A Fatal Winter

by G. M. Malliet

  Watching Lester, Max was reminded of Father Goodwin from his time at Oxford, a priest who eschewed the pulpit for the common touch, striding back and forth before his congregation until one Sunday, entirely caught up in the thrust of his narrative, he lost his footing and actually fell off the altar. He was unhurt, but the incident finally convinced him, when no bishop could, to tone down the theatrics.

  Lester walked with a swagger that sat ill on such a slight and insubstantial frame. Mick Jagger could get away with it—just. Lester, one felt, could not. He found a bench nearby and sitting down, took out a pen, bent his head with its mop of curly hair over a notebook, and began scribbling rather importantly. He wore only a lambswool V-neck sweater with the collar of a white shirt visible beneath. It was a style that would be trendy on anyone else and on Lester looked more like forgetfulness. It was far too cold for such an outfit. Even the twins had thought to wear jackets.

  Surprisingly rosy-cheeked and fresh-faced, Lester looked like a child in a suit too large for him, the collar of his shirt standing out at his neck, although in reality it was probably an artifact of the shrinking that comes with age. Closer up, Lester looked to be not much younger than his brother, whom Max knew to be fifty-three. Where his wife was plump and round, Lester was spare—slope-shouldered and slope-chinned.

  He appeared to be deep in thought, although it might be difficult to say for certain. His scribbling seemed disjointed rather than a sustained effort of concentration. He looked up frequently, eyes roaming blindly, randomly. During one of these self-imposed interruptions, Max approached and introduced himself.

  “Of course, of course.” Lester stood and offered him a hand in greeting. Then he indicated Max should sit next to him. “I can’t tell you the last time we had a clergyman here. My mother especially tended to frighten them away. It’s a shame as we have a perfectly usable chapel on the grounds. I’m not a believer myself, I should probably tell you that right away.”

  “Glad if we’ve cleared that up,” said Max, smiling.

  “My wife and I were wondering … well … how to put this?” Lester had rather large eyes, magnified to bug-eyed intensity by the glasses he wore. “We were wondering what you were doing here exactly?” He flashed what Max was sure he thought of as his winning smile and said, “No offense.” Max recalled his wife’s stated belief that her husband had just missed a booming career in sales, and wondered about that. There was something less than transparent about Lester Baynard, something that did not inspire immediate trust.

  “None taken,” said Max, answering the question, but obliquely: “Detective Cotton will want to speak with you again today.”

  “Fine. Whatever gets us out of this sodding place sooner I’m all for it. We all have been told to stay put but I can’t wait for sodding ever.”

  Max waited for the usual rather reflexive apology for the vulgarity, but none came. He was used to people forgetting in the heat of the moment that they were talking with a man of God who should, presumably, be spared the worst of their language. Of course, few realized that during his MI5 days he had often heard worse—far worse—and had even coined a few new word combinations himself.

  “My wife seems to enjoy these little skirmishes with Cotton and that little sergeant he drags around with him. She was with them for ages yesterday.”

  “Sergeant Essex?” Max guessed.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Fes—I mean Felberta” (now even Max was doing it) “will have to meet with Cotton again, most likely. One interview creates questions that only another interview can answer.”

  “Is that right,” said Lester flatly. More than ever, he seemed curious as to Max’s role in the proceedings. If he complained formally about it, Max imagined it might create a situation for Cotton, so Max quickly said, “I was talking with the twins just now. I think they could use some attention. It was their father, after all, who was killed. They seem oddly detached from it all, when you’d think it would be the main thing on their minds.”

  “Oh, they’ll be fine,” Lester said blithely. “Used to being on their own, that pair. I don’t think they knew Oscar all that well.”

  “That’s exactly the problem, as I see it.”

