It was a source of some consternation and puzzlement to the Major, if not to Wanda, his wife, that he’d never seen “action on the front lines,” as he put it. But a senior officer had summed it up, succinctly if obliquely, in one of the Major’s official evaluations: “The object of any campaign being to avoid a complete rout, it is recommended Major B-S be confined to a behind-the-scenes role—very behind.” There was always an air about the Major of someone self-important, who was aware if baffled by the knowledge that the rest of the world did not share his self-assessment. Listening to him on any subject quickly made one conscious that time was not always fleeting, but could move at a tortoise-like pace. Max often felt sorry for the man—for his evident fall from what he had believed to be a position of influence in the world.
Sensing one of the Major’s more predictable tirades coming on, Max gave him a neutral smile, struggling to hide the “all is lost” look of dismay in his eyes.
“Æthelfrith wouldn’t have stood for it, I can tell you that,” continued the Major. “‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’—Pah! But you wouldn’t have to ask nowadays, would you? All of them pouring out of the closet, in tights and spangles. What this country’s come to. Sad end to an empire, what? Learned nothing from the Romans or the Turks, did we?”
Max again made no response, although he was rather wondering what the Turks had to do with anything. The Major’s right-wing views were too well known for Max to wish to invite a reprise by showing so much as a blink of interest. He noted, not for the first time, that the Major was excessively loquacious when his wife was out of range. Probably it was the only chance he got to talk uninterrupted.
“What we need,” the Major was saying now, “is what your St. Augustine would call a ‘just war.’”
Max, surprised by the reference, thought there might actually be something more going on beneath the Major’s buffoonish, pukka sahib-ish, drag hunt–loving exterior. A thought dispelled by the Major’s next comment.
“Of course, not ‘just’ any war qualifies. ‘Just war.’ Get it?”
Max pretended to spot a long-lost parishioner in the crowd. With murmured apologies, he hared off, just as the Major was getting started on the hallucinogenic waywardness of elected officials.
It was an escape, however, from the fire into the flames. Max ran, in his panic, straight toward a stall manned by a lone local author. Too late he noticed the rabid eye of Frank Cuthbert (husband of Mme Lucie Cuthbert, who operated La Maison Bleue). Frank was offering an unwary public his self-published book—a long, rambling, crackpot pamphlet, really—on the history of the region, spliced with dubious, hand-drawn maps of local walks that, if followed closely, could land the user miles from civilization. Since the book had been published ten years previously, and everyone within a thirty-mile radius had already been strong-armed into buying a copy, it was hard to justify the winsome smile of anticipation and optimism on the author’s moonish, apple-cheeked face as he sat surrounded by half a dozen boxes of unsold copies. He wore his usual tweed sports jacket over a dark shirt open to a cranberry cravat. His black beret perched at a rakish, authorly angle, he twinkled at the Vicar from behind, literally, rose-tinted glasses. Everything about him, including the biblical white beard, seemed to be an unconscious parody of the stereotypes of the literary genius. That his books sold by the handful rather than the thousands diminished his belief in his destiny not one jot. With Frank, bookselling was a blood sport.
Now smiling at Max, Frank emitted something like a high-pitched chortle that made him sound quite mad. It was widely felt that Frank was more than a little mad, but in that harmless way of many writers with a book to sell. At his feet sat Sadie, a beautiful bichon frise whose spotless white coat gleamed in the sunlight. She seemed to offer living proof of the breed’s good and loyal nature, for she clearly adored Frank, who was seldom to be seen, walking about the village with his bowlegged gait, without her.
Max, resigned to giving at least the appearance of renewed interest, picked up a copy of Wherefore Nether Monkslip. As Max recalled, the Arthurian legend also featured prominently in Frank’s recounting, with Arthur recast as a lost pilgrim resting his horses at the Horseshoe on his way to Glastonbury. Max had a suspicion that this gratuitous reference had been worked into the narrative because the owner of the pub had agreed to keep copies of Frank’s opus on sale at the bar in case of passing tourists with ties to the world of London publishing.
Max idly flipped the book over. On the back dust jacket, beneath a photo of Frank at least twenty years out of date, one Jack Ralston-Fifle, Historian and Author, was quoted as finding the book “fascinating.” That, Max felt, certainly raised the question of what other books Ralston-Fifle had read, overriding the key question of who in hell Ralston-Fifle was in the first place.
“You’ve read it already, haven’t you?” Frank asked him now.
“Oh, yes, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was just really … good. Quite good.” God forgive me for being the liar I am, Max thought.
His words had a noticeably galvanizing effect.
“Yes, I felt there were parts, at least, that were extremely good in capturing the spirit of the various ages,” Frank said, eyes alight. “Pushing the historic envelope, as it were. You thought it successful?”
“Oh my, yes.”
