Death by Marzipan

by John Burke

  ‘Professionally I’ve always been Brigid Weir. That will be the name on the book.’

  ‘Of course. Right, Mr Dacre. Miss Weir wants to throw out a few ideas and see whether you’re both on the same wavelength. It’ll be my job to act as interpreter, you might say, if necessary.’

  ‘You might say that,’ said Brigid, ‘but I think Mr Dacre and I speak roughly the same language.’

  Greg was not so sure of that, but stayed silent. He studied Brigid as she spoke, and knew that she was aware of this. Had she dressed and made herself up with extra care for this meeting?

  In her late forties now, she would stay beautiful for at least another two decades. Her lips were thin but finely shaped, ready to smile when that was needed in a negotiation. Tiny puckerings in the corners, though, were not laughter lines. She was as relaxed as a tigress deciding in leisurely fashion which limb of its prey to gnaw next. There was even a hint of a tiger’s stripes in her hair, a deep bronze with two swathes of dark brown carefully sleeked back from her high forehead. Her pale blue eyes, quite out of keeping with that tawny mane, were lazy but watchful. The grey two-piece was less a business suit than a stylish pelt, shaped tautly over her breasts and high at the throat. She knew how to make any man conscious of her sinuous body within those expensive clothes.

  For fifteen minutes they discussed the general thrust of the book-to-be. It was noticeable that although Brigid sounded crisp and confident, explaining the ins and outs of professional appointments, headhunting, forays into venture capital, takeovers and covert monopoly deals, and the sort of man who could make a fortune and lose a fortune, she was giving no individual details away. Not yet. Not until she was ready, thought Greg. Of course that was how she must always operate. All the same, he sensed from little shifts in her tone of voice and the tempo of some remarks an underlying desire for vengeance.

  He had spent part of yesterday on the phone consulting friends in the City and on a financial weekly. They gave colour and an additional dimension to what he, like anybody regularly reading newspapers or catching a passing reference in some TV money programme, already knew about Brigid Weir.

  The title of the organisation within which she had performed so ruthlessly was Excel-Con. An expanded version on its letter heading in smaller type defined this as Executive Link Consultancy. They charged high fees for running management courses and corporate motivational weekends, notoriously the most searching in Scotland and some way down into England. Discarded victims had protested that the experience was more like a battle course than a business executives’ programme. At the same time ExcelCon was rumoured to assess the worth of people sent on such courses, and either recommend their expensive promotion within their current company or try luring them away elsewhere.

  And somewhere, somehow, Brigid had blundered. It would be interesting to see how frank she was prepared to be about that aspect.

  Miss Vaughan-Smith was out of her depth. She shifted uneasily on her chair, wanting to assert herself but not grasping enough of the subject to know where she could interrupt.

  At last she risked it. ‘I’m sure this is the sort of thing where you’ll find Mr Dacre helpful. Getting things into a shape the general public can understand.’

  That had taken quite an effort. At the moment Greg Dacre was not in her good books. Not that Clement & Cowan were exactly noted for good books. Hyped biographies and the ghosted autobiographies of illiterate fashion models and sportsmen, yes; but few of any outstanding literary merit. The accountants who dominated the group had their eyes on swift, substantial returns from the latest crazes and celebrities rather than on less substantial long-term rewards for quality and creativity. Penelope Vaughan-Smith would probably spend only the usual six months here before flitting off to some other publishing house, where she would tell everyone what utterly grisly people she had left behind.

  Right now Greg wasn’t sure what her toothy snarl implied. It could be a lingering reaction to his most recent letter denouncing her editorial subversion of his punctuation. She had a habit of spattering commas like fly-droppings all over a page, saying, ‘I’m sorry, but that’s our house style.’ Or maybe she was still peevish because some weeks ago he had turned down her offer of another ghosting job, not even bothering to get in touch personally but leaving it to his literary agent. He was eager enough for a continuing income, but not desperate enough to put a gloss on the memoirs of a repellent Cabinet Minister who had recently lost his seat: the man’s self-justifications would be more suited to a work of fiction than an honest autobiography. Or maybe Miss Vaughan-Smith — Greg could never imagine anyone getting round to calling her Penelope, let alone Penny — disapproved of the way he was sizing up the other woman in the room. She must sense that she herself, with her bony shoulders and muddy complexion, was never likely to attract that sort of rapt attention; or that kind of income.

