Docketful of Poesy Read online

  After what felt like eons of careful small talk, we moved into the dining room to sit down at the long table where my family had eaten Sunday and holiday dinners for as long as I’d been alive. It felt surreal to look down the line of well known and loved faces and see…Peter Fox?

  In honor of the occasion Mother had prepared something she called Five Spice Chicken—although I could only taste one spice: turmeric—and a lot of it.

  I watched Peter take a bite. He met my eyes and chewed. Once. I smiled brightly—hopefully. He chewed carefully and swallowed even more carefully, but somehow I could tell by the glint in his eyes that this was something we were going to laugh over later. It was a reassuring thought.

  “Turmeric, ginger, garlic, Chinese five-spice, and…toasted anise?” Peter inquired of Mother when he had recovered from that first bite.

  She almost defrosted. “Why yes, that’s correct, Peter,” she said, and the rest of us tried not to indicate anything amiss as she at last let go of the chilly “Mr. Fox” with which she’d been addressing Peter all evening. “Grace mentioned that you’re an accomplished cook.”

  At last something my mother strongly approved of: men taking their turn in the kitchen.

  “I enjoy cooking,” Peter said. “It focuses the mind wonderfully.”

  My mother smiled politely, clearly skeptical of whatever Peter might be focusing his mind on.

  After dinner I caught my mother sending my father pointed looks, and a few moments later, with a hint of awkwardness, Dad invited Peter into his study. Mother commandeered me to help serve dessert.

  “Will we be staying for dessert?” I asked, once safely behind the swinging kitchen door. “What’s going on? Don’t tell me Dad is grilling Peter about his intentions?”

  Mother ignored this. “I read a review of a new book on Felicia Hemans this afternoon,” she said, dishing up a lemon upside-down cake that appeared to have turned inside out. “You might find it interesting. Personally, I’m not a great fan of Hemans, but one can’t discount her popularity or her influence on the premier poets of the day—male and female. Granted, her domesticated imperialism—sentimental militarism—is a little unsettling. Especially in today’s political climate.”

  “To tell you the truth I’ve been thinking about focusing more on some of the lesser-known women poets.”

  My mother said tartly, “That pretty much covers every woman who put pen to paper during the Romantic period.”

  “But some are better known than others. There’s been a resurgence of interest in Mary Robinson, Joanna Baillie, and Hemans—there have been one or two well-received biographies and an annotated bibliography as I recall.”

  “Hemans is far too important a literary figure to ignore.”

  “‘The boy stood on the burning deck,’” I quoted sententiously. “She’s hardly ignored. In fact, she’s about the only female Romantic poet to get any serious press these days.”

  I had lost enthusiasm for Hemans after reading that the poetess had cut off correspondence with an admiring Percy Bysshe Shelley whom she deemed a “dangerous flatterer.” I suspected it had more to do with Shelley’s disapproval of Hemans’s fascination with “fatal sanguinary war.” There was nothing I loved more than a good debate, and Hemans’s reluctance to engage Shelley—one of my favorite Romantic poets—disappointed me.

  I said tentatively, “I think L.E.L. is due to be rediscovered.”

  “Letty Landon?” Mother shuddered. “I don’t see that as an improvement. I thought you were going to focus on women poets of the Lake District?”

  “There aren’t enough of them. Besides, you have to judge Landon’s work by the literary aesthetic of her age. It would be hard to find a poet, male or female, who more embodied the spirit of Romanticism—both in her work and her personal life.”

  “Grace, if you want your work to be taken seriously, you’ll focus on a more worthy subject than Letty Landon. Next thing, you’ll be wanting to write about Sara Coleridge or Caroline Lamb or the Countess of Blessington.”

  And since I had indeed been considering both Coleridge and Blessington, that seemed to be the end of that.

  Peter and Dad returned to the living room as the rest of us were finishing up our cake. I couldn’t tell anything from Peter’s expression, but it seemed a very bad sign to me when, having manfully downed his dessert, he said he was going to make it an early night. I saw him to the door a short time later, and asked, “Did something happen?”

