“That’s right. By any scientific reasoning, it can’t be there, and yet it is. You saw it when you visited Nether Monkslip for the hand-fasting. What did you think?”
The bishop didn’t say anything, and when he spoke, he avoided answering the question.
“Why did you become a priest, Max?”
“Why did I—That’s easy. I wanted my life to count for something, to mean something. To me, if to no one else.”
“And there was an element of turning swords into plowshares in your case, wasn’t there? Given your MI5 background?”
This was true, Max realized. The murder of his friend and colleague Paul had done for him. He had grown sick of the carnage, of the tit-for-tat violence, of the stupid bloody-mindedness of it all, of the constant lying to everyone about who he was and what he did all day. He’d wanted out. It hadn’t stopped his aching wish that the man who had killed Paul would be killed or captured, but it had changed his life completely, and put him on a wholly different path. A path that led to Awena and to Owen. A path toward—dare he say it?—peace and undiluted happiness.
All he had left to remember Paul by now was the shirt he, Max, had been wearing the day Paul died. It had a speck of blood on the collar, presumably Paul’s, and it was tucked on the top shelf of his closet now, carefully preserved. For what, Max could not have said, but he could not be parted from it, and he had given Mrs. Hooser a very hard time when she attempted to use it as a dust rag.
Not long ago, Awena had found it in rearranging the bedroom closets. He’d told her what it was, and she’d asked, “What makes you certain it’s Paul’s blood?” Max had been too stunned to reply. Any other explanation had never occurred to him. He had so wanted it to be Paul’s.
“I could say the same,” the bishop was saying now. “I wanted to make a difference in the world, and this was the avenue that appealed to me—there was so much of the planet in dire straits and I wanted to do something about it, not just spend my short time on earth taking care of me and mine, worrying only about what I could accumulate, and how many channels I could get on my satellite dish.”
Max waited, sensing there was more.
“But I also believed, Max. Despite the fact I consider myself to be a rational actor, I was and am a believer. Why, I asked myself, did Christianity succeed when hundreds of cults died off? It was the Twitter of its age, the underfunded start-up that changed the world. Did the early Christians believe in miracles? Of course they did. We know they did. And without joining the ranks of the credulous, the easily duped, the easily separated from their hard-earned money by charlatans, I think we have to believe, too.”
Max was taken aback. Never had the bishop spoken to him like this, of matters like this. Max felt he was being given for the first time a glimpse into the man’s soul.
“That said,” continued the bishop, “this situation has to be handled very carefully. I suppose you could just keep painting the image over, pointless as it has become. Or have that portion of the wall removed, perhaps?”
But even as he spoke, the bishop seemed to recognize the futility of this approach. Any miracle worthy of the name would break through any attempts to stifle it.
“But we come to the real issue, Max. Between the murders and the face and the rampant speculation about you and your wife by the media—well, it may come to this: You may have to be reassigned to another parish.”
No. Max’s reaction was immediate and heartfelt. Nether Monkslip, like Awena, had come to be a part of his soul. The place not only where he resided but where his soul thrived.
NO.
“I am sorry, Max. We don’t have to decide anything today. But the spotlight needs to be turned down a notch. The murders started when you arrived in Nether Monkslip. Perhaps they’ll end when you leave.”
Or they’ll trail along behind me, thought Max.
And from the look on the bishop’s face, he was thinking the same thing.
Chapter 17
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
Late that night, Max was watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train on DVD. The sound was turned low, as Owen dozed in his arms. Max had figured out that Owen loved old films as much as his father; the sounds seemed to calm him until he fell asleep. Chip off the old block.
The film, starring Farley Granger and Robert Walker, revolved around a professional tennis player and a wealthy psychotic, who suggests they solve each other’s personal dilemmas by switching murders, thus providing on each other with an alibi. Farley’s dilemma involved the fact that his wife was pregnant with another man’s child, and he, Farley, was in any case, in love with another woman. Robert Walker had an inconvenient father standing in the way of his inheritance.
