A Fatal Winter

by G. M. Malliet

  Max picked up the paper with the drawing of the family tree again. He mused over it a moment and said, “Oscar and Leticia were born within minutes of each other, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like Alec and Amanda? With the male in each instance being the elder? If only slightly?”

  “Yes. I don’t see how that gets us any further ahead, do you?”

  “No. It’s not important. Twins, as we all know, run in families.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Picture This

  Cilla Petrie strode into the room with a litheness that spoke of having inherited either an excellent set of genes or a lifetime gym membership. She had long, narrow feet and legs and a light tread that suggested a creature of the Serengeti.

  She sat gracefully in the leather chair Cotton indicated, having scissored her way across the room like a ballerina, every movement as sure as if choreographed.

  In a long dark-gray sweater—or was it a short gray dress?—over ankle-length, black leggings paired with flat patent leather shoes, Cilla looked not just artistic but frightfully artistic, a creature of the demimondaine. Cotton had noticed it was an appearance she cultivated by wearing dark clothing, usually a variant on a polo-neck sweater and very tight jeans. She was whippet thin. Her hair fell expensively about her face in long, precision-cut locks, and she wore a necklace, quite beautiful, of shiny glass and polished stone. The brown, black, and gray colors complemented her deep brown eyes and her lustrous dark hair with its glinting threads of silver.

  Not conventionally beautiful, Max decided, watching her closely, but a memorable and distinctive woman. So this was Randolph’s assistant—the stylist he used for his photographic portraits.

  Cilla now crossed the long legs. She kept the toes of both legs pointed, a posture as unnatural as it must have been uncomfortable. The reason for the artful posture seemed to be to draw attention to the perfection of her long, narrow calves.

  Duly noted, thought both Max and Cotton.

  “Now, Miss Petrie, you say you are here as Randolph’s assistant?” Cotton began the interview.

  A rustling of paper came from the far corner as Sergeant Essex prepared a new page in her notebook. Cilla glanced over, noticing her for the first time. She gave her a tentative smile. Cilla, like most people seeing that their words will be written down, was slightly taken aback.

  “Please call me Cilla. Yes. We were just passing through, actually, on our way to an assignment in Cornwall. I believe Randolph planned to return here, and I was going to travel on to London to stay with family for Christmas.”

  “So you weren’t one of the castle’s Christmas visitors.”

  She shook her head decisively. “The intention for me was not to spend the holidays here, as most of them were planning to do. Obviously, a family affair at the holidays is a different sort of occasion. Special. I was invited to stay, in fact, but I didn’t want to intrude.”

  “Invited by whom?”

  “By the old man, of course. Oscar. He was rather a poppet, you know. I can’t bear to think about what’s happened to him. What was done to him, rather.”

  “Had you visited before?” Max asked.

  She turned toward him. Noticing the crutch for the first time her eyes widened. She asked what had happened (interestingly, none of the others had; perhaps sprains were a way of life around the castle) and she made the conventional noises of concern. Then she said:

  “As to my visiting before: here and there, yes I had. The castle is a nice stopping-off point for many of the places to which Randolph and I have to travel to meet clients. They generally like to be photographed on their own turf, you know. Or astride their own horses. Randolph liked to drop in to Chedrow when he was anywhere in the vicinity and see how his mother was doing. He was rather devoted to her, you know. Two of a kind they are, if you ask me! He’s been distraught since this has happened, let me tell you, although he hides it well.”

  “When you say ‘two of a kind,’ you mean what, exactly?” Max asked her.

  “They’re both a bit of a throwback to the Edwardian age, is all I meant. Now, I have to say, long before Oscar … well, before Oscar was dispatched, shall we say, there had been quite an atmosphere here at the castle. Everyone was very on edge.”

  “So we’re hearing. Have you any notions as to why?”

  “Not really, no.” She uncrossed and recrossed the long legs. “I saw you chatting with the twins earlier,” she said. “It must have been pre-your accident.”

  “Do you yourself have children?” he asked idly.

  A fleeting, wistful smile.

  “No,” she said simply.