  “Of course not. I’ve had a strenuous couple of days, and I could use a decent night’s sleep.”

  “But what was that all about?”

  His smile gave nothing away as he tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Don’t you worry yer purty little head, Gracie girl,” he said with an appalling Texas accent.

  “What does that mean?”

  From down the hall Callie yelled, “Grace…phone!”

  “I’ll call you tonight,” I said quickly.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Peter said at the same time.

  We gazed at each other, mutually discomfited.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said.

  Peter drew me close and kissed me, a press of warm mouth on mine, the hint of coffee and lemon and something uniquely Peter.

  “Tomorrow,” he agreed, and turned away to walk down the tidy brick path.

  I darted back into the house, cheeks flushed by more than the cold, and picked up the phone. It was Roberta Lom and she sounded flustered.

  “Grace, Miles just called me with the terrible news about Walter.”

  I made polite sounds of acknowledgment and commiseration. I was very conscious of my mother, Callie, and Laurel moving about the kitchen, tidying up and chatting in that desultory way that indicates the conversation is merely cover for listening in on other people’s phone calls.

  “And according to the police you were actually there when it happened! You must be in shock!”

  “It was pretty shocking,” I agreed. I was trying hard to find a way to communicate that shock without letting my loved ones know I’d been witness to—not to mention nearly the victim of—a horrific traffic fatality.

  Roberta ran on for a few minutes, long enough to confirm that she didn’t apparently have anything more to say than I, and then she said, “Grace, the reason I called—I mean, besides wanting to make sure that you’re all right—is to ask you to reconsider your decision about signing on with us. This project really needs you. We really need you.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to —”

  Roberta didn’t wait for me to finish. “But you’ve got to help us out now. We’re already filming; we can’t start over trying to find a new screenwriter.”

  “But you’ve already got a script.”

  “But you’ve read it.”

  It was hard to argue with that. And I wanted to be part of the project; I really did. It was my book, my life. I said, “I wish it were possible, but Peter and I are flying back to England within a few days. We just have to book the flight.”

  “Peter! Peter Fox is here? In America? In Los Angeles?”

  “He flew in last night. I thought you realized. He was with me when Walter…when Walter died.”

  Silence.

  “My God,” Roberta said. “This is fate. This is kismet. It’s too good to be true. Promise me you’ll bring him to the set tomorrow.”

  “Roberta, I’m not sure that’s possible, and even if Peter wants to visit the set, it’s not going to change anything. As I’ve said, we’re leaving in a day or two.”

  “But that’s just it! That’s what’s so perfect about this. We’re moving production for Dangerous to Know to England. We’re going to be filming on location in the Lake District!”

  Chapter Six

  “I am going to murder Miles!” Roberta yelled.

  “He promised he’d be back after lunch,” Pammy, the harassed A.D., assured her. “It’s the Jag. It’s back in the shop. Something to do wi
th its brakes.”

  “Brakes again?” I couldn’t help remarking.

  Roberta gave me a chiding look, waving this off as she ushered me before her. “There’s something wrong with his brakes all right, but it has nothing to do with his car, and everything to do with not being able to keep his pants zipped up.”

  Not for the first time that Friday morning I wondered what the heck I’d let myself in for. Anyway, it was too late now. I had agreed to help out as script doctor—for a truly embarrassing amount of money—with the production of Dangerous to Know. It had been a little difficult to refuse when Kismet Productions was going to be filming in my own Lake District backyard.

  I waited as Roberta paused once more to answer questions about Walter Christie.

  If Walter’s untimely and violent death was causing anyone heartache—or even inconvenience—I couldn’t tell. It seemed to be business as usual on the set of Dangerous to Know.

  In fact, Peter’s presence seemed to elicit a lot more excitement than poor Walter’s absence. Granted, Walter had not been a particularly strong or pleasant personality, whereas Peter knew how to make himself charming, and was doing so with minimal effort and maximum results.

