A Fatal Winter

by G. M. Malliet

  “I’ll be having dinner with all of them tonight,” Max said. He struggled to stand, tested putting weight on his left foot, and decided he’d be using the crutch awhile longer. “Wish me luck.”

  “The budget doesn’t run to hiring a food taster,” Cotton told him. “So take care.”

  The mobile on the desk gave a zapping sound, skidding on the polished surface. Cotton picked it up and read from a text message.

  “The technicians, the doctor, the fingerprint people have had another look round and are satisfied they have what they need now—including the bodies. They have asked, however, that the family keep Oscar’s room sealed and unoccupied for the time being. Would you like to see it? You can poke your head in there if you like. Just don’t go inside until we’ve given the all-clear.”

  Max nodded his understanding.

  “I thought the only thing of any real interest was a round table that held enough potions and tablets to subdue Caesar’s army,” Cotton told him. “Most of it homeopathic, some of dubious worth, some outdated prescriptions that should have been tossed long ago.”

  “Anything dangerous in the lot?”

  “Only if taken in sufficient quantities,” replied Cotton. “‘Homeopathic’ to some people means ‘take all you want,’ which is completely a false idea. Still, there’s no indication anything like an overdose was the cause of death.”

  “Could it have been responsible for this illness earlier?”

  Cotton lifted his shoulders in a Who can say? gesture.

  Max made his way up two flights of stairs, thankful that he kept himself in shape so that he could drag himself about when he had to. He followed Cotton’s directions down a short corridor to what had been Lord Footrustle’s room and was now a crime scene. It turned out to be the room around the corner from Max’s.

  He stood at the open doorway, which was crisscrossed by crime-scene tape, and took in what he could of the scene. It was a small room, stone-walled, wood-paneled in places, dark. Cozy if you liked that kind of dark, Igor-ish, medieval look. A room furnished in a nice blend of plush Renaissance comfort and straightjacket medieval style.

  “A great reckoning in a little room”—something like that—the phrase from some half-forgotten university lecture drifted through his mind. Shakespeare writing about Christopher Marlowe, who had been stabbed in the eye.

  The room had been cleaned up, of course; the body taken away, and some preliminary effort had been made to restore order. The room, he knew, had two squints, and was likely historically to have been the room belonging to the lord or at least to some sort of overseer—someone whose business it was to spy on the household unobserved. Remembering the general layout of the castle, Max knew Oscar’s room would overlook the sea on its south-facing side. Via one squint, Oscar would have had a view of the goings-on inside the Great Hall, and via another, a view across the garden to the surrounding lands. Max doubted he could have overheard much from up here, unless people were shouting. As perhaps, given this group, they had been.

  Max craned his head to the left. A near shelf was full of tomes on ancient British history—naval in particular—and novels by somewhat old-fashioned authors like Dumas and Robert Louis Stevenson, although neither author had ever really gone out of style. A rip-roaring yarn remained a rip-roaring yarn. Still, the lack of more modern authors indicated a man who preferred the past and history, and a return to the old favorites of childhood.

  Max prayed the man had taken some enjoyment from his life. Overall, it seemed he hadn’t. It seemed a sad ending.

  CHAPTER 19

  Wintermute

  The solicitor handed him a business card printed on fine, heavy stock. It carried his name (David R. Wintermute, Esq.) and addresses in London and Monkslip-super-Mare followed by his firm’s name and motto: Creating Visionary Integrity since 1797.

  Max wasn’t sure he understood what Visionary Integrity might be when it was at home—could integrity be qualified? Was Visionary Integrity better than Blindfolded Integrity? Integrity in Hindsight? Definitely, he decided, better than Nearsighted Integrity. He snapped with the nail of one index finger at the edges of the card and smiled at David R. Wintermute.

  His first impressions of the solicitor were decidedly mixed. Max had seen the damage solicitors and the courts could do and was aware he did not approach the man with an open, trusting heart. Still, Wintermute struck him as the type who had, after long years in the trade, mastered the art of opaque waffling and sidestepping the questions. A shrewd man. Dry. Humorless.

