A Fatal Winter (29 page)

Max shrugged. “Doubtful. She seems too forthright to be the type to hold grudges. But it’s a possibility we can’t ignore.”

“Point taken. Now, Milo worked on a cruise ship that docked in Southampton, which is when he met Doris, presumably while he was on some sort of shore leave,” Cotton told him, summarizing aloud from his notes. “They got married quickly—a case of true love at first sight. She got him the job at the castle—her family, as I say, has longstanding ties with the family Footrustle. They took him on faith.”

“And he found the bodies,” said Max. “Both of them. Never the best position for anyone to be in.”

“That’s right. What he tells us is that he locks up at night at eleven, and he went to bed straight after, as always. He went to Oscar’s room at the usual time the next day. He was sent to find Lady B once the alarm about Oscar was sounded. He first looked for her in her bedroom and then where she usually was to be found, in the garden or the hothouse.”

Max frowned in thought.

“There is no telling what someone from that upended part of the world has lived through, and been exposed to,” said Cotton. “Or is capable of.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. Those kinds of circumstances can change a man.”

“Right—too right. You can’t expect to stay the same as you were before. Whatever that was to begin with. He was still a lad during the war, not yet a grown man. That has to be factored in, too.”

Max nodded. “Sometimes there is no recovery from the unspeakable atrocities of war.”

“You’ll want to have a word with the family’s consigliere,” said Cotton. “I gather Lord Footrustle never made a legal move without his advice.” Cotton ran his hands over his face in a washing motion. The weariness was starting to show. Even the starched pocket handkerchief looked like it was wilting. “I’ve spoken with this chap Wintermute on the phone, of course. He said he’d be stopping by and he can give you the details, which will be a matter of public record sooner rather than later, anyway. He’s bringing us copies of Lord Footrustle’s will as well as Lady Baynard’s. She had a little money of her own to dispose of. I gather the butler and the cook were generously remembered—at least to their standards it will seem most generous. That will please them.”

“Yes,” said Max vaguely.

“What?” said Cotton. “I know that look.”

“Did you notice,” said Max, “that Jocasta is not tan but her husband Simon is? Does that mean they’ve had separate vacations?”

“Remember where they’re from. That could just be the result of his addiction to tanning beds.”

“It looked real to me. But no matter. Many couples are pulled apart by varying schedules. Or even likes and dislikes for the beach. I’ll ask Jocasta if I get the chance tonight.”

Cotton said, “If you can get a word in edgewise, you mean. Why don’t you go now and have a word with Gwynyth? Wintermute may take his own sweet time getting here.”

“Any background on Gwynyth, other than the biased accounts we’ve heard already?”

“She and Oscar met about fourteen years ago,” Cotton told him. “In the ‘nothing new under the sun’ category, he was much older than she.” He paused again to flip through his notes. “She’s forty-two now—twenty-eight when they met. Nearly three and a half decades’ difference between them. Apparently sparks flew, nevertheless, and twins were the result. He, Oscar, balked initially—reading between the lines, here. Quarrels, reconciliations, all the usual. Again, when the tabloids are part of your source material you have to tread carefully. But then he apparently decided to do the right thing by her, and probably didn’t mind having a young and gorgeous wife to squire around, a living, breathing testament to his virility. But the marriage came unstuck when the differences in their backgrounds became too evident. Too bad for the children, of course, but they were well taken care of. Schools and clothing paid for, and so on.”

“Not…” said Max, “not so much was Gwynyth taken care of?”

“Not to her liking. And not, to be fair, when you consider there was so very much money floating about. Oscar would hardly notice it if half went missing. She had to have had the worst possible legal advice; I would imagine she was out of her social depth, and her solicitor was in awe of Lord Footrustle. The settlement left her largely dependent on the kindness of her children for her old age, and from the looks of things, it’ll be a long shot they’ll care when the time comes.”

There came a knock at the door. It was Milo.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Mr. Wintermute the solicitor has arrived.”

Cotton said, “Please have him wait in the drawing room. Max, perhaps you could have a word with him first? I’ll be a few more minutes here. Thank you, Milo.” It was a polite dismissal. He closed the door quietly.