  Tracy Burke, for one, could hardly take her eyes off him. “So we’re supposed to be in love,” she said when they were introduced. She tossed her platinum hair and fluttered her thick doll-like eyelashes at Peter.

  “It’s a foregone conclusion,” Peter said, and Tracy preened.

  Catching Roberta’s gaze, I managed a frosty smile and allowed her to edge me along to the next set of introductions—leaving Peter to fend for himself.

  On this morning the Kismet Production Company was filming inside an old, abandoned house in West L.A. Crowds of sightseers had gathered out front, held at bay by one sheriff’s car and two bored-looking deputies. The usual equipment trailers and trucks, generators, catering van, and vehicles of cast and crew clogged the street outside the boarded-up mansion.

  Inside the house, which looked nothing like the structure where I had been briefly held captive in real life in England, hot white lights blazed, the camera was positioned and repositioned, and many, many people wandered around—aimlessly, as far as I could tell.

  “Everyone showed up today,” Roberta said ruefully, leading me down a long hallway paneled in carved wood that someone had spray-painted graffiti over. “It’s because of Walter. Everyone loves a tragedy.”

  “Did Walter have many friends among the cast and crew?”

  “None that I know of,” Roberta replied. “But then he was an arrogant little snot.”

  He had struck me much the same, but it seemed heartless to say so now. “He didn’t seem…experienced,” I said.

  “At what? Getting along with people or writing scripts? You’re right on both counts.” Roberta met my gaze. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’re not exactly big budget. Walter wouldn’t have been my first choice, but his price was right.”

  I recalled Walter’s scathing comments about Roberta and Miles not having final say on anything to do with the project. I wondered if Roberta saw things that way.

  The hallway led to a giant, old-fashioned kitchen painted in a grisly green that would have worked well for a slasher movie. The appliances and cupboards had been ripped out long ago, the enormous deep sink was stained with rust, the linoleum was peeling. A large Coleman camp coffeemaker sat on the counter, and a tall, vaguely familiar woman was complaining that there was no green tea available.

  “Come on, Mona, where’s your sense of adventure?” Roberta admonished.

  Mona gave Roberta a long, level look—and I abruptly knew where I’d seen her before: starring in the popular seventies TV series Blue Angel. Mona Hotchkiss had played tough and sexy policewoman Corky Simmons.

  “There’s adventure and then there are suicide missions,” Mona returned.

  Roberta chuckled, and introduced me to the older woman.

  “I read your book. What an interesting life you lead,” Mona remarked with a wide grin and a firm handshake.

  She was very tall and very thin; what must have been sylphlike elegance in her twenties was now merely gaunt. Her skin was radiant, though. I hoped my skin looked nearly that fabulous at sixty-something. Mona’s hair was waist- length and iron gray. She wore crystal earrings and a crystal necklace with a black T-shirt that read No Landmines.

  “It is,” I agreed. And while I knew that wasn’t what Mona meant, my work fascinated me and colored my life. Sometimes I took it for granted; the truth was that I was very lucky to be able to spend my time doing the work I loved.

  “Mona is our Lady Ree,” Roberta said, and I nodded. To avoid potential litigation, Lady Vee (Lady Venetia Brougham) was now called Regina Croydon in the screenplay.

  “I’m hoping I’ll have a chance to meet the original,” Mona commented, unscrewing the cap to a small silver flask. “She sounds like a real charactaah.” Privately I thought it was hard to imagine anyone less like that old fossil of the feudal system, Lady Vee. I watched Mona tilt the flask, take a quick drink, and shiver. Catching my eye, she winked. “My own concoction. Korean white ginseng, juniper berries, red clover, plum flower, and alfalfa leaves.”

  “It sounds…very healthy.”

  “I wouldn’t drink it otherwise. It’s horrible.”

  “Wouldn’t that defy the whole theory of the space-time continuum?” We were joined by a nice looking dark-haired young man. “I mean, you and the original model sharing airspace,” he said to Mona. I caught a whiff of breath mint and alcohol—mostly gin.

  “Grace, this is Norton Edam,” Roberta said. “He’s playing Gerry.”

