“I did wonder if you might be willing to talk with me about the, well, the atmosphere in the house in the days leading up to your son’s demise,” Max Tudor was saying.
She trembled ever so slightly and then threw back her bejeweled and feathered shoulders, braced to withstand any onslaught of questions, however unseemly.
“We must get to the bottom of this,” she said, and Max could only agree. “Someone tried to attack me the other day as I was taking my constitutional in the woods. Only my screams frightened them away. And I think someone tried to break into my bedroom from the tree branch outside my window. I told the gardener that branch should be cut down.”
Max took a moment to consider how much fact was mixed with fantasy here, but meanwhile, she had hared off in a new narrative direction.
“You must understand, Father, how out of my element I am here. I’ve led a rather sheltered life—oh, I’ll admit it! So I don’t know how I can help with such a sordid matter. I can but try!”
She cast him a look of bewildered innocence, a look exquisitely misjudged for her shrewd, rather worldly audience. Max decided to let pass this deft burnishing of past peccadilloes. After a suitably respectful pause to take in his plush surroundings—really, it was as if he’d stumbled onto a set for Downton Abbey—he said, “You have no ideas of your own, then. About what might be behind this?”
“Well … since you ask. My daughter-in-law is not all she might be. Oh, I’ll say no more about it! Nothing could pry more out of me. I shall not stoop to it! But, then again, I suppose I must not conceal what I know. My son’s killer must be caught! She and the groom … the estate manager … I have seen them together, you know.”
Max decided to feign ignorance. “Really?”
“There could be no mistake.” She said this with an operatic gesture, throwing back her head and placing the back of one hand against her temple as she gazed at the ceiling. “They were in the pagoda. Caught them in flagrante, I did. I was that shocked.” She seemed to recall the sheltered life she had claimed to lead, and opening her eyes wide, fingers splayed against her chin, she assumed a look of innocence outraged this time. She and Bree must have the same acting coach, reflected Max.
The pagoda … that little folly or summerhouse in the woods. So his guess as to its alternate uses had been right.
He struggled to come up with something that would drag her attention down to the level of normal conversation. Finally, he came out with a question: “When did you last see your son that day?”
“In the morning, was it? Really, I’m not sure. When I am writing my little books, it is like I’m in a trance. It’s a form of magic, you know. I could be anywhere, in any time period. There was, as I recall, conflict at the breakfast table earlier that week between Bree and Peregrine. I have a little confession to make.…”
“Oh, yes?”
She leaned in closer to him. “I borrowed some of the conflict of that morning for a scene I was writing. Really, the passions and the struggles between that little trollop and everyone else—the hostility and bad blood! I rather thought it might make an intriguing title for the book. The Trollop and the Duke. Or perhaps, Prince would be better.”
Why hold back? Max wondered. Why not go for it with Emperor?
“She came from nowhere, you know. Bree. Even her name—so common. She sounds like a canapé.”
For the second time that day, Max was taken aback by the viciousness and backbiting in this little group. Seeing the truth would not be easy: There were so many shades of dark running through this family tapestry.
Particularly since the dowager’s past, by all reports, would not hold up well to scrutiny, and she would do what she could to hinder the investigation in that regard. As Cotton had speculated, perhaps her own past was the reason she felt she understood Bree and her motivations so well. Or was it simple jealousy?
“How did they meet, Bree and your son?” Max asked, certain she would have her own spin on what he knew of the situation. “I know he was a widower.…”
“You are quite correct,” she drawled, her voice dripping with venom. “His wife—lovely woman; a Pratt-Knodlebaum, you know—was barely in her grave or so it seemed. My son went to a horse show or auction or something like that and Bree made a dead set at him.”
“She was flirtatious. I see.”
“No! No. Of course not.” Max was treated to a pitying look: For such a handsome man, he was certainly a babe in the woods when it came to women. “The easiest way into a man’s heart is to act as if the man doesn’t exist,” she said, speaking slowly, as if to give Max time to absorb the esoteric knowledge she was imparting. “That he’s beneath the woman’s notice. It’s catnip to their egos. Particularly if the woman is from the lower orders, like Bree. Everyone knows that.”
Max bowed to her superior knowledge of tactics deployed in the war between the sexes (this was the woman who had brought Priscilla’s Passion to a waiting world, after all), hoping not to appear to fall in line with her views on the social classes. “Lower orders” indeed. What a dinosaur the woman was.
“Why, oh why, did he have to go and marry her? He was greatly sought after when his wife died. He would have had his pick of great ladies.” She rolled her r’s on the words greatly and great in her rich contralto voice, as if to emphasize not only their greatness but her own highborn, strained speech pattern. “There was Alexandra ‘Tinky’ Leggett-Fitzcalder, just for one—dazzling on the dance floor and in the field and forest.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean,” the dowager said slowly, enunciating for his benefit, a manner she had perfected in issuing instructions to the housekeeper, “she was at home with all the highborn of the land, and with the hare and the hound. She could skin a rabbit in the wink of an eye, or gut a stag, but then bring a man to his knees with her plunging décolletage by eight that very same evening.”
