“He told me he was trying his hand at writing for the screen,” said Max.
There was a knock at the door and Sergeant Essex came in. Max saw behind her the man of large frame and well-tended blond hair who had been jogging in the garden. He had changed into an open-collar shirt with a pullover sweater and designer jeans. He had the bland, tanned good looks of someone who might be employed promoting Weetabix on the telly.
Simon Jones identified himself for the record and confirmed his wife’s account of the events of the night of the murder. They had played cards for most of the time after dinner. He’d come down to breakfast the next day without her, but at his usual time of about eight A.M.
“The place is overwhelming, isn’t it? And I’m still getting used to all these titles and such,” said Simon. “It’s so—well, frankly, it’s just plain un-American, this stuff. Randolph is of course not Randolph but Viscount Nathersby. The earl’s eldest—and only—son Alec has the courtesy title of Viscount Edenstartel but now he’ll be the earl in his late father’s stead. Don’t try to keep up. No one but Debrett’s can keep all this straight. I only know because my wife is so interested.”
Could this good-looking man of the world be as gee-whiz unsophisticated as he was trying to appear? Overall, Max thought not.
“You are not,” said Cotton delicately, “Jocasta’s first husband?”
“No, but is that at all relevant?” He wrinkled his brow with frank curiosity but seemed to take no offense. Max noted that his hands were so tightly clasped in his lap the knuckles were white. He wore a large wedding band of gold that caught the light from the lamp beside his chair.
“Not really,” said Cotton, himself amiability personified. “But a lot of what we have to go on so far, until we hear more from our colleagues in America, is scandal sheet gossip. I’d rather hear a less hysterical, toned-down version of the facts.”
“I appreciate that,” said Simon. “Well, I’m husband number three for Jocasta. The first was someone she met at drama school.” Off Cotton’s look, Simon said, “Yes, I know—she actually did go to drama school. Somewhere in the States, which is how she ended up living there—he was an American so from that marriage it became possible for her to remain in the U.S. without having to overcome visa and work permit issues. Anyway, that marriage was short-lived, a matter of two years. The second husband was a producer of some very doubtful films. Such career as Jocasta has had, however, she owes to him.”
“I see,” said Cotton. He sat back, waiting for the man to continue. It took some moments. Simon took out a handkerchief from his pants pocket and began to mop his brow.
“This has been a complete shock,” Simon finally said. “You must forgive me if I don’t sound quite … connected to the events, or able to talk coherently about them. You see, Jocasta always felt it was Oscar who was close to extinction, to be honest with you. Leticia, so Jocasta maintains, was the picture of health, despite her complaints. The very picture of health. Until, of course, she, erm, well … until she died.” His mind catching up to the paradox presented by his speech, he smiled bleakly. He had beautiful teeth, too white and perfect to be quite real.
“And of course,” continued Simon, “Leticia had the best of everything that might help prolong her life. Randolph and Lester visited daily while they were here, and kept in touch when they weren’t. Felberta tried to visit but I gather Leticia finally ordered her not to. Anyway, Randolph had a buzzer installed by Leticia’s bed so Lamorna could hop to her command. I should be so lucky as to have a personal slave, although I’m not sure how far I’d trust Lamorna. There’s some pent-up hostility there, I think?” He had what Max thought of as an American propensity for making a question of a statement by letting his voice rise at the end of many of his sentences. It made him sound both nonconfrontational, and uncertain.
“Had you met Leticia before?” Max asked.
“I’d met none of them.”
“Surely, you kept in touch, got together on special occasions?”
“No. And that was how Jocasta wanted it. I think after so many years of estrangement, even once any bad feeling wore off, it was just simpler somehow to coast along with things remaining as they were. She’d been in the States for thirty years. It’s where her life was based.”
“If you’ll forgive me, I am wondering how your wife knew so much about things,” interjected Max. “If she was estranged for so long.”
“Ah. Well, you may find it hard to credit, but she kept in close touch with Lamorna over the years.”
“I see,” said Max. “Interesting, that.”
“I thought so, too,” said Simon. “From her letters, which I glanced at occasionally, she and Jocasta had nothing in common. Lamorna doesn’t inform, she pontificates. She also tries to convert people to her beliefs, which is laughable when you consider her audience.”
“So I have gathered,” said Max. “But she operated as sort of an unofficial spy, reporting to your wife?”
“Nothing as coherent or planned as that. But I suppose that’s what it amounted to.”
“If we could back up a moment,” said Cotton, who, although listening closely, had been examining a cuff link with every appearance of total absorption. “You say you didn’t know either of them, Leticia or Oscar, at firsthand. Not until you came here.”
Simon Jones shot a rueful, blinding smile across to Cotton.
“Yes. I can only tell you that one quickly learned never to ask Leticia how she was,” he said.
“Because she might tell you.”
“Precisely,” said Simon. “And at length. She’d tell you anyway but if you led with your chin like that you were really asking for it.” Again, they were treated to a flash of that friendly smile.
“You would say Lady Baynard was what a doctor would call a hypochondriac?”
