A Fatal Winter

by G. M. Malliet

  Cotton sighed. “I have to get back in there. But let’s quickly go back over when it all started.”

  Max again walked through all he’d told Cotton already, concluding with: “I remember Leticia’s phone ringing, and her shopping rolling about the compartment. Her knitting—white wool. Her general high-handedness. How she first frightened away the young man who looked in the window, who was considering sharing the compartment with us. Her mention, most of all, of her uneasiness with the situation. I wish I’d pressed her on that now.”

  “She never alluded to anyone she suspected? You’re sure?”

  Max shook his head. “Not directly. She seemed to have issues with several of the family.”

  “And you say you saw a figure wandering about the garden earlier?”

  “Oh, yes, but that could have been anyone. Whoever I saw could have been wearing any dark color, mind, but it looked like black. All cats are black in the dark, as the saying goes. Cilla wears nothing but black or dark gray, for what it’s worth. Notice that it is dark as pitch out here at night, even with the stars. Without that torch you’d be in danger of falling straight off the cliff’s edge and into the sea. I just can’t be sure…”

  His voice trailed off. Max was experiencing a strange uneasiness, a sense of vertigo, that had nothing to do with his nearness to a sheer drop-off into the water. As far as he could tell, it was connected for some reason with Lamorna’s mention of Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau, who were twins. Twins who competed even in the womb. Oscar and Leticia were twins, he thought. Amanda and Alec were twins. But … so what?

  He dared a peek into the water and just then, as he was puzzling his way through the clues, something slid into place in his mind, so neatly he could almost hear the click as it snapped into its rightful spot. His face lit up and his mind raced ahead. What did it mean?

  Cotton was saying, “We’ve added one piece to the puzzle. Milo and Gwynyth worked on the same cruise line, and at one point were on the very same cruise to the Baltics—she as a singer, he as part of the waitstaff. But they never met, or so both claim. I suppose that is just possibly true—these ships are enormous, floating hotels. But the crew is generally kept cheek-by-jowl in the hold. And I keep thinking how alike in age they are. He’s around forty. Both his wife and Gwynyth are forty-two.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’ve no idea. Maybe it is a coincidence, and not an impossible one. Or they could be in cahoots.”

  Max fifteen years before had crossed the ocean on a private vacation, but had found himself seconded to go undercover on the trail of stolen art being used to fund an I.R.A. operation. He’d never been on a cruise before, and was surprised to learn nearly everyone on the crew did double or triple duty: the art auctioneer (who turned out to have nothing to do with the theft) turned out to be an opera singer who entertained the passengers in the Winter Garden in the afternoon; the waiter who appeared nightly at his table also did room service delivery. These people tended to crop up at all hours, working double shifts, and often wearing different attire.

  He of all people was surprised to realize how disconcerting it was to have people pop out of their “assigned” roles—the roles in which he’d first encountered them.

  Someone in the castle had a secret role as killer.

  But who?

  CHAPTER 28

  At the Cavalier

  It was nearly noon—well past time for elevenses. Awena decided to take a break from the Goddessspell shop for some coffee and a biscuit at the Cavalier. She and Tara having spent the morning unpacking a new shipment of medicinal plants and herbs, the shop smelled of fenugreek (for the stomach) and hawthorn (for the heart) and dandelion (for the liver). The physical work and the aroma of the herbs of course had the effect of stimulating the appetite. Leaving Tara to mind the shop, with a promise to return with one of Elka’s seed cakes, Awena walked up the High to the Cavalier.

  Walking into the Cavalier these days was like walking into a steam factory, for Elka, in response to a business threat from a new shop in Nether Monkslip called the Coffee Pot, which was operated with Tuscan brio by the Grimaldis, had invested in an espresso machine. Now, in addition to the clatter of cups and saucers and the clinking of spoons, to the hiss of gossip was added the hiss of a milk steamer.

  Besides plain coffee, customers now could order fancy Italian drinks—cappuccinos and lattes with shots of this and that. It seemed to Elka that some of the regulars had started to compete with each other in the “knowledge of esoteric coffee drinks” department, with fancy orders for triple shots and 130-degree temperatures and the like. Elka was in fact fed up with the whole coffee scene. The espresso machine had put her in hock for years and it was nothing but aggro.

