The Haunted Season (24 page)

The phrase “tilting at windmills” went through his mind.

Owen opened his eyes just briefly before returning to sleep. Max could have sworn his son winked at him.

*   *   *

It was Sunday, and Destiny was conducting the church service. It was her big moment, which made what happened next so unforgivable.

Max fell asleep during her sermon.

Owen, in a departure from his usual placidness, had awakened again and again throughout the night, crying sporadically; drifting off, then seeming to time his awakenings for when his father started to doze. Max had let Awena sleep through it all.

Nodding off in church—his own church—was an unpardonable lapse, despite the good excuse. Besides, it wasn't a particularly long sermon, as sermons went.

Destiny, who had, of course, spotted him in the congregation, was utterly gracious and forgiving afterward, telling him, “God speaks to us in dreams, too, Max. Probably more helpfully and to the point than in any sermon of mine.”

Then she spoiled it by adding, “Besides, I thought you were just concentrating. Thank God you didn't snore.”

Or even, thought Max, emit gentle snuffles, like one of Awena's dormice.

His little nap had gone mostly unnoticed, apart from a steely-looking woman in a hat sitting across the aisle from him. Beside her sat Miss Pitchford, also sporting a sort of alpine confection with a feather stuck in the brim. The steely woman appeared to be visiting from another parish, and was possibly a friend of Miss Pitchford's; she was not a Nether Monkslipper. From the look she gave him, she would have stabbed him awake with her hat pin had she been close enough. Max could picture her composing the letter she would send to the bishop to report Max's unsuitability for his posting. “It is with deep sadness and regret that I, as a loyal member of the One True Church, feel compelled to bring to your most Esteemed's attention a shocking event I myself witnessed this Sunday,” et cetera, et cetera. There were people like that, as Max knew only too well.

He had drifted off just as Destiny had been quoting from Psalm 59: “Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me.” It was an entreaty that blended perfectly with Max's now-fading dream image of a man in sunglasses—a wavering image Max clung to as he swam against the tides of tiredness and again became aware of his surroundings. This disturbing figure in sunglasses was a recurrent visitor to Max's dreamscape, this menacing half man, half creature, a man trying too hard to look cool, wearing glasses that had not been fashionable for years, if they ever had been. Sunglasses with blue lenses and white frames. Silly, juvenile. Glasses the man had worn the day Max had seen him running from the scene of carnage he had created, the explosion in which Paul had been killed. The man had never been apprehended, despite all the resources of MI5 having been brought to bear.

Like a ghost, he'd vanished, and the dreaming Max thought something in this ghost idea might be important, so he tried to hang on to it, fighting wakefulness. The figure shape-shifted now into a Robert Walker look-alike—the actor Robert Walker. Max now realized he could see through him, like a ghost.

A ghost, like the headless horseman that chased Ichabod Crane in the old American story. Ichabod, he remembered, had been a superstitious man.

Of course. Who wrote that story? He couldn't think … Ichabod, such a wonderful old name from the Bible; his mother named him Ichabod, Max remembered. She died from grief, soon after giving birth to him.
Ichabod.

It began to snow, and in the distance he could see a church on a mountaintop—not St. Edwold's, but a church with an onion dome. Max suddenly became aware that he stood in a forest, and as he stood, a headless man raced by on horseback. The eyes of the horse he rode were rolled back in fear, the whites of its eyes showing. The horse was not Foto Finish, as Max first had thought, but a sturdy Russian draft horse running impossibly fast.

He heard a voice—surely the man could not speak? But a booming, sepulchral voice said, “Remember: It takes a thief.” Max stepped away in horror, and as he did so, he nearly tripped over a head where it lay on the ground among piles of fallen leaves. The head was bearded, a long white beard now soaked in blood. Max tried to run, but his feet were planted, stuck to the ground, mired in the muck of mud and blood and rotting leaves. He became aware of the horse, which was watching him—it must have come back—and of the sound of a cricket's chirp. Beside the head—how odd, almost comical, he thought—lay a smashed pumpkin, its carved skull shattered. The face of the headless man grinned up at him, a jack-o'-lantern grin. The face still wore the sunglasses, but it no longer looked like Robert Walker. It looked like Lord Bayer Baaden-Boomethistle.

