A Fatal Winter (10 page)

“So the grandmother—Lady Baynard—rejected the girl? Rather like an animal rejecting its young?”

Awena nodded. “Something like that. After a few failed attempts to mold Lamorna into what she wanted in the way of a grandchild.”

She lay down her fork and said ruminatively, “This happened well before my time, but this was the scuttlebutt as it went round the village: Leticia rode the girl day and night to try to get her to pay more attention to her appearance—to make her what she thought of as marriageable. When Leticia’s attempts to get Lamorna to stick to a slimming regime and to ‘do something’ about her hair and makeup failed—backfired, even—she finally gave it up as a lost cause. From that point on she seemed to start looking for ways to make Lamorna useful—to herself.”

Max thought suddenly of a mother-and-daughter team he’d sat next to at Waterloo, bickering over their meal, engaged in a battle of wills that neither could win. He shook his head.

“Her own granddaughter,” he said. “What a shame.”

“I gather that was part of the problem, where Leticia was concerned. Lamorna wasn’t her granddaughter
by blood
. She was adopted as a baby from … was it Serbia? No, Russia—that was it. Anyway, you know what these old families can be like. ‘Blood will out,’ and all that rot. Leo, the father, seems to have felt cheated, as if he’d paid for and planted a packet of honeysuckle seeds but weeds had appeared instead. You can’t demand your money back, can you? The poor tyke. You see, there were also emotional and developmental problems. There sometimes were with the children from some of the orphanages over there. Anyway, she seems finally to have withdrawn into herself, and never reemerged on the other side of adolescence. None of this endeared Lamorna to everyone in her new family.”

“Adopted,” said Max. “Unfortunately, I’ve seen this type of reaction before. Tragic when it happens. A child is always a joyful thing, no matter how it arrives. So, you went to the castle, and…?”

“I confess,” said Awena, “I went as much out of curiosity as anything. The castle is famous and the one time I’d tried to visit, most of the grounds were closed off. So I went. Randolph—that’s Lady Baynard’s son—met me at the door, gave me a quick tour, and then took me out to meet his mother in the garden.”

*   *   *

They lingered a long time over dessert, savoring the company and the bottle of wine. One of the things Max had loved about Italy, where he’d spent a riotous gap year, was the way conversations expanded to fill the available time. Luncheons inched into late afternoon, afternoons painted in his memory in muted primary colors—reds and yellows and greens. Dinners ended when no one was left able to drive and were instead invited to spend the night. There was a possibility the cycle would repeat itself endlessly, with guests never leaving, and no one caring if they did. Talking with Awena was like that.

She looked carefully at him after a long but comfortable silence, out of those extraordinary eyes of a pale, translucent purplish-blue that mesmerized all who saw her. “Are you happy here, Max?” she asked him. “In Nether Monkslip?”

“Yes,” he said. “I find that I am. Ridiculously so. What is it the vicar says in the movie they made of
Sense and Sensibility
? Something about a small parish and keeping chickens?”

She smiled, nodded. “And giving very short sermons. Hugh Grant was wonderful in that film.”

She didn’t mention that she thought Max bore a striking resemblance to the devilishly handsome actor, but she did think so.

Max returned her smile. “Well, I do try to keep the sermons short, but I’ll have to get some chickens in. As soon as Luther leaves.”

He spun his wineglass in both his hands. He was attracted to Awena, this he knew. What man would not want a woman as fine-looking as Awena? But since it was also an attraction of like minds, somehow he felt the more dangerous territory could be, well, skirted, as it were. A man in his position couldn’t just tear about the way he had done in his youth. There had been opportunities and he had made the most of them. Even then, working for MI5 presented its own unique problems in this regard. Sleeping with someone outside the roster of available women in his own field was frowned upon—“counterfeiting,” it was called, for the necessity of lying in these outsider relationships. There was a ruder term for it, of course; there always was. These mixed affairs were almost by definition doomed. There were a few young women among his cohorts with whom he’d had affairs of varying degrees of emotional attachment, especially in the hothouse atmosphere of working a case together. That type of situation brought with it its own problems, as it did in any profession.