  In his pastoral work, he had learned that people generally loved talking about their children. Sometimes complaining about them, usually bragging. It was the best icebreaker of all. But now he felt he’d rather blundered, so he asked instead, “I think you’ve made a bit of an impression on Amanda. There’s a bit of heroine worship going on there.”

  “Really? I hadn’t realized. I suppose she’s at an impressionable age. The twins can be a bit … wild, I’ve noticed. My own parents’ divorce was the defining event of my life. Ten years ago, it was—yes, I was well into adulthood—but it affects one, regardless of age. It was a total rupture of everything I’d been brought up to believe was true. People think if they wait until their children are ‘grown’ that it’s okay to divorce. ‘They’re of age now, we can do what we want’—that seems to be the thinking.”

  Cilla delivered this information with a lack of self-pity, and in what seemed to be her usual mode of speech: the rapid-fire intensity of a Londoner for whom life depended on an ability to act quickly and not be run over by taxicabs.

  “You say Oscar invited you to stay,” said Cotton. “Did Leticia seem happy about that?”

  She turned back to face him.

  “No. No, she did not, but as I say, I declined the invitation anyway.”

  “Did you have much chance to talk with her? Did you gain any impressions as to what was on her mind?”

  “Her health was on her mind. It’s difficult being a professional sick person but Leticia managed. Particularly with her crowded social schedule.”

  “I thought she was a bit of a recluse?” said Max.

  “She was. That didn’t stop her from inviting the good and the great to come to her for dinner on occasion. Her table was well-known in its day for the quality and size of the spreads produced. Not to mention the reputations established or destroyed over an hours-long meal. No, Lady B didn’t care for mixing with the great unwashed, but she was generally up for importing her entertainment, so long as they met her standards.”

  “You didn’t like her.” This from Max. It wasn’t a question.

  “No one liked her. Everyone respected her. They even wanted to be like her. There are people like that, you know—people who command that sort of awe. In her day, she was a force to be reckoned with. Randolph said she had dozens of suitors.”

  Cotton looked up from some notes he’d been scribbling and said, “Tell us, if you will, Miss Petrie, something of your relationship with your employer.”

  “With Randolph? He’s been a good employer, is really all I can say. And the job is fabulous—I get to meet all the second- and third-tier royalty, you know. Stay in some pretty posh places. Well,” she added with a laugh, “Randolph could pay me a bit more, I suppose. But if I need time off, as I did when my mother took ill, he never hesitated.”

  “No … romantic interest then,” asked Max.

  She gave him a chilly smile. “Oh, do spare me the clichés, will you, please?” she said. “Starry-eyed assistant hopelessly in love with older, more sophisticated boss? I’m not remotely interested in Randolph if you must know—and I suppose a police investigation elevates this to something beyond idle nosiness on the part of the police. But Randolph is simply not my type. I find him completely charming but rather cold—please don’t repeat that, especially not to him. But not only do
I have a fiancé in London, I’ll be relocating with him soon. We’re going to live in the U.S.”

  “We’ll need a name and number to verify that information.” Cotton made a restless, darting movement with his hands—a signal to Essex to follow up.

  “Of course,” said Cilla. “That’s not a problem. His name is Erick Landstrone.” She spelled it for Essex and rattled off a phone number and an address in Chelsea. “That’s a flat we share.”

  She added, smiling, “I passed Jocasta on the way in here. She said you’d positively grilled her for hours.”

  “A slight exaggeration,” said Cotton.

  “I’m afraid Jocasta is a type I’m used to. Before I started working for Randolph, I actually spent some time in the trenches as a gofer at Pinewood Studios, and at the BBC. For my sins, I also did a brief stint in Hollywood. Not to put too fine a point on it, some of the actors you meet are just poison. It’s all about them and their careers and their ruddy hair and their likes and dislikes, twenty-four/seven.”

  “And Jocasta?”

  She shrugged. “Jocasta is an old-time star, fading, married to a much younger bloke who married her, it is said, to help his own career, in a move reminiscent of the dumb starlet who slept with the scriptwriter. Apparently no one thought to warn him. Jocasta’s near-uselessness in terms of Hollywood connections should have been evident, but I imagine brains were not Simon’s strong suit. That, or he had been literally blinded by ambition.

