What an opening, so to speak. St. Just wondered whether it were to his advantage to keep news of Kimberlee's condition-if news it was-from Jay. He decided that, for the moment, it was also a topic best circled around.
"Your dealings with Kimberlee, then, were…?"
"Superficial, to say the least. We were negotiating a business deal. Perhaps mixed with a little harmless flirtation. I must say, I was a bit in unfamiliar territory, business-wise. Most British crime fiction of recent decades has been dark and stormy- tres, tres noir, you know. Makes Philip Marlowe look like Mary Poppins. The Kimberlee Kalder phenomenon took us all by surprise. Apparently the British public does like a change from kidnap, rape, and torture. They want to read endless descriptions of handbags and haute couture and whatnot."
"When the commotion occurred, at the discovery of Kimberlee's body, where were you?"
"In the library with the rest, I would imagine?"
"You weren't coming downstairs at that point? With Donna?"
"I was n-"
"You were seen by a reliable witness, coming downstairs." Well, thought St. Just, he was sure that in certain circumstances, Quentin could be reliable. He probably never forgot Mothering Day. "It would very much be in your best interests not to lie to me. Now, let's start again: What exactly was the nature of your relationship with Kimberlee Kalder?"
Jay stirred. He struggled through several expressions, finally settling on a lopsided, man-of-the-world smirk.
"All right. We were, erm… lovers- potential lovers. Not me and Donna, of course. I just collided on the stairs with her. Rather, Kimberlee and I were going to become lovers- perhaps. I went up to her room that night at about 10:30. I waited there for her. And waited. At some point shortly after I got there the lights went out."
"How did you get in?"
"She'd given me a spare key she'd gotten from the registration desk. She told them she'd lost hers."
"Go on."
"That's it. I waited. There was a room service tray sitting outside the door. I brought it in. I didn't open the wine but I nibbled on some of the canapes. I fell asleep waiting. After an hour, maybe an hour and a half, I got fed up and left. I was a bit put out, to tell you the truth-until I realized later on, of course, why she didn't show. She must have been killed as I sat around waiting for her, or even earlier. Anyway, I was headed downstairs to the library again when the hubbub started. I ran into Donna on the way."
"How did you find your way? In the dark?"
"Kimberlee had one of those scented candles-probably bought from the spa store. I lit it using a bit of kindling from the fireplace."
Despite St. Just's distrust of the man, everything in his narration rang true. Everything except…
"When did this affair start?"
"I told you, it wasn't an affair, it was…"
St. Just gave a great sigh of weariness. "A dalliance, then."
"A nice, old-fashioned word, that. It should be brought back into use. Very well, let's say a dalliance. My interest in Kimberlee, really-I have to be honest-was financial. She seemed to want… something more. Let's say we were exploring the possibilities. Or getting ready to."
St. Just wondered at this insistence on a chivalrous, or self-serving, relationship, when a paternity test might so easily prove him a liar. But… did Jay even know about the pregnancy? She'd apparently told no one about it; she might not have been aware of it herself.
If she did know, was she hoping to hold him responsible? Was that the reason she arranged their meeting?
And was any of that a motive for murder?
"When did you arrange to meet?" St. Just asked.
"The night before. She invited me to come to her room to celebrate her award, to talk about joining my stable, and perhaps-" He shrugged.
"Perhaps, joining you in bed."
"Precisely. Perhaps."
"And she didn't show up."
"She didn't show."
"While you were in her room, did you notice a letter she'd been writing?"
"You couldn't find a giraffe in that room. You must have seen the chaos in there for yourself."
The love letter was probably just a writing exercise after all, thought St. Just. Practice. A sad thought occurred to him: Perhaps it was Kimberlee's way of practicing emotion and connection with another human being, something she didn't seem to be particularly good at.
"Did Kimberlee confide any-fears to you at any time?" he asked Jay. "Any apprehension about anyone at this conference? Any worries? Any enemies?"
Jay shook his head throughout this series of questions.