“I’ll be having dinner with all of them tonight,” Max said. He struggled to stand, tested putting weight on his left foot, and decided he’d be using the crutch awhile longer. “Wish me luck.”

“The budget doesn’t run to hiring a food taster,” Cotton told him. “So take care.”

The mobile on the desk gave a zapping sound, skidding on the polished surface. Cotton picked it up and read from a text message.

“The technicians, the doctor, the fingerprint people have had another look round and are satisfied they have what they need now—including the bodies. They have asked, however, that the family keep Oscar’s room sealed and unoccupied for the time being. Would you like to see it? You can poke your head in there if you like. Just don’t go inside until we’ve given the all-clear.”

Max nodded his understanding.

“I thought the only thing of any real interest was a round table that held enough potions and tablets to subdue Caesar’s army,” Cotton told him. “Most of it homeopathic, some of dubious worth, some outdated prescriptions that should have been tossed long ago.”

“Anything dangerous in the lot?”

“Only if taken in sufficient quantities,” replied Cotton. “‘Homeopathic’ to some people means ‘take all you want,’ which is completely a false idea. Still, there’s no indication anything like an overdose was the cause of death.”

“Could it have been responsible for this illness earlier?”

Cotton lifted his shoulders in a
Who can say?
gesture.

Max made his way up two flights of stairs, thankful that he kept himself in shape so that he could drag himself about when he had to. He followed Cotton’s directions down a short corridor to what had been Lord Footrustle’s room and was now a crime scene. It turned out to be the room around the corner from Max’s.

He stood at the open doorway, which was crisscrossed by crime-scene tape, and took in what he could of the scene. It was a small room, stone-walled, wood-paneled in places, dark. Cozy if you liked that kind of dark, Igor-ish, medieval look. A room furnished in a nice blend of plush Renaissance comfort and straightjacket medieval style.

“A great reckoning in a little room”—something like that—the phrase from some half-forgotten university lecture drifted through his mind. Shakespeare writing about Christopher Marlowe, who had been stabbed in the eye.

The room had been cleaned up, of course; the body taken away, and some preliminary effort had been made to restore order. The room, he knew, had two squints, and was likely historically to have been the room belonging to the lord or at least to some sort of overseer—someone whose business it was to spy on the household unobserved. Remembering the general layout of the castle, Max knew Oscar’s room would overlook the sea on its south-facing side. Via one squint, Oscar would have had a view of the goings-on inside the Great Hall, and via another, a view across the garden to the surrounding lands. Max doubted he could have overheard much from up here, unless people were shouting. As perhaps, given this group, they had been.

Max craned his head to the left. A near shelf was full of tomes on ancient British history—naval in particular—and novels by somewhat old-fashioned authors like Dumas and Robert Louis Stevenson, although neither author had ever really gone out of style. A rip-roaring yarn remained a rip-roaring yarn. Still, the lack of more modern authors indicated a man who preferred the past and history, and a return to the old favorites of childhood.

Max prayed the man had taken some enjoyment from his life. Overall, it seemed he hadn’t. It seemed a sad ending.

CHAPTER 19

Wintermute

The solicitor handed him a business card printed on fine, heavy stock. It carried his name (David R. Wintermute, Esq.) and addresses in London and Monkslip-super-Mare followed by his firm’s name and motto:
Creating Visionary Integrity since 1797.

Max wasn’t sure he understood what Visionary Integrity might be when it was at home—could integrity be qualified? Was Visionary Integrity better than Blindfolded Integrity? Integrity in Hindsight? Definitely, he decided, better than Nearsighted Integrity. He snapped with the nail of one index finger at the edges of the card and smiled at David R. Wintermute.

His first impressions of the solicitor were decidedly mixed. Max had seen the damage solicitors and the courts could do and was aware he did not approach the man with an open, trusting heart. Still, Wintermute struck him as the type who had, after long years in the trade, mastered the art of opaque waffling and sidestepping the questions. A shrewd man. Dry. Humorless.

