Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel) (6 page)

I did tell you I’ve been invited to join the local writers’ group? I gather the standards for membership are minimal, simply a pen and a notebook and a desire to write. “We let Frank join” is how Suzanna Winship, the doctor’s sister, puts it. The desire to write is there inside me; I suppose it always has been. They say it’s never too late. But what could I write about? I’ve lived a life of little incident. I’m too shy to read aloud my little scraps of poetry (I suppose people would call it poetry, for lack of a better term), and I gather reading aloud is another requirement of joining the group. Maybe it’s time to outgrow that reluctance.

I have to run now—tonight is Lucie’s dinner party. I am happy, keeping busy. I hope you are happy, too.

Your ever-loving, Gabby

Friday, March 23, 7:00
P.M.

Lucie and Frank Cuthbert lived embraced by peaceful woods in an old Georgian house at the west end of the village, on the road to Chipping Monkslip. They recently had moved there from the cramped quarters over their shop.

Rather than take the Land Rover, Max had slogged his way over on foot, passing St. Edwold’s graveyard with its enormous Plague Tree, dodging puddles, and using his umbrella as a windshield. The weather, which had threatened rain for most of March, had seldom delivered, and parts of the South West were officially facing a serious drought. But when it did rain, it tended to pour, as now, chucking it down, with high winds added to stir the River Puddmill’s waters into a froth, and to rattle shutters and windows. Oddly, there was never quite enough water to alleviate drought, but enough to disrupt the various trade routes to and from Nether Monkslip, and, on occasion, to swell the normally placid river into a surging torrent.

Max arrived at the house to effusive greetings and cluckings from Lucie Cuthbert, who helped him peel off his wet raincoat and hat and divested him of his umbrella in the entry hall. The other dinner party guests were already gathered in the Cuthberts’ living room, for Max was last to arrive: He’d been held up by a last-minute phone call from a parishioner asking about available wedding dates at St. Edwold’s. As he rang off, Max thought placidly how nice it was that when the time came, he would be able to pick and choose practically whatever date he and Awena liked.

Max, joining the others, counted off the eight for dinner. Representing the men’s team were himself, Thaddeus Bottle, Dr. Bruce Winship, and Frank Cuthbert; for the women, Melinda Bottle, estate agent Bernadina Steed, and Gabby Crew, in addition to their hostess,
Mme.
Lucie Cuthbert. Max recognized Gabby as the eldest of the three hairstylists who had passed by his window yesterday morning.

Lucie settled everyone with their drinks before going to check on the meal. They all politely eyed one another as they sipped their aperitifs and breathed in the beguiling aromas coming from the kitchen.

As with Gabby, Max had only a nodding acquaintance with Bernadina Steed. She sold properties in the area, and her photo, with its slightly manic expression, often appeared in ads in the
Monkslip-super-Mare Globe and Bugle.
From what little he knew of her, she was a clever and attractive middle-aged divorcée with time and money to devote to her springy, youthful appearance. She had dark corkscrew hair that curled softly at the chin, and she wore a smart navy suit over a striped silk shirt. At her neck was a string of oversized red beads, and strapped to her feet were matching red shoes with heels that must have played havoc with her ability to walk on the cobblestone streets of Nether Monkslip. Her tan (an artifact, he heard her saying, of a recent trip to the south of France) was fading to a somewhat orangey glow.

Dr. Bruce Winship, Max noticed, seemed to be paying her special attention. Bruce appeared to be sucking in his stomach and puffing out his chest, in perfect imitation of the courting pigeon; Bernadina appeared to be reciprocating with sidelong glances of appreciation for this astonishingly macho display. Bruce’s sister, Suzanna, who privately worried he might be in danger of becoming one of those quaint bachelor doctors so beloved of novelists of the thirties and forties, would approve of this mild flirtation, thought Max. Max knew too well the penchant of the women of Nether Monkslip for playing matchmaker.

Bernadina stole a moment from gazing into Bruce’s eyes to introduce Gabrielle Crew.

“Please call me Gabby,” she said. “Everyone does.”

