A Fatal Winter (20 page)

“What do we do now?” Felberta leaned into her husband. Lester privately thought the answer to that question was, “Leave, and the sooner the better,” but he doubted that suggestion would fly in the current interrogative atmosphere, however skillfully presented the suggestion.

“You heard the man,” he said, smiling and patting her hand. “We wait for the truth to come out.”

*   *   *

Max saw a gate in the south-facing wall that likely led to a view of the ocean. He was just heading that way to explore when a fit-looking man in his mid-thirties went jogging past, saw him, and pulled to a stop. The man wore a balaclava which he courteously pulled down around his neck so his face was visible. He had a thatch of sandy hair, wide blue eyes, and conventional good looks. He introduced himself as Simon Jones, Jocasta’s husband.

Max hid his surprise, or hoped he did. Jocasta, for all her well-maintained looks, was clearly older than her husband by at least a decade.

“A fellow jogger,” said Max. “It is nice to meet a kindred spirit. I was just talking with Alec about the days when I was more faithful to my training schedule.”

Simon said, “I didn’t think jogging was a particularly British sport.”

“Well,” said Max heartily, “we practically invented running. Learned it from the Romans.”

Simon, who knew when his leg was being pulled, smiled. He swept a coating of snow off a nearby bench and sat down, breathing heavily.

“I’m not feeling the benefit today,” he told Max. “It’s the jet lag. Completely throws you off. And it’s so damn quiet here,” he added. “I can’t sleep for the quiet. Well, that, and the jet lag.”

“This garden in winter doesn’t provide ideal conditions for running, either. Where did you and your wife fly in from?”

“LAX.”

“A long distance, made twice as long by today’s many inconveniences of travel,” said Max. “I am very sorry for the way your journey ended in such a tragedy.”

“I still can’t quite get over it, you know. To lose both of them the same day! And poor Oscar, killed so brutally. If I put this in a screenplay, who would believe it?”

It was the first Max had heard Oscar referred to as “poor.” At least there was one person who seemed to feel the loss of the man. But he merely said, “You’re a screenwriter? I didn’t realize.”

“I’m an aspiring one.” Simon bent to adjust a shoelace that was coming untied. “After years of reading the shit my wife is offered and seeing it actually make it to the screen, I thought I’d give it a try. God knows, I could hardly do worse. And I have the advantage of being at least on the fringes of the business all these years. You meet people.”

“I met your wife at breakfast,” said Max. He added carefully, “She seems to be holding up well.”

“There was no love lost between her and the old man, if that’s what you mean. He, having jettisoned the first wife, also lost track of the product of that union—Jocasta. She left home decades ago, made it out to Hollywood eventually. That’s where she and I met, of course. I was trying to get an acting career off the ground. She was—well, at one time she was promising. What’s that saying about the gods destroying the promising?”

“‘Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.’ Cyril Connolly.”

“Right. That was Jocasta. Perhaps never a raging talent—well, all right, she was never any kind of talent, really—but beautiful and gutsy and willing to work. Those qualities have taken more than a few actresses further than perhaps they should have gone. Well,” and here Simon slapped his knees and stood up. “I enjoyed meeting you. I’m sure there will be other occasions. If you don’t mind, I need to keep at it if I’m ever going to reset the old internal clock.”

*   *   *

Max opened the gate in the wall and found it led to a cliff-top path overlooking the sea. Here he stood in a bitterly cold breeze, peering out like an old mariner, no longer buffered by the curtain wall. There was a soft green turf which spread to the cliff’s edge, and beneath him a vanishing pool of deep blue disappearing into the horizon. Max stepped carefully back from the vertigo-inducing view.

The house had been built into a rocky promontory overlooking the sea, probably for the breathtaking view. But when French raids became all the worry, the manor house was reinforced accordingly.

The cliff walk was probably a later amenity, added in whatever day it came to pass that enemy invasion by sea was not uppermost in everyone’s mind. A modern-day landscaper had been at work here, too. But Max’s interest was in whether an outside intruder could have made it into the gardens and into the castle via this side of the castle.

