Wicked Autumn

by G. M. Malliet

  “Just the man I wanted to see,” said Cotton. “Any news?”

  “Nothing that gets us any forwarder, I’m afraid. I’ve just come from Guy Nicholls’s restaurant. Apparently, there was some friction between Wanda and the Major.”

  “So says half the village.”

  “Sorry, I did realize that probably wasn’t news to you. However, I also learned that Wanda and Noah, our local antiquarian, had come to a disagreement.” He briefly explained what Noah had told him earlier that day.

  Cotton said, “Noah’s not the only one who had ‘issues’ with her, usually over something of that nature. Something trivial, but maddening if you were on the receiving end. She seems to have been a bit money mad.”

  “If that’s another way of saying ‘cheap,’ I’d have to agree.”

  “I’m afraid it’s really not much in the way of motive, though, is it? Not something a jury might buy. We’ve talked with everyone about the Fayre—their whereabouts and so on. Their stories are so identical as to be interchangeable. For example, Lily Iverson was selling her knitted goods all day, she says. Dozens of people saw her doing it. That sort of thing. Anyway, I’d like you to look over the Village Hall with me, now forensics have done with it and it’s been restored to order. We’ve had a bit of a break in one direction. We just don’t know what it means.”

  There was a constable guarding the entrance to the Village Hall, a young man not too many years away from doing his homework and playing video games.

  He stepped aside as DCI Cotton turned the lock on the outer door, and he and Max went into the building.

  Cotton turned to him and said, “We’ve interviewed Maurice—he’s some sort of village all-around handyman, I gather?”

  “That’s right. And he often deals with repairs and so on around the Village Hall, and the vicarage.”

  Max pictured Maurice: a gentle, somewhat backward man who nearly had to be dissuaded from tugging on his forelock, and whose thick, expressive eyebrows gave him an unfortunate resemblance to the crazed author in The Shining. He was always to be seen with a toothpick tucked behind his ear. Whether it was the same toothpick or not, Max was never sure.

  “Was he able to help you?” Max asked.

  Cotton indicated the old-fashioned door lock. “You need a key to get in from the outside, but inside you could simply slide a bolt home. See?”

  Max nodded. “Yes, I seem to remember that.”

  “Well. Maurice came along about midday during the Fayre and—Get this: he found that the door had been bolted from the inside. There was no way for him to get in, without breaking a window.”

  “He’s sure of that?”

  “Quite definite. He was annoyed, he says, and shouted for someone to open up. Because, you see—”

  “Someone had to be inside. Locked inside.”

  Cotton nodded. “Do you notice anything missing from in here?”

  Max looked around—the little stage, the windows with curtains undrawn and giving onto the night. He could clearly see the churchyard with its brooding plague tree. “You’re thinking in terms of a break-in. Something stolen…”

  “It’s one possibility. She may have interrupted someone committing a crime of some sort.”

  “I’m perhaps not the best person to ask,” said Max. “One of the women from the WI might see more than I do. They’re all over the place most days, arranging flowers, rehearsing for a play, and whatnot. Suzanna Winship may be a good choice—I’d say she’s … observant.”

  “We’re on it now, asking various people. One other thing: do you know an elderly woman named Miss Pitchford?”

  “Everyone knows Miss Pitchford. She taught school. I gather she taught half the village. She’s been retired for years. Knows everyone—and everything about everyone.”

  “Well, Miss Pitchford told one of my men she actually saw Wanda just before noon, walking—so Miss Pitchford thinks now; who knows if it’s hindsight—but walking, she says, toward the Village Hall. She was rummaging in her handbag, says Miss Pitchford, and muttering something like ‘Key?’ Or, as she thinks, ‘Oh, key?’”

  Max wondered, would anyone say, “Oh, key”? As in “Hello, key”? Possible, but odd.

  “Could she have been saying, ‘Okay’?” he asked aloud. He frowned in frustration. The information got them no further.

  “We thought of that possibility, too,” Cotton told him. “Of course, her hearing … at that age it might not be at its sharpest.”

