Death and the Lit Chick sm-2

by G. M. Malliet

  "I'll have a word now, Sir. In your room."

  Quentin hurriedly-and with a guilty, furtive look back at St. Just-hit the send button.

  As Quentin led the way, St. Just took a moment to size up the man. He seemed to the detective to be ridiculously young, but that, St. Just imagined, was more a factor of his own middle age. He knew Quentin to be about twenty-five, an age when he himself was already happily settled in job and marriage, most youthful experiments safely behind him. Quentin, with his spiky, dyed hair-well. St. Just felt it was time for Quentin to grow out of that kind of nonsense. St. Just noticed he smelt powerfully of some musky, animal scent that for some reason seemed familiar. Then he remembered: The stuff was called Ravage. St Just had accidentally ripped open a sample taped into a men's magazine. His flat stank of it for weeks.

  Quentin, as it turned out, had been given one of the ground-floor rooms. While Dalmorton didn't offer any rooms that weren't in some way sumptuous, Quentin's was smaller and less sumptuous than the others, reminiscent of its probable origins as a castle storage area. Whether this reflected Donna Doone's opinion of Quentin or was simply what was convenient when everyone was stranded by the lights-out situation, St. Just couldn't guess.

  Quentin led St. Just in and immediately flopped onto the quilted bedspread, hands behind head in a Queen-of-Shebaish pose. St. Just sat in a nearby wing chair. Quentin, despite his relaxed posture, gave every evidence of keen, bright-eyed interest, waiting expectantly, even eagerly, for the questioning to begin.

  "The night of the murder," said St. Just. "Where were you, what were you doing, when were you doing it, and with whom?"

  "Well… hang on. Let me see… I had a bit of a wreckie that night, so I must tell you I don't remember a whole lot about it. I toggled back and forth between the bar and that lot sitting in the parlor. Sitting room, I guess they call it."

  "Tom's group?"

  "I suppose that's what you'd call it. Although it implies the man has some kind of following, which I would roundly dispute."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why did you 'toggle back and forth,' as you put it? Why not stay put in one room or the other?"

  "Boredom, Inspector? I don't really know. I was restless. If the conversation started to pall in one area, I'd head over to another. This lot don't half talk a load of crap. A man can only take so much."

  "Tell me who was in what we will call for shorthand 'Tom's group.'"

  "That beaten-down wife of his. Winston Chatley and B. A. King. King wandered a bit, too, but mostly he was there."

  "Do you remember what you or they talked about at any point?"

  "I was seriously rat-arsed, so the answer is no, not really. The usual writer stuff. They like to haver on about how their genius is going unrecognized."

  "No one remained in place the whole time, did they?"

  "They all took turns fetching drinks. Except for Tom, that fucking tightwad. Edith, I'd bet you anything, was paying out of her own purse. Nice woman, but she seriously needs to grow a spine."

  "Tom remained there?"

  "Yes, I-no, wait, he did go out once. Maybe to the loo. But in the library, where the bar is, those folk there seemed pretty stationary to me. Again, I wasn't paying attention and I wasn't in any condition to. Then the lights went out and it got really confused. Nearly came a cropper myself when I tripped over a coffee table."

  St. Just sat back, having a think, picturing the group of four-point-five in the sitting room, and the group in the library: Portia, Joan Elksworthy, Annabelle, and Ninette. Winston Chatley and B. A. King, until they wandered to the sitting room. Donna, who came to the library a bit late. Kimberlee had been there a short while, with Jay Fforde. Magretta had flitted by early, only to say goodnight.

  Then he said, "You knew Kimberlee Kalder from before, didn't you?"

  Quentin nodded readily enough.

  "She came to my old newspaper as a temp-it was a maternity leave gig."

  "You didn't mention this when you were questioned previously."

  "Didn't I? I meant to."

  "Really? You meant to. Well, tell me now: How did you two get on?"

  Quentin gave a brief, noisome snort. "The name Kimberlee Kalder became a sort of shorthand among the other reporters for back-stabbing, self-promoting bitch, I can tell you that," he said. "Any of them still at that paper will tell you the same."

