Devil's Breath

by G. M. Malliet

  “I’m glad you were able to call, Max. I’ve had a sort of epiphany.” This had been triggered, she told him, by cracking open eggs for the spring-vegetable quiche—that day’s featured creation. Her recipes were in the main vegan but she offered vegetarian options for those so inclined.

  “It was a double-yolk, as it happens. That’s a good omen, you know. Tremendously good luck and a sign of fertility, particularly twins. But it sent my mind down another path, and I wondered: could it be a female killer you’re looking for? I had been thinking in terms of a male because a date rape drug was used. But that drug or any other could be used by anyone of either sex, to render a person unconscious or unable to fight.”

  “Yes, we had considered that possibility,” Max said. “But a woman acting alone—it is difficult to see how she could have hefted the body over the side. That’s become the sticking point every time.”

  “I see. She would need an accomplice. Or…”

  “Or?”

  “Leverage. Some sort of leverage. Like, I don’t know, a rope-and-pulley system. Ships always have ways to lift things overhead or over the side so the sailors don’t have to rely on brute strength.” Awena’s father had made his living as a fisherman in Wales: she would know, Max reflected. It was so obvious, but with his own experience of ships restricted to traveling undercover on luxury cruises, what he’d mostly observed was that passengers on a cruise were like cats, sitting in the sun, just waiting for their next meal. It made them oblivious to their surroundings, creating a situation where unscrupulous people might take advantage. Max once had been seconded to help Scotland Yard follow a couple to Riga—a couple suspected of smuggling arms into the U.K. He had posed as a crew member, handing them towels and drinks as he eavesdropped, recording their conversations when and as he could, conversations transmitted live to his compatriots. Apart from that, rowing a scull on the Cherwell at Oxford was the closest he’d come to a knowledge of floating vessels.

  Cotton’s experience of water was even more limited. Possibly he’d had a bathtub overflow once.

  “That may well be,” Max said. He sighed. “Motive is still the big question, as much as the ways and means.”

  “I think for anyone basically unstable like a killer, there is always motive aplenty, if only illusory motive. That is true if it’s a killer made or a killer born. You’re going on the assumption after talking with Clarice it could be someone biologically connected with Margot, aren’t you? So put yourself in that person’s shoes. You’ve learned your mother gave you away—she didn’t want you in her life. That may or may not have been true in varying degrees but a troubled personality might let that image of himself—or herself—gnaw away at the core, making that person feel disposable somehow. Unloved. Whatever Margot’s reasons for giving the baby up for adoption, her side of the case was never heard. At least, not by the person who most needed to hear it.”

  “Or her side was heard, and that was how she talked herself into being murdered.”

  “It’s a theory. But you’re assuming an impulsive act, in that case. A sudden surge of hatred. But if the murder was planned—that rather requires even more motivation. For the killer to stay the course in such a cold-blooded way. Look, I have to run. It was just on my mind. The eggs, you know.”

  Max didn’t question this process of thought from eggs to abandoned children. If the thought came from Awena, there would be a perfectly rational explanation, and it would evolve from a chain of ideas tightly linked.

  There was certainly logic in what she had said. An adoption might be “avenged” years later by an unstable personality—particularly if that person had been adopted into an unloving or even abusive family.

  But avenged by whom? There were candidates aplenty of the right age for Margot to have given birth to them. Everyone but the captain, Maurice, and Romero fit the bill, in fact.

  And the father of that child? That, Max reflected, was an entire other kettle of fish. Even if his identity could be determined, what purpose would that serve after all these years?

  Chapter 32

  WATER EVERYWHERE

  As Max talked with Awena, Cotton had found for himself a quiet nook in which to sort through his own notes on the case. The hotel was full of such places: bay windows cushioned and curtained for privacy, and corners with good lighting, plush upholstered chairs, and small polished tables. He stopped at the hotel bar and ordered a glass of mineral water to take with him to his chosen nook. As he waited, he studied the voluptuous room. It was like a stage set, the sort of place that looked as if Prince Albert might wander in at any moment, leading with his broad, cumberbunded stomach, and with a lovely damsel leaning on each arm.

  The bartender placed Cotton’s water on the bar, quite near another waiting order of sparkling water. A young waitress swept by just then and picked up the glass. Cotton was almost certain it was the glass that had been intended for him and started to protest, but no matter. Water was water. He picked up the other glass.

  He started to take a sip and stopped, the glass halted halfway to his lips. Of course, one drink was like another. One glass of water. One glass of wine. One poisoned glass of table red, versus another unsullied glass.

  Slowly he put his glass down onto the bar, as if it were suddenly too heavy to hold. He thought through the ramifications as he stared at the polished wood of the bar, his eyes tracing the burl of the grain, the deformity of wood that created such a beautiful pattern when the tree was sliced open. He, usually the most fastidious of men, looked unseeing at the water mark left by his glass.

  Water, water, everywhere.

  Blood is thicker than water.

