The Kimberlee remarks were said without rancor. She was merely reporting her observations.
She. She must have a first name. Must find out name, telegraphed his brain.
"You're-" he started.
"Although," she was saying, "perhaps that's no longer a requirement in the publishing world. Spelling. Well, I'd better get a move on," she said, starting to turn away. She had a smile like a lightning strike. "It was nice talk-"
" No! " he nearly shouted.
She turned back, looking stunned, as well she might.
Jesus!
"I'm sorry. What I meant was…"
She was of course connected with the conference-what else would she be doing here?-but he could hardly ask her where in the castle she was staying, could he?
"I meant to say, it was nice talking with you."
Nice and lame, a phrase he trotted out ten times a day. Then he rescued himself by adding:
"My name is Arthur St. Just, by the way."
"I know." Smiling, she stuck out her hand.
She knew? She knew who he was? Merciful heaven. He was so flattered he nearly missed taking the small white hand she proffered. Her skin was as soft as a newborn's.
"Bye now," she said.
Spellbound, he slowly raised one hand in an answering wave. "Bye."
He had somehow lost all interest in these books and their authors. Sidling his way, crablike, out of the crowded seller's room, he leaned against a Grecian column to watch the milling multitude, which continued its amoeba-like splitting into ever-changing groups. Apart from the large Kimberlee Kalder cluster, there were others centered around perhaps six authors whom St. Just gathered were to be much praised and emulated for their sales figures. These focal points included Tom Brackett. But the mother of all groups had collected around the handsome young agent, Jay Fforde, who was beginning, rather frantically, to eye the exits.
Just then, a commotion could be heard above the generally deafening noise level, and the words "stars of yesteryear" carried clearly across the room. Magretta had apparently brought to bay the author of the Edinburgh Herald piece.
"I mean really, how dare you print such libel," Magretta said, in her now-familiar clarion tones. "Quentin, I demand a retraction."
The offending reporter, much like the agent, seemed to be seeking escape. St. Just was stirred to pity. Quentin sported an assortment of metal studs in his ears and hair moussed into wilted maroon spikes. Against Magretta's own swirling red locks, one would have thought that corner of the room had caught fire.
"Look, I can't print a retraction for something like that. I mean, it's not like I really said anything much, did I? Stars of yesterday-it's a compliment, like. Depending how you look at it."
"Yester year. Yester year. I've told you how I look at it. You said quite enough, my young man. I'll have you know my fans are legion. Legion. I can promise you'll be hearing from them, as will your editor and publisher."
If there is one thing the young cannot stand to be reminded of, reflected St. Just, it is that they are, in fact, young. A mulish look rumpled Quentin's face.
"Look, I'll tell you what. I'll make it up to you, like. How's about you give me an interview? I'll plug your latest book, give you a leg up, like."
A moue of distaste settled over Magretta's features. A leg up, indeed. Still, Quentin had learned enough in his short time in the company of crime writers to know that the offer of an interview-any interview, anywhere, with anyone-was an irresistible siren call.
She tipped back her head and eyed him from half-closed lids, a queen considering a stay of execution.
"When?" she demanded.
"What's wrong with right now?"
Kimberlee Kalder, having disengaged from her fan club, materialized at St. Just's side, likewise watching the proceedings.
"Magretta-such a silly old moo," she said, beaming at him. She tossed her head like a shampoo model, swinging her gleaming hair into slow-motion action. "I've come to rescue you. A good-looking man like yourself shouldn't be, like, left at the mercy of this crowd."
He demurred. She persisted. St. Just quickly was persuaded that persistence was her calling card.
"Don't be shy," she said. She now twirled a strand of the white-blonde hair around one finger, giggled up and down the scale, and gave her head another toss for good measure. "Cultivate the fans-that's totally what these conferences are for."
St. Just smiled feebly. "I don't have fans. I'm a cop."
She paused, mid-twirl. "Then whatever are you doing here?"
"It's rather a long story."
