A Fatal Winter (34 page)

“She told me so. She said I was a major ben—bennie—what do you call it? Beneficiary.”

“She told me the same thing,” chipped in Lamorna.

They all looked at each other.

“Well, it sounds like she’s been up to her old games,” said Gwynyth, putting her fork on her plate with a clatter.

“It hardly matters now,” said Jocasta. She paused to empty her wineglass. “It’s time you found a job, anyway.”

Gwynyth glared at her. “How dare you say that to me? When have
you
ever held a real job? Playing a bimbo vampire, please note, is not a real job.”

“Bimbo?” spluttered Jocasta, every word a slurred effort. “Look who’s talking.”

“If the Manolo fits, wear it,” murmured Randolph.

Well,
zing
! thought Max. Tension crackled like lightning through the room. He felt it as a rise in his own body temperature, a faint beading of sweat across his brow.

Jocasta kept reaching for the wine bottle in the middle of the table, stretching her body across whatever and whomever was in her way to reach it. More often than not it was Lester, who sat to her left.

“Steady on, old girl,” he said, on the third or fourth reach.

“Mind your own beeswax.”

“Do people still say that?” Randolph wondered, with exaggerated innocence. “Isn’t that expression simply ancient?”

“Like me, you mean?” Jocasta asked, pouring the wine with elaborate drunken care, a chemist on the verge of a major discovery that would both alter mankind’s perception of the universe and the layout of the periodic table. “I’m not so green as I’m cabbage-looking,” she added.

“What a perfectly idiotic saying, I’ve always thought,” said Simon, sensing a brewing conflict and determined to save Randolph, if he could, from needless immolation. “Who, apart from certain of our elected officials, actually looks like a cabbage?”

“Felberta, for one,” said Jocasta. She aimed an elbow at the table and missed. Wine sloshed onto her hand.

“At least,” snapped Felberta, setting down her own glass none too steadily, “at least I don’t dress like I’m opening a third-rate vaudeville show.”

At that, the vaulted ceiling seemed to press in on them with the weight of centuries. It wasn’t the first quarrel in that room—one had ended with a dagger through the heart of one of the then-earl’s vassals—but there were echoes of the past in every face and gesture.

“How
dare
you,” Jocasta snarled, red lips taut as wire.

Max noted with interest that it may have been the first time he’d seen the mask drop. She was clearly not acting now.

He was a peacemaker by nature, and conflict of any size sparked an overwhelming need in him to intervene, to quell the disturbance. Max now called on all his acquired skills in calming troubled waters. After all, he reminded himself, he had faced down a variety of rancorous church committees, not to mention the notoriously cranky Nether Monkslip Book Club, whose members often came to grief in deciding on the monthly read. Dealing with this dysfunctional family, a murderous psychopath among them, should be easy by comparison.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please,” he said. “May I remind you of your recent losses? Let’s show some respect, if you would, for the deceased. Besides, a united front might be your best defense right now. As I’m sure you’re aware, the police are watching your every move closely.”

His words—particularly the latter part of his message—quieted them all, but the shift in mood effectively signaled that the dinner was over. They slowly stood and made their ways with varying degrees of stability and focus toward the stairs. Jocasta overshot the exit and made a beeline toward a door into the garden. She had to be led to the stairs, with elaborate solicitousness, by her husband.

Lester hesitated, clearly wanting a private word with Max. He began to say something and then thought better of it. He swerved off, his wife at his heels. Lamorna walked out without a word.

Soon only three were left: Max, Randolph, and Cilla. The family tension seeped like vapor out of the room. Max thought it was a wonder they didn’t all drink like Jocasta.

CHAPTER 24

After Dinner

Randolph, followed by Cilla, slouched his lanky way over to the arrangement of chairs and sofas by the great stone fireplace. Nearby was the elaborate Christmas tree with its artistic flourishes of holly and mistletoe attached by purple and gold metallic bows. Randolph, looking up, followed Max’s gaze and said, “Jocasta ordered it in from the local florist. A typically extravagant, impulsive gesture. She’s rather like a child, I’ve always thought.”