  Greg had often observed how very sexy money could be. Really rich men could be really ugly and still attract beautiful women; and not always because of the plushy lifestyle they had to offer. And rich women themselves somehow gave off a scent which had nothing to do with expensive perfumes. Money itself was the great aphrodisiac.

  ‘Mr Dacre does have a reputation for empathising with a congenial subject.’ Miss Vaughan-Smith continued with her grudging effort to set Greg up as one of the company’s prized writers. ‘For bringing out the real person.’

  Brigid made a faint inclination of the head in Greg’s direction. ‘It must have taken quite some time to develop such a talent.’

  Miss Vaughan-Smith began to sense something between the two of them which had not been confided to her. Her long face drooped a resentful inch longer. She switched tactics. ‘Perhaps we can settle terms here and now. Have to go to our contracts department to be finalised, of course, but I’d like to establish the basics: the advance, dates for a synopsis, some specimen chapters, delivery dates and so on.’

  Brigid Weir eyed her up and down in an appraisal which briskly wrote off Miss Vaughan-Smith’s narrow head as not worth the hunting; or, indeed, any other part of her anatomy. She said: ‘Before committing ourselves, I think Mr Dacre and I ought to have a personal discussion to make sure we empathise — that was your expression, wasn’t it? I suggest we break for lunch.’ She wasn’t suggesting it at all: she was commanding it. ‘And then if I find we can get on nowadays’ — the emphasis baffled Miss Vaughan-Smith even more — ‘Mr Dacre can come and spend a few days at my place to finalise our working timetable.’

  ‘Stately home in the Borders?’ said Greg.

  ‘You’ve been checking on me. Yes, stately home — sort of. Fewer distractions than the flat in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Either of them is a long way from here.’

  ‘All the better. Fewer distractions,’ Brigid said again. Smoothly she added: ‘Would you like to bring your wife? Or do you find her a distraction when you’re working?’

  It was Brigid’s way of finding out what had been happening to him in recent years. At the same time her tone of voice implied that personal attachments would be regarded as a nuisance.

  The truth was simple enough. ‘I don’t have a wife any more.’

  ‘She’s dead? I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not dead. Just not in my life any more.’

  ‘Ah. Like my husband.’ Blandly she added to Miss Vaughan-Smith: ‘Husbands in the plural, actually. Two of them gone, one still functioning.’

  Miss Vaughan-Smith had had enough of this. It was her office, she was used to authors and suchlike being deferential. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘it would be a help if I joined you at some stage. I could manage to get away for a few days in a case like this.’

  ‘Very thoughtful of you, but I don’t think Mr Dacre and I need a referee. We’ll fight it out between us.’

  Greg wondered how close she was to adding — Just as we always used to.

  ‘And as to the money,’ he said, ‘I’ll have a word with my agent before I leave.’

  M
iss Vaughan-Smith’s face fell even further. She hadn’t really hoped, had she, that just for once she would be able to fiddle things all her own way instead of being wrestled into submission by Kate Hadleigh?

  *

  At lunch, they ordered and then sat in silence for a few minutes: not so much an awkward silence as one of mutual assessment as they took up positions, each waiting for the other’s gambit.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last.

  ‘Well,’ she said. She waited for the ritual of wine sniffing and tasting and pouring to be completed, then made the first move. ‘So you haven’t married again. Or did you marry and then find that that one didn’t work either?’

  ‘No. I haven’t remarried.’

  ‘I thought there was some ravishing blonde around at one stage.’

  ‘I didn’t know you still kept that keen an eye on my career.’

