The Haunted Season (28 page)

“And the dowager?” He could guess the two got along like the mongoose and the snake, but he left the question open-ended.

“I think she couldn't get through the day if she didn't first give everything a base coat of romance” was the silky reply. “In my case, though, she seems to have suspended her usual methods. For me, we are treated to the paranoia and dark worldview of the suspense author. She would be better off focusing her suspicions on Peregrine, but of course she can't allow that into her dollhouse-size mind.”

She turned to concentrate on beautifying Foto Finish, at moments nuzzling her face against the horse's cheek. Trying to hide her expression? wondered Max. Or simply overcome by her rather cloying affection for the horse? She exuded such an air of playacting, Max would have bet the former. For she was hiding
some
thing; no one could be as untouched as she appeared to be about her husband's death—whether or not she were responsible for it. Her world had just been turned—if not turned upside down, then reshaped and molded into an entirely new form and future. Again she busied herself stroking the animal's neck. Even Foto Finish seemed to tire of this extravagant display of fondness, and, snorting, he suddenly threw his head back, stepping away from her.

“You aren't suggesting that Peregrine had anything to do with this, are you?”

She looked straight at Max now. He held her gaze, waiting, wondering if she was trying to toss the boy completely into it. Remembering she herself was not much more than a girl didn't help the dislike he felt for her.

“That in fact is one of
his
theories. That I'm tossing him into it. He is full of … theories. Peregrine believes the earth was populated by aliens. Seriously. So whatever he's telling you, take it with a grain of salt. Or Kryptonite.”

Max knew Peregrine liked to hang out at Awena's Godessspell shop, which drew an eclectic crowd at times. “There's no harm in him, Max,” Awena had told him. “He thinks aliens built Stonehenge and are trying to communicate with us using crop circles, but so do a lot of people. He'll outgrow it.”

Max found Bree's manner so disconcerting, he decided on a gamble, trying to shake her seemingly unshakable poise.

“I am afraid I have heard the other rumors,” he said. “About the estate manager, for one example.”

A flicker of apprehension crossed her face, like the flash of light through tree branches blown by the wind. He remembered the indistinguishable voices he'd heard as he'd approached the stables earlier. But she collected herself and said with every appearance of coming clean, “My husband and I were happy together for a very long while. Happier than most, I daresay.”

“And then?”

She shrugged.

“And then we weren't.” She looked as if she might go on and then decided against it. She closed her mouth so tightly, he would not have been surprised to see her pantomime turning a key in a lock. As it was, she looked defiant, but scared.

“This is rather bad timing for you, isn't it?” said Max, not entirely without sympathy. “Apart from losing your husband, the timing of losing him is a bit awkward, I mean.”

She relaxed her shoulders and rubbed a hand across the back of her neck in a gesture that spoke of tensions being released.

“I am sorry,” she said, surprising him. “I didn't mean to make it sound as if that's my first concern. Of course losing my husband is awful; he was good to me. He gave me a good life. But this all looks rather … you know.”

“Convenient.”

“Yes, too convenient. And it is anything but. The police are bound to look at the whole thing with suspicion. We've all seen those shows on the telly. The spouse is the first suspect.”

“Or in this case, the spouse's lover.”

“Oh my God, Max. What am I going to do?”

Max,
was it now. The appeal to the man, not the priest. But again, he was not without sympathy. If one believed in divine punishment and retribution, here was a doozy of an example. In the midst of a reckless affair, her husband is killed, and she and this man are thrown right into the lineup of suspects—put right at the head of that line. But Max knew there was a certain class of criminal that never considered or cared about appearances. There was a type of personality that believed it was immune and could get away, literally, with murder. He had met many such in his MI5 days, many of them sociopaths.