There were several “outsiders” to whom he’d been authentically attracted—attracted for the long haul. Beyond that short list there were temporary attractions, and of course he had succumbed to some of them. All of his comrades had. But it was completely unfair on the women themselves. The situation was absurd, as well as occasionally dangerous: He could never confess what it was he really did for a living. And he never met anyone he could trust enough to confide in—putting aside the fact that such a confidence would have been a complete breach of the domestic spy agency’s code.

He was content now with his life—and yet … Max only a few weeks before had found one of the acolytes reading a men’s magazine in an off-duty moment. He recalled assuring the embarrassed Alfred that women were a miracle of engineering, and that the boy’s pleasure in looking at them was part of nature’s plan. “Just don’t make the mistake of thinking the women in this magazine are real, in any sense. The publisher is selling fantasy—not hers, but yours. If you want a girl in your life, go find one to talk to. Then be sure you listen to what she has to say.”

Later Max had reflected he might not be overqualified to speak on this subject. He wanted a woman in his own life, but living in Nether Monkslip, where everyone heard you sneeze before you even knew you had a cold, this was out of the question. Seeking out a life’s partner somewhere outside the village—he had time for that exactly never. Content, busy, happy, and possibly wanting to avoid the whole issue, Max supposed God would take care of that in his own good time, as He did everything else.

Now, looking at Awena, he realized he was back in somewhat the same MI5-type situation he’d so recently escaped. He respected her completely—a casual affair was unthinkable, even leaving aside what it would do to her reputation. About his own reputation he didn’t much give a damn, but he wasn’t going to be reckless on both their behalfs.

He would have to venture outside the village for romance, he realized, if he didn’t want to live alone forever.

And yet he was strangely reluctant to join that search party.

“More wine?” he asked Awena, lifting the bottle.

He walked her home that night. She invited him in for coffee and brandy but as tempting as it was, it had been a long day’s journey, and they had lingered for well over two hours over dinner.

Walking back to the vicarage, he looked up and saw a white moon anointing the sky, waxing toward fullness. As he watched, it became shot through with clouds, nearly vanishing.

CHAPTER 5

Many Are Called

As Max had walked Thea earlier that day, winding down the afternoon, DCI Cotton of the Monkslip-super-Mare police had only just begun to gear up for one of the major cases of his career. He’d been at Chedrow Castle since midmorning when the call had come through about the finding of Lord Footrustle’s body. He was barely on his way, Detective Sergeant Essex sitting at his side, when his mobile phone rang with a new announcement—the body of Lady Baynard had just been found, as well.

A twofer. Except in cases of a murder-suicide, which couldn’t be ruled out yet, that sort of thing didn’t happen often in a policeman’s life.

He’d spent the day either interviewing the residents of the castle or colluding with his colleagues on the forensics team, seeing what was to be seen—a lot of blood in the case of the old man, and a peaceful if surprised-looking corpse in the case of the old woman, his sister. When the inhabitants of Chedrow had gone to look for her, she had at last been found surrounded by her pots of flowers and her bags of potting soil, in a garden hothouse not far from the main building of the castle. The butler in both cases had found the corpses.

The butler did it? Far too predictable, that solution, but always a possibility. Only in fiction did the butler
not
do it. They were the last of the put-upon employees, a dying breed, born forelock-tuggers with a grudge. One final demand for a scone buttered
just
so might have sent the poor man right over the edge.

Now, as Max and Awena were finishing their meal in Nether Monkslip, Cotton was in his office in nearby Monkslip-super-Mare, awaiting the first forensic results, and plotting his strategy. For with nobs dying all over the castle, they’d want Scotland Yard brought in. Someone from the castle was probably shouting down the wire already—most likely that Randolph, the lady’s son—demanding special treatment from on high. Randolph—
excuse
me, Viscount Nathersby—didn’t look the sort not to throw his weight around at the first opportunity.

