Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery (4 page)
Sir Adrian was faced with a dilemma, however. He was fast approaching the part of his narrative that he wanted to preserve from the world’s scrutiny, at least until it was ready for publication. After all, the whole point of writing it was to ensure the world scrutinized it eventually. How far could he trust to Jeffrey’s discretion, or at least to his naïveté? Everything Jeffrey knew about Sir Adrian’s past and present he seemed to have gleaned from the pages of writers’ magazines—largely fictional interviews with the Master of Detective Fiction: Sir Adrian made it a point to change his story with every new reporter who came along. Still, the public facts of his marriage to Chloe were indisputable, common knowledge. Would even Jeffrey be able to read between the lines?
Sir Adrian, reaching no decision, sighed again and heaved himself slowly and painfully to his feet. The activity resulted in a grunting, snuffling sound, like a sow approaching a trough. He suffered, like Henry VIII, from gout, which affected his disposition about as well as it did that of the jolly monarch, and was the result of a lifetime of much the same kind of overindulgence. While he hadn’t left a trail of dead wives behind, the thought of beheading Chloe had more than once held temptation as being much pleasanter and more cost-effective than divorce. Grimacing, and with the aid of a cane, he hobbled toward the bell pull next to the fireplace to summon Mrs. Romano.
“He wants his tea, then,” Mrs. Romano informed Watters, the gardener, both of them sitting over their cuppa at the vast refectory table in the even vaster expanse of the surprisingly modern, warm kitchen. Chrome and stainless steel shone from every corner while the scent of just-baked bread filled the air.
Waverley Court had been built in the early eighteenth century by a soldier of fortune who had been well rewarded for his efforts to preserve and defend the monarchy by whatever means necessary, no questions asked. The house seemed to reflect this rapacious gentleman’s subsequent determination never more to roam: It squatted, a square, immovable mass, on many hundreds of landscaped acres, like an enormous pile of building blocks laid out by an obsessive-compulsive giant in the dead center of his green garden. Sir Adrian had acquired it all for a song of a million or so pounds from the improvident descendants of the nobleman, gleefully snatching it just in time from the jaws of the National Trust. Sir Adrian was not certain even now that he had ever visited all the rooms in his dearly bought stone pile.
It was a long walk to the study, for it was a ludicrously large house and Mrs. Romano was not given to doing anything in haste. Indeed, it took five minutes for her to undulate her way from the kitchen in the back to the study in the front, balancing Sir Adrian’s tea tray the while. It was a ritual she had performed most of her working life for him and a task she would trust no one but herself to undertake, even on the days when her son, Paulo, who officiated as butler at the manor, was on duty. Best not to overtax Paulo, was her view: He’s got his life yet to live. And, besides, Sir Adrian seemed to enjoy the ritual every bit as much as she did.
Reaching the library at last, she knocked at its massive double doors before entering. It had apparently also taken Sir Adrian five minutes to get back to his seat; he was just settling in as Mrs. Romano entered.
“Here’s your tea, then. Repulsive English habit,” she said, as she always did.
A genuine smile transformed Sir Adrian, a smile that would have astounded any member of his family or his few acquaintances had they ever been treated to it, which most assuredly they had not. It was a smile in which it was possible to see traces of the handsome man he had been, before corpulence, bad health, and worse temper had ballooned the features into a mask of petulance.
“Mrs. Romano. I do thank you so much.” He pulled off his glasses. “Won’t you join me?”
It was an inevitable invitation with an inevitable reply.
“None for me. You know it would spoil my supper.”
Mrs. Romano had been Sir Adrian’s cook for fifteen years, by far his most enduring employee. She was, in addition to being grounded by a bedrock of common sense, a marvelous cook, and Sir Adrian being known with some justification as a connoisseur of food and wine, she ruled not just the kitchen but the household as a result of her favored status. She and her husband had owned a
trattoria
in Cambridge that Sir Adrian had frequented on his trips to the bookstores. Mrs. Romano—Maria—had run the kitchen while her husband’s contribution to their success had been largely to drink the proceeds with the customers. When her husband died and she discovered he had drunk even more from the till than she had realized, Sir Adrian had convinced her to sell out and work for him with promises of a fat paycheck, autonomy, and spacious living quarters for her and her son, Paulo. She had accepted with alacrity, sick, at her age—she was then fifty-two—of the hand-to-mouth existence of running a small restaurant, for her husband had, typically, left no insurance. She was touched then and now by Sir Adrian’s kindness, and she had never looked back. As she told her mother back in Italy, “Sir Adrian is nothing like they say in the newspapers. Never to me.” That Sir Adrian had gotten an excellent cook in the bargain was only fair, she felt, reveling in the chance daily to create new dishes to tempt Sir Adrian’s jaded palate.