  He had watery bug eyes, and moist lips slack from what might have been a minor stroke. A red-tipped Matterhorn of a nose. The man drank: Max could detect the faint whiff of alcohol surrounding Wintermute like an aura. However, the solicitor was undoubtedly competent, if he worked for Lord Footrustle, and he looked alert and present, for all practical purposes. A functioning alcoholic, they called it. Max dealt with alcoholics frequently in his role as vicar, and more often with their families—those left behind by a tragic, alcohol-fueled accident of one sort or another. Max looked closely at the jowls and watery, bulldog eyes that said, “I’ve seen too much.” Perhaps, in this case, it was, “I’ve drunk too much,” yet Max suspected a wily intelligence peering out from behind the insalubrious, fleshy appearance.

  “Thank you for talking with me,” Max said.

  “The pleasure is all mine. But I do hope you realize,” said Wintermute, with a slight access of pomposity, “that I will be limited to some extent in what I can tell you. I’ve just come from talking briefly with various members of the family, quite informally you understand. There will be a proper reading of the will later after which I may be more at liberty to speak with you. And I should be easy for you to locate if need be: The new young lord will have a mountain of legal papers to sign so I will be a recurring feature of life at the castle for a while.”

  “Can you tell me how it went?” asked Max. “The talk with the family?”

  “In general terms, yes. Randolph was stunned; Lamorna disgruntled—but she always appears disgruntled, does she not? Gwynyth was the picture of frustration, since she had not had time to work on getting her share increased, presumably.” Now, there was a slip in the professional façade, thought Max, hoping there would be many more. “She is not frightfully good at hiding her emotions, Gwynyth.”

  “I understand Lester had already been on to you.”

  A dry smile. “Oh, yes.”

  Max waited, but there were to be no further disclosures. “Let’s do it this way,” he said. “Tell me what you feel you are free to tell me, having spoken with the family and brought them up to date on the situation.”

  “Well. I cannot get into precise figures, except to say the estate is significant. Oscar, Lord Footrustle, was worth fifty or sixty million pounds at one time. Still, even he had lost some of his wealth in the economic calamities of the past year or two.”

  Max was stunned by the figure mentioned. He had known Oscar was wealthy but these were figures designed to tempt the unscrupulous.

  “How did he take that?” Max asked. “The financial losses?”

  “I don’t think he was happy about it, Vicar. No one has been happy with the market lately. It’s been a complete bloodbath for— Oh! Do forgive the expression. Poor Oscar.”

  “I meant, was he upset, angry, especially depressed?”

  “I couldn’t say,” said Wintermute, breezing on. “I will say, more’s the pity the castle was handed over by one of Oscar’s forebears to the National Trust. Because thanks to Oscar’s efforts, there would now be more than enough funds to maintain the property. It can’t simply be taken back, you know. However, his son Alec will carry on the title. He will also come into some of his father’s wealth.”

  Some. “The last time you saw Lord Footrustle was when?” asked Max.

  “Nearly a year ago. Eleven months ago, when he revised his will. Of course, I was going to see him after the new year.”

  Max leaned back,
surprised. “Really? You had an appointment for next month? Why was that?”

  “I’ve no idea. Perhaps he’d changed his mind. His old will was unnecessarily mean-spirited, I rather felt. A slight to his family. Charity begins at home.”

  “I don’t suppose you could elaborate on that?”

  “No.”

  “Were you also to see his sister, Lady Baynard?”

  “I was to have dinner with her.”

  “But not see her in a professional capacity.”

  Wintermute shook his head. Max took it to mean a “no,” not to mean he wouldn’t discuss it further. Wintermute suddenly shot out of his chair and helped himself to the drinks tray. At his questioning look, Max in his turn shook his head. “Too early for me.”

  David R. Wintermute, Esq., shrugged and poured himself a good slug of the drink into a crystal glass. He toasted Max in mock salute, then said, “Oscar had a few surprises up his sleeve. Several charities were to receive large bequests, including Tiggy-Winkle’s, a hedgehog rescue charity, and a donkey rescue group. That one is called Hee-Haw, as I recall. Charities that feed the poor were remembered. Those issues—the homeless, hunger—became important to him of late. He had so much to give, you see. The local cricket team was to benefit, as well. Lord Footrustle was a great cricket fan. It was one of the things we had in common. I consider his loss to be not just that of a client but a friend. And someone with first-rate knowledge of the game.”