He supposed a murderer could just have managed to climb up using modern equipment and then presumably rappel back down. He tried to picture such a shadowy, extremely fit figure, his imagination calling up a member of the Special Boat Service or a pirate, knife clenched in teeth. Max shook his head. Improbable, and impossible without leaving signs of such activity. Surely Cotton’s people had been all over that.

Max considered what he’d learned so far and concluded it didn’t add up to much. He watched the water approach only to crash repeatedly at the foot of the cliff. The climber of his imagination would have had to come off a boat and it was inconceivable any craft could get close enough to the cliff in these violent waters.

He turned and directed his steps toward the castle. It was midmorning. Cotton would be here by now.

CHAPTER 12

Max Out

Max was to be waylaid one more time, this time with maddening consequences, for Amanda was just inside the wooden door opening from the cliff walk path. He’d spent a moment inspecting that door from the outside, despite his belief no one could have made his way up the cliff, and certainly not without leaving evidence of the climb in the rock face. The door didn’t even have a lock, for what it was worth, since the castle residents clearly shared with him the belief the castle was impregnable from that direction. It was kept in place with a simple slide bolt latch.

“Let me show you around,” Amanda said. She was now wearing a red Peruvian-style winter hat with tassels and she’d clearly been waiting for him. “I’ve been reading up on the history of Chedrow Castle. Are you interested in history?” She didn’t stop for an answer. “I am. I just
love
history.” Big smile. “I’m going to read history at university, I’ve already decided. You’ll want to see the Old Kitchen. It’s a favorite with the day trippers.”

He started to cut through the flirtatious chatter and claim his earlier appointment with DCI Cotton, but then realized he’d be missing the perfect opportunity to ask her a few questions, which was after all his reason for being here. Her brother, busy scoring points off her wherever he could, may have kept the girl from speaking freely. Certainly she was showing no signs of her former reticence now.

She began walking toward one of several tall stone towers. One was positioned to the left of the garden and near the front wall. Like the rest of the buildings near the perimeter, it was riddled with small windows and loopholes. The entire castle was perforated with these openings, like a Swiss cheese.

They passed by Milo, apparently doing double duty in the garden, wearing fingerless gloves and a battered oilcloth coat. Max supposed that with Leticia gone his obligations would increase. They’d have to get some additional help. As they passed Milo gave a vicious tug on a weed and swore mildly: Gardening didn’t seem to be his forte.

Amanda walked beside him like a model on a catwalk, a completely unnatural stride that involved tipping back from the hips, arms dangling at the sides and feet crossing one in front of the other. He wondered where he’d seen it just recently then realized that, of course, the woman he’d glimpsed in the garden with the sketchbook walked like that. And she, so glamorous and artistic-looking, would no doubt be someone a fourteen-year-old girl would want to emulate.

They skirted an herbaceous border, the gray-green plants thriving even in winter. She led him across to the tower housing the Old Kitchen.

“There’s not a lot for someone your age to do around here, is there?” he asked her. “At least in warm weather, you could go to the beach.”

An expression of grievance flitted over Amanda’s flawless face, like storm clouds on a summer’s day.

“The nearest town with anything like a nightlife is Monkslip-super-Mare, and their idea of entertainment is a pig race.” Max decided not to tell her about Nether Monkslip’s eagerly anticipated yearly duck race. “In the pub they’re taking bets on how many inches of snowfall we’ll get this year. I’ve been bored to sobs, but Mother says we have to stay until all this is sorted. Is that true? She’s seldom the go-to person for accurate information.”

Max had no idea. “I’m afraid that’s probably so. The police have to solve this crime and you’ll need to be available to them.”

They were nearing the entrance to the tower that housed the Old Kitchen, a door of blackened wood, studded, with heavy metal hinges.

“You must miss your father,” Max said. He kept his tone low; it was the unobtrusive voice he used when a parishioner was in particular distress. He might have been calling from a great distance, a mere background to the person’s chaotic thoughts.

But that was a particularly lame thing to say, judging by her expression. “Do you think I must? I barely knew him. I barely can remember him now.”

