Romero Farnier was in one of the grander suites of the Grand Imperial Hotel, as only befit a man of his stature. Max knocked and entered as commanded, to find the famous director standing on the balcony, staring out to sea like the captain of a whaling ship. The day was turning cold and windy; the light over the sea had dimmed after a brief squall, shredding plump white clouds into gray smudges. It all made for a dramatic backdrop, and Max wondered if the director hadn’t chosen the setting deliberately, almost instinctively. Those who worked in cinema might go through life like that, framing every setting to exploit the maximum beauty and drama from the moment, which was not, when Max thought about it, a bad way to go through life. The Hollywood sort of crowd, however, might also keep rotating to highlight their best angle, to stand where the light was most flattering, and that sort of thing might soon prove exhausting to be around.
The director turned as if startled at Max’s approach. Romero might have been in the company of bad actors a bit too long; some of it had started to rub off.
“This is dreadful!” Romero declared. “I can’t tell you…” Big sigh, furrowed brow, heaving chest. “You are Max Tudor. That inspector person—Cotton—told me to expect you. Although what more I can say I just don’t know.”
“Do you mind if we sit down?” Max asked. “We may as well be comfortable.”
Romero scanned the room. They were in the suite’s living area, where several chairs were grouped by a carved stone fireplace, the overmantel of which rose nearly to the ceiling. But Romero led Max inside to the bedroom where there was another grouping of chairs and a sofa in one corner—a sort of large Santa’s grotto. Romero pointed Max into a chair directly in the path of the sun, and the director took the seat opposite, where an angelic light from behind cast him in shadow. None of this struck Max as accidental. Harmless antics, perhaps—an automatic byproduct of the job at which Romero was reputed to be a master—but signaling a need for control over every transaction, a backlight to every scene whenever possible.
“Margot was always a handful,” Romero began, unprompted. Max suspected that opening was rehearsed and unspontaneous, as well. “She was lovely, and everything a star should be. Imperious, you know: grand, in the way old-time movie stars were grand. Given to large gestures. Generous. But tempestuous as well. Tempestuous, yes, that is the best word to describe her. She drove producers wild as they watched their investments explode before their very eyes. Of course, now we are left to wonder, who did she rile so much they would want to kill her? It is unimaginable, and yet…” Romero’s eyes drifted off to scan the walls for answers. His gaze caught on a framed etching of Durdle Door and paused there, as if captured by the cinematic possibilities of the limestone arch.
“And yet it is what happened,” Max finished for him.
“Really? I was content to think it was an accident, you know. But knowing her…” He shook his head dramatically, a man burdened by the weight of too much reality.
“Do you know,” Max added conversationally, to move Romero beyond his rehearsed speech. “I’ve always wondered. What exactly does a producer do?”
Romero laughed. “Mostly they get on the director’s nerves. They are the ones who try to hold me to a budget, for one thing, but at the same time go about talking about their ‘vision’ for the film and wringing their hands over who should play the lead. Margot drove them into a darker state of crazy, the money guys. Because she simply doesn’t care about anything that wasn’t circling around Planet Margot. Didn’t care, I should say.” A pause. “If you believe in that sort of thing, I guess she really is in a place now where she couldn’t care less what some producer thinks.”
“I am certain that she is. But, I do understand it’s a business where every delay counts,” said Max.
“Yes.” Having been diverted from his prepared notes, Romero’s attention was already wandering, his eyes again casting about the room. As he turned his head, Max saw the barely visible wire that emerged from his ear: a high-end hearing aid, unlike the National Health Service aids Max was more accustomed to seeing, which were just a step up from the ear trumpets of old.
“Whoever chose this wallpaper was a lunatic,” Romero declared at last. “So turn-of-last-century, or the one before that. If they had wallpaper in the Cheddar Caves this was it. If I have to stay here much longer I’ll have people in to tear it down and repaint. Something in a soothing gray violet, to reflect that gorgeous light glancing off the waves.”
Max wasn’t sure if he was joking, but then Romero smiled. It was a smile of great charm—the term “reckless charm” came to mind—a display of great white teeth beneath a well-tended walrus mustache. He had the thick eyebrows to go with the mustache, well-tended also, but white where the mustache was dark. The shock of thick but receding salt-and-pepper hair came across as a compromise.
He was an exceedingly good-looking man. Max wondered why he’d not appeared in his own films, but some people, he knew, were happiest working the spotlight rather than being in the spotlight. Max himself was one of them.
“Would you mind starting at the beginning?” Max asked, to bring the director back on topic. “How long had you known Margot?”
“Oh! Well, I suppose we must dig up all that ground. Well. I met her in London, as it happens. Decades ago. She was performing in some play—don’t ask me the name, it was utterly forgettable. But she was not—my God, she was not. I sent roses backstage. That’s the kind of idiotic thing one did back in the day, to win a lady fair.”