  He and Max had been talking about Hamlet and Gertrude and the entire messy crew, the whole dysfunctional Danish lot of them, plotting and scheming and avenging old wrongs, never allowing bygones to be bygones, stabbing and poisoning until hardly a soul was left standing. Poisoned blades, drownings. Poisoned drinks. Poison poured in ears, for heaven’s sake, which always had struck Cotton as one of the most inefficient ways in the world to do away with someone. For if you had poison handy, surely the easiest thing was to put it in someone’s glass.

  But Hamlet was a play full of the wrong people being killed, and that thought was what had stilled Cotton’s hand. Polonius, stabbed accidentally by Hamlet, who had mistaken the concealed Polonius for the hated Claudius. Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, accidentally poisoned when she drank from a glass intended for someone else. When she drank from a glass intended for Hamlet, in fact.

  It was there the pieces started to come together for Cotton.

  The play’s the thing.

  Leaving behind the unfinished drink of water, he went to find Max.

  * * *

  An hour later, within the fringed and ormolued confines of Camp X: “The report just came in,” Cotton told Max.

  “We were right?”

  “Yes. It was a process of elimination, really. After verifying everyone else’s origins, he was the only one it could be. It turns out he was adopted, making him the only viable candidate for this role. At least, the only candidate who was on board the ship.”

  “What do you mean?” Max asked.

  “Romero has a daughter he formally adopted at her birth forty years ago. Her name is Frances.”

  “Frances Farnier. I saw her picture in his room. Of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “It explains the hold Margot had over him, as nothing else does. Why else would Romero put up with her—take her on board his luxury yacht, no expense spared, and try to find a spot for her in his movie? Because he was such a nice guy? Not if his treatment of Tina is anything to go by. He didn’t need Margot—he could have any actress to play any part he chose, any big name he wanted. Margot needed him. And because she did, she played him. She let him believe he had fathered a child on her years before. Fortunately, he was devoted to the child, but still he let Margot play that guilt card, right up until the end.”

 
; “It was Maurice who arranged for the child to be adopted,” said Cotton. “Maurice knew everybody in Hollywood, including the nuns at Catholic Charities. Although the nuns kept to themselves the details of exactly who had ended up adopting the child. It was a different time.”

  “This is all in Maurice’s diary, right? The nuns, the adoption—everything?”

  “Yes. But with mere guesswork as to Romero’s role—Maurice only knew Romero was in the picture, in Margot’s life, at the relevant time. And that she never seemed to quite get out of Romero’s life. Do you think … well, is it possible Romero just got tired of playing the game? Of feeling guilty for something that, after all, is no crime. Besides, he had done the honorable thing. He had taken the child in, and he had raised her as—I nearly said, he had raised her as his own. But in his mind, that’s what she was. His own greatly loved child. Did Margot ever tell him the truth, that he almost certainly could not be the biological father? Knowing her nature, it is doubtful.”

  Max nodded. “She would lose all leverage over him if she told.”

  There were so many brands of parenting, Max reflected. His own mother had been a kind, loving, and good-hearted scatterbrain who would never have given him over to the care of others. Max was not certain, however, she’d have noticed if her child had fallen down a well, although by mealtime she’d have noticed he was missing. She was so easily distractible, her head always in the clouds, “where things are beautiful.” Max thought her absent-minded brand of mothering might be the reason he’d grown up to be self-reliant, the sort of child who would one day work undercover, with no one to call on when a mission went south. He’d credit her with his streak of idealism, too. The streak that had led him to be recruited—twice, now—into working for MI5. She wanted the world to be a nicer, safer, gentler, and more beautiful place, and so did he.

  Max added, “But it is Frances’s half-brother who is our concern now.”

  “And that would be Addy. The only one who fits the bill.”

  “Margot never having learned her lesson, apparently.”

  “Ah. Well, it does happen. However, according to her medical records, she had a difficult delivery with Frances and she probably thought it had left her infertile. Any doctor of the time would have told her that was the case—according to our own doctor, who has looked at the old records. So she may have felt she had rather a free pass in that department. Then, Addy came along.”

  “None of this proves Addy killed her. In fact, I doubt he’s capable of such a thing.”

  “Let’s go and ask him,” said Cotton. “See what he says.”

  “While we’re at it, let’s have a guard posted on his room. I think it much more likely his life is in danger than that he is a danger to anyone.” Off Cotton’s look, Max said, “I’ll explain later.”

  They found Addison Phelps laboring once more over his screenplay, having given up entirely on the story of Margot. As he explained to the DCI and his vicar pal, it was likely the truth of her life would never be known, and he wasn’t sure he was the one who could tell it, anyway.

  He was much too close to his subject.

  * * *

  “From my research, I suspected I was on the right track,” Addy told them. “There was so much that added up to exactly the right places and times. A few photos, also, that were suggestive if not conclusive: Margot corseted up to her eyeballs in an attempt to hide either a pregnancy or a serious eating disorder.

