The Haunted Season

by G. M. Malliet

  “Might it have been ‘And yet, I don’t believe that’?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe … Sorry, Max, I just can’t be sure.”

  “And whom was this phantom woman talking to?”

  “That’s the part I don’t know, either! But given what’s happened, what are the chances it wasn’t Lady Baaden-Boomethistle?”

  “Was Lady B-B at the meeting?”

  “Almost certainly not. I asked Suzanna afterward, although it seemed unlikely to me she’d be there, given she’s recently been widowed.”

  “The names of those present would be in the meeting minutes.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Or at least the members who sent regrets, so those who were present could be extrapolated from that.”

  “How many were there?”

  “There must have been thirty-five or forty women. When the men started to arrive—say fifty people.”

  She paused, thinking. The logs had burned so long, they’d acquired the look of snakeskin and would soon crumble into the hearth. Max, following her gaze, stood and replenished the wood.

  “But it couldn’t have been a man,” she told him. “A man trying to get anywhere near that sauna would have been shot on sight. If you’d ever seen the Ladies’ University Club, you’d know I’m right.”

  How maddening it was, not to be sure which of the two women she’d overheard was which. They’d have been easier to identify with their clothes on, somehow, clothes being very distinguishing. But the combination of the steam and the ubiquitous white towels on their heads and wrapped around their middles had rendered them anonymous.

  She recalled the looks of shock or surprise from the other women when she’d put on her collar in the changing room. Yes, clothes were very distinguishing indeed.

  “And she didn’t recognize you from the steam room? The woman at the WI meeting?”

  Destiny shook her head slowly.

  “Are you sure? This could be important.” He didn’t want to say, “your life could be at risk,” but he was thinking it.

  “If I couldn’t see her, I doubt she could have seen me in that crowded Village Hall—remember, I was swamped by a sea of people all taller than I am. I didn’t think she saw me in the steam room, either. I was sitting on a lower shelf, beneath them, my back to the wall, with only my legs and feet sticking out.”

  Max thought for a moment. “Is it possible they knew you were there? That they were hoping you’d overhear?” It seemed a long shot, unless for some perverse reason the women had wanted to play games and send her on a wild-goose chase. But perhaps what was simply idle talk had later gelled into reality—into a real murder plot. In part because they’d assumed they were anonymous, voices rising as if out of the steam—that even if overheard, no one could ever trace who they were.

  “That is was staged somehow?” Destiny asked. “Well … It’s just possible, I suppose. But they are awfully good actresses, if so. And when they realized I could overhear, they shushed up very quickly.”

  “They could be good actresses. That’s what a good actress would do.”

  “Oh, really? Well, wait until you hear this.” She settled her empty teacup on the table in front of her and leaned in conspiratorially.

  “There’s more?”

  “There’s more,” Destiny said.

  And she told him of her near-miss accident, how she was nearly run over when she stepped off the curb near St. James’s Square. How it had happened so fast, she didn’t see the make of car and couldn’t even be sure of its color.

  So maybe she had not been as invisible in the steam room as she’d thought.

  Maybe someone had followed her from the club. They’d have had to lie in wait to seize their chance—not easy to do on crowded London streets, small wonder they’d missed.

  They must have been very worried about what she might have overheard.

  Aloud she said, “But what bothers me about that is this: how could they know I had any connection to Nether Monkslip?”

  Max was thinking a quick peek in the guest registry at the club might have clued them in.

  “When you signed into the club, what forwarding address did you use for mail or things left behind?”

  “Oh, I see what you mean. Nether Monkslip.”

  “It’s possible they saw that. Or that they overheard a conversation of yours while you were in the club library or at dinner.”

  She thought back.

  “I suppose.”

  But, thought Max, it didn’t matter where she was from. If they realized someone in the steam room had overheard a burgeoning murder plot, they would have recognized that person was a threat. That person would have to be eliminated, wherever she was from.