Max, now feeling both guilty and moved to pity, ended up buying yet another copy of Wherefore to add to his growing collection, thinking he could pass it along to some distant relative or other at Christmastime. As he started to walk away, he saw Frank push yet another copy of his book into the hands of a passing woman, simultaneously asking if she liked reading history. Max gathered this was a much-rehearsed technique, but the woman stared at the cover like Queen Victoria being handed a pamphlet on early contraceptive techniques. She shook her head and walked away. A woman made of sterner stuff than I, thought Max. He walked on and into the swirl of the Fayre, stopping briefly at the stall overseen by Lily Iverson. Lily was one of his Sunday regulars, but was not one of his Morning Prayer attendees: the requirements of farm life understandably interfered. Today Lily wore a Breton blue-and-white-striped sweater. He complimented her on it, assuming rightly that it was another of her own creations. She blushingly told him it was called the “Hey, Sailor!” model. A woman approached, waving a checkbook and asking if Lily also sold her creations in the shops. Together the two women fell into an excited gabble.
Someone at the next stall was selling corn dollies, each a work of art, traditionally platted from the last sheaf of corn harvested, a symbol of luck to be held for the next year. These looked to be made from barley. They were another harking-back to pagan times, when successful harvests were literally a matter of life or death. Max picked one up, turned it over. It looked like a child’s toy, but much too finely crafted to be entrusted to small hands.
A small girl of perhaps seven walked by just then, dressed as a milkmaid in cap and apron, handing out flyers advertising the sale of goat cheese fresh from her family’s farm.
He came to the stall of Adam Birch, the cardigan-wearing owner of The Onlie Begetter, a shop selling new and “antiquarian” books. Adam was rumored to be writing a novel—to have been writing the same novel, in fact, for many years. He hosted the local writers’ circle, and had by now read versions of most of his book aloud several times to its glassy-eyed members. Adam himself had the eyes of a basset hound with a lifetime of bad decisions behind him, but he was in reality as sturdily optimistic as his fellow scribe and writers’ circle member, Frank Cuthbert. Frank held frequent book signings in Adam’s shop, neither man discouraged by the complete lack of foot traffic these events produced. The literary life, Max gathered—and the chance at the brass ring—was all.
The books on offer from Adam today consisted largely of tattered copies of works by authors as disparate as Janet Evanovich, Julia Child, and Agatha Christie. He browsed through several of the Christies, happily lost in the memories of Dame Agatha’s ingenious plots … H
e was just leaving Adam’s table with an extremely old copy of Crooked House, purchased for fifty pence, when he overheard a female voice say, “Have you seen Wanda?”
He turned and spotted Awena Owen and Tara Raine behind the Goddessspell booth, a gauzy affair of twinkling lights and scented candles, of herbs collected by moonlight and the promise of magic.
Awena, her expression normally serene, was looking a bit the worse for wear. She didn’t seem to notice that her sleeve was caught on the “Make an Offer” sign atop the boxes of tarot cards until she’d tipped it over. Setting it aright with a sigh of frustration, she said, “No, and that’s not like her. At all.”
“I should say not,” replied Tara. Her long red hair today was out of its usual yoga ponytail and pinned to the top of her head; a colorful scarf circled her face. Her complexion was its usual mix of year-round tan and freckles—Max gathered she spent a great deal of time near the water in Monkslip-super-Mare. “She’s usually everywhere, or certainly does a good impression of being everywhere,” Tara continued. “We’re nearly out of tea. But there’s more in the Village Hall—Wanda said earlier.”
He saw Awena hesitate. “I know, but who’s going to help you mind the stall if I start coping with things in the tea tent? Wasn’t someone supposed to be handling that? They’ll rob you blind, this lot, if you’re not careful. And we don’t want Wanda chugging along to ask why the takings are so lean.”
Max stepped up. “I’d be glad to help.”
Awena, turning, clutched at his arm like a drowning woman.
“Oh, would you, Vicar? I’d be ever so.”
“Just tell me whereabouts to look.”
“There should be supplies left out on the table in the Village Hall kitchen. They’ll be in an upper kitchen cabinet, if not.”
“Is it locked?”
Awena shook her head. “Shouldn’t be.”
The two women sighed at Max’s retreating back.
“Bloody waste of a man that is,” said Tara. “I need to get on to my niece to get her out here for a visit. Too bad I’m otherwise engaged myself.” She smiled, straightening the boxes of Tarot cards. “But that could change.”
* * *
Wanda, unseen by all but a few pairs of interested eyes, had minutes before stomped her way over to the Village Hall. Anyone who didn’t know her well would have said she skulked over, in fact, a mode of locomotion not often in her repertoire. In any event, on reaching the door, she definitely looked over her shoulder to see if she had been observed. Which was odd in itself, for nothing could be more normal than that Wanda Batton-Smythe should enter the scene of many of her greatest triumphs.
The Village Hall was typical of its type—perhaps better than most, since it had been richly endowed at its beginning. It had been solidly built between the two world wars from local stone, and the whole enlarged in years past via the munificence of a local squire, who had also given the St. Edwold’s tower its clock.
Wanda entered the main room and crossed over to a south-facing window, where she peered out cautiously from behind the net curtains. She adjusted the position of a figurine that sat on the ledge, a representation of a shepherdess—a decorative prop left over from a drawing-room play, a prop that had never been returned to its rightful owner. It was made of plaster of Paris and amateurishly painted, the shepherdess’s hectic expression suggesting a facelift operation gone wrong, the receipt of a telegram containing bad news, or the irretrievable loss of her flock.