Max, caught up in the portrayal of the thoroughly evil Bruno character played by Walker, felt a little shiver of recognition, a sense of déjà vu. The theme of strangers chatting casually of death—certainly that had come up recently, and was the reason Max had dug out the old recording to watch. But it was more. What was it that nagged at him? Something about pregnancy? The rather doubtful pregnancy of Farley’s wife. The top of Max’s scalp began to tingle. He had been jiggling Owen to help him sleep, but now he froze, trying to summon whatever memory or idea had been called into play. He rewound the film in his mind: Bruno had been talking about a “crisscross,” suggesting the means to establish an alibi, since neither man knew the other and so collusion would not be suspected by the authorities.
But what did that have to do with the current case? Max couldn’t fathom it, although he felt certain whatever was nibbling at the edges of his mind had to do with the death—and the life—of Lord Baaden-Boomethistle. And it wasn’t just the obvious connection that the removal of Lord Baaden-Boomethistle had meant the estate could pass to his son. It was more than that. Something to do with a train, then?
Max, hitting the pause button, thought back over the facts as he knew them, wondering if two people could have colluded in the crime. That was always possible, even though it was the riskiest way to commit a murder: One had to trust absolutely one’s partner’s ability to keep quiet. Murder created a pact as “sacred” as marriage or kinship. But he had the idea this whatever it was he was alerting on predated Lord Baaden-Boomethistle’s death.
He recalled that Lord Baaden-Boomethistle had mentioned a train. Something about a train … how convenient the Chunnel had made train travel but that the Chunnel had just opened one hot summer and he was always one to wait until they’d worked the kinks out of big new projects. The Chunnel opening had been around 1994, as Max recalled—he could look it up, but what did it matter? The lord had talked about how he and his first wife had taken a train out of Spain to catch a plane to England, and how they’d been delayed. How hot it had been that summer. How crowded. The sounds (and the smells) of crying children had added to the discomfort. There had been a litany of complaints about the journey: “I am one of those who firmly believe children should be seen and not heard.” And Lord Baaden-Boomethistle had gone on to request—foolish hope!—that the organizers make sure the noise from children at the duck race be kept to a minimum.
It was gone three before Max put Owen in his crib to be guarded by Thea, the living, breathing baby monitor. Max knew he would need Cotton’s help to confirm his wild hypothesis, but there was not much Cotton could do at this hour. He might need a search warrant: That depended on how cooperative the people at Totleigh Hall might prove to be. Somehow, Max thought the odds were not good, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
The phrase “tilting at windmills” went through his mind.
Owen opened his eyes just briefly before returning to sleep. Max could have sworn his son winked at him.
* * *
It was Sunday, and Destiny was conducting the church service. It was her big moment, which made what happened next so unforgivable.
Max fell asleep during her sermon.
Owen, in a departure from his usual placidness, had awakened again and again throughou
t the night, crying sporadically; drifting off, then seeming to time his awakenings for when his father started to doze. Max had let Awena sleep through it all.
Nodding off in church—his own church—was an unpardonable lapse, despite the good excuse. Besides, it wasn’t a particularly long sermon, as sermons went.
Destiny, who had, of course, spotted him in the congregation, was utterly gracious and forgiving afterward, telling him, “God speaks to us in dreams, too, Max. Probably more helpfully and to the point than in any sermon of mine.”
Then she spoiled it by adding, “Besides, I thought you were just concentrating. Thank God you didn’t snore.”
Or even, thought Max, emit gentle snuffles, like one of Awena’s dormice.
His little nap had gone mostly unnoticed, apart from a steely-looking woman in a hat sitting across the aisle from him. Beside her sat Miss Pitchford, also sporting a sort of alpine confection with a feather stuck in the brim. The steely woman appeared to be visiting from another parish, and was possibly a friend of Miss Pitchford’s; she was not a Nether Monkslipper. From the look she gave him, she would have stabbed him awake with her hat pin had she been close enough. Max could picture her composing the letter she would send to the bishop to report Max’s unsuitability for his posting. “It is with deep sadness and regret that I, as a loyal member of the One True Church, feel compelled to bring to your most Esteemed’s attention a shocking event I myself witnessed this Sunday,” et cetera, et cetera. There were people like that, as Max knew only too well.