  "Really? Why is that?"

  "It's hard to describe exactly what she did, really. A bit difficult to quantify, you know? But she'd cozy up to someone-you know, be their very, very best friend, go out to lunch with them, buy them little gifts-softening them up, you see. Then the next thing you hear, that person had gotten the sack. Happened three times in a row. One of the women involved-I went out with her for awhile-she told me she and Kimberlee would sit around over drinks and grizzle on about the boss. The way you do, you know, except this particular boss was such a paranoid little wanker, it wasn't a wise conversation to have, at all. Anyway, then Kimberlee got Karen-that was her name-to repeat something she shouldn't have said in the first place, in an e-mail. An e-mail that somehow the wanker boss got hold of. It was stupid of Karen, but Kimberlee had a way of making people trust her-when she chose. Reporters have to know how to do that, of course, but the idea is not to use your charm to destroy your colleagues. After awhile, when we all started to catch on, Kimberlee ate lunch alone. But as I say, it was a six-month gig so that solved the problem nicely. And she had bigger fish to fry about that time-a better job offer in London."

  "Why do you think Kimberlee did all this?"

  "She was after their jobs, wasn't she?" said Quentin flatly. "Just in case nothing better turned up. But mostly, I think she just liked to stir up the peasantry, which is how she seemed to regard her fellow scribes. It was the attitude that made you want to ki-I mean, avoid her. Avoid her. The rest of the staff were pigging it, but she would walk in, in her four-inch heels and her Chanel suit. She didn't half stand out, like a Viking at a luau. She obviously saw herself as headed for grander places than the Sheffield Bugle."

  "Which, as it happens, she was."

  Quentin shrugged. He said, grudgingly, "Yeah, I suppose she was. Life, as Kimberlee would say, is so totally not fair."

  "Were you jealous of her success?"

  There was a tiny pause. St. Just might almost have imagined it.

  "Don't be daft. I couldn't-a written that girly, gushing tripe of hers, now could I? Dying for a Latte. What crap."

  Quentin's brief assessment sounded remarkably like that of the other writers. But St. Just wondered if Quentin wouldn't also be happy to write something that might make him a millionaire, as had Kimberlee. He had heard that many newsmen were frustrated novelists.

  Also, was it possible that Kimberlee, in her race to better things, had made it clear that young Quentin-like the other peasants-would never stand a chance in the romance department?

  "Nobody trusted her, you see, mate?" Quentin continued. "And for a reporter, that's deadly. The whole place was like working for the fucking Borgias, mind, but Kimberlee had a real gift for mischief. There was a rumor… well, never mind."

  "Rumor?" St. Just prompted.

  His mouth twisted slightly with the effort of recollection. "I don't know the facts, so I shouldn't say, right? Just rumor, you see? Something about her hounding some poor bloke to his death. But I'll tell you the real reason I wouldn't hurt her, leaving aside whether or not she might deserve it," said Quentin. "She was going to give me a blurb."

  "Blurb?"

  "You know, a few glowing words about my first book. That stuff they put on the back cover to convince a reluctant public to buy. My book's coming out later this year. I asked her and nice as pie she said she would."

  Which helped explain, thought St. Just, that hagiographic write-up Quentin had given her in his paper-the one that had sent Magretta through the roof.

  "Despite your history with her, you felt you could ask her that favor?" />
  "Man, you are new to this business, aren't you? For a blurb from a well-known author like Kimberlee, you develop amnesia about the past-real fast."

  "I am, as you say, new at this. Is it a crime novel you've written, then?"

  "Yep. I'll let you read some of it sometime, if you like. It's awesome. I'll tell you this for free about her salad days, though. She was either a trustafarian or some bloke or other she was shagging was footing the bills. There is no way anyone was buying Chanel on the crap wages they paid us."

  "Had you seen her since she left the paper?"

  "Nah. Of course, I kept up with her career after she left. How could I avoid it, really? She was news. Photos of Kimberlee gliding down the stairwell to Annabel's, or Kimberlee racing about Saint-Tropez in a convertible and a bikini. She was still always, of course, dressed to kill-ah, sorry."

