Years later, when Billy asked his daughter earnestly whether the split had affected her, the twelve-year-old Jenny Hamlin looked her father in the eye and said, deadpan: “Dad. I’ve seen eggs separate with more emotion.”
When her mom asked her the same question, Jenny stood up and gasped melodramatically, clapping a hand over her mouth.
“What? You mean you guys are divorced?!”
The truth was that Jenny Hamlin was a happy, secure, resourceful kid. Her mother was blissfully remarried, and although Billy remained single, he was perfectly content with his business, his buddy Milo, and his season ticket to Yankee Stadium.
Then the voices started.
It began as mild depression. Billy and Milo’s business started to struggle, then fail. The debts piled up, and Billy no longer had Sally’s income to cushion the blow. When Milo and Betsy Bates’s marriage also fell apart, Billy took it hard. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it felt as if the whole world were coming unglued. He started to drink, a little at first, then a lot. Somewhere along the line, the boundary between reality and Billy’s increasingly doom-ridden imagination began to blur. Eventually it disintegrated altogether.
Milo Bates left town, abandoning Billy to face their debts alone. Billy convinced himself that Milo had been abducted and murdered.
He told the police, “He wouldn’t leave me. Not Milo. He’s my best friend. They’ve taken him. They’ve taken him away and killed him.”
When asked who “they” were, Billy Hamlin could only reply “the voice.” An evil voice had apparently told Billy Hamlin that “they” had kidnapped Milo Bates. Billy described vivid, nightmarish fantasies of Bates being tortured and killed by this anonymous individual, and demanded that the police investigate.
Desperately worried, Bill’s ex-wife, Sally, called in the social workers. Billy was diagnosed as schizophrenic and prescribed medication. When he took it, things got better. When he didn’t, they got worse. Much, much worse.
He would disappear for months on end on mysterious “trips,” not telling anyone where he was going and refusing to discuss where he’d been once he returned. “The voice” would tell him where to go, and Billy would follow its instructions, clearly terrified. Nobody knew where he got the money for these trips, and Billy himself seemed vague about it, insisting that funds had mysteriously appeared in his bank account. Sally and Jenny begged him to get help but Billy refused, convinced that if he didn’t do what “the voice” asked, if he allowed the voice to be silenced by doctors or psychiatrists, something quite terrible would happen.
Occasionally he got fixated on specific people. Some were locals, people he knew from the neighborhood whom he believed to be in danger. Others were public figures. Baseball players. Politicians. Actors.
Most recently, and most bizarrely, Billy Hamlin had become obsessed with the new British home secretary, Alexia De Vere. Time magazine had run a picture of Mrs. De Vere as part of its profile on women in power, and Billy had fixated on it, spending hours and hours on his computer “researching” the British politician’s background.
“I have to warn her,” Billy told his daughter, Jenny.
Not again, thought Jenny. He seemed so much better lately.
“Warn her about what, Dad?” She sighed. “You don’t know this woman.”
“That’s not the point.”
“But, Dad . . .”
“She’s in grave danger. The voice said so. I have to warn her. I have to go to England.”
No one, not even Jenny Hamlin, thought that her father was actually going to go.
Teddy De Vere came into the kitchen at Kingsmere looking upset.
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” Roxie asked. “As Granny used to say, you look like you’ve lost a shilling and found sixpence.”
Teddy didn’t laugh. “Have you seen Danny?”
Danny was the ancient family dog, a wire-haired dachshund with the IQ of a cabbage to whom all the De Veres were devoted. Especially Teddy.
“I called him this morning for his walk and he never came. Can’t find him anywhere.”
“He’s probably asleep somewhere,” said Roxie. “Or waddled off to the gamekeeper’s cottage for some free sausages. Do you want me to look for him with you?”
“Would you mind? Silly, I know, but I’m worried about him.”
Half an hour later, so was Roxie. They’d searched the entire house, twice, and all the likely places in the grounds. No doubt about it, the dog was gone.
