Wicked Autumn

by G. M. Malliet

  Max asked, in typically roundabout British fashion, “How are you settling in, then? Learning the local customs?”

  Guy grinned. “As you know, it takes a while to be accepted, even though we’ve both been here quite a while now. Nether Monkslip seems to have its own rules about these things. But the restaurant is starting to fill up without too much print advertising required—good old word-of-mouth is saving the day. Always the best way, anyway.”

  “Glad to hear it. In fact, I’ve heard the good reports myself.”

  “You’ll have to stop in soon. Let me know ahead of time when you’re coming, and we’ll whip up something special for you.”

  By this point they had reached the heavy wooden door of the Village Hall. Max was unsurprised to find it unlocked, as Awena had predicted. It was the Nether Monkslip way of doing things. Besides, what was there inside worth stealing, really, apart from moth-eaten costumes and props willingly cast off by their owners?

  He pulled the door open and stepped aside to let Guy enter.

  Max realized he had not been inside the Village Hall for some weeks, when he’d dropped in on the local whist drive, new to the pastime but willing to learn. Nothing about the place had changed, but then, one wouldn’t expect it to: it was as enduring and static as the Albert Memorial. Some still mourned the days of the traveling cinema when it came to the Hall, but transport had changed much of the complexion of village life. Still, the whist drive never dimmed in popularity.

  The much-maligned orange plastic chairs had been stacked on one side, so as to leave the center of the large room free for ballroom dancing and the like. The area was uncarpeted, the wooden floors polished smooth by decades of use. Windows ranged along one side, curtained in what looked like Irish lace, although he suspected these were acrylic. Between two windows stood a large commode, used for storage, on top of which was an enormous cup—perhaps used to represent the Holy Grail in a Nether Monkslip Dramatic Society presentation on the life of King Arthur (Frank Cuthbert’s portrayal of a superannuated Galahad was still spoken of with some puzzlement), perhaps a trophy from some long-ago sporting event, perhaps both. Figurines stood on each window ledge, a shepherd and his shepherdess. He recognized them as having been used in a production of Lady Windermere’s Fan—a year ago now that was, or was it two? The place was littered with such artifacts from amateur pageants and plays, awaiting storage or disposal. One figurine seemed to teeter too close to the window ledge.

  “What is it we’re looking for again?” asked Guy.

  Max swiveled his attention back. “Tea.”

  “Bags or loose?”

  Max blew out his cheeks. “Good question. Dunno. I forgot to ask. Let’s grab what we can find and hope it’s right.”

  “In the kitchen, then.” And suiting action to the word, Guy walked over to push open the door to the room opposite the stage area. One wall of the kitchen had a serving hatch that could be opened to sell refreshments during performance breaks, but the pass-through was closed. Max noted a padlock had been applied to it.

  Guy’s voice reached him from the other room. “Maybe we should—” he began, and stopped.

  “Maybe we should what?” Max, on his heels, came up beside him. But Guy flew from his side. He was suddenly kneeling over a prone figure, his head bent to the victim, for victim it was—of a stroke? A heart attack? A body that had ceased to breath on its own—that much was clear.

  Max’s old training instantly kicked in. Just the presence of a body seemed to charge the air around him, as if one of his old instructors stood in the background, saying calmly, What do you see? Max was once again in a classroom, images being flashed across a screen, one scene after another, as he was tested on his ability to eyewitness a scene of carnage, and the moments leading up to it, and the faces in a crowd. There, there in a corner might be the young man, one of dozens of young men and women with the usual backpacks, wearing the usual jeans and jackets and with wires to their music running out of their ears, only this man was different. His body also was taped with wires and explosives and a detonator and surely, yes surely, his eyes shone with the crazy bloody-minded will to take his own life, and to commit the senseless murder of dozens more, as his handlers watched and waited for news from a place of safety.

