Devil's Breath

by G. M. Malliet

  Tossing a scarf round his throat and shoving his arms into a jacket, he headed out of the hotel by the back entrance. There he found Cotton pulling an immaculate pair of green Wellies from the boot of his car. He reached far into the boot to retrieve his torch.

  “Believe me, we’ll need this.”

  * * *

  The southern coast of England is a region of soft sandstone. It is riddled with sunken roads or “holloways” whose origins stretch back to the Iron Age. These winding paths were made originally by animals being driven to market, and became codified by pilgrims walking to nearby abbeys to pay their respects to the relics of their favorite saints. In the case of Monkslip-super-Mare and other sea villages, they were used mainly by farmers and artisans—and the occasional smuggler—to carry goods to and from the seaports.

  These sunken roads began as mere ruts in the road but hooves and feet and cartwheels turned them into steep ditches, and running water turned ditches into gorges. They can be as much as thirty feet deep, their beauty and drama arising from the tree branches that meet overhead to create a shadowy canopy of leaves. Walking through a holloway is like walking down the vaulted aisle of an ancient and long-deserted abbey church from which all the monks have fled.

  These paths are dark, mysterious, and somewhat dangerous, and are largely disused today except by nature lovers, and by lovers generally.

  But on this day, the holloway the locals call the Devil’s Trail was nearly a path to freedom for a murderer.

  * * *

  Max and Cotton plunged into the gloom of the holloway like divers entering a pool. Max was glad he’d thought of the boots, for spring showers had turned parts of the stony bottom of the path into a slurry of mud.

  Cotton, via his smart watch, had sent several members of his team ahead to block the ends and exits of the holloway. In theory, their quarry could scramble up the steep sides of the path almost anywhere, but in most places it would require unusual strength, the agility of a goat, and a great deal of noisy thrashing about. He would be easy enough to hear and spot even if he were able to reach the top.

  The path was lined with bluebells and wild garlic, and was permeated by a ghostly aura of dank fog. The two men hadn’t walked but a few yards before they were eclipsed in gloomy darkness, bounded by gnarly shadow—it was very like entering a moss-sided cave, the banks on either side exposing a rich tangle of undergrowth. Only the torch and intermittent sunlight prevented them stumbling headfirst over rocks or knotted roots. The torch illuminated the few feet in front of them, and was otherwise inadequate to the task. Max was comforted to think their quarry was probably facing all the same obstacles they were, and wondered if he’d somehow had the foresight to bring along a torch.

  He tried to peer ahead even as he minded every step. The pathway formed a natural green tunnel that in the distance emitted a space-age sort of light, like a half-life dream; the walls on either side had trees growing at their tops, the roots of the trees helping to hold the wall in place. The air itself was a soupy dark green which made it difficult to breathe. Max dared a glance at Cotton, who in the gloom resembled one of the ghostly forest creatures rumored to inhabit the area.

  A scuttling sound, and Max was in time to see a hedgehog caught in the rays of the torch. Probably it was just out of hibernation and scouting a building site for a nest. Now it scampered to safety beneath the leaves and roots.

  They hadn’t gone far when a cry ahead made them stop, their senses as alert as those of the birds and animals, who scattered now with renewed energy, signaling to each other the news of a foreign invasion.

  “That was human,” said Max. “Up ahead.”

  They ran as fast as the roots and slippery moss would allow. Their quarry had recovered from his fall, only to tumble again in taking the next hurdle. His lace-up dress shoes weren’t designed to cope with the wild terrain. Cotton could have told him that.

  Max reached out and collared him by the scruff of his jacket, and Cotton moved in to pin his arms behind him.

  The soiree was over for the Baron Sieben-Kuchen-Bäcker.

  Chapter 34

  DENOUEMENT

  “Let me get this straight,” said Patrice, speaking again from her throne of cushions and pillows, her swollen ankles resting atop a rounded pouf she’d requisitioned for Camp X. “Addison or Addy as he’s called—he was Margot’s natural son.”

