A Fatal Winter

by G. M. Malliet

  Now Doris was removing a baking pan fragrant with cinnamon rolls from the oven and placing it on a trivet to cool. Then she went to fetch milk and butter from the refrigerator. She moved in short, sturdy steps, a little tugboat plowing through choppy waves.

  “Problem is, y’see,” she went on, closing the refrigerator door with her hip, “he’d been generous with them always and they’d come to rely on it. Lord Footrustle, that is. Then he met Gwynyth and the twins came along. Some of the family had their noses out of joint for a while, you can bet. And it did change things. He never went back to supporting them all the way he once had. Gwynyth spoiled it for them, you might say. Opened his eyes, like.

  “Mind, I’m no fan of their being here, either. Millie—that’s one of the girls besides Lotty what comes from Monkslip-super-Mare to help do for us—Millie says they leave the bathroom in the Tower looking like somebody washed a pig in there.”

  “She is not used to children,” said Milo.

  “Who said it was the twins?” demanded Doris.

  “Was Jocasta particularly affected by Lord Footrustle’s remarriage?” Max asked.

  This was so important a point she stopped midstride and turned to face him. “I should say so. Thing is, he wanted a son, Lord Footrustle, and his first wife could have no more children after Jocasta. When he took up with Gwynyth and produced Alec, and Amanda, in short order—well. It was all like something out of Henry VIII. Jocasta hides it—she’s an actress—but there’s no denying she felt pushed aside.”

  “Lord Footrustle was very old-fashioned, you see,” put in Milo. “There was the title to think about.”

  But for Doris that ship had sailed, and she was on to another topic. “I will tell you something else for free. There have been ghosts here since I was a girl, and my mother before me, and going back who knows how far. Because there have been horrible murders in the past. Don’t doubt for a moment the ghosts here, Father Max. There was that business of the wife of the third earl up to something or other in the garden. She was seen by her husband through one of the squints in the solar being flirtatious and worse with one of her husband’s knights. Or perhaps it was one of the gardeners. The whole thing, it was like a story out of a Harlequin romance.”

  “Or out of Lady Chatterley,” said Max.

  “But he killed her. The husband, you see. He had her killed. It was easy to organize such goings-on back then. And now she seeks her revenge. I wonder what they make of this mess,” concluded Doris gloomily. “The ghosts.”

  Milo seemed to feel a change of subject was in order. “You may want to walk this morning, in the garden. The forecoast later is for snow.” Max started to correct him and then decided forecoast was much the better word, considering how near they were to the sea.

  “However, what Doris says is true,” Milo added. “I don’t believe in ghosts but I believe in atmosphere. And there has been a—a crackle in the air since they all came here.” Again he spoke in his measured, precise way, each thought carefully examined before release. “You will be wanting to meet the others, and now would be good time. They will just be coming down wanting their breakfast. We serve buffet in Great Hall every morning.”

  “We do since they started arriving by the hundreds,” put in Doris. “I can’t serve sit-down meals three times a day, not with the lot of them here.”

  “Well,” said Max, standing, “I thank you for your time. That is an excellent suggestion: I’ll go and see who’s there.”

  But Doris was not yet finished. “The trouble’s just starting,” she called to Max’s retreating figure. “You mark my words, Father.”

  CHAPTER 9

  A Small Repast

  In the Great Hall, dust motes drifted in the weak sunlight streaming though the high stained-glass window. The light didn’t seem to penetrate much below the arches of the ceiling, leaving the room below in murky shadow.

  The room’s corners were marked by four white marble statues on pedestals, all Greco-Roman in theme, and depicting the four seasons. A heavy medieval-era table ran down the center of the room that could easily seat thirty. It was dotted at intervals with massive candelabra, unlighted now but dripping picturesquely with wax. The table overall looked suitable for a twelfth-century monastery, but ranged before it were comfortably padded dining chairs rather than wooden benches. Max was for some reason surprised to notice an elaborately decorated Christmas tree tucked near the cozy seating group arranged before the massive stone fireplace. A few presents wrapped in glitter and gold were scattered underneath the tree, which itself bore gaudy bows of deep purple on its branches. The presents had the impractical, matchy-matchy look of something there only for show, like a tree in the window of Harrods. He was tempted to pick up a box and rattle it to see if his guess was right—that it would be empty.

