A Fatal Winter (15 page)

One glance at her, at the stubborn set of her mouth, convinced him that mere logic would likely confuse her. Much better to approach any subject obliquely.

“It’s a judgment on this castle, I tell you!” she said now. Which Max found more than slightly absurd. This castle had been the scene of so much mayhem, betrayal—surely, yes, even murder—over the years, that if God had not reduced it to rubble long before now, then God never was going to take an active interest in the goings-on at Chedrow Castle.

As she droned on in this vein, literally quoting chapter and verse, Max, smiling amiably, wondered if he could make his escape unnoticed by plunging out the window into the bare flower beds below. He thought Lamorna would have been a fitting companion for Savonarola with his apocalyptic messages and his “Bonfire of the Vanities” burnings. Dealing with the intense yet boring fanatic was another hazard of his profession, like the fawning attentions of elderly ladies.

He felt a barrier had come up between them now, so he said, in his most soothing voice, “I absolutely promise you no harm will come to you.” And because he felt she was keeping something from him, hiding it in all these cries to heaven, he added, “So long as you tell me whatever it is you know that is worrying you so.”

“As I have said,” she intoned with heavy emphasis, “there is a curse on this house. It will fall like the Tower of Babel.”

“There’s actually some debate about that. Whether it actually fell,” Max began, and caught himself up. The last thing he wanted was to enter into that sort of conversation with someone like Lamorna. She was such a poster child for the twisted result of clinging to a joyless, punitive religion, a religion that sapped all the joy from life and led, in its final stages, to the extremism that poisoned the well of sane discourse.

“After all, what goes around comes around,” she said now. A smile of deep, anticipatory satisfaction settled on her lips. Max felt he had heard as much of the collected philosophical wisdom of Lamorna Whitehall as he could take in one sitting. With the repeated assurance that she need not worry and should feel free to come to him with any information or concerns, Max took his leave of her.

He thought perhaps the castle staff could give him a more detached account.

CHAPTER 8

In the Kitchen

He could smell coffee and hear laughter coming from the kitchen as he walked down the dark-paneled passage leading from the Great Hall. It was an incongruous sound for a house in mourning. He recognized one voice: Milo’s deep boom was unmistakable. The other voice was a woman’s.

The door was ajar, and the woman, seeing Max, stood up from the wooden kitchen table and introduced herself as Mrs. Vladimirov (“Call me Doris.”). Max could understand why her husband stuck to the simpler Milo. She was a sturdy British woman with a wide smile and open expression. At the moment, her hands were covered to the elbows in flour.

“Isn’t this a fine mess,” she said. Max assumed she didn’t mean the flour. “A murder investigation at Chedrow Castle. My parents can talk of nothing else. No one will be talking of anything else for years to come.”

Despite the scowl caused by her stated exasperation with the situation, Max thought she had a kind face. Certainly, she viewed Max with ill-concealed friendliness and warmth, but then, most women did.

As she resumed her seat to continue her floury task she sized him up. He was a prepossessing figure but the words that came into her mind were simpler ones from her magazine reading at the hairdresser’s, words like “hottie” and “dreamy,” with dark gray eyes of a peculiar intensity that made Doris feel she was the one person in the world this man had been hoping to meet.

“Good morning to you, sir,” Milo, sitting across from his wife, thundered in his deep bass voice, aware of and unaffected by his wife’s evident interest in Max. He had had Doris at hello, as the saying went, and she him, and their trust in one another had never faltered.

“Would you care for some coffee, Father Tudor?” Milo asked him.

“I would like that very much.”

“Get him some breakfast cake to go with that,” directed Doris. She was punching at some dough on a cutting board like a boxer keeping an opponent against the rails. She planned to serve the castle guests a lunch that she explained was “on croot.” It looked to Milo like plain old Cornish pasties and he made the mistake of saying so.

“On
croot
, on
croot
,” she said. She stood to refill her own cup and to check on something in the oven, thumping about the kitchen as she did so. “I would know what a Cornish pasty is, now, wouldn’t I?”

