Devil's Breath

by G. M. Malliet

  Chapter 7

  NOBLESSE OBLIGE

  “I suppose we have to go,” said the Baroness Sieben-Kuchen-Bäcker.

  “If we want to have any dinner, yes,” said her husband. “It’s not as if we can send out for pizza.”

  She sighed extravagantly. The baroness did most things extravagantly. “It’s the singing for one’s supper part that does get one down.”

  “Yes, dear,” said the baron. “But we must play the hand we’ve been dealt awhile longer. It would be rather ungrateful of us not to acknowledge how lucky we’ve been.”

  Early for the party, they stood waiting on the deck for the others to gather. She turned from checking her makeup in her purse mirror and looked at her husband. Such philosophical sentiment was unlike him. He read an awful lot of rubbish lately, it seemed to her. Alongside self-help books, he liked reading memoirs by obscure members of the royal family, the sort of people it was easy to forget had ever been born. He also liked biographies of Churchill and books about the Third Reich. It was amazing how many of those there were in the world. She supposed he could have chosen worse things to read, but the thing with history, it seemed to her, was that you only had to read it once. Reading a dozen books about World War II was not going to change the outcome, was it?

  She suspected it all had something to do with his family’s fallen fortunes. Perhaps he was hoping for a book where the aristocracy was restored and landed gentry again roamed the countryside, horsewhipping its servants. If so he should switch to science fiction.

  “Luck had a lot to do with bringing us here,” she admitted grudgingly.

  “You mean, running into Romero in Monte? Yes, although we’d have come across him eventually; he does tend to frequent our sort of place when he’s in Europe. And of course simply everyone was there for the Grand Prix de Monaco. But that was a spot of luck.”

  “Yes. And it was so easy to wangle an invitation,” she said. “He’s besotted with the upper classes—quite pathetic, really. But I was in the mood for a private cruise, anyway. Public transport is so distasteful. Even the Queen Mary is full of nothing but parvenus these days.”

  Recalled to the memory of their last voyage aboard the luxury cruise liner, her husband allowed himself a delicate shudder. They had been guests of the von Rother-Magnums, who would meet them when they docked in Hamburg, but through some sort of confused misunderstanding he and the baroness had been forced on the first night to share a table with three couples from Liverpool. The men had been something in the building trades; the women had spent the whole time complaining that “their dogs were barking,” whatever that meant. After such a shocking experience—really, it had been quite intolerable—he and the baroness had ordered their meals brought to their cabin for the remainder of the voyage. The von Rother-Magnums could jolly well afford it. “Yes, but darling, having met that group of electricians or whatever they were we can thank our lucky stars we don’t have actually to work for a living.”

  “I think if people knew what it took to keep up the façade, they might call it work. Which reminds me, I will need a new frock or two soon. Everyone’s seen simply everything in my wardrobe several times over now.”

  She wore a tight-fitting sheath dress and an Italian chiffon scarf wrapped about her head, the ends crossed at the front of her neck and tied at the back. It was the way film stars of the fifties had worn their scarves as they tootled around Rome in sports cars with Gregory Peck. She supposed she was being subtly influenced by the Hollywood-style company she was keeping on this trip. The scarf was a good look on her—Audrey Hepburn was such a paragon—but right now, it was practical as well. It was windy on deck, and sometimes when they hit a wave head on water splashed about like they were in the middle of a monsoon. Why didn’t the captain watch where he was going? They were lucky not to have run into serious trouble with the weather. It was too early in the season for this sort of carry-on.

