Devil's Breath

by G. M. Malliet

  Max noted that a couple of dates with Margot had increased in importance to a tiny fling. Overall, he felt they were inching closer to the truth—perhaps. He couldn’t quite get the measure of the man. It would not be to Romero’s benefit to admit a closer relationship, of course, and Max did not imagine Romero would stop at bending a story to suit his needs. He would not be the first person to want to distance himself from a murder victim.

  “So,” Max asked, “you and Margot had not resumed your relationship at any point over the years?”

  “No.”

  “You never saw each other?”

  Romero looked up from examining his fingernails. They were manicured, Max noted, the backs of his hands soft and white, with a light dusting of dark hair. They were the hands of a man who had never done a day’s manual labor, or at least not for many years. He would have people for that.

  “Well, of course we saw each other at parties and suchlike. Hollywood is really a small town, at least for those of us in the industry. Which I guess if you count the wannabes, is pretty much everybody. And Margot, while she was starting to slip to B-list status, still wormed her way into A-list parties once in a while.”

  Where presumably Romero Farnier was always to be found. Only at the A-list parties.

  Max thought of asking him again if he and Margot had resumed their relationship at any point but it was just asking for a categorical denial—one that may even have been true. He decided if there had been anything like an affair going on, it would have made its way into the rumor mill, and it would be better to wait to confront Romero when and if he, Max, was on firmer ground. He decided on a slight switch of topic.

  “That night at the party,” he began.

  “The last supper, in a manner of speaking. Margot’s last supper. Yes, what about it?”

  “I gather a lot of drinking was going on?”

  “Well, sure. It was a pleasure cruise, not a pilgrimage. A pleasure cruise combined with a bit of actual location scouting to keep the IRS off my back. But the booze flowed freely. I am,” he added modestly, “known as a generous host.”

  “It sounds wonderful,” said Max. “All expenses were paid for your guests, were they, on this cruise?”

  “Oh, yes, absolutely. For me that is the whole point—spreading the wealth among the people I find interesting, for one reason or another. I collect people, if you want to put it that way, and there’s nothing sinister about that. That young writer, Addy, for example: if I can help him in some way I want to. He’s got a real gift that should be encouraged. I grew up poor and I am well aware that luck comes and goes, sometimes quickly, sometimes overnight. I am determined to enjoy it when and as I can, and, as I say, to share my luck. I firmly believe that is how luck is magnified. It gets reflected back.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Max. He felt he knew more about Romero’s background from news stories than from reading Patrice’s dossier on the director, which had served as a light refresher course. The son of immigrants to America, Romero had never finished high school, instead working alongside his father and numerous siblings selling items door-to-door—items that had mostly fallen off the back of a lorry. From such dodgy beginnings the family had earned enough money to start a small neighborhood restaurant, but with so many mouths to feed they often went hungry, surrounded by food they were forbidden to touch. Romero’s escape was the movies, and he admitted to stealing from the restaurant till, risking punishment at his father’s fists, to fund what he called his “addiction” to film. He also became adept at sneaking past the ushers in theaters. He made his way to Hollywood and later London, achieving commercial success with his first release. He bought a home for his parents—in fact, the entire family profited from the success of what had looked to be a prodigal son. Long divorced from, among others, Nola Lars, the famous Dutch actress who had appeared in one of his early films, Romero had only one child, the surfer daughter whose photo was the room’s only personal decoration.

  “I am assuming all the guests were at the dinner party,” said Max. “Apart from Margot, that would be Maurice, Jake, Tina, Addison, and the baron and baroness.”

  “I believe the captain popped in for a moment,” put in Romero. “And Delphine. She is technically part of the staff, but she’s become more like family.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Max. “The yoga instructor.”

  “She’s a bit more than that. She is more like a cruise director, making sure everyone is having a good time. Like Julie on The Love Boat, you know? She was doing a fabulous job, up until all this happened.” Romero flapped his hand, disdainfully wiping away “all this.” “She’s a nice kid. People like her. Jake for one and Addison in particular, I believe. But I don’t know … he wears a man bun.”

