A Fatal Winter (19 page)

Alec said, “Oh, come on. You’re still in the loop, surely.”

Max shook his head. “Not really. Once you leave that particular brotherhood, you leave.” He didn’t add that with his having left before his time, even voluntarily, he carried with him the taint of the outcast. One didn’t simply up and leave MI5. His exit interview with George, cordial though it had been, and sympathetic as George had been, had reinforced his knowledge of that truth.

Max sat on the bench next to Amanda.

“Did you get to see your father often?” he asked. “And your aunt?”

Amanda looked up briefly from her book. She closed the pages, using her thumb as a bookmark, and he saw she was reading
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
. The cold had brought a little splash of color into her cheeks, and her eyes were still alight with interest in the passage she was reading, for she was still a child, of course, and able easily to slip into the parallel worlds a storyteller could create. Max was struck anew by her beauty.

It was Alec who answered, “Not really. We made him nervous, he said. She was okay—just. She bought us stuff.”

“I don’t suppose either of them had much of a life, stuck out here with only Muammar Gaddafi for company,” said Amanda.

“You mean Lamorna?”

Amanda giggled. “The resemblance is striking, don’t you think?”

It was, but Max couldn’t encourage that particular form of adolescent unkindness.

“Lamorna was raised by wolves,” Amanda went on.

“Fester calls her Nell,” said Alec.

“Nell?” Max asked, knowing he shouldn’t.

“The wild girl in the movie.”

“Fester can really be mean,” said Amanda.

“You’re just noticing that? And look who’s talking.”

“Besides,” said Amanda slowly, ignoring her brother. “I don’t think Lamorna is all that stupid. Her views are stupid, certainly, but I think she’s rather a—a
sly
person. Cunning.”

Alec’s eyes wandered, defeating Max’s attempt to catch his attention. Was he hiding something? He gave off a suggestion either of boredom or evasiveness. If he was evading something, what was it? Max felt the boy’s response to the question of how he got along with Leticia and Oscar, and that of his twin, had been prepared. No doubt they had discussed the situation between them, anticipating possible avenues the police might wish to explore.

Suddenly looking over Max’s shoulder, Alec’s expression changed. He said, “Here comes Lester. I can’t stand that prat. Must fly.”

The twins exchanged complicit glances. Max, so he gathered, was to be left to his own devices.

And effectively they vanished, their slim forms disappearing in single file behind a wide tree whose roots burrowed under the curtain wall.

CHAPTER 11

Clear-and-Present Danger

Turning, Max saw the approaching object of this evasive action. Max had thus far managed to avoid the combined clear-and-present danger of Lester and his wife (whose true name he could not at the moment recall, so firmly had “Fester” taken hold in his mind). In any event, he thought he might get further ahead talking with Lester Baynard on his own, and was glad the rare burst of morning sunshine seemed to be bringing people out.

A slight figure with the posture of a question mark, Lester looked like a cartoon in motion, hands flapping like flippers at the ends of his arms, and his brown-and-white saddle oxfords slapping flat-footedly against the ground.

Watching Lester, Max was reminded of Father Goodwin from his time at Oxford, a priest who eschewed the pulpit for the common touch, striding back and forth before his congregation until one Sunday, entirely caught up in the thrust of his narrative, he lost his footing and actually fell off the altar. He was unhurt, but the incident finally convinced him, when no bishop could, to tone down the theatrics.

Lester walked with a swagger that sat ill on such a slight and insubstantial frame. Mick Jagger could get away with it—just. Lester, one felt, could not. He found a bench nearby and sitting down, took out a pen, bent his head with its mop of curly hair over a notebook, and began scribbling rather importantly. He wore only a lambswool V-neck sweater with the collar of a white shirt visible beneath. It was a style that would be trendy on anyone else and on Lester looked more like forgetfulness. It was far too cold for such an outfit. Even the twins had thought to wear jackets.

Surprisingly rosy-cheeked and fresh-faced, Lester looked like a child in a suit too large for him, the collar of his shirt standing out at his neck, although in reality it was probably an artifact of the shrinking that comes with age. Closer up, Lester looked to be not much younger than his brother, whom Max knew to be fifty-three. Where his wife was plump and round, Lester was spare—slope-shouldered and slope-chinned.

