A Fatal Winter (21 page)

“How do you know that?”

She shrugged. “He told me, didn’t he? I thought he was imagining things. Don’t old people make up things to get attention sometimes? Now I wonder—now that this has happened, I wonder…”

“Did he have any idea who had done it?”

“No.”

“Do you?”

“Not really. I mean, my mother hated him enough to do it, but she wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. Except maybe…”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe on a split-second impulse. But it’s not really in her to do that. I would know, wouldn’t I?”

How often had he heard a parent of the worst sort defended by the child who depended on that parent for its own survival. For what it was worth, he filed the information away. Gwynyth, Lady Footrustle, was of course a prime suspect in her ex-husband’s death.

“It was awful, when we lived here,” Amanda was saying. She twirled around one finger a strand of the flaxen hair that had escaped the hat. “Fortunately, I barely remember it. I thought they were both quite mad, my parents.”

Amanda had pudgy little hands like chubby starfish and she waved them now about her ears to show, presumably, how wild and crazy her upbringing had been.

“Certainly when they quarreled they sounded insane.”

His conversation with Lester fresh in mind, Max asked her about her cousin.

She shrugged. “What’s to say? He’s
such
a prat. As for that wife of his, Fester—the one who always dresses like she’s covered in algae … All I can say is, love really must be blind.”

“I hear that it is,” said Max mildly. A picture of Awena rose into his mind, but no blindness was in play there. Awena glowed from within with a beauty that was unique to her alone. It was the first time the word “love” had come into his mind in connection with her, though, and he wondered at that. He wondered very much.

“… thing that is remarkable about Lester,” Amanda was saying, “is that even when it looks like he’s doing nothing, he’s actually doing
nothing
. Which is a thing monumentally difficult to do, when you think about it. He seems actually to be able to empty out his mind, like a man turning out his pockets.”

Max, smiling, reflected that it
was
difficult to do, if not impossible. Besides, Lester struck him as a man who was always up to something, even if something that seemed squirrelly and pointless to the naked eye.

“And his wife? Felberta?”

“Fester. She’s Australian.”

“Yes, all right. And what else do we know about her?”

“I don’t know … They all like to barbeque.” She tapped the fingers of one small hand against her rose-pink mouth, stifling a small yawn. He saw that she wore a skull-and-bones ring, the sort of thing popular with kids. Such an odd fashion statement but he saw it everywhere.

Was she joking about the barbeque? Max didn’t think so. That probably amounted to the sum total of her knowledge and understanding of Felberta.

But: “Thick as thieves, those two,” she added darkly. Her eyes shone brightly out of kohl-rimmed lids. “I think he’s casing the joint, as they used to say in cop movies.”

“And Simon? What do we know about him?”

“He’s American. You know what they’re like.”

“Friendly and hardworking?”

“Noisy and pushy.”

“From what little I’ve seen of Simon, he’s neither.”

She shrugged.
Think what you like, then.

“And he’s fed up with Jocasta,” she said. “Join the club, I say.”

She continued to give him that level gaze. This time there was a certain accretion of goodwill in her eyes.

“I’m glad you’re here. I think with you here we might get it all sorted. Or at least, it won’t get any worse.”

Amanda was fast becoming his new best friend, he realized. She asked, “Do you have any kids?”

The lack of a wedding ring meant nothing anymore, he realized. He surprised himself a bit by saying, “Not yet. But I really would like to have children one day.” In a way, the villagers had become his “children,” and he was content to do as best he could to see to their care. Children of his own he rarely had time to think about. But there it was, what he had said aloud, and it was the truth. One day, he wanted a family of two or three children. He was in his forties—plenty of time biologically. But children deserved a father agile enough to—oh, to save them from drowning or some other calamity. Didn’t they? He was himself mildly astonished that he remained unmarried. It wasn’t through lack of trying in the past. But the person to raise children with him had not appeared in the years when he and Paul were carelessly sampling much of London’s female population. Paul, who had married. Who had had a child. And who had died on his—Max’s—watch.

He shook himself from the reverie and saw Amanda was looking at him curiously. He said, “No time at the present. But one day.”

“I’ll be available as soon as I get through my A-levels,” she said. She smiled to show she was kidding—sort of—and Max let out a bark of laughter.