And Lady Baaden-Boomethistle was in a special category, bestowed by her God-given looks—there was no question. Possessed of a natural, flawless, and effortless beauty, she must be so used to having men open doors for her and rush to do her bidding that she wouldn't give it a second thought. The way one takes health for granted until one's health fails. Thus would Lady Baaden-Boomethistle go through her days, finding the universe organized to her liking, until old age caught up with her at last.

Such thoughtless, innate beauty might make one come to believe one was invincible.

As for getting men to do one's bidding—might that even include murder?

There was a great rectangle of hay just outside Foto Finish's stall, and now, as if suddenly tiring, she moved to sit atop it. She removed her boots and tucked her stocking feet beneath her. It was a casual movement, a strangely intimate one, as though she were in her bedroom, preparing to change for dinner. Max felt this sort of unconscious act on her part was part of her charm. She was not being rude, never that; she was simply following whatever impulse came into her head. It was a gesture that reminded him of someone, and then he realized that just so did Awena sometimes sit, graceful and relaxed and serenely unaware.

He didn't reply, and she continued to gaze at him, although with a certain lessening of favor. With a slight change of gears, and a certain edge to the little-girl tone, she said, “When can we arrange for the … how do you say it? Celebration … of his life?” Had the pause in her last sentence gone on a bit too long?

For
celebration
was clearly the key word as far as she was concerned.

“I'll be in touch,” Max told her. Relenting a bit, for his tone had been abrupt, he added, “‘Jesus, Son of Mary,' number three sixty-three, is a favorite with many.”

She looked as if she couldn't care less if they sang ABBA's greatest hits. Then she surprised him by saying, almost shyly, “I always liked ‘I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.' Could we have that, do you think?”

He smiled. “Of course. You may choose whatever you like.”

*   *   *

Bree watched Max's back as he walked away, out of the stables, headed toward the main house. Really, she thought.
Such
a dishy man; it was just ridiculous. But she had not been brought up in religion and she had no use for religious people. Although she found them wonderfully pliable, particularly the men, she trusted none of them.

And so she found the several small untruths she had told Max bothered her not at all.

A dark figure emerged from one of the stalls at the back of the stables.

“That was perfect.” Foto Finish pricked up his ears at the sound of the deep, warm voice.

“Perfect,” the voice repeated. “You played him brilliantly.”

 

Chapter 20

MAX AND THE DOWAGER

The Dowager Baaden-Boomethistle received Max with a show of pleasure, tempered by a nicely calculated recognition that while he was not to the manor born, he was the village vicar and his office must be accorded respect. She established this fine distinction by addressing him as Father Maxen and pointing him into a low seat before her own place on the sofa. Max ignored the gesture and sat in the chair nearest her.

“Please call me Father Max,” he said. “Or Vicar, if you prefer. I am most deeply sorry for your loss, Lady Baaden-Boomethistle.”

“It is dreadful. Simply dreadful. To lose an only son. And in such a common way.”

“You mean … for him to have been killed in such a way.”

“Murdered!” she said.

Max reflected that there was in fact a long tradition of those in the upper classes getting themselves murdered. While he had never seen statistics to back up the premise, certainly the nobs put themselves in the way of offending people, and perhaps more often than did those in the lower classes. After all, they had wider scope and opportunity to give offense.

She had taken a handkerchief from inside the long sleeve of her low-cut black dress and was now dabbing at her eyes. The handkerchief came away spotted with black goo, the makeup she liberally applied to her false lashes. He also noticed that one corner of a false lash had come loose, giving her a startled, cockeyed appearance. He reminded himself that while snob she might be, she was a mother mourning her son.

“I am so sorry,” he repeated.

She nodded, taking this as her due. She also was busy taking Max's measure: tall and striking, she thought, her romantic writer's brain automatically flipping through the pages of her internal dictionary. A dashing, heroic figure, utterly,
melt
ingly masculine, hard-bodied and with the slightest and
most
attractive hint of the rogue playing at his edges. And those gloriously penetrating gray eyes! If, she thought, I were twenty years younger. Even ten years younger! And not in mourning. And if he were not married.
Well.
Not that the married part had always been an impediment, but now she had her position to consider. That business with Lord Stag-Hazen did follow her around so, his rather ill-bred wife kicking up such a tiresome fuss, and she—

“I did wonder if you might be willing to talk with me about the, well, the atmosphere in the house in the days leading up to your son's demise,” Max Tudor was saying.

