G Malliet - Death and the Lit Chick

She mined this vein for some twenty minutes longer. St. Just, losing the thread-along with, he was sure, many others-looked about him in time to see Tom Brackett plod in, his wife several steps behind, carrying his briefcase. There was a little jostling hubbub at one of the doors and then Magretta shot through the opening, immediately followed by Kimberlee Kalder. Kimberlee's entrance was accompanied by a certain amount of fuss that made St. Just think her delayed appearance, probably like Magretta's and Tom's, had been planned in advance. Her presence sent a flutter of whispers into the air like gulls startled by a sudden noise.

Signaling to Kimberlee to remain standing, Rachel trilled, "There has been a last-minute change in the program that I know will greatly please all of you aspiring young authors in the audience. Kimberlee Kalder, best-selling author of Dying for a Latte, has generously consented to hold a Q-and-A session on how to break into the chick lit mystery market."

This announcement met with a small ripple of applause and comment, some of it puzzled (What in hell is chick lit? one elderly woman with a hearing aid demanded loudly) and Kimberlee remained standing as necks craned to see her. She smiled, offered a lofty wave, then approached the podium, uninvited, a queen heaving her way through a swarm of courtiers. She had learned the orator's trick of maintaining a drawn-out silence before beginning to speak, first gathering all eyes to her.

"They say I am the new Jane Austen," she began. "Certainly I've sold more copies of Latte than Jane ever sold of Persuasion in her lifetime."

A murmur of unrest rose from the assembly.

"As if," whispered a middle-aged woman seated to his left.

"Blasphemy!" hissed another behind him.

"Who is 'they'?" demanded another.

Unabashed, Kimberlee weathered on. Edith Wharton was mentioned, and George Eliot. St. Just looked around to see how everyone else was taking this. By now several loud, incredulous snorts had erupted from various quarters of the room. Many heads were bent in heated discussion, and at least one member of the audience-the woman with strong opinions on Poirot's marrows-had had enough. With rather more commotion than was strictly necessary, she headed for the door.

The rest-especially, he supposed, the aspiring authors Rachel had mentioned-remained in their seats, entranced.

The buffet lunch proved to be a doughy mutton pie and a plain salad of lettuce and tomato, innocent of dressing, followed by oatmeal biscuits from a packet. Seeking out a quiet table, St. Just noticed Donna Doone had now attached herself to Winston Chatley, handing him several dozen pages of typescript, presumably of her manuscript, which he politely pocketed. Magretta Sincock gave St. Just a flirtatious wave, clashing with his naked salad greens as she sailed by.

Mrs. Elksworthy appeared at his elbow and asked him to join her.

"That Tom," she said as they pushed through the melee near the buffet table. "How rude to sit there snorting like a sow throughout poor Rachel's speech. But Kimberlee was worse. Why didn't she just hire a trumpet player to announce her entrance? 'Tips on writing chick lit,' indeed." She drew out a pause with staged emphasis, her customary sang-froid having apparently deserted her. No one could doubt chick lit was in for a thrashing. "After all, what can there be to say? Keep your pencils sharpened?"

They passed Kimberlee sitting at a large round table with a flamboyantly dressed man Joan identified as B. A. King. St. Just was in time to hear Kimberlee say, "You stole it. I want what's mine or I promise you, you'll pay."

"You're crazy," King hissed back. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He stood abruptly and left. Sensing an opportunity-for what, St. Just wasn't sure-more and more people began to gather around Kimberlee, like pilgrims drawn to a shrine. Most held copies of her book open for signing. Unfazed by either the crowd or the heated conversation with King, Kimberlee smiled serenely, taking veneration as her due.

But St. Just noticed the touching scene of homage seemed to induce a vein-popping anger in both Magretta Sincock, who struggled to hide it, and Tom Brackett, who did not.

It is a jolly good thing that looks can't kill, thought St. Just.

By breakfast time on Saturday, the gloves were starting to come off.

As St. Just descended to the Orangery, anticipating a vast Scottish breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, tomatoes, and mushrooms, he thought of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had declared that all epicures would choose to breakfast in Scotland. Life was probably happier, thought St. Just, before we knew the calorie and cholesterol counts for everything.

He carried with him a copy of that day's Edinburgh Herald. Yesterday's conference was featured prominently in the Life section.

Magretta Sincock, bellowing his name, waved him over to her table.

"You saw it then?" She snapped a napkin into her lap. "That cheeky little creep."

"What, in the paper? I haven't read it yet," said St. Just. "Is anything wrong?"

"Wrong? Wrong!" said Magretta, her voice throbbing with emotion. She fairly grabbed the paper out of St. Just's hands and vigorously shook it open at the fold, like a farmer wrestling a bit onto a stubborn horse.

"First the little pillock gives a synopsis of my latest book that reveals who the killer is." Magretta scanned the page columns until she found the relevant paragraph. "Here it is: 'Since the most inattentive reader will be able to guess it, anyway, I shall save you the trouble of reading this tedious rehash of the plot of her 1984 Mystic Murder in the Mirror.' Of all the bloody nerve."

St. Just looked to where she pointed, her finger trembling with outraged indignation.

"I say, Ms. Sincock, that is a rum deal. Quentin didn't directly reveal the killer by name, though-there's that to be grateful for, I suppose. Anyway, I'm sure your new book is completely different from any of the older ones."

A look crossed Magretta's face so fleetingly he might have missed it, but it told him she had indeed recycled an old, successful plot, quite possibly unaware she had done so. That possibility was the bete noire of any prolific writer who had been at the game a number of years, he supposed, and Magretta must have been churning them out for decades. However-and worse, from Magretta's point of view-Quentin Swope had gone on in his article to again sing the praises of "the enchanting Kimberlee Kalder."

"He didn't even mention he was going to interview her," sniffed Magretta.

"In all fairness, would you have expected him to mention it?" asked St. Just.

Magretta's look said all that needed to be said about her expectations. She sighed theatrically.

When St. Just later read the review more closely, he wondered what Magretta had done to the man to provoke such a response. It was even worse than the bits Magretta had been able to bring herself to read aloud. Swope had indulged himself in a lengthy harangue about the dying mystery market, a setup for subsequent paragraphs that cast Kimberlee Kalder in the role of publishing's darling, one who had come up with a "bright, fresh slant that threw open the mullioned doors and windows and let some much-needed air into the cloying atmosphere of the stately home murder, not to mention the tedious predictability of the woman-in-jeopardy novels of Magretta Sincock."

St. Just looked across the room to Kimberlee Kalder, that darling of publishing. She wore a low-cut blouse in her signature pink, this time with a white skirt so tight he could practically read the fabric care instructions through the material. At one point, Lord Easterbrook came over to offer obeisance. Kimberlee, nodding her elegant, narrow head, again seemed to take this as her due.