Sidney Sheldon's the Tides of Memory by Sidney Sheldon

Author:Sidney Sheldon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-four

At last the day of the Kingsmere summer party arrived. Alexia De Vere awoke before dawn after another night of broken sleep. Creeping into the bathroom so as not to wake Teddy, she peered at her reflection in the mirror. A hag stared back at her. Wisps of gray were fighting their way through the blond, her skin looked dry and flaky and old, like stale pastry, and lines of exhaustion and stress ran in deep grooves, fanning out from her eyes and lips.

This wouldn’t do.

Switching on her BlackBerry, Alexia fired off an e-mail to her personal assistant, Margaret, arranging for a hairdresser and makeup artist to come to the house in the early afternoon and fix the damage. Sir Edward Manning ran Alexia’s political life, but when it came to personal matters, Margaret French was her right-hand woman. Having sent the e-mail, Alexia pulled her cashmere dressing gown tightly around her and went downstairs to her office.

“Good morning, madam. You’re up early. Can I bring you some coffee?”

Thank God for Bailey. Good butlers were a dying breed, but Kingsmere’s was the absolute best.

“Oh, please, Bailey, that would be lovely. As strong as you can make it, with warm milk and sweetener on the side. And some rye toast.”

“Slightly burned, ma’am. I should hope I know how you like it by now.”

What a relief to be home, in a place where little rituals mattered and the fundamentals of life never changed. Ever since Paris, and the awful afternoon in Dior when she’d heard about Jennifer Hamlin’s murder, Alexia felt as if the world—her world—had gone mad. By day her schedule at the Home Office was as crammed as ever. Education Committee meetings here, hospital openings there, white papers to be digested on everything from scrapping jury trials for terrorists to the increasingly contentious and unpopular U.S. extradition treaty. But all the time, in the back of her mind, Billy Hamlin’s fate, and that of his daughter, haunted her. When Alexia ate lunch, or went to the bathroom, or slept, or turned on the television, there was Billy’s face like Banquo’s ghost, demanding her attention, demanding justice.

I came to you about my daughter.

I needed your help.

But you turned me away.

Every day, guilt came knocking like a beggar at the door of Alexia’s heart, demanding to be let in. You owed Billy Hamlin so much. And you gave him so little. But every day, with a supreme effort of will, she turned it away. The crimes of the past were Toni Gilletti’s crimes and Toni Gilletti was dead. She was Alexia De Vere: a loving wife, a competent mother, and a committed politician, changing her adopted country for the good. Alexia De Vere hadn’t killed anyone. It wasn’t her fault.

Guilt may have been forced out, but curiosity was allowed in, and soon it was running rampant. Who had killed Billy and Jennifer Hamlin, and why? Were the deaths connected to each other, or to her, or were they in fact merely

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