Devil's Breath

by G. M. Malliet

  He stopped and looked at his watch: he wanted to spend more time going over the files of the case, but couldn’t forget the premiere party that night. The event had been in the planning stages well before the murder had taken place, and the decision had been taken to carry on regardless—a decision made, apparently, with few regrets. While Max wouldn’t receive an official invitation, he could, so Cotton had suggested, crash the party with the police force turning a blind eye as needed. The event’s organizers would be the real hurdle to cross, but “you’ll think of something,” Cotton had assured him.

  Max, running down his mental tally of suspects, realized he had spoken with all the main players in the case except Delphine Beechum, who had remained elusive and mysterious throughout—as befitted, he supposed, someone practiced in an esoteric art like yoga. When had yoga become so mainstream, anyway? Max wondered. It was familiar to him only because Awena had long set aside space in the back of her shop for classes.

  But no connection between Delphine and Margot had come to light, according to Patrice’s reports. No angry conversations overheard, no long-ago ties revealed. Involved with drugs Delphine might well be, but that struck him as being a separate weave in the tapestry of the investigation. Still, there remained a possibility Margot had stumbled across the illicit drug activity on board, making her a threat that had to be removed. He needed to cross Delphine off the list, if crossed off she could be.

  He had other reasons for wanting to talk with her. Those like her who had trained themselves to stillness, to tune out the interference of the day-to-day noise, could be the most useful as witnesses. If he couldn’t find her tonight at the party, he would get Cotton to pin her to a formal interview in the morning. For she might have noted some strange behavior or other during the voyage among all those people traveling in tight quarters—some buildup of tension culminating in the death of Margot Browne.

  In reviewing the other suspects, he felt he had hit a wall. They were a self-involved bunch, but were any of them up for murder? And what could be the motive? Would Tina, for example, really kill Margot out of jealousy? It was highly unlikely. Romero had made it clear, and Max believed him, that his relationship with Margot was very much in the past.

  There was no discernible motive for Addy, and surely, anyway, it was in the best interests of the biographer that his subject remain alive to be available for further interviews. It would be a reach for Addy to believe killing Margot would help him get his book published—that her murder would somehow create a demand from the reading world worth killing for. An author might be ruthless in pursuit of publication, Max supposed, but in this case that motive would be stretching things a bit too far. Addy was not only already a successful author, but, with a potato chip fortune behind him, he had been spared the sort of financial desperation that might tempt him to such a wild scheme. Besides, did Addy even have a completed manuscript ready in case the worst befell Margot? He said not, and he seemed to be preoccupied with other projects. If his goal was to beat other biographers to the punch, killing her would mean he had acted too much in haste.

  Then there was Romero. Would he actually kill Margot because she was an inconvenience, pestering him for a role in his film? Not likely.

  And Maurice—would Maurice kill someone of whom he clearly had been fond? Why would he? It had happened before, of course: love could make people do desperate things, but fear could make them do far worse. Perhaps she had something on Maurice, and was blackmailing him over it—but if so, it would be the devil to uncover what it was. Besides, wasn’t it more likely to be the other way round—that Maurice would have compromising information on Margot?

  Jake? Killing in some jealous, murderous rage? Actually, the more he thought about it, Jake’s relationship to Margot seemed distant, cold somehow—not a union of passionate lovers, but an agreed-upon arrangement by two people who found each other convenient. Of course, that was true in any relationship once you scraped the surface, but this union came across as highly calculated. Hadn’t Jake said something along those lines? “As long as we were both getting what we wanted”—words to that effect. Hardly a ringing endorsement of true love. Of course, the age difference there may well have tempered the appetites.

  The baron and baroness? Those two—he could not put his finger on what was wrong there. They were up to something, but was it necessarily criminal? A minor con, perhaps. A con that had spun out of control, leading them to a larger crime? That he could see happening in their case.

  Motive was the problem all down the line. He just couldn’t see his way clear around that barrier. On the surface, Margot was a threat to no one, apart from her being a bit of a loose cannon. The threat she posed may have been almost an accidental one.

  And those were always the toughest cases to prove: an innocent stumbling into the wrong place at the wrong time, and ending up dead.

  That song had got stuck in his head, the one from which Patrice had quoted: “An actor’s life for me.” It was a song from the animated film Pinocchio—this he knew because since his son Owen’s arrival, he’d become rather an expert on animated films and bedtime stories, with frequent recourse to the stories of Beatrix Potter and an emphasis on the adventures of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. He was also building up a large repertoire of animal sound effects, moos and oinks and meows. Max was constantly amazed to realize the extent to which he was willing to go to raise a laugh from his young son.

  The Pinocchio tune had haunted him so much the night before, he’d finally done a search for it on his laptop. It is sung by the manipulative con man Honest John as he and Gideon take the puppet Pinocchio to Stromboli’s Caravan, promising Pinocchio he will be a star. It was a song of temptation, of seduction into the easy life, a harking to the call of easy money.