  On one wall hung family portraits, a large one flanked by two smaller. The large portrait of a man whose mustaches deserved a painting all to themselves was inscribed with a motto. Max stood closer and translated it as meaning “Move faster.” He thought it was either that or something along the lines of “Don’t just stand there, do something.” Good advice.

  The family’s coat of arms (stags and sea lions rampant) hung on the screen below the Minstrels’ Gallery, and on the adjoining wall were more paintings of ancestors. One of these, of a woman in a bejeweled headdress and outer coat of the sixteenth century, had been drawn by someone with a tenuous grasp of the laws of perspective, but possibly possessed of a sense of humor—the artist caught the surely unintended look of fatuous self-importance in the tilted angle of the chin, the raised eyebrows, the reproving clamp of the narrow lips. All in all, it looked to Max like the portrait of a woman who would not hesitate to have a servant flogged over a minor infraction of the household rules.

  “One of our ancestors,” said a voice at his elbow. “I call her the Dragon Lady, although she had a name, which I somehow always forget.”

  Max turned to acknowledge the speaker with a smile, then squinted at the brass label affixed to the bottom of the picture’s ornate wooden frame.

  “Lady Lavinia Delamarva Footrustle,” he read aloud.

  “That’s right. And of course over there is Leticia, Lady Baynard. Now sadly deceased.”

  Max now saw that a painting of Lady Baynard hung over the mantelpiece. It looked like it might even be a Hockney—certainly it was in his style, at once cartoonish and realistic, capturing the essence of a personality in practiced brushstrokes. It pictured Leticia as a young woman. Her hair was a thick mass of auburn sworls and curlicues and she glared from the canvas with a determined gaze, her firm jaw set in a pugnacious line. Max had not felt she would be a woman to cross and the painting confirmed his impressions of the living woman.

  “And you are…?” he asked politely.

  “I am Felberta Oliver Baynard. Lester’s wife.”

  She was a round woman in a sweater, lettuce green in color and unfortunately of a lacy knit that resembled the yuppier sort of lettuce. Max thought perhaps arugula. It had stray, fringey bits of yarn around the hem and sleeves, and those might have been curly endive.

  She had masses of curly brown hair, parted in the center, which stood out about her head in a solid wedge. The hair made her look as if she were wearing an Egyptian headdress, or were peering out from the center of a pyramid. This, with her long face and nose and large, bright eyes, gave her somewhat the appearance of a standard poodle.

  A red-eyed crustacean appeared to be clawing its way up her blouse. She saw him trying not to stare at it.

  “I designed it myself,” she said with some pride. “The sweater and the jewelry.”

  There was a large painting on the wall directly behind her, this time a landscape—all stormy sea and foamy white water and billowing black clouds. Max walked closer and stared up. It was—could it be? Not a Winslow Homer, surely.

  She came up to stand beside him.

  “Oh, yes,” she said dismissively. Oh, that old thing. “We’ve
had that ages.”

  He noted the “we” and said nothing, but remembered the role of the National Trust in all their lives.

  A doom-laden voice from behind them seemed to echo his thoughts.

  “The house owns that painting,” the voice said. “Not you.” It could only be Lamorna.

  He turned and saw her surveying the breakfast offerings, which to Max’s eye were more than generous, and were being added to even then by Milo, who had hefted in various chafing dishes and platters from the kitchen. Back in Nether Monkslip, Mrs. Hooser liked to present Max with similar large breakfasts, including those English standbys of black pudding, baked beans, and fried bread, over his repeated protests that no man not training for a triathlon could eat so much. Here at least he could exercise freedom of choice.

  But Lamorna pressed her lips together in unconscious imitation of Lady Lavinia Delamarva Footrustle. Her vinegary expression suggested that things were not managed thus in the old days.