“I would say she was obsessed, certainly,” Simon replied. “How much time, after all, can one devote to monitoring every single vital sign of one’s body, day in and day out? Oscar had a tinge of it, and he could bore you with his herbal remedies for everything, but Leticia—well, as I say: It was an obsession that bordered on madness and probably was a form of madness.”
“And yet…” began Cotton.
“Quite. And yet, she did die. So I suppose we need another word for what ailed her.”
There was a movement from Sergeant Essex’s corner. She was making little waving-from-the-elbow movements, like the Queen in a motorcade.
“Yes, Sergeant Essex?” said Cotton.
“If I may, I’ve a question I’d like to ask. How well did you know your wife’s cousins, sir? Randolph, for example.”
“Never met him. Before this, I mean, of course.”
“Isn’t that a bit … unusual?”
“As I’ve tried to convey, the whole family is unusual. Personally, I credit my wife’s creativity—shall we call it that?—as springing from this odd background. They make fun of her, I know. I’ve overheard them. Hell, they barely bother to lower their voices. But I can tell you she had the potential to be great—and was nearly one of the greats at one time. She took some bad advice, and surrounded herself with the wrong people. She also had a tendency to overestimate, or underestimate, her true worth, so negotiations were, well, difficult and not always ending to her advantage.”
“Sounds much like most union negotiations,” said Cotton.
Simon grinned weakly. “All actors are a mass of insecurities. I was one, I should know. You’re at the top one day, then the next day no one can quite recall who you were. That’s why the salaries are so outrageous for some of these stars.”
“Did Jocasta have financial problems, then?” Cotton asked.
“Well, no, I wasn’t saying that exactly. She had to start living within her means, and sooner rather than later. It was a difficult concept for Jocasta to grasp. She loved the extravagant gesture—she could be very generous, to herself, and to others. That designer Christmas tree in the Great Hall was her idea. Typical.
”
“A bit of a shopaholic, then.”
“One could say that, yes. Yes. And then…”
“Then?”
“Again, she made some bad career choices, relying on her own judgment and listening to no one. Her recent foray into vampire films was so ill advised her agent stopped returning her calls until the images were less vivid in the public’s mind. I did try to warn her.”
Max was silent, but he was thinking of the tensions in the family bubbling away for days and months, as they did in many families, harmless until a fissure, a tiny fault, was breached. His fingers drummed on the padded armrest of his chair. The room was darkening; effectively they were in a cellar, and the area was lighted artificially except for small windows high in the walls.
“I think that will be all for now,” Cotton was saying, “seeing as how you only knew the ‘players’ here at secondhand. Unless Father Tudor has any more questions?” Max shook his head. “But we’ll need you to stay on at least for a few days. That is, if you were planning on going anywhere.”
Simon rose and headed for the door.
“I would say it was a pleasure to meet all of you, but that wouldn’t be the truth. I need to get my wife out of here. She’s not well. I think you have noticed that for yourselves.”
“I understand,” said Cotton. “We’ll do our best. I am sure once the guilty party is caught your wife will rest easier.”
* * *
“I’ve been thinking,” said Max, once the door had closed behind Simon Jones, and Cotton had sent Sergeant Essex off to interview the maids and other day help.
“Oh, yes?” said Cotton.
“About Leticia. Lady B. They all seem to have much the same view of her. No one could get past her hypochondria, or her snobbery. It seems rather to have driven them all away. I suppose it was much the same dynamic as with her brother Oscar, except his remarriage got added to the mix.”
Cotton, looking at him closely, asked: “Have you remembered anything more about that day you met Leticia on the train?”
Max shook his head, frustrated. “I just can’t remember more than I’ve told you already.” He’d been preoccupied, rehashing his dinner conversation with George in London, and wanting to be alone to collect himself and his thoughts before returning to his villagers. Aloud he said, “Because she was boring for England, for one thing.” Max was uncharacteristically cross because of his ankle, which injury he saw as the result of his immersion in this dreadful situation with this appalling family. He was also thinking, guiltily: If only I had paid her more attention, asked questions, listened to what she was saying. But no, I was too invested in not being dragged into her personal dramas. And I call myself a priest of the Church of England. Whatever happened to compassion? Et cetera. Et cetera.
Cotton, recognizing the signs, again waited for the spasm of guilt to pass. He gave it a few beats, then said, “She sounds a frightful old battle-axe.” And Max laughed. It was the word that had come into his own mind on that train ride with her.
“I shouldn’t worry,” Cotton continued. “You did the best you could and I know she never felt slighted in any way. It’s doubtful she had much to tell us, really, even ‘from the grave.’ A vague sense of doom and all that doesn’t tell us whom to nail for this murder. The feathery old dear couldn’t have known how important her views would turn out to be. Nor could you.”
Max, somewhat mollified by this speech, still knew he could have done better. He felt somehow he was losing the sharp edge of his MI5 days.
“You’ve checked out the servants thoroughly, I suppose,” said Max.