  And if one of the women had followed Destiny out … The wonder was that there had been no attempt on her life in all these months. Perhaps the fact she’d never told anyone what she’d overheard had assured her safety. Until now.

  “It was a dark color is all I can tell you,” she was saying. “I was flat on my face. Not so long ago, there would have been a different explanation for that. But I was stone-cold sober.”

  Max nodded his understanding. Destiny was an alcoholic, a fact she had shared with Max when the whole issue of being his curate had come up. Although she had been sober for years, it was still a crucial fact of her life.

  “I’ve come to believe the reasons I drank aren’t important,” she had told him. “Which is a good thing, because I don’t know what the reasons are or were. It was—it is—the centerpiece of my life. If you take me on, you have a right to know. I can only promise you that I wrestle with this demon every day and so far, I’m winning.”

  “How are you so sure?” Max had asked her. “Alcoholic: That’s a difficult word to apply. A harsh word to apply to yourself.” An AA group met weekly in the Village Hall, but it was full of people from Monkslip-super-Mare. They wanted to be truly anonymous and so were willing to make the drive to help ensure it.

  She had laughed. “Oh, there were little clues. For one thing, I had bottles hidden all over the house, and I lived alone. We need a new word for crazy. After hours of therapy, it was decided I was trying to hide the problem even from myself, a behavior Freudian in its obviousness. Or obvious in its Freudianness. Whatever. Everything about it was interfering with my life. I couldn’t think beyond when I could have my next drink. It was measured sorrow—sorrow measured out in the number of empty bottles put out in the rubbish bin each week. A good week was only one bottle of my favorite whiskey. A bad week—well.

  “So one day I joined a group, and I found I was far from alone. And I wasn’t crazy. And I wasn’t lost, not anymore.”

  The one thing she had learned from those meetings was that treating yourself well was the only key to being of help to anyone else. And it was the desire to help others that drove her. It was often said that the best comparison was being on a plane when the oxygen masks were deployed. You made sure your own mask was on before trying to help anyone else. Otherwise, you were all going to go down.

  She had told Max all this, knowing she was still a risk. One day at a time, she was still a risk who might embarrass him in the highly political world of the Anglican Communion.

  Max had not hesitated. He’d said, “The position calls for a human being, not a saint. Saints are of no use to me. People of compassion and hard-earned wisdom are.”

  Max said now, smiling, “So, even stone-cold sober, and even though you were nearly run over, you didn’t make the connection with what you’d overheard?”

  “No. Would you? Drivers in London are insane. Much worse than ever they used to be.”

  “Would you recognize both voices if you heard them again?”

  She nodded her head, but doubtfully.

  “They were plummy, upper-class voices is all I can say. Throaty and somehow privileged voices, if that makes any sense. Thick as cream, but rather braying—you know what I mean. One younger and one maybe slightly older, at a guess, but not ol
d.”

  “Do you think it was a woman connected with Totleigh Hall?”

  “Had to be, don’t you think? Knowing what we know now,” Destiny replied. “Unless there’s been another murder in Nether Monkslip I know nothing about.”

  Max shook his head and smiled bleakly. “Not recently.”

  “But it’s really too bizarre to imagine, isn’t it? They could use Totleigh Hall to film a remake of Brideshead Revisited. All grandeur and gilt-edged glory. But you’re thinking one of the women must have been the wife. Lady B-B. I’ve never met her, so no—no idea.”

  “But if you heard her voice?” Max thought nothing could be easier than to arrange a meeting. But if Lady Baaden-Boomethistle really were a deranged killer, what kind of danger would he be letting Destiny in for, then? Possibly a spot of prearranged eavesdropping was called for.… Destiny hidden behind a tapestry or within a stall in the stables … But he was forgetting: Cotton had told him Bree had a clear alibi, with multiple witnesses to prove it. The anxiety that had gripped him relaxed its hold, but only for a moment. Alibis could be faked; witnesses could be bribed.

