The Haunted Season (9 page)

The lord had, however, scored points with Max for asking him how he wished to be addressed. Most people didn't realize that calling him “Reverend” was wrong, if usually well intended. He much preferred to be called “Vicar” or plain “Max” in the case of someone who knew him well.

“Vicar or Father Max is fine,” he told Lord Baaden-Boomethistle now, guessing the familiar “Max” was never going to sit well with such as he.

“I'm sorry if our meeting must be brief. I've a train to catch soon. I do love train travel, don't you?” Max nodded, although the question appeared to be rhetorical. “If nothing else, it gives one a chance to catch up on one's reading. And the Chunnel has made it so easy to get back and forth to the Continent. We've used it nearly since it opened, but I do like to wait until they've worked the kinks out of a new project of that size. I'll never forget one summer, the last time we traveled the old-fashioned way—my first wife and I had taken a train out of Spain to catch a plane to England, and we were delayed. How hot it was! How crowded. The sounds—and the
smells
—of crying children the entire time. Merciful heaven. I am one of those who firmly believe children should be seen and not heard.”

“Many would agree.” Max smiled neutrally. “Fortunately, my son has a quiet and contented nature. Like his mother.”

“Ah! That's right. You're a family man now. My congratulations.”

Just then, the butler emerged from the murky corridor. He was carrying a tray with silver pots and china cups. He put the tray on a sideboard and went through an elaborate, Geisha-quality performance of preparing and pouring cups for the two men. With a slight bow in the general direction of his lordship, he left the room and the tray behind.

“It's about the duck race,” said Max, taking a sip of his tea, an excellent oolong. Under the influence of Awena, Max was becoming something of a connoisseur of teas and herbs.

“Thought it might be,” said the lord. “I did hear that Noah Caraway wouldn't be around this year to offer up his grounds. Figured you might want another spot.” He patted his sparse white hair, which had been cut short to stand in a small corona about his head. He resembled a larger version of Anthony Hopkins, minus the slicked-back prison hairstyle of
Silence of the Lambs.
The lord's gaze held the same intelligent, speculative gleam as Hopkins's, almost as if Max were being sized up for his potential as an entrée.

“It's one of those traditions that won't die,” said Max. “People like it.
I
like it.”

“Duck race,” the lord said, ruminating as a catlike smile played at the corners of his mouth. “They've been doing that since I was a boy here at the Hall. The children enjoy it, and I suppose it does foster goodwill.” But he sighed deeply, as if the thought of all those happy children was more than he could be expected to bear.

Something in his manner added to Max's impression of a man concerned with doing the right thing, but only if observed or certain to be lauded or rewarded for his selflessness. If unobserved, all bets would be off. Max was just following a mental thread to the surveillance cameras that had become ubiquitous in the UK—who could say how much they promoted good or better behavior in its citizens? It might make a fascinating addition to my current sermon, Max mused, when Lord Baaden-Boomethistle interrupted his thoughts by saying, “I suppose we must not let the village children down.”

“It's the village adults who would be more disappointed, I think you'd find,” said Max. “The villagers make small side bets on the ducks they've sponsored, have a drink or two—all in good fun. It generates goodwill and, of course, it's a most effective means of fund-raising. Does this mean you are willing to allow the use of your land, Lord Baaden-Boomethistle?”

There was a finely timed pause, the only sound in the room the ticking of a clock on the mantel and the distant roar of a lawn mower—Max looked out the window and could see a man disappearing down a small knoll in the grounds, pushing the machine before him. Lord Baaden-Boomethistle said, “I simply don't know.”

Max, fighting down a highly un-Anglican response, gazed with what he hoped was an expression of good-natured earnestness at this potential village benefactor, silently cursing the moment he had agreed to act as village spokesperson. It was really more a job for the chair of the Parish Council, but that eminence was known to be better at ruffling feathers—even plastic ones—than at smoothing them. Under his leadership, Nether Monkslip's government operated according to a hidden, Kafkaesque logic, and many grudges still were held over the “Night of the Long Knives”—the Parish Council meeting on the redesign of the village coat of arms.