He had drifted off just as Destiny had been quoting from Psalm 59: “Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me.” It was an entreaty that blended perfectly with Max’s now-fading dream image of a man in sunglasses—a wavering image Max clung to as he swam against the tides of tiredness and again became aware of his surroundings. This disturbing figure in sunglasses was a recurrent visitor to Max’s dreamscape, this menacing half man, half creature, a man trying too hard to look cool, wearing glasses that had not been fashionable for years, if they ever had been. Sunglasses with blue lenses and white frames. Silly, juvenile. Glasses the man had worn the day Max had seen him running from the scene of carnage he had created, the explosion in which Paul had been killed. The man had never been apprehended, despite all the resources of MI5 having been brought to bear.
Like a ghost, he’d vanished, and the dreaming Max thought something in this ghost idea might be important, so he tried to hang on to it, fighting wakefulness. The figure shape-shifted now into a Robert Walker look-alike—the actor Robert Walker. Max now realized he could see through him, like a ghost.
A ghost, like the headless horseman that chased Ichabod Crane in the old American story. Ichabod, he remembered, had been a superstitious man.
Of course. Who wrote that story? He couldn’t think … Ichabod, such a wonderful old name from the Bible; his mother named him Ichabod, Max remembered. She died from grief, soon after giving birth to him. Ichabod.
It began to snow, and in the distance he could see a church on a mountaintop—not St. Edwold’s, but a church with an onion dome. Max suddenly became aware that he stood in a forest, and as he stood, a headless man raced by on horseback. The eyes of the horse he rode were rolled back in fear, the whites of its eyes showing. The horse was not Foto Finish, as Max first had thought, but a sturdy Russian draft horse running impossibly fast.
He heard a voice—surely the man could not speak? But a booming, sepulchral voice said, “Remember: It takes a thief.” Max stepped away in horror, and as he did so, he nearly tripped over a head where it lay on the ground among piles of fallen leaves. The head was bearded, a long white beard now soaked in blood. Max tried to run, but his feet were planted, stuck to the ground, mired in the muck of mud and blood and rotting leaves. He became aware of the horse, which was watching him—it must have come back—and of the sound of a cricket’s chirp. Beside the head—how odd, almost comical, he thought—lay a smashed pumpkin, its carved skull shattered. The face of the headless man grinned up at him, a jack-o’-lantern grin. The face still wore the sunglasses, but it no longer looked like Robert Walker. It looked like Lord Bayer Baaden-Boomethistle.
At which, Max finally jolted awake, stifling a shout of alarm and dropping his hymnal to the stone floor. It made a thunk! which caused heads—heads firmly attached to their owners, thank God—to turn in his direction.
He rubbed both hands over his face, desperate with weariness. Between Owen’s awakenings and his preoccupation with the murder of Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, all on top of his usual pastoral duties and the delicate political dance he was engaged in with his bishop, he was exhausted. While he knew that this, too, would pass, he started to wonder when it would.
He realized he’d been listening to Destiny’s sermon with part of his mind, anyway, and bits of it had seeped into his unconscious, making the usual incomprehensible stew. For she was now talking about Herodias demanding the head of John the Baptist.
Oh my, thought Max. Good Lord. Given recent events, it was perhaps not the happiest choice of topic. But he knew Destiny had been working on her sermon for ages, polishing it and looking toward the day she’d have a chance to use it, and by this point might not even have seen the parallels.