  Max had paused, looked up from the computer. Pinocchio had been promised stardom. So, presumably, had Margot at some point in her career. At many points, in fact. That was indeed the actor’s life. It might be close to being a gambler’s addiction. The next film, the next play, was going to be the award-winner, the one that would make the actor live in memory. Was that the connection, the source of the nagging earworm that would not let him go? Margot’s constant trying for the brass ring, the hope of success which grew fainter with the passage of time? What would she sacrifice to achieve her goal? Everything and everyone?

  Sunk deep in thoughts of fleeting fame, Max suddenly pulled up behind an elderly couple bundled tightly against the cold—wrapped in thick scarves and gloves and woolens, holding hands and leaning into one another, for the woman wasn’t too steady on her pins. The man walked with his head thrust forward, a half-smile of anticipation on his lips, like someone looking at the end of a journey. Max wondered if these might even be the Emersons, the couple who had discovered Margot’s body.

  Max took the conscious decision to slow down to their snail’s pace rather than sprint past as if he were late for an appointment. To learn from them, and to take in the sights he’d have missed if he overtook them. He reasoned that they had not reached such a great age without accumulating a certain store of wisdom, and he found himself eavesdropping on their conversation, a charming combination of good-natured banter and concern for the other’s welfare. She expressed in a whispery voice a wish for some flowers for their dining room table. “And you shall have them,” was his reply. It was said in such a way that Max knew this man’s certain joy in life had been in granting his wife’s every small wish.

  This, he hoped, would be himself and Awena given forty more years. Bundled in wool against the cold and relying ever more on each other for support, more in sync than even now they were, and every passing year bestowing grace along with the wrinkles. Owen would be well out of the nest and on his own by then. Perhaps there would be another child; a girl would be nice next time. Perhaps grandchildren to look forward to …

  They had survived what Max thought of as the nightmare time. When Awena had been hospitalized and he awoke each day—when he slept at al
l—to the searing fear that he might yet lose her. Some hospital mishap. Some unforeseen complication. Some new lunatic sent out by a fiendish unknown, bent on revenge. The episode had left a legacy of dread and a deeper love than Max had believed was possible for the human heart to contain.

  Dropping behind the couple, he sent them on their way with a silent blessing, watching them turn a corner and begin their slow steep climb up Albert Street. He passed several establishments selling sarnies and pizzas, not all of them open this early in the season. The painted cottages ringing the coastline provided a cheery backdrop of pastel pinks and turquoises and yellows against a sky overcast and mud-gray. Gulls swooped and glided overhead; one carried a hapless fish in its beak. On a distant hill, he could just trace the outline of one of the manor houses that dotted the area, many dating to Elizabethan times, or it may have been one of the ancient abbeys he saw, once nearly demolished beyond repair and now salvaged and converted into private homes. He knew from the brochures provided by the hotel that in summer these establishments opened to the public to share the treasure of their lush gardens, their carefully tended topiaries, and their extravagant follies or summer houses. In winter, the owners would withdraw behind wrought-iron gates to wait beside hand-carved stone fireplaces for the return of good sailing weather.

  Passing an ancient church next to the Monkslip-super-Mare Yacht Club, he came upon a sign advertising the “Royal National Lifeboat Institution,” the charity established to save lives at sea. The sign claimed the RNLI rescued an average of twenty-two people a day—an astonishing statistic when Max thought about it. Sailors, windsurfers, swimmers—everyone at risk from the fearsome push and pull of the waves.

  Max thought the RNLI might have saved Margot if she’d been given half a chance, but of course she’d been dead before she hit the water. He stopped to wonder why her death by drowning had not been left to chance—it was nearly a sure thing, with the yacht’s being that far from shore—but of course there could be not the slightest risk taken by a murderer of leaving a live witness.

  The weather seemed unable to make up its mind to do anything other than glower erratically. At the moment the horizon was stacked high with sooty cotton-ball clouds, and the harbor was alive with a bobbing fleet of fishing boats. He gathered that in every sort of weather this was a working harbor, with people depending on the sea for their livelihoods, as they had done always. He watched as a group of fishermen unloaded their glistening catch, the men loudly profane as they struggled against the slippery weight. A sign next to a docked ferry assured him that in two weeks’ time it would carry passengers from one side of the harbor to the other. Meanwhile an old sailing ship roiled against the tide; it appeared to be waiting for guests to come be regaled by costumed men and women with tales of the hazards of the sea. It was somewhere near this old ship that Margot’s body had been found by the Emersons.

  He came to the pavilion, gaily decorated with strings of fairy lights. He set the stone pier as his goal, now keeping the harbor to his left. He eyed the yachts in the water, none so fine as Romero’s, of course. He also spotted an imposing navy vessel far out to sea. He passed more restaurants and pubs, and fish and chip shops without end, before climbing steep steps to cross the bridge, which at set times of the day would open to allow tall-masted ships to pass beneath. The bridge was illuminated at night, and he could see it from his hotel window; it looked like a structure abandoned by scientists on Mars.

  He circled back round to the lifeboat station, and thought of those who go down to the sea in ships in all weathers, the brave ones who unhesitatingly put their lives on the line when sailors and fishermen, wise or foolish, found themselves in trouble.