  “That’s right. Also, Frances was her daughter, her firstborn. Most likely conceived in the horrible circumstances we’ve described, when Margot was a teenager in Kansas. But that didn’t stop her plans for a glorious future. She left town at the first opportunity with what money she’d saved from her after-school jobs.”

  “Okay. So she goes to Hollywood, gets some sort of menial work to keep body and soul together, and then perhaps eight months later, Frances is born. She is given up for adoption. Is that right?”

  “So far so good, yes.”

  “Where does Romero come into this?”

  “Margot met Romero right after she arrived in Hollywood,” said Max. “Romero misled me about when they first met. Like Maurice, he was taken with her. Unlike Maurice, he launched headlong into an intimate relationship with her. He was very much in love, by the way, and followed her to London later. He lied about that: it made him look rather a fool, if not a complete stalker.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t…” began Patrice. Then: “Oh. Frances. He thought Frances was his.”

  Max nodded. “Margot let him think so, certainly. We have to remember she came from the sort of shattered background that doesn’t encourage what today we would call bonding. Or honesty, for that matter. Given her losses coupled with her dreadful upbringing, Margot no doubt had a rather shaky idea of the entire concept of family. And of love. She may simply have presented to Romero that he was the father and, because he loved Margot, he jumped at the chance of parenthood. Maybe he saw it as a way to cement the bond with Margot. Or he simply accepted the responsibility, and made doubly sure he could keep the child by going to the trouble of a formal adoption. I don’t think we’ll ever know, to be honest. He seems to regard Frances as his daughter, whether by birth or by choice. I’ll let someone else break the news to him of the true situation. I’m not sure it’s our place to do so.”

  “One question,” said Cotton. “Does this have anything to do with why you wanted to see the autopsy results?”

  “I wondered whether Margot had ever given birth. The coroner was concerned only with how she died and so didn’t highlight all the aspects of her medical history. But as you know, we rather lucked out. The autopsy actually showed she’d given birth twice. One was a natural birth: Frances. The second was a Caesarean—no doubt necessitated by complications from the first birth.”

  “Wait,” said Patrice. “Caesarean? Second birth?” Her eyes narrowed as her mind knotted all the ends together. “Addy,” she said, “So if we think the baron was trying to poison Addy—”

  Max cleared his throat, looked over to Cotton, who made an “after you” gesture.

  “He was.”

  “But why?” She pushed back her hair in frustration. “Why would he do that?”

  “Try to poison his own flesh and blood, you mean? For that, we’d have to revisit the story of Cain and Abel. Although, in this case, we are dealing with two half brothers. Both born of the same father but of two different mothers.”

  “Max,” said Patrice, and her voice carried a warning note. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  Max, smiling, relented. “All right. The young baron as we know him is no baron at all. He was born out of wedlock to one of his father’s paramours, and that illegitimacy, all very hushed up, is the great secret of our young baron’s life. Just imagine, the people who have hosted him and his wife all these years finding out he never was born to a great title and wealth. Imagine her finding out that he is not the rightful heir to the estate of the Sieben-Kuchen-Bäckers. That honor goes to none other than Addy. Addison Phelps, as
he came to be called by the people who adopted him.”

  “That would mean—are you saying—Margot and the old baron were married?”

  “Yes. She seems to have talked him into marriage in time to legitimize Addy. Her pregnancy with Addy may have been unintended and unexpected, given her medical history. But this time she had a baron in her sights, not a struggling would-be director like Romero had been.”

  “Or worse,” said Patrice. “One of her disgusting cousins.”

  “Right. This time, she was going to change the course of her own history. Write her own fairy tale of a movie. She and the baron were married in Scotland. He had a remote hunting lodge up there, and that is where she delivered Addy.”

  “Why keep things so hidden?” asked Patrice. “Why would she go about it like that?”