She emitted a girlish squeal and with an expression of mock horror, threw up her hands and said, "The Bill! Ooh! I surrender!" There was more in this vein and then, rescue mission forgotten, she giggled again and spun off in search of her publicist, who "was supposed to be arranging an interview with the Scotsman. I don't know what I pay him for. How am I supposed to finish this book if I have to do his job, too?"
As she strode away on champagne-stem heels, a bedraggled Annabelle Pace crossed his line of vision, carrying a plastic bag bulging with about a dozen books.
"You've been shopping, I see."
She nodded. "One has to keep up with trends, however appalling they may be. I never thought I'd say this," she added, "but 'poor Jay.'"
Nodding in the direction of the besieged agent, she said, "He doesn't need this grief. He certainly doesn't need the money, nor the publicity. I wonder why he's here at all."
"Looking to recruit new talent?" said St. Just.
"You're joking, right? He's probably got more successful clients than he can handle now. Besides, agents never come to these things looking for talent. But would you turn down a free holiday?"
Splinter groups were now forming around people Annabelle identified as late-arriving publishers and magazine editors.
"They're trying to get on the publishers' lists or finagle a book review," Annabelle informed him. "Oh! See that grey-haired man, the toff who looks like Ian Richardson? That's Julius Easterbrook, the publisher. My host and yours, in case you haven't yet met him."
Watching the sycophantic crowd, and thinking of the hundreds of books he'd just seen at the booksellers' stalls, St. Just said, "It's a funny business you're in. Constantly writing about murder."
"Are you wondering, in your professional capacity, if we're ever tempted to take it that one step further -cue sinister harpsichord music?" asked Annabelle. "The answer is no. Writers are observers, not doers, Hemingway being the rare exception. We don't, as a rule, engage in anything so… proactive as murder. Especially crime writers. Completely lacking a spine for that sort of thing, I would have said."
"But you're forgetting," he replied. "Crime writers are people, too."
She looked about them. In one corner, an author was whinging to his publisher about the "puny print runs" for his book, "which would otherwise have been a best-seller." In another, a woman surreptitiously added a tot of brandy from a hip flask to her morning coffee. A scruffy-looking man in an overcoat was taking down one of the booksellers, who had apparently committed the mortal sin of forgetting to stock the author's books.
"Only in the most elastic sense of the term," she told him.
Annabelle soon left him to discuss contracts, and St. Just began walking about, sipping his juice and trying to look as though he belonged. He'd never known how to "work" a room, which often left him at the mercy of whatever bore latched onto him, but he had learned how to move quickly and purposefully through a crowd so as not to be waylaid. As he did so, he came across Magretta, enthroned in an armchair, interview with Quentin Swope underway. She was apparently just wrapping up a defense of the mystery genre, and the enduring fascination of reading about others being done to death in outrageous and implausible ways.
"Would you not say it is true that good writers can no longer find a platform, especially in America?" St. Just heard Quentin ask. "That they're being ignored in favor of the few, reliable blockbus
ter writers?"
"Not at all," Magretta replied frostily. "The blockbuster writers like Kimb-I mean, these newcomers, some of whom are here with us today, will be forgotten in twenty years' time, you mark my words. While the carefully crafted suspense novel, such as I write, will, like the pyramids, withstand the test of the ages."
Registering that Magretta had actually failed to answer the question, St. Just strode briskly past, gathering odd scraps of conversation as he went.
"You have to have a corpse by page fifty-seven. Page seventy at the absolute outside."
"Says who?"
"Why, so says everyone. It's the industry standard."
"Industry standard? What are we writing here? CliffsNotes or crime novels?"
Another group, this one dominated by a man in green golf slacks. Surely a soul mate for Magretta, or her lost twin.
"Prologues are so last year. Did you read that pointless, winding thing in Magretta's last book?"
Or, perhaps not.
A few steps further brought him to a redoubtable woman sporting a pince-nez and a brocade waistcoat.
"The murder has to take place in the first five pages. Otherwise, the readers lose interest."
"Are they suffering from attention deficit disorder, or what? I mean, surely these decisions depend on the requirements of the story one is trying to tell."
