Wicked Autumn (26 page)

The former vicar of St. Edwold’s had been High Church in his views; Max was determined to follow a more inclusive, middle road. Some, like Wanda and the Major, had been outraged at the change, going so far as to travel to Monkslip-super-Mare for services. This lasted until poor weather, and a growing sense of their isolation from the rest of the village, had driven them back (rather, had driven Wanda, the Major remaining ever pliable). Wanda’s sense of her place in the village was her prize psychological possession.

Although Max had that rock-star status from the start, the trust of the parishioners had to be earned daily. He wouldn’t really have wanted it any other way, as frustrating as their suspicions (inborn in the case of the long-term native villagers) had been—even though it was like being watched over by the head of a particularly snotty public school. Several heads.

*   *   *

Max walked in silence now through the jewel-lit darkness of the nave’s main aisle, the heels of his shoes ringing against the floor, a sound magnified as it ricocheted against the high ceiling. The church building was always left unlocked, vandalism being almost unheard of in Nether Monkslip. And cold-blooded murder even more so. Would Wanda’s death change all this—make his parishioners fearful, contaminate them with the urban fears and prejudices and phobias they had come here to escape? Max sighed at the thought of the worm in the apple.

As he approached the chancel steps, he heard a slight pattering sound and, on turning, saw he was not alone. Little Tom Hooser was sitting in one of the pews, rhythmically tapping the toes of his small feet together. He was so small the top of his head with its springy dark hair could not clear the pew in front of him. Max wondered not only how he had managed to crawl up into the pew but also how he had slipped the bonds of the all-seeing Tildy Ann—possibly he was here because it was one of the last places his sister might look for him. Max had been uncertain until this moment that Tom could function without her, but Tom seemed to be managing well.

Max, greeting him, sat in the pew in front.

“There’s something growing there,” Tom informed him. Slowly, dramatically, he lifted one small hand, a bit the worse for what looked like the remains of a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and, like Scrooge’s ghost, pointed a finger at the wall directly to his left. Max followed the spectral-like directive. Together, solemnly, they gazed at the wall.

Where there was, no question about it, a moist stain of some kind, a dark nimbus forming on the white plaster, like a solar eclipse in reverse. Max barely suppressed an oath: damn and double damn it all forever. The roof must be leaking again, water seeping down through the old cracked walls. Another item for Maurice to assess, and probably well beyond his capacity to fix. Max had the sudden, mean realization that Wanda’s murder had probably truncated the profits that had been earmarked to flow from the Fayre toward the church restoration fund. He looked at Tom, who seemed to sense the gravity of the situation, and sympathetically shook his head. Duty done, he said his good-byes and left, the Vicar wondering what on earth it was going to cost to repair his incandescent little church—this time. Why the child was not in some sort of school or day nursery he also stopped to ask himself. He would have to ask Tom’s mother. Or Tildy Ann, who was more likely to know.

He breathed deeply and deliberately, trying to calm and clear his mind, but before long the problem of the roof was replaced by the questions that had assailed him in the night. They crept back, all part of the same theme: who could have killed Wanda? Max was not enamored of the passing-stranger theory, if only because one felt one had to know Wanda rather well before being inspired to see her removal as a blessing for all mankind. That might be a rough sentiment for a vicar, but it was a realistic appraisal. The same applied in the case of the tradesmen and various farmers involved somehow with the Fayre. Dislike on such a massive scale, Max felt, had to have taken some time to accumulate, with repeated infusions of ill will, to set the killer’s mind on slaughter.

He suddenly had the odd sensation of seeing himself from the outside, as a passing visitor would see him, a tall, dark-haired man sitting surrounded by the beauty of the solemn old church. He decided to do what he long had done for direction—and he smiled, knowing Awena did the same, although her name for it was guided meditation: she would choose a picture or a phrase at random and go with the flow of whatever ideas emerged. Max would open a Bible at the Book of Common Prayer at random for guidance, although the meaning sometimes took a lot of sifting. His eye more often than not fell on phrases that seemed nonsensical, unrelated to the topic that perplexed him. As happened now, he could not see the guidance as the book fell open to Psalm 51, in which David asks to be purged of his sins and made “whiter than snow.”