  “Of course, it’s not entirely the twins’ fault they’re the way they are,” Lester breezed on, waving an arm for emphasis. His thin, wiry frame seemed barely able to contain his puppyish energy, which tended to explode in a series of ill-coordinated gestures. “Gwynyth, their mother, is neurotic and completely self-absorbed. And marriage only made her worse. She had nothing to do but think about what to wear and plan her next meal out. She had zero career aspirations or responsibilities. Unless you count the twins, which she did not. They were raised by whomever she could pay to raise them.”

  Max surprised him by asking, “What do you think made Gwynyth that way?”

  “Made her that way?” Clearly, Lester was taken aback that anyone should care. “Oh, she had the usual sad story about her poverty-stricken upbringing, if that’s what you mean. But some people are born to sponge—to take advantage.”

  “You feel she took advantage of your uncle Oscar, then.”

  “Tried to,” Lester said complacently. “He soon caught on, though. She was seen out nightclubbing once too often, in the company of someone ‘not her husband,’ as they say.”

  Lester must have read somewhere that the way to show sincerity was to lean forward into a conversation. He did this now, radiating earnestness. Max instinctively drew back.

  “Oscar used to stride about this garden in that castle-owning, king-of-all-I-survey way he had. When Gwynyth was done with him, there was no more striding about. She really finished the guy. I could feel sorry for him.”

  “I haven’t met your brother yet. Randolph. Viscount Nathersby. This must come as a shock to him as well.”

  “Oh, you are in for a treat,” said Lester, collecting his writing implements. “Well, I’m rather tired, so if you don’t mind…”

  “This is the sort of occurrence to make one age overnight,” said Max, commiserating. “Losing a parent is hard to bear. I have often thought losing a mother may be hardest of all.”

  There was a sudden drop in temperature, a lessening of studied bonhomie. Lester, drawing in from his sincere, open pose, said, “The avaricious little shit. Ask him.”

  “Ask him what?”

  Lester, while monumentally preoccupied with himself, was strangely likeable. Max wouldn’t have trusted him an inch in business dealings but that wasn’t the same thing as liking. He seemed incapable of self-editing—what was in his mind was soon on his lips. It was often the sign of a truthful nature, but always the sign of an impulsive, perhaps uncontrollable, one.

  “For a start, ask him what he plans to do about the twins. As you say, someone has to care about them, now they’ve lost their father. You would think Randolph, the eldest male figure, would step up to bat there.”

  Again the eager, forward-leaning posture. It would have been flattering to the listener had it not come across as too practiced, too full of deliberate intent. I am sincere, the gesture proclaimed, too loudly. Part of his terrific sales technique, along with the blaze of concerned interest in his listener. But Max thought it was the concern of self-interest, not the concern of the concerned.

  What was certain was that during Alec’s minority, he would need a legal guardian to make decisions for him about the disposal of his father’s estate. Max sensed there might be a jockeying for position between the two brothers, Lester and Randolph. It was not unlike the situation when Henry VIII had died, leaving Edward VI king at the age of nine. One of Edward’s uncles had seized the reins. None of it had gone well, especially when Edward died, aged fifteen years, choosing (at the urging of the adults holding the real power) Lady Jane Grey as his short-lived heir.

  He definitely would need to talk to that solicitor, Max decided.

  Felberta came into the garden just then, looking for her husband.

 
; “What are you doing out here without a coat?” she scolded him. She had a jacket over her arm which she handed to Lester. Her springy hair was now scraped back into a rubber band and he could see she had nice ears, flat to her head, and the sun, as it was at her back, shone through them, pink and shell-like, showing the delicate tracery of capillaries. She had a slight indentation in each lobe—Max had read somewhere that was a sign of heart disease, but could think of no way to lob that one into the conversation. Instead he said, “In the sunshine, it’s not too bad.”

  Lamorna walked by just then, a basket on her arm and pruning shears in hand. She now wore the gray cardigan over a black woolen dress with a knitted Peter Pan collar. She apparently owned a collection of these accessories, for the collar was slightly different from that of the day before. Her costume wasn’t sufficient protection against the cold of the day but Max imagined that was all part of the fun. The outfit really only needed a veil to resemble a modern-style nun’s habit, right down to her sensible lace-up shoes.

