“So you will do it?” Cotton knew from Max’s tone that he, Cotton, was winning now. Once Max met Lamorna he might not be so filled with sympathy, but Cotton wasn’t going to tell him that.
“I’ll be glad to talk to her and to all the family, certainly. I’ll have to clear up a few things here—beginning with a call to Father Arthnot. But I don’t want to be in the middle of your investigation. I’ll simply muddy the waters for your people.”
“They’ve all left, my people. The video team, the photographer, the police doctor.” The image came into his mind of the two bodies, each encircled by its own technicians wearing their all-enveloping blue coveralls with elastic at wrists and ankles, accessorized none too fashionably with the booties and hoods designed to protect the crime scene from contamination. They stooped and swayed, poked and prodded, shuffled about and chanted to one another in the ritual of violent death they had all come to know too well.
“They’ve gone off to learn what they can from the scene photos and the bodies themselves,” he told Max. “The areas where the bodies were found have been sealed off for the time being, of course. She was found in the hothouse, which is tucked into a corner of the garden, where I’m told she spent much of her time. He, as I’ve indicated, was found in his bedroom. The technical people have gone off to chortle over the blood spatter patterns in which they take such delight. But we’re left with the suspects, who still are the main source of clues.”
“Even with forensics and all the modern gewgaws, it comes down to the people in the end, doesn’t it?” agreed Max.
Cotton nodded, as if Max were there to see him. “The police surgeon thought we should ask for a postmortem on both bodies. Obviously, there’s foul play in the case of Lord Footrustle. We need to be quite sure there wasn’t something suspicious about Lady Baynard’s death, as well.”
“Poor woman. I’d never met him, but to have just parted from her … That is harsh.”
“So you will help.”
Now Max, unseen by Cotton, was nodding. But somehow Cotton knew this.
“Then I’ll see you there,” said Cotton. “Hopefully tomorrow—time is of the essence in these cases, as you are well aware. Just let me know when you’re setting out.” And he quickly rang off, again in a nod to all the film noir he’d ever seen in his life, and again not wishing to push his luck. Max could always change his mind, but somehow Cotton didn’t think he would. A hound already set on the chase, was Max.
Thoughtfully putting down the colossal Bakelite phone at his own end, unknowingly dislodging Luther from another of his death-defying acrobatic attempts, Max wondered what his bishop would think of the way his pastoral duties were starting to overlap with high crimes and misdemeanors. Overall he felt it best to say the least possible unless asked directly what in the world he thought he was doing. He could argue he was doing God’s work in trying to bring criminals to justice, but would the Bishop of Monkslip agree? On the whole, Max thought perhaps not. Softly, softly then. So long as none of his pastoral duties suffered, there was no reason for the bishop to even learn of Max’s involvement in the affair.
CHAPTER 6
A Man’s Home
Max had a rusting old Land Rover he used mainly for home visits to farms. In the village, he could walk everywhere, often with Thea at his side. In such a small and compact area as Nether Monkslip, he seldom even used his bicycle.
He powered up the ancient but reliable engine the next day for his visit to the castle. Despite Cotton’s mild protests, the business of St. Edwold’s had to come first, and it took some time for him to arrange cover during his absence: Someone had to be available to administer the sacraments. His bishop was not consulted—nor need he have been, Max quickly added to the thought. If he had been, he might not have stamped his approval on the scheme insofar as the police investigation was concerned. But as it happened, the vicar at St. David’s Church in Monkslip-super-Mare had declared himself glad to be relieved of the immediate need to make a condolence visit to Chedrow Castle. So much so that Max asked him, suspiciously, why that was so.
“You mean apart from the fact a knife-wielding murderer is rampaging about the castle? Do I need another reason?” Father John Arthnot was a canny, no-nonsense cleric, nearing retirement, a prospect he viewed with quiet happiness. He and his wife had three grandchildren who had arrived in rapid succession, all of them living in Bradford, and all of them in need of babysitting services.
