Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel) (17 page)

“I should think so,” said Elka. “People are frightened. There’s a maniac on the loose.”

“Suzanna,” said Max, “with all due respect, you need to leave this to DCI Cotton and his team. It’s a dangerous situation, and if you are putting yourself in danger, you’ll only add to his burden.”

“Nonsense,” said Suzanna briskly. “Whoever killed Thaddeus—and very good riddance, by the way—has nothing against me.”

“That’s not how it works, Suzanna,” said Max. “If you do see something the killer thinks you shouldn’t have seen, you could become the next target. You do follow that, don’t you?”

“I read detective stories, Father Max. I know how these things work.”

Max was tempted to demand she hand over the binoculars, but he realized not only had he no right to do so but that it would be a pointless exercise. Suzanna, relentless, would always find a way.

The Horseshoe, like many such old English pubs, was divided between a saloon and a public bar. Max found Cotton in the saloon, a handsome room with windows darkened by the smoke of centuries, blackened beams crossing the ceiling, and gleaming brass against the whitewashed walls.

There sat Cotton by the door, resplendent in his bespoke suit, a starched shirt like gray armor against his chest, and a nicely contrasting tie. His blond hair had been smoothed in place, a reproof to Max’s own efforts in that regard, and his gray-blue eyes shone with the passion tempered by intelligence that was fast earning him a superstar reputation on the force.

He greeted Max like the old friend he now was, asking first how Awena was doing.

“Good good good,” said Max quickly, too quickly, making it clear this was a subject he wasn’t willing to pursue.

“Well, good,” said Cotton.
So,
he thought, I’m not supposed to know the obvious about Max and Awena. Alrighty then. Far be it from me to parachute blindly into those waters, however warm and tranquil they may be.

“Well, kemo sabe,” began Cotton. “Let’s find a corner away from prying ears, shall we?”

They had a word with the landlord and were given a coveted spot in the snug.

Once they were completely settled in with jackets stowed, Max tossed the sheet of A4 paper, encased in plastic, on the table. “Delivered the same way,” he said.

“Another one?” said Cotton. He read aloud “‘We are orphanes and fatherlesse, our mothers are as widowes.’”

Max said, “The first quote is from Lamentations. The second quote is from Psalms. I didn’t stop to look up the exact verse for you. The first quote is talking about the suffering following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was about 600
B.C.
”

Carefully, Cotton put the paper in its plastic casing into his briefcase. He exhaled mightily in frustration. “Well, that’s clear as mud. Are we to look for a Babylonian suspect, then?”

“I would look for someone who feels they have been oppressed, someone who feels he has lost everything. Someone without hope for justice who has thus taken justice into his own hands. That last was just a guess, but we do have Thaddeus’s corpse to explain, and it’s too great a coincidence I would suddenly start getting these thundering quotations from an anonymous correspondent.”

“They surely have to be from the killer. Agreed.”

“And there is that hint of recklessness in using the same method of delivery. Although the vicarage is just that bit sheltered from prying eyes that the person wasn’t taking a huge risk. Besides, I have visitors all the time, as well as people dropping off a note rather than disturb me by knocking. No one who saw the delivery being made would question what they saw for a minute.”

They were interrupted by the landlord’s daughter, come to take their order for lunch.

“It’s like this,” Cotton resumed when once again they were alone. “The police surgeon—Wouters—agrees the coroner should have this case brought to his attention. That’s about the most I can get out of him ‘pending further testing.’ In case we’re wrong, you know, he doesn’t want to be accused of sounding the alarm for no reason. But that wound on the victim’s neck—well, it’s damnably hard to see why Thaddeus Bottle would have stabbed him
self
in that way. It doesn’t look like something you could do to yourself accidentally. Furthermore, Wouters says there is a foreign substance in the wound. He’s running further tests, but it’s not a usual substance.”

“He’s thinking poison, of course.”

Cotton mentioned a name.

Max was taken aback. “That’s rather exotic, isn’t it?

“Not in this shrinking world. As it happens, Wouters has come across this once before. We shall see if he can confirm his hunch.”

