Wicked Autumn

by G. M. Malliet

  “They met in Mumbai originally,” Cotton told him. “Guy was traveling about, and Jasper was simply looking for a cheap place to live where he could stretch out the money his parents sent. Interesting, that. He would play one parent off against the other, at least until Wanda pulled the plug, and neither parent knew the other was sending him money. It’s a game you might call ‘Double Your Money.’ Double-dipping—hitting both parents up for money, and swearing each parent to secrecy about it.”

  “The cynicism is breathtaking,” said Max.

  “Isn’t it just? Apparently, he hated both of them. I have the idea—a dead certainty, in fact—that the Major might not have lasted long after he inherited from Wanda. Not long at all. I’m sure the Major was their next intended victim, after Jasper’s mother. The rich pathology of this family hardly bears scrutiny.”

  “I’m afraid you are quite correct about that,” agreed Max. “What no one told me was how much both parents adored Jasper—each, perhaps, in their own way. And in Wanda’s case, up to a point. But the sentiment wasn’t returned.”

  “No, it was not,” said Cotton. “The whole point being the money he and Guy coveted so much—for this restaurant of Guy’s, for one thing, to keep it afloat. And for their travels, for another. I gather they’d run through quite a bit of cash, via one scheme or another—never thinking two days out, especially in Jasper’s case. Guy, with his business experience, seems to have been somewhat of a stabilizing influence. Jasper was always the dreamer. And the big spender.”

  “So,” said Max. “Mumbai is where Guy met up with Jasper in his travels. Possibly where their evil plot was conceived. Certainly where like soul called out in recognition to like soul.”

  “Guy described it to me as being hit by a thunderbolt,” said Cotton.

  “He went out of his way to present himself to me as heterosexual to almost a parodic degree—ogling the waitress, drooling over Suzanna. Tara says he went out with her a couple of times, but there was nothing doing, and she rather wondered why he’d bothered. And Jasper’s coming here, dragging that poor Clementia with him, was more of the same kind of blind.”

  Cotton nodded. “We never thought in terms that were not stereotypical. Jasper, we were told, had a love interest. That love interest must, therefore, be female. How hard it is to think outside of these stereotypes.”

  “A drawback in both my profession and yours, I would say.”

  “You were right about the key business, by the way,” Cotton said. “Guy says Wanda always preferred to use the more romantic French pronunciation in addressing him. Guy—rhymes with key.”

  “So what Miss Pitchford heard—or rather misheard—as ‘oh, key’ was Wanda saying his name: ‘Oh, Guy.’ Presumably in some breathy, adoring, distracted way. She was probably looking for her compact, her lipstick—it could have been any number of things. But Miss Pitchford heard ‘key’—or thought she did—and linked the word, quite naturally, to the sight of a woman scrabbling around in her handbag. I sat there in Miss Pitchford’s sitting room, where the works of Guy de Maupassant are ranged on her bookshelves. Something about the name caught at my mind at the time—‘Guy’ pronounced in the French manner of course rhymes with ‘key.’ It wasn’t until much later that I made the connection.”

  “Is it possible,” Cotton asked tentatively, “that Miss Pitchford is a bit hard of hearing, as well?”

  “I suppose it is. She’s somewhere in her eighties. And when I spoke with her the other day, she did ask me to repeat something I’d said. She’d misheard ‘food’ as ‘mood.’”

  “I really never thought to ask her about her hearing. She is so completely sharp and canny in every respect.”

  “Something tells me she might not have ’fessed up to it if you had asked. She’s rather proud, our Miss Pitchford, and I don’t suppose she likes getting older any better than the rest of us do.”

  “Still, it sure beats the alternative.”

  “You think?” Max asked. “Not in my book.”

  Epilogue

  Max sat at his desk sipping hawthorn tea as he ruminated over his next sermon. Mrs. Hooser came in with the vicarage mail, which had arrived several hours before. Although it was not raining, and had not rained for days, she had managed to get the circulars, bills, and assorted rubbish soaked through with water.