  “We used to have sit-down service for breakfast,” she told him, catching Max’s eye on her. “But we are tightening our belts now.”

  “Not by the look of things, you aren’t.” This from a young, high male voice. “You look like you’ve put on half a stone in the run-up to Christmas.”

  A boy and girl of a startling beauty, obviously twins, had come slouching in, using the louche, sloping stride of the runway. They were very slender: turn them sideways and they’d disappear. Both were fair in a white-blond, Nordic, Children of the Corn way, children who with their pale blue eyes could bend adults to their wills.

  Max’s train of thought carried him to Children of the Stones with its villagers known as “the happy ones.” He had watched a recording of that old series from the seventies with Mattie, his girlfriend at the time, the pair of them screeching with laughter at the cheesy clothing and stage sets, shouting warnings at the ill-fated actors of the too-evident danger, which tended to be telegraphed by a rise in the noise level of the ubiquitous chanting in the background. Mattie, as fair as these children, had long since disappeared into Majorca, where he’d heard she’d found happiness living in a house along the coast with her Spanish husband and their two cherubic children.

  This blond pair seemed anxious to avoid rather than to control the adults. Knowing the sort of conversation adults tended to aim at young people, almost always on the topic of how they liked school, Max could hardly blame them. The boy and girl grabbed napkins from the buffet and stuffed them with whatever food was portable, then tied the napkins into a hobo’s valise and bustled off together. Called to account for their rudeness by Lamorna, they merely mumbled good-byes, but the boy added their intention of enjoying the sun while it lasted out in the garden.

  Felberta started in on what Max imagined was a recurring theme as soon as the door into the courtyard was closed behind them.

  “What brats they are. Completely unsupervised.” Felberta had a tendency to bob her head as she talked, a head that with its massive hair appeared too big even for the generous proportions of her body. “Such an ill-considered liaison, Oscar with Gwynyth. And twins—the downside of fertility treatments, if you ask me. Breeding tells—my mother-in-law was right about that. The Middleton misalliance reduced her to sobs. ‘Her family is in trade,’ Leticia would say. She called their business Party Poopers, refusing to get the name right. It was quite funny actually. Such a dreadful snob, Leticia was.”

  Max had chosen a plate and was ladling a portion of scrambled eggs, bacon, and mushrooms onto it. Lamorna, the early riser, had already come back for seconds of the reviled offerings. She stood piling food on a plate in a way that would have won the delighted admiration of Mrs. Hooser. So absorbed was she in her task he was surprised when she proved to be hanging on Felberta’s every word and composing a response.

  “I think you’re horrid,” she burst out suddenly, turning. A slice of bread flew off her plate and hit the floor, landing butter side down in the long tradition of fallen buttered bread. “Kate Middleton at least will have a palace full of advisors and etiquette coaches at her fingertips. Gwynyth was thrown in with a lot of folk who sneered at her—not so much for the way she earned her living but for the fact she was forced to earn a living at all. She was surrounded by people who had inherited wealth and sat on their arses, and on their horses, all day making fun of her. If you ask me, she was taken advantage of from the start, and she more than deserves a fairer shake than she was given.”

  This outburst was greeted by Felberta with something like stunned disbelief, at both its boldness and at the uncharacteristic use of the word “arses.” It was also met by a small twinkle of appreciation, this from Milo, who had appeared on yet another mission to replenish supplies. It was clear neither of them had seen the case pro-Gwynyth in quite those terms before.

  It was also clear that the removal of Oscar and, in particular, Leticia had gone a long way toward loosening Lamorna’s tongue.

  As was his way, Max countered anger with mildness. In a voice that was almost a croon, he said, “Your defense of those absent does you proud, Lamorna.”

  Her shoulders, which had hunched nearly to her ears with tension during her outburst, dropped into a more relaxed posture. Max always found it remarkable—the most effective weapon against anger—praise—was the most easily forgotten, especially in the heat of the moment.

  But he had underestimated the depth of the well that held Lamorna’s grievances. She stood abruptly and swept out of the room in a manner meant to suggest she had said all she had to say on that particular topic. But she paused dramatically at the door and swung round to deliver one parting shot.

