Once admitted to the room by Mrs. Hooser, the “poor wee lamb” darted in, lightning fast, a red sprite flashing against the somber grays and browns of the study shelves. She perched on a chair by the fireplace and held out her small white hands to the flames for warmth. Max, taking off his hat and coat, moved to join her.
“How are you holding up, Poppy?” he asked, taking the chair opposite.
She didn’t answer, but “How do you think?” seemed to hang in the air.
“I was actually just on my way to see you after the noon service,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “I never go to that.”
“I know. I wasn’t sure you’d be home. Your stepmother is at work. Probably you know that.”
“She’s always at work. Jane is a drone. Or a pod person. I’ve never been sure which.”
Max chose not to go down that path. “You spend a lot of time with Stanley Zither these days, I hear.”
That got her attention; quickly she raised her head and stared at him from out of those overly decorated eyes. “I suppose she told you that. She should mind her own business. She doesn’t approve of Stanley, you know. Because he’s in a band. Neither did Grandmamma approve of him, but she didn’t approve of anything in the whole entire world.” Poppy lifted those small hands to draw a large orb in the air, to demonstrate the vastness of Netta’s contempt for everything—everything that mattered to Poppy and presumably to all other right-thinking people.
Max rose to put another log on the flames. The rain, tapping softly at the windows, had quickly lowered the temperature of the room by several degrees. “Why is that, do you suppose?” he said mildly, brushing traces of sawdust from his hands. “Stanley always struck me as a very fine young man.”
She nodded her head vigorously. There, you see? “He is an outstanding person in every way. Bright. Loyal. Clever. Everything in total, you know? But Grandmamma had someone else in mind for me, and Jane, to keep the peace, went along with whatever she said. She doesn’t care, Jane. But I think just having me gone was the whole point, so whoever I left with, it didn’t matter. I was a conundrum to her. Just a complete burden.” Conundrum was Poppy’s word for the day, used slightly wrong in this context.
Max, sensing this was at least partly true, let her take the lead, now that she was off and running.
“She was jealous, too, I think. Here was Jane, stuck with my father, while I had Stanley. I mean, my father was a good guy, but you could tell she didn’t think so. I would bet she thought the past months without him have been great. Total, like, freedom. And they had solidified her belief that marriage to him had been a huge mistake. Solidified as in made solid, you know. It’s from the French.” Solidified had been Poppy’s new word for yesterday. “Certainly, it solidified mine. She practically danced all the way home from seeing him off at Heathrow. My guess was, when he came back she was planning to start loosening the ties that bind. Not right away, not all at once, but eventually.”
“You think she wanted a divorce?”
“I do. I mean, duh. She hated it here. She always called it Sodding Monkslip. Sorry, should I not have said that? I was just quoting her. Anyway, she always wanted to be back in London, to hear her talk. The plays, the museums and galleries, on and on.”
“Many people find Nether Monkslip a bit of a slower pace. And an acquired taste.” Max remembered his early days in the village, when the deep silence punctuated by random, piercing squawks and the hooting of lovelorn owls kept him awake.
Poppy, who like Jane found the pace glacial and longed for the bright lights of the big city, was not to be diverted from her main topic. “I never liked my stepmother, not much I didn’t. And I never trusted her. Like, never, from the beginning. What a snake that woman is. She’s a witch—for real. She is! I tried to warn my father but he was besotted. I would swear she killed him, I know she wanted him dead, but…”
“But what?”
“But I was with her that evening. Briefly, but … yeah.” Poppy’s reluctance was palpable. She really would have liked to land Jane in the soup. “I asked if I could borrow the ATM card. My father was there with her. He’d been drinking, but he was okay. I kissed him good-bye; I’m so glad I at least had the chance. But there is no way she had time to do it.”
“What time were you there?”
“About five o’clock. Maybe five after. I just stopped in for a moment and I left right away.”
“And where did you go?”
“I walked to the bank in Monkslip Mallow to use the ATM.”