Soon Max was holding a warming cup of coffee in both hands. Milo sat down next to him, having served him a pastry made with blueberries, nuts, and oatmeal. Max had been fed similar confections by Mrs. Hooser that he would not have offered to a horse. This was sublimely crunchy but moist—made with buttermilk, Doris told him, when he complimented her on it. The kitchen was the epitome of a cozy place that invited one to settle in for long sessions of talk and the exchange of confidences. It had a small fireplace, size being relative—smaller than the fireplace in the Great Hall, yet large enough to roast a good-sized specimen of livestock. The murmur of the sea against the rocks could be heard from a window opened to release some of the cooking heat of the room. The soothing hum served as a counterpoint to the crackle of the hearth.

“I have just been talking with Lamorna Whitehead,” Max told them.

Doris, who had resumed pummeling her dough, looked up briefly from her task.
Poor you
, said her expression, but she merely waited for him to continue.

“How well do you both get along with her?” Max asked. “With Lamorna?” There was little point in asking
if
they got along with her.

Milo said, “As well as can be expected. She does not have any—what do you call it? The skull?”

“The brain?”

“That’s right. Any brain. She is full of doom and does not have the brain of a boiled egg.”

Doris nodded. Delivered of that somewhat gastronomic opinion, Milo crossed his arms and waited for the next question.

But Doris added, “Mind, she’s got her reasons. The life they lead her, it’s not a fit life for a mule. Surely not a good situation for a young woman. But she puts up with it. Hasn’t the gumption to leave, or to get some training, or to strike out on her own. Or even to spruce herself up—lose that horse blanket she always wears, for one thing—and go looking for a bloke. Puts up with all manner of rudeness just for room and board in a draughty castle. So it’s hard to feel too sorry for her, even given the cards she’s been dealt.”

Her manner as she spoke was down to earth. Max felt her beliefs as well as her loyalties would be unshakable, founded as they were on common sense mixed with a splash of sympathy.

“Her parents left Lamorna some little money,” said Milo. “Of course, there wasn’t a lot to leave. Or so we hear. It is not our business, is it? But it stands to reason. So we don’t know why she stays.”

Doris turned her dough over and gave it a good thwack.

Milo said, “She is the type of person full of rules.”

“Dogmatic,” said Max.

“No, more catlike, I think. She creeps about—well, we have seen her…”

“She sneaks around the place,” Doris finished for him. “Especially now, with all of them here. Trying to find out what they’re all up to. She is not happy about that situation, you can be sure.”

“I gather Lady Baynard felt the same way,” said Max. “Or did you gain the impression she had in any way instigated this family get-together over the holidays?”

Doris Vladimirov threw back her head laughing. The dough took a hit to the solar plexus. “Of
course
Lady B didn’t agree to having them all come here. She’d rather be shot, I’d have said. She did what Lord Footrustle wanted, in the end, whenever she couldn’t talk him out of whatever it was. She was very old-fashioned in that and other respects, was Lady Baynard. In most respects.”

“The male ruled.”

“He was
Lord Footrustle
. And that was that. Unless, as I say, she couldn’t first talk him out of whatever it was, using whatever means. She had her little bag of tricks, did Lady B.”

Milo nodded in agreement.

“He’s one peculiar old duck, always was, Lord Footrustle.” She paused to fork in some cake and to take a sip of coffee. “A-course, I don’t call him that to his face. A duck. Didn’t call him, I mean. Didn’t…” Suddenly caught up by the memory of what had happened, she blanched, all the color draining from her hectic complexion. Putting down her cup, she took a moment to dab at one eye with a corner of her apron. Milo stood and gave her an encouraging thump between her shoulder blades, as though she were choking. Finally she heaved a mighty sigh and said, “Still, no cause to kill the man in that horrible way. Mostly what was wrong with him, he was lonesome. It made him crotchety.”

She tried for another sip of her coffee but her hand trembled too much.

“And Lady Baynard,” Max asked gently. “How did you get along with her? Was she, erm, crotchety sometimes, too?”

