Wicked Autumn (12 page)

So the ideally suited Cudwells could wait; their coming to him was a formality only. Here was a new case, a wrong to be righted. A problem to be solved. A villain to be outwitted. A blight on the village to be eradicated.

He’d admit it to no one but himself, but the pull of his former life remained strong, and he suspected it would never leave him entirely. The qualities his superiors had praised, in words that now sat encrypted somewhere on an MI5 server—words praising his dogged temperament, his fierce curiosity, his almost atavistic need to pursue justice—these qualities sprang, with a surge that was palpable, to the fore. He was the proverbial hound who had scented the fox.

“Plenty of time,” he told the policeman.

CHAPTER 12

Legend

Max’s life revolved around Sundays, as did the lives of all parish priests. A person could name a date of any month—the nineteenth, for example—and Max would instantly think,
That will be two days after the Sunday.
An occupational hazard, he imagined, like an accountant totting up figures without really having to think about it.

This Sunday was unlike any other in his experience, of course. He preached a sermon of healing, of blanket forgiveness, injecting a reminder that we are always in the midst of death, to record-breaking attendance. But he knew this surge in his popularity had nothing to do with an expected uptick in the quality of his sermon—in fact, he hardly knew what to say to the villagers. They had learned—somehow—that there would be a preliminary inquest, and that no funeral would be held until that and other bits of officialdom were taken care of. So the Sunday service was the next best thing—a placeholder until the main event. A trailer, as it were. Lydia, his usually competent young acolyte, seemed in particular to be nearly beside herself, lighting the altar candles with an air of distraction that risked setting her robe on fire.

Looking out over the congregation, he saw that Tildy Ann Hooser was wearing a rhinestone tiara, dark sunglasses too large for her face, and a big-buttoned red coat with stand-up collar. It was disconcerting, like having a tiny Audrey Hepburn in the audience. Her mother, as usual, sat oblivious to the fact that her other child, Tom, was systematically building an unsteady fortress of hymnals and prayer books that was close to collapse. It was Tildy Ann/Audrey who made him stop, lowering the sunglasses only long enough to aim at her brother a lethal, basilisk gaze.

Despite the noise of the large crowd scuffling about in their seats, noticeably missing was Wanda’s booming contralto voice during the singing, as the congregation bleated its way uncertainly through the hymns. Say what you might, Wanda was a leader in many ways, even if her voice tended to drown out everyone else. Max noticed all this as he struggled to focus on the service. People were here for comfort, he knew, as well as from curiosity. He prayed for the grace to allow the tone of his own voice to calm their fears.

After the service would be the usual mingling in the churchyard, the weak sun struggling to warm the gathered faithful. He would normally have stood chatting amiably with the members of his congregation as they filed out of the church, stopping to greet him and comment on the sermon, the weather, the economy, the crops.
More people here than last week
, Max might think, with the part of his mind not engaged in swapping platitudes.

This day, of course, was different. Max, braced as he was for the flood of curiosity on the day following Wanda’s death, was almost amused by the varying attempts to hide (or not even bother to hide) avid interest, almost cruelly thwarted by his stern refusal to be drawn into conversation with the villagers about the only thing on their minds—the murder of Wanda Batton-Smythe. Since it was well known that Max had discovered the body, there were many eager attempts to glean facts that could be examined, polished up, and passed along to the next purveyor. Nether Monkslip was too small to sustain a newspaper of its own—in most weeks, there was not enough news or even gossip to bother printing, and what there was could more efficiently be shared by word-of-mouth. The days following Wanda’s demise would of course prove to be the exception. The
Monkslip-super-Mare Globe and Bugle
—aka
UK Yesterday
(as a visiting American wag had dubbed it)—would have to print extra copies daily to keep up with demand.

“Great sermon. By the way, I hear the police are paying you late-night visits,” said Frank Cuthbert, Author. Max smiled wanly. Was that meant as an accusation? Probably not. Cheated of their chance to speculate (Max dodged all attempts at sounding him out, subtle or otherwise, by saying the police had forbidden him to speak of the discovery of her body), they did the next best thing, and lingered for close to an hour swapping theories with one another. Max quickly left them and went to change in the vestry. Then, sneaking with furtive steps out a side door, he went for a walk in the village.