  Although they were sailing in the lap of luxury, the baroness felt she would be glad to walk on dry land again. Or rather, to let her horse carry her over fields and fences, and then back to the manor for a nice hot drink before a raging fire, rounding off the stirrup cup of port that would have begun the day. That was her true milieu. She longed for the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, and dreaded another day of wobbling about the watery deck pining for entertainment with her own kind. For while she liked lounging about the beaches of the Riviera as well as the next person, she avoided the water, mostly. She didn’t like thinking about what was in there. What monsters lay beneath. What fights to the bitter death were hidden under those dark blue waves. Her instincts were those of the huntress—her middle name was Diana, after all—but in addition to the thrill of the chase, there was something noble, she thought, in the traditions of the sport. And then there were the lovely dinners and dances afterward, when people of her class gathered to relive the day’s hunt. How she longed to enjoy it all again.

  She and the baron stood beneath an overhanging balcony, out of the wind for the most part. But her blond hair was so shellacked the wind couldn’t much ruffle it, anyway, with or without the scarf. And very little else ruffled her composure, a composure that came from years of being invincible, above it all, above them all. It was how she had been raised; it was how her own parents had been raised, and their parents before them. Her husband was likewise smooth and dapper to the point of oiliness. It was a façade he cultivated, and it had served them both well. People expected certain things of aristocracy—even minor aristocracy. It would be wrong to disappoint. Selfish, really.

  It was all, if she stopped to think about it, not unlike being in show business. The show must go on and all that. She wondered briefly how the Duchess of Cambridge coped, with everyone scrutinizing every new frock she wore, and every snip of the hairdresser’s shears calling forth rapture from even the staidest publications. Those babies of hers had better turn out to be flawless human beings, too. The baroness could almost sympathize—the constant pressure!—but at the same time she wouldn’t mind trading places. After all, she was much the same age as Kate, and she had traveled in much the same circles as the now-duke, back in the day when he was single and the world’s most eligible polo-playing prince. There had been a time when she had been in the running for his favor, right alongside Kate. Everyone said, Oh, that Kate: she was so nice to him, and that is how she won the heart of a prince.

  Nice. Bugger nice. Not a drop of royal blood ran in Kate’s veins, unless you count that tenuous connection to the 1st Marquess of Lansdowne. Really, it was enough to make one sick. She was nice, too, and a born blueblood, and it had only landed her Axelrod. Some people had all the ruddy luck.

  “I know, darling,” her husband said now. “We won’t have to stay with the ship once it’s docked in Weymouth. That’s Monkslip-super-Mare in the distance, so we’ve not far to go now. I believe the ship is headed for Amsterdam after Weymouth, and I really can’t abide Amsterdam. All those people riding their bicycles in such a suicidal manner, medicated out of their minds. It’s irresponsible, that sort of thing.”

  “The king of the Netherlands is rather dashing, I’ve always thought,” she murmured. “I wonder if he rides?”

  “A bicycle? Oh, to hounds, you mean. I’ve no idea, darling. Anyway, I’ve mentioned our leaving to Romero and he’s fine with it, of course. Soon we’ll be free to go.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Just do please keep the Margot person away from me. Keep them all away from me, for that matter.”

  “Not much longer now, darling. Do be patient.”

  “Ya-a-as,” she drawled, bored. One couldn’t smoke out here on deck, the wind just blew everything about and back in one’s face, and the captain went mental if he caught people at it. They’d planned to drop into the lounge and have a quick drink and a smoke, but they’d seen Maurice through the etched glass and decided not to engage. Maurice was all right but well and truly, she’d had enough of show business types for now.

  The pa
ir stood staring at the lights twinkling in the distance; they exerted a hypnotic, soothing effect. After a moment the baron, finishing off his drink, said, “I can’t imagine what our little author Addison could find to write about her that wouldn’t be actionable, can you?”

  “About Margot? No. No, that’s hard to imagine. Much better to drop the whole project.”

  “Perhaps his real problem will be to find something that hasn’t already been written. I mean, the woman has lived her life on the public stage, everything exposed for the world to see, in a manner of speaking.”

  “I think Addison’s going on the theory that she can’t last much longer, if you want my opinion. And that will allow him to write what he likes. He told me a biography has a short shelf life, but if it’s going to sell, it will sell quickest in the month of the person’s death.”