  “Of course, I always knew I was adopted. My parents—the people who raised me—were progressive types. All very avant-garde in their thoughts on child rearing. They hired a foreign nanny who was commanded to speak to me only in French—that sort of thing. I think they told me the truth well before I understood what in the world they were talking about, to be honest. But all they said was I had been the love-child—their term—the love-child of a famous actress and some unidentified but terribly important man. He was British and that’s all I knew for sure. I was apparently conceived at the same time Margot was here in the U.K., doing that play in the West End. I still don’t know who the man was, exactly. I mean, I don’t know the sort of man he was. Someone who was smitten by her performance, came backstage, and swept her off her feet—I’m guessing, but that’s likely what happened. I had my DNA tested not long ago using one of those online kits that are so popular now. All it could tell me was that I was free of markers for certain dreadful diseases, which was good to know. When you’re adopted, you worry about that sort of thing. But you see, the more I looked into Margot’s life, the more I was sure she was the actress my parents had hinted at.”

  “You didn’t know this, before you started writing about her?”

  “No.” He shook his head firmly. “I really didn’t. Subconsciously, perhaps? Had I picked up hints along the way from my parents? I’m not sure, because I wasn’t one of these children you read about, desperate to learn their origins, frantic for any clue. I was happy where I was, and very lucky to have ended up in the lap of luxury. I like to think I had the sense to know that, to shut up and be grateful.

  “But I was always an old movie buff and maybe, just maybe, I saw the similarities in her face and features to mine. Something in her gestures, something I responded to. My parents loved watching these old films of hers, too. And then I met her, and of course … the attachment I felt was undeniable. I can’t prove it, and you need not believe me, but I had had only inklings of the truth up until then. I wasn’t totally sure up until this moment, in fact, now you tell me you’ve seen the birth records.”

  “I believe you,” said Max simply. “Do you happen to have with you a copy of your DNA test?”

  “Well, no. Would you expect me to? But the results are online.”

  “Might I have a look?”

  “I don’t know,” Addy answered warily. “What are you looking for?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure,” said Max. “Anything that might codify your relationship to Margot.”

  Addy pulled up a screen, logged in, and stepped back while Max in his turn sat down before the screen.

  “You’re distantly related to Napoleon, it says,” Max remarked a few minutes later.

  “I know,” said Addy. “How cool is that? Also to Marie Antoinette. And to Prince Philip and Susan Sarandon.”

  Max had been scrolling quickly through the pages, most of which contained coding that was incomprehensible to a layman. He shook his head: nothing. Addy, looking over his shoulder, said, “I found quite a close relation before. But there was no way to connect with whoever it was. You can opt in or out of revealing more than just your first name or your initials. You can also be completely anonymous if you don’t want your DNA relatives getting in touch. Then the test results only list the predicted strength of the relationship.”

  Suddenly Max stopped scrolling and peered closely at the screen.

  “Look at this,” he said to Cotton.

  Cotton walked over and saw Max was pointing to one of the anonymous listings.

  “Well, that’s suggestive,” Cotton said. “Not conclusive, but—what are the chances?” He turned to Addy, saying, “We must warn you: you could be in some danger.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We think the intended victim was not Margot. We think the intended victim was you, because of your relationship to Margot. Your blood relationship.”

  “What were you drinking that night, the night Margot died?” Max asked.

  “The same as everyone, really, not that I was keeping tabs on people. Red wine was what I had to drink, is all I can say for certain. There were several bottles decanted. I think that’s all anyone was having.”

  “Margot was drinking the red wine as well?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m fairly sure I saw her with a glass of the wine.”

  “Is it possible someone switched your glass for hers? That she picked up the wrong glass, and drank from it?”

  “It is more than possible,” said Addy. “She was drinking whatever was th
ere, whatever you put in front of her. But why—who would … I mean, why me? Who would want to poison me?”

  “For the usual reasons,” said Cotton. “You were a threat to someone. You stood between them and something they wanted very badly.”

  Addy shook his head sadly. “I don’t know how you do the job you do. Too much reality, much of it sordid. Me, I’d rather deal in fantasy. Like Margot.”

  Chapter 33

  HOLLOWAY

  Cotton and Max were leaving Addy’s room to discuss their next move when a uniformed constable came at a run down the hallway.

  Reaching a clumsy halt, and gasping for air, he said, “One of them’s done a runner, sir. I’m sorry, sir. That dark, skinny one. Looks like a movie star. He were running scared, like a man fleein’ hellfire. And he ignored me when I yelled at him to stop.” The constable looked ruefully down at his protruding stomach. “I tried to give chase but he were in better shape.”

  “Which way?” Cotton asked tersely. The constable, still breathing heavily, pointed behind Cotton’s head. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said again. “It happened so fast.”

  Max turned to Cotton. “You know the area better than I. What’s north of here? Which way would you go to avoid capture? Up that holloway, right?”

  Cotton agreed, “Yes. Up the holloway. You could hide an elephant in there and no one would notice. A man could easily use the trees and overhanging branches to hide behind. If he heard someone in pursuit, he could just scamper up a bank, and wait until the coast was clear.”

  “But he could be routed.”

  “Eventually. If I stationed my team in a string along the path, he could.”

  “How long is it?”

  Cotton shrugged. “Half a kilometer?”

  “‘No time is to be lost.’ I’ll meet you in back of the hotel.”

  Max stopped into his room only long enough to exchange his runners for boots. The death of Maurice had been the unhinging factor; he felt the door was flying off the case now. It was a murder too carelessly executed, a sign of the disintegrating personality behind it.