“And the Church,” John had told him, “is not what it was. It’s time for the old guard like me to leave the way clear for the youthful go-getter like yourself. You’ve worked miracles in Nether Monkslip, I hear. Attendance is off the charts.”
Max didn’t want to go into the fact that the recent murder in the village, and his subsequent involvement in the investigation, had much to do with the religious revival that had gripped the village. For now, it was sufficient to know that his attendance on the castle would not be treading on the man’s pastoral toes.
“Besides,” John added, “the family is barking. I’m happy to hand them off to you. Never was a condolence call less needed.”
“Surely not,” said Max, somewhat shocked. Two people dead, and no one in need of consolation?
“You’ll see,” said John placidly. “It’s sad, but they’re probably all too busy counting the silverware and keeping an eye on one another to mourn the passing of either lord or lady.”
Max set out then, but not before making half a dozen additional phone calls, some to call in his chits with other priests in the vicinity. He wasn’t certain how long he would be gone, but this was a busy time of year for the church, and his duties couldn’t just be abandoned at any time. He also let Mrs. Hooser know he’d be gone, to make sure the animals were fed in his absence.
He admitted to himself that part of his motivation in heeding the call from Cotton was that Lady Baynard had told him of her misgivings or forebodings. He felt that he owed it to her to find out what had happened to her brother, whose violent death so spectacularly fulfilled her premonitions of trouble to come.
* * *
The weather cooperated, but grudgingly. The South West of England boasted a temperate climate that since time immemorial had drawn visitors to its shores, and this record for scenic hospitality was only now being threatened by the caprices of global warming. The area still enjoyed what the locals called “rainfall on tap”—rain when needed, sun when not—and the deep soil of the region meant not only good planting but good grazing for much of the year. Animals also could be bred earlier than in other parts of Britain. The region generally was spared the worst of winter, but this year’s had been unusually bitter, unusually cold, with snow staying on the ground longer than any of the locals could recall. The snow brought chaos with it, as many were not used to driving in wintry conditions, nor did they have the kinds of heavy automobiles designed to safely navigate snow and ice.
By this point the winter qualified as having been one of the most terrible in recent memory. From December first the country had been nearly paralyzed by icy roads and snow—elderly people, unaware and unused to the hazards, had been found frozen to death. Deliveries were halted as filling stations ran out of petrol, and people had been trapped on trains or unable to get public transport to work, further slowing the movement of goods and services.
Max steered the Land Rover, which was a bit too wide for the Lilliputian lanes leading to Monkslip-super-Mare. Despite the need for hypervigilance in this needle-threading task, it was a pleasant drive of hedgerows, stone walls, sparkling snow, and blue sky. At one point he caught a glimpse of an old barn in the distance, its roof thatched. The voices of the popular Scandinavian group Trio Mediaeval issued from the dashboard, singing thirteenth-century church music. Awena had lent him the CD.
The quiet otherwise was at a level beyond that of Nether Monkslip, as if he had slipped on noise-cancelling headphones. Mr. Whippet, the elderly parishioner Awena was watching out for, had told him the village o
nce had been a noisy place, with the laments of animals being driven home at night, and carts rumbling down the High, and the shrieks of children at play. The village had had a school in those days, a building responsible for most of the clamor and, along with the church, for the ringing of bells. These days, the few young children were sent into Monkslip-super-Mare for their schooling. A baby mewling during church services was a welcome novelty.
Max, knowing full well that a flock of sheep would surely be around the next blind turn unless one pootled along at twenty kilometers per hour on the narrow road, resigned himself to a speed that in his pre-vicar days would have had him thrumming his fingertips against the steering wheel in barely controlled frustration. His caution was rewarded when, at the next turn, a small sheep appeared, as if from outer space, in the frame of his windscreen. It stood dead center to the road, alone and staring with startled, frozen panic at the Land Rover’s approaching grille. Max stood on the brakes, fishtailing madly, and, after pulling over as far as he could to the left (which was still nearly in the middle of the road), he climbed down out of the vehicle, first trying a mild tap on the horn to move the animal, to no avail.
