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Hands were clapped, fingers clicked, and immediately Alexia found herself surrounded by swathes of rustling fabric, cotton and toile and slub silk and velvet and lace in every conceivable cut and color. It had been a long time since Alexia had shopped for clothes. These days she ordered everything from Net-A-Porter, or got her PA to pick things up for her. She realized she’d forgotten how much fun nonvirtual fashion could be.
She’d also forgotten just how obnoxious Americans could be, especially when on vacation abroad. In the dressing room next to Alexia’s, a very loud, very vulgar Texan woman was shouting at her husband to turn off his iPad and pay her some attention.
“I swear to Gaaawd, Howie, if you don’t turn that thing off right now, I’m gonna spend so much money in here you won’t be able to afford a cab back to the Georges V.” She pronounced it “George Sink,” which made Alexia cringe. Having eradicated her own American accent forty years ago, she recoiled at Americanisms now like a reformed smoker wrinkling her nose at others’ cigarette smoke. Clearly this woman felt the need to ensure that the entire store knew that she and “Howie” were staying at the most expensive hotel in Paris.
“Would you shut the fuck up, Loreen?” her husband replied boorishly. “I’m tryin’ to listen to the news here.”
“There’s news at the hotel. I am tryin’ to shop.”
“I mean real news, not that French communist baloney.”
“Real news” turned out to be Fox, probably Alexia’s least favorite media outlet. But, like the rest of the store, she soon found herself being deafened by the noise from Howie’s iPad, turned up to maximum volume, presumably to make a point and show his strident young wife who wore the pants.
The Dior staff, as ever, were scrupulously polite.
“Sir, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to turn that off.”
“Ask away, Pierre,” the Texan said rudely. “I’m listening to the news and that’s that. Do you have any idea how much money I’ve spent in your store in the last forty-eight hours?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Yeah, well. It’s more than you make in a year. I pay your fucking wages, okay, Pierre? So back off.”
“Howie! Stop being such an asshole and help me pick a dress.”
As the marital argument wore on, Alexia found herself tuning in to the headlines on autopilot. The U.S. president had delivered a popular speech on the first day of his trip to Israel. American defense spending was up again, for the third quarter in a row. That’s a mistake, Alexia thought. The euro was down against the dollar. A flamboyant Miami businessman had thrown his name into the hat for the Republican presidential nomination next spring. But it was the last item, added by the newscaster almost as an afterthought, that made Alexia De Vere catch her breath.
“The mutilated body of a young woman washed up on the Jersey shore yesterday morning has now been identified as that of Jennifer Hamlin, a twenty-two-year-old secretary from Queens, New York.”
Jennifer Hamlin!
The name rang in Alexia’s ears like a hideously clanging bell. Her mind flashed back to last year. Billy Hamlin standing in Parliament Square, calling her Toni, begging her to acknowledge him. Alexia heard his voice now, as if he were standing right beside her.
“Toni, please! It’s my daughter. My daughter!”
He was frightened, frightened for his daughter, and he needed my help. But I turned him away. And now his daughter’s dead. Murdered, just like poor Billy.
In her guilt, Alexia clutched at straws. Perhaps it was a different Jenny Hamlin? Not Billy’s daughter at all? But she knew in her heart that the coincidence was too great. She remembered the file on Billy Hamlin that Edward Manning had compiled for her. Billy had had one daughter, Jennifer. The family was from Queens. What did Billy want to tell me, about his daughter? What was it that I was too afraid, too self-interested, to listen to? Could I have saved her? Saved both of them?
Alexia handed the dresses back to the assistant and left the store in a daze.
Outside on the Avenue Montaigne, she made a phone call.
“Billy Hamlin’s daughter’s been murdered.”
On the other end of the line, Sir Edward Manning betrayed no emotion. “I see.” He’d been exactly the same after Billy Hamlin was found dead last year, a case that the police had closed without identifying a single suspect. Cool. Calm. Unruffled. It was what Alexia expected of him, what she wanted, in a way. And yet, unreasonably, it still upset her.
“Is there anything you’d like me to do, Home Secretary?”
“Yes. Get me all the information on the case. All of it. Talk to the U.S. police, to the State Department, to the FBI. I don’t care how you get it and I don’t care who knows. I want a report on Jennifer Hamlin’s murder on my desk by the time I get back to London.”
“And if people ask why the British Home Office is so interested in an obscure American murder inquiry?”
“Tell them to mind their own damn business.”
Alexia hung up, shaking. Suddenly the trade talks and the stupid Kingsmere summer party didn’t matter at all anymore. All she could think about was Billy Hamlin and his poor daughter. Just as it had last summer, Alexia’s past had emerged to reclaim her. But this time she couldn’t resist it. She couldn’t stick her head in the sand and simply run away. People were dying. Because of me?
Alexia De Vere caught the Eurostar back to London that night, with a deep sense of foreboding on her heart.