  Max’s heart rate slowed now, his breathing slowed, and he began coolly, robotically taking in the scene around him, his brain dividing the room into sections, his eyes taking mental snapshots of every wall, every corner. Like a camera lens, his eyes recorded the ordinary kitchen, with nothing out of place, everything lined up and looking spotless, bags of tea, bags of coffee, everything put away except for these, except for the plates of food, biscuits and cakes, covered in cling film, that waited for collection on the counter. A leather handbag rested there, too.

  Guy had tilted the victim’s head back, pinched the nostrils, and began breathing several times into the mouth. Then settling back on his haunches, he placed one hand over the other and pushed, hard, against the chest. “One, two, three, four…” He counted aloud to fifteen, his voice loud and ragged with stress. Max, beside him, saw that the chest wore a bumblebee that rose and fell with these efforts, but it was the artificial rise and fall produced only by Guy’s efforts. Guy was giving mouth-to-mouth to a figure in dark violet. He was trying to save Wanda. But he clearly was far too late.

  “You work on her heart while I try to get her breathing,” Guy said. He sounded determined now—settled into the situation, as if he’d done this often, as perhaps he had. Mouth-to-mouth was probably part of the training for working in a restaurant.

  Max knew it was no use—the staring gray eyes and the waxy sheen of her skin told their own tale. She had been dead some time, perhaps as much as half an hour. As much to humor the man as to ensure they really had done all they could, Max placed the heel of one hand on Wanda’s lower chest. Locking the fingers of both hands together, he took over the chest compression, pressing rhythmically down with his palms, as Guy continued to try to administer the breath of life. They worked in the desperate silence of the minutes, focused only on the body, on the lungs that refused to respond, until Guy, reluctantly, looked frantically back at Max and said, “It’s no use.”

  Max gently helped Guy to his feet and looked closely at the body.

  Wanda seemed to look straight ahead with wide, disbelieving eyes: This can’t be happening. Her lips appeared swollen, and her hands were clasped loosely near her neck, as if she’d been choking, and had made an instinctive, ineffectual grab for the afflicted area. He could see the scratch marks where she’d clawed at the white, soft skin. In honor of the day, she’d painted her fingernails, which shone glossy pink against her neck.

  Even as he took in the details, a No! seemed to pinball about inside his skull: This can’t be happening. Not here, not here of all places. I came here, I became a priest, I came here to get away from senseless death, from too many deaths, deaths caused by me, deaths I was helpless to prevent.

  But even as the horror ricocheted inside his head he continued automatically to register every detail. He looked again at the handbag. It had to Max the look of something Wanda would own, black and prim and squared off at the bottom, snapped closed at the top. In fact, he realized he’d seldom seen her without a similar bag, either slung over one arm or with the handle clutched to her waist with both hands.

  Then his focus returned to the body itself. What was different here? Ignoring those eyes, staring, accusing, filled with silent outrage, he took in the violet dress, the pin, the sturdy brogues on her large feet, which splayed out at the ankles. She wasn’t wearing the body armor—was that it? And her hair—her hair had been loosed from its Final Net death grip, and stood out in a sort of halo around her head, as if unleashed by humidity and the force of wind.

  There were marks on her wrists. Bruises? A struggle of some kind, then, or simply her struggle for air?

  She had clipped a small black velvet bow to the side of her finely shaped, curly head, a
nd this ornament remained in place. It was too small a device to be anything but purely decorative, which Max found immeasurably sad. Vanity might be a “sin” according to some lights, but he thought in measured doses it was one of life’s allowable little pleasures. It helped everyone get through their days. A simple thing like a velvet bow: Wanda worried about looking nice on her big day.

  “Let’s get some help in here,” he said, turning his attention back to Guy, who had moved away, averting his eyes from the corpse. “Do you have a mobile? I left mine at the vicarage. Mrs. Hooser had instructions to send Tildy Ann and her brother to fetch me if there were a need.”

  “Mine was nearly out of power earlier,” Guy replied, looking rather gray. “I’ll try standing by a window to get a signal. You know Nether Monkslip. We could be on the moon.”