An extraordinary meeting of the Nether Monkslip Parish Council had been called over the duck business, with people summoned in haste one evening by the clerk to the council. The ideal had always been to hold the race festivities closer to the river, and Noah's absence this year at last afforded them this opportunity. The only obstacle was in persuading the Great Family at Totleigh Hall that now that they were in residence (for a change), it would be gracious of them to welcome the villagers in this way. The chairman of the Parish Council had, in Max's absence, volunteered him for this task of conversion.

Now the lord smiled icily and said again, “I don't know, Vicar. We hosted the cocktail party after the spring fete one year. Hargreaves still complains about the cleanup involved. Well, not com
plains
, actually”—Max was thinking he wouldn't dare—“but he has his little ways of showing displeasure. The three-minute egg well congealed before it reaches the breakfast table. That sort of thing.”

“I do realize the inconvenience, but…”

“I have no duck in this race.” Lord Baaden-Boomethistle chortled.

“Ha-ha. We can organize volunteers to help with the cleanup. That won't be a problem, I assure you.”

Max waited the man out, taking another sip of tea while he considered his options. He really had no compelling argument as to why Lord Baaden-Boomethistle should allow the villagers to trample his grounds and destroy his peace and quiet, and appealing to the man's better instincts seemed a very long shot. Finally, Max played his ace card. “I did hear the Harvest Fayre over at Stelvendore Hall was a huge success. They raised over ten thousand pounds for the church organ there.”

Lord Baaden-Boomethistle's flagging interest in the conversation was visibly revived. The owners of Stelvendore Hall were among the noblest and oldest of the land. Max happened to know Lord Baaden-Boomethistle was in an unspoken competition with them, and loathed the very air they breathed.

“Ten thousand pounds,” the lord said now. “Really, is that the best they could do? Lord Valleroth was always one to stint on charity. What a tightwad.”

“I know,” said Max, “that he has that reputation.” Max said nothing more, waiting the man out, watching from over the top of his teacup as Lord Baaden-Boomethistle's wish for a quiet life was overcome by this ancient family rivalry with the despised and despicable Valleroths.

“Very well,” he said at last. “Let's see if we can't do better than a paltry ten grand, even standing on our heads. Just make sure the noise from the children is kept to a minimum, will you?”

 

Chapter 5

THE HON. SON

Max, as he was being ushered out of the lord's office by his butler, was met by the son of the house, the Honorable Peregrine Baaden-Boomethistle. The young man had showered and changed into artfully torn jeans and a T-shirt, but he was still looking flushed and exhausted. For his age, he is out of shape, Max thought. It might be an underlying medical condition, or it might be an addiction to late-night carousing.

Over the T-shirt he wore a green Barbour jacket, even though the weather wasn't yet chilly enough to justify the warmth of such a garment. Max had the idea Peregrine wore it as a status symbol, for it generally was worn by those who wanted to appear to be posh, and only rarely by those who actually were.

The boy was perhaps nineteen or twenty, dark-haired and dark-eyed, like his father, and while shorter and slighter of build, he was much the same physical type, with an expanding middle. Unlike his father, who looked like someone who might once have won the British Open, Peregrine's sportiness was more suited to a soccer field. Where he differed most markedly was in the doughy, rather truculent set of his face, where his father's was all strong ridges and shadows, like an Easter Island statue.

Max had already noticed Peregrine's largish ears, which stuck out far from his head. For some reason, he had chosen to draw attention to this peculiarity with a trendy style that dictated the hair be shaved close to the sides of the head, allowing the top strands to flop forward. A “hipster undercut,” it was called. He would be recognizable even from behind with those ears, but he was otherwise good-looking in a blandly patrician way, portly and genial. He wore trendy black frames that did not add much to his appearance.

On the surface, he looked genial. Max suspected—for there was something rather wary in his eyes—that he was genial until crossed.

“Hullo,” Peregrine said politely enough. He stood with arms akimbo and looked Max up and down appraisingly. “You're the padre over at the village, aren't you?”