Well, stuff the Yard! Cotton was not an overly ambitious man, certainly not in the self-important, destructive way of some of his colleagues. But this was an important case, one that would be talked about and written about for decades (
Who Killed Lord Footrustle?
), and it had fallen straight into his lap. He’d go begging to the Yard for help as a last resort only, if and when it seemed there were no other way to solve the crime.

It certainly beat the usual drug deal resulting in murder on a council estate. Cotton had just come from such a case. He couldn’t say so aloud, but these manor murders were much more to his taste. Here we had this Viscount Nathersby and his assistant Cilla. And Lester and Felberta—Lester being Randolph’s younger brother and a real piece of work. Lady Jocasta Jones—daughter of Lord Footrustle—and Simon, her husband. The stunning Gwynyth—ex-wife to Lord Footrustle. Two teenagers—children of the deceased lord, by said stunning Gwynyth. The Vladimirovs—cook and butler. And that oh-so-strange Lamorna person.

Of course, the Rat Pack, also known as the gentlepersons of the press, would be all over this in a way they never were for a common, garden-variety drug deal gone bad. One couldn’t blame them, really, but they added nothing to the equation except in those rare instances when Cotton found a way to manipulate them to his, and the department’s, own ends.

Okay, so, where to start? He would need to handpick a team. Surely they’d give him full latitude here, if only to stop the phone from ringing off the hook in the guv’s office. He’d want Detective Sergeant Essex beside him, for certain. A woman terrier in appearance, and terrier in mentality. She would worry a suspect until he gave up whatever he held most dear, including his freedom, just to be shut of her.

He picked up his phone and punched in some numbers.

“Get everyone in here who isn’t absolutely, positively needed elsewhere. Meeting on the ground floor in the morning—the usual place. At eight
A.M.
That’s eight
sharp
, tell Moynahan.”

Absurdly pleased by this one-sided exchange, Cotton rang off sharply, without a good-bye, just as they did in the action films. Why waste valuable time? The phone rang back almost immediately. It was Sergeant Essex, wanting to know what sort of AV equipment he might need. It rather spoiled the effect of immediacy and derring-do that Cotton had been striving for, but he asked her for a bulletin board and some markers, wishing it could be something more, well,
dynamic
, like bullets or blasting caps. Again, really pushing his luck this time, he rang off without saying good-bye. The phone obediently remained silent.

Then he began furiously to think, pacing the office in a graceful swooping motion, back and forth, hands clasped beneath his coattails. He might have been an ice-skater.

By the time nine o’clock rolled around that night, he at least had a positive ID on the body. Oscar, Lord Footrustle, was definitely the deceased. Cause of death, multiple stab wounds, although the initial fierce thrust of the knife was believed to have been fatal. It seemed a trivial and unnecessary step, this preliminary run-up, this identification—the man had been found in his own home—his own castle—by people who knew him well. But without that certain starting point, the case could blow up before it even got started. And he supposed stab wounds might be mistaken for something else, or used to disguise some other sort of injury, but this time, what looked like a stab wound was just that. They’d run tox scans, to be sure, but there you had it.

The woman, now, this Oscar’s sister. Lady—he ruffled through his papers once again—Leticia, Lady Baynard. Née Footrustle. An autopsy and tox scan for her, too, of course, given the circumstances, although the doctor was saying natural causes. As far as they knew now, the only possible connection to the murdered man’s death was some sort of fatal shock coming over her at hearing of the finding of her brother’s body. Otherwise, the timing was the purest coincidence. Well, they were twins after all, thought Cotton, and shock might be exaggerated in such a close relationship. Their twinship was a bit of information contained in one of the reports—the statement of the butler—but Cotton had known that without needing to be reminded.

For of course Cotton knew the family, or knew of them. They were the landed gentry of the area, well known to Cotton since he was busy learning his alphabet at school.

He planned what to say when he would meet his team the next day. On a schematic of the castle and its grounds which he’d obtained from the brochure they handed out to tourists, he carefully drew Xs to approximate where the bodies had been found. Again he worried that they were going to conduct this investigation with a fraction of the help Cotton knew he would need, which meant a lot of long days and sleepless nights ahead. A handful of CID officers, a few more uniforms to do the heavy lifting.