Call After Midnight (9 page)

The clerk was still writing. Sarah steadied her hands on the counter and prayed she could lie convincingly. “I hope—I hope you don't have the wrong address,” she said. “We're still in Margate, but we—we moved last month.”

“Oh, dear,” sighed the clerk, heading toward the back office. “Let me see if the address has been updated….” A moment later, she emerged with a registration card. “Twenty-five Whitstable Lane. Is that the old address or the new?”

Sarah didn't answer. She was too busy committing the address to memory.

“Mrs. Fontaine?” asked the clerk.

“I'm sure it's all right,” said Sarah, quickly sweeping up her suitcase and turning for the elevator.

“Mrs. Fontaine, you needn't carry that up! I'll call the boy….”

But Sarah was already stepping into the elevator. “Twenty-five Whitstable Lane,” she murmured as the door closed. “Twenty-five Whitstable Lane…”

Was that where she'd find Geoffrey?

* * *

T
HE SEA POUNDED
against the white chalk cliffs. From the dirt path where Sarah walked, she could see the waves crashing on the rocks below. Their violence frightened her. The sun had already burned through the morning fog, and in a dozen cottage gardens, flowers bloomed and thrived despite the salt air and chalk soil.

At the end of Whitstable Lane, Sarah found the house she'd been seeking. It was only a cottage, tucked behind a white picket fence. In the tiny front garden, stately rosebushes mingled with riotous marigolds and cornflowers. The soft clip of garden shears drew her attention to the side of the cottage, where an elderly man was trimming a hedge.

“Hello?” she called across the fence.

The old man stood up and looked at her.

“I'm looking for Geoffrey Fontaine,” she said.

“Isn't 't 'ome, miss.”

Sarah's hands started to shake. Then Geoffrey
had
been here. But why? she wondered. Why keep a cottage so far from his work in London?

“Where can I find him?” she asked.

“Don't rightly know.”

“Do you know when he'll be coming home?”

The old man shrugged. “Neither he nor the missus tells me 'bout their comin's 'n goin's.”

“Missus?”
she repeated stupidly.

“Aye. Mrs. Fontaine.”

“You don't mean—his wife?”

The old man looked at her as if she were an idiot. “Aye,” he said slowly. “It would seem that way. 'Course, with a little imagination, one could always figure on 'er bein' 'is mother, but I'd say she's a bit young for that.” He suddenly burst out laughing, as if the whole thing was quite absurd.

Sarah was clutching the picket fence so hard that the wooden points were biting into her palms. A strange roar rose in her ears, as if a wave had swept over her and was dragging her to the ground. With fumbling hands she dug in her purse and pulled out Geoffrey's photograph. “Is this Mr. Fontaine?” she asked hoarsely.

“That's 'im, all right. I've got a good eye for faces, you know.”

She was trembling so hard she could barely stuff the picture back into her purse. She held on to the fence, trying to absorb what the man had said. The knowledge came as a shock, and the pain was more than she could bear.

Another woman. Hadn't someone asked her about that? She couldn't remember. Oh yes, it had been Nick O'Hara. He'd wondered about another woman. He'd called it a logical assumption, and she'd been angry with him.

Nick O'Hara had been right. She was the blind one, the stupid one.

She didn't know how long she had been standing there among the marigolds; she had lost track of time and place. Everything—her hands, her feet, even her face—had gone mercifully numb. Her mind refused to take in any more pain. If it did, she thought she'd go crazy.

Only when the old man called to her a third time did she hear him.

“Miss? Miss? Do you need some 'elp?”

Still in a daze, Sarah looked at him. “No. No, I'll be all right.”

“You're sure, now?”

“Yes, I…please, I need to find the Fontaines.”

“I don't rightly know 'ow, miss. The lady packed 'er bags and took off 'bout two weeks ago.”

“Where did she go?”

“She weren't in the 'abit of leavin' a forwardin' address.”

Sarah hunted in her purse for a piece of paper, then scribbled down her name and hotel. “If she—if either of them—shows up, please tell them to call me immediately. Please.”

“Aye, miss.” The old man folded up the paper without looking at it and slipped it into his pocket.

