The Haunted Season (27 page)

Max thought back to his conversation with Candice, the younger of the two nannies. She had not indicated a state of united marital harmony with the first Lady B-B such as Bree was describing. Was one of these two beautiful young women lying? Max wondered. Or was it possible that the Lord Baaden-Boomethistle Candice knew had changed his spots when his wife died? Shock and grief could alter people, he knew. A shocking loss, out of the blue, could make one reassess. Max had learned that at firsthand.

“And the children? I know sometimes children don't really welcome a new stepmother. Especially when they've lost their own mother in a tragic way.”

She nodded her head in acknowledgment, but then she shrugged.

“The fact I was near them in age helped, I think. I didn't try to mother them. I was not at all interested in mothering them.”

At least that's honest, thought Max. Why pretend what you don't feel? And why try to force yourself in where you're not wanted? There was wisdom in that. The relationship might be one of benign neglect on all sides, thought Max. The fact that they—the stepmother and the boy and the girl—were of a similar age did make nonsense of any idea that she would be a mother to them, an idea she reinforced with her next sentence.

“Their own mother was a perfectly nice woman and I am sure quite irreplaceable.”

“You were their friend, perhaps.”

“I also didn't want to be friends particularly. I choose my friends more carefully than that, Vicar. Oh, I see I've shocked you. I didn't mean to. It's just that I don't find I have anything in common with her, or him, especially, although I did try. But he'd launch into these idiot defenses of things that don't need defending. Long-winded diatribes against the government and its policies. I'm sure he's right, but I simply don't care. Except when it comes to attempts to ban foxhunting completely, I pay no attention to what goes on at Whitehall.”

Seeing Max's continued surprised expression, she softened her tone.

“I'm not a motherly type,” she went on insistently. “Which is good—the children were young adults, rebelling against everything, by the time I came along. They would have rejected any nurturing attempts, from anyone. It's kind of who they are.”

“So, who took care of them?”

Again a don't-care shrug. “They were away at school most of the time. There were scads of people taking care of them. I'm just saying I wasn't one of them. It isn't done in these rarified families to keep the children home.” She did not add “Thank God,” but he sensed if she'd been talking to anyone but him, she might have.

Max remembered a much-wanted child who had been kidnapped—what had come to be called the Monkbury Murder Case. Here it was different: Here the children of the family did not seem to be much wanted by anyone. They had had only the love of their mother, and she was taken from them. Max felt a surge of pity.

Max thought also of the current Lady Baaden-Boomethistle in a loveless marriage with her lord—if loveless it had been. He supposed it was only natural one so young and beautiful might turn her affections elsewhere; Cotton had said there were rumors of an affair. Or affairs, plural. But it made a nonsense of her marriage vows. Why had she entered into the marriage in the first place? For social prestige? For a little bit of money?

Now he sounded like that policewoman in
Fargo.
Maybe the love at first sight she claimed to have felt had simply worn off. It wouldn't be the first time in history that had happened.

Max wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. All the bad press the woman had received had undoubtedly colored his opinion, in spite of his best efforts. He was reminded, oddly, of a woman he had known in his MI5 days, an expert on serial killers. Before meeting her, he had expected to find a person of sharp edges, clad in leather and red lipstick and jangling metal, a woman who subsisted on wine and canapés, someone who drank to forget what she knew. Instead, he'd been introduced to a woman who fit the stereotype of a favorite granny. She had plied him with tea and biscuits and asked with genuine concern about his life in Five—how he was holding up to the pressure. After half an hour in her presence, he'd felt he'd been through a sort of healing therapy session.

He remembered something else Awena had told him once about the gossip swirling around Bree: “Everything negative I know about her, I came to realize, I heard from the daughter at first- or secondhand. From Rosamund. And only from her.”

“But you believed it?”

Awena's fantastic pale eyes, always ablaze with life, had caught new fire.