But it was hopeless. Whoever had not been in church waylaid him now. He noticed several strangers walking about, knocking on doors—plainclothes policemen all, as well as a handful of uniforms. There must be a barber in Monkslip-super-Mare that all the policemen went to, so similar did the men look.

There were other strangers in the village, as well—some going door-to-door, others buttonholing people in the streets, lanes, and alleyways. Judging by their generally scruffy-looking demeanor they were not police, unless they were police gone so far undercover as to be irretrievably lost to humanity. Going native, it was called. But no—Max recognized them, from long experience, as newspaper reporters. He saw that one of them was talking with Constable Musteile.
Oh, my: too late to warn Cotton. Damage done.
As he watched, a van made its way down the High, a BBC logo painted on its sides, with giant receiving equipment affixed to the top. The telly news had arrived.

No …

Max quickly set his feet in the direction of the path that led up to Hawk Crest, not wishing to be pinned down in the vicarage if he returned there, as he almost certainly would be. Thea would never forgive him if she knew he was headed for their special walking-and-exploring place, but he’d give her a good long outing later. He needed to be completely on his own.

And the BBC van couldn’t make it up the path.

*   *   *

He had successfully avoided thoughts of Paul for so long that their return hurled him straight back into the past, to the days when he could hardly look in the mirror—which, if he’d thought about it, was probably just as well. It had been obvious from the fit of his clothes that he was rapidly losing weight, and, despite all the sleep, he had felt more like something very old that had been excavated than someone who was well rested and ready to rejoin the human race. Officially, the working theory was that Paul had been killed by underlings wanting to impress the Russian—hoping for promotion if they caught his eye. Max knew there was little hope of catching such small, nameless, unimportant fish.

On the seventeenth day, bored, mind blank and unable to focus even on a television show, let alone a book or crossword puzzle, he had gone for a walk in the park near his flat. His steps led him past a Thomas Cook shop, with its span of glossy posters in the window, and its notices of cheap flights to Spain and Portugal:
HURRY, ONLY A FEW SEATS LEFT AT THIS PRICE!
He found himself walking in, fishing for the credit card in his wallet as he went, and signing up for the first poster that had actually caught his eye:
EGYPT
, the letters written in some jagged typeface undoubtedly meant to suggest hieroglyphics, scrawled against a scene rendered in an Art Deco style, surely as if Hercule Poirot would be joining the party.

Max was a seasoned traveler, or so he thought of himself, his father a career diplomat. Another civil servant like himself. From a young age he had roamed the world with his parents, his mother being unwilling to deposit him in boarding schools except when it was completely unavoidable. He’d be left behind for safety’s sake, while she followed his father to some remote posting or other, most often in Africa and later in the Far East. He thought later that his touristy trip to Egypt was perhaps an attempt to re-create that sense of adventure cushioned by the security, false or real, of Her Majesty’s government having their backs at all times.

His father’s diplomacy seemed to him now a matter of repressing his deepest-held beliefs and feelings. He would hold it in all day, but some days, when he came home, would stop on the mat outside the front door and say, quite clearly, “That asshole,” never realizing Max could hear him from his room window above. Then his father would turn the handle and walk in, all smiles, to kiss Max’s mother and inquire what was for dinner. It wasn’t until much later, after his father’s first stroke, that Max realized the stress this “double life” had been causing. It wasn’t a lesson he had thought applicable to his own life.

*   *   *

Adventuring as a young man, Max had gone on an ill-advised solo trip through Western Africa. The object had not been to frighten his parents, but of course it had done. At one of the worst points in the journey, in Equatorial Guinea, he had traveled from the island of Malabo to Bata on the mainland on a Ukrainian boat called Djiblho. There, overnight, among thieves and strangers, as he lay awake to ward off the pickpockets, one woman had died as another was giving birth. He was dehydrated and disoriented himself at that point, but he later was sure he had felt fingertips of ice brush his cheekbone as the old woman died.

