Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel) (8 page)

Lucie knew Gabby was in her late sixties, but she looked far younger. She had clear eyes, few wrinkles, and perfect teeth, which may have added to the illusion—her teeth were so perfect, they might have been implants. She wore perhaps a little too much makeup; her cheeks were painted a hectic red—little dots of red, like a marionette’s. She had outlined her lips in a matching shade. Her posture was strong and her back straight within the long-sleeved jumper, and her white hair, which gave off a light scent of orange blossoms, gleamed in its impeccable twist.

Outside, the rain rattled against the terrace beyond the French doors like a shower of pebbles, splashing hard and hail-like against the little panes. Lucie’s eyes were caught by Father Max’s, and she returned his smile. So nice, she thought, that he and Awena have found each other at last. It took them long enough.

Her husband was saying, apropos of what she didn’t know, “This is why England is going to the dogs.” Frank had been strangely silent throughout the meal, but before their guests had arrived, he’d made his displeasure with Thaddeus clear. There would be no return engagement chez les Cuthberts for Thaddeus Bottle.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Max. “There are some things we do uncommonly well, or used to do. Architecture, for one.”

Bernadina and Melinda nodded in agreement.

“Furniture, for another,” put in Dr. Winship, flinging a quick glance at Bernadina, seeking that same approval. “And paintings, like that Coombebridge on the wall there. And writing: plays and books and poetry. And—”

“I take your point,” said Thaddeus disagreeably, with a grating sneer. “However, you are talking about the England that used to be. Now, where we had architecture, we have seedy-looking council flats that won’t last another decade, but only if we’re lucky. And the Millennium Wheel—whose idea was that?”

Max couldn’t say he opposed Thaddeus’s views on architecture, but what was it about the man that made him want to disagree, if only on principle? And what made Thaddeus an expert anyway? The Bottles’ new house was a known eyesore.

“At least we’re finally getting a good reputation for cooking,” he said.

And Max said a few more words in this vein, adding an endorsement for sustainable resources. Thaddeus began feigning a deep interest in Max’s remarks, a pastime that soon paled as the conversation stayed resolutely on the topic of the world’s food supply in general and away from himself.

“It is certainly better than what the English served for so long,” sniffed
Mme.
Cuthbert. “I wouldn’t feed that to Frank’s dog.”

“I’m not sure Sadie would eat it if you tried,” said her husband.

“That,” said Lucie Cuthbert, “is only because you treat that dog like it is human.”

Frank’s mouth fell open in mild surprise. He did regard Sadie as human.

Gabby said, “What do you all think of the new restaurant in the village?”

Max recently had come to realize that as a topic, the new restaurant had nearly displaced complaints about the planning committee for the Easter egg hunt.

“Excellent—the Grimaldis are doing very well,” said Bruce. “Suzanna used to call them ‘Primo’ and ‘Secondo,’ although this pair doesn’t seem to be struggling anymore like the brothers in
Big Night.
They’ve probably been set up for life with all the free publicity they’ve been getting. Of course, it’s not certain we want to attract all these foodie sorts from London.”

“Why not?” wondered Gabby. “The salon could use new customers. Hair only grows so fast, you know.”

“They want to move here, and that raises the price of housing; that’s why not.” As soon as Bruce said the words, he saw his mistake. Bernadina Steed made her living selling homes at inflated prices. And her clients Thaddeus and Melinda could be said to be Exhibit A in the foodie category, genus Yuppie, usual habitat: London. “I meant, well—I didn’t mean anyone here, of course.”

Max’s glance strayed across the table to Melinda Bottle. She was drinking quite heavily by this point. Her husband, Thaddeus, took an abstemious sip from this own glass, peering critically over the rim at his wife and looking much like a hanging judge getting ready to pass sentence. She was drinking the way a woman might drink after having at last stumbled across an oasis in the desert—that is to say, thirstily and without inhibition. That she did not appear to be drunk might be taken as a sign that her capacity, after long and arduous training, was larger than that of the average person. Her dinner sat before her, virtually untouched. If someone would invent an alcoholic beverage infused with vitamins and protein, thought Max, she might just manage to pack a few pounds onto her small-boned frame. Max had seen whippets with more body mass. He asked her a question about her new home, and he saw he had underestimated her condition, for she dragged her head around to listen with the intense concentration of the very, very drunk. Even so, having gathered her full attention, Max had to repeat himself.