“Did you keep the receipt?”
“No. There was no reason to. Anyway, it was five twenty-five. I remember looking at my watch. Stanley was waiting for me in the village, and wondering where I’d got to. I dawdle sometimes. It’s a bad habit—my head gets lost in the clouds when I’m writing a story or something.”
He’d relay all this to Cotton and have him ask the bank about the time of the withdrawal from the ATM. It was a good alibi if she needed one. Undoubtedly the ATM had camera coverage, too. Awena had been with Jane at five-fifteen, she’d said. So between Poppy’s testimony and Awena’s, there had not been time enough for Jane to get out to where the car containing Colin and Marina was, stage the scene, and get back to the library in time for her meeting with Awena.
Poppy meanwhile was pursuing another thought. “She’s not even pretty! I said to him. He had no idea what I was talking about. And he—he was so very handsome.”
“Love is blind, they do say.”
She nodded. But what would Max know about it? His wife was gorgeous, talented, and genuinely kind, not phony-kind and condescending like some adults. Awena was everything Poppy wished her stepmother was or would be. Awena was vibrant and colorful, where Jane was as plain as a white plate.
Poppy pushed her hair behind the elaborate earrings, made of ruby-colored glass to go with the dress. They were nearly the only things she wore that came close to matching. “But for the sake of getting along and not upsetting my father, I pretended everything was fine. Mostly, I tried to stay out of her way. That worked—mostly. But I kept tabs on her.” Poppy nodded sagely. “She thought she was rid of me. But I saw.”
Max bit. “Saw what?”
“The kits.”
“I’m sorry. The kits?”
Poppy sighed deeply, hesitated a moment, then clearly reached an “in for a penny” decision. “She has all these test kits, you see. Kits that measure the amount of hCG in your urine. Well, in a woman’s urine. I think she bought these tests by the case—I found so many empties in the bin.”
“Pregnancy tests?”
“That’s right.”
In his surprise, Max rather blurted out: “Why would she need so many? Your father had only just returned home.”
Poppy sighed, exasperated that she had to spell this out for him. Men could be so thick, even dishy, experienced men like Father Max. “I don’t think my father had anything to do with this. It was in the summer she started buying these kits. He wasn’t even here.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. You see? So what was she up to?”
Having an affair was what she was up to, clearly. Max had read somewhere the more sensitive of these tests were able to detect a pregnancy as early as seven days after conception. So, who was the lucky man, if not her husband? And why test so often, come to that. Was she worried she was going to become pregnant? Or was she worried she might not? It was very curious behavior.
He had to allow, he supposed, for the possibility she was receiving in vitro treatments. Even in Colin’s absence, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, if a bit unusual for a woman in her situation. But given everything else Poppy was saying—well, if Poppy was making things up or getting things wrong, could he really rely on what she said? Still he asked, “Was she seeing a doctor or visiting a clinic routinely?”
Poppy thought a moment, then shook her head no. “I don’t think so.”
“How many of these test kits
did you find?” he asked.
She answered promptly, “At least a dozen, just in August alone.”
What madness, thought Max. To test and retest like that. If fear of pregnancy was the point, surely prevention would have made more sense. Of course, perhaps the hope of finding oneself pregnant with a longed-for child was the point. He thanked Poppy for telling him, although he wasn’t sure himself what to make of this information.
“Poppy,” he said. “You’ve suffered a terrible loss. I don’t want to add to your sorrow. But there is an investigation been started into your father’s death, you know.”
“I didn’t know. So someone else thinks it’s fishy besides me. Good.”
“You’ll do all you can to help the police, am I right?”
“Well, duh. Of course. The only thing holding me together is wanting to get at the truth. But I don’t know where to start. I’ll do anything. Anything to help.”
Max rather thought that would be her response.
“You had some tarot cards at your birthday party, I hear.”