He appeared to be deep in thought, although it might be difficult to say for certain. His scribbling seemed disjointed rather than a sustained effort of concentration. He looked up frequently, eyes roaming blindly, randomly. During one of these self-imposed interruptions, Max approached and introduced himself.

“Of course, of course.” Lester stood and offered him a hand in greeting. Then he indicated Max should sit next to him. “I can’t tell you the last time we had a clergyman here. My mother especially tended to frighten them away. It’s a shame as we have a perfectly usable chapel on the grounds. I’m not a believer myself, I should probably tell you that right away.”

“Glad if we’ve cleared that up,” said Max, smiling.

“My wife and I were wondering … well … how to put this?” Lester had rather large eyes, magnified to bug-eyed intensity by the glasses he wore. “We were wondering what you were doing here exactly?” He flashed what Max was sure he thought of as his winning smile and said, “No offense.” Max recalled his wife’s stated belief that her husband had just missed a booming career in sales, and wondered about that. There was something less than transparent about Lester Baynard, something that did not inspire immediate trust.

“None taken,” said Max, answering the question, but obliquely: “Detective Cotton will want to speak with you again today.”

“Fine. Whatever gets us out of this sodding place sooner I’m all for it. We all have been told to stay put but I can’t wait for sodding ever.”

Max waited for the usual rather reflexive apology for the vulgarity, but none came. He was used to people forgetting in the heat of the moment that they were talking with a man of God who should, presumably, be spared the worst of their language. Of course, few realized that during his MI5 days he had often heard worse—far worse—and had even coined a few new word combinations himself.

“My wife seems to enjoy these little skirmishes with Cotton and that little sergeant he drags around with him. She was with them for ages yesterday.”

“Sergeant Essex?” Max guessed.

“That’s the one.”

“Fes—I mean Felberta” (now even Max was doing it) “will have to meet with Cotton again, most likely. One interview creates questions that only another interview can answer.”

“Is that right,” said Lester flatly. More than ever, he seemed curious as to Max’s role in the proceedings. If he complained formally about it, Max imagined it might create a situation for Cotton, so Max quickly said, “I was talking with the twins just now. I think they could use some attention. It was their father, after all, who was killed. They seem oddly detached from it all, when you’d think it would be the main thing on their minds.”

“Oh, they’ll be fine,” Lester said blithely. “Used to being on their own, that pair. I don’t think they knew Oscar all that well.”

“That’s exactly the problem, as I see it.”

“Of course, it’s not entirely the twins’ fault they’re the way they are,” Lester breezed on, waving an arm for emphasis. His thin, wiry frame seemed barely able to contain his puppyish energy, which tended to explode in a series of ill-coordinated gestures. “Gwynyth, their mother, is neurotic and
completely
self-absorbed. And marriage only made her worse. She had nothing to do but think about what to wear and plan her next meal out. She had zero career aspirations or responsibilities. Unless you count the twins, which she did not. They were raised by whomever she could pay to raise them.”

Max surprised him by asking, “What do you think made Gwynyth that way?”

“
Made
her that way?” Clearly, Lester was taken aback that anyone should care. “Oh, she had the usual sad story about her poverty-stricken upbringing, if that’s what you mean. But some people are born to sponge—to take advantage.”

“You feel she took advantage of your uncle Oscar, then.”

“Tried to,” Lester said complacently. “He soon caught on, though. She was seen out nightclubbing once too often, in the company of someone ‘not her husband,’ as they say.”

Lester must have read somewhere that the way to show sincerity was to lean forward into a conversation. He did this now, radiating earnestness. Max instinctively drew back.

“Oscar used to stride about this garden in that castle-owning, king-of-all-I-survey way he had. When Gwynyth was done with him, there was no more striding about. She really finished the guy. I could feel sorry for him.”

“I haven’t met your brother yet. Randolph. Viscount Nathersby. This must come as a shock to him as well.”