He had watery bug eyes, and moist lips slack from what might have been a minor stroke. A red-tipped Matterhorn of a nose. The man drank: Max could detect the faint whiff of alcohol surrounding Wintermute like an aura. However, the solicitor was undoubtedly competent, if he worked for Lord Footrustle, and he looked alert and present, for all practical purposes. A functioning alcoholic, they called it. Max dealt with alcoholics frequently in his role as vicar, and more often with their families—those left behind by a tragic, alcohol-fueled accident of one sort or another. Max looked closely at the jowls and watery, bulldog eyes that said, “I’ve seen too much.” Perhaps, in this case, it was, “I’ve drunk too much,” yet Max suspected a wily intelligence peering out from behind the insalubrious, fleshy appearance.

“Thank you for talking with me,” Max said.

“The pleasure is all mine. But I do hope you realize,” said Wintermute, with a slight access of pomposity, “that I will be limited to some extent in what I can tell you. I’ve just come from talking briefly with various members of the family, quite informally you understand. There will be a proper reading of the will later after which I may be more at liberty to speak with you. And I should be easy for you to locate if need be: The new young lord will have a mountain of legal papers to sign so I will be a recurring feature of life at the castle for a while.”

“Can you tell me how it went?” asked Max. “The talk with the family?”

“In general terms, yes. Randolph was stunned; Lamorna disgruntled—but she always appears disgruntled, does she not? Gwynyth was the picture of frustration, since she had not had time to work on getting her share increased, presumably.” Now,
there
was a slip in the professional façade, thought Max, hoping there would be many more. “She is not frightfully good at hiding her emotions, Gwynyth.”

“I understand Lester had already been on to you.”

A dry smile. “Oh, yes.”

Max waited, but there were to be no further disclosures. “Let’s do it this way,” he said. “Tell me what you feel you are free to tell me, having spoken with the family and brought them up to date on the situation.”

“Well. I cannot get into precise figures, except to say the estate is significant. Oscar, Lord Footrustle, was worth fifty or sixty million pounds at one time. Still, even he had lost some of his wealth in the economic calamities of the past year or two.”

Max was stunned by the figure mentioned. He had known Oscar was wealthy but these were figures designed to tempt the unscrupulous.

“How did he take that?” Max asked. “The financial losses?”

“I don’t think he was happy about it, Vicar. No one has been happy with the market lately. It’s been a complete bloodbath for— Oh! Do forgive the expression. Poor Oscar.”

“I meant, was he upset, angry, especially depressed?”

“I couldn’t say,” said Wintermute, breezing on. “I will say, more’s the pity the castle was handed over by one of Oscar’s forebears to the National Trust. Because thanks to Oscar’s efforts, there would now be more than enough funds to maintain the property. It can’t simply be taken back, you know. However, his son Alec will carry on the title. He will also come into some of his father’s wealth.”

Some
. “The last time you saw Lord Footrustle was when?” asked Max.

“Nearly a year ago. Eleven months ago, when he revised his will. Of course, I was going to see him after the new year.”

Max leaned back, surprised. “Really? You had an appointment for next month? Why was that?”

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he’d changed his mind. His old will was unnecessarily mean-spirited, I rather felt. A slight to his family. Charity begins at home.”

“I don’t suppose you could elaborate on that?”

“No.”

“Were you also to see his sister, Lady Baynard?”

“I was to have dinner with her.”

“But not see her in a professional capacity.”

Wintermute shook his head. Max took it to mean a “no,” not to mean he wouldn’t discuss it further. Wintermute suddenly shot out of his chair and helped himself to the drinks tray. At his questioning look, Max in his turn shook his head. “Too early for me.”

David R. Wintermute, Esq., shrugged and poured himself a good slug of the drink into a crystal glass. He toasted Max in mock salute, then said, “Oscar had a few surprises up his sleeve. Several charities were to receive large bequests, including Tiggy-Winkle’s, a hedgehog rescue charity, and a donkey rescue group. That one is called Hee-Haw, as I recall. Charities that feed the poor were remembered. Those issues—the homeless, hunger—became important to him of late. He had so much to give, you see. The local cricket team was to benefit, as well. Lord Footrustle was a great cricket fan. It was one of the things we had in common. I consider his loss to be not just that of a client but a friend. And someone with first-rate knowledge of the game.”