  “Sorry?”

  “A man bun. It’s a clip-on bun. A hair extension. Ghastly thing. Leo DiCaprio was an early champion of the style. If we can use the words champion and style in the same sentence in this context.”

  “Um. So, Delphine was included in the dinner party. And there was a bit of a fracas?”

  “A verbal squabble, nothing more. Like I said, Margot got it into her head that I’d promised her the moon, or I owed her the moon, or something. And she started taking swipes at Tina, my—well, my friend. I let her get away with it for a bit and then I felt I had to intervene. Margot finally went stomping off.”

  “Alone?”

  “That’s right. Boyfriend Jake not in tow, although she tried to drag him with her. It seemed to infuriate her even more that he didn’t immediately jump up and do as he was told. I’ve been noticing on this trip some trouble in paradise between those two.”

  Truth? wondered Max. Or an attempt to point the finger of blame at Jake?

  “Was everyone drinking the same thing at dinner?” Max asked. “The same wine?”

  “I think I see where this is headed. Yes, we didn’t have course pairings. I always think that’s just pretentious, don’t you? But then, I’m from simple stock. There were no courses to speak of, either. We had a nice table red for all the offerings, which included both meat and seafood. Several bottles of it. We all shared. So if anyone tampered with the drinks—you see, I’m way ahead of you; I have directed more than one movie with that plot—they tampered not with the bottles but with the individual glasses. And before you ask—no idea. It wasn’t a proper sit-down dinner, you see. It’s a big yacht but it really doesn’t run to gigantic long tables for sit-down candlelit meals. This was more like a cocktail party with heavy hors d’oeuvres. People stood, people sat, people leaned against the piano, people lounged about talking. So tampering with Margot’s drink, if that’s what you’re getting at, would be a snap. Assuming that happened. Of course, I’ve no idea. Just guessing. It’s a lot like the plot of my film Rampage!—you’ve seen that one, of course. No? Really? Anyway, she was beyond plastered when she stormed off, but I’m afraid that’s nothing new. Actually she didn’t storm off so much as vaguely point herself toward the exit and stagger in that direction. She really was in bad shape.”

  “Margot, I do gather, may have been an alcoholic. And that usually goes along with a certain lack of judgment.”

  “It seems to go with the entire territory, if you ask me. The whole ‘artiste’ scene is not for me. As a director, I have to be in control. Yes, I’m an artist, but I don’t need alcohol to be creative. A lot of actors and actresses seem to find it essential. It’s performance anxiety, I guess. They’re the ones in the spotlight, after all, with people staring and gaping, just looking for flaws and tearing them to pieces in some goddamn blog or other. But you know, when you’re a director premiering a movie—that’s pressure, too. And I know few directors who feel they have to get blotto to get through it. At least, not as a matter of course. There are always exceptions. Margot—well, I never knew her to be sober, I don’t think. I also think she got worse at covering it up as time went on. What was she, nearly sixty?”

  “Fifty-eight,” said Max. “No great a
ge.”

  “Hah! I can see you aren’t in show business. For a woman, she was done at forty or even at thirty-five—her life was over. Forget Meryl Streep and the handful still in business at that age or more. Meryl is the exception—lovely woman; I’d give anything to direct her. And Helen Mirren—my God! Margot was nowhere near that level of talent even at her peak. She was worse during the live stage performances. One can see why, I guess. No do-overs, no rewrites. Shame, it is.” He shook his head. “It’s a real shame.”

  Max was wondering why, if Margot was so blotto all the time, anyone would bother drugging her on top of everything else. But the problem with alcohol was that one got to a level of tolerance where even a bottle or two of wine might not show one off too badly. That could go on for decades; then one day the body’s chemistry simply changed. The liver started to revolt and it was all downhill from there.

