Wicked Autumn

by G. M. Malliet

  “No reason I can think of,” Max said slowly.

  “I’ll get in touch with our friends in Belgium. If anything emerges of great interest, we may have to send someone over there.” He smiled. “Strange, but it’s always easier to find volunteers to travel over to Europe than to—oh, say, Milton Keynes, for example.”

  Max held up the bottle, offering the last few sips, which Cotton accepted.

  “Your instincts are good,” Cotton said. “Who do you suspect?”

  Max could only shrug—he suspected everyone. He supposed it was a legacy of his MI5 days. The Major, Lily Iverson, Frank Cuthbert—the list was long of people who were at the Fayre, but whose exact presence was not accounted for at the crucial noon hour? No matter how suspicious he might be, he could not see any of these people committing murder. And yet it must be one of them, or someone just like them. The Fayre attracted every sort of person from miles around, but no one who would have stood out as a homicidal maniac. More was the pity, of course. It was going to make finding whoever was responsible deuced hard. And finding proof that they did it.

  “I told you I saw the Major the other day,” said Max, “and he told me his wife was not using the local GP.”

  “Right. And he showed you that letter from his son. The contents of which we verified, by the way: he was where he said he was. Which reminds me: along with the calendar, we found a stash of letters to Mumsie from the son, Jasper. I have them here.”

  “Really. Could I see them?”

  Cotton fished for the briefcase at the side of his chair.

  “Go carefully, there,” he said, handing over a small stack of letters inside a clear plastic bag. “We didn’t bother to bag them all separately. Here, put these on.”

  He handed over a pair of disposable plastic gloves for Max to wear.

  The letters, Max saw, were nearly identical in style and type with what Jasper had written to the Major—asking for money or thanking for money, effusively—and addressed to only one parent, not both. The last was dated in May.

  “The husband hid them from the wife and vice versa—is that it? More strangeness in that family,” commented Max. “We’re absolutely sure, are we, that the son is in the clear?”

  Cotton nodded emphatically. “Passport control confirms it. The media in Argentina confirm it. No way he was anywhere near the scene.”

  They chewed over the evidence, the inconsistencies, and the possible motives for another few minutes, but little of useful note emerged.

  “Where to now, Max?”

  “I need to think a bit,” Max replied. “And I do that best at St. Edwold’s. Right now, there’s a pile of images and puzzle pieces in my head—nothing quite fits together.

  “But it will. If I sleep on it a bit, and pray on it a lot. For the first time, I’m starting to believe it will all come together.”

  CHAPTER 23

  St. Edwold’s

  The next day saw a return of a brisk wind, this time from the south, pushing before it heavy white clouds. It gave the illusion, as Max approached, that St. Edwold’s was moving, somehow being born aloft against the clear blue of the sky.

  Words from the Book of Common Prayer similarly floated across Max’s mind: “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.” Was some similar selfish impulse—so often a precursor to murder—behind Wanda’s death? The words mirrored those in the sermon he had been working on, so long ago it seemed now—James’s “You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder.”

  His late conversation with Cotton had raised more questions than answers, although with so many facts to tie together, Max felt he must be gaining on the killer. He had the fanciful idea he was stepping on his or her shadow.

  DCI Cotton appeared just then, coming from the direction of the Horseshoe. He paused just long enough to wish Max a good day. Frank Cuthbert, accompanied by the faithful Sadie, came into view as Max parted from DCI Cotton at the lich-gate to the churchyard.

  Frank lurked (it was the only word for it), watching closely and waiting as Cotton crossed the High to the police pod near the Village Hall, where the ceramic shepherd and shepherdess peered blindly out on the scene from their respective windows. Max, wanting to hear Frank’s own version of his run-in with Wanda at the Fayre, could see no sideways approach to the matter, but Frank, as if reading his mind, saved him the trouble.

  “I was just on my way to see your DCI,” Frank told him. “Best to make a clean breast of things.”

  It would be too much to hope, thought Max, that Frank was confessing to the murder—things were never that simple. As it transpired, Frank only wanted to be sure the police heard of the incident with Wanda before a version reached them—a version that tainted his silence with suspicion. It seemed Wanda had tried to get Frank moved to a less prominent spot, saying the public had seen enough of his “stupid books.”

