A Fatal Winter (39 page)

“Rather thought you might be talking about the castle,” murmured Awena, but she went to join them without hesitation.

The Cavalier, converted from the village’s old communal bakehouse, now held a pleasing assemblage of mismatched wooden furniture; each wobbly table was covered by a cloth patterned with different flowers against a white or yellow background. Suzanna and Miss Pitchford were at the marigold table.

“I was just saying to Miss Pitchford here it was too bad about Lady B,” said Suzanna as Awena settled herself in. “She was a nice enough old trout. Frightful snob, of course, but people of that class always are, don’t you find?”

“I understood she’d been ill…” began Awena.

“No, she wasn’t.”

“It’s well known Lady Baynard was a hypnochondric,” put in Elka from behind the counter.

“That would be ‘hypo,’ Elka. Hypochondriac.”

“Had you invited any of them to the party, Awena?” asked Miss Pitchford.

“I had, actually, more as a friendly gesture than expecting them actually to show up.”

“She was too big a snob to mix with the hoi polloi,” said Suzanna. “At least, I always thought so.”

Awena, a bit surprised, merely said, “You’d met her?”

“Here and there. The doctor’s sister enjoys a certain amount of prestige in these parts. Bruce saw more of her than I did, of course, although she mainly went to London to see someone in Harley Street. She would, wouldn’t she? And make sure everyone knew she could afford an expensive, private doctor. But she kept to herself after the kerfuffle over the access rights or right of way or some such thing.”

“Access rights?”

“You didn’t come to hear of it?” Miss Pitchford, exchanging glances with Suzanna, sat back in astonishment, dropping her newspaper. It was as if Awena had disavowed all knowledge of the Great War.

“It was
the
topic at the time here at the Cavalier Tea Room and Garden, I can tell you,” said Suzanna. “It was some typical country-ish thing they all get het up about. I didn’t pay much attention … an area farmer wanted to cross the Footrustle property with his sheep or cows or some sort of livestock and the family kicked up about it—wanted him to go the long way round. It may have been his pigs that were the breaking point. Eating the acorns or whatever it is pigs do for their own amusement.”

“Truffles, I think, my dear,” put in Miss Pitchford vaguely. “They like truffles.”

“Or maybe it was radishes,” said Suzanna. “Anyway, what
ever
it is they eat.”

“I think they eat pretty much anything,” said Awena.

“Well, there you are,” said Suzanna. “I’m sure that was entirely the problem. Anyway, there was the most frightful dustup over all of it.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, a year or two ago. Yes, about that. I remember it wasn’t long after I came to live in the village and I remember thinking I’d made the most dreadful mistake in coming here. Pigs and grazing rights? I mean, really.”

“‘How are the mighty fallen’?”

“I didn’t mean that exactly.” But she did mean that exactly. Suzanna, used to “being something” in the city was only slowly succumbing to the somnolent charms of Nether Monkslip—to becoming “someone,” as Coco Chanel had put it.

“So, what happened?”

She shrugged and smoothed back her hair, a graceful gesture that called to mind Gina Lollobrigida or one of the other great vamps of the fifties, all insouciance and endless afternoon hours spent lolling about an Italian veranda. “It went to court and I think the farmer lost. There was
strong
feeling about that.”

Miss Pitchford, her eye caught by a
Times
editorial on education, a subject dear to her heart as a retired schoolmistress, nonetheless nodded vigorously.

“So you say Lady Baynard didn’t see much of your brother?” Awena asked.

“Lady Baynard—as you have gathered, it was never ‘
Do
call me Leticia’ about that one. Anyway, Lady B was a difficult patient and she wouldn’t follow Bruce’s dietary advice. She was naturally thin but she didn’t exercise, either, apparently, other than to potter about the castle gardens and fuss about the hothouse. Even then, she had others to do the heavy lifting. Bruce had her on medication or so he tells me but whether she took it religiously or not, who can say. Anyway, she made it plain that in her view Bruce was little better than a local horse doctor and took herself off to London, as mentioned. Good riddance, said I. Bruce could hold his own with the toffs in Harley Street any day. He simply chooses not to. ‘The simple life for me’—you know how he is.”

