“A starter,” mused Awena. “A provocateur.”
“But Chanel isn’t talking anymore,” said Cotton. “She’s clammed up. The prints we found on that clicker Max uncovered are hers, interestingly enough. It’s not airtight evidence, but every bit helps. If Bree put that thing in the planter, by the way, it seems she was smart enough to wear gloves doing it.”
“Chanel isn’t talking yet, you mean. That day may come—unless Bree does a magnificent job of making sure she doesn’t feel forgotten, rotting in her cell. If Bree is really smart, she’ll hire the best solicitors and barristers to handle Chanel’s case.”
“But you do think she talked Chanel into this?”
“Not exactly talked,” said Max. “She’s too canny for that. She’d choose her words wisely, and never say anything that could be brought home to her door. I think she only had to drop little hints of how much she longed for freedom. Mention how the pair of them could be together, and how nice it would be if they were. They could go and live on a tropical island, perhaps, if only she were free … with all that money.… How desperately unhappy she was, but it was all impossible. You know the sort of thing. It is likely that the full extent of Bree’s involvement might never be known, but I would not be at all surprised if she used the oldest trick in the book, claiming that Lord B-B was unfaithful or abused her in some way. I noticed there were faint smudges under her eyes when I spoke with her, like healing bruises. I think now they were bruises, and I think they were self-inflicted. Either that or it was cleverly applied makeup. Even Chanel may not realize how much she’s been manipulated.”
“She acted as though the whole thing were her own idea, and claims that it was. She’s staying with that story, Max.”
“What made her talk?” Awena asked.
Again, Cotton and Max exchanged glances.
“Chanel fell into the trap we’d laid for Peregrine,” said Cotton. “We arranged for a headless horseman to ride through the woods, just after the sun went behind the trees, and the setting was properly spooky and cast with shadows. And we made sure Peregrine and Bree were there to see it—I’d asked them to meet me to look at some evidence near the murder site.”
Max said, “Cotton tells me that Bree, as we rather expected, kept her cool—the benefit of being suspicious by nature is that you’re harder to fool. I almost wonder if she knew the famous story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow—one of her horses is named Gunpowder, the same name as the horse Ichabod rode. A brass plate with that name is on one of the stalls in her stables. Anyway, in the story, there is a strong suggestion the whole thing is a hoax: a pumpkin is involved, as I recall.” His mind caught on the pumpkin in his dream, smashed in pieces. “Peregrine quickly came apart and confessed to the affair, but denied he had anything to do with murder. She tried to shush him, but he was past listening to her. This was all much more than he had bargained for. I’m sure he will forever have nightmares about the headless corpse of his father.”
“And then Chanel, who had been waiting for Bree in the summerhouse, arrived on the scene,” interjected Cotton. “She heard Peregrine yelling blue murder—remember, he’s not much more than a boy—and she came running, just in time to see the ‘ghost’ race by. Then she came undone. Once we’d reduced everyone but Bree to a quivering mass, the truth came out quickly enough. There was not a lot of point in Chanel’s claiming she didn’t know what we were talking about, not once we told her her conversations in the summerhouse had been overheard. We implied we knew more than we did, but no matter. She confessed she’d done it. She was gibbering to the point I had to interrupt the flow to caution her.”
“Wait a minute,” said Awena. ‘Everybody just wait a minute. Headless horseman?”
“Horsewoman, actually. The very diminutive Sergeant Essex, atop Foto Finish. With a cape covering her head, the horse thundering down the forest path in the flickering moonlight, it was an amazingly lifelike apparition. Essex carried an old-fashioned lantern as she rode, which I think was rather a nice touch—her idea. Quite frightening, actually—even I was shaken, though I knew who it was and what was going on.”
“Is all this legal?” inquired Awena.
“More or less,” said Cotton lightly. He toggled one hand equivocally. “It got the confession we wanted from Peregrine, as to his involvement with Bree. And a denial of involvement in the murder she had urged him to commit—a denial that was utterly convincing. The added bonus came from Chanel, as to the commission of the murder itself. She simply threw herself under the wheels to keep Bree out of it, once she saw the way the whole thing was trending: The blubbering Peregrine was, by this point, accusing Bree openly, quoting chapter and verse. From a legal standpoint, it’s hearsay, of course, even though I believe him.”