“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind. I suppose I should go and find out where DCI Cotton is.”

“He’s in the library. I gathered we’re all to be positively
grilled
throughout the day. In a way, I wish they’d just leave it alone. Anyway, I must run now. If they’re looking for me I’ll be in the main tower. That’s where we’re staying while we’re here.”

And turning abruptly, she skipped down the stairs. Max took a final look around the room and followed, racing to keep up with her fearless descent, and wondering exactly what she meant by wishing they’d leave it alone. Surely it was in her best interests to learn the truth surrounding her father’s death.

Outside, he came to stone steps with a thin veneer of black ice. He was just wondering how he was going to extend his stay at the castle. He’d have to come up with some story, some excuse to buy extra time, but that would be lying, and a step back to his MI5 days of nothing but deceit, and—

Oh—

Blast and damn it all to hell.

He was on his face in the snow, the top of the stairs was far above him, and his ankle was as sore as if someone had taken a hammer to it. Was it broken or merely sprained? He thought sprained—at least, there were no protruding bones and everything looked attached, if aching.

The castle steps at this time of year offered a kind of double whammy. Worn down to an edge over the centuries like a ski slope, and now covered with invisible ice.

Damn.
He should have been more careful. His head was aching, too. He made an effort to collect his thoughts, which seemed to have scattered like marbles across a glass floor. He looked around. Amanda was long gone.

But Lamorna was beside him. Lamorna, possibly the one person one would not want around in an emergency.

“Don’t move!” she shrieked, as if she’d found him planning a decathlon with the injured ankle. “I’ll get help!”

Good
, thought Max, gingerly turning his head, not so much immobile as wondering if God really moved in such mysterious ways as to render him sidelined from the investigation. Or was the point to force him to stay where he was and investigate at his leisure? He took the opportunity to wonder how Lamorna had appeared so fortuitously. Had she been following him and Amanda?

Lamorna’s brogues came into his peripheral vision. She wore them with black socks with a subtle pattern of acorns, he noticed. The detail one could glean from ground level!

“Don’t move!” she commanded again.

“I’m not moving,” he told the hard, frozen ground.

“Help is on the way!”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. She hadn’t called an ambulance?

“Look, I’m fine.” He turned over slowly and sat up with great care, as if all his bones might shatter with the effort. Wincing, he examined the offending area. “See? I’m fine. Just a sprain.”

“I’ve sent for the nurse.”

Of course, he’d forgotten that between Leticia and Oscar, both elderly, they probably kept the local nurse practically on speed dial. Max struggled to rise and the pain in his left ankle suggested he not try that just yet. In due course the nurse appeared, a supremely competent-looking soul named Emma Brown with masses of white hair ballooning about her head. She carried a little leather bag of supplies, which included an elastic bandage wrap with tabs to secure it. She first satisfied herself that Max’s own diagnoses were correct. No concussion (“stunned silly for a moment, is all”), minor sprain. She cleaned and bandaged the wound on his forehead and recommended ice and elevation for the rest.

“Were you by any chance called out here for Lord Footrustle recently?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes. He had a bit of a tummy and finally let me look at him. He wouldn’t have the doctor.”

“What did you think was wrong?”

“Didn’t I just say? A bit of tummy. Something he ate that disagreed with him.”

“Could it have been food poisoning?”

She leaned back on her haunches and looked at him.

“I’ve known Doris all me life. No, it could not have been food poisoning. Not by accident or carelessness, anyway.” She stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

She returned from her car with a crutch and a recommendation that he go to the hospital for an X-ray, which he knew immediately he would not do. Thanking her for her trouble, he tried walking—hopping, rather—without the crutch but decided overall he’d heal faster if for now he did as he was told.

It was time to find Cotton, while he was still able.

CHAPTER 13

Old Friends

Max reached the library by hobbling down a mercifully few short steps which began near the main staircase off the Great Hall. It was a room which must at one time have been an undercroft of sorts to the main hall. A storage area, perhaps. The original inhabitants of the house, Max imagined, would have had little time for quiet reflection over books of poetry or passionate discussions of stagecraft over tankards of mulled wine.