Wanda sighed contentedly, a secret smile playing at her lips. She had recently had confirmation—if any more were needed!—that her organizational skills were superb, second to none, and would be in much demand in the business world. Surely she was wasted here, hiding her light under the provincial bushel that was Nether Monkslip? She would need up-to-the-minute training, of course, but that was easily done. Possibly there was a course she could take through Denman College, the Women’s Institute’s adult education center in Oxfordshire. But then, those courses trended toward subjects like hen keeping and stump-work embroidery. Perhaps what was needed was a proper degree, a longer course, with diplomas and exams and things. Her heart gave a thrilling little surge at the thought.
If not Denman, then, certainly she could do something via the Open University. Business or hospitality management or some such. Yes, as soon as the Fayre wrapped up, she would look into it. There was money to hand … Again, her pulse quickened at the thought of her new, glamorous, rewarding life.
The sounds of celebrating villagers reached her ears, as of a far-off ocean wave, or the muted blare a telly makes when no one’s watching it. A whoop of pleasure, perhaps a cry of recognition as old friends from neighboring villages seized the chance to catch up.
Really, everything was going quite well. The Fayre was a personal triumph. At the thought, an expression of exultant satisfaction curled her thin mouth. She opened the door into the kitchen and practically twirled her way girlishly into the room, like someone in a shampoo ad.
Yes, it was a tragic waste of her talent to continue on as she had been, year after year. Didn’t the easy success of all her undertakings in Nether Monkslip just demonstrate that? Undoubtedly. The village was becoming too small a stage for her triumphs. It always had been so. And she was too young to waste any more time with th—
A sound interrupted this reverie—a slight rustling, and the creak of the main door opening. Wanda frowned: that useless Maurice had once again failed to oil the hinges.
But she turned, her body tense with energy and awareness, a cautious smile of greeting on her lips.
CHAPTER 9
Grim Reaper
The men of Nether Monkslip had learned their assigned tasks when it came to the Fayre, even before the accession of Wanda Batton-Smythe to the throne of the Women’s Institute. These tasks included hauling supplies that had been stored over the preceding weeks in the Village Hall to the grounds near the Abbey Ruins. The kitchen of the Village Hall was used as an additional staging area for various provisions for the tea that was served throughout the Fayre, the kitchen of the nearer Abbot’s Lodge having quickly reached capacity.
Walking past the marquee entrance, where Constable Musteile stood self-importantly on duty, Max literally ran into Guy Nicholls, who was just emerging from inside. Guy (“Rhymes with ‘High,’” as he had told Max at their first meeting), a well-set-up man in his early forties, fell into step beside him. He had an open countenance with aquiline features and a smooth complexion, now, like Tara’s, lightly tanned and freckled from the summer sun. He was a relative newcomer to the area, operating a trendy restaurant in Monkslip-super-Mare, and the men had formed a bond of sorts over their mutual newness and outsider status. Max welcomed Guy’s easy friendship, framed as it was by the man’s shrewdness, his sense of humor, and a worldliness that called to Max from his pre–Nether Monkslip days. Guy wore his sandy hair cropped in seemingly haphazard fashion by someone wielding an axe, but in fact in slavish (and expensive) devotion to the spiky fashion of the day. Max noticed the suspicion of a colorful hair dye on the tips, growing out from some previous experiment; chefs, in recent years having achieved a fame to rival that of pop stars, had become more concerned with being adventurous in their appearance, as well as in their menus. In voguish-swashbuckler style, Guy wore a small gold hoop in each ear.
Guy greeted him in the fashion which had become a routine between the two men.
“Villagers haven’t tarred and feathered you yet, I see?”
“I’ve escaped so far,” Max answered.
“Wanda still have you running hither and yon today?”
“I will be much in demand later on for my services as a fine judge of turnips,” Max told him. “But right now, I’ve been dispatched by Awena to see where the rest of the tea rations have gone.”
“Can I help?”
“Probably. Best if you’re seen to be doing something rather than enjoying yourself, if you follow. I’d enjoy the company in any event.”
“We are lucky in the weather,” said Max. They generally were. The southwest of England generally enjoyed more temperate climates than the north—cooler summers and warmer winters.
Guy shot him a winning smile. “Do you really think Wanda would have allowed it any other way?”
Max smiled in his turn. “Funny you should say that.”
It was strange when one thought about it: it was believed Wanda not only controlled village affairs, but the very heavens. As the two men chatted about the prospects for the coming winter, which was predicted to be an unusually cold one, Max noticed, not for the first time, that Guy’s melodious voice had a trace of a French accent. He said “you” as “ewe”—more a matter of the pursing of the lips than the pronunciation. Not the accent of the native-born French speaker, Max didn’t think, but the accent of someone who has acquired an overlay to his English after months or years of immersion in a foreign culture. For MI6 operatives who spent so much time overseas, in particular, it went with the territory.
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