  "Dressed to be killed, in this case," said St. Just. "Let's go back to where everyone was, and when. Annabelle Pace, for example."

  Quentin shook his head.

  "All I can tell you is every time I saw her, she was in the library talking to that Portia lady or that Mrs. Elksworthy. Oh, hold on. I also saw her outside the ladies' talking with Kimberlee. But Kimberlee went her own way, headed for her room, presumably, and Annabelle rejoined the rest of the group."

  "Did it look like a friendly conversation?"

  "Yeah. They were smiling, anyway. This was-nine-fifteen at a guess?"

  "How about Edith Bean?"

  "I don't recall. She's the kind of woman it's hard to remember she's alive, you know what I mean? I do remember at one point she spilled a drink and had to go right out and fetch another. It was Tom's drink, poor woman."

  "Where were you when we lost power?"

  "In the library getting a refill. The fireplace was going, which helped a bit so we didn't all positively maim ourselves on the furniture. Like I said, I nearly lost it over a coffee table, anyway."

  "So there was enough light to see by? You could see clearly who was there?"

  He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "No, not clearly, but more or less. It's more that I wasn't paying attention; I just was on a mission to the bar to get one for the road. Annabelle was there, and Mrs. Elksworthy. Magretta wasn't there, or I'd have been able to hear her yodeling. At dinner she kept saying that her muse was calling her-you know the kind of shit she comes out with. I do remember one thing-but this was from before, when I was in the parlor with 'Tom's group.' B. A. King ran up to his room to get some whiskey he wanted us to try. Not that he or any of us really needed any more to drink at that point."

  "What time was that?"

  Quentin shrugged again.

  "So you were in the library when the commotion began over Kimberlee's body? Or were you in the sitting room?"

  "In the library, once again. We heard the screams and we all kind of rushed the door. Tom came out of the sitting room, holding a lighter. He went off down the hall to investigate. He came back and told us someone was dead."

  So, Tom had lied about heading straight to bed, thought St. Just. So had Edith. No doubt distancing themselves from the scene of the crime, but it was a foolhardy lie.

  "You could see clearly it was Tom, I imagine-but you couldn't see the others?"

  "Not once we were all in the hallway, no. Black as pitch it was away from the fireplace."

  "So you aren't sure who else was in the hallway."

  "Man, ask me who wasn't. I don't know. Just a big, jostling crowd at that point. Oh, wait, I do remember something else. Jay Fforde, he must have left the group early and gone to bed or something. I remember now because we all kind of shuffled our way en masse in the direction of the bottle dungeon. When we got there, Jay and Donna Doone were approaching, but from down the stairs. I could see them because he was carrying a candle."

  "Did you get the impression they were coming downstairs together? I mean, that they had not just run into each other by accident?"

  Apparently struck by the idea, Quentin thought for some time before answering.

  "Now you mention it, they might have been together. Yes."

  I KNOW WHY THE

  JAYBIRD SINGS

  Wondering very much what Jay Fforde and Donna Doone had found to talk about-assuming Quentin was correct; St. Just had had enough experience of reporters to know the profession was larded with unreliable narrators-he went in search of the literary agent.

  He found him now reclining in the library, feet up on a pouffe, and brooding handsomely over a large, leather-bound book. The louche, Sebastian-Flyte pose looked staged, lighted as it was by the pale remnants of sunset merging with the moon. St. Just suspected that the man went through life forever putting his best profile forward.

  "Come on, Mr. Fforde," St. Just said to him. "I've got to find dinner somewhere, but you and I can kill two birds with one stone."

  Jay looked up from his book and frowned, as if trying to place St. Just in his list of acquaintance.

  "Dinner is over," he informed him.

  "The police, we have our ways," St. Just said. "Come along with me, please."

  They found Donna in her office. Whatever was on her computer, she rather guiltily closed out the screen at their approach, but she cheerfully agreed to organize a cold meal for St. Just.

  "If you'll go to the small dining room upstairs, I'll send Florie straight in," she said.