“Oh, very nice,” she said. “It’s nice.” This seemed to deplete her supply of adjectives, so he asked her how she was settling in. This provoked much the same sort of response. “We like it here. S’nice.”

Max could overhear Bernadina telling Lucie she had known actor/playwright Thaddeus from before, in London.

“But only slightly,” she said. “In that way you feel you know an actor once you’ve seen him on the stage.” Bernadina’s voice rose above the pleasant hum of other conversations. “I’ll never forget him,” she went on, with a nod in Thaddeus’s direction, “as Bertrand in
Eggplant.
”

Melinda lifted her head at this, but groggily. There it was again, thought Max. That sense of tension, moving not through but somehow beneath the civilized surface of the lovely room, like lava bubbling at the lip of a volcano. Thaddeus seemed always to be at its source.

“I just ah-
dore
the theater, don’t you?” Bernadina was saying. “Nether Monkslip needs a local theater, I’ve always thought.”

“There is an amateur drama group that puts on the occasional play in the Village Hall,” said Lucie. “We all find it, well … I can guarantee it’s like nothing you’ve seen before.”

“Experimental, is it?” asked Bernadina.

“It somehow always ends up being so,” answered Lucie. “More haricots verts?” Ladling a large portion on Bernadina’s plate, Lucie said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a real actor appear in one of our little village plays? What do you think, Thaddeus?”

Thaddeus greeted this idea much as the early Christians might have viewed an invitation to one of the gladiator shows at the Colosseum. That is to say, he pulled back his lips in a horrified grimace, perhaps meant to be a condescending smile, and said, “I have come here to escape the hurly-burly of the stage, the crowds, the fans, the constant currying of favor, the requests for autographs and endorsements. Besides, ‘the laborer is worthy of his hire.’ Isn’t that what the Bible says, Rev?”

“Hmm?” said Max.

“I do not,” explained Thaddeus, “engage in
amateur
theatricals.”

“Actually,” said Max, “I’d much prefer it if you didn’t call me that.” “Rev,” a nickname made popular by a recent television show, bothered him not at all coming from other people. He found it did bother him coming from Thaddeus.

Lucie had anticipated that Thaddeus wasn’t the type to do anything without financial compensation.

“I’m afraid,” she said, a tad icily, “that these are charity dos. People donate their time. The proceeds always go to a worthy cause. Because,” she added with pointed emphasis, “‘it is more blessed to give than to receive.’ Isn’t that right, Father Max?”

Max, who had no desire to be caught in the middle of a game of dueling Bible quotes, a game with limitless variations, said to Thaddeus, “Perhaps when you’re more settled into the village, you’ll feel differently,” guessing that the man would not long be able to resist the lure of being a big fish in a small pond, and not realizing how closely his thoughts tracked Melinda’s own.

As much as Max felt he himself could resist for a very long time the temptation to see Thaddeus in a live performance, still he recognized that the actor might be a draw for people in the neighboring villages. A little flattery—in fact, bucketfuls of flattery, lavishly applied—would probably be all that was needed.

Still, Thaddeus’s tone held endless reserves of scorn for those who could not appreciate the finer points of the dramatist’s art—a group that, judging by her expression, included his wife.

“Somehow I doubt very much that I’ll change my mind,” said the actor.

At Max’s side, Gabby continued to work her way through her meal in her precise and meticulous way, every small mouthful savored. She also ate every scrap on her plate, using a piece of bread for a dainty mopping up. Lucie offered seconds, which she accepted, and the whole careful procedure began again. Max wondered that the woman didn’t weigh twenty stone, but she was fit and trim, even muscular, quite tall, and weighed perhaps less than ten stone. “Well preserved” was the only possible phrase.

A runner himself, Max asked, as diplomatically as he could phrase it, how she stayed so fit for her age. “Do you walk or run?”

She smiled. “Run? Good heavens, but I’m flattered. Not at my age. Hardly.” She finished the next morsel and carefully set down her knife and fork before she went on. “My mother taught me how important it is to exercise and stay fit. That you have to be ready for whatever life throws at you, and for that you have to keep up your strength. It was good advice. So I walk as far and as often as I can. The area around Nether Monkslip is perfect for that, is it not? One day I walked nearly to Monkslip-super-Mare. And I recently signed up with Tara for yoga classes, over at Goddessspell. It’s a shop run by a really interesting woman named Awena Owen. I think you know her?”

