A Holly, Jolly Murder

by JOAN HESSS

  My shoes were making squishy noises by the time I reached the edge of the woods. My disposition had fared no better, and I sharply reminded myself that I was here by choice. Not a good choice, mind you, but without coercion of any kind. Malthea had been pleased, if not rhapsodic, when I’d called and accepted her invitation to attend the winter-solstice ritual. What I hadn’t anticipated was that said ritual would begin at sunrise; the winter solstice, being a technical kind of thing when the sun reaches its most southerly point in the sky, can happen at any time during the day, including midafternoon. Malthea had informed me that they were using calculations from an eighth-century Celtic calendar. I hadn’t thought they were relying on TV Guide.

  An unfamiliar woman stepped out from behind a tree. Her anemic brown hair had been chopped off by what was clearly an untrained hand; uneven bangs obscured her eyebrows (presuming she had them). Her skin was sallow and scarred from acne, her cheeks concave, her countenance more sour than her thirty-odd years of life merited.

  “Malthea asked me to meet you,” she said. “I’m Gilda D’Orcher.”

  “Thank you. I wasn’t quite sure how to find the grove.”

  “Those who genuinely come to seek enlightenment shall not stray. The Mother Goddess watches over us. Blessed be.”

  She turned and walked quickly into the woods. I followed as best I could, catching an occasional branch in the face and tripping over vines and rocks. There were no birds to be heard; birdbrained though they might be, they had enough sense to sleep in.

  I was breathing heavily as we detoured around a fallen tree trunk and came into a small clearing defined primarily by oaks and scruffy firs. In the center was a stone altar made of two vertical pieces and a horizontal slab; it had been decorated with branches of holly and clumps of mistletoe. As far as I could see, there were no faded bloodstains or remnants of animal entrails on its surface.

  Despite the imminence of dawn on what I gathered was a major holiday, the Druids were not in a festive mood. Malthea and Fern were on the far edge of the clearing, deep in a conversation that obviously disturbed both of them. Roy Tate sat on a log, his shoulders slumped and his hands twitching as his eyes flickered around the clearing. His hair was either wet or a good deal greasier than it had been when I first met him. Beyond him was the woman who’d ordered the book about Wiccan initiations; after a moment I remembered her name was Morning Rose Sawyer. The man beside her was small and wiry, his thin, receding hair a contrast to her profusive black mane. He stared at me as though I’d stepped in something in the pasture and brought an obtrusive fetor into the grove.

  All of them, to my disappointment, were wearing conventional coats and gloves, including Malthea, who’d eschewed her scarlet cape for dowdy tweed. It was much too early to be confronted with naked flesh, but I’d been hoping for ornate robes and headdresses to spice up my subsequent accounts of my adventure (preferably interrupted by frequent gasps of admiration for my derring-do).

  Gilda gestured at a stump. “Sit there.”

  “What’s going to happen?” I asked her.

  “How should I know? You’ll have to ask the Arch Druid. She’s made it clear she’s in charge.”

  I went around the perimeter of the clearing and approached Malthea and Fern. In that I was not well versed in orthodox Druidic greetings, I opted for a commonplace, “Good morning.”

  Malthea gave me a forced smile. “I’m surprised to see you.”

  “Why should you be?” snapped Fern, her sharp chin quivering with annoyance. “You invited her, even though we have a covenant to ban skeptics. That was probably what pushed Nicholas over the brink. He’s been fussing and fuming for the better part of a month, but he was not intractable. You must bear the responsibility for this, Malthea.” Her eyes filled with tears, fogging up the lenses of her bifocals. “To think after all these years…”

  “Now, now,” Malthea said, patting Fern’s shoulder. “We must not give up hope that Nicholas can be persuaded to change his mind. I may have erred, but Gilda and Morning Rose share the responsibility. Roy is not completely innocent, either. He refused to tell me why Nicholas was so angry earlier in the week. That well may have had something to do with the current calamity.”

  It seemed I had stumbled into something more multifarious than a sacred grove. “What’s wrong?” I asked, as much to remind them of my presence as to meddle in the muddle.

