’t there something, well, active that could be done?”

“Such as?” asked Richard.

“For instance, the crime itself. We all know Jordan couldn’t have done it. So who did?”

Reggie grunted. “You’re hardly qualified as a detective.”

“Still, it’s a question that will have to be answered. That young woman was killed while watching over Jordan. So this may all stem from the reason Jordan’s in Paris to begin with. Though I can’t quite see how a twenty-year-old case of murder could be so dangerous to someone.”

“It was more than murder,” Beryl observed. “Espionage was involved.”

“That business with the NATO mole,” Reggie said to Helena. “You remember. Hugh told us about it.”

“Oh, yes. Delphi.” Helena glanced at Richard. “MI6 never actually identified him, did they?”

“They had their suspicions,” said Richard.

“I myself always wondered,” said Helena, reaching for a biscuit, “about Ambassador Sutherland. And why he committed suicide so soon after Madeline and Bernard died.”

Richard nodded. “You and I think along the same lines, Lady Helena.”

“Though I can’t say he didn’t have other reasons to jump off that bridge. If I were a man married to Nina, I’d have killed myself long ago.” Helena bit sharply into the biscuit; it was a reminder that even mousy women have teeth.

Reggie tapped his pipe and said, “It’s not right for us to speculate.”

“Still, one can’t help it, can one?”

By the time Reggie walked his guests to the front door, darkness had fallen and the night had taken on a damp, unseasonable chill. Even the high walls surrounding the Vanes’ private courtyard couldn’t seem to shut out the sense of danger that hung in the air that night.

“I promise you,” said Reggie, “I’ll do everything I can.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Beryl murmured.

“Just give me a smile, dear. Yes, that’s it.” Reggie took her by the shoulders and planted a kiss on her forehead. “You look more and more like your mother every day. And from me, there is no higher compliment.” He turned to Richard. “You’ll look out for the girl?”

“I promise,” said Richard.

“Good. Because she’s all we have left.” Sadly he touched Beryl’s cheek. “All we have left of Madeline.”

“WERE THEY ALWAYS that way together?” asked Beryl. “Reggie and Helena?”

Richard kept his eyes on the road as he drove. “What do you mean?”

“The sniping at each other. The put-downs.”

He chuckled. “I’m so used to hearing it, I hardly notice it anymore. Yes, I guess it was that way when I met them twenty years ago. I’m sure part of it’s due to his resentment of Helena’s money. No man likes to feel, well, kept.”

“No,” she said quietly, looking straight ahead. “I suppose no man would.” Is that how it would be between us? she wondered. Would he hold my money against me? Would his resentment build up over the years, until we ended up like Reggie and Helena, sharing a lifetime of hell together?

“Part of it, too,” said Richard, “is the fact that Reggie never really liked being in Paris, and he never liked being a banker. Helena talked him into taking the post.”

“She doesn’t seem to like it here much, either.”

“No. And so there they are, always sniping at each other. I’d see them at parties with your parents, and I was always struck by the contrast. Bernard and Madeline seemed so much in love. Then again, every man who met your mother couldn’t help but fall in love, just a little.”

“What was it about her?” asked Beryl. “You said once that she was…enchanting.”

“When I met her, she was about forty. Oh, she had a gray hair here and there. A few laugh lines. But she was more fascinating than any twenty-year-old woman I’d ever met. I was surprised to hear that she wasn’t born to nobility.”

“She was from Cornwall. Old Spanish blood. Dad met her one summer while on holiday.” Beryl smiled. “He said she beat him in a footrace. In her bare feet. And that’s when he knew she was the one for him.”

“They were well matched, in every way. I suppose that’s what fascinated me—their happiness. My parents were divorced. It was a pretty nasty split, and it soured me on the whole idea of marriage. But your parents made it look so easy.” He shook his head. “I was more shocked than anyone about their deaths. I couldn’t believe that Bernard would—”

“He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t.”

After a pause, Richard said, “So do I.”

They drove for a moment without speaking, the lights of passing traffic flashing at them through the windshield.

“Is that why you never married?” she asked. “Because of your parents’ divorce?”

“It was one reason. The other is that I’ve never found the right woman.” He glanced at her. “Why didn’t you marry?”

She shrugged. “Never the right man.”

“There must have been someone in your life.”

“There was. For a while.” She hugged herself and stared out at the darkness rushing past.

“Didn’t work out?”

She managed a laugh. “I’m lucky it didn’t.”

“Do I detect a trace of bitterness?”

“Disillusionment, really. When we first met, I thought he was quite extraordinary. He was a surgeon about to leave on a mercy mission to Nigeria. It’s so rare to find a man who really cares about humanity. I visited him, twice, in Africa. He was in his element out there.”

“And what happened?”