Delphine threw her head back, laughing, making the earrings jingle like soft chimes.
“You could say that. Mainly Tee-na”—here she fluttered her fingers about her ears to indicate the general silliness of such as Tina—“Tina likes yoga because it allows her to wear tight pants with a low-cut halter top. I mean, the philosophy behind the whole thing just passes her by. Who does yoga in full makeup with eyelashes, anyway?”
“Hmm,” Max said neutrally.
He was about to ask about the night Margot died when Delphine said, “And that is totally why Margot was killed, I think.” She nodded darkly. “Karma. It’s killer, that stuff. What goes round … you know.”
He felt somehow they’d skipped over a page here. “How is that?” he asked. “Assuming you don’t mean she misbehaved in a previous life.” That would make a stunning if improvable defense, he thought. The court system would grind to a standstill while past-life psychics were brought in to testify.
“Well, probably she did, but I’m thinking it’s more about happenings in this lifetime than in any previous incarnations. Margot was a young soul, you know. She was one of those people who kept making the same mistakes and never saw it was the same mistake over and over. Big duh.”
“It’s so easy to see it in others, isn’t it?” said Max as the waiter approached with their drinks. At this party, it was not mere tap water on offer, but an expensive brand he’d never heard of. Something from ancient glacier melt, no doubt. Something with gold dust settling at the bottom.
“You’re so right,” she agreed, with a polite nod of thanks to the waiter, who seemed transfixed by the attention from this mythical sea creature. Max wanted to ask her how she’d ended up where she’d ended up—which was at the heart of a murder investigation, far from home and apparently up to no good. He recalled that home was somewhere in New Hampshire, near the border with Vermont.
“We can’t see our own mistakes,” she went on. “But honestly, Margot had had the error of her ways pointed out to her more than once, sometimes by the international media. Usually, it was the disgruntled spouse or girlfriend of whoever she was ‘dating’ at the moment, and the pointing out was done at the top of loud voices. ‘Dating’ being a euphemism for a lot of things, of course, but trying to steal someone else’s partner was usually part of the scenario.”
“She saw it as a challenge, do you think?”
“I do. Who wants the latest thing unless everyone else wants it—you know that kind of thinking? They chant that mantra on Madison Avenue every day. So the man, whoever he was, had to be rich, and good-looking, and powerful. He had to be the object of attention, a rising star in his field, whatever it was. Usually it was movies or the theater, because of course that’s the world in which Margot rolled most often. But if you’d seen her at the races in Monaco—my God. It was like she’d seen whole new worlds to conquer, opening before her very eyes. If the man was already married—that was just the cherry on top. You could see her go after these guys from across a crowded room—separate them from their wives, she would; just cut them out of the herd before the man or his wife knew what was happening.”
“Jake Larsson doesn’t seem to fit the profile. He’s not married, is he?”
“No, and neither is he rich and powerful. Good-looking and ambitious—arm candy for Margot. Younger than her usual, for certain. Yes, this is where the karma part comes in. Margot could no longer command the sort of men who once came running when she crooked her finger. She was reduced to such as Jake.”
“Reduced?”
“Yah. Reduced. Jake is no better than he should be. He uses drugs, for sure—why don’t they just swallow poison? Same result. Your head explodes or your gut does and then one day: no more Jake.”
Max guessed she was being completely disingenuous—holier-than-thou was so often a useful cover. At the same time, she was implicating Jake in the drug scene. Was he one of her “clients”?
“But Jake sees—saw—Margot as a stepping stone to greater things. It was a matter of time before he woke up to the truth. Actually, from watching them together, always in a state of armed siege, he had already woken.”
“They weren’t getting along?”
She shrugged. “’Course not. Margot had alienated most of her connections over the years. You can’t network with that many holes in your net. Poor guy, I could almost feel sorry for him if I liked him better. For both of them.”
So. If she’d been seen flirting with Jake it was not, apparently, because she fancied him. Always supposing she was telling the truth.
“So just as Margot used people, so she was being used.”