He gradually had become aware that many of those he came across on his journey were slaves, damaged and undocumented people from nowhere, some mentally ill or deficient, probably sold by their poverty-wracked families. In the remotest regions, children would come up to him and rub his arm, thinking his skin color was painted on. Poverty and isolation, wherever he looked, walking hand in hand.

He often wondered about the child born on that ship.

This time, he signed up for a glossy tour of Egypt. Just another old fogey being led around the sights. Fine with him. But on this tour, looking only for escape and luxury, rest and good food and forgetfulness and the need never (ever) to do or think for himself again, he found his compass. He found his God, as some would have it. The decision—rather, the clear view of the road ahead—was instantaneous and unquestioned. At the moment, he never stopped to wonder what Egypt had to do with a calling to the modern Anglican priesthood, or why faith had come to him in a reverse of the usual process: people generally
lost
their faith when faced with a tragedy that made them question what kind of deity would allow such things to happen.

*   *   *

The group had been in the second week of the Egyptian trip and the processes of getting to know one another had advanced apace. There were those whose company one might seek out for a drink at the end of the day. There were those to avoid—talkative, intrusive, loud, or boastful. Old couples, one family. Divorcées and merry widows galore. Again, he didn’t want to have to
think
and he reveled at first in this mindless freedom. He had wanted someone else to decide what he should have for breakfast, and when, and where.

So he was simply drifting through days that were much of a sameness, despite the changes of scenery, and doing as he was told when it was time to get on the next bus. But his presence caused such a commentary among the single women and the older couples—why hadn’t he realized how intrusive this would become?—that he was already planning to leave the tour and strike out on his own when they came to Luxor.

The land of the pyramids was a place as tawdry and mysterious as the glossy posters had promised, but somehow both at once—a Mae West of a country. They had stopped for the day at the vast, badly ruined temple complex of Karnak, such a staple of Egyptian travel literature as to be required viewing, with only the Giza pyramids for real competition. The complex was the work of over thirty pharaohs, or so the tour guide told them. A purely mankind-engineered enterprise, then, like Canterbury Cathedral or the temples of Machu Picchu. Lofty, exalted, and the result of a wonderful hubris amounting to madness that impelled their creation. Immortality for both pharaoh and worker, set in stone.

There among the massive columns, dwarfed and insignificant, he felt what he could only describe as a lightening, as if someone had taken from his hands some enormous, heavy container he’d been holding forever—and holding onto for dear life. As if someone had tapped his shoulder and said, Here, let me take that.

And the thought came to him clearly, unbidden:
I can’t do this anymore.

He couldn’t be a part of it anymore, and that was all. The men poisoned to impress a higher up—initiative from below. The people garroted on a nod, a lift of the eyebrow from some unknown thug in charge, perhaps several thousand miles away. The lies that were becoming second nature to him. He’d seen it all, witnessed too much.

Paul’s death could have turned him toward a quest for justice or revenge, but at that point he was at a place past revenge—at the point of tiredness and exhaustion with vengeance. He wanted, simply, something easier and at the same time far, far more difficult than hatred.

Time shifted, collapsed. It was his road-to-Damascus experience, and it came not with a blinding light, or a parting of the clouds by an unseen hand, but with a calm certainty, in the most banal of circumstances. He thought: Life was running out like water cupped in his hands. What was he doing with his time?

It was as if he were following a directive as instinctive as the impulse to stand and fetch a drink when he was thirsty. He was literally called. He went.

He returned to the rest of the group that day and looked about him at his fellows, at the couple that had squabbled its way across Egypt, at the women, young and old, without partners, at the man who had complained about the food nonstop since their arrival, and he understood their commonality was that one day all of them would put down their worries and their concerns large and small, and they would be forced to make that final journey alone. They suddenly became to him what they were—fallible, ordinary people all carrying stories to tell that they dared not tell anyone. The compassion that had always been a part of his makeup rose to the surface and remained there, subtly and forever altering his landscape.