The Haunted Season (19 page)

“The son may have felt it was necessary to guard his mother's memory by rubbishing the woman who had taken her place. That is a very common reaction to that particular sort of grief.”

Destiny nodded, adding, “The boy clearly had too much time on his hands, and a head stuffed with grievance and guilt. He used his anger to justify his failures, of course—as if his father's remarriage were the reason he never achieved anything.”

Max was mulling over everything she had told him. What were the parallels to the situation at Totleigh Hall? Would grievance and guilt—anger at Bree's quick assumption of power—have led Peregrine to exact a horrible revenge against his father?

Max needed some time to focus on the case. But time was what he never seemed to have. Unless … “Would you take the service for me on Sunday?” he asked her suddenly.

“Of course,” Destiny replied happily. “Any particular topic I should dwell on? ‘Thou shall not kill'?”

He shook his head. “I think they know that already.”

“All but one or two of them, perhaps.”

“I'm afraid you're right about that. Just keep it short. The congregation has a limited attention span.”

*   *   *

An hour later, one of the sudden squalls that could beset the coast sprang up, lashing tree branches against the vicarage windows and rattling the fragile panes. Destiny, watching the storm from her cottage window, decided her hair was better than a barometer—she could always tell when rain was on the way. A great crack of lightning disguised the creak of the gate leading into her front garden, a gate designed more for keeping stray animals out than for keeping the cottage dweller safe from intruders.

Fortunately, Destiny could not linger; she had promised to visit a shut-in parishioner. Stopping just long enough to throw on a coat and rain hat, she went flying down the garden path and out the gate to her car, eyes scrunched against the pelting rain. She never saw the dark figure that stepped back off the path to hide from her in the shadows.

In the same way, a roll of thunder soon disguised the creak of the gate leading into the nearby vicarage garden, and the sound of someone lightly tapping an exploratory rap at the door—a door that proved to be unlocked when that same someone tried the handle.

Max returned from securing all the windows against the storm to find Ms. Eugenia Smith-Ganderfort standing in his study, looking like the proverbial drowned rat. A man with nerves of steel, he actually jumped back an inch at the sight.

Lord help me.

“Eugenia, please—if you'd not walk in unannounced. That is what Mrs. Hooser is for.”

Actually, what Mrs. Hooser was for was anyone's guess, and the skeptical look on Eugenia's face seemed to confirm the absurdity of Max's assertion. But she merely said, “I'm sorry, Father Max. It
is
a vicarage, and thus I thought it was open to all who need your help.”

“Of course it is, just not…”
Oh, what is the use?
“What is it you wanted, Mrs. Smith-Ganderfort?” he said, distancing himself with the formal address. Her disappointment at this change showed in her crestfallen gaze. The wind set up a howl just then beneath the eaves. He imagined he could feel the roof lifting, as if the old place might take flight, with him and her in it.

“Oh, nothing, really. I was … I was just wondering how the murder investigation is coming along.”

Really?
“I don't know a lot about it—”

“Oh, but that's not true. Everyone knows you are at the very center of things. You always are.”

“—at least, nothing I'm at liberty to discuss,” he concluded firmly. What did she imagine as she stood there, water from her slicker dripping onto the vicarage carpet? That he would invite her to sit down and pick over the clues with him?

“That wife of his is not all she pretends to be, you know.”

Another country heard from.
Unfairly or not, while he would be inclined to give credence to whatever Noah or Destiny speculated, he would doubt any contribution of Eugenia's. If Bree reminded Destiny in some Miss Marple–like fashion of a situation in her old village, an innocent accused, there might be something to it. This, however …

“She's unfaithful to him, you know.”

Masking his annoyance, Max said, “If you know anything for certain, you must tell DCI Cotton. I'm not at lib—”

“He'll think I'm just guessing. I'm not guessing. I know. I understand the human heart! I hear its cries. Just because I live in a small village doesn't mean I don't know anything of life. Oh, I know about
life
all right!” She paused, looking at him intently, willing his eyes to meet hers. “Don't you feel it, too, Father Max?”