“Yes, sadly. That's the invidious thing about nasty-minded gossip. It's seldom the truth that sticks in your mind, just the ugly details.”

“Should I be frightened?” Bree asked him now, turning from grooming the horse, her own large eyes widened in a classic, silent-film-star look of fear. It was like being caught in the rays of a searchlight, and it seemed to be a calculated attempt to enlist him as her protector. “What if I was the intended target?” she elaborated. “I'm always out riding, and I ride Foto Finish a lot. Did anyone think of that?”

“No. I mean, yes, they did. It seems to have been a … a finely calibrated crime. With one intended victim only.”

“Oh.”

“Do you have any thoughts about what happened? Any theories at all? Did
he
have any reason to fear for his life? Had he been anxious or worried about anything lately?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly with either concentration in forming her answer or suspicion of Max's motive in asking the questions. Again, small white teeth nibbled at her lower lip. In truth, Max didn't know why the questions about fear had occurred to him, but past experience had taught him there was often a clue in the way his thoughts were trending—if only he could fathom what it was.

“He was a powerful man. Powerful men make enemies,” she said at last. This was a somewhat cleaned-up version of what she had told Cotton. Perhaps she had taken a moment to ponder the wisdom of being so frank with the authorities.

“I see.” He paused a moment to see if she'd say more. “Well, I am, of course, willing to help you with arranging the services for your husband,” he told her. “Perhaps his son…”

“Would wish to be consulted? I suppose. Maybe.”

“They were not close?”

“It was not a strong relationship, no,” she replied. “Most parents care about their flesh and blood children simply because they are flesh and blood. Some care only about their legacy—their children as their legacy. A reflection of themselves.” She stopped, as if something had just occurred to her. “Peregrine is Lord Baaden-Boomethistle now. I suppose Pater Baaden-Boomethistle would be pleased by that, if he were still around.” She paused, adding, “Or perhaps not. His father thought Peregrine wasn't living up to his potential.”

“And you?”

“I never thought he had any potential.”

Ouch.
“Really?

“He's rather a fatuous young man. It remains to be seen if he'll outgrow that, if the added responsibilities of his title will bring him up to the mark. But he's been protected and cosseted and spoon-fed all his life, programmed into becoming the vapid, mindless oaf you see today. I don't believe the rumors he is gay. He has always struck me as rather a gloomy sort of person. A gloomy oaf. Anyway, his gayness is anybody's guess, but overall, I think not. He seems to be neither here nor there, and it is far more likely he is unpopular with members of both sexes.”

Ouch,
thought Max again. Peregrine thus disposed of, she returned her attention to the horse. He was taken aback by her harshness, by the hard words emerging incongruously from the petal pink, childlike lips. The initially demure manner had slipped. Certainly Peregrine, from what little he knew of him, would not win any awards for intellect, but even so—

“How do you and your stepdaughter get along?”

“I can stand her in small doses.” She paused and added, “I daresay she feels the same way about me.”

Again she turned away from Foto Finish to look at him. “Actually, she's not around that much. And he—generally he's away, too, of course, but even before that … He's a
strange
boy. Given to mooching about on his own. I never know quite what he's up to. His father allowed him to take his meals alone, in his room.”

That struck Max as a sad commentary right there. This kid on his own all day and even during the dinner hour, when most families manage a passing check-in with one another. And then there was the comment that he was given to mooching about. Looked at another way, a lot can be seen and overheard when one mooches about on one's own. A lot of trouble gotten up to, as well.

He did not fail to notice she had switched the conversation away from Rosamund and back to Peregrine. And he wondered why.

“I did hear there was sometimes sparring at mealtimes.”

“Oh, I suppose. There was a bit of business at breakfast the other day. No worse than the usual. Peregrine had done something his father disliked. Between us, I think he was about to be sent down from university. In fact, he seemed to have intercepted a message from his tutor to that effect—the tutor and my husband were great friends.”

“But there was already something of an atmosphere before Peregrine arrived home?” Max was fishing, but this kind of rancor generally thrived in a preexisting atmosphere.