“Right. You got it. Karma—big time.” She twirled a ring on her left index finger, a Celtic symbol of infinity with a large diamond at its center. She watched Max drink the high-end water, his wedding band now on full display. Her face crinkled with disappointment, but she rallied quickly. “So, tell me, Max, what’s it like being a private eye? Do you need a license and stuff? Because while my yoga practice will always be a part of who I am, I might need to look at steadier employment.”
Max wasn’t sure that being a private eye would qualify as steady work at the best of times. But he decided not to mislead her further. The news of who he was would reach her soon, anyway. He said, “I’m not a private eye. I mean, I am here in an unpaid, unofficial capacity to assist the police.”
“Really?” She looked at him suspiciously, as well she might. “So you sort of investigate freelance? But for no pay?”
Max looked around. There was no one to overhear. No one coming to rescue him from his predicament, either.
“That’s more or less correct. I’m the vicar of a small church in Nether Monkslip. I am—”
She snapped her fingers. “Yes! Yes! That’s where I’ve seen you before. I knew it! Max Tudor—of course. You’ve been in the news, haven’t you? Murder investigations, suspicious deaths, all that. Well. Well, well. It is a pleasure to meet you, truly. My mother and father are both Episcopal priests. You could say religion runs in the family.”
You could say that, thought Max, but you’d be wrong. He was having a harder and harder time reconciling Delphine’s background with that of a drug dealer, but she wouldn’t be the first child of religious parents to run amok. To rebel for the sake of rebellion. The pressure never to put a foot wrong could be intense; it was like being the offspring of a headmaster or prime minister. “Me, I wanted to see the world—Eat, Pray, Love, you know; such an inspirational book—and that included seeing what other religions had to offer. And do you know what? I’ve decided it’s all paths to the same place.”
“My wife would agree with you.”
“Really? Cool. Anyway, it was my dad started following your exploits a while back. I think it’s a bit of hero worship on his part, between you and me and my mom. Not that he wants his parishioners to drop dead or anything like that—God forbid; he’d be horrified—but he’d love to solve the crime if they were the victims of foul play. Poison in the chalice—you know. So, of course I know who you are; I just couldn’t put two and two together.”
“You don’t say,” said Max. “How … remarkable.”
“Oh, sure. The media in the States picked up on it when you solved that nunnery caper. The ‘Canny Cleric,’ they call you.”
Good Lord. “I hope the name doesn’t stick,” said Max.
“Oh, just wait ’til I tell my dad!”
Max was still stalled on “Canny Cleric.”
“How absolutely appalling,” he said, knowing his bishop would never let him forget it if that came to his ears. Nor would Cotton. “I say, I’d rather you—”
“We’ll have to come up with something better. What do you think of the ‘Saintly Sleuth’? Or—wait, I’ve got it!—the ‘Prying Priest’?”
“God in heaven, no. And whatever you do, don’t spread the word about the nunnery investigation to the others. I’m not sure how useful I can be to the inquiry once it’s known I—”
>
“Once your cover’s blown. Got it.” She tapped one finger alongside her pert nose, which at this point was reddening from excitement or nervousness at meeting her first celebrity priest. Or was he witnessing fear—a fear of discovery? “Your secret is safe with me, Father. I’ll take it to my gra—oh, sorry. I mean, I…”
Max just then was alerted to a hubbub at the entryway to the ballroom. Turning, he recognized Cotton by the gleam of his fair hair as it caught the lights, and he saw the flash of the warrant card Cotton was pointing at an officious private guard. Quickly losing his patience, Cotton swept past the gatekeeper and plunged into the crowd. Max pushed his own way through the multitude, heading in Cotton’s direction and holding his glass aloft to keep it from the jostling throng. The dazzling hordes on both sides of the room interrupted their laughing conversation as they parted to admit the men, the beautiful and the mighty turning to stare as the two met in the center of the room.
Max could tell with just a glance at Cotton that whatever had happened, it was bad.