  He walked into the next room and stopped near one of the windows. Max followed close behind, his eyes swiftly cataloging the details of the space. As Guy powered up his mobile he reached out to touch the figurine of the shepherdess on the ledge.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Max said sharply.

  Guy dropped his hand quickly away, but said, “Whyever not?”

  That was quite a good question, thought Max. There was something about the setup that bothered him. That was all he could have said in truth.

  “I just think it would be better if you didn’t touch anything,” he said firmly.

  Guy gave the mobile a frustrated shake. “This is hopeless. I’ll go myself and fetch Constable Musteile. Should I?”

  Oh, God, thought Max. That oaf. He supposed there was no hope for it, though. Constable Musteile was the local bobby and the natural source for official help—rather, the most direct route to officialdom.

  “Yes,” said Max. “He’ll need to ring in someone from Monkslip-super-Mare. Better the request comes from him. You go and look for him—he’s standing by the entrance to the marquee, looking important, last I saw. I’ll wait here and make sure no one comes in here accidentally. We don’t want anyone to see her looking like that.”

  He paused, then added, “I suppose you’d better tell him: I think it’s a crime scene.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Law and Order: Pod People

  By the mysterious process of instant village communication, word had leaked out that something was up at the Village Hall, and a sizable crowd gathered almost at the same moment the police arrived and began setting up cordons of blue-and-white crime-scene tape. The villagers and many Fayre visitors from farther away stood outside the Village Hall, a chaotic buzz of hushed conversation floating over their heads like a cartoon cloud. Nether Monkslip, Max had often reflected, was the original social networking site.

  The arrival of the police car from Monkslip-super-Mare had been excitement enough, as it careened up Church Street to the High, spewing dirt and gravel, and quickly followed by its smaller brethren. (The police sitting in these tiny, new, energy-efficient cars looked like they were sitting in roller skates, which detracted somewhat from the gravitas of their mission.) “They must’ve come to take over the investigation,” the whisper went about. “Must be something serious, then.” Normally the village had to be content for “real” police presence with periodic appearances of the Community Contact Vehicle, a special-built Fiat Ducato, looking much like the Perambulating Library that similarly visited small villages in the area.

  It was felt that the arrival of the local constable, madly peddling on his bicycle, was in the nature of an anticlimax, but since Constable Musteile was not greatly loved by the villagers, this in itself was a welcome and entertaining spectacle. Sensing that his arrival might have been an occasion for ridicule, Musteile, after first propping up his bike, pulled a mobile phone from his hip pocket, viciously punched in a few numbers, and, forgetting to announce himself (he was connected to his home’s call minder), barked a couple of “Right”s and “Will do”s into the device, concluding with, “Roger that. I’m on it. Over.” He flipped the phone shut with a practiced, one-handed flick of the wrist and swaggered toward the Village Hall, where he was promptly curtailed by an enormous, immovable constable from Monkslip-super-Mare.

  The above-mentioned erection of cordons by the new arrivals from Monkslip-super-Mare had, however, prompted more than a bit of resentful comment (“What do they think we are, to herd us about like this? A load of football hooligans?” “It’s our Village Hall. This is still England, isn’t it? I think I know my rights.” Etc.) and a palpable swell of excitement. Nothing had happened like this in Nether Monkslip since … well, since no one could quite say when. Certainly since time out of mind. Tongues wagging, they pressed against the barriers, a tight knot of people craning to see and looking like a many-headed hydra. But to their frustration, the windows of the building were too high and narrow for them to look inside.

  Some enterprising soul should have brought a ladder and sold tickets to this event, thought Max, who was the excited center of attention once it was learned—again, via that mysterious jungle drum telepathy—that he had actually been inside the Village Hall and made some sort of Discovery, and it couldn’t be good, could it, if the police were here now? Max, attempting too late to extract himself, looked around for Guy Nicholls, but he, wise man, seemed to have vanished. That or been swallowed whole by the crowd, avid for a firsthand account.