  He stood and watched as another group of local fishermen unloaded a large haul of crabs. He knew the lobsters had come back, too, for the woman at the hotel’s front desk had happily told him so. The entire reason for the staff’s existence seemed to be to ensure that Max’s stay with them was a happy one; in case a lobster dinner were what he most wanted in life, that could be organized.

  The staff did not at first connect his presence with that of Cotton and his team, not until they had seen the two men together a few times, striding purposefully across the lobby, at which point the stories had begun to swirl about. MI5 and MI6 consulting on a mission, certainly that was it, they thought, never knowing how close their guesses came.

  Before that, what had they imagined? A lone man, recovering by himself from a loss or a breakup, perhaps. The wedding ring symbolizing Max’s attached state didn’t stop the female side of the staff from romanticizing him over tea in the break room, speculating over what had brought him there and what might induce him to stay. The general hope was that he was a widower (but not too recent a widower, for his grief might complicate things) and the further consensus was that he could leave his shoes under their beds anytime he liked.

  The object of the women’s affections meanwhile stood quietly unawares as dusk fell over the village. Across the harbor, through the furled masts of ships at rest in their slips, Max saw the baron and baroness walking into the hotel. They were hand in hand like the elderly couple, but looking like a magazine ad for expensive timepieces or French perfume. Even the darkening sky cooperated in enhancing the beauty of this pair, the low spotlights that illuminated the garden casting them in a glow like two saints in a stained-glass window. They were perfect. Perfectly formed, perfectly dressed, perfectly coiffed, perfect together in every way.

  What was it about that perfection that bothered him so?

  Chapter 25

  THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS

  Later that night Max stood to one side of the large hotel foyer, watching a large crowd surge its way toward the doors which opened onto the ballroom. He was assessing the strength of the security procedures, and waiting his chance to blend into the throng.

  There was no trick to it, really. Gate-crashing a celebrity party was as easy as could be. Everyone charged with security was so busy pretending not to gawk, trying so hard to be cool and blasé, they missed the forest for the trees, every time.

  The successful gate-crasher simply attached him- or herself to a large, boisterous group of partygoers as they approached the entrance and pretended to be one with the crowd, laughing and smiling maniacally at whatever was being said. It didn’t hurt, of course, that Max looked like a movie star in the first place. He saw people do a double take, wondering who he was and what film they might have seen him in, and he saw the phone cameras pointing in his direction. It occurred to no one to ask to see his invitation; his walk and bearing confirmed his right to be there. As “his” group approached the security station, Max stood aloof, slightly to one side, as if to demonstrate that the security guard was beneath his notice and that Max’s precious time was being wasted by such bureaucratic rigmarole—I mean, really. Then he swept in through the door with the others, his head thrown back in laughter, his teeth gleaming as they caught the light of the camera flashes. His photograph would appear almost instantaneously online and in the next day’s newspaper, where he would be misidentified as Ewan McGregor. There would be widespread Internet pandemonium as bloggers speculated as to why Ewan’s hair had turned darker, why he looked even more divinely handsome than before, and why his wife, Eve Mavrakis, was not at his side. Max doubted this case of mistaken identity would fool his bishop for a moment (after all, the poor man was used by now to coming across news photos of his most charismatic and trouble-prone priest) but then again, that was all right these days: Max had been given tacit permission to involve himself “where souls or lives might otherwise be lost.” It was an expression that rather reminded Max of the words inscribed on the gate of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.

  Looking around at the goings on, Max felt this party certainly would qualify at least in fulfilling the former condition—it was hardly a Girl Guides convention. Some of the women wore clothes that defied gravity in staying attached to their wearers—some of the men did, as well.
The women teetered on six-inch-high heels—again, some of the men did, too. Satins and silks abounded, as did a feathery boa scarf or two. The jewelry alone made the place a natural magnet for a cat burglar working the resorts, and Max spotted a few guests who almost certainly had been placed there by management to keep an eye on things that might otherwise go missing. He recognized a retired colleague of his from MI5 days and, knowing he must be in the room acting as extra security, Max nodded imperceptibly and kept going. In the center of the room was a large fountain that literally spouted champagne, each corner of the room sported a full bar, and against each wall were long tables laden with every sort of tempting delicacy. Max sidestepped the champagne and made straight for a platter of cheese and bread, realizing he’d not taken time to eat that day and was ravenous.

  He had talked with Awena earlier on the phone as she’d been preparing a spring salad to go with her homemade vegetable-noodle soup and seed bread. He knew that even with the several types of caviar on offer at the party, nothing here would taste as good. Tomorrow she had a BBC camera crew arriving to film the next installment of The Pagan Vegan, her popular organic cooking series, which had reinforced “foraging” as the new catchphrase among foodies. Even a visit to the local market these days was considered foraging, of course, but for those with a real passion for all-natural everything, Awena’s show was can’t-miss viewing. It had grown in popularity, with advertisers queuing for airtime, and with concomitant offers for publishing contracts and guest appearances. Awena, being Awena, balanced it all with aplomb, declining the guest appearances and sifting through the book offers that, as she put it, “offered the greatest benefit to the greatest number.” She held the belief that the planet could only be saved when people focused solely on locally grown fruits and vegetables and eschewed any food that had to be flown in.