  “Because there was no hiding the fact that the baby had been conceived out of wedlock and that was still something people liked to cluck over in those days. They would count up the months to nine and come up a few months short. But Addy was legitimate—according to the National Records of Scotland, his father married Margot in a valid ceremony. She hustled her baron to the altar just in the nick of time.”

  “But then she gave Addy up for adoption?”

  “Yes. Once again, she felt she had to. The old baron died shortly after the birth—he probably knew he was dying when they married, and that may have added to his wish to leave a legitimate heir. But Margot was in the same position as before, really, as she had been with Frances. She, the least maternal of women, had a child on her hands she had no wish to raise, and she had few means with which to raise it—especially when it turned out the baron was land poor. He had land and a title but little money to sustain either. He had gambled away much of his wealth, a fact of which she was no doubt blissfully unaware when she took up with him.”

  “But Addy was the real thing. He was the true heir to whatever was going.”

  “Yes.” Max had spoken briefly with Addy, who was having a hard time adjusting to his revised status. He was also grieving, in his own way, the loss of a mother he’d never known.

  “So, she gave up her child for adoption to clear the path for a success she never really achieved,” had been Addy’s reaction. “There is a sad irony there. I was traded in for a sort of fool’s gold, wasn’t I?”

  “Margot chose to bring you into the world,” Max had reminded him. “I believe you did mean something to her.”

  Addy’s reply had been a scoffing, “Do you really think so?”

  “I do, actually. The thing about Margot is, she knew her own weaknesses, at least when it came to motherhood. Her own limitations, given the trauma of her past. She knew or feared she’d be no sort of mother to you, and she wanted you to have a better chance than she could offer.”

  “She wanted stardom, is what she wanted. To not be saddled with me.”

  He would feel that for a long time, thought Max. But Max hoped that one day, for his own sake, Addy might change his mind, or at least make his peace with what he believed.

  “Addy was the legitimate heir, yes,” he continued now to Patrice and Cotton. “But the fact of Addy’s legitimacy made him dangerous to the young ‘baron’—the fraudster who had spent years trading on a title to which he was not, to coin a phrase, entitled. I think it likely his own mother fueled his sense of grievance about what he’d lost, about what would rightfully have been his, had his father married his mother. He had no trade, no skills, nothing to fall back on but the family name, remember, which he had taken—stolen—as his own. That was his way of making a living, in a manner of speaking. And when he learned the identity of a genuine, verifiable heir, he saw that heir as a threat to his livelihood, a threat that must be disposed of.”

  “Was her ladyship aware of the imposture?” Patrice asked.

  “We may never be sure. She won’t admit any knowledge now, that much is certain. She may not have been aware of his true situation when they married. But once they were married, if she began to suspect, or if he told her the truth—well, she may have found after a number of years that she was in too deep. It may just have been easier to go along than risk a scandalous divorce.”

  “But how did he come to know all this about Addy?”

  “Through another relative of his, oddly enough. Remember the German couple he and his wife were visiting? This German couple had taken up online DNA testing almost as a party game, and they persuaded the ‘baron’ to be tested, also. It would appear the fun part of this testing is in learning you are related by blood, however distantly, to someone famous.

  “Let’s start using his first name, Axelrod, in order to be clear. Well, as there seemed to be no harm in it—Axelrod knew he was a blood relation of the old baron, his father—he went along. Remember that his role as a houseguest was to keep his hosts happy, and the German wanted to see the confirmation of the blood tie. Very often, with this testing, the conclusions can be fortified by a cross-referencing with another blood relative. That is why these services allow all the participants to interact with one another, if they choose to, or at a minimum, to see other relatives with whom they share a connection. They can also see the strength of that connection—first cousin, fourth cousin, whatever. Well, lo and behold, Axelrod saw that he shared, through his father’s line, an extremely close tie with someone named Addy Phelps. And this Addy, being the open and transparent sort of person he was, had provided his contact information—home town, e-mail, and so forth—so others sharing bits of his DNA could get in touch if they wanted. This information was enough for the baron to do some research of his own online, find Addy’s year of birth (a matter of record, because of the copyrights on his writings) and confirm Addy must indeed be the true but unnamed heir his own mother had complained about. From there, it was a matter of finding Addy, and thanks to Addy’s online blog, nothing could be simpler. He was, by happy chance, in Monte Carlo, sailing around Europe with Romero.”

