A Fatal Winter (35 page)

“The family were explorers,” said Randolph, in answer to Max’s questioning. “Gambling blood runs through our veins, you could say. Because it wasn’t all just about the challenge and the thrill. Oh, no. There were great fortunes to be made out of the undiscovered or unsettled lands. That those lands were already in the possession of the native populations—well, that didn’t enter into the thinking, not for a moment.

“One ancestor in particular, Sir Champerson, took after Sir Walter Raleigh and that lot—he lost a fortune several times when one ship or another came to grief. He didn’t turn a hair. That kind of thing—well, it’s in the blood. Lost his life to it, in the end, did Champerson. Drowned with his crew. Poor buggers. Imagine crossing the Atlantic in the type of ship they had—little better than a wooden tub with sails.”

“Raleigh lost his life in a different way.”

“Oh, yes. The famous charm that worked so well on Elizabeth failed him when it came to James. Funny thing, charm. And luck. I suppose it really does run out for some. Anyway, now the place is a tourist haunt for part of the year and people show up at all hours expecting to see the sights, or to retrieve the umbrella or whatnot they left behind over the summer. It’s quite absurd, but they think somehow because a family is known to live here, that makes it different from a museum or an unoccupied National Trust stately home. As if we have nothing better to do than keep track of their rubbish all day.

“They have weddings now here at the castle during the summer months, a development my mother viewed with special horror. Oscar didn’t mind, strangely enough. He was a bit of a romantic at heart. Well, you only have to look at Gwynyth to see that is true. The May/December marriage is a particular specialty of the romantic—a veritable triumph of misty-eyed hope over experience. My poor uncle. One could really feel sorry for him at times.”

Somehow Max again brought the subject around to Lamorna. He could not have said why he persisted so, except that her particular request for his presence made him hope that if he could not get to the bottom of this crime, he could at least see to her welfare.

“From what I have observed,” said Max, “Oscar’s relationship with Lamorna was different from her relationship with Leticia. I gather he was indifferent to Lamorna. Leticia on the other hand at least recognized her usefulness. Am I right?”

“I rather imagine he simply didn’t like having her around, which is how she escaped the indentured servitude foisted on her by Leticia,” said Randolph. His eyes took on the blank cast of someone remembering the past. “Lamorna came out of St. Petersburg stuffed into dirty clothes too small for her, even though she was skin and bones. The extra poundage came later, when she began making up for lost meals, I suppose.”

“Now she has her freedom. I wonder if it isn’t too late. I do feel her grandmother might be taken to task for that.”

“I suppose someone of your beliefs would say that she is being taken to task, even as we speak.” Randolph smiled, less a smile than an aristocratic wince, a flash of teeth and an expression that said life with his mother had not always fulfilled its promise of good times for all. Surely, thought Max, I saw that for myself in my very brief time with her.

“You know, a death watch beetle burrowing into the paneling would have had a warmer welcome from my mother than her own family did,” said Randolph. “And in fact, that’s not a bad comparison.”

“So I gathered. Did your mother say what bothered her about the invitation?”

“She seemed to think they leapt on the invitation because Oscar couldn’t have much longer to live.”

“That’s rather a cynical viewpoint?” Max shaded the end of the sentence so it was more a question than an accusation. Randolph merely answered with a lift of the eyebrow and a question in return.

“Do you think so, Vicar?” Pause. “More whiskey?”

Randolph as he spoke looked closely at Max Tudor. What he saw was a sincere-looking man, an attractive man with an open, honest face that seemed to welcome confidences. That face also held a hint of worry, even of alarm. Randolph supposed that was only natural: Murder would be far outside the man’s normal experience of sermons and flower rotas and parish council meetings.

Cilla said, “She was extremely old-fashioned, Leticia. A real throwback. When was the last time, for example, you heard someone talk of ‘running an affair’? It was like we were always starring in a revival of some campy production dating from between the wars.”