“Hmm?”

“The electricity. Don't you feel it, too?”

Max, listening with only half his attention—really, he wanted to get back to his work while he had five minutes to himself; Awena would be closing the shop in a few minutes and they had little enough time alone as it was. So he said, “The rug shock the other day, you mean? That was just—”

“You must have felt it, too,” she told him earnestly. “That current that runs between like minds—minds thinking alike.
Being
alike. From the beginning, I've felt it—that … that awareness, like being drawn to like. Soul to soul.”

Oh my Lord.
He reached blindly for his chair and sat down, hard. This was worse than anything Max could have imagined. He felt he was staring, not for the first time in his life, straight into the face of madness. Only this time it was not the egomania of a drug lord or the paranoia of a terrorist steeped in religious mania, but a harmless woman of middle years who was undoubtedly too much alone in the world.

The recent words Destiny had used echoed:
Too much time on her hands.

Was
she harmless?

He debated with himself what was best to do. How to extricate himself without harming or alarming her. In the end, he reminded himself that arguing with a delusional person only gave credence to their beliefs, allowing them to set the agenda. Much better to change the subject.

And better still, to leave the conversation, as gently but decisively as could be.

“I am afraid I must visit Miss Pitchford today,” he told her, pulling his jacket from the back of his chair. “Mrs. Hooser will have to show you out.”

And then, as always, his unfailing kindness kicked in. He could not bear to injure someone so fragile.

“Thank you for stopping by,” he said.

 

Chapter 14

ST. EDWOLD'S

Outside, the storm had become an insistent drizzle shot from a lowering sky. Max grabbed his mackintosh from the row of hooks by the vicarage door and pulled it on over his jacket, tugging the collar up against the wind.

He had told Eugenia the truth about his planned itinerary—but he was headed first to the church,
then
to check on Miss Agnes Pitchford. She had an increasing tendency to fall—a particular worry with her fragile, aging bones, according to Dr. Winship—and so Max would often look in on her.

God would have to forgive him for the almost-white lie—he didn't feel it was wise to give Eugenia a minute-by-minute account of his plans. The topic of his sermon mocked him, but the ends must sometimes justify the means. Must they not? Or was everything to be put in God's hands while mankind stood passively by?

As he set out, Max could see the Cavalier, alight like a beacon against the darkening storm. In springtime, the seductive aroma of hot cross buns would fill the High, a temptation to anyone trying to lose that extra half stone before swimsuit season. The ever-enterprising Elka, who had started her business serving customers on her mother's old wedding china, would also offer egg-shaped Easter biscuits and marzipan bunnies with near-transparent ears. Max's favorite Easter treat was the simnel cake, a tradition believed to have originated in the Middle Ages, with its eleven marzipan balls representing Jesus' disciples, minus the one who had betrayed him.

At this time of year, with Hallowe'en approaching, Elka's shop would be filled with the aroma of bread pudding and plum and blackberry crumble and apple pie and hot spiced drinks, with a bit of rum-soaked cake thrown in to keep her customers warm.

The early church had tried to stop the Samhain practices that welcomed the return of the dead, along with other pagan customs like the sacred springtime cakes, but in the end the church fathers had decided to pick their battles more wisely. As Samhain became All Souls' Day, so the pagan celebrations of the spring equinox had morphed into the Feast of the Annunciation. The date for Easter itself was not fixed and unchanging, but tied in a most paganlike fashion to the phases of the moon. There had been various other Christian fiddles designed to win converts. It was overall a better plan than annihilating people outright, Max felt.

As his steps took him past Miss Pitchford's cottage, he threw a glance over his shoulder to see if Eugenia had followed him to catch him in a lie. She had not. He did see the telltale twitch of Miss Pitchford's lace curtains. She must be feeling better if she was spying on the neighborhood again. “Keeping tabs,” as she called it. “For security's sake.” At least, she had the sense to hang curtains to hide behind, but then she had her standards. Those curtains, to his certain knowledge, were washed and starched every month. That was how she had suffered her last fall, rehanging them from a stepladder. But she would suffer in steely-eyed silence rather than allow the white lace to yellow.