  “Maybe I’d recognize her voice,” Destiny was saying. “It’s been so long—I doubt my testimony would stand up in court, but at least I’d know. It was just a fluke I recognized the voice in all the hubbub at the meeting. Worse luck I couldn’t on either occasion see to whom the voice was attached.”

  She paused, pushing back her thick auburn hair with both hands. She wore it chopped short at the neck, as if she’d taken the scissors to it herself. She would push the curls back when she was beset by a problem, which created a most unfortunate mushroom-cloud effect: Einstein on the verge of a great discovery. Today she had applied gel in a last-ditch effort at controlling what the moist sea air creeping in from the coast would destroy. The result looked somehow inflammable.

  “I am reminded of a similar situation,” she told him, “in the village where I grew up. A widower who owned a small chain of shops married a much younger woman. Since he was considered to be a catch, there was a certain amount of talk, particularly among the ladies who had tried and failed to catch him. He had a son, a bit of a layabout, who didn’t adjust well to the new situation, as so often is the case. As seems to be the case there at Totleigh Hall—I have heard the stepmother and the son don’t get along at all. It is easy to think in clichés—older man, younger woman. The son in my village was sure the new wife was after the money. Gasping to get her hands on the pearls and the silverware. Nothing could have been further from this woman’s—Betty’s—true north. She was not interested in things. That is what people were too hidebound to see. She and her husband had fallen in love—she respected him enormously, perhaps as a father figure, but whatever. And that really was all there was to it.”

  “The son may have felt it was necessary to guard his mother’s memory by rubbishing the woman who had taken her place. That is a very common reaction to that particular sort of grief.”

  Destiny nodded, adding, “The boy clearly had too much time on his hands, and a head stuffed with grievance and guilt. He used his anger to justify his failures, of course—as if his father’s remarriage were the reason he never achieved anything.”

  Max was mulling over everything she had told him. What were the parallels to the situation at Totleigh Hall? Would grievance and guilt—anger at Bree’s quick assumption of power—have led Peregrine to exact a horrible revenge against his father?

  Max needed some time to focus on the case. But time was what he never seemed to have. Unless … “Would you take the service for me on Sunday?” he asked her suddenly.

  “Of course,” Destiny replied happily. “Any particular topic I should dwell on? ‘Thou shall not kill’?”

  He shook his head. “I think they know that already.”

  “All but one or two of them, perhaps.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right about that. Just keep it short. The congregation has a limited attention span.”

  * * *

  An hour later, one of the sudden squalls that could beset the coast sprang up, lashing tree branches against the vicarage windows and rattling the fragile panes. Destiny, watching the storm from her cottage window, decided her hair was better than a barometer—she could always tell when rain was on the way. A great crack of lightning disguised the creak of the gate leading into her front garden, a gate designed more for keeping stray animals out than for keeping the cottage dweller safe from intruders.

  Fortunately, Destiny could not linger; she had promised to visit a shut-in parishioner. Stopping just long enough to throw on a coat and rain hat, she went flying down the garden path and out the gate to her car, eyes scrunched against the pelting rain. She never saw the dark figure that stepped back off the path to hide from her in the shadows.

  In the same way, a roll of thunder soon disguised the creak of the gate leading into the nearby vicarage garden, and the sound of someone lightly tapping an exploratory rap at the door—a door that proved to be unlocked when that same someone tried the handle.

  Max returned from securing all the windows against the storm to find Ms. Eugenia Smith-Ganderfort standing in his study, looking like the proverbial drowned rat. A man with nerves of steel, he actually jumped back an inch at the sight.

  Lord help me.

  “Eugenia, please—if you’d not walk in unannounced. That is what Mrs. Hooser is for.”

  Actually, what Mrs. Hooser was for was anyone’s guess, and the skeptical look on Eugenia’s face seemed to confirm the absurdity of Max’s assertion. But she merely said, “I’m sorry, Father Max. It is a vicarage, and thus I thought it was open to all who need your help.”