  Lamorna said, “I thought I’d gather some flowers for the table. I am feeling so at a loss with Lady Baynard gone.”

  “What would Jesus do?” said Felberta sarcastically.

  “Shut up, Felberta,” said Lester, nudging her, with a significant nod in Max’s direction.

  Max said, “He would know the truth immediately, tell it, and we could all go home. I have to help sift the truth from the lies somehow and pray for guidance.”

  The significance of what he was saying was not lost on Lester. Max was here to advise on more than the services for the departed. Lester didn’t look pleased to have his suspicions confirmed.

  “I thought that was a given,” he said. “‘Seek and ye shall find.’”

  “It is,” said Max. “It just takes some of us longer. The truth’s always there, waiting.”

  Lester turned to look at his wife, who was apparently not listening, but busy inhaling the scent of the fresh air. Lamorna had left them, engaged in the fruitless task of finding live blooms in the garden this time of year. It would be ages before she’d be allowed by the police into the hothouse, where she might have had better luck.

  Lester, looking at her, launched into a lengthy explanation, with what he obviously believed was disarming candor, of how Lamorna had always been a problem. The point may have been to emphasize that he himself, by way of contrast, had never been the least cause for concern. Max listened to as much of this as he could and then cordially took his leave of them.

  Fester and Felberta remained behind, sitting together on the garden bench.

  “What do we do now?” Felberta leaned into her husband. Lester privately thought the answer to that question was, “Leave, and the sooner the better,” but he doubted that suggestion would fly in the current interrogative atmosphere, however skillfully presented the suggestion.

  “You heard the man,” he said, smiling and patting her hand. “We wait for the truth to come out.”

  * * *

  Max saw a gate in the south-facing wall that likely led to a view of the ocean. He was just heading that way to explore when a fit-looking man in his mid-thirties went jogging past, saw him, and pulled to a stop. The man wore a balaclava which he courteously pulled down around his neck so his face was visible. He had a thatch of sandy hair, wide blue eyes, and conventional good looks. He introduced himself as Simon Jones, Jocasta’s husband.

  Max hid his surprise, or hoped he did. Jocasta, for all her well-maintained looks, was clearly older than her husband by at least a decade.

  “A fellow jogger,” said Max. “It is nice to meet a kindred spirit. I was just talking with Alec about the days when I was more faithful to my training schedule.”

  Simon said, “I didn’t think jogging was a particularly British sport.”

  “Well,” said Max heartily, “we practically invented running. Learned it from the Romans.”

  Simon, who knew when his leg was being pulled, smiled. He swept a coating of snow off a nearby bench and sat down, breathing heavily.

  “I’m not feeling the benefit today,” he told Max. “It’s the jet lag. Completely throws you off. And it’s so damn quiet here,” he added. “I can’t sleep for the quiet. Well, that, and the jet lag.”

  “This garden in winter doesn’t provide ideal conditions for running, either. Where did you and your wife fly in from?”

  “LAX.”

  “A long distance, made twice as long by today’s many inconveniences of travel,” said Max. “I am very sorry for the way your journey ended in such a tragedy.”

  “I still can’t quite get over it, you know. To lose both of them the same day! And poor Oscar, killed so brutally. If I put this in a screenplay, who would believe it?”

  It was the first Max had heard Oscar referred to as “poor.” At least there was one person who seemed to feel the loss of the man. But he merely said, “You’re a screenwriter? I didn’t realize.”

  “I’m an aspiring one.” Simon bent to adjust a shoelace that was coming untied. “After years of reading the shit my wife is offered and seeing it actually make it to the screen, I thought I’d give it a try. God knows, I could hardly do worse. And I have the advantage of being at least on the fringes of the business all these years. You meet people.”

  “I met your wife at breakfast,” said Max. He added carefully, “She seems to be holding up well.”