Miss Pitchford would sometimes lure Max to her cottage with the guilty pleasure of a Battenberg cake, a checkered edifice glued together with a hardened sugary frosting. These were special occasions, when Max had a bit of information she was anxious to pry loose, generally having to do with a murder investigation. The fact that Max remained incorruptible despite these blandishments did not stop her from trying. She would sit before him, her black skirt primly tucked over her support hose—pink industrial-grade stockings that looked as if they could be used in bridge construction—and prod and insinuate until Max was forced into a defensive posture, attempting to save her latest target from social ostracism. He was quite certain that given recent events in the village, one of these cakes awaited him, threatening to spoil his dinner. His biggest debate with himself for the moment was whether to allow this to happen.

The sight of Miss Pitchford's curtains returned him to a rare memory of his MI5 days, when he had helped crack a case of corporate espionage. The corporation had been housed in one of those glass monstrosities ubiquitous in London, and Max quickly realized the spy had only to rent a flat across the way and use binoculars to watch through the plate-glass windows as workers logged in to their computers. A search for the flat most recently let had led straight to the culprit.

But his days with Five were long over, put on the shelf with a sigh of relief.

Max passed the churchyard, on the lookout for dormice; Awena had told him a family of them was nesting there. She had come into the vicarage carrying a hazelnut, announcing that she was going to mail it to the Dormouse Officer at the People's Trust for Endangered Species.

“They can tell by the teeth marks if a dormouse has nibbled it open. The hazel dormouse is vanishing and they've started a project to monitor where they live.”

“The Dormouse Officer?”

“Officer. That's right. I'm sure they mean it as a little joke, but it's tremendously serious. The mice are dying out because we've destroyed their native habitats. The Trust has resorted to catch-and-release programs.”

“They must be rather easy to catch,” said Max.

“How, easy?”

“They're generally asleep. It must be a matter of just scooping them up with a spatula and relocating them to a nearby woods. If they're anything like my church mice, they can sleep through anything, even organ and choir practice. Not to mention my sermons.”

Awena smiled. “Dearest, no mouse would think of sleeping through a sermon of yours. Anyway, they generally hibernate between October and May. I understand they do snore a bit.”

“But quietly. Unlike some of the parishioners.”

In the middle of his reverie, a black cat seemed to drop from the sky, landing at his feet. A startled Max realized it had jumped from the top of the church's lych-gate. A pair of yellow eyes stared at him briefly, dismissively. He was reminded of the irredeemable Luther, whom he had often been tempted to excommunicate, as the eccentric poet and vicar of Morwenstow had done to his cat, allegedly for mousing on a Sunday. Unsettled, Max looked behind him to see if the cat was following, or Eugenia, but the cat had vanished. He saw Eugenia slipping into the Cavalier.

He shook off his feeling of unease. What was the superstition about black cats anyway? It had looked a perfectly nice cat, well fed and loved.

Max passed the Plague Tree on his way through the churchyard. The tree was believed to have been planted centuries ago and was said to mark the final resting place of dozens of Nether Monkslippers, who had been deposited there when there were too many corpses to bury and too few people left alive to bury them properly. Max could not walk by the tree without an inward shudder at their fate. Even in a time when medicine could seemingly cure anything, there remained the threat to mankind of the rogue virus that no vaccination could prevent and no treatment cure.

*   *   *

St. Edwold's was as typical an old village English church as could be found. But everyone agreed it was a special place, preserved in an amber glow of rare tranquility. Its very air seemed permeated with a calm that cloaked the visitor on entering.

Max had often thought the building resembled an illuminated manuscript. Skilled masons had chiseled the stone surrounding each of its windows to encase the precious glass; the wood had been embossed at each point of intersection in the roof, the designs picked out by colorful paints.