He leaned in, and Cotton spoke one word into his ear, just loudly enough to penetrate the noise of the party.
“Maurice,” he said. Cotton stood back and shook his head, pale and disbelieving.
“Not—not gone?” asked Max. “But—he was just here. I was just going to ask you to put an extra guard on him.”
Cotton nodded. He ran a hand through his hair, disturbing its perfection—a sure sign of his distress. “Maurice,” he said again. “I’m afraid so.”
Chapter 27
A POOR PLAYER
“I really should have known,” Max was saying. “Maurice thought with his heart—he absolutely led with his heart and not his brain. I could have warned him even more strongly to stay out of it.”
“Right,” said Cotton. “You could have. But you know as well as I do, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. Most people find it hard to believe they’re in danger, don’t you find? We all like to believe we’re invincible—special and somehow protected from the worst.”
They stood in the hallway outside room 202 of the Grand Imperial Hotel, waiting for the coroner’s people to remove the body of Maurice Brandon, stylist to the stars. Maurice had been found by Beatrice, a housemaid who had come to turn down his bed for the night. She had knocked and, receiving no answer, used her passkey to enter the room, where she saw Maurice lying face down on the bed. His posture suggested a man who had passed out but Beatrice, having had experience of many such horizontal guests, approached the bed to make sure he was still breathing. It was not uncommon for people on holiday to overindulge. It was also not uncommon for them to take their own lives, as had once happened with a businessman facing bankruptcy. He had rented the poshest room in the hotel, ordered the finest champagne, and used it to wash down a bottle of Seconal.
Beatrice, only in her twenties, was thinking her mother might be right: she needed to get into another line of work, something with a brighter future. Tonight she’d have settled for a job with fewer surprises. Her manager finally had sent her home after she’d reported her discovery, but had said she’d need to be back early tomorrow to be available for further questioning. Not one of these extra hours was going to be on the clock, needless to say. She should have been home an hour before the manager, who was always all up himself to begin with, told her she could leave. Like he had anything to do with it, the pompous git. Anyone could see who was in charge, and it weren’t Delwyn Kendrick. It were them two handsome men, the blond one and the dark-haired one. Them and that beautiful pregnant lady, whose role in this Beatrice could not begin to fathom.
She was just taking her cart into the storage closet when she saw Delwyn talking with the men investigating the case, sucking up to them, as she knew he would do. Fat chance of keeping this one out of the papers, she thought, if that’s what he was hoping for. He’d be in a right panic over that. Automatically she’d started counting the towels for the next day when she stopped and wondered what the use was of that? She diagnosed herself as suffering from shock—the look on that poor dead man’s face, the color of his skin. And his hand—why was his hand held in a claw like that, the veins on the back of his hand so purple and dark? She’d not soon forget the sight. He had been a nice man, ever so considerate, not leaving his kit strewn about the room and flinging his underpants everywhere, like he thought he was the shah of bleedin’ Iran, and missing the rubbish bin every time with his nose tissues. Not like them other two, the ones the others called the baron and the baroness—my eye, them two never were royalty, not proper royalty. Beatrice had dealt with minor nobs here and there in her job, and she felt she would know the real article if anyone would.
Finally released, Beatrice found her hat and scarf and caught the last bus home, longing for a cuppa and wondering how much she could safely tell her mum. Mum did go on so but this time, she might have a good point worth listening to. It was a glamorous job in its way, working at the hotel, especially with all these film stars hanging about, but when murder got this near—well. And it was murder. No one could look at that man and think he had welcomed death. Not like the other poor sod with the Seconal.
Her cousin worked selling tickets in the Cineplex down the road. Maybe a job sweeping the floors there would be glamorous enough for now, just to keep her going until Darryl proposed. He was showing all the signs of being ready to settle down—he’d bought a newspaper subscription for home delivery and all. Maybe if she told him how dangerous her work had become it would be the spur he needed. This could all turn out for the best.
