A Fatal Winter

by G. M. Malliet

  Doris, who had resumed pummeling her dough, looked up briefly from her task. Poor you, said her expression, but she merely waited for him to continue.

  “How well do you both get along with her?” Max asked. “With Lamorna?” There was little point in asking if they got along with her.

  Milo said, “As well as can be expected. She does not have any—what do you call it? The skull?”

  “The brain?”

  “That’s right. Any brain. She is full of doom and does not have the brain of a boiled egg.”

  Doris nodded. Delivered of that somewhat gastronomic opinion, Milo crossed his arms and waited for the next question.

  But Doris added, “Mind, she’s got her reasons. The life they lead her, it’s not a fit life for a mule. Surely not a good situation for a young woman. But she puts up with it. Hasn’t the gumption to leave, or to get some training, or to strike out on her own. Or even to spruce herself up—lose that horse blanket she always wears, for one thing—and go looking for a bloke. Puts up with all manner of rudeness just for room and board in a draughty castle. So it’s hard to feel too sorry for her, even given the cards she’s been dealt.”

  Her manner as she spoke was down to earth. Max felt her beliefs as well as her loyalties would be unshakable, founded as they were on common sense mixed with a splash of sympathy.

  “Her parents left Lamorna some little money,” said Milo. “Of course, there wasn’t a lot to leave. Or so we hear. It is not our business, is it? But it stands to reason. So we don’t know why she stays.”

  Doris turned her dough over and gave it a good thwack.

  Milo said, “She is the type of person full of rules.”

  “Dogmatic,” said Max.

  “No, more catlike, I think. She creeps about—well, we have seen her…”

  “She sneaks around the place,” Doris finished for him. “Especially now, with all of them here. Trying to find out what they’re all up to. She is not happy about that situation, you can be sure.”

  “I gather Lady Baynard felt the same way,” said Max. “Or did you gain the impression she had in any way instigated this family get-together over the holidays?”

  Doris Vladimirov threw back her head laughing. The dough took a hit to the solar plexus. “Of course Lady B didn’t agree to having them all come here. She’d rather be shot, I’d have said. She did what Lord Footrustle wanted, in the end, whenever she couldn’t talk him out of whatever it was. She was very old-fashioned in that and other respects, was Lady Baynard. In most respects.”

  “The male ruled.”

  “He was Lord Footrustle. And that was that. Unless, as I say, she couldn’t first talk him out of whatever it was, using whatever means. She had her little bag of tricks, did Lady B.”

  Milo nodded in agreement.

  “He’s one peculiar old duck, always was, Lord Footrustle.” She paused to fork in some cake and to take a sip of coffee. “A-course, I don’t call him that to his face. A duck. Didn’t call him, I mean. Didn’t…” Suddenly caught up by the memory of what had happened, she blanched, all the color draining from her hectic complexion. Putting down her cup, she took a moment to dab at one eye with a corner of her apron. Milo stood and gave her an encouraging thump between her shoulder blades, as though she were choking. Finally she heaved a mighty sigh and said, “Still, no cause to kill the man in that horrible way. Mostly what was wrong with him, he was lonesome. It made him crotchety.”

  She tried for another sip of her coffee but her hand trembled too much.

  “And Lady Baynard,” Max asked gently. “How did you get along with her? Was she, erm, crotchety sometimes, too?”

  Distractedly, Doris made a production of dusting flour off her fingertips with a linen dish towel that commemorated one of the royal weddings. Her mouth set in a firm line that plainly said, If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all. Max waited. Then, after a moment’s internal struggle: “She was horrid. Horrid.” The dam breached, Doris poured forth some further opinions which were apparently of long standing. “It seemed to me all she cared about was her garden and her flowers. It was as if she thought we were all living in some daft production of Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey. As if there’d never been a war—first or second—and all the changes that came with it.” Anticipating his question, she said, “I put up with it because it was a job, and she saw to it we were paid well, I’ll say that for her. There isn’t much call for a cook in this type of setup these days, and I never trained as a restaurant-type chef. Never wanted that kind of high-pressure environment. So this job was what was here and what was available, in the back of beyond, as we are.”