"I'm telling you. Monique's last book didn't have the murder until page twenty. The returns positively flooded back to the publisher."
"That's just ridiculous. The book didn't sell because it was rubbish."
And a bit later:
"Fifty? Honey, she's sixty-five if she's a day. Hell, her author photo is practically a daguerreotype."
Another group was discussing the famous Hercule Poirot.
"All those giant marrows," said one. "I mean, really. One can't escape the symbolism. And Miss Marple, with her knitting-"
Just then the conference organizer, Rachel Twalley, whizzed by, an hysterical gleam in her eyes, just avoiding a collision with a ginger-haired man in granny glasses.
"Have you ever noticed how serial killers always think in italics?"
One conversation he overheard that later seemed significant was when his orbit brought him past Tom Brackett and Lord Easterbrook, Tom leaning in confrontationally, hands on hips.
"It's not blackmail if no money changes hands," Tom hissed at the older man.
"Extortion, then. And I've had enough of whatever you choose to call it. If Kimberlee goes, everything's changed. You must realize that. I may well be bankrupt next year."
"Don't give me that crap. You've got more money than Croesus."
St. Just missed the rest of the conversation, a jam having formed in earnest near the ballroom, resulting in some genteel shoving and elbow-pushing. The throng eventually swept St. Just through the door and deposited him inside, where Rachel Twalley and several other dignitaries were arranged on a dais behind a long, cloth-covered table. The seated audience members alternated between rubber-necking and studying their programs as intently as scholars decoding the Dead Sea scrolls. St. Just, finding a seat near the back, hoped no one would hold him responsible for "Bad Boys."
Rachel stood and bustled to the podium, rather in the unto-the-breach attitude of a suffragette about to chain herself to the gates of Parliament. Gripping the microphone as if it were a lifeline attached to a rescue helicopter-"Testing! Testing! Can you hear me in the back?" (St. Just felt sure they could hear her in the North Pole)-she launched into her opening remarks.
"The crime novel, once the poor stepchild of literature, has at last been crowned, thanks to all of you who gather here yearly to raise the fallen flag and rally the troops to the side of the immortal Agatha, the inimitable Ngaio, the sublime Dorothy-our Great Softboiled Ladies of Mystery-and their hardboiled cousins: Hammett, Chandler, and Cain."
She mined this vein for some twenty minutes longer. St. Just, losing the thread-along with, he was sure, many others-looked about him in time to see Tom Brackett plod in, his wife several steps behind, carrying his briefcase. There was a little jostling hubbub at one of the doors and then Magretta shot through the opening, immediately followed by Kimberlee Kalder. Kimberlee's entrance was accompanied by a certain amount of fuss that made St. Just think her delayed appearance, probably like Magretta's and Tom's, had been planned in advance. Her presence sent a flutter of whispers into the air like gulls startled by a sudden noise.
Signaling to Kimberlee to remain standing, Rachel trilled, "There has been a last-minute change in the program that I know will greatly please all of you aspiring young authors in the audience. Kimberlee Kalder, best-selling author of Dying for a Latte, has generously consented to hold a Q-and-A session on how to break into the chick lit mystery market."
This announcement met with a small ripple of applause and comment, some of it puzzled (What in hell is chick lit? one elderly woman with a hearing aid demanded loudly) and Kimberlee remained standing as necks craned to see her. She smiled, offered a lofty wave, then approached the podium, uninvited, a queen heaving her way through a swarm of courtiers. She had learned the orator's trick of maintaining a drawn-out silence before beginning to speak, first gathering all eyes to her.
"They say I am the new Jane Austen," she began. "Certainly I've sold more copies of Latte than Jane ever sold of Persuasion in her lifetime."
A murmur of unrest rose from the assembly.
"As if," whispered a middle-aged woman seated to his left.
"Blasphemy!" hissed another behind him.
"Who is 'they'?" demanded another.
Unabashed, Kimberlee weathered on. Edith Wharton was mentioned, and George Eliot. St. Just looked around to see how everyone else was taking this. By now several loud, incredulous snorts had erupted from various quarters of the room. Many heads were bent in heated discussion, and at least one member of the audience-the woman with strong opinions on Poirot's marrows-had had enough. With rather more commotion than was strictly necessary, she headed for the door.