  Fern took a tissue out of her coat pocket and wiped her eyes. “Forgive us, Claire. You’re here in anticipation of our celebration to embrace the primacy of the Earth Mother and honor the Celtic deities. The ‘calamity,’ as Malthea calls it, has nothing to do with you.”

  I glanced at Malthea. “If it would be politic of me to leave, please say so. I won’t be offended.”

  “There’s no point in that now,” she said with a shrug. Raising her voice, she said, “Roy, did you see Nicholas this morning? The sun will be up soon, and I don’t want to begin without him.”

  Roy rose to his feet and came across the clearing to join us, walking with the same indolent slouch that was epidemic in the halls of Farberville High School. “I came directly here. There was a light on in the kitchen, so maybe he’s having a last cup of coffee or something.”

  “Or he’s not coming,” added Morning Rose. “After what happened last night, he may have decided to boycott the ritual.”

  The Arch Druid hesitated, then threw back her shoulders and said with great regality, “Nicholas would never do that, no matter how upset he was. The cyclical celebrations are very meaningful to him. This is not to say he might not take petty pleasure in arriving at the last minute in order to alarm us.”

  Gilda glided up. “Perhaps someone ought to go ask him if he’s coming. My shift at the hospital starts at eight, and it’ll take me half an hour to get there on my bicycle.” She looked at Morning Rose. “Did you put some kind of curse on him?”

  “Of course not,” Morning Rose said, ignoring Malthea’s sudden intake of breath. “Sullivan has forbidden curses because of the children. Besides that, I don’t know any specifically suited for this situation. Do you?”

  Sometime between leaving my car and arriving at the Sacred Grove of Keltria, I’d lost my mind, I thought as I edged out of the circle of decidedly peculiar people. What’s more, they were in the midst of a conflict among themselves that had unpleasant undertones. I’d hoped to come away with a diverting narrative, but at that moment all I wanted to do was leave without incurring any curses.

  “Do you want me to go to the house?” asked the man who was apt to be Morning Rose’s husband, or at least the father of her children.

  Malthea nodded. “Yes, Sullivan, I think that’s what needs to be done. If Nicholas does not intend to participate, then there’s nothing to do but get on with it.”

  After he left, Malthea and Fern drifted away to continue their conversation. Roy resumed his seat and Gilda faded into the woods, leaving me with Morning Rose.

  “Where are your children?” I asked her.

  “At home. They got into a tussle last night and knocked over a bookcase. Sullivan was furious enough to ground them for two weeks. He doesn’t believe that they should be allowed to express their aggressive impulses. I’m afraid they’re becoming stifled. Cosmos, in particular, needs to act out his inherent urge to compete with his father for tribal dominance, which is all he’s doing when he attacks Rainbow. She, on the other hand, must deal with her sexual attraction to her father and her resentment toward me.” She touched a bruised semicircle below her eye. “She was so upset last night that she hit me. She cried afterward, but I assured her that she was only acknowledging her basic instincts.”

  I tried to hide my revulsion at her psychobabble. “It’s a shame they’ll miss the ritual.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said. “Last year Cosmos ate so many tarts that he threw up in the van.”

  Malthea clapped her hands to get our attention. “The sun is going to rise with or without Nicholas’s presence. I do
not intend to allow him to put a cloud on this glorious day when we seek Herne, who at Samhain promised to protect us through the dark months of winter.” She pulled off her coat. To my delight, she was wearing a silky white robe with embroidered symbols.

  “What about us?” asked Gilda as she came back into the clearing, her smug expression leading me to wonder if she’d been casting the odd curse or two. “As I said, I’m going to celebrate in the manner I prefer.”

  Malthea frowned at her. “It was decided last night that Wiccan elements will be excluded from today’s ritual. I believe we should continue to abide by that.”

  “Nicholas is the only one who objects,” retorted Gilda, her hands on her hips, “and he’s not here. I should be allowed to affirm my traditional beliefs. Go ahead and expel me from the grove. I don’t care. I won’t be here for Beltaine anyway.”