  “Gerry” or Geraint Salt was the character named after the real-life Ferdinand Sweet. For legal reasons, blah, blah, blah. I was getting a little tired of having it explained to me—as though I would possibly object to having a firewall of fake identities placed between me and this project.

  “Apparently I’ve become typecast,” Norton said. “I’ve played the least likely suspect in my last three films.” He was slightly pudgy with gentle brown eyes. Attractive in a pleasantly nondescript way—the type that frequently got cast as either the most expendable victim or the killer in low budget straight-to-cable films.

  “At least you’ve had three films,” Mona said. “Has Tracy done anything besides shampoo commercials?”

  “Meeeow,” Norton murmured.

  “Mona,” Roberta cautioned.

  Mona put a hand up. “I didn’t say a word.”

  Roberta seemed satisfied. “Coffee, Grace?”

  I nodded, and Roberta poured coffee in two Styrofoam cups. She dumped the appropriate powders in as requested, and handed a cup to me.

  “So we’re off to jolly old England,” Norton said. “Cheers.” He raised his cup in mock toast.

  “That’s right. Hopefully everyone’s passports are in order.”

  Mona said dryly, “Tracy’s is. But I overheard her worrying about her immunization shots.”

  Norton swallowed his coffee the wrong way, and moved off making strangled sounds. Roberta shook her head. “You’re terrible, Mona.”

  “I’m just reporting the news as I heard it.” Mona glanced at me. “Speaking of news. I heard you were with poor little Walter when he died.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Mona nodded, but to my surprise didn’t pursue it.

  “Did you know him very well?” I asked.

  Mona laughed and turned to Roberta. “She really is an amateur sleuth.”

  “I was just…making conversation,” I protested guiltily. I was relieved to see Peter appear in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Yowza. Now who is this?” murmured Mona. I had to admit that Peter did look like somebody. He had whatever it was that managed to make jeans and a tailored shirt look like Savile Row.

  “They’re about to start shooting your incarceration,” he informed me.

  “Been there, done that,” I remarked, and the others laughed
.

  “Coffee?” Roberta inquired of Peter, and once again she did the honors with the artificial creamer and sweetener.

  We drank our coffee and chatted, and then Roberta shepherded us off to be introduced to the remaining cast members who were not immediately involved in shooting the current scene. Everyone seemed nice enough, if preoccupied. Most commented on Walter’s death, and everyone had questions about the decision to shoot on location in Britain.

  “I was wondering about that myself,” I said, as Roberta finished discussing the day’s shooting script with the assistant director. “Why are you moving the shooting to Great Britain?”

  “I think it’s a fabulous idea,” Roberta enthused. “It’s going to make all the difference to this film.”

  Peter’s eyes met mine. I knew what he was thinking. I said, “But isn’t it going to be incredibly expensive, moving an entire film production overseas? All these people? All this equipment?”

  “Location, location, location,” Roberta said breezily. “It’s the way they used to make movies in the good old days. Think of Hepburn and Bogie filming in Belgian Congo, Grace Kelly in Monaco, Audrey Hepburn in Rome.”

  “But isn’t this just a little, cheap, made-for-cable film?” Not that I wanted to belittle the filming of my own real-life adventures but…well…wasn’t it?

  Roberta gave me an odd look. “It works out nicely for you, doesn’t it? For you and for Peter?”

  “Well…yes.”

  “Then I wouldn’t worry about it. The head of Kismet Productions has decided this could turn out to be a commercially successful project after all. He’s willing to pump a lot more money into it. That’s great news for all of us.”

  I’d assumed Roberta was the head of Kismet Productions. Apparently not.

  She caught sight of Miles coming in the side door.

  “Miles!”

  A momentary flash of irritation crossed the director’s weathered face, but then he walked toward us with a rueful smile. Mindful of Roberta’s earlier comment, I studied him curiously. Miles Friedman was not exactly handsome, but he was certainly attractive in a well-lived way. Medium height, stocky but muscular, very fit. His eyes were a light, striking green in his tanned face.