Max said: “Do we ever really appreciate those comparisons, especially at that age? Youth, after all, is always wasted on the young. He may just not realize yet how well set up he is for the future.”
“You’re very kind, Vicar,” said Randolph. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, a tad idealistic.”
It was an adjective Max had heard applied to himself before. Every time, it made him bristle. “Idealistic” was a word he equated with gullible and rube-ish, as if he were some sort of hayseed from the provinces. He sat deep in thought, holding his glass between his hands like a chalice. His eyes with their dark gray irises gleamed in the firelight. A parade of ghosts from his former life in MI5 might have been passing before him, including the elusive man with the unusual sunglasses who haunted his dreams.
“You must admit,” Randolph was saying, “Lamorna qualifies as a skeleton in any family’s cupboard.”
“‘The day of their calamity is at hand,’” intoned Cilla, in Lamorna’s dolorous tones. “Any passage in the Bible that involves death and destruction is Lamorna’s very-most favorite. She just breezes right by the ‘love one another’ bits.”
“I wonder…” said Max, thinking this might be a good time to put in a word for the hapless Lamorna. “I wonder what she will do now? I think she’s rather frightened of what may happen to her.”
“I suppose Leticia was a form of protection from the outside world,” said Randolph. “Really, I’ve no idea, but I can’t picture the new heir chucking her out.”
“Can’t you?” said Cilla. “I have the idea that’s exactly what he may do, when he’s a bit older and a certain amount of time has elapsed.” Her voice trailed off with the smoke from the fireplace. She held up her wineglass to the flickering firelight, watching the play of red and gold. After a pause she shifted the subject. “I suppose Bambi will stay with Jocasta long enough to see what his cut is.”
“Who, Simon?” asked Randolph. “Most certainly.”
They spoke quite openly, Max thought, with the easy give-and-take of people who had worked in harness for many years—like Milo and Doris, in fact. It was almost as if he were not in the room.
At that moment Milo entered, this time bearing the coffee tray. At Randolph’s direction, he put it down with a slight clatter on the table and left the room.
A gust of wind rattled the darkened panes which Max could now glimpse beyond the screen. Ice crystals had formed fractals on the windows and tree branches bearded with ice threw their ominous silhouettes against the sky.
Max sank back sleepily into his chair, fighting to remain alert. There had been a lot of wine at dinner, a different wine for each course, and Max felt like the snake that swallowed the mongoose. He wasn’t used to rich, heavy food, especially since his tofu-laden, organic years in Nether Monkslip, and he could feel his body marveling at this new, Henry VIII-ish lifestyle.
“Whiskey?” Randolph asked.
Oh, why not? Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
“Thank you. That would be most welcome.”
Randolph rose and yanked on a bellpull by the fireplace. Max began to wonder if Milo ever got a break. Perhaps with their inheritance he and Doris wouldn’t stay much longer.
Milo, the perfect servant, somehow knew what was wanted, and appeared almost on the instant with a tray holding a bottle and glasses.
Randolph, having formally bid Milo a good night, unstopped the decanter. He poured Max a generous dollop of a brand of single-malt whiskey Max had not enjoyed since his days of the high life in London, and then only infrequently. The strong spirit ran smoothly down his throat.
The fire crackled as a log fell, a great report that ricocheted off the stone walls. Snow piled up at the window, and the branches outside creaked under their heavy, wet burden. Max felt he’d been at the castle since its founding, and having said so, they began to speak of its history.
“The castle is built on the ruins of an ancient monastery,” Randolph told him. “Apart from the chapel, there are no traces left unless you count that eerie quality one can feel around here at times. Who could live that way?”
Max shrugged. “As a monk, you mean? Any religious vocation is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t received the call.”
Randolph, taking a sip, looked at him over the top of his glass. He said, “I visited a Benedictine monastery once. In Germany. It was called Maria Laach. I don’t know what they’re doing out there except praying for my worthless self. It’s not a life I could tolerate for five minutes but you could see its beauties around the edges, as it were.”
Max thought that a very good description of the way we all get a glimpse of heaven at times. Just around its edges. He said as much.
Randolph tipped his head forward in acknowledgement.
“‘Our’ monks here at Chedrow went elsewhere; probably they were forced out. No one is quite certain how or why. The family took over the place, and eventually they were granted the King’s ‘license to crenellate,’ which was a very big deal at the time. It showed the king trusted you, you see. Not everyone was allowed to upgrade to the war model since you might become a stronghold in a fight against him.”
“It must be wonderful to know one’s family history as well as you all must know yours. Most of us are descended from serfs, and have to guess at the gaps in our heritage.”
Randolph, a lock of his hair fallen over one eye, was now fully engaged. He pushed the hair back; Max was reminded of seeing him earlier outside with Gwynyth. That seemed to be a relationship they were trying to keep quiet, perhaps one in its beginning stages. “They say Shakespeare stayed here once with his fellow players, to escape the plague,” Randolph told him.
“Surely they never traveled this far west.”
“They say that he did—it’s a family legend that’s been handed down forever. And who’s to say he did not?”