Like a drunken woman, she stumbled toward the road. At the beginning of Whitstable Lane, she saw a row of mailboxes. Glancing back, she saw that the old man was once more at work, clipping his hedge. She looked inside the box labeled 25 and found only a mail-order catalog from a London department store. It was addressed to Mrs. Eve Fontaine.

Evie.

More than once, Geoffrey had called Sarah by that name.

She shoved the catalog back into the mailbox. As she walked down the cliff road to the Margate train station, she was crying.

* * *

S
IX HOURS LATER
, tired, empty and hungry, Sarah walked into her room at the Savoy. The phone was ringing.

“Hello?” she said. “Sarah Fontaine?” It was a woman. Her voice was low and husky.

“Yes.”

“Geoffrey had a birthmark, left shoulder. What shape?”

“But—”

“What shape?”

“It was—it was a half-moon. Is this Eve?”

“The Lamb and Rose. Dorset Street. Nine o'clock.”

“Wait—Eve?”

Click.

Sarah looked at her watch. She had half an hour to get to Dorset Street.

F
OG SWIRLED AROUND
the door of the Lamb and Rose. The cabdriver took Sarah's bills, grunted something unintelligible and sped off. Sarah was left standing alone in the dark street.

From the pub came the muffled sounds of laughter and the clink of glassware. Through the haze the window glowed a soft, welcoming yellow. She crossed the cobblestoned street and pushed open the door.

Inside, a fire crackled in the hearth. At the gleaming mahogany bar, two men hunched over glasses of ale. They looked up as she walked in, then just as quickly stared down at their glasses. Sarah paused to warm herself by the fire, all the time searching the room with her eyes. Only a serving girl, standing by the tap, met her gaze. Without a word the girl nodded toward the back of the room.

Sarah returned the nod and walked in the direction the girl had indicated. Several wooden booths lined the wall. In the first booth sat a couple, staring intently into each other's eyes. In the second an old man in tweeds quietly nursed a whiskey. There was only one booth left. Even before she reached it, she knew Eve would be sitting there. A wisp of cigarette smoke drifted from the shadows. The woman looked up as Sarah approached. Their eyes met, and in that one glance, they both understood. Even in the pub's dimly lighted interior, each could see the other's pain.

Sarah slid onto the bench across from the other woman. Eve nervously took a puff from her cigarette and flicked off the ashes, all the while studying Sarah. She was slender—almost too slender—and fair haired, with greenish eyes that looked tired and pinched. Her hands moved constantly. Every few seconds she glanced toward the pub door, as if expecting someone else to walk inside. The cigarette smoke curled like a serpent between them.

“You're not what I expected,” said Eve. Sarah recognized the husky voice from the telephone. The accent was faintly Continental, not English. “You're not as plain as I expected. And you're younger than he said. How old are you? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”

“I'm thirty-two,” said Sarah.

“Ah. So he wasn't lying.”

“Geoffrey told you about me?”

Eve took another puff and nodded. “Of course. He had to. It was my idea.”

Sarah's eyes widened in astonishment. “
Your
idea? You mean—but
why
?”

“You don't know anything at all about Geoffrey, do you?” The green eyes stabbed cruelly into Sarah's. “No,” said Eve with a trace of satisfaction. “Obviously you don't. And I suppose I'm scotching it all up now, telling you this. But you seem to have found out about me on your own. And I wanted to see you for myself.”

“Why?”

“Call it morbid curiosity. Masochism. I hated to think of you two together. I loved him too much.” Her chin came up, a poor attempt at nonchalance. “Tell me. Were you happy with him?”

Sarah nodded, her eyes suddenly stinging. “Yes,” she
whispered. “We—at least
I
was happy. As for Geoffrey… I don't know anymore. I don't know anything anymore.”

“How often did you make love? Every night? Once a week?”

Sarah's mouth tightened. “Why should it matter to you? It was all part of your plan, wasn't it?”

The eyes softened, but only for an instant. “You loved him, too, didn't you?” asked Eve. She glanced down as she flicked off another ash. When she looked up, her eyes were once more as hard as emeralds. “So we both lost out, didn't we? It had to happen someday. It's the nature of the business.”