She trembled ever so slightly and then threw back her bejeweled and feathered shoulders, braced to withstand any onslaught of questions, however unseemly.

“We must get to the bottom of this,” she said, and Max could only agree. “Someone tried to attack me the other day as I was taking my constitutional in the woods. Only my screams frightened them away. And I think someone tried to break into my bedroom from the tree branch outside my window. I
told
the gardener that branch should be cut down.”

Max took a moment to consider how much fact was mixed with fantasy here, but meanwhile, she had hared off in a new narrative direction.

“You must understand, Father, how out of my element I am here. I've led a rather sheltered life—oh, I'll admit it! So I don't know how I can help with such a sordid matter. I can but try!”

She cast him a look of bewildered innocence, a look exquisitely misjudged for her shrewd, rather worldly audience. Max decided to let pass this deft burnishing of past peccadilloes. After a suitably respectful pause to take in his plush surroundings—really, it was as if he'd stumbled onto a set for
Downton Abbey
—he said, “You have no ideas of your own, then. About what might be behind this?”

“Well … since you ask. My daughter-in-law is not all she might be. Oh, I'll say no more about it! Nothing could pry more out of me. I shall not stoop to it! But, then again, I suppose I must not conceal what I know. My son's killer must be caught! She and the groom … the estate manager … I have seen them together, you know.”

Max decided to feign ignorance. “Really?”

“There could be no mistake.” She said this with an operatic gesture, throwing back her head and placing the back of one hand against her temple as she gazed at the ceiling. “They were in the pagoda. Caught them in flagrante, I did. I was that shocked.” She seemed to recall the sheltered life she had claimed to lead, and opening her eyes wide, fingers splayed against her chin, she assumed a look of innocence outraged this time. She and Bree must have the same acting coach, reflected Max.

The pagoda … that little folly or summerhouse in the woods. So his guess as to its alternate uses had been right.

He struggled to come up with something that would drag her attention down to the level of normal conversation. Finally, he came out with a question: “When did you last see your son that day?”

“In the morning, was it? Really, I'm not sure. When I am writing my little books, it is like I'm in a trance. It's a form of magic, you know. I could be anywhere, in any time period. There was, as I recall, conflict at the breakfast table earlier that week between Bree and Peregrine. I have a little confession to make.…”

“Oh, yes?”

She leaned in closer to him. “I borrowed some of the conflict of that morning for a scene I was writing. Really, the passions and the struggles between that little trollop and everyone else—the hostility and bad blood! I rather thought it might make an intriguing title for the book.
The Trollop and the Duke
. Or perhaps,
Prince
would be better.”

Why hold back? Max wondered. Why not go for it with
Emperor
?

“She came from nowhere, you know. Bree. Even her name—so common. She sounds like a canapé.”

For the second time that day, Max was taken aback by the viciousness and backbiting in this little group. Seeing the truth would not be easy: There were so many shades of dark running through this family tapestry.

Particularly since the dowager's past, by all reports, would not hold up well to scrutiny, and she would do what she could to hinder the investigation in that regard. As Cotton had speculated, perhaps her own past was the reason she felt she understood Bree and her motivations so well. Or was it simple jealousy?

“How did they meet, Bree and your son?” Max asked, certain she would have her own spin on what he knew of the situation. “I know he was a widower.…”

“You are quite correct,” she drawled, her voice dripping with venom. “His wife—lovely woman; a Pratt-Knodlebaum, you know—was barely in her grave or so it seemed. My son went to a horse show or auction or something like that and Bree made a dead set at him.”