Max stood, waiting to be invited to join them, waiting to be noticed. The squabbling he’d witnessed during dinner had disturbed him. There were strong undercurrents there. He felt he had missed something.

But it was Cilla with her preternatural awareness who had smiled first in polite greeting, including him in. Her response reminded him of Awena, whose insight—and company—he missed already.

“Join us,” she said. “We’re trying to digest all that’s gone on. Wine as good as this, as I am sure you will discover, helps. We can’t let it go to waste.”

Randolph then motioned him over. Minutes later the three sat huddled near the fire like regulars at a pub, Cilla curled up in her chair like a question mark. Before them on a low table were glasses of wine in varying stages of fullness. Accompanying the Côtes du Rhône was a cheese plate supplied by Milo. Max helped himself to an excellent bleu on a wafer-thin slice of toasted French bread.

“What must you think of us?” said Randolph. “Somehow I feel I owe you an apology, although none of them are
my
doing. You mustn’t mind Alec, for a start.”

“Not at all,” said Max. “He’s still creating himself, and one way teenagers do that is to argue with the oldies. It helps them to tease out what they actually do believe.”

Randolph harrumphed. “Alec seems to regard himself as representative of his generation and is given to making blanket pronouncements about the thinking processes, likes, and dislikes of everyone within that generation. However, one has to take into account that he only represents a tiny fraction of the
privileged
segment of the population at large, so his opinions may be flawed, at best. The rest of the people his age have more mundane concerns about earning a living, getting into a good school, and so on. For Alec, it has been handed over on the proverbial plate, with garnish. For all his mother’s grousing about money, he’s well set up compared with most.”

Max said: “Do we ever really appreciate those comparisons, especially at that age? Youth, after all, is always wasted on the young. He may just not realize yet how well set up he is for the future.”

“You’re very kind, Vicar,” said Randolph. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, a tad idealistic.”

It was an adjective Max had heard applied to himself before. Every time, it made him bristle. “Idealistic” was a word he equated with gullible and rube-ish, as if he were some sort of hayseed from the provinces. He sat deep in thought, holding his glass between his hands like a chalice. His eyes with their dark gray irises gleamed in the firelight. A parade of ghosts from his former life in MI5 might have been passing before him, including the elusive man with the unusual sunglasses who haunted his dreams.

“You
must
admit,” Randolph was saying, “Lamorna qualifies as a skeleton in any family’s cupboard.”

“‘The day of their calamity is at hand,’” intoned Cilla, in Lamorna’s dolorous tones. “Any passage in the Bible that involves death and destruction is Lamorna’s very-most favorite. She just breezes right by the ‘love one another’ bits.”

“I wonder…” said Max, thinking this might be a good time to put in a word for the hapless Lamorna. “I wonder what she will do now? I think she’s rather frightened of what may happen to her.”

“I suppose Leticia was a form of protection from the outside world,” said Randolph. “Really, I’ve no idea, but I can’t picture the new heir chucking her out.”

“Can’t you?” said Cilla. “I have the idea that’s exactly what he may do, when he’s a bit older and a certain amount of time has elapsed.” Her voice trailed off with the smoke from the fireplace. She held up her wineglass to the flickering firelight, watching the play of red and gold. After a pause she shifted the subject. “I suppose Bambi will stay with Jocasta long enough to see what his cut is.”

“Who, Simon?” asked Randolph. “Most certainly.”

They spoke quite openly, Max thought, with the easy give-and-take of people who had worked in harness for many years—like Milo and Doris, in fact. It was almost as if he were not in the room.

At that moment Milo entered, this time bearing the coffee tray. At Randolph’s direction, he put it down with a slight clatter on the table and left the room.

A gust of wind rattled the darkened panes which Max could now glimpse beyond the screen. Ice crystals had formed fractals on the windows and tree branches bearded with ice threw their ominous silhouettes against the sky.

Max sank back sleepily into his chair, fighting to remain alert. There had been a lot of wine at dinner, a different wine for each course, and Max felt like the snake that swallowed the mongoose. He wasn’t used to rich, heavy food, especially since his tofu-laden, organic years in Nether Monkslip, and he could feel his body marveling at this new, Henry VIII-ish lifestyle.