“We’ve only just begun.” He pulled up a file on his laptop this time, and said: “Milo Vladimirov, the butler and general dogsbody. From Serbia. The war ended in 1995, fifteen years ago. He’s forty now, so he would have been about twenty-five. His wife is Doris, aged forty-two years. He doubles as head gardener, times being tough—supervising the locals, especially during planting season. Of course, the Trust oversees a lot of the routine maintenance of the site. If you haven’t gathered already, it is a sore spot with the family that the Trust has taken over. They could afford to buy the place back now but legally it’s all tied up with a big red bow.”
Max told him, “Doris seems quite attached to the family, for all she doesn’t seem to have cared much for Lady B, in particular.”
“Her family has served here for generations, I gather,” said Cotton. “I suppose she could be descended from those who served here at the castle in its early days. Or even descended, on the wrong side of the blanket, from an early earl. Perhaps she harbors some sort of seething resentment against the upper classes—is that what you’re thinking?”
Max shrugged. “Doubtful. She seems too forthright to be the type to hold grudges. But it’s a possibility we can’t ignore.”
“Point taken. Now, Milo worked on a cruise ship that docked in Southampton, which is when he met Doris, presumably while he was on some sort of shore leave,” Cotton told him, summarizing aloud from his notes. “They got married quickly—a case of true love at first sight. She got him the job at the castle—her family, as I say, has longstanding ties with the family Footrustle. They took him on faith.”
“And he found the bodies,” said Max. “Both of them. Never the best position for anyone to be in.”
“That’s right. What he tells us is that he locks up at night at eleven, and he went to bed straight after, as always. He went to Oscar’s room at the usual time the next day. He was sent to find Lady B once the alarm about Oscar was sounded. He first looked for her in her bedroom and then where she usually was to be found, in the garden or the hothouse.”
Max frowned in thought.
“There is no telling what someone from that upended part of the world has lived through, and been exposed to,” said Cotton. “Or is capable of.”
“I was just thinking the same thing. Those kinds of circumstances can change a man.”
“Right—too right. You can’t expect to stay the same as you were before. Whatever that was to begin with. He was still a lad during the war, not yet a grown man. That has to be factored in, too.”
Max nodded. “Sometimes there is no recovery from the unspeakable atrocities of war.”
“You’ll want to have a word with the family’s consigliere,” said Cotton. “I gather Lord Footrustle never made a legal move without his advice.” Cotton ran his hands over his face in a washing motion. The weariness was starting to show. Even the starched pocket handkerchief looked like it was wilting. “I’ve spoken with this chap Wintermute on the phone, of course. He said he’d be stopping by and he can give you the details, which will be a matter of public record sooner rather than later, anyway. He’s bringing us copies of Lord Footrustle’s will as well as Lady Baynard’s. She had a little money of her own to dispose of. I gather the butler and the cook were generously remembered—at least to their standards it will seem most generous. That will please them.”
“Yes,” said Max vaguely.
“What?” said Cotton. “I know that look.”
“Did you notice,” said Max, “that Jocasta is not tan but her husband Simon is? Does that mean they’ve had separate vacations?”
“Remember where they’re from. That could just be the result of his addiction to tanning beds.”
“It looked real to me. But no matter. Many couples are pulled apart by varying schedules. Or even likes and dislikes for the beach. I’ll ask Jocasta if I get the chance tonight.”
Cotton said, “If you can get a word in edgewise, you mean. Why don’t you go now and have a word with Gwynyth? Wintermute may take his own sweet time getting here.”
“Any background on Gwynyth, other than the biased accounts we’ve heard already?”
“She and Oscar met about fourteen years ago,” Cotton told him. “In the ‘nothing new under the sun’ category, he was much older than she.” He paused again to flip through his notes. “She’s forty-two now—twenty-eight when they met. Near
ly three and a half decades’ difference between them. Apparently sparks flew, nevertheless, and twins were the result. He, Oscar, balked initially—reading between the lines, here. Quarrels, reconciliations, all the usual. Again, when the tabloids are part of your source material you have to tread carefully. But then he apparently decided to do the right thing by her, and probably didn’t mind having a young and gorgeous wife to squire around, a living, breathing testament to his virility. But the marriage came unstuck when the differences in their backgrounds became too evident. Too bad for the children, of course, but they were well taken care of. Schools and clothing paid for, and so on.”
“Not…” said Max, “not so much was Gwynyth taken care of?”
“Not to her liking. And not, to be fair, when you consider there was so very much money floating about. Oscar would hardly notice it if half went missing. She had to have had the worst possible legal advice; I would imagine she was out of her social depth, and her solicitor was in awe of Lord Footrustle. The settlement left her largely dependent on the kindness of her children for her old age, and from the looks of things, it’ll be a long shot they’ll care when the time comes.”
There came a knock at the door. It was Milo.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Mr. Wintermute the solicitor has arrived.”
Cotton said, “Please have him wait in the drawing room. Max, perhaps you could have a word with him first? I’ll be a few more minutes here. Thank you, Milo.” It was a polite dismissal. He closed the door quietly.
A Fatal Winter Page 22