At which, Max finally jolted awake, stifling a shout of alarm and dropping his hymnal to the stone floor. It made a
thunk!
which caused heads—heads firmly attached to their owners, thank God—to turn in his direction.

He rubbed both hands over his face, desperate with weariness. Between Owen's awakenings and his preoccupation with the murder of Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, all on top of his usual pastoral duties and the delicate political dance he was engaged in with his bishop, he was exhausted. While he knew that this, too, would pass, he started to wonder when it would.

He realized he'd been listening to Destiny's sermon with part of his mind, anyway, and bits of it had seeped into his unconscious, making the usual incomprehensible stew. For she was now talking about Herodias demanding the head of John the Baptist.

Oh my,
thought Max. Good Lord. Given recent events, it was perhaps not the happiest choice of topic. But he knew Destiny had been working on her sermon for ages, polishing it and looking toward the day she'd have a chance to use it, and by this point might not even have seen the parallels.

Stranger things were still to come during this service. The organist began to play the opening notes of hymn number 247 and the choir joined in, warbling with gusto, if a mix of abilities. Awena's voice soared above the rest, sounding like an angel to his ears, Owen apparently content now in his carrier at her side. But, even allowing for the fact he himself generally sang off key, Max couldn't help but notice many in the congregation were singing a different song, until the voices began to trail off and stall in confusion. People were turning to one another, pointing to their hymnals, then pointing to the hymn board.

As in most churches, the board hung at the right of the altar. The numbers for the hymns planned for the service were affixed to a black background using movable plastic white type. Also as usual, the type didn't necessarily match; there had been some attrition over the years, with pieces gone missing, and pieces replaced with numerals in a slightly different font. But what was odd was that the last hymn for the service was to have been number 247.

It was now, according to the hymn board, number 345.

Perhaps some of the village children had been messing about with the board, thought Max. It had happened before. Or perhaps one of the many new visitors to the church had gone in for a spot of mild vandalism. He stole a glance at Miss Steely Eyes. Perhaps … there were all sorts of strangers lately … but no: Such as she would never stoop to such a thing. Clearly there had been some mistake, however it had happened. Max would have to ask the sexton about it.

As the congregation sang on (at least those in the congregation who knew the words to hymn number 247 without having to follow the printed lyrics), he took a copy of the hymnal from the rack attached to the pew in front of him. He flipped through the pages until he found hymn number 345, which happened to be “Here We Come with Gladness.”

That is odd, Max thought. That is very odd indeed.

 

Chapter 18

MAX AND COTTON

Max, on his way to see DCI Cotton, made a slight detour.

As he approached the stables at Totleigh Hall, he heard two voices, one low and importuning, the other low and dismissive. But at the sound of his footsteps, the voices stopped, and when he entered the row of stalls, it appeared he was alone—except, of course, for the horses.

The horse he wanted to see was not hard to find. Each stall was labeled with a big brass plate with the name of its occupant: Gunpowder, Brio, Mamasito Gold. He wondered idly who had the job of keeping the brass to such a high polish. The fellow who wrote
Downton Abbey
would know, he decided.

Foto Finish, a fine-looking dappled gray, stared from one of his enormous eyeballs, taking Max's measure.

“What do you know?” Max whispered to him. “What did you see with those big eyes, eh?” He had taken a carrot from the kitchen at home, where it had been waiting to be diced for Awena's famous Root Soup—she was making a video of how to prepare the recipe to upload to her Web site, and he hoped she wouldn't notice she was a carrot short. He held the offering out on the flat of his palm. The horse pricked up its ears, eying Max with renewed interest, and gently nibbled the carrot off Max's hand with his enormous teeth. “What did you hear with those big ears, fella?” Max ran a hand down the horse's withers and stroked the base of his ears. Did horses like being scratched behind the ears, like a dog? This one apparently did. His ears twitched with hope for another carrot.