  “Anyway, Jocasta is a throwback to the days when Hollywood created stars who rode in limousines and wore furs, rather than campaigning against gas guzzlers and those who kill animals for their fur. While these stars might adopt the occasional orphan, that hadn’t reached the peak of the trend we’re seeing now. Jocasta has mentioned she’s thought of adopting. Can you just imagine?”

  All three listeners remained diplomatically silent.

  “Anyway, it is likely she picked up the habit of retiring modesty during her time in Hollywood.”

  Max said mildly, “I don’t think Hollywood has a lock on the enormous-ego franchise. We grow our own here, many of them in London.”

  “You’re too right there,” said Cilla. “Anyway, she talks of her many fans, but I have the most difficult time imagining what a fan of Jocasta’s might look like, don’t you? Listening to tales of Jocasta’s brief—but not brief enough—career is right up there with the history of dentistry for grimly fascinating topics.”

  “Now, Miss Petrie—” Cotton began.

  “Cilla, please.”

  “You say you worked briefly in Hollywood. Did you ever meet Jocasta in the United States?”

  “Yes, didn’t I say? We crossed paths, very briefly,” Cilla said. “And very crossly.”

  “Oh?”

  “One doesn’t tend to have happy memories of one’s encounters with Jocasta. I’d nearly forgotten all about it until Randolph told me she was a cousin.”

  “Did you also know her husband Simon?”

  “Only in the way one runs into people at parties and things. Hollywood is a company town. Sooner or later you know everyone. I always felt rather sorry for him, poor pet. It’s no life for a grown man.”

  Max felt there was little to be gained by further examination of the marital affairs of Jocasta and Simon. In his experience, all manner of people married and stayed married for all manner of reasons. There was no telling with folk, as an American comrade of his had used to say. Looking across to Cotton—it was his interrogation, after all—Max asked Cilla for her views of Randolph’s sibling.

  “Lester. Oh, yes. And Fester,” said Cilla. “She of the bad jewelry and the travel wear made of some indestructible fabric that could be used in an emergency to repair a propeller blade or stop a herd of runaway cattle. She is an Australian he met over there somehow. And he is one of the most ghastly people you’ll ever meet. One wonders how his wife puts up with it, only then one realizes she’s worse than he is.”

  My gran would have loved these people, thought Sergeant Essex. Lobbing their grenades at each other, all over the castle. Gran had loved a bit of kerfuffle.

  Cotton, meanwhile, had asked Cilla about Lamorna. Cilla was saying, “Lamorna is a religious nut, not to put too fine a point on it. On leaving school, she volunteered at a Christian mission in India—I think that was it, India. Maybe it was China. But all that wasn’t deprivation enough. Next she went to Africa to ‘help the women,’ many of whom seemed ungrateful for the help and were profoundly glad to see the back of her. This according to Randolph. It was well before my time.”

  “I hadn’t noticed a religious streak in any of the others,” said Max.

  “You won’t, I shouldn’t think,” said Cilla. “Personally, I think people are rather unfair to Lamorna. But she has no sense of humor. And that really is too bad: It could have stood her in good stead given that she comes up short in several other departments. The other day I asked if she’d like my professional help with her styling techniques. What styling techniques, you may well ask? Just trying to be kind, you understand. Besides, there is damn-all to do around here, in case you haven’t noticed. But she looked at me as if I’d suggested we perform the Dance of the Seven Veils on the castle parapets for the next busload of tourists.”

  Cilla had begun to fidget, shifting around in her chair. Again she crossed and recrossed her slender legs.

  “I say, are we going to be held here much longer?”

  “That’s difficult to say,” replied Cotton.

  “It’s just that now—you see, I already have a new job with a photographer in America. I was to begin next week. Erick has been stuck back there at our flat with the job of packing all our rubbish and I’m hearing from him hourly, it seems. I can give you the photographer’s coordinates if you like—I’m hoping I can tell him I’ll be allowed to leave soon?”