There was a mischievous note to this last, and a strange silence as she waited for his reply. During Gabby’s conversation Max felt, rather than saw, Lucie looking up from taking another piece of bread from the basket, and the questioning glance she exchanged with Frank. Max’s reaction was guarded: He and Awena had taken such care to keep their relationship away from the prying eyes of the village.

“Yes,” he said, staring down with studied neutrality at the haricots verts on his plate, as if they might escape without careful monitoring. “Awena is remarkable. This parsley—is it that flat kind?”

But Lucie had fallen noticeably silent. Now with an effort she turned and looked at Max as if he had taken leave of his senses. “Yes-s-s,” she said carefully. “It is what they call flat-leaf parsley.”

“Oh! Just that … it’s delicious. I’ll have to ask A—I mean, Mrs. Hooser to prepare some for me this way. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to share the recipe with her? With Mrs. Hooser, that is?”

As Mrs. Hooser was incapable of boiling water without setting the kitchen curtains aflame, Lucie’s look of staggered skepticism remained fixed in place: eyebrows raised, a moue of surprise on her lips. The French have perfected that look, thought Max, wriggling under the scrutiny. They should patent it. He smiled weakly. “Mrs. Hooser needs all the help she can get.”

“That is obvious,” replied Lucie judiciously, after a pause while she considered this truism. “Of course. I’ll be certain she gets a copy. More beets?” she added brightly. “They had fresh ones at the market today. It’s a sure sign spring is coming.”

Everyone declined the offer except the apparently bottomless Gabby. For pudding, Lucie served a lemon tart topped by a mound of frothy meringue. This also vanished. Every crumb, this time, on every plate but Melinda’s.

Gabby remained focused so completely on her food that at one point she didn’t hear Bernadina asking if she would consider buying a three-bedroom home. Bernadina repeated the question.

“Too much room for me,” Gabby answered briefly, shaking her head. She seemed to take little pleasure from the food; she ate with the focused concentration of a woman eating only because she understood food to be good for her.

Gabby’s intensity was in complete contrast to Melinda Bottle’s. Melinda continued to pick nervously at her food, even the hard-to-resist lemon tart.

*

“There is much to be said for the old remedies used by our ancestors,” Gabby was saying, voluble now that dinner was finished. Lucie had given them small tulip-shaped glasses of a rare port to finish the meal. “The homeopathic cure. I was reading the other day that olives are good for preventing seasickness … something about the tannic acid.”

Doc Winship said, “Yes. I suppose that would explain why the average life expectancy in the Middle Ages was about thirty-nine.”

“Bruce is our resident voice of scientific reason,” Max explained to Gabby.

“Someone has to be, around here,” said Bruce Winship. “How’s that sprained ankle of yours doing, Max?”

“Much better,” said Max, smiling. With a nod in Gabby’s direction, he said, “Awena applied a homeopathic remedy—some sort of salve made with sage and other things. It really seems to be working wonders.” Max had walked and even danced on his ankle too soon after he’d injured it on the ice at Chedrow Castle. He had wondered himself, Is it the salve or is it her?

“What’s in this stuff?” Max had asked her.

“Snakes and snails. You know—the usual New Age, Wiccan hocus-pocus.”

“Seriously.”

“Wildcrafted sage. Jojoba oil. Coconut oil. Beeswax. Nothing too exotic.”

Now Bruce was saying, “Nonsense. It’s the painkillers I gave you.”

Max debated whether to tell Bruce he’d stopped taking the painkillers because they made him drowsy. Mrs. Hooser had more than once discovered him, Tom, and the dog, Thea, fast asleep, like creatures fallen under a spell in a Grimms’ fairy tale. Awena’s massaging whatever it was into his ankle had brought the swelling down in a nearly miraculous and drug-free way.

Max said diplomatically, “I’m sure it’s a combination of all the attention my ankle’s been getting.”

This seemed to mollify Bruce, who confidently pronounced, “The placebo effect is undeniably real.”

“Undeniably,” said Max, thinking, No. It was Awena and her salve.