  Max nodded, but absently. Cricket was up there with the sports he understood but hardly saw the reason for, knowing only that a Zen-like patience was required of its fans. Looking at Wintermute, it was hard to reconcile him with the Buddha, but he supposed there were physical similarities.

  The liquor seemed to be having an effect, if the wavering focus in Wintermute’s eyes were any indication. Max thought this might be a good time to ask how Jocasta fared in Oscar’s will.

  “Jocasta and her descendants, had there been any, were remembered in Oscar’s will, along with the twins. Gwynyth faired poorly, as I’ve said.”

  Wintermute spread himself a little wider in his plush chair, ran a hand through his thinning gray hair, and said, “Do you know, I have always found inherited wealth to be corrosive and disincentivizing. And the longer I am in my line of work, the more I believe that. In amounts seemingly finely calibrated to produce the effect, I have seen it breed some of the laziest human beings on the planet. Rarely does there emerge a personality strong enough to rise above the effects of the inculcated sense of entitlement, and to put the money to good and creative use.” It was an unexpected, even confessional, outburst, coming as it did from a man whose bread was buttered by the upper classes he served. “In the case of the Footrustle family,” he went on, “you could see the blood rapidly thinning out by the time of the present generation.”

  Max said, “I wouldn’t be too sure of that just yet.”

  “You are thinking in particular of the peculiar intelligence of Alec and Amanda,” Wintermute said, again surprising Max. The mind operated clearly despite the alcoholic fog. “It’s too early to say there. Gwynyth—Lady Footrustle—may have provided just the infusion of fresh blood that was needed. Non-blue blood, of course. Occasionally that’s necessary, you know, to keep the upper classes from going completely potty with all the inbreeding.” He tipped back his drink. Before he could head off to fetch a refill, Max asked how Lady Baynard’s death affected the situation.

  “To answer that I’ll begin by referring you back to Lady Baynard’s inheritance from her husband,” said Mr. Wintermute. “There was little to inherit, I hasten to add. Old Baynard was what we used to call a blackguard, a word that sadly has fallen into disuse, along with cad and bounder. What money there was went to her in trust for life, and she had no control over its dispersal. Under the will of her late husband, it went to their children at her death. Of course, Lady Baynard was remembered handsomely by her brother.”

  “Her estate would go to Randolph and Lester?”

  “That is correct. And there’s a sum going to Lamorna, the granddaughter. Not as much as to the sons, but she was not left out.”

  “That is interesting.”

  “Hmm. Never leave grounds for a contested will. That is my motto,” said Wintermute.

  So much for the visionary integrity motto, thought Max. Perhaps the real motto wouldn’t fit on the business card. “Have you yet met Simon, Jocasta’s husband?”

  “Briefly,” said Wintermute. “That was all I needed. He’s likely a fortune hunter, but surely there can’t be all that much fortune to hunt, not if the quality of Mrs. Jones’s movies is any guide to her pay scale. Still, if you ask me, he’s kept her glued together all these years. If he’s a fortune hunter, he’s at least earned his fortune.”

  “What about the money Jocasta might expect to receive from Oscar, her father?” said Max. He felt that Wintermute was positively letting his hair down at this point, and he wanted to press the advantage. “You don’t include that when you speak of her fortune?”

  “Ah. Well. Oscar didn’t much approve of her choice of career, you know. Both he and his sister seem to have held old-fashioned views on this subject and regarded a career on the stage or in film as one step up from prostitution.”

  Max chanced his arm. “One wonders how much inheritance Jocasta might in fact expect to, well, inherit?”

  “Ah.” Again with the “Ahs,” thought Max. It appeared to be a topic full of hesitancies and doubts. “Not as much as Alec. Amanda also inherits less than Alec. If there had been natural issue of Jocasta’s union with Simon, well…”

  “It would have made a difference to Lord Footrustle,” Max finished for him. “As you say, you had known Lord Footrustle—Oscar—a long time. Certainly you knew him when he first met Gwynyth?”