  Her husband looked at her, astonished. “I say. How perfectly ghoulish of him to think of it. And she’s not so very old as all that.”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps he was joking. But I told you: show business types are simply the worst. So grubby, so tacky. I can’t wait to get to the country, back to the hounds and horses. Back to real life, and real people.”

  “Here, here,” said her husband. “There are few things more civilized than a well-run fox hunt.”

  Chapter 8

  IN SO MANY WORDS

  Addison Phelps was at work on his laptop in his stateroom. Actually, he was playing with his new scriptwriting software, Block Begone, in lieu of writing.

  He knew he should be working on his book about Margot Browne, the book he had told all and sundry he was writing: a sort of fictionalized tell-all, a nonfiction novel like Capote’s In Cold Blood. But he’d stalled in mid-chapter and wasn’t sure he could pick up the thread again. He’d just spent an hour or so rereading what he’d written, in case there was some nugget, some kernel he could repurpose, perhaps into another art form. He was a great believer in recycling, in hanging on to every word he’d ever written. He called it his inventory. This hoarder’s practice had saved him more than once when a script deadline loomed too large.

  But it was no good, this nonfiction thing; he’d done a ton of research but now he felt it was all for nothing. It was as if he couldn’t work outside the cocoon of make-believe. God knew that trying to get the truth down on paper was always hard—the truth in whatever form. But he was finding it impossible to write even tangentially about a real, living person. He had tried to keep going, to plow on, writing gibberish until inspiration arrived. But he’d found he could not.

  And now the script he’d switched to writing as a momentary diversion, a sort of palate cleanser, would not take off for him, either. It had been inspired by a wedding he’d attended—his best friend’s wedding, in fact. He had done his best to dissuade Roger from marrying a social-climbing she-wolf, to no avail. So that angry conversation, held practically on the porch of the church, had been the end of a beautiful friendship, and Addy, who had few friends to begin with, had been plunged into despair. As always, a real-life experience got buried for a while, only to turn up months or years later as a script or a book, or even a scrap of bad poetry. The poetry in particular tended to be fermented, like kimchi. The novels were unpublishable. But the screenplays had paid the rent for many years. For whatever reason, he had a facility that allowed him to finish a script in a matter of days. Writing scripts was how Addy had clung to his sanity, ever since he was in grade school.

  Now he scrolled back to the top of the page, and read:

  FADE IN:

  EXT-ITALIAN VILLA-DAY

  A wedding scene. A large crowd APPLAUDS as it surrounds the newly united GROOM ONE and the blond, voluptuous bride PIPPA.

  INT-CHURCH (SANTA FE)-DAY

  Another large, upscale wedding. This time, a New Mexico theme, with bride Pippa, a tanned brunette, wearing Spanish-style white ruffles. The service over, she walks down the aisle with GROOM TWO.

  EXT-HAWAIIAN BEACH-DAY

  Another wedding, this time smaller, more intimate.

  MINISTER

  I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.

  EXT-RESTAURANT-PATIO-DAY

  Pippa’s wedding reception. Kate’s date BRIAN can’t take his eyes off the bride. Kate notices.

  BRIAN

  Sorry.

  KATE

  S’alright. I’m used to it.

  BRIAN

  No, really. Come on. Let’s dance.

  KATE

  Guys go for my sister. They always have. All those looks going for her, plus she’s rich now.

  The story was a black-widow tale of a woman who marries up (and up) the ladder, attracting increasingly wealthier men as she goes, and discarding the men who had served as her springboards to the top. The working title was, in fact, Springboard. It was a stark warning, spelling out what his friend—his former friend—Roger still refused to see. Addy was deciding whether or not to have all the springboards found murdered. Yes. That would make for a really fun plot, he decided. His last thriller had done well.

  But the Pippa of the tale was too thinly disguised. If the script made it out of his computer and onto the desktop of a Hollywood producer, he’d have to cover his tracks completely. For one thing, Roger’s new bride was named Philippa, which Addy supposed was a dead giveaway right there. He thought a moment, did a quick search and replace, and Pippa was transformed to Rochelle. Okay. Good.