David’s were sins of murder and adultery. Max’s thoughts turned to betrayal—how murder was the ultimate in that line. Betrayal by an enemy or a trusted friend; Judas’s betrayal. He turned to find the psalm he was reminded of, the one he thought of as the Betrayal Psalm, and finding it, he read:

For it is not an open enemy, that hath done me

this dishonour: for then I could have borne it;

Neither was it mine adversary, that did magnify

himself against me: for then peradventure I would

have hid myself from him;

But it was even thou, my companion: my guide,

and mine own familiar friend.

He pulled out the small notebook and pen he carried everywhere with him, used for jotting down dates and reminders—also random thoughts, ideas, and inspirations, most of which ended up in his sermons. He began trying to marshal his thoughts. He wrote nothing for a long while, but it was like doing the crossword puzzle—without pen in hand, he never felt the answers would come to him.

After a while, he wrote “Elka,” followed by “Betrayed? Would lie to protect son? To avenge?” It was one of those moments when his subconscious seemed to have taken over, because rereading this he had no idea from where the thought had emerged. After another minute he added, “Grief-stricken?—the Major.” And: “Lily. As frail as she seems?” Now he was forcing the issue, he realized, so he crossed all of this out and sat, quiet and still, waiting.

And what came to mind, of all things, was the vicarage study—those awful curtains. Queen Victoria’s knickers. And a phrase he had heard or seen recently, or that reminded him of something someone had said. Something to do with an envelope. Pushing the envelope, perhaps—a phrase that had long lost its original meaning, given it by test pilots, of pushing the limits of a plane’s capabilities. The Major had shown him an envelope, and told him there had been a delay in receiving his son’s letter. Max thought of all those letters found in Wanda’s house, read and presumably treasured and stored away. The lyrics of a treacly old song came to mind, a song of innocent summer times, summer memories: “So let us make a pledge / To meet in September.” “Sealed with a Kiss”—that was it. She had died in late September. He tried to catch the memory or idea that now danced tantalizingly out of reach. And could not. It seemed significant now.

Drat.

CHAPTER 24

Acolyte Down

The night before Wanda’s funeral, Max dreamt he was solemnizing a wedding. The couple stood before him at the chancel steps; in the way of dreams, it made perfect sense to him that both bride and groom had their faces swathed in heavy black veils. Wanda, mother of the bride, was there, her face wearing its accustomed mask of displeasure. He began to read aloud the lovely and age-burnished words, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God … to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony.” But when dream-Max turned to ask the man if he would have the woman as his wife, he saw his mistake: this wasn’t a wedding. This was a funeral, and the man and woman now stood before him wrapped together in a white shroud. How could he have got it so wrong? The banns hadn’t even been published, he suddenly realized. Wanda would be furious. Desperately, he began to search the prayer book for the Order for the Burial of the Dead. All he could remember of the words was that we brought nothing into this world. “We brought nothing into this world,” he told the couple. “Nothing!” The shrouded bodies began to stir, and again Max knew in the way of dreams that whatever the white cloth covered was decayed and no longer human. Terrified, his heart pounding, in a cold night sweat he awoke to a room bleached gray by moonlight.

*   *   *

The next morning, Max, who had been up since before dawn reworking the funeral sermon, looked out blearily over his congregation. The vestiges of his dream hung over him, lending a dreary pessimism to the already distasteful task of laying Wanda to rest.