  “Of course it is, just not…” Oh, what is the use? “What is it you wanted, Mrs. Smith-Ganderfort?” he said, distancing himself with the formal address. Her disappointment at this change showed in her crestfallen gaze. The wind set up a howl just then beneath the eaves. He imagined he could feel the roof lifting, as if the old place might take flight, with him and her in it.

  “Oh, nothing, really. I was … I was just wondering how the murder investigation is coming along.”

  Really? “I don’t know a lot about it—”

  “Oh, but that’s not true. Everyone knows you are at the very center of things. You always are.”

  “—at least, nothing I’m at liberty to discuss,” he concluded firmly. What did she imagine as she stood there, water from her slicker dripping onto the vicarage carpet? That he would invite her to sit down and pick over the clues with him?

  “That wife of his is not all she pretends to be, you know.”

  Another country heard from. Unfairly or not, while he would be inclined to give credence to whatever Noah or Destiny speculated, he would doubt any contribution of Eugenia’s. If Bree reminded Destiny in some Miss Marple–like fashion of a situation in her old village, an innocent accused, there might be something to it. This, however …

  “She’s unfaithful to him, you know.”

  Masking his annoyance, Max said, “If you know anything for certain, you must tell DCI Cotton. I’m not at lib—”

  “He’ll think I’m just guessing. I’m not guessing. I know. I understand the human heart! I hear its cries. Just because I live in a small village doesn’t mean I don’t know anything of life. Oh, I know about life all right!” She paused, looking at him intently, willing his eyes to meet hers. “Don’t you feel it, too, Father Max?”

  “Hmm?”

  “The electricity. Don’t you feel it, too?”

  Max, listening with only half his attention—really, he wanted to get back to his work while he had five minutes to himself; Awena would be closing the shop in a few minutes and they had little enough time alone as it was. So he said, “The rug shock the other day, you mean? That was just—”

  “You must have felt it, too,” she told him earnestly. “That current that runs between like minds—minds thinking alike. Being alike. From the beginning, I’ve felt it—that … that
awareness, like being drawn to like. Soul to soul.”

  Oh my Lord. He reached blindly for his chair and sat down, hard. This was worse than anything Max could have imagined. He felt he was staring, not for the first time in his life, straight into the face of madness. Only this time it was not the egomania of a drug lord or the paranoia of a terrorist steeped in religious mania, but a harmless woman of middle years who was undoubtedly too much alone in the world.

  The recent words Destiny had used echoed: Too much time on her hands.

  Was she harmless?

  He debated with himself what was best to do. How to extricate himself without harming or alarming her. In the end, he reminded himself that arguing with a delusional person only gave credence to their beliefs, allowing them to set the agenda. Much better to change the subject.

  And better still, to leave the conversation, as gently but decisively as could be.

  “I am afraid I must visit Miss Pitchford today,” he told her, pulling his jacket from the back of his chair. “Mrs. Hooser will have to show you out.”

  And then, as always, his unfailing kindness kicked in. He could not bear to injure someone so fragile.

  “Thank you for stopping by,” he said.

  Chapter 14

  ST. EDWOLD’S

  Outside, the storm had become an insistent drizzle shot from a lowering sky. Max grabbed his mackintosh from the row of hooks by the vicarage door and pulled it on over his jacket, tugging the collar up against the wind.

  He had told Eugenia the truth about his planned itinerary—but he was headed first to the church, then to check on Miss Agnes Pitchford. She had an increasing tendency to fall—a particular worry with her fragile, aging bones, according to Dr. Winship—and so Max would often look in on her.

  God would have to forgive him for the almost-white lie—he didn’t feel it was wise to give Eugenia a minute-by-minute account of his plans. The topic of his sermon mocked him, but the ends must sometimes justify the means. Must they not? Or was everything to be put in God’s hands while mankind stood passively by?