“Oh, you
are
in for a treat,” said Lester, collecting his writing implements. “Well, I’m rather tired, so if you don’t mind…”

“This is the sort of occurrence to make one age overnight,” said Max, commiserating. “Losing a parent is hard to bear. I have often thought losing a mother may be hardest of all.”

There was a sudden drop in temperature, a lessening of studied bonhomie. Lester, drawing in from his sincere, open pose, said, “The avaricious little shit. Ask
him
.”

“Ask him what?”

Lester, while monumentally preoccupied with himself, was strangely likeable. Max wouldn’t have trusted him an inch in business dealings but that wasn’t the same thing as liking. He seemed incapable of self-editing—what was in his mind was soon on his lips. It was often the sign of a truthful nature, but always the sign of an impulsive, perhaps uncontrollable, one.

“For a start, ask him what he plans to do about the twins. As you say, someone has to care about them, now they’ve lost their father. You would think Randolph, the eldest male figure, would step up to bat there.”

Again the eager, forward-leaning posture. It would have been flattering to the listener had it not come across as too practiced, too full of deliberate intent.
I am sincere
, the gesture proclaimed, too loudly. Part of his terrific sales technique, along with the blaze of concerned interest in his listener. But Max thought it was the concern of self-interest, not the concern of the concerned.

What was certain was that during Alec’s minority, he would need a legal guardian to make decisions for him about the disposal of his father’s estate. Max sensed there might be a jockeying for position between the two brothers, Lester and Randolph. It was not unlike the situation when Henry VIII had died, leaving Edward VI king at the age of nine. One of Edward’s uncles had seized the reins. None of it had gone well, especially when Edward died, aged fifteen years, choosing (at the urging of the adults holding the real power) Lady Jane Grey as his short-lived heir.

He definitely would need to talk to that solicitor, Max decided.

Felberta came into the garden just then, looking for her husband.

“What are you doing out here without a coat?” she scolded him. She had a jacket over her arm which she handed to Lester. Her springy hair was now scraped back into a rubber band and he could see she had nice ears, flat to her head, and the sun, as it was at her back, shone through them, pink and shell-like, showing the delicate tracery of capillaries. She had a slight indentation in each lobe—Max had read somewhere that was a sign of heart disease, but could think of no way to lob that one into the conversation. Instead he said, “In the sunshine, it’s not too bad.”

Lamorna walked by just then, a basket on her arm and pruning shears in hand. She now wore the gray cardigan over a black woolen dress with a knitted Peter Pan collar. She apparently owned a collection of these accessories, for the collar was slightly different from that of the day before. Her costume wasn’t sufficient protection against the cold of the day but Max imagined that was all part of the fun. The outfit really only needed a veil to resemble a modern-style nun’s habit, right down to her sensible lace-up shoes.

Lamorna said, “I thought I’d gather some flowers for the table. I am feeling so at a loss with Lady Baynard gone.”

“What would Jesus do?” said Felberta sarcastically.

“Shut up, Felberta,” said Lester, nudging her, with a significant nod in Max’s direction.

Max said, “He would know the truth immediately, tell it, and we could all go home. I have to help sift the truth from the lies somehow and pray for guidance.”

The significance of what he was saying was not lost on Lester. Max was here to advise on more than the services for the departed. Lester didn’t look pleased to have his suspicions confirmed.

“I thought that was a given,” he said. “‘Seek and ye shall find.’”

“It is,” said Max. “It just takes some of us longer. The truth’s always there, waiting.”

Lester turned to look at his wife, who was apparently not listening, but busy inhaling the scent of the fresh air. Lamorna had left them, engaged in the fruitless task of finding live blooms in the garden this time of year. It would be ages before she’d be allowed by the police into the hothouse, where she might have had better luck.

Lester, looking at her, launched into a lengthy explanation, with what he obviously believed was disarming candor, of how Lamorna had always been a problem. The point may have been to emphasize that he himself, by way of contrast, had never been the least cause for concern. Max listened to as much of this as he could and then cordially took his leave of them.

Fester and Felberta remained behind, sitting together on the garden bench.