  “So, Margot stormed—or staggered—off after the meal?”

  “Yes. The rest of us stayed on. No one was willing to let her spoil the party. We’d had over a week of that sort of thing by that point. It was boring.”

  “No one left with her—you’re certain of that? No one followed her out, or simply drifted off to their own cabin?”

  “Well, I don’t know, really. The police asked all the same things, more or less—several times. I wasn’t keeping tabs, you see. The room, and it was a smallish room—well, it didn’t seem to get less crowded, at least not all at once. That’s the best I can say. Anyone could have come and gone. And it was a party. No one was busy keeping tabs, I don’t think. We were too busy enjoying ourselves.”

  This was not a new situation for Max. While a student at Oxford, he’d investigated the murder of a member of one of the famous drinking clubs. The trouble had been that everyone’s memory of events on the night in question had been so hazy. This situation looked to be the same sort of setup. They’d all been drinking; no one could remember what happened when. No one had an eye on the clock.

  Except, perhaps, for the murderer.

  “Did Tina stay?” he asked Romero.

  As if on cue, the sun vanished just then behind a cloud, casting Romero’s face in darker shadow. “Tina Calvert? Well, yes. I guess she did. But she may have slipped out to the ladies’ room. She never lets a minute go by without touching up her lipstick.”

  The tone was brutally dismissive. Max could almost swear Romero was talking about an actress in his employ rather than a young woman with whom he was sharing a bed and presumably a life. The tone did not bode well for Tina’s future with the director.

  “Was Tina angry with Margot? Jealous?”

  Romero’s answer confirmed Max’s sense of the man’s indifference. “What, you’re asking if Tina was jealous enough of Margot to do away with her? Very unlikely. For one thing, Tina and I were no big deal. Are no big deal. Not worth killing over. And for another thing…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, have you seen Tina?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  “She’s no bigger than a child, really. No way could she hoick Margot overboard. Simply put, there is no way.”

  Not without help, thought Max.

  Chapter 17

  JAKE, ACT II

  After leaving Romero, Max wanted a word with Margot’s companion, Jake Larsson. He decided to ring him rather than turn up at his door. As it was nearing the noon hour, Max hoped he might interview the young actor over a meal. There was no answer at his room, so Max called down to the front desk.

  The helpful clerk seemed to be under the impression that Max had an arrangement to meet Jake for lunch, because he began to provide a rundown of the possible places he might have gone for a meal, ending with, “Of course, we’re serving lunch now in the Green Room. You could try him there.”

  Which was where Max found Jake a few minutes later, sitting alone at a table for two by a large picture window overlooking the water. The room had been designed to provide as many ways as possible for as many guests as possible to enjoy the sight of sea and sky—a half-oval space jutted out from the building in a large glass-enclosed balcony. But instead of taking in the view, Jake was staring at the screen of his mobile phone.

  Max knew a buffet breakfast was served in this room each day—the traditional British “fry” and more were included in the price of the hotel stay. Right now the room was nearly empty, but in season it would no doubt be crowded, providing a feast for people watchers: A woman buttering her bread with German efficiency. A baby demanding immediate release from its high chair. A teenager plotting escape from its parents.

  Max recalled with something like nostalgia what solo diners had done so many years ago, before the invention of the personal phone. There of course had been books if you remembered to carry one with you. Or, if on vacation, postcards to write to send back home. And there had been simply staring at the view.

  Max walked over and introduced himself, asking Jake if he could join him. Jake was taken aback at first, having no idea who Max was, but he recovered quickly when Max explained his mission: at the request of DCI Cotton, he wanted to talk to Jake in an unofficial capacity about Margot. Jake lacked the imagination to wonder what “unofficial capacity” meant. Or perhaps he was just eager to talk to anyone willing to listen to his story. Max wasn’t certain such a direct approach would have worked with the average British citizen, so famously reticent. In any event, Jake tucked the phone in his jacket pocket and gave every appearance of cooperation, saying, “I can’t get over it. It’s like a frigging nightmare.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I was just looking at the news online. This was what Margot most wanted in life, this kind of attention, however fleeting it will be. Most people under a certain age won’t even know who she was. But that’s not fair, is it? I mean, she used to be someone.”