Miss Pitchford folded the paper neatly and said, “She was rude to your brother, there is no question. I well remember the occasion. But more often than not she put people’s backs up simply because she had Standards, you see.” The capital S was audible. “That doesn’t go down well with those who cannot be troubled with having Standards.” Miss Pitchford could have written the book on this subject, thought Awena. In a beautiful cursive script.

“The grazing or common rights being a case in point, I gather…” said Awena. “I suppose back in the day we’d all have been her serfs. Funny to think of, isn’t it?”

The biscotti really was a triumph and she looked up to smile her appreciation in Elka’s direction. Elka, however, was at the sink with her back turned, and was elbow deep in soapsuds.

“Yes,” agreed Miss Pitchford. “Not that I can’t see both sides of an issue. And she did herself no favors by the way she spoke to Farmer Braddock. A spoonful of sugar, et cetera. Especially since she knew she’d win. But that was Leticia’s way.”

“She allowed you to call her Leticia?” asked Suzanna. “You must have been on good terms.”

Miss Pitchford blanched visibly. “Most certainly she did not—
never
would I dare call her that to her face. The very idea. I understand her niece—that dreadful actress, she played a dead Viking; I tried to watch it on the television—and her husband, the American in-law, they called her Leticia once, but their Standards are quite different to ours, aren’t they? They no longer have a monarchy.”

Awena knew several Americans who would debate that opinion. She corrected her gently. (“I think you must mean vampire, not Viking”). She waited patiently for Miss Pitchford to calm herself.

“Goodness gracious me,” Miss Pitchford went on, patting her heart back into her thin chest. “What
can
they have been thinking?”

They were thinking that was her name and they were relatives, after all, but Awena decided there was no point in pursuing that particular avenue of discussion. There was a good bit more in the “goodness gracious” line but otherwise she felt she had learned all she could of the situation from Suzanna and from Miss Agnes Pitchford. Collecting her things about her, she was preparing to rise and depart when Miss Pitchford said, “At least we can rest assured Father Tudor won’t make that mistake.
Cannot
make it.”

“Oh?” said Awena, with what she hoped was a casual lilt to her voice, as she gripped her umbrella to her chest like a talisman against evil. “And why would he?”

“I saw him leaving town earlier,” said Miss Pitchford, always happiest when she had a tidbit of news that clearly was news to someone else. “He said he was going to stay at the castle. Just for a day or so, he said. To advise.”

“Oh.”

“That divorce was his undoing, Lord Footrustle’s.” Miss Pitchford resumed her earlier theme, feeling all had not yet been said on this topic. “There is nothing new under the sun, is there?” She appeared to be gathering steam so Awena, still clutching her umbrella, sank back down for the duration.

“As for the rest! Of course, having invited themselves, I don’t suppose it occurred to any of them to behave well whilst they were guests of the castle.” She bridled, lifting her head in disdain at the thought of the goings-on of these invaders.

“I thought Lord Footrustle invited them to visit?”

“To visit, surely, but they’ve been there for weeks and months, some of them. Living off the fat of the land. Pigs in a poke, every one, especially that Gwynyth person.”

Awena noted that it was Lady Baynard when it came to the formal niceties, but Gwynyth rather than Lady Footrustle, as she was still entitled to be called, when it came to someone Miss Pitchford plainly regarded as a common interloper. “
And
you know what they say about fish and guests smelling after three days,” she added. Awena, marveling at her ability to mix her metaphors, made a mental note to ask Max on his return exactly how the family, immediate and extended, all had come to stay at the castle. And finally to find out what in the world a poke was, anyway.

She had already said her good-byes and was turning to go when Miss Pitchford said flatly, “Madness runs in that family.”

Suzanna was nodding. “Bruce always thought so. You know, that’s a bit of a hobbyhorse of his. Madness.”

Miss Pitchford agreed. “They’re all barking, to some degree or other. Daft as brushes.”

“And Max is staying there,” said Suzanna. “With a murderer?”