  “Stupid!” Fairly spitting, a flush of remembered anger washed over Frank’s already hectic complexion.

  “It’s a minor thing,” said Max soothingly, “but I do feel telling Cotton up front would stand you in good stead.”

  Frank, with a tip of his beret, said, “Minor, is it? Damn the woman. As much trouble in death as in life. Always the corrosive influence around here. And she wouldn’t know a good book if it bit her.”

  But, seeming to gather together the shreds of his authorial dignity, Frank turned and followed in Cotton’s steps over to the pod.

  * * *

  Max opened the lich-gate, which was rusting about the hinges and making an unnerving, Boris Karloff–type creak whenever anyone touched it. He’d have to get the sexton on it. Even though such things were best left to Maurice, there was a weird proprietary game being played between the two men with regard to the church, and Max wasn’t sure he knew all the rules as yet.

  Skirting the churchyard, Max opened the church door and stepped through the narthex and into the nave. The murk was at first blinding, and he nearly tripped on the flagstone floor, which had been scooped and worn into a veritable pothole by centuries of worshipers. It was as good a reminder as any of life “everlafting,” as the old plaque inscriptions in the church would have it.

  Visitors who took the trouble to find Nether Monkslip never failed to be amazed when they stumbled upon the jewel of a church that was St. Edwold’s. To all appearances, from the outside it was just another squatty little Norman church of not particularly inspired execution. Inside, the stained-glass windows caught and scattered light in a way designed to transfix. The few entries in the church’s guestbook usually fell back on words like, “awesome,” “breathtaking,” and “peaceful,” invariably followed by a row of exclamation points. For while England had many lovely old churches, St. Edwold’s, through some divine trick of light, or cunning artifice of its builders, seemed to shimmer and glow in the patina of centuries. People swore it was a holy place on holy ground, and Max could only agree.

  * * *

  In the days and nights that followed his “conversion” in Egypt, he had puzzled to pick out the thread in his reasoning. Why the Church of England? Why not go the whole hog and join, say, a Tibetan monastery? It was not merely the pull of the familiar, although that played a part: one of his aunts, his father’s sister, had become an Anglican nun. He could recall, as a small child, walking between his parents on the way to church, each of his small hands clasped in one of theirs, his body nearly suspended, his feet barely touching the ground. This was before his siblings had come along. Like all only children, he gloried in having his parents to himself. As much as they had traveled during his nomadic childhood, the Anglican Communion, the local church with its predictable rituals, had been his consistent home.

  Even in adulthood, when he was an occasional churchgoer at best, he would have questioned his own sanity had he suddenly taken up a religion about which he knew next to nothing. It seemed to him it almost didn’t matter, the outward form a religion took—the prayers and rituals. What mattered
was the near-universal agreement throughout mankind’s time on earth that we weren’t here, on this lonely planet, alone. These were views he kept quiet about while reading theology, especially from the more kneejerk conservative of his instructors. Like a magpie, he selected from their teachings what made sense to him, what brought him comfort, and hid from them his more elastic views.

  There was beyond all this, of course, the question of joining an institution that to all appearances was foundering, rocked by scandal and nearly toppled by indifference. Why the C of E, beyond habit? Perhaps because at the end of the day it was Max’s church—the selfsame church that had taught him right from wrong, however far he might later have steered from the path.

  He looked about him in the glowing silence of the building that had awed and humbled so many strangers, of all faiths. It helped that the sexton who maintained the church building (and did double duty in the office of verger, assisting at services) was a punctilious and conscientious man who seemed to regard the place as his own property and its care a divinely appointed task—hence the open rivalry with Maurice. Mr. Stackpole was a dour, humorless man Max had inherited from his predecessor. While the sexton was always polite—just—he seemed to regard Max as an upstart interloper; his narrow figure, like something out of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, exuded condemnation for the way the world was turning. He was one of the staunchest preservationists in the village, and while Max agreed in theory with much of what he stood for, his inability to see both sides of any issue made him a difficult person to deal with.