“Might Mummy have let him out by mistake when she left for London this morning?” Roxie asked. “Should we call and check?”
“Done it already. She said she didn’t check his basket but she doesn’t remember seeing him, and he definitely didn’t get out.”
“Your lordship.”
Alfred Jennings hovered in the kitchen doorway. Teddy De Vere had given up his title decades ago, when Alexia first stood for Parliament, but Alfred was congenitally incapable of addressing a De Vere in any other way.
“Have you found him?” Teddy’s round face lit up with hope.
The old gatekeeper stared at his shoes. “Yes, your lordship. I’m afraid we have.”
Alexia De Vere peeled back the Frette sheets on her London bed and slipped inside. It had been a long day—since her appointment as home secretary, all the days were long—and the soft touch of Egyptian cotton against her bare legs felt wonderful. Alexia usually wore silk Turnbull & Asser pajamas to bed, but London was enjoying a three-day heat wave, and the one luxury that the De Veres’ Cheyne Walk house lacked was air-conditioning.
“I’m buggered if I’m paying for that nonsense when we’re away all summer,” Teddy insisted. “If it’s hot, we can open the bloody window.”
He can be so English sometimes, Alexia thought affectionately.
Teddy had called her earlier from Kingsmere. Sir Edward Manning had passed on three messages, but Alexia literally hadn’t had a single free moment to return his calls. The phone rang just as she was reaching for it.
“Darling. I’m so sorry. You wouldn’t believe how hectic things have been here, I’ve had two select committees, my first full cabinet meeting, I’ve—”
“Alexia. Something’s happened.”
Teddy’s tone stopped her instantly. Horrors flashed through her mind. An accident. Michael. Roxie.
“Somebody’s poisoned the dog.”
For an instant Alexia felt relief. It’s only Danny. Not the children. Then the full import of what Teddy was saying hit her.
“Poisoned him? Deliberately?”
“I’m not sure. But none of the gardeners are admitting to putting rat poison down and the vet says his stomach was full of it.”
“Was full of it? Is he dead?”
“Yes, he’s dead! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. All damn day.”
Alexia could hear Teddy’s voice quavering. He loved that dog. Suddenly she felt afraid. The mystery caller. Danny being found dead. There was probably no connection. But what if there was? What sort of psychopath would kill a sweet little dog?
After a few minutes comforting her husband, Alexia De Vere hung up. As soon as she did so, the phone rang again. She snatched it up, silently praying that it wasn’t her mother-in-law, who often called late at night. The Dowager Lady De Vere was ninety-six and profoundly deaf, a disability that had in no way reduced her enthusiasm for the telephone as a means of communication. She particularly enjoyed shouting recipes down the line at her daughter-in-law, conveniently ignoring the fact that Alexia had never cooked so much as a piece of toast in her six decades on this earth, and was probably even less likely to do so now that she had the small matter of a country to run. A typical call would begin, “Teddy’s very keen on eels in aspic. Have you got a pen and pencil handy?”
But it wasn’t Teddy’s mother. The faint click on the line told Alexia immediately it was a long-distance call, but there was no voice on the other end.
“Hello?” Sometimes there was a delay on the line, especially with calls from the U.S. “Lucy, is that you?”
Lucy Meyer, Alexia’s summer neighbor from Martha’s Vineyard, was the only other person she could think of who might call her at home at this hour. With the holidays approaching, Lucy had been in closer touch, a welcome reminder of the peaceful life that existed outside of politics. If only Lucy lived in England, how much easier my life would be.
“If it’s you, Luce, I can’t hear you. Try again.”
But it wasn’t Lucy Meyer. It was a low, synthesized growl. “The day is coming. The day when the Lord’s anger will be poured out.”
The voice distorter was designed to frighten. It worked.
Alexia tightened her grip on the handset.
“Who is this?”
“Because you have sinned against the Lord, I will make you as helpless as a blind man searching for a path.”
“I said who is this?”
“Your blood will be poured out into the dust and your body will lie rotting on the ground. Murdering bitch.”