  “But it’s more likely Wanda had found the door locked herself and was looking for the key in her handbag,” said Max. “Isn’t it? And muttering aloud as she looked? Or, did she expect to find the door locked and was looking to make sure she had the key?”

  Cotton might have been reading his mind. “I feel we’re making bricks without straw here,” he said. “It’s quite a puzzle either way.”

  “I’m to have tea with Miss Pitchford tomorrow,” Max told him. “I’ll see if I can get anything from her that makes more sense than that.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Miss Pitchford Disposes

  The next day, as he had told Cotton, Max was scheduled for tea with Miss Agnes Pitchford, an engagement that had been arranged far in advance—part of Miss Pitchford’s rather diabolical appointment-arranging technique. Max reflected that while one could claim pressing engagements in the coming week or two, it was harder, unless one were planning to be out of the country or on another planet entirely, to find excuses in June for an October meeting. October, one felt, might after all never arrive.

  He made slow progress on his way, for he was as usual frequently stopped by people wanting to chat, although Awena, carrying a basket from which obtruded wild flowers, a loaf of French bread, and a newspaper, simply waved and said hello as she glided by. Members of the press who tried to waylay him got the cold shoulder. Among those who stopped him was the Major. The man seemed to have shrunk, his still-large girth hanging on a somehow smaller frame.

  “I just got a letter from my son, from Argentina,” the Major told him. “Of course, the postal service being what it is, it was written several days ago. He’s been on the telly, it seems.”

  The Major, clearly proud of his son’s achievement, or perhaps just his neat handwriting, handed Max the letter. It was a simple, short note, again thanking the Major for wiring money and helping subsidize his career. It mentioned that he was waiting in a greenroom to be interviewed in the next half hour on live television. He had included a clipping from the local paper about an art show held the day before, complete with a photo showing the young artist standing in front of one of his vigorous, abstract creations. Max, looking at the envelope, noticed that by a terrible coincidence it was postmarked the day Wanda died. “You always understood my art, Dad!” That struck Max as unlikely in the extreme, but it was a nice bread-and-butter note just the same. The letter was signed “Jasper,” and finished with XOX, symbols for hugs and kisses. The letter put Max in mind of the long-suffering Theo, brother of Vincent van Gogh, who had kept the genius alive for so many years. Max had often thought van Gogh’s suicide had much to do with Theo’s increasingly turning away from Vincent toward his new young family and adult concerns. That the Major, however, continued to support and care about his son was evident from his pleasure as he reread the letter, then tucked it carefully in his jacket pocket. But his face fell into somber folds as he said: “Needed to talk with you, Padre.”

  Max had been told by Mrs. Hooser that the Major had called in at the vicarage while Max had been out on an early walk with Thea. Now the Major said, his voice lowered and his eyes looking left and right to see who might overhear, “It’s all so awkward. They—the police—still won’t release … her. Until. Well, until, you know. Difficult to know what to do.”

  Closure, thought Max. What one of his American colleagues at Oxford, a big blond rower from California, would call “closure” was precisely what the Major needed, and could not have. All the bureaucratic niceties had first t
o be observed, all the forms filled out.

  Max nodded understandingly. As always, Max found the Major both affable and difficult to grasp, intellectually speaking. There seemed little to hold on to, and even though the Major and Max shared backgrounds with some similarities, Max always felt himself floundering, trying to find commonality. It wasn’t as if the man left one with a sense of depths left unplumbed. It was more as if the placid surface of the man was all that there was to him. A near impossibility, in Max’s experience. Wasn’t it?

  But now, of course, the situation was complicated by the fact that Max had seen the man at his most vulnerable: now there would be that extra English layer of reserve to chip through. Someone of the Major’s background and breeding might feel that some position had been lost and would need to be reasserted.

  Max was not disappointed in his guess. The Major now put on a show of hearty bluffness that wouldn’t have fooled a child, and said, eyes stark with loss, “What can’t be cured must be endured.”

  Just then Lily Iverson crossed the street to greet them. She wore a heavy fawn woolen coat wrapped tightly against the chill of the day. Her small face peered up at them in turn, beautifully framed by another of her scarves, this one in a fluffy yarn the color of apricots.