The ultimate multitasker, then. Max gained the clear impression the Dowager Baaden-Boomethistle had wandered off inside one of her own books, from which she would continue to quote the most appalling drivel if he could not pull her back out in time.
“But Lord Baaden-Boomethistle passed all this by for the sake of Bree,” he said quickly. “I see.”
“She also had many suitors, did Bree,” the dowager admitted, but grudgingly. “That only added to her appeal for my son. Women like Bree have their ways and their wiles.”
Women like Bree. “And I suppose she was a good cook.” Max could not resist playing with the dowager just a bit.
“Really, I’ve no idea.” She looked at Max as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “I’ve never seen her do so much as boil an egg. We have servants for all that.” She sniffed, adding, “I can only guess at what she was good at, and I prefer not to be reminded of it, if it’s all the same to you, Vicar.”
“Yes, I do hear Bree’s an expert horsewoman.” Max beamed at her, the picture of innocence.
The dowager sighed deeply into her own rather impressive décolletage. Really, the man was hopeless. How on earth anyone this naïve had managed to father a child?… Still, what could she expect? He was a priest, after all. Her fingers itched to dial up her wellborn friends and relay this conversation. They all seemed to agree that Bree was a gold digger who should be clapped into irons immediately. And now this credulous priest was somehow assisting the police with their investigation. She would just have to get on the horn to Whitehall. And to the bishop of Monkslip. This outrage could not stand. Had her son been killed in a duel between equals, she felt she could bear it—just. But for him to be murdered by the lowborn Bree—and he had been, she just knew it! She knew it!—well … It was an insult to the proper order of things, that’s what it was. And now it looked as if Bree was going to be allowed to get away with it, the truth overlooked and swept under the rug by an incompetent constabulary.
Away with murder.
Away with murder, and with access to the family millions.
Max assu
med much of this venom came from worry about her dowager rights, with this little “trollop” Bree coming in from the gutter, as the duchess thought of it, and taking everything. People who feel their basic security is being threatened will lash out in all sorts of ways, Max reflected, which went a long way toward explaining the savagery of some divorce proceedings. Even though she was protected by law and tradition, who would want an unseemly tussle over who owned that silver tea service, and who owned that painting? And, more important, who lived where. Bree no doubt could make things very uncomfortable for the dowager if she chose.
Bree, for her part, might fear a smear campaign, along with being “outed” for having an affair. That mattered less with Lord Baaden-Boomethistle out of the way, of course. But gossip and innuendo could make life a bit uncomfortable for her in the village, with the dowager claiming to be an eyewitness to carryings-on in the summerhouse. But, had she seen anything? It was always possible she was testing the waters, seeing how Bree would react. Or causing mischief for the sake of mischief. That tendency of hers toward fantasy might blur the edges of reality. He would ask Cotton to look into any other witnesses to this behavior on Bree’s part. It was possible she had let herself open to a spot of blackmail.
“I must bid you farewell now,” said the dowager. She eased gently back into her pillows, as if her back troubled her. Max was reminded of Cotton as he’d left him just now, wrapped in cotton wool like a rare artifact. In such a manner did the Queen dismiss her courtiers. It was courteous, but it let the listener know who was in charge. Her courtiers would be sent scurrying to open doors if she were leaving the room, and to offer arms to escort her to her final destination in Buckingham Palace or in whatever palace she managed to find herself. Max stopped to wonder at the life of evident privilege, and to try to will himself into such a place and setting, and he found he could not do so. His natural habitat was the little vicarage study, where he wrote his sermons and dandled Owen on his knee, not this gilded cage.
Max made the usual sounds of regret at being parted from her and rose to leave.
“I hope I have not imposed on your grief,” he told her. “Please remember that I am here to help. You need only call. And of course there will be arrangements to make.”
“Arrangements?”
He could clearly see her flipping through her mental file, looking under A for Arrangements. Flower arrangements, seating arrangements—ah, of course, here it is! Of course, yes: funeral arrangements.
“You mean arrangements for his … erm…”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Max. “Please don’t trouble yourself about it now. Plenty of time. Perhaps your daughter-in-law would—”
But this mention of Bree seemed to galvanize the dowager. Gone was the mask of genteel and noble suffering, to be replaced almost comically by a Kabuki-style warrior mask—her painted red lips drawn back and her heavily made-up eyes narrowed into a menacing guise of anger. Gone, too, was the look of simpering helplessness. The Dowager Baaden-Boomethistle looked fully capable of taking care of herself. And of dealing with anyone who might try to stand in her way.
“No,” she said flatly, crossly. “Not her. I will not have her involved.” It was almost as if it had just occurred to her that arrangements would have to be made, and of course her daughter-in-law would be consulted first about them.
“I’ll see her in hell first,” said the dowager.
Chapter 21
DESTINY REMEMBERS II
Max had asked Destiny earlier to stop by the manor house whenever she could fit it into her schedule, to see if she could offer any help.