  “There was no love lost between her and the old man, if that’s what you mean. He, having jettisoned the first wife, also lost track of the product of that union—Jocasta. She left home decades ago, made it out to Hollywood eventually. That’s where she and I met, of course. I was trying to get an acting career off the ground. She was—well, at one time she was promising. What’s that saying about the gods destroying the promising?”

  “‘Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.’ Cyril Connolly.”

  “Right. That was Jocasta. Perhaps never a raging talent—well, all right, she was never any kind of talent, really—but beautiful and gutsy and willing to work. Those qualities have taken more than a few actresses further than perhaps they should have gone. Well,” and here Simon slapped his knees and stood up. “I enjoyed meeting you. I’m sure there will be other occasions. If you don’t mind, I need to keep at it if I’m ever going to reset the old internal clock.”

  * * *

  Max opened the gate in the wall and found it led to a cliff-top path overlooking the sea. Here he stood in a bitterly cold breeze, peering out like an old mariner, no longer buffered by the curtain wall. There was a soft green turf which spread to the cliff’s edge, and beneath him a vanishing pool of deep blue disappearing into the horizon. Max stepped carefully back from the vertigo-inducing view.

  The house had been built into a rocky promontory overlooking the sea, probably for the breathtaking view. But when French raids became all the worry, the manor house was reinforced accordingly.

  The cliff walk was probably a later amenity, added in whatever day it came to pass that enemy invasion by sea was not uppermost in everyone’s mind. A modern-day landscaper had been at work here, too. But Max’s interest was in whether an outside intruder could have made it into the gardens and into the castle via this side of the castle.

  He supposed a murderer could just have managed to climb up using modern equipment and then presumably rappel back down. He tried to picture such a shadowy, extremely fit figure, his imagination calling up a member of the Special Boat Service or a pirate, knife clenched in teeth. Max shook his head. Improbable, and impossible without leaving signs of such activity. Surely Cotton’s people had been all over that.

  Max considered what he’d learned so far and concluded it didn’t add up to much. He watched the water approach only to crash repeatedly at the foot of the cliff. The climber of his imagination would have had to come off a boat and it was inconceivable any craft could get close enough to the cliff in these violent waters.

  He turned and directed his steps toward the cast
le. It was midmorning. Cotton would be here by now.

  CHAPTER 12

  Max Out

  Max was to be waylaid one more time, this time with maddening consequences, for Amanda was just inside the wooden door opening from the cliff walk path. He’d spent a moment inspecting that door from the outside, despite his belief no one could have made his way up the cliff, and certainly not without leaving evidence of the climb in the rock face. The door didn’t even have a lock, for what it was worth, since the castle residents clearly shared with him the belief the castle was impregnable from that direction. It was kept in place with a simple slide bolt latch.

  “Let me show you around,” Amanda said. She was now wearing a red Peruvian-style winter hat with tassels and she’d clearly been waiting for him. “I’ve been reading up on the history of Chedrow Castle. Are you interested in history?” She didn’t stop for an answer. “I am. I just love history.” Big smile. “I’m going to read history at university, I’ve already decided. You’ll want to see the Old Kitchen. It’s a favorite with the day trippers.”

  He started to cut through the flirtatious chatter and claim his earlier appointment with DCI Cotton, but then realized he’d be missing the perfect opportunity to ask her a few questions, which was after all his reason for being here. Her brother, busy scoring points off her wherever he could, may have kept the girl from speaking freely. Certainly she was showing no signs of her former reticence now.

  She began walking toward one of several tall stone towers. One was positioned to the left of the garden and near the front wall. Like the rest of the buildings near the perimeter, it was riddled with small windows and loopholes. The entire castle was perforated with these openings, like a Swiss cheese.

  They passed by Milo, apparently doing double duty in the garden, wearing fingerless gloves and a battered oilcloth coat. Max supposed that with Leticia gone his obligations would increase. They’d have to get some additional help. As they passed Milo gave a vicious tug on a weed and swore mildly: Gardening didn’t seem to be his forte.