  Max glanced at her husband. His grave manner seemed to overlay an impish intelligence that missed nothing but held its own counsel. There might just have been a spark of humor glancing off the eyes, which otherwise looked iced over, and while his stiff comportment seemed to convey disapproval, Max felt somehow that Milo was thoroughly enjoying all the palaver. It must have made a break from his usual routine.

  “Were there often visitors to the castle? Apart from the family, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes. Lady Baynard had the nobs down from London sometimes. She really put on the dog when it was someone she thought was important. She didn’t truck with mixing with the ‘lower orders of people’—her words. Like the rest of us was bacteria. We had to ship folk in so she could have someone good enough to dine with. That it cost me no end of extra work was beside the point.”

  Suddenly her hands, square as the spade one might use to turn over a garden plot, cut the air with a decisive slice. “Enough of that,” she said. “What must you think of me, Father.”

  “Not at all,” said Max. Actually, more of the same was what was needed. He would never arrive at the truth of the matter if everyone went around speaking no ill of the dead. It was their ills that led directly to murder, in nearly every case with which he was familiar.

  He decided to give Doris the abridged version of this truth, ending with, “I really need to know what you know about the family. Your perspective is invaluable, since you are on the outside looking in. For example, I gather Randolph, Viscount Nathersby, was Lady Baynard’s eldest son.”

  “Yes. Then there was Lea, her daughter. She came after Randolph. She died in a plane crash with her husband Leo. That’s how we come to have Lamorna living here.”

  She sprinkled more flour over her dough; flipping it over, she sprinkled flour on the other side and began kneading. The ropy veins in her strong hands stood out against the freckled skin.

  “Then there’s Lady B’s youngest, Lester. His given name is Leicester but I gather no one in Australia could spell that. His wife is Felberta, but we call her Fester. Lester and Fester. Hang about them for a day and you’ll see why. Any rumor or bad news or bit of snarkiness seems to start with one or both of them.”

  Max took a guess. “There was a rumor when Lord Footrustle fell ill, wasn’t there?”

  “They think I don’t know,” Doris fairly exploded. She stopped to push a strand of hair away from one eye, leaving a streak of flour across her forehead. “They’re saying Lord Footrustle took ill because of my cooking. And don’t I know where that idea got started. What a pother that created with all them police. There’s nothing wrong with my cooking; I’m ever so careful about ptomaine and such.” She pronounced the “P” in ptomaine, a spitting sound. “For all I have to trek some of the food from where it’s stored in the Old Kitchen, now we’ve all these extra mouths to feed.” She picked up a brochure that sat on the table, held it at arm’s length, and with exaggerated pomposity, read aloud:

  “‘The Old Kitchen of the castle is popular with tourists, giving insight into domestic life of the Middle Ages.’ Don’t it just. They don’t bloody have to cook in this museum, do they? Or they wouldn’t find it all so bleedin’ thrilling. Still, there’s no time for anything to spoil. The very idea—”

  “Now, now,” said her husband, standing again to retrie
ve the coffeepot. The impeccably tailored if well-worn clothes could not conceal the toughened body beneath. Max had the sense Milo was a survivor. Of what, Max could not have said. But the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist spoke of someone used either to hard work or weights training. Somehow he didn’t think the castle ran to a weight room, although one never knew in these days of the five-star accommodation.

  “It is for best we ignore this,” said Milo Vladimirov in his impeccable if gappy English. He tended to use several words while searching for the right one even if he did leave out the occasional article. Max thought it was his way of buying time while his brain was busy translating.

  Doris said, “What was odd was this: People thought Lord Footrustle, the ‘sickly’ one, always worried about his health, would go before Leticia—if they thought about it at all, of course. Men do tend to go first. And he’d had a couple of little scares. But that’s why he was so particular about his health, all them potions he had.”