Max politely shook Gabby’s hand, noting its surprisingly firm grip. He supposed her line of work explained the grip, but overall she was a vigorous-looking woman, if older than he’d first thought. Closer inspection revealed the crosshatching of fine lines on the plump skin around her eyes and mouth.

Lucie, an energetic woman in her late forties or early fifties, briefly emerged from the kitchen, a white dish towel looped over the leather belt at her waist. Max often thought of her as the backbone of the Cuthberts’ marriage, the frame that gave her husband’s blue-sky ambitions something to cling to. Both were of the artistic temperament, but in very different ways. La Maison Bleue, the village wine and cheese shop, ran on the engine of Lucie’s steely determination. She was what the French would call
jolie laide,
or pretty-ugly, with distinctive large features that taken as a whole were unforgettably attractive. At the same time, one look at Lucie and one’s thoughts inevitably drifted toward Madame Defarge in
A Tale of Two Cities.
That strong and unstoppable will shone through.

Max complemented her on one of the appetizers, a soft white cheese spread on toasted slices of French bread. It was, she told him, a Lyonnais specialty called
cervelle de canut
and made from
fromage blanc
, herbs, shallots, olive oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper. “The name means ‘silk worker’s brains,’” she told him. “Try not to think about it.”

Max would not let it put him off. He had never eaten so well as since coming to Nether Monkslip. Awena was an excellent cook, for a start, her specialty being the ability to prepare any dish so no one suspected they were eating a vegetarian meal. Max had lost what little spare body fat he’d possessed under her gentle ministrations and had never felt as sound and whole as he did now. Lucie Cuthbert was likewise an excellent cook, but of the butter, cream, and goose-liver pâté variety.

Lucie, taking Gabby’s arm in hers, told Max, “We call her ‘Auntie’; she and my mother were like sisters. You may be interested to know Gabby and her husband were missionaries for a while.”

“Oh, but that was a long time ago, Father,” said Gabby. “I’m sure everything has changed. We came back to live in England some time ago.”

Max mentioned an Anglican group often involved in missionary work.

“No, Father, this was a Catholic organization. My husband was a very devout Catholic.”

“He is no longer with you?” Max asked her. She cocked her head, straining to hear, and he repeated what he’d said.

“He died last year.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” said Max.

She nodded. “It’s more difficult than you realize it’s going to be. But Lucie and Frank have been very kind, very welcoming, in giving me a new place for a new start. I don’t know if you’re aware I am living in the shop over their store. I work at the Cut and Dried.”

“Gabby comes from a long line of hairdressers,” said Lucie.

Gabby nodded. “My mother and grandmother owned a hair salon.”

Max became aware of a man hovering in his peripheral vision, waiting to cut in. He had been standing very near Bernadina, but having failed to entice her away from Dr. Winship, he seemed momentarily at a loss. Less by process of elimination than from the look-at-me signals the man gave off, Max knew this had to be Thaddeus Bottle. He had a frame designed for leading-man parts and, Max was to learn, a wonderful bell-like speaking voice. Brown hair sprang back from a widow’s peak—a luxuriant mane that was thinning ever so slightly, to judge by the gleaming scalp visible at the part.

It was somehow made clear to the observer that Thaddeus was well aware of his many wonderful attributes. Max half-expected him to position himself by the window so as to—
Oh, wait for it. There he goes.
Thaddeus walked over to one swagged window, ostensibly to admire the darkening garden. The setting sun cooperated by silhouetting his features against a sudden burst of golden backlighting. It was all nicely staged, and Max could not help but think it
was
staged. The others were too taken up by their conversations to notice, and after a while Thaddeus dropped the pretense of a sudden rapt interest in horticulture and rather sulkily rejoined the group tugging at his collar, which seemed to irritate him suddenly. Max hid his amusement by taking a small sip from his glass.

A new figure appeared beside Max and said, “Hullo.” The woman held out a hand in greeting. “I’m Melinda Bottle. I think we’ve met before.”

“Yes, of course,” said Max.