She looked puzzled by this tangent, as well she might. “Well, yes. My father was here and he loved anything to do with cards. But it was just a game. Nothing to it. I don’t believe in that stuff. Do you?”
“Do you still have the cards?”
“I’ve got them in my bag.” Before he could stop her, she reached down into the tasseled brown handbag she’d brought with her and extracted a small colorful box.
“Did the police not ask you about these?”
“No. Why should they?”
He supposed DCI Cotton hadn’t yet sent anyone to the cottage to look for them, or that she’d been gone when they got there.
“They might be relevant to the case.” Having said that, he wasn’t sure why. It was more a point of interest to learn where the tarot card found with the victims came from. That upside-down hanged man with the baffling expression. “Would you mind if I gave them to the detective in charge?”
“Sure, yes,” she said, pushing the box at him. “Of course.”
“Just a minute,” he said. He went to his desk and retrieved a tissue. It was probably all much too late, for certainly she’d been handling all the cards for ages along with her friends, but there might be latent prints Cotton would want preserved.
She handed the cards into his now-shielded hand as her words tumbled out anew, trying to force him to see her view. She seemed to sense he was half convinced already and was determined to press her advantage.
“Did you see her at the funeral for Grandmamma?” she said. The kohl-lined eyes narrowed in remembrance. “It was enough to make a cat puke. Standing next to my father in the graveyard, holding his hand and somehow, through it all, looking thrilled. She was just pretending, you see. Of course she was. Pretending to be happy that her husband was back at her side. She actually had tears in her eyes. Tears of joy, one was supposed to think. I don’t know how she managed that.” Poppy tossed her head back, aping her stepmother as she gazed adoringly at Colin. It was actually quite a good imitation but Max felt he should draw a line now.
“Poppy…,” he began. “This is your stepmother you’re talking about.”
She waved that aside and rushed on, ignoring him. “Cooking all his favorite meals, too. ‘Would you like pork chops, Colin? I know they’re your favorite. How about some applesauce to go with them? More potatoes?’ Pah! That never happened before. He ate what he was given, if she could be bothered to put some frozen ready meal from Sainsbury’s in the microwave.”
Was this just the expected reaction of a young woman in shock, who has lost so much and is in deep mourning for her family? Max wondered. Of all times, it was now she would miss having her own mother to turn to. As if reading his mind, she said, “I know people will think I’m just causing trouble for Jane. Out of grief for my father, for my parents, for my great-grandmother. I’m upset, sure I am. I can’t sleep, thinking about it. But I can disentangle that, you know? Separate it out from the rest. I don’t trust Jane and I just don’t and that’s got nothing to do with anything else.”
“You are bound to feel two ways,” Max began. “I—”
“But the clincher was,” she rushed on, “that with all this lovey dovey stuff on display for the public, he slept on the sofa every night.”
“Oh.”
“Yes! My father was sleeping on the sofa at night. From the moment he returned from Saudi until, you know.” She had captured the vicar’s attention at last. That was so satisfying.
How very strange, thought Max. Surely after months away from each other, and with no apparent rift between them, the couple would at least share a bed. The pregnancy tests made even less sense. Assuming Poppy was telling the truth about that.
Poppy’s face was flushed now with a sort of gratitude, her eyes shining. Someone was listening. Someone at last was trying to understand what she’d been saying. Max wondered how far Poppy’s theories had been sprinkled about the village. Gossip was a horrible thing—contagious. In the village, Miss Pitchford was in charge of chatter, but she had many at her beck and call. With her advancing years and declining health, she had found it necessary to assemble an army to assist her.
“You see?” Poppy nodded grimly. “You do see, don’t you Father Max? Jane was up to something. I don’t know how, or what, or even who. But she was up to something. And my poor father, he never saw it coming. And now Marina … she was kind to me. She always had time for me. I’m so worried about her.”
What she told him next he wasn’t sure he believed. But he felt he had no choice but to act as if he did. He knew he’d never forgive himself otherwise.