  An elderly waitress came over to their table, handed them menus, and described the specials, all of which involved fresh seafood: scallops, mackerel, Dover sole, and crab. She offered that samphire was on offer, even though it was early in the season—samphire being a sort of salty sea asparagus—and suggested they share it as a side dish. Jake declined but Max said he’d try it. This was apparently the right answer, for she brightened considerably, explaining that it was a favorite of hers from when she was a girl. “Now it’s gone all trendy.”

  She wore a starched apron tied round her thin frame and a cap like a maid from a wayside smuggler’s inn; she looked as if she might have been serving food since the hotel was built at the turn of the nineteenth century. Her white lace-up shoes had thick soles such as a hospital ward nurse might wear, the better to sneak up on sleeping patients to administer a three a.m. dose of medicine. A name tag announced her name was Hazel.

  She left to get their drink orders—bottled water for Max, white wine for Jake.

  “She’s still someone, Margot is,” said Max. “But may she rest in peace after what seems to have been a rather hectic life. How did you two meet?”

  Jake played with the knife of his place setting, turning it over and over on the table. “Oh, you know. The usual. Actually, my agent introduced me to her. She seemed to think it would lead to something, the agent. God knows what. I think she just wanted me out of the country for a while and out of her hair. It led to a murder investigation, but I don’t suppose that’s the kind of publicity Kara had in mind.”

  “You know the saying about all publicity being good.”

  “Do you know, I’ve never found that to be true? It’s the sort of thing Tina Calvert would say but I don’t think ‘Out of the mouth of babes’ applies in this case. She is only a babe in the sense she is just unbelievable in a bikini. Romero bought her those, count on it. The implants, I mean. Anyway, Max—may I call you Max?—anyway, with Margot I soon found myself taken up with more drama than I could handle, but precious little publicity of a useful sort. She drank, you know. Prodigious amounts. My father drank so I thought I could handle it; I thought I knew all abou
t alcoholics. My mother also drank but she wasn’t a patch on my father. I went to Al-Anon meetings for years. But this was one for the books. My dad looked as sober as a judge in comparison with Margot. I suppose that’s what killed her. The booze, I mean.”

  Was it possible he didn’t know? Max wondered. Jake had said “murder investigation,” but even so, it seemed as well to clear up any misapprehensions.

  “Her drinking did not cause her death,” Max told him. “At least, not directly. The police say she was dead before she—before her body—hit the water.”

  “You don’t say? You mean somebody choked her or something?”

  Was that just a lucky guess?

  “It is possible she was strangled, yes.” And possibly by someone left-handed like you, thought Max, although he didn’t add this tidbit of information. “What is certain is she didn’t jump. Judging by the height of the safety railing and her own height, she must somehow have been lifted up and sent overboard. A dead weight.”

  The waitress arrived with their drinks. She was a good waitress with almost preternatural hearing who pretended not to have overheard what she’d just heard. Her shock would be saved for when she was safely back in the hotel kitchen sharing the news, and swearing the staff to secrecy. Remarkably, they were all so well trained in discretion they would abide by their promise until the circumstances of Margot’s death were made public.

  The waitress took the men’s orders—baked cod for Max, shrimp casserole for Jake—and treaded silently away, her narrow legs as they emerged from the big white shoes making her look like a character in a children’s cartoon.

  “So the murderer was someone strong,” said Jake. “I did a few CSI shows—Crime Scene Investigation. You get that here?”

  “Certainly.” Max was a fan of the show, which came on in the wee hours in Nether Monkslip. Quite often he had rocked Owen back to sleep to the show’s soundtrack of eerie electronic instrumentals, which his son seemed to enjoy.