The studied air of disinterest was convincing, but a very thin membrane separated Max from the rest of the world. He was able to feel others’ joys and sorrows, and adopt their preoccupations, forgetting himself and his own joys and sorrows in the process. This ability to relate, to cohere even to the vilest of lowlife criminal, was what had made him a valuable asset to MI5. The same ability to relate to people of all stripes also made him valuable to the Anglican Church. His sense of Amanda was that she was hiding a world of loss behind the cool façade.

They stood in the shelter of the high stone walls as she gave the round door handle a practiced twist and a downward push. The door creaked open. The sea could faintly be heard in the distance: pummeling, pounding, roaring, eternally seeking entry.

“… ghosts in the castle.”

Max, distracted by the melancholy beauty of the sound, asked her to repeat what she’d said.

“Of course they’ve just joined the ghosts in the castle,” she said. “My aunt, and my father. They haven’t really left.”

“Do you seriously believe that? Believe in ghosts?” Max asked her.

She gave him the
Well, duh
look patented by teen cave dwellers at approximately the start of recorded history. He might have made the mistake of asking if she thought Justin Bieber was cute.

“There are. You don’t see them, hovering just at the corner of your vision? I do. Then when I turn to look, of course, there’s nothing there.”

They stepped over the threshold and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Kitchens in those days, he knew, were placed away from the main building because of the constant risk of fire. Max and Amanda passed through an inner door and looked about; much of the room was roped off, undergoing renovations. The windows were set high to draw the heat and smoke up and out; an enormous fireplace with roasting hearth and bread ovens on either side ranged against one wall. Amanda pointed out the serving hatch, where servants would collect the food and carry it across the courtyard to the Great Hall.

“Imagine this job in winter,” said Amanda.

“Or in a sweltering August,” said Max. “Even worse.”

The scullery occupied the ground floor of the next tower over, she told him. It had a drain in the floor which presumably was used to eliminate wastewater.

“But here,” his guide told him, “is what is so cool. I use this as my hiding place, when I just want to read or think and get away from the rest of them.”

She indicated a small doorway designed to knock the taller, modern-day visitor senseless. She motioned him through, and he saw that it opened into a spiral staircase. A panther would have had trouble climbing it, and there were no handrails.

“The general run of tourist is not allowed up here,” she said. Her face became serious, closed off; he nodded in appreciation of the privileged status she had granted him. He followed as she went tripping up the treacherous, uneven steps. Round and round they went in a tight circle, hands extended to brace themselves against the walls, and finally they reached a small room two floors above the scullery.

Pushing open the door, she said, “They think it was a guardroom.” He saw a round room with two-foot-thick walls: Loopholes, wide inside and narrowing to long apertures, offered defense-by-arrow of the outer walls. The openings had long since been glassed in to keep out the cold. The room was furnished, sparingly if with some charm, with a double bed, tables, and rugs, and had been fitted out with a small bathroom.

“Sometimes we let it out to guests,” she said. He noted the “we” and the little throb of pride in her voice. With her father gone she seemed to have assumed ownership of a place from which she effectively had been barred by her parents’ divorce. Not just a “place,” he amended, but a national treasure steeped in history and beauty. Lamorna and Felberta had exhibited similar signs of possessiveness.

Max moved over to a window. He imagined he could see the tops of the trees on Hawk Crest in the far distance. His villagers would all be going about their daily lives; early risers like Lily Iverson would have been up for hours to tend to her sheep, to Dolly and Lucrezia (the black sheep) and all the rest, as mist still hovered over the hedgerows. Awena would be in her shop, dusting or organizing or keeping track of inventory on her computer.

“Do you know what’s strange?” Amanda asked of his back.

“I would love to hear what is strange,” he replied, turning to her.

“I think someone tried to kill my father even before they … they succeeded.”

Of course he knew about the poisoning attempt, assumed by some to have been attempted murder. But she surprised him when she said, “I think they tried to hit him with a stone dropped from the parapets. He was walking around the garden, just as we were now, and he felt something
whoosh
right by his ear. He turned around and there was this enormous boulder in the path.”