An open verdict had been returned at the reconvened inquest, and the body freed by the coroner’s order for burial; the Major, far from barring its release, had begun agitating for it. The Major was the type of man to chafe at any uncertainty—to need official opinions and renderings and judgments—and this uncertainty regarding his wife’s fate was surely the greatest test of any man’s patience. The open verdict—the verdict of last resort—meant the jury found the circumstances of Wanda’s death suspicious, but they could definitively say no more than that. On a fact-finding mission only, they could legally make no accusations. They had been nothing if not earnest and thorough, but the law as they were allowed to apply it was narrow in scope, a verdict of unlawful killing too far a reach with the evidence at hand. Max had felt the palpable suspicion, as well as frustration, hanging thick in the air that day, and not all of it emanating from DCI Cotton alone. The truism of any investigation was that as the trail grew colder, the chances of the culprit’s going free increased, even if the culprit were caught eventually.

At the rendering of the verdict, the Major had retrieved a large handkerchief and let into it a loud snort of either grief or disbelief. Perhaps both.

*   *   *

In the interim, St. Edwold’s had continued to enjoy a boost in attendance, which would reach its apex with Wanda’s funeral, where Max knew he would play to a packed house. Murder had either put the fear of God into the villagers, or (far more likely) they didn’t want to miss out on any developments. It was interesting over the days to watch when the time came to exchange the peace—it was like a live illustration of shifting alliances in the antechamber of a medieval court. Suspicion fell on first one villager, then the other; the Major was first out of favor (wasn’t the husband always guilty?), then back in (surely, he wouldn’t have had the nerve).

He wished he could take credit for this measurable spurt in the village’s spiritual rebirth. More than that, he wished Wanda had not been murdered. Her passing had torn the fabric of the place. And the fact that he was not much closer to discovering who had killed her rankled as a personal and professional failure, no matter how he tried to look at it as something beyond his scope and control.

There was one measurable change: as Max had gone from house to house, trying to suss out information about Wanda’s death, he had been relentlessly plied with little sandwiches and cakes. Word of his movement through the village, like that of a king on stately progress, had preceded him everywhere, to the point where he had added some noticeable bulk to his carefully monitored weight. By the end of each day he felt he could not stand to see another starchy, sugary confection, however well made or beautifully presented. And certainly no more liquids.

“Tea, Vicar?” some well-meaning soul would ask, and it was all he could do not to recoil in horror.

*   *   *

A lot of nonsense is spoken at funerals, especially when the deceased had not been well liked in life. Many euphemisms are called into play: “vital,” “energetic,” and (repetitively) “full of life.” And frequently, these funerals of the unpopular are sparsely attended, many people suddenly recalling another engagement of critical importance elsewhere.

This was not the case with the funeral of Wanda Batton-Smythe. As expected, attendance at St. Edwold’s hadn’t reached such dizzy heights since 1980, when a baseless rumor had gone round that the vicar’s wife was having it off with the verger. Now the fact that a villager had been murdered added a frisson of danger to the attraction. The sudden and suspicious death of Wanda had outstripped even the draw of the handsome “new” vicar.

Besides, people wondered whether
not
appearing might not be taken as a sign of guilt. So in they all packed, cheek by jowl, necks craning, and friendly little waves being exchanged when they momentarily forgot the solemn reason they were there.

As the organ wheezed its way to the concluding chords of “Amazing Grace,” Max’s gaze took in the elaborate coffin and the congregation arrayed before him. The squire’s pew in front was left empty—by old tradition and unspoken agreement, although there was no reason, earthly or otherwise, for this undemocratic holdover from the past to persist into the twenty-first century. These worthies—the squire and his family—were in any event not yet returned from holiday (and would be most distressed when they learned they had missed the most exciting event to befall Nether Monkslip in many decades, if not centuries, although the affair did have about it the air of serfs misbehaving, which is never quite as interesting, it was felt, as murder among the upper classes).

Suzanna Winship was looking her usual ravishing self in vintage Chanel—beige wool trimmed in black, with a black chiffon scarf draped gracefully over her hair. Her skin was dappled green by light from the stained-glass window near which she sat, her brother at her side. Max had been hearing that the passing of Wanda had left a vacuum in the bossy busybody department; it seemed nature did indeed abhor a vacuum, if the bright light of excited ambition in Suzanna’s catlike brown eyes were any indication. The Women’s Institute would not long suffer from lack of leadership.