The Haunted Season (30 page)

“I see.”

“But there's more.”

“More about Peregrine?”

“More about his stepmother.”

Max stopped in the middle of spreading preserves on his toast, his knife, dripping with currant jam, poised in midair. “Do go on.”

“I wonder if there's any more of that wonderful coffee?”

Max went to make another pot. The conversation stilled for a moment as he fed fair-trade coffee beans through a hand grinder.

It transpired that after spotting Peregrine, Destiny heard again the voice of one of the women she'd overheard in the steam room.

“The thing is,” she told Max, “after talking with the dowager—and what an interesting fossil she is; I kept thinking of Mae West—and after recognizing this son as someone I sort of knew by reputation at Oxford, I heard a
voice
I recognized. All of this happening at once made it a bit difficult to process, you see.”

She told him that after passing Peregrine and walking on toward the village and her cottage, she heard a voice: a woman talking. And she followed the voice as she heard it coming through the fog, dumbstruck to realize it was the same disembodied voice she'd heard once before. The voice led her to the templelike summerhouse in the woods.

“It was all
just like
before, in fact, because of the fog. The identical sort of hazy setting triggered the memory of the voice in the ‘fog' of the steam room. There could be no mistake. Problem is, I couldn't see inside the summerhouse through the windows—I didn't dare get that close. They'd have heard me and there'd be no good explanation for my being there.”

“Tell me again what you heard in the steam room,” Max said. “Word for word.”

Destiny made a moue of effort, trying to remember. “I'm not sure I can.” She summarized the overheard conversation as best she could, adding, “The odd part was when she said she knew someone who could obit someone. Who says that? I figured it was some slang term I didn't recognize. But it didn't sound like a positive outcome for someone.”

“Might she have said ‘omit'?”

“Yes, of course, that makes more sense, doesn't it? There was also that odd phrasing I told you about, that ‘not yet.'”

“The voice you heard in the summerhouse last night—it was Lady Baaden-Boomethistle speaking, perhaps?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. Never got the chance to meet the woman—the butler told me she wasn't at home when I came to call. That may or may not have been true, although I think he would have said she wasn't receiving visitors if he'd been trying to cover for her. It wasn't the dowager—I'd just left her, and she'd really have had to hoof it to get that deeply into the woods that quickly.”

“That can be remedied,” said Max thoughtfully. “Hearing Lady B-B's voice, I mean. It is a voice she has polished to a high gloss, rubbing away all traces of her background, and yet it
is
most distinctive. Whom was she talking to?”

“That's what's so frustrating. She was on a rant, really not allowing whoever it was to speak. My sense is that this time, the person she was speaking to was male, though. It might have been Peregrine—perhaps that had been where he was headed in such a hurry, to meet her. She was agitated, her voice sort of urgent—hectoring is the best I can describe it. I'll just scoot over there to the hall before I start my hospital visits today and make sure. See if I can catch her in.”

“Don't you dare do that. Don't even think of it. I'll arrange to have a policewoman with you when you go, or we'll figure out a way you won't be seen.”

“But I—”

“Promise me. Whoever is behind this killing is quite, quite mad. Ruthless. Even given the horrors we are becoming accustomed to seeing and hearing on the news every day, this stands out.”

Off her look, he added, “It's not what you'd expect in Nether Monkslip. I know.”

 

Chapter 22

GASLIGHT

Max rang Cotton after Destiny had left and related the gist of her story. Cotton was in court all that day, testifying in another case, so Max invited him to stop by later that afternoon to talk over a pot of tea laced with whiskey.

He arrived at five. Awena was away taping her cookery show for the BBC at a studio in Monkslip-super-Mare. Max, Owen, and Thea had stayed behind at the vicarage with a fire blazing against a settling autumn chill.

“Destiny and I both read theology at St. Barnabas House,” Max told Cotton. “She was an undergraduate at the time I was a graduate student of the college.”

“And you trust her—her judgment, her testimony?”