“But Bree admits nothing,” said Awena.
“I am not holding my breath that she will ever own up to the extent of her involvement. It is very likely she cannot be held culpable, as things stand. And she knows it.” Cotton shuddered slightly. “She’s like a spider, that one.”
“But how was it done?” Awena asked, clearly appalled. “The beheading … the wire.”
“How exactly did Chanel pull off the murder? The horse had been trained from a colt to obey the sound of a clicker. All of this was quite a normal part of his training. Then at some point, over and over, he began to be taught that to get a reward, he had to lower his head at the sound. And keep his head down and keep running until the clicker sounded again.”
“I heard what I thought was the sound of crickets that night,” said Max. “As I walked through the woods with Thea.”
“Crickets don’t live in forests,” said Awena. “They live in fields and meadows.”
“I know. It took me a while to realize what a country boy would have known right away.”
“We have got,” said Cotton, “to get more local farm people to join the force. Musteile doesn’t count.”
“So Chanel—ironically, the self-help guru—became besotted with Bree almost from the moment she moved to the village?” asked Awena. “A case of love at first sight?”
“Something like that,” said Max, remembering Bree’s comment that Chris Marlowe had it right.
“It may not have been first sight—we’re looking into that,” said Cotton. “They are both from Wiltshire originally. But first sight or old friendship, they forged a bond either way. I gather Bree is rather good at forging bonds.”
“Or at making other people believe they have a bond with her,” suggested Max.
“She killed at Bree’s unspoken bidding,” said Cotton. “That took some doing.”
“Shades of Salome,” Max pointed out, “the topic of Destiny’s recent sermon. Rather, Herodias and her dutiful dancing daughter, whom we have come to call Salome. What a totally appalling mother, I have always thought. Pushing your daughter to dance before your husband—probably an erotic sort of hoochie coochie, snaring him into getting your enemy John the Baptist killed for you.”
Awena and Cotton looked at each other and laughed. “Hoochie coochie?” said Awena. “Honestly, Max. Who says that anymore?”
“What?” said Max. He was mildly irritated—not that they were laughing at him, the old fuddy-duddy, but that their laughter had distracted him from an idea he’d been chasing. Something struggled to emerge from the depths of his mind, something slippery and dark, a murky connection that slithered maddeningly out of reach just as he reached to retrieve it. He thought it was connected with the dream he’d had in church, the dream that had given him the idea for shaking the truth out of Peregrine. He’d awakened, mortified to realize he’d surfaced in the middle of Destiny’s sermon. What was it that eluded him now, though? The ghost? The pumpkin?
“I do, apparently,” he told them. “Hoochie coochie is a time-honored and useful phrase.” Again, Cotton and Awena exchanged glances. “Anyway, a woman who didn’t do the actual killing but had it done for her. A woman well aware of her power to command.
In any event, the purpose was to free Bree from a loveless, abusive marriage. Something Chanel felt she knew all about, having survived a loveless and abusive marriage of her own.”
“Bree,” put in Cotton, “was stringing along both Peregrine and Chanel. Chanel was particularly useful to her because she knows everything about horses. Because, as she tells us, she grew up on a farm—a horse farm.”
“I guess that is why Brat Farrar came to mind,” said Awena. “The story with the rogue horse.” Owen was stirring now but listening intently. He liked the sounds of adults talking, and would listen, all eyes and ears, completely still, drinking everything in. Like his father, thought Awena.
“Not completely,” said Max. Half of his mind was still on the rogue idea that had popped into his head and immediately vanished. Deliberately, he released the thought now, letting go of it like a kite on a string, knowing that was the only way it might return. “Only later did I realize the other reason the Brat Farrar story stuck in my head. The story has to do with an imposter, a man who passes himself off as a rightful heir. In this case, there was no imposter, but the creation of a rightful heir where there had been none before.”