Distractedly, Doris made a production of dusting flour off her fingertips with a linen dish towel that commemorated one of the royal weddings. Her mouth set in a firm line that plainly said,
If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.
Max waited. Then, after a moment’s internal struggle: “She was horrid.
Horrid
.” The dam breached, Doris poured forth some further opinions which were apparently of long standing. “It seemed to me all she cared about was her garden and her flowers. It was as if she thought we were all living in some daft production of
Upstairs, Downstairs
or
Downton Abbey
. As if there’d never been a war—first or second—and all the changes that came with it.” Anticipating his question, she said, “I put up with it because it was a job, and she saw to it we were paid well, I’ll say that for her. There isn’t much call for a cook in this type of setup these days, and I never trained as a restaurant-type chef. Never wanted that kind of high-pressure environment. So this job was what was here and what was available, in the back of beyond, as we are.”

Max glanced at her husband. His grave manner seemed to overlay an impish intelligence that missed nothing but held its own counsel. There might just have been a spark of humor glancing off the eyes, which otherwise looked iced over, and while his stiff comportment seemed to convey disapproval, Max felt somehow that Milo was thoroughly enjoying all the palaver. It must have made a break from his usual routine.

“Were there often visitors to the castle? Apart from the family, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. Lady Baynard had the nobs down from London sometimes. She really put on the dog when it was someone she thought was important. She didn’t truck with mixing with the ‘lower orders of people’—her words. Like the rest of us was bacteria. We had to ship folk in so she could have someone good enough to dine with. That it cost me no end of extra work was beside the point.”

Suddenly her hands, square as the spade one might use to turn over a garden plot, cut the air with a decisive slice. “Enough of that,” she said. “What must you think of me, Father.”

“Not at all,” said Max. Actually, more of the same was what was needed. He would never arrive at the truth of the matter if everyone went around speaking no ill of the dead. It was their ills that led directly to murder, in nearly every case with which he was familiar.

He decided to give Doris the abridged version of this truth, ending with, “I really need to know what you know about the family. Your perspective is invaluable, since you are on the outside looking in. For example, I gather Randolph, Viscount Nathersby, was Lady Baynard’s eldest son.”

“Yes. Then there was Lea, her daughter. She came after Randolph. She died in a plane crash with her husband Leo. That’s how we come to have Lamorna living here.”

She sprinkled more flour over her dough; flipping it over, she sprinkled flour on the other side and began kneading. The ropy veins in her strong hands stood out against the freckled skin.

“Then there’s Lady B’s youngest, Lester. His given name is Leicester but I gather no one in Australia could spell that. His wife is Felberta, but we call her Fester. Lester and Fester. Hang about them for a day and you’ll see why. Any rumor or bad news or bit of snarkiness seems to start with one or both of them.”

Max took a guess. “There was a rumor when Lord Footrustle fell ill, wasn’t there?”

“They think I don’t know,” Doris fairly exploded. She stopped to push a strand of hair away from one eye, leaving a streak of flour across her forehead. “They’re saying Lord Footrustle took ill because of my cooking. And don’t I know where that idea got started. What a pother that created with all them police. There’s nothing wrong with my cooking; I’m ever so careful about ptomaine and such.” She pronounced the “P” in ptomaine, a spitting sound. “For all I have to trek some of the food from where it’s stored in the Old Kitchen, now we’ve all these extra mouths to feed.” She picked up a brochure that sat on the table, held it at arm’s length, and with exaggerated pomposity, read aloud:

“‘The Old Kitchen of the castle is popular with tourists, giving insight into domestic life of the Middle Ages.’ Don’t it just. They don’t bloody have to cook in this museum, do they? Or they wouldn’t find it all so bleedin’ thrilling. Still, there’s no time for anything to spoil. The very idea—”

“Now, now,” said her husband, standing again to retrieve the coffeepot. The impeccably tailored if well-worn clothes could not conceal the toughened body beneath. Max had the sense Milo was a survivor. Of what, Max could not have said. But the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist spoke of someone used either to hard work or weights training. Somehow he didn’t think the castle ran to a weight room, although one never knew in these days of the five-star accommodation.

“It is for best we ignore this,” said Milo Vladimirov in his impeccable if gappy English. He tended to use several words while searching for the right one even if he did leave out the occasional article. Max thought it was his way of buying time while his brain was busy translating.