  “You’ll catch your death of cold,” said Fern, sounding more like a grouchy great-aunt than a joyful solstice celebrant.

  “The first thing I did this morning was to cast a spell to protect myself from the cold,” Gilda said, “and it’s none of your business, anyway. I warned all of you when I joined the grove that I would continue to practice my religion.”

  I glanced at Morning Rose. “What’s the issue?”

  “Gilda wants to perform the ritual skyclad. So do I, but Sullivan would have a fit. He’s incredibly surly when I insist on engaging in certain observances in the backyard. He thinks they’re a bad influence on the children. He’s being ridiculous, of course. Children come into the world without the artificial restrictions of clothing.”

  Sullivan staggered into the clearing. “There’s been a terrible accident,” he said in a raspy voice. “It’s Nicholas. He’s—” We all gaped at him as he leaned against the altar to steady himself. After a deep shudder that threatened to put him on the ground, he added, “He’s badly hurt or even dead.”

  “Nonsense,” said Malthea.

  “When he didn’t answer the doorbell, I went around to the back of the house to see if he might be in the kitchen listening to the radio. The door was locked, but I could see his body on the floor. There was blood.”

  Malthea gestured at Gilda. “It may well be a practical joke, but we must act. You hurry ahead on your bicycle and see if there’s anything you can do. The rest of us will follow as quickly as we can.”

  No one commented on the sudden eruption of sunlight through the foliage as we ran toward the vehicles parked on the road. I could see Gilda pedaling across another pasture as I dove into my car and scrambled to find my key in the bottom of my purse. After a significant amount of maneuvering, we formed a procession and drove back to the highway, and then turned almost immediately on a driveway lined with poplars.

  Nicholas Chunder’s house wasn’t a castle, but it was nevertheless impressive in its size and ivied stone facade. A separate building, also of stone and perpendicular to the house, was more likely to have sheltered cars than carriages, but it added a stately pseudo-Regency touch. I parked in front of a row of marble statues of bearded men and comely women, and beyond them, a nonfunctioning circular fountain. Sullivan, Roy, and Morning Rose were already running around the corner of the house as I caught up with Fern and Malthea.

  “What are you doing here?” said Fern.

  Rather than answer, I dodged around them and hurried toward the back of the house, where I saw Gilda peering through a window. Sullivan was seated on a wrought-iron chair, bent forward while Morning Rose held his head between his knees. Roy stood apart, with hands in his pockets.

  Gilda straightened up. “He’s lying on the floor, and like Sullivan said, there’s blood on his face. What should we do?”

  “Is the door locked?” I said.

  “Yes,” Sullivan whimpered. “I tried it earlier. The front door’s locked, too.”

  Morning Rose released the back of his neck, picked up a flowerpot, and smashed the window in an unsettlingly proficient manner. “Roy, crawl through here and unlock the door.” As he carefully climbed over the sill, she handed a small metal box to Gilda. “This is the first-aid kit we keep in the van. It’s probably a little late for a Band-Aid and Mercurochrome. You’d better leave the smelling salts on the table for Sullivan.”

  Malthea and Fern arrived as Roy unlocked the back door, and with the exception of Sullivan, we all jostled our way into the kitchen. Gilda dropped to her knees and put her fingers on Nicholas Chunder’s neck. I took a quick glance at his bloodied forehead, vacant eyes, and limp, outflung limbs. Suspecting it was a great deal more than a little late for a Band-Aid, I continued through the kitchen and into a hallway, where I found a telephone on an antique escritoire.

  I dialed 911, explained as best I could what had happened and where the house was, and then returned to the kitchen in time to hear Gilda say, “I can’t find a pulse.”

  “Don’t touch him,” I said. “I’ve called for an ambulance, and there’s nothing we can do until the paramedics arrive. We need to wait outside.”

  “Oh, dear,” groaned Malthea, the words bubbling from deep inside her. “This is dreadful. Nicholas was a stickler for propriety. It seems…blasphemous to leave him in this undignified position. Let me find a blanket to cover him.”