  Max had noticed several other people avoiding them in the way people will avoid the recently bereaved, and he wondered at her temerity. The normally retiring Lily placed a hand briefly on the Major’s arm, and said, “I am so sorry for your loss. I saw her at the dentist’s all the time, it seemed. It’s so hard to take in what’s happened.” She gave him a small, sad smile; sunlight glinted briefly off her braces. Max knew she was self-conscious about the bands on her teeth, purchased when she started to come into money from her business. He thought they lent a charm to her vulnerability that had been somewhat lacking before. With a parting glance at them both from under her lashes, she quietly went about her business. The Major seemed nearly undone by this kindness, devoid of mawkish curiosity as it was.

  The Major then spent several more minutes swapping comments of zero substance with Max, as Max struggled to get down to the question uppermost in his mind. Finally he was given a chance to ask, “Were there any changes in your wife’s habits in recent days? Or concerns over her health, perhaps? Were the allergies worsening?”

  “Funny you should ask,” replied the Major. “She’d started seeing a new GP in Monkslip-super-Mare. She’d decided she didn’t trust the local man.”

  “Winship?” Max was surprised. It was not the done thing to switch doctors in a small place like this, especially if one weren’t in urgent need of a specialist. It would be bound to cause comment and speculation. He supposed Wanda might not have thought of that, or cared. But Winship himself had painted a somewhat different picture. Why? Professional pride, or something more?

  “Why didn’t she have her auto-injector? That’s what I don’t understand.” This burst out of the Major like gunfire, a sign of the tenuousness of his grip on himself.

  “Why, indeed,” Max said flatly.

  “It was always with her. It comes in a spring-loaded syringe—easy to use. They prescribe them for people like Wanda, who are at risk for severe allergic reactions. She was never without it. It would have been in her handbag. So, why?”

  Max thought perhaps if it had been in her handbag, she didn’t have time—the reaction was too strong. Or perhaps the auto-injector wasn’t in her handbag when she went to look for it. Or she was prevented from getting to it. But he said nothing, just shrugged and shook his head in helpless sympathy. Don’t know.

  Parting with the Major after a few anodyne words of comfort, Max carried on toward Miss Pitchford’s, his steps slowing as he thought over what he’d learned.

  * * *

  Miss Agnes Pitchford was of an age where making and returning calls was a way of life, and text messaging was no substitute for face-to-face socializing over bridge and heavily stewed tea. Max had to agree about the texting.

  He ambled over to the tiny cottage on River Lane, feeling as always, as he gently pushed open the gate into the immaculate front garden, like a giant who had stumbled upon a miniature land where fairies might be found living under toadstools, and a cat might wander by and wish him a good day. The river churned softly nearby, foaming its way to the sea. Autumn was clearly re-establishing its stronghold in the South West region, the landscape blurred by a gentle mist in the mornings, but the haze later dissolving to reveal a sky of Constable blue. The lilac-colored Michaelmas daisies had arrived on cue, along with the autumn crocuses.

  Miss Pitchford was a pink-and-white, elderly lady of deceptively fluffy aspect and all-seeing china blue eyes, her cheeks as soft and unwrinkled as a child’s. Her former pupils maintained that she had an extra pair of those china blues in the back of her head. She wore the white hair on that all-seeing head in a style Max thought might be called marcelled, without quite knowing how on earth he knew the word or what he meant by it. But he had seen similar elaborate waves and curly swooshes on the heads of film stars of the twenties or thirties. Her clothes were immaculate but old and old-fashioned, her dress frilly at the neck and with a long skirt nearly covering her calves, which were encased in thick orthopedic stockings the color of poached salmon. On her feet she wore lace-up brogues, polished, but of ancient vintage. He saw that she had missed a button on her cardigan, or perhaps a button was missing altogether. In anyone else, this would be a sign of mild forgetfulness. In the fastidious Miss Pitchford, it was a clear measure of her distress, bordering on incipient madness. