The Haunted Season (33 page)

“I know. It took me a while to realize what a country boy would have known right away.”

“We have got,” said Cotton, “to get more local farm people to join the force. Musteile doesn't count.”

“So Chanel—ironically, the self-help guru—became besotted with Bree almost from the moment she moved to the village?” asked Awena. “A case of love at first sight?”

“Something like that,” said Max, remembering Bree's comment that Chris Marlowe had it right.

“It may not have been first sight—we're looking into that,” said Cotton. “They are both from Wiltshire originally. But first sight or old friendship, they forged a bond either way. I gather Bree is rather good at forging bonds.”

“Or at making other people believe they have a bond with her,” suggested Max.

“She killed at Bree's unspoken bidding,” said Cotton. “That took some doing.”

“Shades of Salome,” Max pointed out, “the topic of Destiny's recent sermon. Rather, Herodias and her dutiful dancing daughter, whom we have come to call Salome. What a totally appalling mother, I have always thought. Pushing your daughter to dance before your husband—probably an erotic sort of hoochie coochie, snaring him into getting your enemy John the Baptist killed for you.”

Awena and Cotton looked at each other and laughed. “Hoochie coochie?” said Awena. “Honestly, Max. Who says that anymore?”

“What?” said Max. He was mildly irritated—not that they were laughing at him, the old fuddy-duddy, but that their laughter had distracted him from an idea he'd been chasing. Something struggled to emerge from the depths of his mind, something slippery and dark, a murky connection that slithered maddeningly out of reach just as he reached to retrieve it. He thought it was connected with the dream he'd had in church, the dream that had given him the idea for shaking the truth out of Peregrine. He'd awakened, mortified to realize he'd surfaced in the middle of Destiny's sermon. What was it that eluded him now, though? The ghost? The pumpkin?

“I do, apparently,” he told them. “Hoochie coochie is a time-honored and useful phrase.” Again, Cotton and Awena exchanged glances. “Anyway, a woman who didn't do the actual killing but had it done for her. A woman well aware of her power to command. In any event, the purpose was to free Bree from a loveless, abusive marriage. Something Chanel felt she knew all about, having survived a loveless and abusive marriage of her own.”

“Bree,” put in Cotton, “was stringing along both Peregrine and Chanel. Chanel was particularly useful to her because she knows everything about horses. Because, as she tells us, she grew up on a farm—a horse farm.”

“I guess that is why Brat Farrar came to mind,” said Awena. “The story with the rogue horse.” Owen was stirring now but listening intently. He liked the sounds of adults talking, and would listen, all eyes and ears, completely still, drinking everything in. Like his father, thought Awena.

“Not completely,” said Max. Half of his mind was still on the rogue idea that had popped into his head and immediately vanished. Deliberately, he released the thought now, letting go of it like a kite on a string, knowing that was the only way it might return. “Only later did I realize the other reason the Brat Farrar story stuck in my head. The story has to do with an imposter, a man who passes himself off as a rightful heir. In this case, there was no imposter, but the creation of a rightful heir where there had been none before.”

 

Chapter 25

BORN AND BRED

“I don't follow, Max,” said Awena. “How do you create an heir? Apart from the usual way, that is.”

“By adopting one,” Max replied. “Or by stealing one. In this case, a foundling was adopted to ensure the family line did not die out entirely, at least in the eyes of the world. Only the adoption was kept secret, from everyone. It was, it turns out, a deadly secret.” Max was coming to think this was a fairly common occurrence among the families at a certain stratum of high society. Was anyone up there who he thought he was? Modern DNA would surely put a stop to this sort of deception, but then only if a deception were suspected.

That Peregrine was adopted was probably known only by the man he called father—and his father, when angry, had threatened to disinherit Peregrine, telling him he was no son of his. Did Bree know? Max wondered. Did her husband tell her Peregrine was not his heir? Was not of his flesh and blood? Max thought it likely.