  “Indeed, I did. And I did try to talk him out of it. As a friend, as a solicitor.”

  “How did they meet? Lord Footrustle and Gwynyth?”

  Wintermute replied, “He met her on a cruise to the Baltics, one of those cruises where widowed women outnumber eligible males by a thousand to one.” Max thought fleetingly of his own widowed mother, fascinating male passengers and crew as she sailed practically nonstop from one destination to another.

  “So what were the chances he’d come home with a new bride—that he’d actually be married as soon as they landed?” Wintermute was saying. “She’d been a showgirl, part of a dancing and singing troupe onboard ship. Some cabaret-type extravaganza. It was a classic middle-aged crisis situation with Oscar. If he had not been on a ship he’d have bought a red sports car, too, no doubt.”

  “Marriage to Gwynyth changed the equation for all of them, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, it most certainly did, at least for a while—until the divorce, of course. She came back for more several times, and I would imagine that is why she is here now.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the anger I’m sensing here, among certain of the family members.”

  “Don’t you really? You’d have to go back a few years, I suppose. Lord Footrustle paid for everyone’s schooling, but they took the ‘fun’ courses rather than get proper qualifications. Lounging about became a permanent trait. Even Randolph’s photography was the sort of choice made by a young man who knows he has great wealth at his back. Lester, on the other hand, never made any choices that stuck and seemed to regard fast dealing as the best way to get ahead. Their cousin Jocasta—well, she at least tried to parlay that feeble talent into something, I’ll give her credit for that. Great expectations, yes, indeed. Then along came Gwynyth. It was what they call a real wake-up call for the younger branches of the family. It wasn’t until her removal—and some of them campaigned mightily for her removal—that hopes rose again, but the twins coming along in the meantime somewhat diluted those hopes. They were his flesh and blood, after all, and baby Alec was much to be desired as a male to carry on the title.”

  “I gained no impression that Oscar was fond of the children,�
�� said Max.

  “Fondness had nothing to do with it. A hereditary title did.”

  “Lord Footrustle was married before, a union which produced Jocasta. What happened to his first wife?”

  “Oscar’s first wife is both divorced and dead,” said Wintermute. “In that order. Rather inconsiderate of her not to have spared him the trouble of divorce, so Lord Footrustle always seemed to think.”

  “No love lost between them, then.”

  “No.”

  “He rather lost interest in Jocasta, I gathered, when the marriage dissolved.”

  “Yes. And I have gathered from my very occasional reading of the more sensational press that Jocasta therefore sought attention elsewhere. Sadly, that’s not an uncommon reaction, is it?”

  Wintermute was by this point on his third drink. He went to reach inside his jacket pocket for his Montblanc and dropped it on the floor. The interview ended with him on his knees crawling about while Max hobbled about trying to help, scanning the floor and the far corners where the pen might have rolled.

  “The thing is,” said a thick, garbled voice coming from behind the sofa. “The thing is that I feel there will be an explosion, and soon. So much money, so many who feel slighted. Yes, it—aha!” Wintermute stood, holding the errant pen aloft.

  “Mark my words,” he said. “We haven’t come to the end of the trouble yet.”

  * * *

  Max left Wintermute shortly afterward in the company of Cotton, who was attempting to get what sense he could out of the man while he was still on this side of sober. From outside the door, where Max listened unabashedly, he heard Wintermute again mention money in the neighborhood of fifty-plus million pounds.

  A sum worth killing for, some might think. Max leaned back against the wall and wondered: Did Wintermute’s being again called to the castle become a sort of catalyst, speeding up the plan to kill Lord Footrustle—if plan there had been? For the killer, the natural assumption would be that Wintermute was contacted to draw up a new will for Lord Footrustle. And perhaps also a will for Lady Baynard, if for some reason she had changed her mind about including Lamorna in her bequests, or about any of a dozen other things. The killer wouldn’t want this complication … it could mean being left out. So any old, existing will was preferable to one that didn’t yet exist and might be deleterious. Of course, it might also have been to the killer’s benefit, but could he or she take the chance? One thing was certain, there was no way to ask anyone, and the killer couldn’t risk waiting to see—waiting for the final will to be prepared and sent back for signing. Or worse, to be signed.