Max smiled, shrugging—still doubtful. He tipped the glass to his lips and finished the last of the excellent whiskey, thinking this was the life, for Max was a man of epicurean tastes whose self-indulgence was rare, not least of all because a vicar’s stipend didn’t run to luxuries large or small. He put down his glass. Randolph, taking it as a request, poured again from the decanter.
“How lucky you are to live on such a property,” said Max. “Even though these manor houses are a huge upkeep and a worry, I’m sure.” Max felt that given his experiences with the roof of St. Edwold’s he was becoming rather besotted with the maintenance of ancient structures. “But it’s important that they be preserved, not torn down to make way for the new. Lamorna pointed out to me some of the architectural features. Defense against invaders seems to have driven many of the architectural decisions.”
“Oh, Lamorna.” Oh, her again. “Yes, she has taken quite an interest in the castle’s history.” Randolph’s own interest in Lamorna quickly evaporated. “Try to picture it,” Randolph went on. “There would be a large fire in the center of the Hall. That’s where the servants and retainers would sleep—the concept of privacy is strictly a modern one. The mind just reels, doesn’t it? The lord and lady who formerly had a smidge of privacy on a raised dais at one end of the Hall”—and here he paused to illustrate with a wave of one hand—“eventually had a private or family room. It was called the solar, with which you are familiar—Oscar’s room, of course.” He paused. “I saw you taking a peek in there earlier,” he said pointedly. Max did not rise to the bait. Instead, he returned Randolph to the path of the family history, in which he seemed to take as much of an interest as Lamorna.
“The family were explorers,” said Randolph, in answer to Max’s questioning. “Gambling blood runs through our veins, you could say. Because it wasn’t all just about the challenge and the thrill. Oh, no. There were great fortunes to be made out of the undiscovered or unsettled lands. That those lands were already in the possession of the native populations—well, that didn’t enter into the thinking, not for a moment.
“One ancestor in
particular, Sir Champerson, took after Sir Walter Raleigh and that lot—he lost a fortune several times when one ship or another came to grief. He didn’t turn a hair. That kind of thing—well, it’s in the blood. Lost his life to it, in the end, did Champerson. Drowned with his crew. Poor buggers. Imagine crossing the Atlantic in the type of ship they had—little better than a wooden tub with sails.”
“Raleigh lost his life in a different way.”
“Oh, yes. The famous charm that worked so well on Elizabeth failed him when it came to James. Funny thing, charm. And luck. I suppose it really does run out for some. Anyway, now the place is a tourist haunt for part of the year and people show up at all hours expecting to see the sights, or to retrieve the umbrella or whatnot they left behind over the summer. It’s quite absurd, but they think somehow because a family is known to live here, that makes it different from a museum or an unoccupied National Trust stately home. As if we have nothing better to do than keep track of their rubbish all day.
“They have weddings now here at the castle during the summer months, a development my mother viewed with special horror. Oscar didn’t mind, strangely enough. He was a bit of a romantic at heart. Well, you only have to look at Gwynyth to see that is true. The May/December marriage is a particular specialty of the romantic—a veritable triumph of misty-eyed hope over experience. My poor uncle. One could really feel sorry for him at times.”
Somehow Max again brought the subject around to Lamorna. He could not have said why he persisted so, except that her particular request for his presence made him hope that if he could not get to the bottom of this crime, he could at least see to her welfare.
“From what I have observed,” said Max, “Oscar’s relationship with Lamorna was different from her relationship with Leticia. I gather he was indifferent to Lamorna. Leticia on the other hand at least recognized her usefulness. Am I right?”
“I rather imagine he simply didn’t like having her around, which is how she escaped the indentured servitude foisted on her by Leticia,” said Randolph. His eyes took on the blank cast of someone remembering the past. “Lamorna came out of St. Petersburg stuffed into dirty clothes too small for her, even though she was skin and bones. The extra poundage came later, when she began making up for lost meals, I suppose.”
“Now she has her freedom. I wonder if it isn’t too late. I do feel her grandmother might be taken to task for that.”
“I suppose someone of your beliefs would say that she is being taken to task, even as we speak.” Randolph smiled, less a smile than an aristocratic wince, a flash of teeth and an expression that said life with his mother had not always fulfilled its promise of good times for all. Surely, thought Max, I saw that for myself in my very brief time with her.
“You know, a death watch beetle burrowing into the paneling would have had a warmer welcome from my mother than her own family did,” said Randolph. “And in fact, that’s not a bad comparison.”
“So I gathered. Did your mother say what bothered her about the invitation?”
“She seemed to think they leapt on the invitation because Oscar couldn’t have much longer to live.”
“That’s rather a cynical viewpoint?” Max shaded the end of the sentence so it was more a question than an accusation. Randolph merely answered with a lift of the eyebrow and a question in return.
“Do you think so, Vicar?” Pause. “More whiskey?”
Randolph as he spoke looked closely at Max Tudor. What he saw was a sincere-looking man, an attractive man with an open, honest face that seemed to welcome confidences. That face also held a hint of worry, even of alarm. Randolph supposed that was only natural: Murder would be far outside the man’s normal experience of sermons and flower rotas and parish council meetings.