  “No!” I said with such forcefulness that they all stopped staring at the body and looked at me. “The police will want the scene to remain exactly as we found it. They’ll be upset as it is that the window’s broken and everyone has trampled all over the floor. Now we need to move outside.”

  After I’d repeated this several times, Gilda rose and we retreated to the flagstone patio. Morning Rose hauled Sullivan to his feet and steered him across the lawn to a bench beneath a bower covered with dried vines. Fern sank down in one of the chairs and plucked at the buttons of her coat. Gilda announced she would await the ambulance in the driveway. The sun was above the treetops and shining brightly, but no one seemed in the mood to herald the dawn of the winter solstice by embracing the primacy of the Earth Mother. I most assuredly was not.

  Malthea drew me aside. “Do you think it was necessary to summon the police? Nicholas had a heart condition that forced him to retire last year. Isn’t it likely that he had an attack and hit his head on the edge of the counter as he fell?”

  “All I know is that the police have to be notified in this sort of situation,” I said. “If he had a heart attack, the autopsy will reveal it. Do you know who his next of kin might be?”

  “You’ll have to ask Fern. She’s been renting from him ever since her husband passed away some ten years ago. I myself moved into the duplex only two years ago. I used to live in a little house of my own, but the maintenance became too much of a burden. It was a difficult decision, but I finally sacrificed my view of the cemetery and accepted Nicholas’s offer.” Her gaze shifted to the kitchen door. “He was not the most assiduous landlord, but I tried to be tolerant because of his willingness to allow the grove on his property. I do miss my midnight strolls among the headstones and marble cherubim, however, and the ease in which I could join funeral parties during interments.”

  I tried not to think how I would have reacted if a figure wrapped in a scarlet cape had appeared out of the fog as Carlton’s casket was being lowered. “Did Nicholas live alone?”

  “I believe so,” she said.

  Roy, who’d disappeared during the transition to the patio, came around the far corner of the house. “I found a broken window in his study. There are footprints in the flower bed, but they’re so jumbled I can’t tell how many burglars there might have been.”

  “Burglars?” said Malthea.

  “Looks like it,” he said. “I told him he should have an alarm system put in or get a couple of dogs to patrol the grounds. I mean, a rich old guy living by himself in the middle of nowhere—that’s asking for trouble.”

  No one refuted his final statement, or did much of anything until Gilda came back to the patio in the company of two paramedics with a gurney and an equal number of u
niformed police officers.

  One of the officers followed the paramedics into the kitchen, but the other, a shiny-faced boy who looked as if he were Caron’s age, stopped and stared at me. His plastic name tag identified him as Corporal B. Billsby.

  “I know you, don’t I?” he said.

  As much as I wanted to resort to nothing more than name, rank, and serial number, I managed a nod. “I believe we encountered each other last summer on Willow Street,” I said coolly. “We were never formally introduced.”

  He took off his hat and scratched his head for a moment. “Oh, yeah, you’re Lieutenant Rosen’s girlfriend—the one who keeps butting into his investigations and trying to get herself killed. One of the dispatchers is keeping a scrapbook.”

  “Goodness,” murmured Malthea, sounding awed and to some degree, appalled.

  The other officer came to the doorway. “The homicide team’s on the way. Keep an eye on things while I go meet the sergeant and let him know what’s going on.”

  Corporal Billsby sized me up with such arrogance that I wanted to shove him into the nearest flower bed. “Are you some kind of magnet for murder, lady? I’ve been on the force for six years, and I’ve only seen two cases. Funny that you were in the immediate vicinity both times, isn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t in the vicinity this time,” I said.

  Malthea nudged me aside and opened her coat to expose her white robe with its colorful yoke. “Claire merely asked to participate in our winter-solstice ritual across the pasture in the Sacred Grove of Keltria.” She raised her arms as if indicating a touchdown had been scored. “‘The geese fly high this solstice morn, the woods are bare, the snow is deep. We wait for Herne to sound his horn to wake his children up from sleep.’ Isn’t that lovely?”