Foto Finish seemed docile enough to Max, who wondered idly if the animal even realized he was at the center of a murder investigation. Had he been traumatized at all, perhaps by the smell of blood? Probably not. The whole event was for him a chance to return early to the stables and nothing more.

Leaving this mute witness behind, Max walked from the stables to the side of the house. He had arranged to meet up with DCI Cotton where he'd been given permission to set up temporary headquarters.

Approaching a sparkling pair of French doors into the manor, Max noticed the soil in one of the large vases on the patio, holding a small decorative evergreen, had been disturbed—a bit of soil lay on the ground next to the vase. Squirrels at work, most likely. But he cleared away an inch or two of topsoil and saw a blue plastic object had been buried there. It was egg-shaped and of a size to be held comfortably in the palm of the hand. In the center of the object was an orange button. By instinct and habit, he used a clean handkerchief to pick it up. Experimentally, he pushed the button, expecting perhaps an alarm, but it emitted a little clicking sound.

Rosamund appeared at his elbow, the sound of her footfall deadened by the lush grass of the lawn. Today she was wearing round eyeglasses with pink frames and a lavender frock.

Max asked her what the object was, to confirm his suspicion.

“It's a training clicker. You use it to train animals. You know, dolphins, dogs.”

“Horses?”

“Horses,” she agreed. He could almost see the light switch on as her mind grappled with the implications.

“Where would you buy such a thing?”

She shrugged. She was trying for nonchalance. But failing.

“A pet store. Online. Anywhere. ‘Wherever pet products are sold,' as they say.”

“Have you seen this before?”

“Well, sure. We have horses, don't we? It's used for positive reinforcement: They come to associate the clicker sound with getting a reward, so long as they do whatever positive thing is being asked of them, either by someone on the ground or sitting in the saddle. Bree is very keen on them because she doesn't like the more punitive training methods: She's a real softy, is Bree, when it comes to animals. There are likely several of the things lying about.”

But only one buried in a flowerpot, thought Max. It explained so much.

“I say, you don't think…” she began.

Max nodded. “I do.”

*   *   *

Max showed the clicker to Cotton.

“Here,” he said, handing it over, still wrapped in the handkerchief. “There might be prints on it.”

“Yes, I know,” said Cotton, smiling. “That sort of specialized detective knowledge was mentioned in the brochure that came with my secret decoder ring.”

“Sorry.”

Cotton, being even more a city man than Max, leaped to the same wrong conclusion. “What is this? One of those personal security-alert things?” Cotton looked closer. There was an image of an animal embossed on the plastic. “Oh, I see. I've seen people out walking their dogs with one of these.”

“Right. And they are used for horse training, too.”

Max told him his emerging theory.

“Wow,” said Cotton. “So, premeditated, and planned for a very long time.”

“With a slight question remaining as to who the intended victim was.”

“We've established Foto Finish was the man's usual mount, and that was his standard time of day to ride. There isn't a stable hand who didn't know the drill around here.”

“So it is probably safe to say Lord Baaden-Boomethistle was the target,” said Max. “Besides, everyone else would have been too short of stature for this plan to work.”

“For the wire to hit them right at the neck.”

“Right.” Max paused, thinking. “Has it occurred to you that we're dealing with a real psychopath here?”

“It has indeed. Although it was a ‘clean' kill, there are surer, swifter ways to murder someone. Less cinematic ways. This was … a sort of playing with the victim. A game, and a sick one.”

Max agreed. “Lord Baaden-Boomethistle had a collection of guns in his office, just to name one possible method that might have been used.”

“That would indicate an inside job, though,” said Cotton. “The guns are kept locked. The key is in the desk, but the wife swears he locked the desk whenever he left the room for any length of time.”

“But it might be a sort of double bluff. The killing was done the way it was in order to implicate an outsider, someone other than the family, someone without day-to-day access to the house. The stables are easier to slip in and out of. Have you looked at known associates, friends and acquaintances?”