“In what context did she use that phrase?” asked Max.

Cilla blushed. It was clear she had stepped right into it. With an apologetic glance at Randolph, she said, “She got hold of the idea that Randolph and I were an item. As I’ve told you, nothing could be further from the truth.”

“Although I did beg her for her hand in marriage, many times,” said Randolph jokingly. “The truth is, I was always romantically engaged elsewhere—fool for love that I am—and then when I looked around, Cilla had been taken. Swiped right out from under my nose. Her fiancé is a fantastic fellow, really one of the best, so I don’t feel I can complain. I’ve only myself to blame.”

Cilla greeted this with a cheeky, happy smile. “And if you don’t mind,” she said, “I’m going to go try to call my paragon now. I couldn’t reach him earlier.”

“Oh, do stay for a bit.”

Randolph poured her another drink. Reluctantly, she subsided. “Just a small one, then.”

As Randolph sat back in his chair, he sneezed. “So sorry,” he said. “Some of us have been passing this cold back and forth for weeks.”

Max was not surprised. Without the fire in the room it would have been freezing. Half of them must be down with perpetual colds living here in the damp. He had to remind himself that that wasn’t what had carried Lady Baynard off in the end.

“Lady Baynard had a bad case of cold,” Max said aloud. “Before she succumbed.”

“Yes, I know,” said Randolph. “I suppose I caught it from her. Poor old thing.”

*   *   *

Over Randolph’s protests, Max took his leave of them several minutes later. Cilla watched him head upstairs. The ankle was coming along nicely; he was avoiding using the crutch, but she saw he did have to use the wooden rail that had been installed some years ago for safety. His progress was slow.

“Nice chap,” said Randolph. “And a sound fellow. Too bad he’s been dragged into this.”

“Yes,” said Cilla vaguely. “It is unfortunate, of course, but things happen as they must.”

“Oscar was a grand old fellow in his way,” said Randolph musingly. “She, one has to admit, was … rather tiresome at times. But so old—it would have happened soon anyway. We have to take that view.”

“They were both seventy-five,” Cilla said.

“Old, like I said.”

Something hung unspoken in the air. She looked hard at him out of expertly kohl-lined eyes. Her own mother had lived to be eighty-five.

*   *   *

Fortified by Randolph’s whiskey, Max felt able to tackle the complexities of the castle’s corridors and byways, and to find his room at last. Easier, as it turned out, said than done, and coffee might have been better than the whiskey for gearing up his logic and reasoning abilities.

He made his way up the stone steps, the sounds of their conversation fading behind him. The castle’s corridors wound round and round him in an intricate crochet.

Max slipped into the shadowy hallway, followed by the castle ghosts, who wished him Godspeed.

CHAPTER 25

Lost Sheep

Getting to his room, even once he thought he knew the way, had involved a number of false starts throughout his stay at the castle. He would stride out confidently in one direction, unshakable in the knowledge that his room was oriented to the south, only to be met with a dead end or a small cupboard. Retracing his steps, less assured now, he would enter an empty space which seemed to serve no purpose except to offer him three or more closed doors from which to chose his next path. He soon would find himself in another corridor to nowhere that might end in an otherwise blank wall with a little window, peephole, or arrow slit. Max pictured knights in clanking armor, as in some old Robert Taylor movie, jostling their way down the narrow confines of the castle—rats in a maze, defending against all comers.

It didn’t help that this night he had left the Great Hall in a thoughtful, distracted frame of mind. It was as he was finding his tortuous way back to his room that he collided with Alec coming down the servants’ staircase—the same stairway Milo had disappeared into after first showing Max to his room. Alec was headed for the outside, judging by his coat and scarf.

“It’s time you were asleep, Alec.”

The boy smiled, that guileless, open smile that would carry a young man far through this life, melt many hearts, open many doors.

“I know. I was just out for a stroll.”

Max’s glance at his watch showed it was midnight.