  At least, she thought, the big coffee geniuses at the Coffee Pot couldn’t compete with her steamed Christmas puddings. The ones she was offering this year were masterpieces—moist with fruits and brandy, made the traditional way with thirteen ingredients to represent Christ and his disciples. She’d spent the Sunday before Advent working on them—“Stir Up” Sunday—and even her son Clayton had taken a hand in stirring the mixture. She’d made several wishes as she added the traditional new coins for good luck and prosperity. As usual, the wishes all had to do with Clayton.

  Awena opened the door into a fragrant, steamy rain forest of a room, infused with the enveloping heavenly aromas of coffee and vanilla and chocolate, overlaying the usual scent of pastries baked fresh that morning. And … was that the smell of brandy? Lovely. She was not surprised also to have found a larger-than-usual crowd sitting around the Cavalier; predictably, from what she overheard over the tinkling of the shop bell as she entered, they were immersed in talk of the murder of Oscar and the death of Leticia at the castle.

  Awena, after wishing Elka a good day, asked her for a café au lait. “And I think I’ll have a slice of that almond biscotti. It looks wonderful.”

  “And well it should,” said Elka. “I was up until one this morning over that biscotti. Not as simple to make as it looks.”

  “I find that a high oven temperature helps,” ventured Awena.

  “Do you?” said Elka. “Fancy that. Let’s hope you don’t go and open a bakery.” Smiling grimly, she put the biscotti slice on a small plate covered by a paper doily, then excused herself to answer the call of an egg timer announcing that the next batch of biscuits was ready to come out of the oven. “That’s all you want?” said Elka, returning from the kitchen, drying her hands on a linen towel covered in a pattern of cornflowers. “A simple coffee with milk?”

  “Ye-e-ess,” said Awena, sensing a test of some sort.

  “Try the macchiato,” said a voice from behind her. She turned to see Miss Pitchford, retired schoolmistress, sitting at a table by a window. A shopping basket rested at her feet. “It’s ambrosial.” She drank deeply of her cup by way of demonstration.

  “Oh, we can do better than that,” said Elka, emptying a filter with a series of booming thumps against a rubbish bin. “I have far, far more complicated drinks on the menu than simple coffee and tea these days!” And she laughed—more a mad cackle than a laugh. Awena wondered if there weren’t even a tinge of hysteria behind the laugh. Elka was one of the hardest-working women in the village. She got sporadic help from her son in operating her bakery business and tea shop. Now that she had effectively opened a gourmet coffee shop as well, Clayton’s lack of actual help had probably become glaringly noticeable.

  “For example,” chimed in Suzanna Winship, who shared a large wooden table and several newspapers with Miss Pitchford. “You can have it lungo, ristretto, bollente, tiepido—whatever you want. Why settle for a simple coffee when we have all of Italia on our doorstep lately, here at La Cavalier. Or would that be Il Cavalier?”

  “And chai!” added Elka. “Don’t forget the chai drinks!”

  “Do you…” And Awena hesitated, fearing this might be the very final and fatal last straw for Elka. “Would you by any chance
have soy milk for my coffee? If it wouldn’t be too much bother.”

  “Soy milk!” Elka was practically shrieking now. “Soy milk! Of course we have soy milk. How could I hold up my head in this village if I didn’t have sodding soy milk—organic, of course. Almond flavored, vanilla flavored, chocolate flavored. You name it. You want soy, I’ve got soy. And rice milk, don’t forget! Almond flavored, vanilla—”

  “Just plain soy will be fine, Elka, and thank you so much for all you do for us.” It seemed to Awena it might be as well to pretend this was some special favor being offered, rather than Elka trying rather frantically to hold her own against the encroachments of capitalism and the free market.

  “Bring your coffee over here when it’s ready,” said Suzanna, as Miss Pitchford nodded and patted the seat at her side. “We’ve been discussing the doings up at the castle.”