Because that was the end of her need for Peregrine. Max imagined the moment her husband had confided Peregrine's true status to her would coincide precisely with the day she started to ease out of her relationship with Peregrine. For she would be out on her ear if their affair were uncovered, and Peregrine would be out, too, with no inheritance for them to live on. For her to continue her relationship with him was simply too risky—foolhardy and with no payoff in the end.

Max also thought, and wanted to believe, that Peregrine would have balked at any suggestion he help Bree murder her husband. Peregrine was no angel, but Max thought he would draw the line at doing anything so completely amoral as to kill the only father he had ever known.

So Bree had had to look elsewhere for help in killing her husband.

The case in the end really had little to do with horses, Max reflected, except that a horse had been used as the means to an end. There was something clinical and detached about the method used—like killing secondhand. A knife or gun would have been a more direct and intimate method.

And perhaps it had been decided that was the problem with using a more conventional method: An opponent could dodge a bullet, or overcome a woman wielding a knife.

Finding the clicker had been pure chance, even though squirrels liked to dig wherever soil had been recently disturbed. Perhaps it had been Bree who had buried it in the vase on the patio, figuring it would not be found, or, if found, could not be traced to her. Having left it in a temporarily safe hiding place, she probably decided it was better not to return too soon to dig it out.

So many red herrings. The case had to do with love or lust, call it what you will—Chanel's wish to free the desired one of an unhappy marriage, in the mistaken belief it would win her heart. There was also some element of greed, of course. A beloved with a huge inheritance would be an improvement on a beloved broken financially by a prenup.

“The Brat Farrar story nearly led me astray,” said Max aloud. “There is a rogue horse in that book, as you say, but what we were dealing with here was just the opposite of a rogue. Not a “killer” horse but a perfectly trained, even docile, one.

“There was also an heir in that story making false claims to an inheritance, but the heir in this case wasn't attempting to impersonate anyone. He honestly did not know he'd been substituted into his position almost from birth.

“One further parallel is that, like Brat Farrar, Bree is a true horse lover. She is also charming and utterly dishonest.”

“Back up, back up,” said Awena. “Peregrine is not the heir to Totleigh Hall?”

“No,” said Cotton. “He is not his father's son. He agreed to let us test his DNA—he seemed to think it had something to do with the crime scene. And since he knew he had nothing to do with the setup for his father's grisly death, he was more than happy to comply.”

“Really,” said Awena, arching one perfect dark eyebrow.

“It was your husband's idea,” Cotton told her.

“Really,” she said again.

“Still, it didn't clear Peregrine as a suspect,” said Cotton, “because he may have had no clue he was not the heir. It is likely Bree didn't know this, either, going into the relationship—that he was not eligible to inherit in the first place. Otherwise, it is very doubtful she'd have wasted time on him.”

“So where exactly did Peregrine come from?” asked Awena.

“He was kidnapped shortly after his birth from another blue-blooded family. Via some orphanage where he was left, and then through the offices of an adoption agency—probably a rather dodgy one—he came to be taken into the B-B family. This likely was done, the illegal ‘adoption,' at the instigation of Lord B-B's first wife. Desperate for a child, she talked her husband into this scheme to pretend Peregrine was their own. When Cotton made a joke about the people up at the casa, it reminded me of Peregrine's origins—that he was born in Málaga, where the family had long had a home. The story about his remaining in hospital for some imaginary illness was a ruse to fudge his age, to cover the fact he was too big to be a newborn.

“I came to realize Lord Baaden-Boomethistle and his wife were in Málaga at the exact same time a baby was kidnapped in an internationally famous case that took place near Monkbury Abbey. It was in that summer of 1994. He had a distinctive birthmark at the top of his back, this baby—in case he was ever found, officials could readily identify him, because that mark was so unusual. It was a port-wine stain in the shape of a heart. Photos of the mark were distributed far and wide through police channels. Both nannies confirm Peregrine had a birthmark, by the way. Elspeth Muir alluded to Cain, and she may have had the “mark of Cain” in mind. But they never connected Peregrine with that missing child, and they never saw the police photos.