“You’d best get back. Your mother will be worried.”

This earned him a
you must be joking
look, but Alec shrugged agreeably and continued his downward progress.

Finally in his room, Max pulled the Bible from the shelf, not really intending to read it, but to hold it as a talisman against the disquiet he felt. It slipped from his hands and fell open to this passage from Matthew:

Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Raca
. Worthless. Certainly the opinion Randolph held of his brother Lester, as some form of idiot, with the feeling being mutual. This grisly passage, as Max recalled, was the one that went on to advise the plucking out of eyes and so on.

The house had two brothers at odds, that was certain, if the narrowed eyes and jutting jaws indicated anything. Max leafed through the pages, which fell open to the start of Genesis 27:

And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son.…

The story Lamorna had mentioned. More about squabbling sons and an inheritance, and trickery over an inheritance. Max closed the pages, using one index finger as a bookmark. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled as if a skeletal hand had touched him.

“What?” he said aloud. He raised his eyes.
What is it?
He read the entire chapter slowly and then he put the book aside. He stood and walked to the east-facing window. As before, a movement caught his eye. Was it?—yes. A dark shape moving among the shadows—a black shape against a black wall. In the sea fog coating the garden, the shape floated free under a sky pocked with stars, making footless progress in the direction of the archway leading to the back regions of the garden. He’d have missed it altogether but that the shape, momentarily washed by moonlight, turned to look back toward the castle for a flash of an instant, and Max saw a countenance dimly lit—gray with dark sockets, an indentation for nose and mouth. That was all he could have sworn to have seen. An impression, merely. Then the face, the mask, turned away. It was as if nothing had ever been there.

He knew if he tried to follow the figure would be long gone, with a hundred places to hide, so he stood awhile, waiting for it to reemerge, hoping for a better glimpse of the face in the changeable blue snowlight of the half moon. It never reappeared.

No less quiet in his mind, Max undressed for bed.

*   *   *

Max in the long watches turned over restlessly, burrowing deeply into his high-count cotton sheets smelling of lavender and soap. The wind outside howled as he dreamt that leprechauns with tiny metal mallets were pinging away at his swollen ankle. Their pounding grew louder, more insistent. Coming fully awake, Max bolted out of bed. Someone was at the door.

He allowed a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, for fear of walking into some massive, immovable piece of furniture that had stood rooted to the floor since the fifteenth century. Fortunately he had left the curtains undrawn—there was no need for privacy as there was no one who could see in from below.

And above the sound of the wind, he heard a scream. It was a scream worthy of the worst of Jocasta’s movies—high-pitched, shrill, and frenzied, it seemed to go on forever, until it was silenced by a tremendous thud of something heavy coming up against something immovable.

The knocking at the door began again, a furious pounding. Through the thick wooden door he heard a muffled cry.

He recognized Lester’s voice.

Cautiously, he inched open the door. And there was Lester peering back, a picture of stark panic.

“Did you hear that?” he demanded. “That scream?”

Max, already on the move, nodded. “One second.” He felt his way to the light on the bedside table, then threw on a thermal jacket over his bare chest and drew running pants over his pajama bottoms. He slipped his feet sockless into his trainers and flung open the oak door, which had creaked its way half shut, and rushed into the corridor, colliding as he did so with a brown bear. His heart gave a colossal leap, but the bear was Lester, wearing the kind of fur hat with earflaps favored by Russians during their long winters, as if he’d planned a stop-off in Siberia after his visit to South West England.

“What on earth was that?” asked Lester. He carried an electric torch that seemed to need new batteries.

What in hell
, more like, thought Max. Aloud he said, “I think it came from the servants’ staircase.” No need to say what “it” was. There was nothing about that sound that portended finding a whole and healthy person at its source.

The light directly over the main staircase was turned off, and the corridor had only feeble electric light from the faux-medieval sconces on the wall. These seemed to cast shadows more than they did light.