Chapter 25
BORN AND BRED
“I don’t follow, Max,” said Awena. “How do you create an heir? Apart from the usual way, that is.”
“By adopting one,” Max replied. “Or by stealing one. In this case, a foundling was adopted to ensure the family line did not die out entirely, at least in the eyes of the world. Only the adoption was kept secret, from everyone. It was, it turns out, a deadly secret.” Max was coming to think this was a fairly common occurrence among the families at a certain stratum of high society. Was anyone up there who he thought he was? Modern DNA would surely put a stop to this sort of deception, but then only if a deception were suspected.
That Peregrine was adopted was probably known only by the man he called father—and his father, when angry, had threatened to disinherit Peregrine, telling him he was no son of his. Did Bree know? Max wondered. Did her husband tell her Peregrine was not his heir? Was not of his flesh and blood? Max thought it likely.
Because that was the end of her need for Peregrine. Max imagined the moment her husband had confided Peregrine’s true status to her would coincide precisely with the day she started to ease out of her relationship with Peregrine. For she would be out on her ear if their affair were uncovered, and Peregrine would be out, too, with no inheritance for them to live on. For her to continue her relationship with him was simply too risky—foolhardy and with no payoff in the end.
Max also thought, and wanted to believe, that Peregrine would have balked at any suggestion he help Bree murder her husband. Peregrine was no angel, but Max thought he would draw the line at doing anything so completely amoral as to kill the only father he had ever known.
So Bree had had to look elsewhere for help in killing her husband.
The case in the end really had little to do with horses, Max reflected, except that a horse had been used as the means to an end. There was something clinical and detached about the method used—like killing secondhand. A knife or gun would have been a more direct and intimate method.
And perhaps it had been decided that was the problem with using a more conventional method: An opponent could dodge a bullet, or overcome a woman wielding a knife.
Finding the clicker had been pure chance, even though squirrels liked to dig wherever soil had been recently disturbed. Perhaps it had been Bree who had buried it in the vase on the patio, figuring it would not be found, or, if found, could not be traced to her. Having left it in a temporarily safe hiding place, she probably decided it was better not to return too soon to dig it out.
So many red herrings. The case had to do with love or lust, call it what you will—Chanel’s wish to free the desired one of an unhappy marriage, in the mistaken belief it would win her heart. There was also some element of greed, of course. A beloved with a huge inheritance would be an improvement on a beloved broken financially by a prenup.
“The Brat Farrar story nearly led me astray,” said Max aloud. “There is a rogue horse in that book, as you say, but what we were dealing with here was just the opposite of a rogue. Not a “killer” horse but a perfectly trained, even docile, one.
“There was also an heir in that story making false claims to an inheritance, but the heir in this case wasn’t attempting to impersonate anyone. He honestly did not know he’d been substituted into his position almost from birth.
“One further parallel is that, like Brat Farrar, Bree is a true horse lover. She is also charming and utterly dishonest.”
“Back up, back up,” said Awena. “Peregrine is not the heir to Totleigh Hall?”
“No,” said Cotton. “He is not his father’s son. He agreed to let us test his DNA—he seemed to think it had something to do with the crime scene. And since he knew he had nothing to do with the setup for his father’s grisly death, he was more than happy to comply.”
“Really,” said Awena, arching one perfect dark eyebrow.
“It was your husband’s idea,” Cotton told her.
“Really,” she said again.
“Still, it didn’t clear Peregrine as a suspect,” said Cotton, “because he may have had no clue he was not the heir. It is likely Bree didn’t know this, either, going into the relationship—that he was not eligible to inherit in the first place. Otherwise, it is very doubtful she’d have wasted time on him.”
“So where exactly did Peregrine come from?” asked Awena.