The rest-especially, he supposed, the aspiring authors Rachel had mentioned-remained in their seats, entranced.
____________________
The buffet lunch proved to be a doughy mutton pie and a plain salad of lettuce and tomato, innocent of dressing, followed by oatmeal biscuits from a packet. Seeking out a quiet table, St. Just noticed Donna Doone had now attached herself to Winston Chatley, handing him several dozen pages of typescript, presumably of her manuscript, which he politely pocketed. Magretta Sincock gave St. Just a flirtatious wave, clashing with his naked salad greens as she sailed by.
Mrs. Elksworthy appeared at his elbow and asked him to join her.
"That Tom," she said as they pushed through the melee near the buffet table. "How rude to sit there snorting like a sow throughout poor Rachel's speech. But Kimberlee was worse. Why didn't she just hire a trumpet player to announce her entrance? 'Tips on writing chick lit,' indeed." She drew out a pause with staged emphasis, her customary sang-froid having apparently deserted her. No one could doubt chick lit was in for a thrashing. "After all, what can there be to say? Keep your pencils sharpened?"
They passed Kimberlee sitting at a large round table with a flamboyantly dressed man Joan identified as B. A. King. St. Just was in time to hear Kimberlee say, "You stole it. I want what's mine or I promise you, you'll pay."
"You're crazy," King hissed back. "I don't know what you're talking about."
He stood abruptly and left. Sensing an opportunity-for what, St. Just wasn't sure-more and more people began to gather around Kimberlee, like pilgrims drawn to a shrine. Most held copies of her book open for signing. Unfazed by either the crowd or the heated conversation with King, Kimberlee smiled serenely, taking veneration as her due.
But St. Just noticed the touching scene of homage seemed to induce a vein-popping anger in both Magretta Sincock, who struggled to hide it, and Tom Brackett, who did not.
It is a jolly good thing that looks can't kill,
thought St. Just.
A SIGHT TO SEE
By breakfast time on Saturday, the gloves were starting to come off.
As St. Just descended to the Orangery, anticipating a vast Scottish breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, tomatoes, and mushrooms, he thought of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had declared that all epicures would choose to breakfast in Scotland. Life was probably happier, thought St. Just, before we knew the calorie and cholesterol counts for everything.
He carried with him a copy of that day's Edinburgh Herald. Yesterday's conference was featured prominently in the Life section.
Magretta Sincock, bellowing his name, waved him over to her table.
"You saw it then?" She snapped a napkin into her lap. "That cheeky little creep."
"What, in the paper? I haven't read it yet," said St. Just. "Is anything wrong?"
"Wrong? Wrong!" said Magretta, her voice throbbing with emotion. She fairly grabbed the paper out of St. Just's hands and vigorously shook it open at the fold, like a farmer wrestling a bit onto a stubborn horse.
"First the little pillock gives a synopsis of my latest book that reveals who the killer is." Magretta scanned the page columns until she found the relevant paragraph. "Here it is: 'Since the most inattentive reader will be able to guess it, anyway, I shall save you the trouble of reading this tedious rehash of the plot of her 1984 Mystic Murder in the Mirror.' Of all the bloody nerve."
St. Just looked to where she pointed, her finger trembling with outraged indignation.
"I say, Ms. Sincock, that is a rum deal. Quentin didn't directly reveal the killer by name, though-there's that to be grateful for, I suppose. Anyway, I'm sure your new book is completely different from any of the older ones."
A look crossed Magretta's face so fleetingly he might have missed it, but it told him she had indeed recycled an old, successful plot, quite possibly unaware she had done so. That possibility was the bete noire of any prolific writer who had been at the game a number of years, he supposed, and Magretta must have been churning them out for decades. However-and worse, from Magretta's point of view-Quentin Swope had gone on in his article to again sing the praises of "the enchanting Kimberlee Kalder."
Death and the Lit Chick sm-2 Page 6