  Max always felt that he himself was on trial with the sexton—a normal ordeal for any incoming parish priest to go through. But in this case, Max believed that no matter how exemplary his conduct and personal habits, Mr. Stackpole would always find him wanting when measured up against the conduct of Walter Bokeler of sainted memory.

  The truth, Max suspected, was that Mr. Stackpole (he insisted everyone address him as “Mister”) had trouble categorizing Max theologically, and the lack of easy labels made a man like Stackpole uneasy. Especially in an age where it was felt the church was circling the drains, some people clung to whatever looked certain and solid, making them less able to handle ambiguity and apparent contradiction. Stackpole wanted firm answers. Max did not have firm answers to give, only hope and abundant good will. This, Mr. Stackpole seemed to feel, was simply not good enough.

  The former vicar of St. Edwold’s had been High Church in his views; Max was determined to follow a more inclusive, middle road. Some, like Wanda and the Major, had been outraged at the change, going so far as to travel to Monkslip-super-Mare for services. This lasted until poor weather, and a growing sense of their isolation from the rest of the village, had driven them back (rather, had driven Wanda, the Major remaining ever pliable). Wanda’s sense of her place in the village was her prize psychological possession.

  Although Max had that rock-star status from the start, the trust of the parishioners had to be earned daily. He wouldn’t really have wanted it any other way, as frustrating as their suspicions (inborn in the case of the long-term native villagers) had been—even though it was like being watched over by the head of a particularly snotty public school. Several heads.

  * * *

  Max walked in silence now through the jewel-lit darkness of the nave’s main aisle, the heels of his shoes ringing against the floor, a sound magnified as it ricocheted against the high ceiling. The church building was always left unlocked, vandalism being almost unheard of in Nether Monkslip. And cold-blooded murder even more so. Would Wanda’s death change all this—make his parishioners fearful, contaminate them with the urban fears and prejudices and phobias they had come here to escape? Max sighed at the thought of the worm in the apple.

  As he approached the chancel steps, he heard a slight pattering sound and, on turning, saw he was not alone. Little Tom Hooser was sitting in one of the pews, rhythmically tapping the toes of his small feet together. He was so small the top of his head with its springy dark hair could not clear the pew in front of him. Max wondered not only how he had managed to crawl up into the pew but also how he had slipped the bonds of the all-seeing Tildy Ann—possibly he was here because it was one of the last places his sister might look for him. Max had been uncertain until this moment that Tom could function without her, but Tom seemed to be managing well.

  Max, greeting him, sat in the pew in front.

  “There’s something growing there,” Tom informed him. Slowly, dramatically, he lifted one small hand, a bit the worse for what looked like the remains of a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and, like Scrooge’s ghost, pointed a finger at the wall directly to his left. Max followed the spectral-like directive. Together, solemnly, they gazed at the wall.

  Where there was, no question about it, a moist stain of some kind, a dark nimbus forming on the white plaster, like a solar eclipse in reverse. Max barely suppressed an oath: damn and double damn it all forever. The roof must be leaking again, water seeping down through the old cracked walls. Another item for Maurice to assess, and probably well beyond his capacity to fix. Max had the sudden, mean realization that Wanda’s murder had probably truncated the profits that had been earmarked to flow from the Fayre toward the church restoration fund. He looked at Tom, who seemed to sense the gravity of the situation, and sympathetically shook his head. Duty done, he said his good-byes and left, the Vicar wondering what on earth it was going to cost to repair his incandescent little church—this time. Why the child was not in some sort of school or day nursery he also stopped to ask himself. He would have to ask Tom’s mother. Or Tildy Ann, who was more likely to know.

  He breathed deeply and deliberately, trying to calm and clear his mind, but before long the problem of the roof was replaced by the questions that had assailed him in the night. They crept back, all part of the same theme: who could have killed Wanda? Max was not enamored of the passing-stranger theory, if only because one felt one had to know Wanda rather well before being inspired to see her removal as a blessing for all mankind. That might be a rough sentiment for a vicar, but it was a realistic appraisal. The same applied in the case of the tradesmen and various farmers involved somehow with the Fayre. Dislike on such a massive scale, Max felt, had to have taken some time to accumulate, with repeated infusions of ill will, to set the killer’s mind on slaughter.