* * *
The telephone rang soon after Poppy left. It was Adam Birch phoning to say the book he’d ordered for Max had arrived. Adam’s shop, The Onlie Begetter, was on Mermaid Lane off the High, and as Max would be passing nearby on a promised pastoral visit to old Mr. Greeley, he told Adam he’d be right over.
The bell over the shop door rang and Adam emerged from the back carrying a load of books he’d found at an estate sale. “Hidden treasures in here,” he assured Max, adding that he’d scoured the world to find the book Max had wanted: At Home with the Buddha.
“It sounds like something Awena would read,” Adam commented, placing the book inside a paper bag printed with the shop’s name and logo, a copy of the Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare.
“I’ve promised to let her read it when I’m through,” said Max. “How have you been, Adam? It’s been a while since I’ve seen you about.”
Adam’s face flushed rather pink above the brown cardigan he habitually wore. Max hoped he hadn’t been too obviously prying. Adam had long been rumored to be seeing something of Elka Garth, although they both seemed to feel no one in the village was aware of their by now well-established and talked-about connection. The only question in everyone’s mind was when the two would get around to tying the knot. Susanna Winship had been taking bets it would be within a year, while older hands at the game like Miss Pitchford held out for something closer to six months. Elka had begun wearing an engraved band on her ring finger that she maintained was simply a ring that did not fit any other finger on her hand, and since Elka was incapable of dissembling, the villagers had to be content for now with what was surely a signal that she was “taken.”
Reminded of his own courtship with Awena, which had set the village grapevine alight for months, Max was reluctant to press Adam on such a sensitive topic.
“I’ve been rather busy, Max,” said Adam. “Writing. You know.” He pushed his thick glasses further up his nose. The brown eyes magnified by the lenses were soft. Adam was one of the gentler souls of the village, along with Elka, and Max for one applauded the fact two people so deserving of happiness had found it.
“Hmm,” said Max. Even though he suspected Adam was more busy visiting with Elka when both their shops were closed than writing, Awena had told him that the worst thing you could do was quiz a writer about his
writing habits. Writers were always, she had assured him, writing, even when it didn’t much look like they were. Well, most writers, she’d added.
Adam, like many members of the Writers’ Square writers’ group, which met in his shop, had been laboring over some kind of manuscript or other for ages. Max might have asked him how his book was progressing but he was rather afraid he’d tell him at length and put Max off his schedule for the rest of his day.
“So you were not signed on for Lord Duxter’s writing retreat?” Max asked.
“Oh, not I,” Adam replied. “I have to keep the shop open, you know. And Lord Duxter has rather raised the standards of the retreat to published authors. To keep out the riffraff—the wannabes like me.”
“I don’t call that raising the standards,” said Max. “People sincerely working on their books are writers, surely.”
“Well, God bless you for thinking so,” said Adam. “That’s my thinking, exactly.”
“Tell me,” said Max. “Has this ‘raising the standards’ business made anyone—oh, I don’t know. Disgruntled with Lord Duxter? Would anyone be holding a grudge?”
Adam peered shrewdly out of those basset hound eyes of his, smoothing his thinning hair. “You’re referring to what happened in Prior’s Wood, aren’t you? Of course, I’ve read the news. But that would mean—surely, you’re not thinking that was some sort of attack on Colin and Lady Duxter, to get even with Lord Duxter? That it was all somehow staged?”
For someone not writing a crime novel—at least, not the last Max had heard—Adam was quick off the mark.
“Really, I’m just wondering aloud, Adam. It would be best this conversation not be repeated. If it got out through the village grapevine, you know—I was merely talking. There’s no proof th—”
“It’s much too late for that, Max,” said Adam cheerfully. “Madame Cuthbert was in earlier—she’d just come from Miss Pitchford’s—and apparently there is a groundswell of rumor already. Miss Pitchford had had a word on the telephone with the man who found Colin and Lady Duxter.”
In Prior's Wood Page 12