“Implicitly, although much of what she knows or thinks she knows may be clouded by time. You know how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be, even given an honest and well-intended witness. She heard that conversation in the steam room many months ago now. And then she overheard two people talking in the forest. She went off the path in the fog and didn't realize quite where she was. Only this time, one of the voices Destiny overheard was, she thinks, male. Although he wasn't really talking, just listening and agreeing with the woman—perhaps pretending to agree. A grunt of assent or protest here and there.”

“Young male? Middle-aged?”

“She couldn't say.”

“Was it Peregrine?”

“Again, not sure. He veered off the path after nearly running into her and might have been heading for the summerhouse. She rather assumed it was he, and I probably would have assumed the same. Otherwise, the woods were teeming with people that night, which seems unlikely.”

“Well, what did she say?” Cotton asked. “The woman who might be Lady B-B, I mean.”

Max cast his own mind back to the exact words as relayed by Destiny. “‘When it's over, we can do as we please. Not much longer now. We'll sell up—the National Trust would kill to get its hands on this place—and we'll go where no one knows us.'” Again he replayed the conversation with Destiny in his mind.

“Bora-Bora, I believe, was mentioned,” Destiny had told Max. “Do you know it?”

“I was there once on a case,” Max had replied absently. “Smuggling. Anything else?”

“No. Just then I snapped a twig underfoot and they heard it, because they shut up right away. I nearly fainted, it was that loud, or so it seemed to me. I had to duck behind a tree, holding my breath. God knows what I'd have done—what they'd have done—if they hadn't decided it was a wild animal in the woods scuffling about. But it spooked them and they ended the conversation.”

Max again summarized all of this for Cotton, who sat studying the play of light on the whiskey bottle that sat between them on the low table.

“She didn't really say anything all that helpful,” Cotton remarked. “‘When it's over'—well, yes, that might mean the murder and the investigation of the murder. But it would have been jolly helpful if she'd said, ‘When they're through investigating me for killing my husband, which, by the way, I actually did do, and I'm not at all sorry, not one little bit. Here, let me put that in writing while I'm thinking about it.'

“But the need to go where no one knows them,” Cotton continued, “somewhere far away, like Bora-Bora … Doesn't Bora-Bora have an extradition treaty with us?”

“Lady Baaden-Boomethistle and whoever it was she was talking with might have more luck heading to some of the larger stretches of Africa if the idea is to disappear. But I think she meant it as a for instance. They'd take the money and run as fast and as far as the money would take them. They'd do a disappearing act, like Lord Lucan.”

“Are we saying we like Lady Baaden-Boomethistle for this murder? Or the son? Or both of them in it together?”

“Certainly. But there are other suspects. The victim was not universally loved. Even the people who cared something about him—and I include his mother, the dowager—seemed to feel he was making choices that threatened them.”

“There are various live-out staff, of course,” said Cotton. “One needs a mob of day help to run a place like theirs. They are out of this picture as suspects, though.”

“How do you know that?”

“We asked them if they had anything to do with the murder and they said no. Seriously, Max, they've all been cleared by my team for the time in question.”

“Which is?”

“Precisely seven. Ish. Nothing has changed there. You know the medical examiner will never be held to anything without twenty minutes wiggle room either way. Even if he'd been an eyewitness to the murder, it seems to me he'd try to stretch the time frame.”

“But no one really needed to be there on the dot,” insisted Max. “They only needed to set the trap, which could have been done maybe a half hour before.”

“Agreed. Still, you couldn't just leave a snare like that hanging out there for long. It would be spotted; people would ask questions; it might harm someone you didn't intend to harm. Our guess is it was put in place only minutes before, and taken down right away. The lord was very particular about his routine. An evening ride, a quick shower and change, dinner at eight.”

“I see. That means whoever did this had to stand about, hiding and waiting.”

“Yes.”

“And, of course, there is a houseful of people who knew the routine well—who might have chatted idly about it, and to anyone for miles around.”