DCI Cotton was there along with Detective Sergeant Essex.

“Where have you been?” Cotton greeted him. “In a roller derby?”

“It’s just a sprain. Thanks for your concern.”

Sergeant Essex, she of the choppy haircut with its multicolored strands, smiled warmly at him.

“Glad you could join us,” said Cotton, “whatever your condition.”

Max collapsed into a chair, leaning the crutch against the Tudor-style dark paneling. The room, faced by bookcases built into the walls, was gently lighted by wall sconces and warmed by a log fire in the stone hearth.

“Right. So what have we got?” Max asked.

Cotton noted the “we” with a little frisson of satisfaction. Max was fully on board already.

“We haven’t released the crime scene but everyone is free to roam about everywhere except Lord Footrustle’s bedroom and, until we’re certain what’s going on, Lady Baynard’s hothouse.”

Cotton was examining his suit jacket as he spoke. There seemed to be an imperfection in the weave that was troubling him. Dapper and clean shaven, the promise of a dilettantish approach to crime suggested by the obvious care Cotton took with his appearance was undermined by the take-no-prisoners look that stole into his eyes when he suspected a suspect was lying.

He went on: “We’ve taken statements from everyone concerned—meaning, everyone in the castle—but I’ll be talking with all of them again. I’d like you to sit in on these sessions, Max. I’d like to know your impressions.”

“I’m happy to oblige, but as you know…”

“You’ve no official status. Well, actually you have. I’ve asked you to be here. If anyone objects we’ll deal with it then. They’re a rum bunch, I’ll say that for them.”

Cotton had stopped worrying his jacket to twirl a biro around the top of the desk, clearly deep in thought. He had a laptop on which he began to tap out a few notes. He was, to Max’s certain knowledge, a man in perpetual, dynamic motion. Max took the moment to lift his left ankle onto a footstool. Finally Cotton sat back and said, “So, Max, you’ve had a little time to meet some of them. Let’s have your first impressions.”

Max’s first and second impression had been of a household vastly on edge, but that was understandable, with a recent murder very much at their feet. Max had the feeling this edginess was of long standing, however. All this he said to Cotton and Essex, ending with, “I suppose we have to start with motive.”

“Motive?” Cotton shook his head mockingly. “To hear the public, we officials never bother with motive. But here we have motive aplenty. Money—the obvious driver, since there’s so much of it—isn’t the entire story. There’s a well of ill feeling. A sense of “getting even” pervades this case, if I’m right. If you’d seen the body you’d agree.”

“Overkill.” Max nodded. “I am sorry to hear it, poor man. But Lady Baynard’s death…”

“It was a natural death, so far as the experts can tell.”

“Was it? Maybe she’d been poisoned over a long period—someone using arsenic, like all the Victorian poisoners seemed to use back in the day.”

But Cotton told him that was one of the first things they tested for. “Those metallic-based poisons—frankly, no murderer worth his salt would use arsenic anymore. But overall a tox scan can take forever and never be successful unless they know the poison they’re looking for. There is no such thing as an untraceable poison, just one the lab fellows haven’t thought to test for.”

He made another note on the laptop, then added: “I got them to call in a Home Office pathologist.”

“Ah. A forensic pathologist—a specialist in the art of death by criminal means. Called in for both Leticia and Oscar, then?”

“Yes. He is likewise adamant the woman died of natural causes. He said he’d make sure and run a few more tests beyond the standard set, but unless we’re hoping for ‘some nonsense like a new and undetectable poison from South America’—his words—she died because she’d reached a certain age and she had a certain condition. Nothing unnatural about it.”

“The condition being?”

“She apparently died of an abdominal…” He paused to consult his computer screen. “An abdominal aortic aneurysm.”

“Symptoms?”

“Generally, there are none. Pain is the only symptom, and I gather she never complained of abdominal or back pain. The kind of pain we’re talking about would definitely have alarmed her. She seemed in the days before her death to be preoccupied only by a simple head cold. No sign of anything as dangerous as this. ‘She’d have been screaming bloody murder,’ is how one of the suspects put it, if she’d been in any real pain.” Max thought that was probably Doris. “There is speculation Leticia’s fatal symptoms emerged out of shock or remorse but…”