  Water, he thought, sighing, was becoming a recurring theme in his life.

  The water stain, painted over twice now, had reappeared on the wall of the church, despite all Max’s attempts to fix the leak in the roof, or to at least divert the tide that would descend at the next rainfall. During a recent Sunday service, little Tom Hooser had said loudly, “Looks like Jesus,” only to be shushed immediately by his sister. All heads swiveled to look, and an excited buzz rose from the congregation.

  Max, walking over after the service, joining the others for a closer look, saw what the boy had seen: The stain, growing darker, its outlines and contrast more pronounced, was beginning faintly to resemble the face on the shroud of Turin, something the boy had no doubt seen on a recent telly documentary. A negative image of a gaunt, bearded man with longish hair, eyes closed as if in sleep. The resemblance was slight, but definitely it was there. Max, far from being enthusiastic, felt immediate twinges of panic. This was not something he would welcome at St. Edwold’s—the rubberneckers, the curious, the devout, and the crazy would all crowd in if word got out. He had seen this kind of thing before—crying statues that turned out to be crying because of some weird, one-off juxtaposition of the atmospherics, the climate, a malfunctioning boiler, and the humidity in a church. He’d have to get it repainted. He reached for his phone to call Maurice again.

  He thanked Mrs. Hooser now and she turned to leave; the broom she carried just missed sending all the magazines and papers on a table near the fireplace to a fiery death.

  “Oh,” she said, turning again, and doubling her chances of leaving chaos in her wake. “I nearly forgot. She’s here. The witchy woman.”

  She could only mean Awena. “Please show her in, Mrs. Hooser. And whatever you do, don’t call her that.”

  Awena bustled slowly in, swathed in folds of brilliant fabric, as always looking like a queen on a stately progress. Thea, knowing better than to jump, instead threw herself in a rapturous heap at Awena’s feet. She seemed to consider Awena something of a soul mate.

  “I’m on my way to tonight’s Women’s Institute meeting,” Awena said, briefly bending down to caress the top of Thea’s head, “and thought I’d drop in and say hello. We haven’t really spoken since you rounded up those two cretinous thugs.”

  “Good heavens. Is it that time again? I did hear Suzanna had taken up the reins of power.”

  Awena nodded. There was a glint of mischief in her eyes that should have forewarned him.

  “Big changes are afoot,” she said.

  “Really?” Refusing to be drawn, he started to turn back to his sermon.

  “Don’t you want to know?” she demanded.

  “Don’t you want to tell me?”

  “Very well. If you insist. Be among the first not on the distaff side to hear: the Nether Monkslip Women’s Institute is going to make a calendar.”

  “They do that every year, I thought. So you can only be saying…”

  “That’s right. A nude calendar. Well, not completely nude, but…”

  “You mean, like the North Yorkshire women in Calendar Girls?”

  “Exactly. Miss Pitchford is positively scandalized.”

  This could only be Suzanna’s idea, he thought. Suzanna, with her pinup looks.

  “Who else is involved?”

  “Oh, you know. Elka. Lily.”

  Lily? “That is supremely hard to imagine,” he said aloud. “How did she ever get talked into it?”

  “Talked into it?” repeated Awena. “She’s one of the most avid supporters. She’s a changed woman, since she’s started seeing the Major. She’ll be posing with her spinning wheel.”

 
Good heaven. “I’m going to have to start getting out about the village more,” Max said.

  “He’s been ‘squiring her about,’ as only the Major could do,” Awena told him. “It’s a real old-fashioned courtship. He calls her ‘Little Lady.’”

  “He actually called her that? Good Lord. It’s like a line from a bad John Wayne film.”

  “Which one? All his lines were bad. Anyway, she seems to like it. She has come into her own, our Lil. She worships him and his accomplishments, as she sees it. Love is strange.”

  “Ah,” said Max. There seemed no other possible response.