“What do you see as the next step?” Cotton asked.

“Right at the moment, I'm thinking in terms of ‘dynamic inactivity.'”

“What?”

“What Harvey Schlossberg, a well-known hostage negotiator, used to call ‘dynamic inactivity.' In other words, if all else fails, you wait and do nothing. That in itself may flush out your suspect. The bad guys get as tired and restless and antsy and bored as we do.”

“Ah. Very Zen-like. Well, grasshopper, I'm not sure that won't lead to all the clues just drying up, in this case.”

Max hid a smile by taking a sip of his tea. If anyone lived an existence like an illustration from
Zen Life,
it was Cotton.

“The clues, such as they are, have already dried up,” said Max. “I do think the solution in this case is more psychological than forensic.”

“Meaning?”

“The suspect may let something slip if left alone—left to his or her own devices. The waiting makes most people anxious, and can make them act irrationally—make them give the game away.”

“I'm afraid I must come down on the side of actually doing something, Max. My super will raise objections if I'm found in downward-facing child pose when I'm supposed to be investigating in my usual dynamic and results-oriented way.”

“It's called simply ‘child pose,'” corrected Max. Because of Awena, he could command an entirely new vocabulary. “You're mixing it with downward-facing dog pose.”

“If you say so. How about if I bring the ‘child' in to help with our inquiries? Peregrine? From what Destiny has said, he's gone to some trouble to change his appearance, his manner. The most likely reason is that he's up to his neck in this. Oh, sorry—what an unfortunate choice of words.”

Max said merely, “It's an idea.”

Cotton gathered that while it was an idea, it was a wrong one. Max was too diplomatic to come right out and dismiss any plan or theory. Also, he was too wise not to know the wildest ideas were sometimes the ideas closest to the truth.

“Well, what've
you
got?” Cotton asked.

“I have an idea who's behind it.”

“So do I. But now I hear I'm wrong.”

“My concern is we'll never be able to make a case that will stick.” He shifted in his chair. “Have you got any further with the search warrant?”

“Yes. He went along with it, dying of curiosity but meek as a lamb. ‘Anything to be of help.' It may take a while for us to find what we want. There's always a backlog, you know.
If
there is something to find.”

But Max had moved on, pursuing a different thought. “The question of motive is puzzling me still,” he said. He reached over and topped up Cotton's drink, then his own. “This crime took a lot of motivation to be done the way it was done, even given that the killer is unbalanced. There was no going back once it was set in motion.”

“Good old greed? Lust runs a close second, in my experience. Mindless hatred spinning out of control—not for a crime like this, I don't think. This was not spontaneous.”

“But hatred may well have played a part. I suppose everything you say is correct. And it might be a combination of motives. It generally is.”

“Lady B-B has got to be behind this,” said Cotton. “She paid a hit man—something like that. But our usual informants in that department have nothing to contribute this time.”

Max was shaking his head. “She strikes me as someone who will do whatever is necessary to remain in control, and to protect herself above all. So if she's involved, she thought this through and she wouldn't have casually recruited from the local criminal population. She is not a risk taker in that way—in her mind, it is for other people to take risks on her behalf.

“The thing is, Lady B-B was doing fine and was very well off just staying with her husband—so long as she could keep him in the dark. Scandal would not be part of her plan; divorce would be out of the question. She was comfortable. Why upset the applecart? She didn't need to run off with Peregrine or with anyone. She just needed to let things be.

“If she and Peregrine, especially, were in a relationship, it was bound to bring scandal down on both of them. However, his fear would be that he would be disinherited by his father, whose anger over this would be epic, I'd imagine. That fear existed only so long as Lord Baaden-Boomethistle lived. The risk has been eliminated. The boy can relax. And so can she. He inherits, and she lives happily ever after
with him
—if she chooses. After a certain amount of time, the scandal would pass. I think she'd be comfortable with that. I'm not sure he would be. Thus the need to make him think an island escape was in his future.”