  Her hand had begun to shake again and she set down her cup with a clatter. Her cheeks flooded with color. It was like watching a video of a sunrise play out in fast-forward motion.

  “It’s been that big a shock! In all my days I never thought to see the like,” she said.

  Max reached over to mop at her saucer where the coffee had breached the lip of the cup, then sat back in the creaking rush-seat chair to listen. He was quite certain she wasn’t done yet—might never be done. She might compulsively talk of the goings-on at Chedrow Castle for the rest of her days.

  “How kind you are,” she said, lifting the cup with a somewhat steadier hand.

  Max looked about and noticed a display of house bells ranged across one wall. Each would ring with a different pitch so the staff would know who was in what room wanting something. As Doris had said, it was all frightfully Downton Abbey.

  Doris turned to follow his gaze.

  “They’re not much used except the ones connected to Lord Footrustle’s room and Lady Baynard’s. We’ve only got two hands apiece, Milo and me. Even they recognized the fact.”

  “Did his bell ring on the morning that he died?”

  “No.”

  Max didn’t suppose it had. Cotton had told him the old gentleman had been surprised in his sleep, in all likelihood had never awoken from sleep. A sneaky crime, the calling card left by a coward.

  “But I’m not always here in the kitchen, you know,” she continued.

  “Ah. You have rooms elsewhere in the castle?”

  “That we do. In what we call the West Wing.”

  Milo said, “I did not discover body until later in morning because he sleeps in late—he slept in late—and I had been instructed not to wake him until ten. He was a night owl who stayed up late but also woke up late, unlike most gentlemen his age,” said Milo.

  “He was like a vampire, actually,” said Doris.

  “Really, Doris,” said her husband.

  “Lord Footrustle never came down early,” Doris said.

  “He liked to stay in bed and read, and take his time getting dressed,” confirmed her husband.

  “You have outside help?” Max asked them. “Well, you must. The place is enormous.”

  Doris said, “We have a girl from the village to help with the prep for dinner, and two more to act as daily help. ‘Act’ being the operative word most days. Those two go home well before the sun sets, no doubt worn out from their efforts, which seem to consist of sipping tea in between jabbing feather dusters at the tops of the picture frames.”

  “The police will have to interview them, of course,” said Max.

  “They’ll have their work cut out for them to try and get some sense out of Lotty. Dotty Lotty we call her. Interviewing the other two will be like talking to a bowl of goldfish. Good luck to that Inspector Cotton. He’s rather a nervy fellow, isn’t he?”

  Max smiled. Cotton was a perpetual motion machine. If they could harness that energy nations could put an end to wars over oil.

  Milo added, in the interest of thoroughness, apparently, “Iris sometimes also comes in with her mother to do for the castle. Doris can’t manage it all, of course, and neither can I, although I turn my hand to whatever is needed, including some of the gardening.”

  “You act as a chauffeur sometimes, I would imagine?”

  “Not very often. There simply is not time, even in off-season.”

  “How did Lady Baynard get around? Did she drive?”

  Milo seemed to find this a ludicrous suggestion. People like Lady B did not drive themselves anywhere.

  “I put her into taxi that came to take her to station. This was December thirteenth. The family have car but they let the chauffeur go long ago as full-time persons were not needed. I fill in as chauffeur on the special occasion but it is not practical for me to drive car and keep in good repair along with everything else I do.”

  It was the first hint Max had heard of complaint, and it may not even have been that. He noticed the trellis of permanent worry lines that crisscrossed the man’s forehead.

  “How did she seem that morning?” Max asked him.

  “The same person she always was. Grumpy. Maybe little worse because she had cold.”

  Doris stood to attend to a dish simmering on the stove. From there she stomped her sure-footed way around the kitchen from pot to plate and back again, not a motion wasted. At one point she balanced several plates on one arm, as easily as if they’d been glued on.

  Max turned to Milo and asked him how he came to be here.

  “I met Doris and we married,” he said simply, adding, “I wanted to live in the outer skirts of the city.”