They had chatted briefly during one of the interminable queues in the village post office, a queue resulting from the postmistress’s need to pass along all the news of the day to whoever stood before her counter. This could be a matter of some minutes while the news was assessed, verified, and passed up and down the queue for additional input and analysis. Max recalled that Miss Pitchford had been in the middle of the queue, which seemed to be adding to the rebuttal time needed for this intricate, time-honored method of news dissemination, for Miss Pitchford was bound to uphold her reputation as the purveyor of only
accurate
village gossip. As she was generally the Q source for every rumor, villagers often felt it was best to consult her for clarification should any questions arise.

On this occasion, Max recalled, the postmistress had been even slower than usual, as tidbits about the Royal Couple had to be communicated to each and every customer, with time allotted for each and every customer to comment and speculate at length.

Max, who had been in rather a hurry, and much good had it done him, had greeted Melinda Bottle politely but with only half his attention, for the queue was making him late for an appointment and he was preoccupied with what he could do, short of faking some sort of fatal seizure, to move things along.

Thus in meeting Melinda Bottle, he had formed a hazy impression of a thin but attractive woman, the impression of attractiveness reinforced now that Melinda was done up in her finery, with glistening hair and stagy makeup, the impression of thinness emphasized by the prominent collarbones on display at the top of her dress. She wore sky-high platform shoes, and it seemed to take all her effort to stand in them without swaying as she sipped her aperitif.

On the day of the Great Post Office Wait Your Turn, she had been in mufti, wearing some sort of yoga costume of stretchy black fabric and clutching a purple mat under one arm. He had been standing ahead of her in the fumes of the flowery perfume she seemed to favor, since she was wearing it again now. Back then she’d been dressed for the winter in a short but bulky winter coat over the yoga togs, with a woolen scarf wrapped high around her hair and neck.

She’d had a package destined for mailing to London, and she could be heard to mutter that she could have delivered it herself in less time than this was taking. The postmistress might have heard this, for Melinda received a rather deliberate and piercing appraisal as Mrs. Watling abruptly stopped her monologue to peer at Melinda over the top of her pince-nez.

“Lovely to see you again,” said Max now. “Did you ever get that package mailed?”

She laughed. “Yes, but the price was a relentless grilling by Mrs. Watling. How long do you have to live here before you’re no longer considered an outsider?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d give it twenty more years. Until then, you’re still considered a Townie.”

“Gawd,” she said.

*

After half an hour or so, Lucie, who had been dashing in and out from the kitchen, announced that dinner was served. They willingly trooped into the dining room, where they found a beautifully set table complete with scented candlelight and a low floral centerpiece of velvety tulips and pansies.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle as they went to find their places.

“Here you are, Gabby,” said Lucie, indicating a place next to her. Despite the small size of the party, Lucie had provided little place cards with names written in beautiful calligraphy. It was an old-fashioned touch he hadn’t seen done for years.

But Gabby, her attention seemingly caught by one of Lucie’s paintings, ignored Lucie’s instructions. Max already thought that perhaps her hearing wasn’t good—he had had to repeat that question he had put to her during the predinner drinks, but then there had been a great deal of chatter in the small room.

Then Gabby dropped something from her purse, and there was a scramble to retrieve it.

And she ended up sitting by Max, who was flattered to realize she had maneuvered to arrange this proximity by switching her card with Bernadina’s. Max assumed she had some personal matter she wanted to discuss with him, or perhaps she found some comfort in sitting next to a man of the cloth. In his role as vicar, this sort of thing often happened, particularly with the recently bereaved, like Gabby.

While pulling out her chair for her, Max noticed she wore an enameled medallion that depicted the Madonna standing on a globe with hands outstretched against a pale blue sky. It was beautiful both as a piece of jewelry and as religious art, and Max complimented her on it.

“The nuns gave it to me as a school prize in a spelling competition. I was good at languages; in fact, they finally convinced me to go to university in France. I always wear it, the medallion, although I follow no particular religion. As I told you, Father, it was my husband who was the devout one. I do go to church, but the necklace is more like a talisman for me. I suppose you’d say I wear it in a superstitious way—isn’t that odd, that we ‘rational’ people do these things? I’m afraid to be without it, as if something might drop from the sky if I didn’t—some horrid fate befalling me.”