  “With Margot on board.”

  “Yes, Addy had of course mentioned this on his blog, too. He was traveling with the once-well-known actress Margot Browne. Writing about her, in fact.”

  “The two people in the world who were a huge threat to the fake baron, Axelrod, were tidily collected in one place,” said Patrice. “Isn’t that rather a coincidence?”

  “Not when you consider the industry they were in, no. It is often said that Hollywood is a small town. Margot, Romero, and Addy were all connected via agents, and producers, and past collaborations in film and on stage. The odd thing about it is that this was the first time all three of them were together in close proximity.”

  “Did the baron realize how close Addy was coming to the truth?”

  “I think he must have done. Addy was getting closer to the truth. And while the baron quickly altered his online profile with the DNA service to hide his close relationship with Addy, here was Addy, researching like mad, and wanting to show off his research in a book—well, Addy had to go. Poor Addy didn’t know he was a threat. He thought it was all just an interesting and growing possibility that he was Margot’s child.”

  “Addy didn’t realize the danger?”

  “Not for a minute. He’s an American, remember. Even had he begun to glimpse the full truth of his origins, he simply did not think in terms of having a title, and there was so little money and property attached to being the legitimate heir to the Sieben-Kuchen-Bäcker dynasty, anyway. Not compared with the vast sort of wealth he was used to. He may have found the whole idea preposterous—at best, a bit of a lark.”

  “And for the baron, it was no lark,” said Cotton. “He was about to lose everything once Addy made all these connections, which, given his inquisitive nature, he was bound to do.”

  “Correct. But when it came to the murder, Addy thought Margot was the actual target, just as we did. That she had been killed for some incomprehensible reason, just as we did. He didn’t realize he himself was first in line to be eliminated. Margot was probably in line for
removal later on, although she had kept her secrets so long, she posed no immediate threat.”

  “That’s what I don’t understand,” said Patrice. “She must have recognized the baron’s name from the start: Sieben-Kuchen-Bäcker. I mean, really. Why did she say nothing? Did she not realize he was an imposter?”

  “Not at all. Axelrod took the first opportunity to tell her he was the rightful heir—that his own mother had married his father, the baron. And that they had never divorced. Not true, of course, they had never married. But what was one more lie? He let Margot believe her own marriage was invalid. From what she knew of the old baron’s dubious character, she would not have questioned it. He’d lied to her about his finances, too, remember—I think a novelty in Margot’s life would have been a man who didn’t lie to her. Anyway, Axelrod further told her—just to make sure she shut up and stayed shut up—that he had had a younger half-brother he’d stayed in touch with, but that this half-brother had died. Of course she thought he meant her son. The man we know as Addy.

  “Still, the baron must have felt the scheme was unraveling around him. He tells us he saw Addy and Margot in conversation all the time, and he was sure the truth would come out. They were probably talking about old movies but that is where his paranoia kicked in. There could be no chance of the world learning the truth, or the baron would lose what little he had. Not just the title but the small income from the property he’d also been cashing in on. All that would go to Addy if the truth were known. I have a suspicion losing the title was what really rankled, though. It was that title that gave the ‘baron’ entrée. It made him somebody. Without it, he was just another mooching houseguest who brought nothing to the table, not even bragging rights. Plus, he’d be made a laughingstock in the upper-class circles in which he orbited. The whole tawdry story of his origins was bound to come out. He’d have done anything to prevent that happening.