Cilla said, “She was extremely old-fashioned, Leticia. A real throwback. When was the last time, for example, you heard someone talk of ‘running an affair’? It was like we were always starring in a revival of some campy production dating from between the wars.”
“In what context did she use that phrase?” asked Max.
Cilla blushed. It was clear she had stepped right into it. With an apologetic glance at Randolph, she said, “She got hold of the idea that Randolph and I were an item. As I’ve told you, nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Although I did beg her for her hand in marriage, many times,” said Randolph jokingly. “The truth is, I was always romantically engaged elsewhere—fool for love that I am—and then when I looked around, Cilla had been taken. Swiped right out from under my nose. Her fiancé is a fantastic fellow, really one of the best, so I don’t feel I can complain. I’ve only myself to blame.”
Cilla greeted this with a cheeky, happy smile. “And if you don’t mind,” she said, “I’m going to go try to call my paragon now. I couldn’t reach him earlier.”
“Oh, do stay for a bit.”
Randolph poured her another drink. Reluctantly, she subsided. “Just a small one, then.”
As Randolph sat back in his chair, he sneezed. “So sorry,” he said. “Some of us have been passing this cold back and forth for weeks.”
Max was not surprised. Without the fire in the room it would have been freezing. Half of them must be down with perpetual colds living here in the damp. He had to remind himself that that wasn’t what had carried Lady Baynard off in the end.
“Lady Baynard had a bad case of cold,” Max said aloud. “Before she succumbed.”
“Yes, I know,” said Randolph. “I suppose I caught it from her. Poor old thing.”
* * *
Over Randolph’s protests, Max took his leave of them several minutes later. Cilla watched him head upstairs. The ankle was coming along nicely; he was avoiding using the crutch, but she saw he did have to use the wooden rail that had been installed some years ago for safety. His progress was slow.
“Nice chap,” said Randolph. “And a sound fellow. Too bad he’s been dragged into this.”
“Yes,” said Cilla vaguely. “It is unfortunate, of course, but things happen as they must.”
“Oscar was a grand old fellow in his way,” said Randolph musingly. “She, one has to admit, was … rather tiresome at times. But so old—it would have happened soon anyway. We have to take that view.”
“They were both seventy-five,” Cilla said.
“Old, like I said.”
Something hung unspoken in the air. She looked hard at him out of expertly kohl-lined eyes. Her own mother had lived to be eighty-five.
* * *
Fortified by Randolph’s whiskey, Max felt able to tackle the complexities of the castle’s corridors and byways, and to find his room at last. Easier, as it turned out, said than done, and coffee might have been better than the whiskey for gearing up his logic and reasoning abilities.
He made his way up the stone steps, the sounds of their conversation fading behind him. The castle’s corridors wound round and round him in an intricate crochet.
Max slipped into the shadowy hallway, followed by the castle ghosts, who wished him Godspeed.
CHAPTER 25
Lost Sheep
Getting to his room, even once he thought he knew the way, had involved a number of false starts throughout his stay at the castle. He would stride out confidently in one direction, unshakable in the knowledge that his room was oriented to the south, only to be met with a dead end or a small cupboard. Retracing his steps, less assured now, he would enter an empty space which seemed to serve no purpose except to offer him three or more closed doors from which to chose his next path. He soon would find himself in another corridor to nowhere that might end in an otherwise blank wall with a little window, peephole, or arrow slit. Max pictured knights in clanking armor, as in some old Robert Taylor movie, jostling their way down the narrow confines of the castle—rats in a maze, defending against all comers.
It didn’t help that this night he had left the Great Hall in a thoughtful, distracted frame of mind. It was as he was finding his to
rtuous way back to his room that he collided with Alec coming down the servants’ staircase—the same stairway Milo had disappeared into after first showing Max to his room. Alec was headed for the outside, judging by his coat and scarf.
“It’s time you were asleep, Alec.”
The boy smiled, that guileless, open smile that would carry a young man far through this life, melt many hearts, open many doors.
“I know. I was just out for a stroll.”
Max’s glance at his watch showed it was midnight.
“You’d best get back. Your mother will be worried.”
This earned him a you must be joking look, but Alec shrugged agreeably and continued his downward progress.
Finally in his room, Max pulled the Bible from the shelf, not really intending to read it, but to hold it as a talisman against the disquiet he felt. It slipped from his hands and fell open to this passage from Matthew:
Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Raca. Worthless. Certainly the opinion Randolph held of his brother Lester, as some form of idiot, with the feeling being mutual. This grisly passage, as Max recalled, was the one that went on to advise the plucking out of eyes and so on.
The house had two brothers at odds, that was certain, if the narrowed eyes and jutting jaws indicated anything. Max leafed through the pages, which fell open to the start of Genesis 27:
And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son.…
The story Lamorna had mentioned. More about squabbling sons and an inheritance, and trickery over an inheritance. Max closed the pages, using one index finger as a bookmark. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled as if a skeletal hand had touched him.
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