  “But she’s playing the field, in the most genteel way imaginable,” Awena assured him. “Keeping her options open. Smart girl.”

  “So. Who else is going to appear in the calendar?” Max asked.

  “Oh, you know. Me, for one.” She practically shuffled her feet, examining one beaded shoe, then another. “I’ve agreed to pose wearing a witch’s hat, stirring toil and trouble in a black caldron.”

  Really. “That’s … nice,” he said.

  “It’s for charity,” she told him. Her eyes were gleaming; clearly, she couldn’t wait for the opportunity.

  Max reflected that the last time he’d heard the phrase, “It’s for charity,” things had not turned out well. This time, he felt in his heart, would be different.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  WANDA BATTON-SMYTHE—The formidable and much-feared head of the Nether Monkslip Women’s Institute. Her stewardship of the annual Harvest Fayre netted her many enemies.

  LILY IVERSON—Owner of a local knitting and textiles business, timid Lily was much put-upon by Wanda.

  SUZANNA WINSHIP—Lily’s champion and sister of the local doctor. The vampy, ambitious Suzanna often felt restless in the small village.

  ELKA GARTH—Owner of the Cavalier Tea Room and Garden, and mother of the feckless Clayton, she was pressured by a relentless Wanda to donate her services for the Harvest Fayre.

  AWENA OWEN—Owner of Goddessspell, the village’s New Age shop. Down-to-earth Awena predicted cosmic consequences if Wanda were not brought under control.

  MAXEN “MAX” TUDOR—A former MI5 agent turned Anglican priest, he thought he’d found a measure of peace in the idyllic South West English village of Nether Monkslip—until murder invaded his Garden of Eden.

  GUY NICHOLLS—Chef and restaurateur, he was also dragooned by a persistent Wanda into donating his services to the Fayre.

  DR. BRUCE WINSHIP—An expert in general ailments, he reveled in theories of how the criminal mind operates.

  MAJOR BATTON-SMYTHE—Wanda’s long-suffering husband, he claimed to be quite fond of his wealthy wife.

  TARA RAINE—A lithe, attractive yoga instructor, she rented studio space at Goddessspell.

  FRANK CUTHBERT—Local historian, author (Wherefore Nether Monkslip), and husband of Mme Lucie Cuthbert, who was proprietress of La Maison Bleue, Frank clashed with Wanda over his beloved books.

  MRS. HOOSER—Max’s housekeeper at the Vicarage, and the mother of Tildy Ann and Tom.

  NOAH CARAWAY—Wealthy owner of Noah’s Ark Antiques and of Abbot’s Lodge, site of the fatal Harvest Fayre.

  CONSTABLE MUSTEILE—An officious man, he was the first official on the scene of the crime.

  DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR COTTON—The kinetic DCI was dispatched from Monkslip-super-Mare to investigate a most suspicious death.

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT ESSEX—DCI Cotton’s assistant.

  MISS AGNES PITCHFORD—A retired schoolmistress, prim Miss Pitchford was a walking cross-indexed repository of all village gossip.

  JASPER BATTON-SMYTHE—Absent son of Wanda and the Major, and a talented young man with a burgeoning artistic career.

  LAWRENCE HAWKER—Jasper’s friend-turned-enemy from his school days.

  LYDIA LACE—Acolyte at St. Edwold’s, she knew she was not just seeing things when she spotted a killer.

  ALSO BY G. M. MALLIET

  Death of a Cozy Writer

  Death and the Lit Chick

  Death at the Alma Mater

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Thomas Dunne Book for Minotaur Books.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

  WICKED AUTUMN. Copyright © 2011 by G. M. Malliet. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Malliet, G. M., 1951–

  Wicked autumn : a Max Tudor novel / G. M. Malliet. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Thomas Dunne book for Minotaur Books.”

  ISBN 978-0-312-64697-4

  1. Vicars, Parochial—England—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.A4535W53 2011

  813'.6—dc22

  2011019523

  First Edition: October 2011

  eISBN 978-1-4299-8389-1