  St. Just soon sat in splendid isolation at a table for eight in a corner of the deserted, "small" dining room, which belied its name by being the size of a minor cathedral. Jay remained standing, warming his backside at the fireplace. DCI Moor's men were nowhere to be seen; St. Just assumed they'd finished their work for the day. He looked at his watch. They'd probably all long gone home, to families and pets and warm meals. Moor himself might be at the police station, or headed for home.

  He looked across at Jay. It was difficult to credit him as a man in the middle of a murder investigation-a suspect in same. With his high color and thick, flopping hair, Jay Fforde looked the very picture of carefree relaxation, if not of innocence. Jay had too much of the Byronic hero about him to ever project innocence.

  "So, Mr. Fforde," St. Just said, easing into the interview. "Tell me something I've always been curious about. What exactly is involved in being the British agent for an American novel? I assume you do have American clients."

  "Certainly," replied Jay. "Well, we don't do a frightful amount, actually. We find a buyer, of course. For the British edition we might help translate the American spellings-'correct' the spellings-that's our little in-house joke." He offered a little heh-heh by way of demonstration.

  Jay suddenly interrupted himself to turn and preen in the mirror over the fireplace. What had Kimberlee seen in this self-absorbed ninny? St. Just wondered. Herself reflected back?

  Satisfied that his hair remained artlessly tousled, and his expression set in its usual cast of petulant ennui, Jay turned back into the room and continued, with the air of a man humoring a dim but willing pupil.

  "We might also help mess about with the cover art," he said, "although that's really the publisher's call." Like Easterbrook, he had the strangulated, upper-class diction of a man reading a speech whilst being slowly choked to death. "We witter through all the little legalities, that's the main thing. Frequently, we help change the title."

  He arranged his mouth into a self-satisfied smile.

  "Why?" asked St. Just.

  "Change the title? No one knows, really. It does add rather to the confusion."

  "So," said St. Just, "your involvement with Kimberlee amounted to-"

  "Who says I was involved?" Jay cut in, his voice suddenly losing its fruity overlay. "Nothing of the sort. No. I'd brought some cover-art mockups for her to look at, that's all."

  He folded his arms defensively. St. Just decided to circle around the topic for now. If Jay was going to go in for such a childish lie, it should be easy enough to arrange a later ambush.

  "I see. And, when did you show her t
he cover art?"

  Jay uncrossed his arms, relaxing as his interrogator apparently bought into his denials.

  "Last night. Before dinner."

  "Where?"

  "Where what?"

  St. Just heaved an exaggerated sigh.

  "Where were you when you showed her your etchings?" he said, more nastily than he'd intended.

  Jay's guard immediately shot up again.

  "Oh, I say, no need to take that tone with me," he sputtered. "As a matter of fact, we were in the library."

  Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick, thought St. Just. He thought, not for the first time, how strange it was that a game for children should be about death and the worst sort of mayhem.

  It would make his life simpler if they were just playing Cluedo, he reflected. There were no bedrooms in Cluedo. Here there were dozens. A thorough search could take days.

  "Did anyone see you there?"

  Mrs. Peacock perhaps?

  "As a matter of fact, yes. That American woman with the gray hair and Native American jewelry."

  "Mrs. Elksworthy. I see." His voice trailed off. Something Jay had said just now sent a jolt of alertness through St. Just-a tantalizing near-memory hovered, but he couldn't capture what it was.

  "I see," he repeated vaguely.

  What the deuce was it? He slid down a few inches on his chair, stretching out his long legs. He shook himself mentally. Best not to force it; it will come back.

  "Tell me more about your job," he said. "Do you do much editing?"

  This, at least, seemed to unleash a deep wellspring of emotion. "God, no. Do I look like I have time for that? Not that writers don't expect it. If it were up to them, we agents would do all the writing and their job would be to cash the royalty cheques. Lazy sods, writers. No, if I get involved, it is perhaps to suggest to an American writer that the expression 'knock up' has quite a different meaning in the U.K. and that no one gets pregnant by answering the door. Well, not usually."