"You really didn't know her, did you? If Kimberlee Kalder was aware she made enemies, and there is little evidence she was aware, she bloody well didn't care. She left dead bodies in her wake like a battleship. It wasn't even a form of confidence, not really. Just a supreme unawareness. All the world was a stage to Kimberlee, and she was playing the lead role. Everyone else was in the supporting cast."
"You don't sound very fond of a woman you were entertaining launching a liaison with."
This seemed to utterly baffle Jay. His forehead creased with a perplexed frown.
"Since when does fondness have anything to do with sex?" he asked. But he quickly added, "I didn't dislike her, Inspector, not by a long chalk. I did feel she required special handling, especially given the business nature of our relationship. I didn't want the whole thing to blow up in my face if it turned out Kimberlee and I were… incompatible."
"I see," said St. Just. And he thought he did. An entanglement with Kimberlee Kalder would give any man pause, and getting out of a relationship was always trickier than getting into one. Jay would not want to foul the nest of the goose that laid the golden eggs. In fact, Kimberlee's apparent interest in Jay-might it not altogether have been a mixed blessing?
And exactly how did her husband fit into all of this?
"You were aware, of course, that she was married. That must have added an extra element of-"
"She what?" St. Just watched closely as Jay's expression changed from its customary bored sneer into a mask of bewildered alarm. His hand flew to his forehead in a dramatic gesture, pushing his hair on end above half-moon eyebrows, and his mouth flew open, exposing some impressive dental veneer work. "She was married? Why in the-she never-I had no idea. No! None!"
St. Just, having witnessed several displays of astonishment that day, felt he was becoming a bit of a connoisseur of the emotion. Even though he rated Jay's particular exhibit as a bit over the top, it might well be genuine. Full points.
They talked for another quarter hour, but St. Just could get nothing more from the man than expressions of amazement and heated denial.
Later, after Jay had collected himself and left the room, rather less cocksure than he had entered it, St. Just sat staring into the dwindling fire, thinking. The room was growing chilly. He was hungry to the point of madness.
He was at a loss.
St. Just sank back in his chair in exhaustion. He often skipped meals in his job, or ate on the run, a fact of police life that had many of his colleagues fighting both the battle of the bulge and the bottle. In his case, the problem was more likely to be in reverse-the stress of an investigation often meant he had to struggle to keep from falling too far below his fighting weight. He longed for this particular investigation to end, for normalcy-in the form of a hot meal, maybe at St. Germaine's-to return. If he were lucky, might it not be a meal that included Portia De'ath sitting at his table? Might he not take her punting on the Cam, to The Orchard for tea? It would soon be June, Cambridge's magic time, the time of the May Balls, and anything could-
The entrance of a young waiter with a tray interrupted these halcyon daydreams. He placed before St. Just a salad of chicken, almonds, blue cheese, and currants. The cold meal, rounded off with bread and wine, and ending with a selection of cheeses and port and a pudding, surprised him by being exactly what he might have ordered if asked-instead of the steak. Donna could ha
ve hidden talents as a mind reader, he decided. He'd asked for lots of strong black coffee and someone-perhaps the missing Florie-had obliged with an enormous silver pot of the scalding brew.
St. Just sat in the deserted dining room like a liege laird, happily tucking into his food, relieved to be alone with his thoughts for the moment. He turned over in his mind everything he'd learned, mentally running through a list of all the suspects. Apart from the staff, who tended to alibi each other-and it was hard to imagine some Area-51-type conspiracy featuring Florie and the sous-chef -some but not all of the castle guests did have what seemed solid alibis for nearly the whole time. Nearly. Anyone nipping out to kill Kimberlee would have to have gone about it sharpish. And would first have had to have known where to look for her. It was much easier to picture the publishing gang than the staff engaged in carrying out some Byzantine murder plot. Not so easy to picture them happily cooperating in carrying out a plot together, though.