  The village had been full of talk of the visitors when they arrived, of course. There was not so much going on in the village proper that the need to import or invent gossip didn’t occasionally arise. That one of the visitors was American, married to a “famous actress” who happened to be the daughter of the deceased, quickly got round, although when that particular rumor had started it at least resembled the truth: “A formerly near-famous actress was visiting,” the woman who ran the post office told everyone standing on line. “You know. She was in that movie where she was tied up and nearly pushed off a cliff. Only that dark handsome actor with the nose saved her. Now what was his name?” And so on. By the time the story reached those at the back of the line, the actress had starred in an Indiana Jones movie with (for reasons unknown) Tom Cruise.

  “Rather thought you might be talking about the castle,” murmured Awena, but she went to join them without hesitation.

  The Cavalier, converted from the village’s old communal bakehouse, now held a pleasing assemblage of mismatched wooden furniture; each wobbly table was covered by a cloth patterned with different flowers against a white or yellow background. Suzanna and Miss Pitchford were at the marigold table.

  “I was just saying to Miss Pitchford here it was too bad about Lady B,” said Suzanna as Awena settled herself in. “She was a nice enough old trout. Frightful snob, of course, but people of that class always are, don’t you find?”

  “I understood she’d been ill…” began Awena.

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “It’s well known Lady Baynard was a hypnochondric,” put in Elka from behind the counter.

  “That would be ‘hypo,’ Elka. Hypochondriac.”

  “Had you invited any of them to the party, Awena?” asked Miss Pitchford.

  “I had, actually, more as a friendly gesture than expecting them actually to show up.”

  “She was too big a snob to mix with the hoi polloi,” said Suzanna. “At least, I always thought so.”

  Awena, a bit surprised, merely said, “You’d met her?”

  “Here and there. The doctor’s sister enjoys a certain amount of prestige in these parts. Bruce saw more of her than I did, of course, although she mainly went to London to see someone in Harley Street. She would, wouldn’t she? And make sure everyone knew she could afford an expensive, private doctor. But she kept to herself after the kerfuffle over the access rights or right of way or some such thing.”

  “Access rights?”

  “You didn’t come to hear of it?” Miss Pitchford, exchanging glances with Suzanna, sat back in astonishment, dropping her newspaper. It was as if Awena had disavowed all knowledge of the Great War.

  “It was the topic at the time here at the Cavalier Tea Room and Garden, I can tell you,” said Suzanna. “It was some typical country-ish thing they all get het up about. I didn’t pay much attention … an area farmer wanted to cross the Footrustle property with his sheep or cows or some sort of livestock and the family kicked up about it—wanted him to go the long way round. It may have been his pigs that were the breaking point. Eating the acorns or whatever it is pigs do for their own amusement.”

  “Truffles, I think, my dear,” put in Miss Pitchford vaguely. “They like truffles.”

  “Or maybe it was radishes,” said Suzanna. “Anyway, whatever it is they eat.”

  “I think they eat pretty much anything,” said Awena.

  “Well, there you are,” said Suzanna. “I’m sure that was entirely the problem. Anyway, there was the most frightful dustup over all of it.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, a year or two ago. Yes, about that. I remember it wasn’t long after I came to live in the village and I remember thinking I’d made the most dreadful mistake in coming here. Pigs and grazing rights? I mean, really.”

  “‘How are the mighty fallen’?”

  “I didn’t mean that exactly.” But she did mean that exactly. Suzanna, used to “being something” in the city was only slowly succumbing to the somnolent charms of Nether Monkslip—to becoming “someone,” as Coco Chanel had put it.

  “So, what happened?”

  She shrugged and smoothed back her hair, a graceful gesture that called to mind Gina Lollobrigida or one of the other great vamps of the fifties, all insouciance and endless afternoon hours spent lolling about an Italian veranda. “It went to court and I think the farmer lost. There was strong feeling about that.”

  Miss Pitchford, her eye caught by a Times editorial on education, a subject dear to her heart as a retired schoolmistress, nonetheless nodded vigorously.

  “So you say Lady Baynard didn’t see much of your brother?” Awena asked.