  * * *

  For Max, politely ignoring the avid curiosity, but curious himself, there was an eerie sense of déjà vu, as he watched the police engaged in their sad business of collecting and photographing. The scenes-of-crime officers would be inside dusting for fingerprints, and collecting DNA samples, going about the grim business of death, codified over time into a ritual of rules and procedures, much like a religious service, the aim being to bring to justice the person or persons who had gone rogue, and had violated one of mankind’s primary rules and agreements: Thou shalt not kill.

  Someone was taking Max’s opinion that it was a crime scene very seriously.

  Time passed, and the crowd grew less agitated, more willing to wait for news on something as big as this. Several people were sent by their families to bring food from the Fayre, lending some sense of a fun outing to the occasion.

  But the removal of Wanda’s body was something else entirely—with that came a shift in mood. A somber silence descended such as no one in the bustling village could recall. Death was not unknown in Nether Monkslip, but everyone sensed there was something different about this death. No one had been as alive as Wanda, although “indestructible” was the word most often evoked.

  But they recovered themselves quickly, recalling their duty to inform. As the news made its way up and down the High, the few remaining villagers outside the loop of current events struggled to make an appropriate response. “Thank God” didn’t seem quite right somehow—there was the Major to think of, after all, and he was regarded by many as somewhat of a pet, if an irksome one. Most of the villagers settled on verbalizing some version of “How shocking!” before settling in for a good chin-wag over possible suspects. But here, bewilderment reigned. For when you thought about it, who would “knock off”—Frank, the scribe’s, phrase—a member of the WI for being perhaps a little too diligent over her responsibilities? Any other motive, however, lay quite outside the imaginations of most.

  “It was a robbery, pure and simple,” was the overall consensus.

  “What was there to steal in the Village Hall? My gran’s recipe for candied yams isn’t that rare.”

  “People get killed these days for less. Some of the costumes and such must have been valuable. And she’d have had her handbag with her, wouldn’t she?” Here a sage nod of the head, and a finger tapped alongside the nose.

  “Makes you think.”

  But not in Nether Monkslip. Such things just didn’t happen. That was the constant refrain: not in Nether Monkslip.

  * * *

  It was the arrival of the mobile station much later on that let villagers know something new and notewo
rthy definitely was afoot. The police set up the pod next to the Village Hall in the same spot usually reserved for the Perambulating Library. Soon wires and cords trailed from the sides of this portable shell. The police were in business.

  A local wag at the Horseshoe immediately christened it “the Bobby Pod.” It was a name that stuck.

  * * *

  The news updates continued to spread through Nether Monkslip as only unexpected and shocking news could in a small village—rapidly and with mule-headed inaccuracy. For some reason, it became established fact that Wanda had been bludgeoned to death, once the likelihood of her having been stabbed to death had been dismissed as a possibility. It took several hours of effort by the postmistress, the fountain of most avid conjecture in the village, to help everyone sort through the speculation, summarize what little was known, and render a popular verdict of probable suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed—a phrase many of them had come across in their reading of the newspapers.

  Max had gone back to the vicarage to try (with little hope) to work on his sermon, but he had rejoined the crowd as news of the pod’s arrival reached him (via the simple expedient of someone’s sticking their head in the study window to announce the news in passing). Again he stood on the fringes of the crowd, watching, but in truth there was little to see. He was turning away—the sermon was going to have to be completely rewritten, after all; how could he ignore this particular elephant in the room?—when he heard a familiar voice call his name.

  Max had crossed paths with DCI Cotton of the Monkslip-super-Mare police in the past. He and the policeman were at times working on opposite sides of the coin, with DCI Cotton trying to pin a crime on a miscreant, and Max presenting the reasons why leniency should be shown, especially in the case of a young offender. But neither of their devil’s advocate roles struck Max as being at odds in their aims. Cotton was too professional, and too competent, for that.