“Was there a weapon found?”

Cotton nodded appreciatively, giving Max the benefit of his laserlike gray-blue gaze. “No. No, there wasn’t. And that’s part of what cinched it for Wouters. And for me. There should have been a weapon found by the body. We’ll have to have proceedings at the coroner’s court, a mere formality to identify Thaddeus Bottle as the deceased, to have the pathologist’s report read out, and to request an adjournment pending further police inquiries.”

“That will really get the press’s attention, an adjournment,” said Max. “We’ve already got the BBC and at least one enterprising local fellow here.”

“That guy from the
Globe and Bugle.
Right. I thought I saw his car earlier. What a slob. It’s a wonder he can find the steering wheel.”

“Maybe you could give him a parking ticket.”

Cotton smiled. “All this rot you read in the news about journalists and police on the take—I don’t get it. I can hardly stand to brief the media for even ten minutes on a case, let alone take money from them for providing tips on celebrities. Of course, it helps that I don’t know any celebrities. The one I did know, sort of, has now been killed.”

But Max wasn’t really listening. Cotton sat back and watched, amused, as Max ticked over the case in his brain. You could almost see the gears, watch the connections being made and the little synapses fizzing. It was like watching one of those enhanced computer graphic things on the telly.

Max was thinking: A stranger to the village, killed not very long after his arrival. Why? He was an old man. Maybe not a particularly nice old man, and hardly a crowd pleaser in his private life, but at least he posed no physical threat to anyone. Except, perhaps, to Melinda?

After a while, Max voiced some of his thoughts aloud, then added, “Unless … unless he knew something about someone already living here—about one of the villagers. Something that put the person in danger, so he felt he had to strike out to defend himself. As we’ve often said, there are few people living here anymore who are
from
here.”

“Which means,” said Cotton, “someone now living here recognized him from somewhere else—or he recognized that person. Could Thaddeus have been trying a spot of blackmail?”

Max hesitated. “I suppose it could be something like that. Definitely he seemed the type to enjoy the sense of power that can come from holding things over people’s heads. Whatever happened, he must have been a threat to
some
one, and that led to his death.”

“No one we’ve talked with claims to have known him well, although there seems to have been no love lost between him and the members of the Writers’ Square. Frank Cuthbert called him a ‘philistine,’ and he could barely bring himself to be even that polite. I gather Thaddeus was rather hard on one of the other members, and they all stick up for one another. No, unless you count the occasional insomniac who caught Thaddeus in one of his old movies on the telly, no one claims to have really known him.”

“Avoided him, rather,” said Max. “Yes, I can see how that would be true. He was arrogant. But crafty with it. Arrogance usually goes hand in glove with stupidity. Have you noticed? And I don’t think he was stupid.”

“We’ve done some looking into his background, of course, and I was on the phone earlier to his agent. I’m not sure the agent was all that fond of him. Call me crazy, but that’s the impression I got. One thing he said that really struck me. He said of Thaddeus, “He wanted to be a famous actor, and anyone who got in his way, even unwittingly, became the enemy.”

“He was also a playwright,” said Max.

“Yes,” said Cotton. “According to the agent, he was not a bad playwright, either. But nobody recognizes playwrights anymore except perhaps for Tom Stoppard. I say ‘anymore,’ but no one has ever recognized the playwright. It was the recognition Thaddeus craved, and for that you need to be on the stage or in film, not behind the scenes.”

“I promised Melinda I’d have a word with someone who can speak at the service for Thaddeus,” said Max.

“Did you now?”

“Yes. ‘At the behest of the widow’ sort of thing. It seems the desire is for the splashiest funeral possible, but Melinda is worried no one will trouble to be there unless someone, preferably a professional, starts drumming up publicity for the ‘event.’”

“Good luck with that. Altogether I gathered from the agent that Thaddeus went through life leaving in his wake a surge in the demand for apologies—apologies that never arrived, it need hardly be added. But if you’re asking my permission, by all means speak with the agent—I’ll put in a word for you if you’d like. You’ll find him forthright in stating his belief that Thaddeus was a thorn in everyone’s paw, but he has offered to help in any way he can.”