  “I tell you it’s a Judgment. A Judgment on this house.” A typical Lamorna remark, washed in the blood and alive with retribution. In an eerie echo of what Doris had said earlier—had Lamorna been listening at doors again?—Lamorna added, “The trouble’s just starting.”

  And with this Book of Revelation verdict on the situation, she rumbled off, her hips like panniers beneath the blanket of her gray sweater.

  “Crikey,” breathed Felberta, giving Lamorna’s back a look that could freeze a waterfall, as Max’s grandmother used to say.

  “She was a missionary at one time,” Felberta said to Max, in the same tone she might use to say, “She was a prostitute.” “She even begged for money on the street at one point. Lived as and where she could in various godforsaken parts of the world, and relied on churches to help her wherever she went. Is it any wonder Leticia was horrified by her? In the end, it seems to have been decided it was better to keep her living here, close to home, rather than have her roaming about trying to convert people.”

  Max murmured that there was a long tradition of that sort of thing in the early church—nothing new there. It was how the apostles had spread the word, relying on the kindness of strangers. He didn’t find Felberta receptive to this theory so he took his plate to a place at the table and sat down. But Felberta wasn’t finished with her background on Lamorna. She sat down next to him.

  “I remember she was a cute child but then she began to grow,” Felberta recalled, almost wistfully. “Chubby knees, so adorable on a baby, were simply fat deposits on a ten-year-old. The onset of adolescence, of course, was catastrophic. It became clear that Lamorna was going to curve out in the wrong places, and curve in at others. Her complexion turned bad. About the time she began to sport a mustache and unibrow, Lady Baynard lost interest. It’s a hellish time for most people, but particularly for Lamorna. This was also when she cultivated that stoop, almost like a dowager’s hump. She’s only thirty, for god’s sake. When I first saw her again this November I thought she was middle-aged.”

  Max tried to deflect this outpouring with a question. “Do you and your husband have children of your own?”

  “It was not to be,” she said sadly. “Leticia longed for a grandchild so.”

  Max was thinking Lady Baynard hadn’t appreciated the one she did have very much. But he kept his head down and
kept busy with his scrambled eggs.

  “Leticia doted on my husband,” she said brightly. “Of course, she kept Lester from realizing his true potential. She could be a terrifying old trout. Just ask Lamorna.”

  “So I’ve been given to understand,” said Max.

  “He’s ever so good with people, is Lester. He could have been something in sales, you know. But Leticia wouldn’t hear of that. In the end, he had to migrate to Australia for the freedom he needed to grow.”

  “Hmm,” said Max. The scrambled eggs really had been delicious. He was rising to get himself another serving when:

  “Ah! And here comes dear, dear Jocasta,” said Felberta, waving her napkin in case she might not otherwise be noticed. In the gloomy lighting of the Great Hall that wasn’t entirely impossible. “I don’t suppose you’ve met my husband’s cousin?” she went on, in a way that managed to imply he hadn’t been missing much. “Jocasta Jones?”

  An intensely well-preserved woman of middle years with auburn hair, dressed flamboyantly in flouncy neon blue, stuck out her hand in greeting.

  “Oh, a priest!” she said breathlessly. “Just like in The Song of Bernadette. Wasn’t Jennifer Jones—no relation, alas—wonderful in that part?”

  “Actually,” replied Max, who was soon to learn most of Jocasta’s references were cinematic, “wrong religion.”

  “Jocasta and her husband Simon got here just before Lord Footrustle took ill,” said Felberta with pointed emphasis. “Didn’t you, dear?”

  If Jocasta was meant to take offense Felberta’s aim had missed the target. Jocasta, completely taken with Max, merely flashed her shiny, practiced smile and said, “We’d have been here sooner but we got behind some thickie in security trying to board with full-size bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a metal nail file. You wonder what planet some people have been living on. Anyway, it’s jolly good to see the family digs again! And what have we here?” she asked, lifting the lid of one of the copper serving dishes. “Kippers! We can’t get these back home, really—or not nearly as good. Marvelous!”