“Whiskey?” Randolph asked.

Oh, why not? Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

“Thank you. That would be most welcome.”

Randolph rose and yanked on a bellpull by the fireplace. Max began to wonder if Milo ever got a break. Perhaps with their inheritance he and Doris wouldn’t stay much longer.

Milo, the perfect servant, somehow knew what was wanted, and appeared almost on the instant with a tray holding a bottle and glasses.

Randolph, having formally bid Milo a good night, unstopped the decanter. He poured Max a generous dollop of a brand of single-malt whiskey Max had not enjoyed since his days of the high life in London, and then only infrequently. The strong spirit ran smoothly down his throat.

The fire crackled as a log fell, a great report that ricocheted off the stone walls. Snow piled up at the window, and the branches outside creaked under their heavy, wet burden. Max felt he’d been at the castle since its founding, and having said so, they began to speak of its history.

“The castle is built on the ruins of an ancient monastery,” Randolph told him. “Apart from the chapel, there are no traces left unless you count that eerie quality one can feel around here at times. Who could live that way?”

Max shrugged. “As a monk, you mean? Any religious vocation is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t received the call.”

Randolph, taking a sip, looked at him over the top of his glass. He said, “I visited a Benedictine monastery once. In Germany. It was called Maria Laach. I don’t know what they’re doing out there except praying for my worthless self. It’s not a life I could tolerate for five minutes but you could see its beauties around the edges, as it were.”

Max thought that a very good description of the way we all get a glimpse of heaven at times. Just around its edges. He said as much.

Randolph tipped his head forward in acknowledgement.

“‘Our’ monks here at Chedrow went elsewhere; probably they were forced out. No one is quite certain how or why. The family took over the place, and eventually they were granted the King’s ‘license to crenellate,’ which was a very big deal at the time. It showed the king trusted you, you see. Not everyone was allowed to upgrade to the war model since you might become a stronghold in a fight against him.”

“It must be wonderful to know one’s family history as well as you all must know yours. Most of us are descended from serfs, and have to guess at the gaps in our heritage.”

Randolph, a lock of his hair fallen over one eye, was now fully engaged. He pushed the hair back; Max was reminded of seeing him earlier outside with Gwynyth. That seemed to be a relationship they were trying to keep quiet, perhaps one in its beginning stages. “They say Shakespeare stayed here once with his fellow players, to escape the plague,” Randolph told him.

“Surely they never traveled this far west.”

“They say that he did—it’s a family legend that’s been handed down forever. And who’s to say he did not?”

Max smiled, shrugging—still doubtful. He tipped the glass to his lips and finished the last of the excellent whiskey, thinking this was the life, for Max was a man of epicurean tastes whose self-indulgence was rare, not least of all because a vicar’s stipend didn’t run to luxuries large or small. He put down his glass. Randolph, taking it as a request, poured again from the decanter.

“How lucky you are to live on such a property,” said Max. “Even though these manor houses are a huge upkeep and a worry, I’m sure.” Max felt that given his experiences with the roof of St. Edwold’s he was becoming rather besotted with the maintenance of ancient structures. “But it’s important that they be preserved, not torn down to make way for the new. Lamorna pointed out to me some of the architectural features. Defense against invaders seems to have driven many of the architectural decisions.”

“Oh, Lamorna.” Oh,
her
again. “Yes, she has taken quite an interest in the castle’s history.” Randolph’s own interest in Lamorna quickly evaporated. “Try to picture it,” Randolph went on. “There would be a large fire in the center of the Hall. That’s where the servants and retainers would sleep—the concept of privacy is strictly a modern one. The mind just reels, doesn’t it? The lord and lady who formerly had a
smidge
of privacy on a raised dais at one end of the Hall”—and here he paused to illustrate with a wave of one hand—“eventually had a private or family room. It was called the solar, with which you are familiar—Oscar’s room, of course.” He paused. “I saw you taking a peek in there earlier,” he said pointedly. Max did not rise to the bait. Instead, he returned Randolph to the path of the family history, in which he seemed to take as much of an interest as Lamorna.