  He suddenly had the odd sensation of seeing himself from the outside, as a passing visitor would see him, a tall, dark-haired man sitting surrounded by the beauty of the solemn old church. He decided to do what he long had done for direction—and he smiled, knowing Awena did the same, although her name for it was guided meditation: she would choose a picture or a phrase at random and go with the flow of whatever ideas emerged. Max would open a Bible at the Book of Common Prayer at random for guidance, although the meaning sometimes took a lot of sifting. His eye more often than not fell on phrases that seemed nonsensical, unrelated to the topic that perplexed him. As happened now, he could not see the guidance as the book fell open to Psalm 51, in which David asks to be purged of his sins and made “whiter than snow.”

  David’s were sins of murder and adultery. Max’s thoughts turned to betrayal—how murder was the ultimate in that line. Betrayal by an enemy or a trusted friend; Judas’s betrayal. He turned to find the psalm he was reminded of, the one he thought of as the Betrayal Psalm, and finding it, he read:

  For it is not an open enemy, that hath done me

  this dishonour: for then I could have borne it;

  Neither was it mine adversary, that did magnify

  himself against me: for then peradventure I would

  have hid myself from him;

  But it was even thou, my companion: my guide,

  and mine own familiar friend.

  He pulled out the small notebook and pen he carried everywhere with him, used for jotting down dates and reminders—also random thoughts, ideas, and inspirations, most of which ended up in his sermons. He began trying to marshal his thoughts. He
wrote nothing for a long while, but it was like doing the crossword puzzle—without pen in hand, he never felt the answers would come to him.

  After a while, he wrote “Elka,” followed by “Betrayed? Would lie to protect son? To avenge?” It was one of those moments when his subconscious seemed to have taken over, because rereading this he had no idea from where the thought had emerged. After another minute he added, “Grief-stricken?—the Major.” And: “Lily. As frail as she seems?” Now he was forcing the issue, he realized, so he crossed all of this out and sat, quiet and still, waiting.

  And what came to mind, of all things, was the vicarage study—those awful curtains. Queen Victoria’s knickers. And a phrase he had heard or seen recently, or that reminded him of something someone had said. Something to do with an envelope. Pushing the envelope, perhaps—a phrase that had long lost its original meaning, given it by test pilots, of pushing the limits of a plane’s capabilities. The Major had shown him an envelope, and told him there had been a delay in receiving his son’s letter. Max thought of all those letters found in Wanda’s house, read and presumably treasured and stored away. The lyrics of a treacly old song came to mind, a song of innocent summer times, summer memories: “So let us make a pledge / To meet in September.” “Sealed with a Kiss”—that was it. She had died in late September. He tried to catch the memory or idea that now danced tantalizingly out of reach. And could not. It seemed significant now.

  Drat.

  CHAPTER 24

  Acolyte Down

  The night before Wanda’s funeral, Max dreamt he was solemnizing a wedding. The couple stood before him at the chancel steps; in the way of dreams, it made perfect sense to him that both bride and groom had their faces swathed in heavy black veils. Wanda, mother of the bride, was there, her face wearing its accustomed mask of displeasure. He began to read aloud the lovely and age-burnished words, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God … to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony.” But when dream-Max turned to ask the man if he would have the woman as his wife, he saw his mistake: this wasn’t a wedding. This was a funeral, and the man and woman now stood before him wrapped together in a white shroud. How could he have got it so wrong? The banns hadn’t even been published, he suddenly realized. Wanda would be furious. Desperately, he began to search the prayer book for the Order for the Burial of the Dead. All he could remember of the words was that we brought nothing into this world. “We brought nothing into this world,” he told the couple. “Nothing!” The shrouded bodies began to stir, and again Max knew in the way of dreams that whatever the white cloth covered was decayed and no longer human. Terrified, his heart pounding, in a cold night sweat he awoke to a room bleached gray by moonlight.