There was never a shortage of need for pastoral care in the village, and Destiny was already much in demand. Max somehow thought a woman’s sense and sensibilities might be useful in this case. A referee between the two ladies up at Totleigh Hall, he realized after speaking with them both, might be even more needed. He thought Destiny possessed the right diplomatic skills, possibly enough to get everyone through the funeral service in one piece. He felt sometimes she was wasted here and would have better served the world in the Hague.
It was late in the evening when she visited the hall, and early the next day she headed straight for Max and Awena’s cottage. She found Max alone at the breakfast table, lingering over his second cup of coffee and the newspaper. He apologized again for his unplanned nap during her sermon.
“Really, don’t worry about it. I say, that was odd about the music, though, wasn’t it?”
“The hymn board? Yes.”
“Eugenia was in a complete tizzy. She says she saw a woman changing it. Changing the hymn numbers before the service.”
Not a teenager messing about, then. “Did she say who it was?”
“She thinks Chanel Dirkson. Can you imagine? She’s starkers, Max—Eugenia is, I mean. Or she needs her eyes examined. I wouldn’t pay much attention whatever her answer. Why would a grown woman do such a silly thing?
“Anyway, why I’m here: I went to the manor house, as you asked, to see where I could be of help. At all cost we need to avoid having the lady and the dowager engaged in unseemly squabbles over the lord’s remains—I’ve seen that happen in the best of families. And this is not the best of families, I’m sure you’ll agree. Anyway, it was a pea souper out there—fog so thick, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I was on a shortcut through the woods, which is particularly spooky, I don’t mind saying. Especially once you know what happened to Lord Baaden-Boomethistle in those woods. But it was when the fog cleared momentarily that I had my first good look at him.”
She realized, she said, that she must have been walking the same path through the woods that Max had taken the night of the murder. And that was when she saw him.
“Him who?”
She had not known his name—he went by one of those posh nicknames at Oxford, like “Cosmo” or “Smurffy”—or that he was from a manor house near Nether Monkslip. But she recognized him on sight, in that split second the fog had cleared, despite the odd haircut he had adopted. She thought maybe he was trying to dumb himself down for the police investigation, but why he would do that defeated her.
“It does seem far-fetched. You are talking about Peregrine, of course. You passed Peregrine in the woods outside the manor house. And you recognized him from your recent Oxford days.”
“I do mean him. He just passed me by, pretending not to have seen me in the fog. But he had not wanted to be seen and definitely did not want me to waylay him. He turned his head and sort of scuttled off.”
“Was he wearing glasses?”
“Hmm? No, I don’t think so. Are you saying he couldn’t see me without his glasses?”
Max did not reply.
“And you knew who he was?” he asked. So? he wanted to add, but this was Destiny. There would be a point to this, however long it took to get there.
“Just wait for it,” she said. “There’s more to tell you, Max. Loads more.”
* * *
“I knew the son only by reputation at Oxford, but it was quite a reputation he had.” She put down the piece of whole-grain toast she had appropriated from the rack on the breakfast table. Max pushed a little bowl of currant jam toward her. “This sounds like the most dreadful gossip, doesn’t it?” she added.
It did, but Max was not about to stop the flow of these revelations. Gossip and unsubstantiated rumor were terrible if indulged in for entertainment or cruelty. They had been the saving grace in more than one investigation, however.
“He was not at Oxford what he appears to be now: a sort of überdork. He was famous for partying in a town known for drinking clubs and out-of-control gatherings. He was also famous for affairs and breaking hearts, generally—a bit of a ladies’ man. More than a bit. He was not famous for intellectual achievement, not surprisingly. Where would he find the time?”
“Surely you recognized him when you saw him here in the village? Recognized that name?”
She shook her head.
> “I only saw him as he flew by on his bicycle, generally muffled in a scarf. There were photos of him in Cherwell and other student papers—generally holding a glass aloft—so I know what he normally looks like. In the woods, I came face-to-face, within a few feet of him. I didn’t know him—here or at the university. He arrived at Oxford pretty much as I was leaving. And I only heard rumors, you understand—his arrival was like a rock thrown into a pond. I was on the farthest shore of that Brideshead sort of thing, but even where I was, I felt the ripples. He wasn’t a member of St. Barney’s, obviously; he was at Christ Church, carrying on with his little foxhunting friends.
“He wasn’t like you, Max,” she added, thinking, You could have had your pick of anyone you wanted, but you never took advantage of the fact. Which only made you that much more desirable to every female of every age and persuasion for miles around. “Peregrine was known to be predatory. Famous for it. Again, I know only his reputation, but that’s what it was. Among the women, especially. Not that many of them seemed to take the warning. He’s the type to give the Bullingdon Club a bad name.”
Since the Buller, a famous drinking club, already had a bad name, Max reflected this was probably saying something. While at Oxford, he’d once investigated the murder of a member of such a club. The trouble had been that everyone’s memory of events on the night in question had been so hazy.
“But can you be sure it was Peregrine?”
“Who else could it have been in that particular place in the woods, so near the manor house?”
The Haunted Season Page 22