Max nodded. “One thing I noticed at the dinner party,” he said. “Thaddeus is probably not from England originally. Am I right?”

Cotton nodded. “He was born in France, where he was christened Thaddee Landry. The ‘Thaddeus Bottle’ came later, with his adoption. A lot of people from around here have roots going back to France. How did you know?”

“His French was too good, for one thing, although Melinda did mention his first wife was French, which would help explain it.”

“And for another?”

“He made a reference to
the
New College at Oxford. Most people born and raised here and claiming to know firsthand all the theatrical movers and shakers and professors of theater would know to leave off the word
the.
It is called simply New College.”

“You’re quite right. He was adopted by the Bottles when his parents were killed in a car accident. This was early in 1945. The Bottles were distant relatives. I guess they wanted to thoroughly anglicize the boy.”

“Interesting, that.”

Cotton waited for enlightenment on what was interesting, but none was forthcoming, so he said, “I’ve searched the house—King’s Rest. Or rather, my team did so—a thorough search from top to bottom. Technicians: fingerprint people, blood people, all the usual lot.”

“Nothing of interest?” Max asked.

“Unless you count some really execrable artwork, which includes a velvet painting in one of the bathrooms, there’s nothing much to draw our attention,” he told Max. “They’ve taken away the hard drive from the computer in his study to have a look at its contents. At a cursory glance, they won’t find much but some overblown prose and some pretty hilarious attempts at a science fiction book, much of it repurposed Ray Bradbury. But it was old stuff Thaddeus hadn’t accessed for a while.”

“Isn’t it possible he was writing something that portrayed someone in an unflattering light?” Max asked. “A character based on a real person?”

“If so, it must date from some time ago,” said Cotton. “And if you’re thinking that could be a motive, well, from what I saw, he wasn’t exposing anyone’s embezzlement or anything of that nature. We didn’t find any recent writing, or anything that suggested to me that what he was writing was based on a real person. Do writers do that anyway?”

“You could ask the local writers’ group, but I should think most real people translated directly into text would not be all that interesting to the wider world—not unless they’re well known to the broader world in some capacity, like queens and prime ministers.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Cotton. “I think Suzanna Winship’s life might make a fascinating read. Anyway, I’ve got a uniform with literary aspirations looking at all of it. We’ll see if he finds anything suggestive.”

“That would be PC Detton, correct?”

What a memory the man has, thought Cotton. PC Detton, a struggling scriptwriter, was responsible for some of the more colorful police reports handed around the Monkslip-super-Mare police station. He had written some of the reports in the Chedrow Castle case, in which Max had been involved a few months previous.

“I need your help on this more than ever, Max,” said Cotton. “We’ve got a new prosecutor, and she’s already putting pressure on me to nail Melinda for this.”

“It would be nice if she waited for some evidence.”

“She’s ambitious.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“She’s also an idiot.”

“An ambitious idiot. Problem.”

“Yes. Whenever someone in law enforcement puts career advancement first, integrity second, we’re all of us in trouble. We might as well roll up the flag and go home. She also has a tendency to think in clichés, which I find maddening. She’s decided that Melinda must have killed her husband because, A, Melinda was in the house and, B, she was married to Thaddeus. Those are the two items that make me think Melinda would not have done this, at least not in such a way that the spotlight shines brightly on her alone. She’s not the sharpest tool in the box, but she’d know not to poison her husband and then hang around waiting for the poison to take effect. She could have doctored anything she liked in the house and then left town for a while. Poisoned the brandy. Hired a hit man. Anything but involve herself so directly.”

Just then, a shuffling noise alerted them that a waitress was bringing their meal. They got their drinks and serviettes sorted, and waited until they were sure she was out of earshot. Then Cotton said, “Does anyone in the village know Melinda particularly well?”

Max took a small bite of his buttered bread and cheese, shaking his head. “Not sure. I could ask Awena when I see her.”

With finely calibrated irony, Cotton said, “What a good idea. No rush. Whenever you happen to run into her will be fine.”