  ‘The sort of glossy magazines I have to skim through to keep an eye on my clients — you appear in them occasionally.’

  ‘Very occasionally.’

  ‘She looked rather gorgeous.’

  ‘It was just publishers’ publicity. You know how it is.’

  ‘I do indeed.’ She paused as the melon and Parma ham were set in front of her. ‘And you’ve got at least a glimmering of what I’ve been up to and what we’ll be writing about?’

  Greg nodded. ‘What gets me,’ he said, ‘is that when your headhunting is so blatant, why do top people allow it to happen? Why risk sending their best men on such dangerous campaigns, knowing the chance’s of them defecting?’

  ‘A lot of the book’s going to be about just that. Don’t expect me to trot out an easy synopsis off the cuff.’

  ‘But you really do want to tell all? Give away all the secrets, how the big shots make their decisions, how they work behind the scenes, switching men and women to and fro at ever-increasing salaries, collecting their own dues, recommending someone and damning someone else?’

  ‘And put flesh on the bones of the contestants, yes. Lots of flesh. And then strip it off for everyone to see.’

  Who would trust her after these revelations she was bent on making? Or had she decided she was no longer interested in being trusted?

  Abruptly she was the one doing the questioning. She ate in quick, small mouthfuls, skilled at formulating crucial barbs to launch at her companion when his own mouth was full and he had to gulp before coping with the answers.

  ‘Do fill in the gaps between those occasional pictures and paragraphs. How have things been for you?’

  Put flesh on his bones … so that she could strip it off layer by layer …? She had always been good at getting down to the raw nerves.

  ‘It depends,’ he said warily, ‘on who I’ve been at any given time.’

  It was almost like facing an interview for a job. Which, he supposed, was really the way she saw it. Only he was not a desperate applicant. Just as she could choose not to employ him, he could choose at any minute to walk out. Just as she had walked out, way back.

  Without boasting or trying to ingratiate himself, he summarised his career crisply and impersonally, as if sketching the outline of somebody else’s biography.

  She hardly needed telling that he had worked with little hope of advancement in that sombre little Edinburgh educational publishing house in its cramped cobbled square, while more ambitious colleagues headed towards London to make a name for themselves. It had always been a source of argument and bitterness between them. Brigid had left in a fine flurry of rage before he turned his own footsteps towards London and discovered his own real talent. The Edinburgh firm had sold out to a conglomerate, and it was a matter of accepting a transfer to the London office or wandering round Edinburgh looking for something else.

  The shake-up shook many things into a new pattern for Gregory Dacre. Editing a clumsy autobiography commissioned by his new employers, he began to sense what the man was really trying to say, and found in himself a talent for becoming another person, and then a whole sequence of other people: not so much impersonating them as assuming their identity. Quite unlike the bossy Miss Vaughan-Smith, always wanting to impose her own strait jacket upon a variety of other people, he didn’t assert himself, but coaxed the truth out of his collaborators. Even when he had become a respected name in the profession, his own face was never on the cover or even the back flap of a book. But he had become sufficiently sought after to justify his name appearing on the title page, usually in the form of ‘as told to Gregory Dacre’ or ‘with Gregory Dacre’, as if he were some sort of detergent additive. There came a time when people felt privileged if his name was suggested as their ghost. He didn’t suppose Brigid would regard him quite so respectfully.

  Yet she was famous for her intuition in choosing the right man for the job. And she was the one who had insisted on Cowan approaching him.

  Just what were her real intentions?

  He would find out, not from her but through her. He had become a more skilful dramatic interpreter than any actor. He didn’t just play the part: thinking himself deeper and deeper into it, he virtually became the character. When working on that Soviet spy’s autobiography, he had thought and become the man himself, in spite of original distaste for him. Usually it was a man. But several women had gushingly said that he understood them.

  That wasn’t something he would risk reporting to Brigid.