“I don’t think much has changed,” said Max with a smile.
“Oh, don’t you? Well, that’s sweet. But where have you been living?”
“Nether Monkslip, actually. And it is a bit off the beaten path. My wife loves any sort of flower, by the way, especially wildflowers. So tell me, what has changed?”
“Nether … oh. Well, these days—I have a daughter living at home, so I know.” He waved a hand in the direction of a framed snapshot displayed on a dresser across the room. It showed a smiling young woman standing on a beach holding a surfboard. “They show up on motorcycles and practically drag her out of the house by her hair. And that’s just the girls. It’s shocking. Gallantry is dead. Anyway, back in the day, it worked, the flowers. Margot let me come backstage—this was before anyone knew who I was. Correction: before I was anybody in London.” He actually preened, sitting up straighter, and saying, “Now I can go backstage pretty much anywhere I please.”
“So you two began dating.”
A minimizing shrug. “We went out to dinner a few times.”
“That’s all?”
“Pretty much,” he answered smoothly. “I gathered she was playing the field and apart from the fact that I stand in line for no one, then as now, that sort of playing about is a bad idea. This was before the AIDS epidemic really started gaining ground, but even so. She needed to keep herself tidier—I think that’s how you British put it: guarding the reputation? She needed to guard her reputation better. Margot was no good at keeping herself tidy.”
“There is an impression … that is, I was given to believe your relationship with Margot was of more moment than that. That you and she were an item, at least for a while?” Max kept it deliberately vague who had said this to him, for indeed, no one had. It was more an impression he got from the director himself, from the type of man he appeared to be, and from the over-insistent tone of his denials.
“Oh, really?” The expressive eyebrows shot up. “And from where did you get that impression? Margot herself?”
“Indirectly, I suppose—yes. There’s been talk. Of course I never met Margot, but…”
And right there—that was the rub, thought Max. He had never met the victim in this case. And so often, what could be learned from the life could act as a signpost to a hidden murderer. To how the victim came to meet up with his or her killer, and why the meeting turned fatal. To be able to see “in the flesh” the mannerisms, the expressions, even the hairstyles and dress—this showed an investigator so much about the victim’s character, background, choices in life. Without that animation of the living being, that spark of life, one was left only with the impressions of other people, impressions often viewed through their own distorting prisms. The stories they might tell about the victim so often were told to benefit only themselves. The truth, ever elusive, became more so at second remove.
Romero sniffed. It was a sniff of great contempt. Of anger, even. He practically growled, “I thought so. God knows what some of the people from the yacht have been repeating as fact, without considering the source. Well, let me tell you, it suited Margot to pretend we had this big, passionate love affair, a love to transcend the ages, yada yada. She wanted me to put her in my new film, and my refusal, if there were one, had to look like an utter betrayal of our timeless love. It was all bullshit but it was how her mind worked. Frankly, Margot could be a complete pain in the ass.” He hesitated, then added: “May she rest in peace.”
“You say if there were a refusal. Does that mean you were considering her for a role?”
“Oh, sort of. Maybe. There was possibly a part for her as the mother of my hero. A brief scene, the sort of thing where he drops in to say, ‘Bye, Mom, I’m off to war.’ Kiss, kiss, hug, hug; here, take these homemade brownies with you. You know. Anyway, Margot began pestering me for a part and it occurred to me she could just about handle this scene, so why not? She still has lots of fans who would gather round to make sure she was still breathing. Oh, sorry, I guess that sounds—anyway. She could just about handle it and I was just about to say the part is yours when she started coming up with all these brilliant ideas for expanding her role. She could be dying of something and the son visits her on her deathbed. Okay, fine. Then she could have this long deathbed speech where she gives him lots of advice as he heads out to war. Not so fine. Then she thought there could be flashbacks to her youth—heavily backlit and shot through heavy gauze, you know, to make her look young. Absolutely not. We had reached the absolutely not stage when she died.”
“She was made distraught by this? Upset?”
“Well, yes. I’m afraid she was, to be honest, and there was a tiny little scene with her at the party that final night. I may as well tell you because someone else is bound to. She was mutinous, alternating anger with a sort of manic hysteria. The usual thing. Only she was smashed, more smashed than usual, so it was a bit, well…”
“Over the top?” suggested Max.
“Precisely: over the top, even for Margot. Then she started in on Tina—accused me of robbing the cradle, of throwing her, Margot, over for a younger woman. I mean, I ask you. She and I had the tiniest fling decades ago and now I’m throwing her over for a teenaged temptress? I mean, it was ridiculous. Absurd. For one thing, Tina’s high school years are long behind her.”
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 age.”
“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.