Sighing, he pushed aside his empty plate, reached for his coffee, and pulled Magretta's "alibi" manuscript from his coat pocket. Just then, he looked up to see Portia De'Ath walking toward him.
Tonight she was dressed in black-a high-necked, clinging jersey and slacks, and flat shoes. She looked like a slightly more voluptuous version of Audrey Hepburn. Since when, he wondered, had he become such a connoisseur of women's clothing?
"How's it going?" she asked.
He shrugged.
"We need a barrister-proof case," he said. "And I'm not sure we have one. Yet."
"You think you know who did it?" asked Portia.
"When I know how it was done I'll know who must have done it. I have a small idea…"
"Well?" she demanded. "Tell me."
"Soon. I promise. Soon. And, Portia… Ms. De'Ath… when all this is over…"
He let that hang in the air. When this is all over, what? We start calling the caterers? Book the college chapel? The thought that her answer might be "no" made something dark and cold clutch at his heart. It was too soon, much too soon. He'd have to work frightfully hard and make sure that when he asked, the answer could only be "yes."
He was tempted to blurt out something about Nuncross, his weekend home, but, desperate as he was to impress her, he had what he recognized as a juvenile wish that she like him for himself alone, not for the status symbols he could bring to a union. He supposed he was testing her, which somehow did not seem kind.
God, but when did love get so complicated?
"Okay," she said simply. Was she angry, resigned? He couldn't read her. Her eyes held her usual look of dreamy intelligence. "When this is over. Maybe-" and he cringed inwardly at that hateful, tentative word- "maybe, when this is all over…"
She paused, and when she began to speak again, the treacherous subject had changed: "You remember what I told you when we met, about Kimberlee and her roman a clef?"
He dragged his attention back to the present. "About how she couldn't spell?"
She smiled. "That, and something else I was going to mention. You looked so unwell at the time I thought it best to wrap up the conversation."
That point being when St. Just was struggling, without success, to remove Cupid's dart from his heart.
Never, he vowed, but never will I tell you why I looked like that. Not for at least, oh, thirty years.
"What was it?" he asked.
"Just that what's interesting about her book is that they published it at all. It was a book about the magazine publishing industry, rather than the book publishing industry, but there's a lot of overlap between those two worlds."
"I don't follow."
"The book she wrote. Latte. It was all about them. Trashing the people at the magazine, I mean. Airing laundry about affairs, back-stabbings, bankruptcies, and et cetera. Even after the lawyers got through vetting it, it was still not very nice."
"So…"
"So, if Kimberlee was going to dish the dirt on the book publishing industry, and in a big way, it might have made someone here nervous. The people here are convinced she was writing another tell-all. But no one will admit to what she had to tell about them, if anything. No one, including Lord Easterbrook, seems to know a lot about what she was really up to."
"Not surprising. He claims not to have bothered reading the first book."
Portia hesitated. "Do you know… Kimberlee was never going to found a leper colony or anything like that, but I hope you catch whoever did this. Dishing the dirt-all right, not a nice way to make a living. She was ambitious, far too ambitious, but I don't think she herself was capable of killing. Not like some I could name here."
"Do you have anyone in particular in mind?" He could see her stiffen at the question.
"No," she said.
St. Just waited out the silence until it was clear she had no intent to elaborate.
"Why do you say no?" he asked at last.
She smiled wanly. "I've started to think pretty much any of them are capable of killing, if pushed to it. I suppose that's true of anyone, though, isn't it? Do you really have no solid idea of who did it?"
"If I did, I wouldn't tell you. I'm too, erm…" Oh, golly effing Moses, he thought, half tempted to share with her his half-formed theories. She's a suspect; they all are. I can't do this.
"You do realize you are being condescending and chauvinistic?" she asked.
"Chauvinistic. Now, there's a word not heard much in the past thirty years."
"If the shoe fits…"
"It's a police investigation. You are not the police. You are a-"
She folded her slim arms tightly against her narrow waist.
"Go ahead, say it. I'm a suspect, which is why you can't confide in me. Or won't."