“
What
business?”

Eve leaned back. “You're better off not knowing. But you want to hear it, don't you? If I were you, I'd forget all this. I'd forget it and go home. While you still can.”

“Who
is
Geoffrey?”

Eve inhaled the smoke deeply and gazed into the distance, conjuring up the memories. “I met him ten years ago, in Amsterdam. He was a different man then.” She smiled wanly, as if amused by some private joke. “By different, I mean both literally and figuratively. His name was Simon Dance. At the time, we were both working for Mossad—the Israeli Secret Service. We were quite a team then, the three of us. Simon and I and another woman, our chief. Mossad's best. And then Simon and I fell in love.”

“You were spies?”

“I suppose you could call us that. Yes, let's leave it at that.” She stared thoughtfully at the patterns her cigarette smoke was weaving in the air. “We'd been together only a year when one of our assignments went badly. We worried too much about each other, you see. That can't happen, not
in our business. The work must be everything. Otherwise, things go wrong. And they did. The old man escaped.”

“Escaped? Was that your assignment, to arrest someone?”

Eve laughed. “Arrest? In our business, we do not bother to arrest. We terminate.”

Sarah's hands went ice-cold. Surely this wasn't the same Geoffrey they were talking about? No, she reminded herself. He wasn't Geoffrey then. He was
Simon
.

“So the old man lived. Magus, we called him. A holy name for an unholy man. Magus, the magician. To us it was more than just a code name. In a way he was a magician. That case finished us.” She stubbed out her cigarette and lighted another, ruining three matches in the process. Her hands were shaking too much. She sighed, gratefully inhaling the smoke. “After that, we all dropped out of the business. Simon and I were married, and for a while we lived in Germany, then France. We changed our names twice. But we kept feeling as though things were closing in. We knew there was a contract out on all of us. Ordered by Magus, of course. We decided to leave Europe.”

“So you chose America.”

Eve nodded. “Yes. It's all so simple, really. He found a new name. And a plastic surgeon. His cheeks were brought in, the nose narrowed. The difference was dramatic—no one could've recognized him. My face was changed, too. He went first, to America. It takes time to establish a new base, a new identity. I was to going to follow.”

“Why did he marry me?”

“He needed an American wife. He needed your home, your bank account, the cover you could provide. I could not pass as an American. My accent, my voice—I could
not change them. But Simon—ah, he could sound like a dozen different people!”

“Why did he choose me?”

Eve shrugged. “Convenience. You were lonely, not so pretty. You had no boyfriends. Yes, you were very vulnerable. You fell in love quickly, didn't you?”

Choking back a sob, Sarah nodded. Yes, she had been vulnerable. Before Geoffrey, her days had been spent at work, her nights mostly at home alone. She'd longed for a relationship with a man, for the closeness and caring her parents had had. But her career had been demanding and she'd been single too long; with each year that passed, marriage had seemed less and less likely.

Then Geoffrey had appeared. Geoffrey, who had filled the void. She'd fallen in love at once. Yet all this time, he had thought of her as nothing more than a convenience. She looked up in anger. “You didn't care, did you?” she asked. “Either of you. You didn't care who got hurt.”

“We had no choice. We had our own lives—”

“
Your
lives? What about
my
life?”

“Lower your voice.”

“My life, Eve. I loved him. And you can sit there, so smug, and justify what you both did!”

“Please lower your voice. They can hear you.”

“I don't care.”

Eve started to rise. “I think I've said all I care to.”

“No, wait!” Sarah grabbed her hand. “Please,” she said softly. “Sit down. I have to hear the rest. I have to know.”

Slowly Eve sank into the booth. She was silent for a moment, then said, “The truth is, he didn't love you. I was the one he loved. His trips here to London—they were only to see me. He'd check into the Savoy before taking the train to Margate. Every few days he'd return to London to call
you or post you a letter. I hated it, these last two months, sharing him with you. But it was necessary and only temporary. We were both surviving. Until…” She looked away. Her eyes suddenly glistened with tears.