  “Soon,” said Cotton briefly. “But leave the information with Sergeant Essex. I gather your planned parting from Randolph was amicable? He took the news of your leaving well?”

  “Completely!” she said, seeming astonished by the question. “He’ll miss me, I like to think, but a good stylist isn’t that hard to find, not when you’re Viscount Nathersby. As for me, it was time for a change, Erick or no Erick. I get bored doing the same type of things. The photographer I’ll be working for—in New Mexico—specializes in nature photography. He promotes ecology, sustainable resources, doing good for the earth. I’ve never been to New Mexico—I really can’t wait to see it.”

  She left the room soon after that, leaving behind a name and address in the U.S. and a reiterated wish to be allowed to get to her new job as soon as possible.

  * * *

  “So. What do we make of her?” Max asked.

  Cotton said, “We make of her that she is clever and ambitious.”

  Essex said, “And much older than she looks. She’s forty-five, would you believe? Do you like her for this crime, Inspector?”

  “She has the brains for it,” said Cotton. “Or maybe I mean the nerve.”

  “And no alibi. But that’s true of all of them.”

  They spoke awhile longer, then Cotton said: “Do you know, from all we’ve been told, Oscar reminds me of some Agatha Christie-ish captain of industry plotting world domination from his castle keep. Or a shadowy spymaster of yore, called in to haul Europe back from the brink.”

  “It would be easy to see him only in that way,” said Max, “and forget he was a lonely and aging man who’d antagonized nearly everyone in his familial orbit. A figure to be pitied rather than feared. But someone feared or hated him enough to make this brutal attack on him. In a particularly cowardly way, too—while he was asleep. I wouldn’t credit a wild animal with such behavior, but here you have a human behaving thus. And no doubt justifying it somehow as necessary for his or her own survival.”

  “The loneliness would explain the ill-thought-out marriage to Gwynyth, I suppose,” said Cotton thoughtfully, as he again spun the biro on the desktop. “I mean
, apart from her obvious attractiveness, and his wealth, the two of them had nothing in common, and he seems to have paid a heavy price for that bit of folly.”

  “The twins don’t seem to be regarded as compensation, either. There is the real sadness to the story.”

  “It was a cowardly murder, wasn’t it?” said Sergeant Essex, picking up the thread. “So much blood. The poor old man bled quite a bit.”

  “I’m afraid so, yes.”

  “‘Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.’”

  They both turned to her.

  “You needn’t look so surprised,” she said. “I won a prize for Shakespeare, in school.”

  Max, abashed, said, “It’s a powerful line. Too true in this case.”

  Encouraged, Essex said, “‘I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ That’s from the Scottish play, too,” she informed them.

  “Let’s hope,” said Max, “the second part isn’t also true. What we don’t want most of all is for the killer to ‘go o’er.’ To be at the beginning of some sort of rampage.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Simon Says

  “Simon Jones next, and let’s say that’s the lot for today,” said Cotton. “We spoke with Gwynyth extensively yesterday—as the ex-wife she merited special attention. Sad that being an ex-spouse always makes one the prime suspect, what? Still, why don’t you have a word with her, Max, once we’ve finished with Simon?”

  “All right, I will,” said Max. “As to Simon, perhaps as an in-law, he’ll have a slightly different perspective from the rest. What can you tell me about him?”

  “He’s husband number three for Jocasta.” Cotton settled back in his desk chair, elbows resting on the leather arms. “The other two were divorced in a firestorm of publicity, but this union seems to be holding. In the case of the second husband, it was something to do with a secretary (him) and a personal trainer (her). Simon, her number three, is an actor—I should say former actor. She met him somewhere in her travels across the vast reaches of America when she was trying to reestablish a stage career. I call him a former actor because he seems to have stopped appearing in thespian delights only marginally more obscure than Jocasta’s own. His real passion—how I have come to detest that word!—his real passion seems to be cars and car racing. His good looks kept propelling him in other directions, however. He seems to act as some sort of business manager for her in his spare time off from wishing he were behind the wheel.”