Clearly, not a very bright sheep. He wondered briefly if there were any smart sheep.
Cautiously he approached the creature, making eye contact. It was not fully grown, still more lamb than sheep. Didn’t it need a shepherdess or something? A flock? The creature eyed him back, complacent now, since the engine that had worried it so was stopped. Max made little shoo-shoo motions with his hands, also to no avail.
Lily Iverson, who raised sheep outside the village and sold apparel made from their wool, became so attached to her creatures she had named each one. She claimed they knew and responded to their names. Knowing Lily, and her meticulous care of the animals, that was likely true. Did this sheep have a name, he wondered?
He sighed, looked about him. Privately he christened his sheep Noodlehead. They could be here all day and the next car down the road would come and flatten them both. He had never held a sheep in his life and never expected to, but holding out his arms he squared up to the animal and somehow scooped its legs together. They felt like large furry chopsticks, unwieldy in his arms. Beyond a token bleat, the creature made no protest as he lifted it, seeming to realize this mild indignity was fundamental to its well-being. Did sheep bite? Max had no idea. It was a soft—yes, soft as lambswool—and somewhat smelly bundle, and Max staggered up the road with it until a gap in the hedgerow revealed from whence it had come. Gently, he pointed its head through the gap and gave it a shove, a mere suggestion, which the animal seemed to understand. It disappeared, bleating, to join its mates, immediately to be greeted by a fierce blue-eyed dog who stood stock-still, clearly saying, “There you are. I was worried. You might have rung.”
Max resumed his journey. A few cautious miles farther brought him to Monkslip-super-Mare, where he took the bypass which skirted the wanton, drunken architecture of the seaside town, with its ancient houses spilling down to the sea. He slotted the Land Rover into the traffic in the roundabout just outside the town and joined the slipstream that would carry him toward Chedrow Castle.
It was in the dying late-afternoon sunlight that he first had an up-close view of the castle. It was an image that would remain with him a long time.
He had made his approach via a long wooded drive, which seemed a veritable highway after the track from Nether Monkslip. Lined with sentinel trees on each side, the road rose at the last in a majestic sweep to the castle gates. Max imagined this road followed the same winding trail as the original, and was designed to ease descent while at the same time making a direct, plunderous assault impossible. He came eventually to a lane lined with low stone walls, which in summer would drip with vegetation, and passed through an open gate flanked by stone pillars. He could now see the castle with the latticed grille of its gateway.
The structure sat on an apron of land fanning out over the ocean far below. He could hear and smell the sea which beat at the back fringes of the compound, imagining stipples of light fighting the dark on the water’s surface. The “waist” of this apron was narrow—a high stone wall joined at the middle by a gate of elaborate iron scrollwork. You could see how the land might erode over many centuries, narrowing that waistline, causing the wall to collapse, stone by stone, and finally tipping the house and all its contents into the English Channel.
It was a weighty structure of turrets and battlements, fortress-like and forbidding in aspect, even after centuries of peaceful occupation—peaceful, Max reminded himself, until the events which had brought him to this place. The collection of buildings which comprised the compound crouched now behind defenses clearly added later to the original manor house. Perhaps from its inception the place was intended as a retreat from a hostile world, even before reinforcements had been added to repel all invaders. Effectively grappled to the top of a rock, the castle was a perfect picture of stoic majesty in the face of the relentless tide of the ages.
The sky was a grainy blue, like the nighttime sky in a photo taken with a cheap camera, but the graininess came from the snow that floated lazily in the distance. This near the sea, snow crystals tended to break apart almost as soon as they formed. He could not account for the odd luminescence of this sky, which looked like the first glimmerings of the aurora borealis.