Numbly, Awena allowed the words to sink in. She was upset, she realized, that Max hadn’t mentioned this plan to her.

And more upset to realize there was no reason he should have done.

“So I hear,” she said.

CHAPTER 29

S.O.S.

Having spent much of the day talking with the suspects, going over old and new ground, Max returned to his room to shower and change, hoping the sluice of water would help rejuvenate his thinking.

Changing quickly into a dark wool jumper and jeans, he took out the notebook he always kept with him to capture the random thoughts that often ended up in his sermons. Using a plastic pen embossed with the Footrustle logo, a guest souvenir, he described as best he could the images that slipped through his mind in a stream-of-consciousness style. Turning to a more analytical mode, he also noted the nagging inconsistencies, but he could draw no connections there.

Frustrated, he flipped the notebook to a new page, as if the sight of a fresh, unmarred sheet of paper might clear up his thinking. Predictably, it only seemed to mirror the blankness of his mind. He kept returning to Lamorna’s passing reference to Esau and Jacob until finally he looked up the passage again. At Genesis 27:41 his eyes fell upon these words:

And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The dayes of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob.

Max read this and thought, Yes, that’s all well and good, and I can’t entirely blame Esau for his anger. Max knew by now that money and inheritance, as is so often the case, were at the bottom of the current situation at the castle as well, but beyond that, where was the connection?

He closed the book, stood, and thought with a sudden fierce longing of Awena. He badly wanted just to see her face. To be in the presence of someone who was the opposite of persons full of guile, greed, and grasping ambition.

He had well and truly had it with the Footrustles and their damnable lusting after money.

He didn’t think beyond that, to what might happen between him and Awena. He just wanted urgently to see her, almost as if he feared for her safety. Yet he knew she was safe, in what must have been one of the safest places on earth. Well, despite the recent unpleasantness, Nether Monkslip was the safest of havens.

There came a knock at the door. It was probably Cotton, he thought, as he twisted the iron door handle—Cotton wanting to rehash some point of the case. Max rubbed his eyes with weariness.

And there she was. He stepped back, doing an almost comic double-take. Awena.
What in the world?

But she looked distraught. If it were possible for Awena ever to look haggard, she did, with dark circles under the luminous, deep-violet eyes.

“You know,” she said without preamble, “you really might have told me. They’re worried sick back at the village.” Somehow it seemed safer to present herself as a spokesperson for the villagers and their anxieties. She wasn’t yet ready to admit she was at the castle after succumbing to a gnawing, mind-numbing anxiety of her own. She had to see Max, and see with her own eyes that he was safe.

He stood back from the door to let her pass. “How…?” he began.

“Cotton saw me arrive,” she told him. “He told me where I could find you.”

“You know there’s been another murder.”

“He told me. Lamorna. Good heaven, that poor child.”

He started to correct her, to say,
I actually meant, how did you know I desperately wanted to see you?
but settled for, “It is very good to see you.”

It was a measure of Cotton’s esteem for her that she was allowed here at all under the circumstances, Max knew. She could be trusted not to get in the way of the investigation, to contribute only when and if asked, and, most of all, to be discreet and keep to her own counsel.

He looked at her delightedly, disbelievingly. Awena’s classically etched face mirrored the transparency of her personality, free from guile, imbued with joy. More than most people, Max thought, Awena was without barriers, her soul translucent as glass, as sheer as a seashell worn by tides and sand. He turned toward her with an embracing movement of his arms, a welcoming embrace that did not touch her, as if he feared this vision might evaporate.

Only a few miles had separated them, but she had stood in his mind like a bejeweled icon of serenity. Now holding her by the arms, he reveled in her presence. He took in the day’s attire, a soft, saffron dress like a bright flame gathered with a wide satin belt. It glittered with embroidery and small, semiprecious stones of every hue.

“You shouldn’t be here,” said Max. “Someone very disturbed—something evil is at work here. I don’t want you in harm’s way.” He grimaced briefly at the thought of Awena getting in the path of this horror. He thought of her as vulnerable, given to starry-eyed beliefs, and would have been astonished to know she thought the same of him. “Who saw you arrive?” he asked.