“He was kidnapped shortly after his birth from another blue-blooded family. Via some orphanage where he was left, and then through the offices of an adoption agency—probably a rather dodgy one—he came to be taken into the B-B family. This likely was done, the illegal ‘adoption,’ at the instigation of Lord B-B’s first wife. Desperate for a child, she talked her husband into this scheme to pretend Peregrine was their own. When Cotton made a joke about the people up at the casa, it reminded me of Peregrine’s origins—that he was born in Málaga, where the family had long had a home. The story about his remaining in hospital for some imaginary illness was a ruse to fudge his age, to cover the fact he was too big to be a newborn.
“I came to realize Lord Baaden-Boomethistle and his wife were in Málaga at the exact same time a baby was kidnapped in an internationally famous case that took place near Monkbury Abbey. It was in that summer of 1994. He had a distinctive birthmark at the top of his back, this baby—in case he was ever found, officials could readily identify him, because that mark was so unusual. It was a port-wine stain in the shape of a heart. Photos of the mark were distributed far and wide through police channels. Both nannies confirm Peregrine had a birthmark, by the way. Elspeth Muir alluded to Cain, and she may have had the “mark of Cain” in mind. But they never connected Peregrine with that missing child, and they never saw the police photos.
“I was already thinking in terms of a switch: The film about the switch of murders on the train. Then I realized—perhaps there was another sort of switch altogether? A switch of babies? Then I thought, That can’t be right; they brought their baby out of Spain together and the dates of pregnancy don’t match up. I asked Cotton to pull the birth certificate.
“Peregrine’s mother—the woman who raised him—tried to claim it was a preemie birth to waffle the dates, but who ever heard of a nine-pound preemie?”
“And you know this how?” Awena asked. “Ouch.” Owen had grabbed a fistful of her hair and was pulling on it like a rope. Awena gently disentangled him.
“Partly because the woman who was the nanny at the time, Elspeth Muir, has taken the advice of her minister. And his advice was to tell the truth and shame the devil, mirroring her own inclinations. She knew Peregrine was adopted; they tried to buy her silence and she wasn’t having any.”
“My head is reeling,” said Awena. “So Rosamund? How does she fit into this? She’s not adopted also, is she?”
“No. Ros
amund is the true heir, not her brother. As so often happens, once a couple adopts a child, they conceive a child soon after. I have to emphasize though that this child, now called Peregrine, was stolen in the first place, then substituted for the child Lady Baaden-Boomethistle could not successfully carry to term. All of it strictly irregular and highly illegal, not to mention immoral. There was a worldwide manhunt for that child. What we don’t know is whether the Baaden-Boomethistles were aware of his true origins. They may have thought the baby they adopted was a foundling, left by a local woman who was, for whatever reason, unable to care for him.”
“So sad…” said Awena.
“I kept remembering that the butler overheard an argument between Peregrine and Lord Baaden-Boomethistle. ‘You’re no son of mine. You’re unnatural, that’s what you are. No son of mine could do what you did.’ Lord Baaden-Boomethistle was angry and not to be taken literally—or so it was assumed. But no: He was being precise and literal, and not just blowing off steam. Peregrine was no son of his.”
Cotton said, “As part of the investigation, Max had us check all the birth records for Málaga for around the time of Peregrine’s birth. Peregrine had said he was born there, and on paper he was. But another child born there to Lady Baaden-Boomethistle did not survive, and that is in the records.”
“Along with what is, on close inspection, an altered certificate of birth for Peregrine,” Max added.
Awena looked down at the beloved face of her own child. “That poor woman,” she said, then corrected herself: “Poor women. The one who lost her baby to kidnappers, believing it had died, and Lady B-B.”
“Yes,” said Cotton. “Having lost the longed-for son and heir, I don’t think she and her husband took time to think it through. They acted. She may have believed it was her only chance to have a child.”
“And so there was a scramble to find a ‘replacement’ child,” Max continued. “Lord B-B put his agents on the case. Just then, a baby boy of a few weeks of age turned up in the local orphanage. It was said to have been abandoned. We were able to track down this transaction—I won’t call it an adoption. The baby came from out of nowhere, but its birth date matches exactly that of the child who was kidnapped from near Monkbury Abbey so long ago. The same date, even to the same hour.”
The Haunted Season Page 25