Except for the poor man in room 202, of course. As she rode the Number 12 home, Beatrice made a sign of the cross and said a silent prayer for the peace of his soul. In her world, where neatness rated highly, he’d been a ruddy saint.
It wasn’t until the next day during break that Hazel, one of the waitresses, told her she’d seen someone loitering about room 202 the night before. “Behavin’ in a most peculiar fashion,” she said. “They saw me and scarpered. Do you think I should tell the police and all?”
“Delwyn won’t like that.”
“I know.”
“Did you get a good look at who it was?”
“Oh, yes. From when I was serving lunch the other day.”
“You should tell. I guess. Maybe. Maybe Delwyn won’t come to hear of it?”
Hazel’s face puckered further with concern. “Let me think on it,” she said finally. “I don’t retire until next year, when I can finally kiss that devil good-bye. Meanwhile, I need the job.
“Besides,” she added, “I only saw them skulking about, not murdering anyone. It’s not the same thing at all, is it? I wouldn’t want someone banged up for nothing, like they done to my Jonah.”
Beatrice nodded understandingly. You didn’t involve yourself with the police if you could help it. Everyone with a grain of sense knew that.
* * *
“Maurice said he wanted to catch the conscience of the king,” said Max. “He was hinting darkly, dropping clues—I really should have threatened him or something.”
“Threatened him with what? Excommunication? Max, his reputation as the soul of discretion meant everything to him. You couldn’t have prevented this.”
“Sent him away then.”
“What could we do, in all honesty? Put him in the clink for his own protection?”
Max, who would always feel he could and should have prevented Maurice’s death, shrugged Cotton’s objections aside and continued with his thought. “That ‘conscience of the King’ bit could refer to Romero. In fact, that would be the obvious connection. Romero owns the yacht. He’s the king of all he surveys.”
“There’s also a captain of the ship, don’t forget,” said Cotton. “A kinglike personage. But I’d say the more obvious connection with Hamlet is that Maurice was planning to stage something, given his background in theater and film. It’s exactly the sort of sideways approach he would adopt. Not stage an entire play, of course, but a scene
. Something that would draw signs of guilt from the guilty party.”
“It’s a big leap to assume the killer here has a guilty conscience, but perhaps. Yes. Let’s see … Hamlet. Could there be another connection? Maurice simply could not make up his mind what to do—in that he was very Hamlet-like. He should have just told us his suspicions but he wanted to be sure.”
“Right,” Cotton said. “I think we agree, that was Maurice’s style. Also, we’ve got a poisoning here. In the play King Claudius is forced to drink poisoned wine. And the queen, Gertrude—Hamlet’s mother—drinks poisoned wine. We have a poisoning of Margot in this case. I suppose…”
“There are all sorts of possible connections with the play. Not forgetting that Margot enjoyed a brief strut and fret on the floorboards.”
“It wasn’t all that brief,” said Cotton. “Besides, wrong play.”
“Hmm?”
“The strutting and fretting. It’s from the Scottish play:
‘Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.’”
“Right you are,” said Max. Cotton was such a treasure, thought Max, his head positively stuffed with lyrics and quotations and other useful tidbits. Typical of him also that he wouldn’t say the actual name of the play aloud. It was famously bad luck to do so, at least backstage among actors, where Cotton had spent so many of his formative years. Even quoting from the play was for him going far out on a limb.
“That play,” Max went on. “The one Addy told me about, the one Margot starred in, performing on the West End in London. Shopgirl.”
“I’ll have someone on my team look into it,” said Cotton. There was a pause, and Cotton cleared his throat before saying, “I’m sorry to have to ask, but what would they be looking for exactly?”
“Costars, producers, money men, disputes, gossip, dates, times, love affairs.” Thinking of Delphine, he nearly said, “Karma.” “The one thing I can say for sure is Delphine is in the clear for this murder. She was talking with me as Maurice was being killed.” But rather than repeat Delphine’s “what goes round” theory, he simply added, “Look for motives for revenge, for retribution. Whatever you’ve got.”
Devil's Breath Page 20