  Now the next scene he had in mind involved Kate and her sister Pippa-now-Rochelle. Perhaps a catfight between the two women, wherein Kate spelled out everything that was wrong with Rochelle, going back to their childhoods together. Or maybe a scene with their parents. He’d met Philippa’s parents at the wedding and really, you didn’t have to wonder how she had turned out the way she had. What a feral-looking bunch—they looked like they’d just climbed down out of the trees. They belonged to some back-country religion that was practically a cult. In her shoes, he supposed he would have done anything to escape that fate, too.

  Including murder? Well, maybe. Probably not. But maybe. Who knew what they were capable of until something came at them head-on—something really bad?

  But he knew this was why the story was stalling. Pippa and the whole thing, it was too soon, too close to real life—he couldn’t perform the alchemy until a few more months had passed.

  Fighting back the rising sense of despair, he reopened the computer file on Margot Browne. Why had he thought writing a nonfictionish book would be any easier? Maybe he should just stick to what he knew best: making stuff up. “Useless wool-gathering,” as his mother called it.

  Anna Phelps came from a long line of financial experts, men without a shred of soul to short-sell among them. All they read were stock market figures in the Wall Street Journal. And after a while, their brains soaked in scotch whiskey and their initiative eroded by inherited wealth, they couldn’t be bothered to read even that much. His uncle Robby solemnly believed the stock market was run by a secret cabal of descendants of the Romanovs who had escaped execution during the revolution—a complicated theory he insisted on explaining at great length each and every goddamn Thanksgiving. Why they kept inviting him no one could say. And Robby was the sanest of his mother’s seven brothers. On his father’s mother’s side were the Derby-Whitsuns, a tribe of certifiable Class A lunatics.

  Addy began reading aloud from his Margot pages (working title, Margot!) hoping to get a jumpstart on his quota for the day. Four pages a day, no matter what. Each page containing roughly two hundred and seventy-five words, for a total of a little over a thousand words. Eleven hundred words, merely. Easy. And at the end of the year, he’d have written the equivalent of four books.

  Scripts were easier. Just one hundred pages. Twenty-five days to write, max.

  It seemed so simple to do, put that way. It was one of the mental tricks he had to use to get himself going each day. There was also that whole business of writing a book being like driving a car at night: E. L. Doctoro
w had said you could look ahead only as far as your headlamps showed the way, but that was how you arrived at your destination.

  Addy sighed. Margot! What he had so far was one hundred pages of largely random notes and jottings, here and there strung together into a narrative paragraph. To complicate matters, Margot had come out of obscurity, and had been adopted into an even more obscure branch of her dead mother’s family. This was a family in Kansas, with no show business background, and—judging by what few photos he’d been able to dig up—no great fund of beauty to draw from, either. She had been one of those miraculous children who, coming from pudding-plain parents, encouraged questions as to her true paternity. Questions that for obvious reasons had to be couched in the most circuitous manner possible.

  It was a creepy family, Addy thought, with odd offshoots of weirdness to rival his own. Addy had managed to unearth one of Margot’s distant relatives for a direct quote, and for the first time, he had felt a crushing wave of pity for his subject, the necessary biographer’s objectivity melting even against his will and best interests. He had wanted to know the worst of Margot, and—if he was being honest—he had been hoping to unearth more of it. Dirt sells, after all. But the uncle, or whatever he was, seemed to think Margot owed him something, and he had used the most salacious terms possible to describe her—his own flesh and blood. It made Addy’s skin crawl, and for the first time he began to doubt the course on which he had embarked. But he’d come so far, and put in so much work. What was that quote? “I am in blood stepp’d in so far.”

  How did Shakespeare know? How did he always know? For that was exactly what it felt like: he was in so deep it was just as easy to keep going forward as to go back.