“Father Max Tudor, yes. I'm the vicar at St. Edwold's Church.”

“The spy, right?” he asked, eyes bulging for comic effect from the pudgy face.

“A vast exaggeration,” said Max. “I was once employed by MI5.”

“Oh, but you would say that, wouldn't you? ‘A vast exaggeration'?”

Max resumed walking and Peregrine attached himself at his side, apparently there for the duration and not just headed by coincidence in the same direction. He seemed to want something from him, although Max could not imagine what it might be. He was familiar with the hesitation and the roundabout conversational gambits when a parishioner had something he wanted to share or ask advice on and wasn't sure how to go about it.

“I mean, you wouldn't be able to just come out and admit what you're up to,” the young man continued, ambling peacefully beside him, much like a young puppy.

“What exactly is it you think I'm up to?” Max asked, amused.

“Dunno. The vicarage could be a listening station for GCHQ or something like that. If ever I saw a perfect front for undercover operations, it's a man in clerical garb operating out of a small obscure village like Nether Monkslip.”

Again, Max was amused, and busy adjusting to this image of himself as being what he had, in fact, once been: a man who hid behind costumes and beards and false fronts, living assumed lives in borrowed houses.

“I assure you, Peregrine—may I call you Peregrine? I assure you, Peregrine, I am duly ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church, I have the papers to prove it, and I have not been recruited by GCHQ, or MI5, or MI6, or Buckingham Palace to listen in on anyone's phone conversations or to spread rumors and propaganda. We have Miss Pitchford for that.”

Peregrine laughed very loudly, a gauche, youthful outburst. Apparently, Miss Pitchford's fame as a living, breathing transmitter of village gossip and disinformation had reached the rarified air of Totleigh Hall. Still, Max was enchanted at the idea of the vicarage being some sort of holdover from Bletchley Park.

“Was there something you wanted to ask me, Peregrine?” As they were approaching the stables area, and he felt anything Peregrine might want to confide might come out more easily where he could not be observed, Max thought to give him the opening while he could. But Peregrine was perhaps not quite ready, had not quite been able to put into a comprehensible form whatever was troubling him, for he said, “I am not sure it's something you would understand, Father.”

“I can assure you I have the best-possible bona fides for understanding what might be troubling you. I was your age once, and I remember perfectly the self-doubt that can dog a person at that age. At any age.”

“You?” Peregrine was clearly astonished at this admission from Max. “I mean, a bloke who looks like you couldn't possibly have gone through what I'm going through.”

So it was female trouble after all. Had to be.

“Why don't you make an appointment with me at the vicarage when you're ready to talk?” said Max. “Better yet, drop in. I'm not usually doing anything that can't be interrupted.” In truth, his life was a series of interruptions, but he didn't see how he was to be useful to his flock if he tried to keep office hours like a psychiatrist. People needed him when they needed him, and he didn't want to discourage the conversation that could take place only once the worried soul had reached a fever pitch.

“Will you be around the village much longer?” he asked the boy. “Surely you'll be going back for Michaelmas term. Hasn't it started already?”

“Yes. Just. I … I have a sort of special permission, you see.” This was clearly a shading of the truth, but Max decided not to press. “I had wanted to travel to see a girlfriend during the break, but I guess she'll have to wait for next year.” He threw the word
girlfriend
into the conversation with a touching man-of-the world swagger that failed to deceive the listener. If he had a girlfriend, it was a new and novel experience for him—not, as he seemed to be trying to imply, just the most recent in a string of amorous conquests. “My father holds the purse strings and my stepmother makes sure he doesn't open that purse very often on my account. Not for ‘frivolous' things, as she would call them.”

“Where does your friend live?”

“Italy. Near Palermo.”

“Ah. Italy is special,” said Max, who had lived there off and on for years. He was fluent in the language and Italianate in appearance, which suited MI5's needs well when a suspect wandered outside their usual bailiwick. “Southern Italy I know best, but all of it is special.
Truly
special. The saying is that there is Italy, and then there is the rest of Europe. Did you know your name means wanderer? Pilgrim, actually.”