“Stay for a chat, then, Mrs. Romano,” said Sir Adrian, motioning her to one of the chairs opposite his desk. She settled her generous form into the upholstered chair, mentally kicking her shoes off. This, too, was a frequent part of the ritual. More than most, she knew the solitariness of Sir Adrian’s day; like no one else, she felt sorry for him.
“How are the wedding dinner preparations coming along?”
Mrs. Romano, who had been steadfastly avoiding the subject, sidestepped with a question of her own.
“I did wonder, Sir Adrian, if it wouldn’t be better for me to speak with the bride about the preparations?”
“Whatever for?”
“Er. I mean, she is the bride, and traditionally …” She trailed off. Mrs. Romano was seldom without words or an opinion, but something, as the British say, was fishy here, and she wasn’t going to venture too far without finding out first what it was.
“Tradition be damned,” said Sir Adrian. “Violet wouldn’t know a cauliflower from a pig’s brain—always too busy worrying about her figure to actually eat anything. She wouldn’t know what you were talking about.”
Not for the first time, Mrs. Romano wondered at the oddity of this proposed May-December match. Clearly it was a case of Jack Spratt and his wife in reverse, for one thing. But there was something more that bothered her. She knew Sir Adrian better than most and there was something, she felt,
all wrong
about all this. Violet Winthrop had emerged as a name spoken by Sir Adrian only in the past few months, and now these sudden wedding plans, with only the family invited, no friends. Of course, Sir Adrian had no friends, she reflected sadly. The ceremony was to be performed here in the library by a multidenominational pastor Sir Adrian had apparently selected from the phone listings. Why, at his age? The obvious answer of post-midlife crisis seemed out of character for Sir Adrian. There were men and there were
men
, after all. There was nothing Mrs. Romano felt she didn’t know about men. But she had never known Sir Adrian to face any crisis with other than blustering indifference.
And where was the blushing bride while all these preparations were going on?
“As for the refreshments after the ceremony,” she said now, “Champagne, of course. And I thought maybe a nice—”
“Too soon to worry about that now,” Sir Adrian said.
Too soon? With the wedding a few days away?
“Very well, Sir Adrian.” Long experience had taught her that there were times to ignore Sir Adrian, and this was one of them. Privately, she began listing the provisions she would order from the greengrocer and butcher in town. Raised on Italian weddings in her small village where the drunken celebrations had gone on for days, with or without the happy couple, she was having trouble paring this celebration down to the hole-in-corner affair Sir Adrian seemed to want.
She left the library some ten minutes later, following a spirited discussion with Sir Adrian as to how to prepare a traditional British roast with garlic, no easier in her mind than when she entered. Something is wrong here, she thought, pulling the massive doors, thick enough to repel an army, closed behind her.
“Something is wrong here,” she announced to Watters, having surged her way back to the kitchen more slowly than usual, lost in thought, looking more than ever like an older Sophia Loren in
Two Women
. She was not surprised to see Watters still sitting there at the oak refectory table, slowly sipping his highly sweetened tea. At eighty-two, his role as gardener at Waverley Court had largely been reduced to taking a few feeble swipes with the pruning sheers at the rosebushes in the formal gardens, and pulling whichever weeds yielded themselves to his ineffectual tugging. The real work of maintaining the grounds was done by a hired firm from nearby Newton Coombe, which came in twice a week and largely prevented Watters from doing more damage than he might otherwise have done.
Now he roused himself from contemplating the tea leaves in the bottom of his cup to peer enquiringly around the kitchen.