Of course he couldn't. Years of ingrained training didn't disappear just because…
She turned away. She was backlit like a Greek icon by the dim ochre light of the room. Just then, she turned her head back toward him.
… just because she actually glowed, damn it. The woman glowed.
Training! said the voice, the voice that might belong to either an angel or a devil capering on his shoulder.
He had once as a child seen lightning in a snowstorm, a dazzling sight that had filled him with wonder and a kind of dread, as he hadn't realized such a thing were possible. Akin to this sense of wonder was his reaction to Portia. Could she be real, or were his eyes and mind deceiving him? Had he simply, damn it, lived alone too long?
"Tell me how she died." It wasn't a question.
"She was hit with a blunt object and thrown into the dungeon."
"What, like a hardback book?"
He smiled weakly. "Something a little deadlier." A cosh, probably makeshift, was the best guess. A cosh long since dismantled, its parts scattered in the moat, or burned, or hidden where they might never be found.
"There's something I've been meaning to ask you. Why do all you authors seem to travel with your own books? It's rather coals to Newcastle, isn't it?"
"Sometimes the bookseller runs out of copies. If so, we provide them on commission, or come to some other arrangement. No one wants to miss the chance of a sale."
"It's a funny business you're in."
She sighed. "It's a horrible business you're in. I'm glad I only have the academic side. Murder twice removed." She paused, added: "I don't think I could marry a policeman."
That no one had actually asked her to marry a policeman needn't be said. It had been on his agenda almost from the beginning, probably from the first time he set eyes on her in the restaurant.
"I can't picture being anything else."
"I know," she said flatly. "Well… perhaps we'll talk later."
Perhaps? Which was worse-perhaps or maybe?
"Perhaps a meteor will destroy all life as we know it on this planet before noontime tomorrow," he said. "You and I will certainly talk later."
Good, he thought. Manly, decisive-that was the ticket.
But she merely smiled, that wondrous smile that made him f
orget everything, forget his name, practically.
"Perhaps," she repeated, but now he thought she meant, yes. Eyeing him thoughtfully, she asked, "What are you? Originally, I mean. Not English. Welsh?"
"Not English. I'm Cornish."
"Ah. Like the hens?"
"Like the miners. I need to talk with Annabelle."
"I just saw her in the sitting room. I'll tell her."
RUMOR MILL
"I want your impressions of Kimberlee," St. Just said a few minutes later to a duly summoned Annabelle. "How did the other writers seem to like her?"
The contrast with Portia could hardly have been greater-Portia with her clear eyes and skin, indicators of rude health-and of a clear conscience? The opposite, at any rate, of the woman who sat before him now, a woman who seemed to be turning more parchment-like, her hair more drained of color, by the day.
"Oh, fine, fine. Great," said Annabelle. "Kimberlee was… hmm. Were you asking for an accurate assessment?"
"I was."
"Well, then. She managed to piss off everyone who came in contact with her, high or low. I was the least surprised person in the world when I heard she'd been killed. Well, second-least surprised, after the killer."
"Yes, but I'm trying to get at the 'why.'"
"Well, can you blame them, really?" Annabelle tugged idly at her stringy, nondescript hair, finally giving up and pushing it messily behind her pierced ears. "A lot of these authors really sweat blood, fine-tuning each sentence again and again. Then along comes this little trixie who sort of vomits it up on the page-and makes a zillion pounds for her 'efforts.' It was bound to cause bad feeling among this crowd. You know, I heard her tell Magretta, 'I've never read Agatha Christie.' I swear, I thought Magretta was going to faint. Kimberlee really did give the impression she could barely read and write."
"Stupid is so often a perfect cover," murmured St. Just. "Who were her readers, do you think?"
"I don't know." Annabelle shrugged. "The same people who care, 24/7, what Paris Hilton gets up to? I mean, it really beats me. But you know, in fact, now I come to think of it…"
Her voice trailed off, her gaze fixed on the room's ceiling medallion.
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