  ‘I can’t believe,’ she said over the poached salmon, ‘that you’ve been entirely celibate all these years. Come on, Greg, if we’re going to work together —’

  ‘It’s your autobiography we’re going to write, not mine. Just when and where do we start? And when you tell a pack of lies, how much am I allowed to put right?’

  She fidgeted for a moment, uncharacteristically unsure of herself. Then she stooped to pick up her briefcase and took out a few pages of print-out which had obviously been left ready to hand. There was an unusual timidity in the way she handed them over to him, as if at the last moment she might snatch them back. ‘My first sketch of an opening. I know there’s a lot of polishing to be done … I can see faults in it myself, but …’

  It was a familiar situation. They always made lame apologies, hating the idea of anyone else casting a critical eye over their efforts.

  ‘Let’s just have a quick look, shall we?’ said Greg soothingly.

  ‘Would you excuse me a minute?’

  Of course she couldn’t bear to sit and watch him while he read the few pages. This was where he ceased to be regarded as a potential employee and began to take charge. It had happened so often before. He had never expected it to happen with Brigid.

  She was back in ten minutes, talking fast before she had even sat down. ‘I don’t expect you to rush into an immediate judgment. Not off the top of your head. Have a look through it before we next meet. Tell me what you think when you’ve had time to digest it.’

  He already knew what he thought. It had taken only a few minutes to get the flavour of it. Too detached. Stodgy. Some provocative facts were there, but there was no life in it. No real people. Not even Brigid herself.

  Over the coffee he deliberately refused to offer her the few stopgap assurances which, in spite of what she had just said, she was waiting for. Quite a new sensation, keeping Brigid dangling.

  Just for the hell of it, he returned to the attack. ‘What I don’t understand is why these organisations who send their top people on those courses don’t realise they’re likely to lose them. I mean, with you sitting there picking out the likely ones —’

  ‘Like a vulture?’ Her smile this time was quite unforced. She was so pleased with herself.

  ‘I can’t believe they could be that gullible. Running risks like that.’

  ‘If they sometimes lose a good analyst or administrator to a competitor, they can afford to be philosophical about it, because’ — she studied her coffee cup as if her palate had suddenly sharpened — ‘sooner or later they’ll acquire somebody better. From the same source. They rarely send an
yone on those courses that they’re genuinely worried about losing. It’s usually only dubious folk from the Marzipan Layer.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘That’s a new one on you? Bright middle management types. Sometimes getting too cosy. Not uncommon for us to get a tipoff from the top floor that they wouldn’t mind this one or that one getting a bad report, or being nudged somewhere else. But there are others who are just about ready for something more ambitious. Nobody in that middle segment, the Marzipan Layer, is ever quite safe, one way or the other.’

  ‘But the prizes for coming out of the marzipan into the icing on top of the cake are considerable?’

  ‘You’re getting the hang of it.’

  ‘I shall look at some folk I know in the publishing world through new eyes.’

  ‘On that subject,’ said Brigid, ‘I wasn’t impressed with that Miss Vaughan-Smith.’

  ‘Publishers’ editors are all pretty much the same. They love to try telling you how to write, and then alter what you’ve written because they don’t feel they’re earning their salaries if they don’t meddle.’

  ‘What sort of salaries?’

  ‘What you might call the Digestive Biscuit Layer.’

  ‘You do pick the terminology up fast, don’t you?’

  There was still that question which kept popping up in his mind. ‘Why have you decided to spill the beans now? I mean, won’t it make it difficult for you to get another job later? Or are we going to stick to fairly uncontroversial material?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘we certainly are not.’

  ‘In which case —’

  ‘We’ll deal with each case as we come to it. And bring out all the facts, whatever they may be.’

  Or whatever you’ve decided they should be, he thought.

  He said: ‘Isn’t this going to get dangerous? Somebody might get hurt.’

  She was smiling to herself this time, far away in some daydream of settling old scores. ‘That’s the whole idea, Greg. So let’s not waste any more time, right? You can fly up to Edinburgh with me this evening, and we’ll drive to —’