“No,” said Mrs. Romano. “I mean here, at the house, in general. This wedding. Everything about it is not right. He is up to something, you mark my words.”
“No fool like an old fool,” intoned Watters, looking pleased, as if he’d newly minted the thought.
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Romano, briskly gathering the tea things and traversing what looked, from a bird’s-eye view, like miles of stone floor to reach the stainless steel double sink. “But that is not what I meant. I do not think he is serious about this at all. We are only days away from the wedding and—has he even mentioned flowers to you?”
Watters shook his head.
“He had me bring in a couple of Christmas trees and some of them poinsettia plants for the house.”
“No, I mean
flowers
. You know, flower arrangements, for a wedding.”
“Nah. I thought ’twere strange, that. Can’t have a wedding without flowers, can you now?”
“Exactly. No, you can’t.”
Mrs. Romano folded her arms, strong as a ship builder’s, under her impressive bosom. A crease appeared between her perfectly groomed eyebrows.
“I’ll tell you what I think. What I think is I do not think there is going to be a wedding. This week or next week or any time in the future. I do not think that is what he has planned at all.”
“Eh?” Watters’ mind raced, trying to keep up with Mrs. Romano. “Don’t be daft. The family will all be here, all invited, like.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Romano. Absently, she flicked a dishcloth in the direction of a bread crumb. “Yes. The family will all be here. And I think that what Sir Adrian has planned is not a wedding, but the fireworks.”
_______________________
THE DAY BEFORE THE
wedding dawned with a wintry brilliance that by midday had settled into a mind-numbing, cloak-defying chill only to be found in the unprotected surrounds of Cambridgeshire. Unshielded by barriers either natural or artificial, the area was pummeled throughout the winter months by an Arctic blast that from time immemorial had driven itself directly from the north across the sea, sweeping undeterred past shore, fen, farmland, and village, straight into the bones of rich and poor alike. It was hard to imagine a more unlikely time for a wedding.
Sir Adrian, surveying the wintry scene before him from the French doors of the drawing room as he sipped a pre-dinner sherry, was pleased. Yesterday he had traveled to Cambridge to sign his newest will in the presence of witnesses, and he had the sense of accomplishment that comes mainly to those who enjoy creating unholy mischief.
If he could have seen past the slightly rolling hills of the grounds as far as to the village of Newton Coombe, he would have observed a dilapidated red sports car approaching the village, veering dangerously on the narrow road lined by stone walls that gapped unexpectedly to reveal a loose sheep or a stray car attempting to cross the fray of the main thoroughfare. The driver of the car, reaching the outskirts of the village, indicated unofficially by a smattering of tiny worker’s cottages tarted up to attract the highest bidder among fleeing suburbanites, gave a token tap on the brakes and slowed to within twenty kilometers of the speed limit before screeching to a halt in front of the Thorn and Crown. The car door opened, and the driver tumbled rather than slid out from the tiny opening thus created, just managing to escape the appearance of having landed on his hands and knees. He righted himself with elaborate dignity, and proceeded with careful steps toward the pub.
It was Albert, and Albert was very drunk.
The pub owner greeted him as a long-lost friend, as indeed he was. Albert, a generous tipper, generally well-behaved and with enormous drinking capacity, was always a welcome sight.
“As I live and breathe,” he cried, already pulling a pint of Albert’s usual.
Albert slumped onto a barstool, first checking carefully to make sure its four legs stood more or less evenly on the flagstones. More than once, he had found himself discarded on the floor when one of the rickety chairs seemed to vanish from beneath him.
“On your way to visit your father, is it, then?”
Albert laughed mirthlessly.
“‘Home is the sailor, home …’ ” he trailed off, looking around him. “You’ve, er, fixed the place up, haven’t you, Jim?”
Jim Tanner swelled with owner’s pride. In response to sagging trade, for Newton Coombe was miles from the major motorways and only to be discovered by the most dogged American tourist, Jim had decided to give the customers what they wanted. What they wanted, apparently, were striped red velour seat coverings and antique farm implements suspended from the ceiling. The place now looked like a cross between a Victorian brothel and a cowshed.
“Nice,” commented Albert, stifling an inward shudder. It was just what one of the major chains would have done to liven up trade.