  “Lady Baynard—as you have gathered, it was never ‘Do call me Leticia’ about that one. Anyway, Lady B was a difficult patient and she wouldn’t follow Bruce’s dietary advice. She was naturally thin but she didn’t exercise, either, apparently, other than to potter about the castle gardens and fuss about the hothouse. Even then, she had others to do the heavy lifting. Bruce had her on medication or so he tells me but whether she took it religiously or not, who can say. Anyway, she made it plain that in her view Bruce was little better than a local horse doctor and took herself off to London, as mentioned. Good riddance, said I. Bruce could hold his own with the toffs in Harley Street any day. He simply chooses not to. ‘The simple life for me’—you know how he is.”

  Miss Pitchford folded the paper neatly and said, “She was rude to your brother, there is no question. I well remember the occasion. But more often than not she put people’s backs up simply because she had Standards, you see.” The capital S was audible. “That doesn’t go down well with those who cannot be troubled with having Standards.” Miss Pitchford could have written the book on this subject, thought Awena. In a beautiful cursive script.

  “The grazing or common rights being a case in point, I gather…” said Awena. “I suppose back in the day we’d all have been her serfs. Funny to think of, isn’t it?”

  The biscotti really was a triumph and she looked up to smile her appreciation in Elka’s direction. Elka, however, was at the sink with her back turned, and was elbow deep in soapsuds.

  “Yes,” agreed Miss Pitchford. “Not that I can’t see both sides of an issue. And she did herself no favors by the way she spoke to Farmer Braddock. A spoonful of sugar, et cetera. Especially since she knew she’d win. But that was Leticia’s way.”

  “She allowed you to call her Leticia?” asked Suzanna. “You must have been on good terms.”

  Miss Pitchford blanched visibly. “Most certainly she did not—never would I dare call her that to her face. The very idea. I understand her niece—that dreadful actress, she played a dead Viking; I tried to watch it on the television—and her husband, the American in-law, they called her Leticia once, but their Standards are quite different to ours, aren’t they? They no longer have a monarchy.”

  Awena knew several Americans who would debate that opinion. She corrected her gently. (“I think you must mean vampire, not Viking”). She waited patiently for Miss Pitchford to calm herself.

  “Goodness gracious me,” M
iss Pitchford went on, patting her heart back into her thin chest. “What can they have been thinking?”

  They were thinking that was her name and they were relatives, after all, but Awena decided there was no point in pursuing that particular avenue of discussion. There was a good bit more in the “goodness gracious” line but otherwise she felt she had learned all she could of the situation from Suzanna and from Miss Agnes Pitchford. Collecting her things about her, she was preparing to rise and depart when Miss Pitchford said, “At least we can rest assured Father Tudor won’t make that mistake. Cannot make it.”

  “Oh?” said Awena, with what she hoped was a casual lilt to her voice, as she gripped her umbrella to her chest like a talisman against evil. “And why would he?”

  “I saw him leaving town earlier,” said Miss Pitchford, always happiest when she had a tidbit of news that clearly was news to someone else. “He said he was going to stay at the castle. Just for a day or so, he said. To advise.”

  “Oh.”

  “That divorce was his undoing, Lord Footrustle’s.” Miss Pitchford resumed her earlier theme, feeling all had not yet been said on this topic. “There is nothing new under the sun, is there?” She appeared to be gathering steam so Awena, still clutching her umbrella, sank back down for the duration.

  “As for the rest! Of course, having invited themselves, I don’t suppose it occurred to any of them to behave well whilst they were guests of the castle.” She bridled, lifting her head in disdain at the thought of the goings-on of these invaders.

  “I thought Lord Footrustle invited them to visit?”

  “To visit, surely, but they’ve been there for weeks and months, some of them. Living off the fat of the land. Pigs in a poke, every one, especially that Gwynyth person.”

  Awena noted that it was Lady Baynard when it came to the formal niceties, but Gwynyth rather than Lady Footrustle, as she was still entitled to be called, when it came to someone Miss Pitchford plainly regarded as a common interloper. “And you know what they say about fish and guests smelling after three days,” she added. Awena, marveling at her ability to mix her metaphors, made a mental note to ask Max on his return exactly how the family, immediate and extended, all had come to stay at the castle. And finally to find out what in the world a poke was, anyway.