“I was already thinking in terms of a switch: The film about the switch of murders on the train. Then I realized—perhaps there was another sort of switch altogether? A switch of babies? Then I thought, That can't be right; they brought their baby out of Spain together and the dates of pregnancy don't match up. I asked Cotton to pull the birth certificate.

“Peregrine's mother—the woman who raised him—tried to claim it was a preemie birth to waffle the dates, but who ever heard of a nine-pound preemie?”

“And you know this how?” Awena asked. “
Ouch.
” Owen had grabbed a fistful of her hair and was pulling on it like a rope. Awena gently disentangled him.

“Partly because the woman who was the nanny at the time, Elspeth Muir, has taken the advice of her minister. And his advice was to tell the truth and shame the devil, mirroring her own inclinations. She knew Peregrine was adopted; they tried to buy her silence and she wasn't having any.”

“My head is reeling,” said Awena. “So Rosamund? How does she fit into this? She's not adopted also, is she?”

“No. Rosamund is the true heir, not her brother. As so often happens, once a couple adopts a child, they conceive a child soon after. I have to emphasize though that this child, now called Peregrine, was stolen in the first place, then substituted for the child Lady Baaden-Boomethistle could not successfully carry to term. All of it strictly irregular and highly illegal, not to mention immoral. There was a worldwide manhunt for that child. What we don't know is whether the Baaden-Boomethistles were aware of his true origins. They may have thought the baby they adopted was a foundling, left by a local woman who was, for whatever reason, unable to care for him.”

“So sad…” said Awena.

“I kept remembering that the butler overheard an argument between Peregrine and Lord Baaden-Boomethistle. ‘You're no son of mine. You're unnatural, that's what you are. No son of mine could do what you did.' Lord Baaden-Boomethistle was angry and not to be taken literally—or so it was assumed. But no: He was being precise and literal, and not just blowing off steam. Peregrine was no son of his.”

Cotton said, “As part of the investigation, Max had us check all the birth records for Málaga for around the time of Peregrine's birth. Peregrine had said he was born there, and on paper he was. But another child born there to Lady Baaden-Boomethistle did not survive, and that is in the records.”

“Along with what is, on close inspection, an altered certificate of birth for Peregrine,” Max added.

Awena looked down at the beloved face of her own child. “That poor woman,” she said, then corrected herself: “Poor
women.
The one who lost her baby to kidnappers, believing it had died,
and
Lady B-B.”

“Yes,” said Cotton. “Having lost the longed-for son and heir, I don't think she and her husband took time to think it through. They acted. She may have believed it was her only chance to have a child.”

“And so there was a scramble to find a ‘replacement' child,” Max continued. “Lord B-B put his agents on the case. Just then, a baby boy of a few weeks of age turned up in the local orphanage. It was said to have been abandoned. We were able to track down this transaction—I won't call it an adoption. The baby came from out of nowhere, but its birth date matches exactly that of the child who was kidnapped from near Monkbury Abbey so long ago. The same date, even to the same hour.”

“This seems like no more than a wild coincidence,” insisted Awena. “Except—except for…”

“Precisely.” Max nodded. “There's no getting around that birthmark. The kidnapped baby was very tiny, practically a newborn when it was taken. They claimed Peregrine was large for his age, to forestall questions—his size had to make sense for his supposed date of birth. But who would question it, really? They were of a class of people who could buy what they wanted, and they were operating in a country where poverty allowed them what they—what Lady Baaden-Boomethistle—most wanted: a child.”

“And the kidnapped baby? No one ever knew?”

“The authorities assumed he had been killed. That is the case in most kidnappings, sadly. His own brother had arranged cold-bloodedly for the kidnapping—out of pure jealousy, I still believe, among other motives. He—the fifteenth earl of Lislelivet—didn't ask or care to know what became of the child. He just needed the child to be legally declared dead. Which it was.”

Max paused, then added, “If Peregrine had taken part in killing his father, it would have been for nothing. Because Lord Baaden-Boomethistle was not really his father. And Peregrine was not the heir to the estate. His sister was.”