G Malliet - Death and the Lit Chick

Donna Doone sniffed, her lips folded tightly together. A right proper little madam and no mistake, this Kimberlee. Judging by her limo driver's face, he would be glad to see the back of her, too.

Why were writers so often difficult? So… ambitious… bound to cause upset…

She recognized the next woman to arrive, too. This, emerging gracefully from a taxi, was Portia De'Ath, who had won all those awards for her first book. Set in Cornwall, it was-lovely. Lovely looking woman, this Portia was, too, with her sleek dark hair tied back by a scarf. Tiny thing, she was. Rather, a tall thing with a tiny waist and slender hips. Gym or genetics? Perhaps a bit of both. Donna glanced down at her own padded hips and sighed.

As Donna watched, Portia shot Kimberlee a look that was none too different from that of the limo driver. Apparently Portia had also made the acquaintance of the Pink Princess of Publishing.

Let's see… Donna counted on her fingers. That agent, Ninette Thomson, and that spy writer Brackett and his wife were still to arrive, and-Who was this?

A tall, well-built, dark-haired man was emerging from a taxi. He took one look at Portia and stopped dead in his tracks, a look of stunned amazement on his face.

Now that would bear watching. Donna felt she hadn't spent years helping stage weddings without becoming sensitive to love in bloom.

This big fellow was coming down with a very bad case, indeed.

Alive on Arrival Portia De'Ath believed in premonition, if that was the right word for the free-floating anxiety that heralds something about to spin horribly out of control. The problem was, of course, the feeling was always too vague to be acted upon in any preventative way. Only in twenty-twenty hindsight did it seem that precisely this or that disaster had been foreseen.

The entire trip up from Cambridge had been like that: Nothing felt quite right. For a bad start, she and Gerald had quarreled as he drove her to the station-a minor squabble, soon forgotten, but an increasingly frequent occurrence. Of lesser moment, but adding to her discomfort, she'd worn all the wrong clothes for the March weather, which, to spite the forecasters, had turned as balmy as spring. The glassy blue sky held just a smudge of grey cloud, like a small scattered army. Since British Rail apparently followed the same BBC forecast as Portia, her train compartment was overheated, and the window stuck shut. She'd also forgotten to pack the new P. D. James she'd planned to read over this weekend, which left her somewhat at the mercy of her serendipitous travel companion, Kimberlee Kalder.

Kimberlee, of course, looked like an illustration for a magazine article on travel tips for the trendy, her sleeveless pink top perfectly suited to the climate. She wore gravity-defying high heels; diamond studs too big to be real flashed from the lobes of her ears, and evidence of rude good health shone from her luminous face. Despite a somewhat pointed jaw that leant a sly, ferrety cast to her features, Kimberlee was a showstopper.

She had appeared in the carriage just as the train pulled out, pulling a checkerboard-pattern Louis Vuitton bag like a dog on a leash, and carrying a matching computer bag slung over her shoulder. Greeting Portia with a girlish shriek of recognition, she'd deposited herself on the seat opposite, then stretched out her legs like a bored leopard, also taking over the place beside her. She pointedly ignored other passengers as they peered into the compartment from the corridor, looking for a spare seat.

"You're going to this soiree at Dalmorton, of course," Kimberlee said, talking into a compact mirror as she checked her flawless makeup. She had pale blue eyes and straight, white-blonde hair that positively shouted "plundering Viking ancestors." She now gave a vigorous toss of her head in a gesture that Portia came to realize was habitual, and probably designed to show her natural highlights to advantage. As Portia ruminated on the genetic heritage that blessed or doomed us all, Kimberlee continued:

"I saw your name in the conference program. I can't tell you how, like, surprised I was to learn the true identity of the author of the Vyvyan Nankervis novels was none other than Portia De'Ath. The very same writer with whom I happen to share an agent and a publisher. Why ever did you keep it such a secret?"

Portia shrugged. "Self-preservation? I'm at Cambridge as part of a fellowship program. Not quite a 'don,' as the Herald would have it. Trust me, the real dons would want to know why I'm spending time writing crime novels when I'm supposed to be writing a thesis that's the last word on recidivism."

Kimberlee creased her lovely, vacant face with an effort at understanding. Her blue eyes blanked on "recidivism," but after some apparent internal struggle she decided not to ask.

"Oh, surely not," she said instead. "Would it, like, have mattered-like, seriously-if they'd known?"

Like, how to explain, thought Portia. The "they" of their conversation being eccentric Cambridge academics, there was no telling. All Portia knew was that life for a female visiting fellow at St. Michael's was tough enough without sticking pins in the eyes of her mostly male comrades. Comrades who would be deciding her academic future very soon.

"Oh, right, I suppose I do see what you mean," Kimberlee went on. "It's the same old story: Crime writers just aren't taken seriously, for they all hand out laurels to Ruth Rendell. You'd think we were drug dealers. Still, crime writing pays, for some of us; those ivory-tower types are just jealous, living in hovels, most of them. I wouldn't give it another, like, thought."

Portia gazed levelly across at her companion, delighted by the mixed metaphor and wondering if she herself were seriously included in that "for some of us" remark.

She was already regretting her promise to moderate a panel at the Dead on Arrival conference, not least of all because, as Kimberlee had said, the conference sponsors had chosen to "out" her without her permission. Clearly they were blissfully unaware of the pains to which she'd gone to keep her secret vice a secret. And yet: She had felt that a long weekend in Scotland might be a rejuvenating reward for the soul, a plunge into cold water after the steaming sauna of academic life.

She had been at St. Mike's two years, a fleeting nanosecond in the glacially slow-moving world of academic research. But a fair amount of her time was taken up not with the penal system but with a dark-haired fictional detective of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary named DCI Nankervis. What had begun as a lark had become nearly a full-time job, requiring more and more hours devoted to correspondence with agents and editors, in addition to the writing itself, of course. Generally, she avoided book promotion like the plague it was, but this offer from Lord Easterbrook had sounded too good to pass up-all expenses paid for three nights at the fifteenth-century Dalmorton Castle while she and her fellow authors appeared on panels at the nearby conference in Edinburgh.

Kimberlee, apparently quickly bored by any problem not her own, indicated they had reached the limit of her interest by immersing herself in Vogue. After awhile she dozed off, the magazine landing with a resounding "thunk" on the carriage floor.

By now they were leaving the Satanic mills of the industrial revolution behind, heading into lush terrain as the train neared Scotland. Huddled piles of sheep sped past the window, white dots against a green-gray landscape. Portia anticipated the moment when the sea would open up on her right, offering an endless horizon dappled with fading sunlight. She recalled that Rosslyn Chapel, that supposed site of Masonic mysteries, was not far from Edinburgh, and didn't wonder at the myths that clung to the area.

Eventually the train chugged and screeched its way into Edinburgh's Waverley Station, waking her companion. Portia helped Kimberlee muscle her luggage onto the platform, but when she turned to offer to share a ride, Kimberlee was nowhere to be seen. Minutes later, on reaching the taxi ranks, Portia was dumbfounded to see her-or at least, the back of her white-blonde head-speeding off in a limo. Suddenly the rumors Portia had heard of Kimberlee Kalder, Overnight Sensation, began ringing true.