Stranger things were still to come during this service. The organist began to play the opening notes of hymn number 247 and the choir joined in, warbling with gusto, if a mix of abilities. Awena’s voice soared above the rest, sounding like an angel to his ears, Owen apparently content now in his carrier at her side. But, even allowing for the fact he himself generally sang off key, Max couldn’t help but notice many in the congregation were singing a different song, until the voices began to trail off and stall in confusion. People were turning to one another, pointing to their hymnals, then pointing to the hymn board.
As in most churches, the board hung at the right of the altar. The numbers for the hymns planned for the service were affixed to a black background using movable plastic white type. Also as usual, the type didn’t necessarily match; there had been some attrition over the years, with pieces gone missing, and pieces replaced with numerals in a slightly different font. But what was odd was that the last hymn for the service was to have been number 247.
It was now, according to the hymn board, number 345.
Perhaps some of the village children had been messing about with the board, thought Max. It had happened before. Or perhaps one of the many new visitors to the church had gone in for a spot of mild vandalism. He stole a glance at Miss Steely Eyes. Perhaps … there were all sorts of strangers lately … but no: Such as she would never stoop to such a thing. Clearly there had been some mistake, however it had happened. Max would have to ask the sexton about it.
As the congregation sang on (at least those in the congregation who knew the words to hymn number 247 without having to follow the printed lyrics), he took a copy of the hymnal from the rack attached to the pew in front of him. He flipped through the pages until he found hymn number 345, which happened to be “Here We Come with Gladness.”
That is odd, Max thought. That is very odd indeed.
Chapter 18
MAX AND COTTON
Max, on his way to see DCI Cotton, made a slight detour.
As he approached the stables at Totleigh Hall, he heard two voices, one low and importuning, the other low and dismissive. But at the sound of his footsteps, the voices stopped, and when he entered the row of stalls, it appeared he was alone—except, of course, for the horses.
The horse he wanted to see was not hard to find. Each stall was labeled with a big brass plate with the name of its occupant: Gunpowder, Brio, Mamasito Gold. He wondered idly who had the job of keeping the brass to such a high polish. The fellow who wrote Downton Abbey would know, he decided.
Foto Finish, a fine-looking dappled gray, stared from one of his enormous eyeballs, taking Max’s measure.
“What do you know?” Max whispered to him. “What did y
ou see with those big eyes, eh?” He had taken a carrot from the kitchen at home, where it had been waiting to be diced for Awena’s famous Root Soup—she was making a video of how to prepare the recipe to upload to her Web site, and he hoped she wouldn’t notice she was a carrot short. He held the offering out on the flat of his palm. The horse pricked up its ears, eying Max with renewed interest, and gently nibbled the carrot off Max’s hand with his enormous teeth. “What did you hear with those big ears, fella?” Max ran a hand down the horse’s withers and stroked the base of his ears. Did horses like being scratched behind the ears, like a dog? This one apparently did. His ears twitched with hope for another carrot.
Foto Finish seemed docile enough to Max, who wondered idly if the animal even realized he was at the center of a murder investigation. Had he been traumatized at all, perhaps by the smell of blood? Probably not. The whole event was for him a chance to return early to the stables and nothing more.
Leaving this mute witness behind, Max walked from the stables to the side of the house. He had arranged to meet up with DCI Cotton where he’d been given permission to set up temporary headquarters.
Approaching a sparkling pair of French doors into the manor, Max noticed the soil in one of the large vases on the patio, holding a small decorative evergreen, had been disturbed—a bit of soil lay on the ground next to the vase. Squirrels at work, most likely. But he cleared away an inch or two of topsoil and saw a blue plastic object had been buried there. It was egg-shaped and of a size to be held comfortably in the palm of the hand. In the center of the object was an orange button. By instinct and habit, he used a clean handkerchief to pick it up. Experimentally, he pushed the button, expecting perhaps an alarm, but it emitted a little clicking sound.
Rosamund appeared at his elbow, the sound of her footfall deadened by the lush grass of the lawn. Today she was wearing round eyeglasses with pink frames and a lavender frock.
Max asked her what the object was, to confirm his suspicion.
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