A large car park had presented itself to his right as the old Land Rover sputteringly gained the top of the hill. Max parked and walked over to the high stone wall with its wrought-iron gate. He found the buzzer and speaker on the right pillar and announced his presence, as instructed earlier by a heavily accented, impeccably polite male voice over the phone. He seemed to have anticipated Max’s arrival either through the use of his good butler genes or, more likely, by peering through one of the tiny windows that dotted the front of the castle. No doubt Cotton had also given the man a heads-up on what to expect. Max was rewarded with an electronic buzz and the metallic ka-thunk of the gates unlatching.
Max stood looking at the castle, waiting, as instructed by the voice (“Vait zare for me, pu-leaze.”), unaware that his photo was being snapped by an enterprising young reporter from the Monkslip-super-Mare Globe and Bugle who was staking out the castle entrance from behind one of the low stone walls. He was busy noticing there were openings between the supporting corbels, brackets helping hold up the castle’s upper floors. He’d had a teacher once who was keen on old styles of architecture and some of her enthusiasm had rubbed off. But what was the name for those openings? He’d known it once. Starts with an M …
“The machicolations are interesting, aren’t they?” said a voice at his ear. Startled, he turned to see a squat, heavy woman, so short she had to tip her head far back to look up at him. She was not very old but had the look of someone anticipating old age by many decades, as if anxious to get the aging process over with all at once.
This must be Lamorna, thought Max. The orphaned young woman Awena told me about.
Awena had told him Lamorna had been named optimistically after the romantic spot where her parents met, although there was little about Lamorna that spoke now of romance. Doughy and lumpen, her shoulders slouched inside a nappy old gray sweater that Max suspected she wore even on summer days, using its stretched and bulging pockets as a carryall. She wore glasses in old-fashioned black plastic frames that might have been issued by the health organization of a failing socialist country. These fitted her poorly, and her every sentence seemed to be punctuated by her having to push the glasses the long way back up her nose. Her eyes were very slightly crossed and too close together. The sunlight caught the highlights in the thin mustache on her upper lip, and her fringed hair sprang wildly about the black Alice band she used in an attempt to tame it. He noticed that in an additional cruel twist of fate, she wore a hearing aid.
She was saying now, “The machicolations could be purely decorative but of course they were used to drop things onto the enemy below. Stones, boiling oil, the conten
ts of chamber pots—whatever was close to hand, presumably.”
She gave an exaggerated shudder. “Horrid, they were in those days,” she said. But Max thought her smile unpleasant as she envisioned such fates for the victims.
“Yes, of course,” said Max. “Machicolations. I couldn’t pull up the word.”
“You would be Father Tudor. They said you’d be coming.”
It wasn’t a question. The clerical collar saved so much time in terms of identifying himself and his mission. It was like being a fireman, thought Max.
“And you are?” he asked, just in case he was wrong.
“Lamorna Whitehall.” She pointed toward the castle, warming to her role. “You see the lookouts? They’re everywhere, really, at ground level and above. These let the defenders observe the approach of the enemy. From the sea, the place is impregnable. It was really only this approach they had to worry about.”
“But originally it was a manor house,” prompted Max. “Unfortified.”
“Yes. They had to get a special license from the king to castellate it and to surround it with protective walls.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
This pleased her. “We’re open to the public three or four days a week in summer. Sometimes I take tours around. The family just administers the place, you know. The National Trust owns it. We live here on suffering.”
Presumably she meant sufferance, but he understood that her alternate word might sum up her own feelings more precisely. Max looked up, taking it all in. It really was a fine specimen of its type of building, crenellated and dour, yet romantic. The only jarring note was provided by the tubes running up the walls, carefully painted to match the stone but tubes nonetheless, meant to conceal modern things like electrical wires. These old stone buildings had walls too thick to allow for drilling—wires and tubes had to be dropped in from the roof.
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