“Oh, Carlos, don’t you think the police should be told everything now? That strangling of her pet bird may be a symbolic threat of violence against her. She may be in danger.”
“She doesn’t behave like a frightened woman. Each time she has gone away she has always come back in good health and spirits. Each time, she’s insisted that it would never happen again.”
“But it has. Couldn’t you tell the police all this without telling the press?”
“You’ve just told me your editor knows about her disappearances already. We thought that was a secret we had kept. Did he say anything else about Vivian?”
“No, he didn’t, but something happened to me which I think the police ought to know about now. There was a letter—”
The door opened. A page came in with a tape recording machine.
“On the coffee table,” said Carlos.
“Anything else, sir?”
“That’s all, thank you.”
The door closed. Carlos turned back to Tash. “What’s this about a letter?”
“The day I interviewed Mrs. Playfair she gave me a letter to mail for her. Then, when you and the Governor appeared and I mentioned the letter to her, she said, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ This morning I tried to speak about the letter again. Twice. The first time she changed the subject. The second time she said she didn’t want to talk about it.”
“When did you mail the letter?”
“I never got a chance to mail it. My pocket was picked after I left here. The pickpockets took her letter when they took my wallet.”
“Does she know the letter was stolen?”
“No. That’s what I was trying to tell her when she refused to talk about the letter. I couldn’t have forced her to listen without making a scene. There were other people there. It was just before luncheon.”
“Did you notice the name and address on the letter?”
“Not really. I just noticed that it was addressed to a Doctor, not to a Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Don’t you think we’d better get that press release blocked out now?”
Carlos looked at his watch. “Dios! Only forty minutes left! We’ll both have to be Saxon now and hurry. I’ll dictate. You stop me and smooth out any rough places as we go along. Remember, this must be all cliches. They’re so reassuring. Ready?”
“Ready.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes against the cloud of cigarette smoke around his head.
“State and city police are sending out a five-state alarm here tonight for Mrs. Jeremy Playfair, wife of the Governor, who has been missing from the residence at Leafy Way since . . . Since when?”
“It was about ten when the Governor discovered she was missing, but no one has seen her since three when the luncheon party broke up.”
“We’d better say ‘since shortly after two o’clock.’ The longer she’s been missing, the more likely people are to pay attention to this. What happened to the mike? Thanks.” Carlos backed up the tape, erased the last words, and re-dictated. “. . . since shortly after two o’clock this afternoon. Her car, a white convertible . . . Do you remember the make and year?”
“Buick, 1975.”
“A Buick, 1975, is also missing. She was last seen at a luncheon party today at Leafy Way attended by . . . Who was there?”
Tash spoke directly into the microphone. “The Governor himself, members of his staff, and the Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. Jackman.”
Carlos took back the microphone. “All those who saw her at luncheon agree that she appeared to be in normal health and spirits at that time, but—”
“Stop! I’d say ‘usual’ instead of ‘normal,’ because normal always suggests its opposite, abnormal, is lurking in the wings.”
“Good point. In her usual health and spirits at that time. Hospital emergency wards are being checked throughout city and state, but so far there is no indication that Mrs. Playfair has met with an accident. There remains the possibility that she may be the victim of an unreported accident, or that she is suffering from loss of memory. Anyone with any knowledge of her whereabouts should telephone the Governor’s house at Leafy Way or State Police Headquarters immediately at one of the following numbers. We’ll get the numbers from the switchboard. Any criticism?”
“You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“The whole thing sounds fake. People will never understand why we are sending out a five-state alarm at ten when she’s only been missing since two. We need something to make it more real. Since we can’t tell the whole truth, her previous disappearances and the canary business, we need something else to make it sound like an emergency. What about her engagements this afternoon? Did she break any?”
“Hilary will know.” Carlos reached for the telephone. He was smiling when he put it down. “She had a private engagement. An old school friend coming to tea at five.”
“And she broke it?”
“No, much better. She failed to keep it without breaking it. That’s the sort of detail that makes a disappearance seem involuntary, which is the very effect we want to create.”
Carlos dialed the switchboard again. “Nick, I need all the telephone numbers for Leafy Way and the state police barracks, and a page to take a tape to the secretariat for Xeroxing.”
When the page came back with Xeroxes of the transcript made from the tape recording, Carlos said, “If you’ll proofread these, I’ll go and tell Jerry about that letter of Vivian’s that was stolen. I think he ought to know.”
“Will you be back in time to meet the newspapermen?”
“I’ll be back in two minutes.”
The door crashed behind him as he plunged out of the room.
So he can hurry if he wants to. Tash filled in the telephone numbers on the Xeroxes by hand in order to save time. She had just finished when Carlos burst back into the room.
“Too late! They’re here. I didn’t even get as far as Jerry. Some day, when this is all over, I shall go back to my mother’s house in Sotavento and spend the rest of my life