  “You have been happy here?” Max asked. “I gather from what your wife has said Lord Footrustle and Lady Baynard were not always easy employers.”

  “Too right!” Doris exclaimed, in the midst of one of her room crossings.

  Milo visibly expanded at being the center of attention—the repository of insider knowledge regarding the doings of what he thought of as the Upper Crusts. What didn’t he know about what these nobs got up to? His career working on a cruise line had removed any trace of innocence he may have had on that score. The problem was how he came by that knowledge, which was a matter of, well, not spying exactly. One could say, of simply being in the right place with ears unstoppered.

  “Their cheques always cleared the bank,” he said now. “It is all one can ask of an employer in these economic times. I have no complaints.”

  “Huh!” This from Doris. A glance from her husband silenced her.

  “I do not think retirement suited Lord Footrustle. He was dynamic person always. I think he grew—how you say?—downtrodden in retirement.”

  “Depressed,” corrected Max automatically. “Or despondent.”

  Max was a bit skeptical about anything the butler might tell him. He had the sense the man knew things—what was the saying? No man is a hero to his valet?—but how accurate would be his interpretation of what he saw and “knew”? The trouble with eyewitnesses generally was a tendency to embellish. He thought the butler might have that tendency in spades, but the embellishment would be so subtly done it would be hard to see the truth behind it.

  “As for Lady B, she was, as I tell you, the same as always. But I think she worried that new arrivals might upset pushcart.”

  “Apple cart,” said Max and Doris simultaneously.

  “You are talking of Lord Footrustle’s estate?”

  “Yes,” said Milo. He seemed happily willing to offer what information he had to buy a few more minutes in the public eye, as it were. Perhaps life with Doris was like that. “He had changed his will not a year before. But who knows if that change was to Lady Baynard’s benefit—or to the benefit of any or all of them?”

  “I suppose we’ll soon know,” said Max.

  Doris had stopped dead in her tracks and stood worrying the tea towel. Lowering her voice, she said, “I’ve had a bad feeling since they all came here.”

&nb
sp; The phrase “déjà vu all over again” flashed through Max’s mind. Leticia—Lady Baynard—on the train, and now this.

  “A feeling,” she went on. “O’ course, an old place like this is full of atmospherics. Old murders and betrayals unavenged, and such.”

  “And such. Quite,” said Max, smiling, hoping this was not the prelude to some long tale of headless maidens and drowned sailors or even of speckled bands and silent dogs.

  “Atmospherics,” she repeated with relish. “There’s been that all right.”

  “Do you think you could be more specific, Mrs. Vladimirov?” Max asked. And the floodgates again opened.

  “Well,” she began. “Well.” She smoothed her apron several times over her lap, tugging and pulling at imaginary wrinkles in the floral-patterned fabric. It was a pretty compendium of butterflies and flowers that Max was nearly certain did not all bloom at the same time except in the apron manufacturer’s imagination. “You want to talk about people creeping about?” This phrase was aimed at her husband. Max averred that he did want to talk about precisely that. “The whole family is greedy but you ask me Lester and Fester have the most to worry about in that department, he being the younger son. The pair of them have been on a scavenger hunt since they got here. Weighing up the value of this ’n’ that. It’s not right. The folk at the National Trust would be bothered if they knew, and I’ve half a mind to tell them to look inside the suitcases before the pair of them leave here. This castle has been home for generations to lords and ladies, and my family has been in service to them since the year aught. To treat the place as a jumble sale—well.”

  She seemed to include herself in this pride in the family tree. Of course, Max supposed it was even possible she was descended from those who had served here at the castle in its early days. From someone exercising his droit du seigneur.

  “As to Jocasta and Simon: Let me give you a for-example. Let’s say character A is good-looking, but B has more of a personality. Put them together you’d have a whole person. Don’t you find that true of so many married couples? I don’t think she’d last a minute without him. Weak, Jocasta. Always has been since I’ve known her. Borderline.”