“Was there? I don't recall particularly that there was.” She looked up at him, calmly assessing, a look of mild humor on her face. “You are thinking I am too hard on him,” she said. “You don't know him as well as I do, Vicar—some people bring trouble wherever they go. So you mustn't rush to judge me.”

They were words of annoyance but spoken in that silky, insinuating voice, so that the listener was not quite sure where he stood.

“You seem, if you don't mind my saying so, a bit hostile toward him.”

“You'd be hostile, too, if he'd slandered you to anyone who would listen. He and Rosamund, and that floozy grandmother of theirs. I've always been in a bad position, all of them running their mouths against me. Accusations…”

“I wasn't aware—”

“I've had nothing to do with the estate manager,” she rushed on hotly. “With Bill Travis. That slandering, horrible woman.”

He could see how tiresome her position was. No one enjoyed being disliked, especially when accusers were stacked three against one.

“Yes, the standards are exacting for being a member of this family,” she said. “But if you are thinking I killed my husband to get out from under, I was in Monkslip-super-Mare at the time it happened. I have an alibi: shopping, having lunch, followed by more shopping—with witnesses. I ran into some people from the village while I was there. First it was Elka Garth. Then I saw Chanel Dirkson. We chatted a long while. You know how it is with the villagers. You can't just say hello; you have to stay and have a real chin-wag. This was around seven in the evening. Then I stayed the night in Monkslip Parva. With a
girl
friend and her family.”

“Yes, DCI Cotton told me you had an alibi.”

“You don't believe me?” When he did not reply, she added sulkily, silkily, that pretty pout cushioning her words, “You seem to be very chummy with the DCI.”

“We go back a long way. We first met when I was appearing as a character witness in court, for a young lad who'd gone astray with some bad companions. DCI Cotton was there, representing the forces of law and order.”

“Did it work?”

“Hmm? The character witnessing, you mean? Yes. The lad was let off with a warning. And when last seen, he lives surrounded by people who care about him. He's been luckier than most, and more important, he has the wit to realize it.”

“I see.” She did not elaborate on what she saw. She had been brushing Foto Finish's mane; now she began to separate strands of hair, weaving them into a braid along his neck. Max had never seen this done before. Again he wondered at the love and pampering that went into maintaining this particular horse, probably all the horses here. Did they spoil from the attention, like some people, or did it make them into better horses? The trifling thought led him back to the subject of the young lord of the manor, Peregrine.

“You and Lord Baaden-Boomethistle had been married five years, is that right? How did Peregrine react initially to the marriage?”

“How did he react?” She stopped her work, almost as if pausing to consider the subject for the first time. She seemed to settle on truthfulness as an answer, reasoning quite rightly that Max already knew or could soon find out the truth. “He was almost violently opposed to the marriage, especially at first. I suppose we hadn't prepared him for it—my husband was not one to ask permission or input, particularly from his son. We didn't exactly poll everyone for their views, you know. We were in love.” Again that insistence, Max noted. “So we had … some bad weeks. Finally, Peregrine agreed to see a shrink. He went weekly for well over a year. It seemed to calm him. I think what really made the difference was that he simply grew out of the bratty stage and came to realize his father had a right to a happy life, too, like anyone else.”

“Would you tell me the name of the doctor he visited?”

She named a Harley Street specialist of great renown. Max had actually met him at a religious conference once—something about the nation's spiritual crisis and the effect on mental health. There were many people in search of a church or simply something to believe in; many more who had given up on religion entirely. The majority of the latter felt the need to talk about their lack of religion, which Max and the doctor found interesting in itself. Weren't those people just protesting too much?

The doctor had struck Max as being saner than many of his colleagues. He wondered at the ethics of trying to get him to talk about Peregrine, but he realized the chances the man would be willing to breach patient confidentiality were a million to one against. Max would pass along the information to Cotton and let him worry about it.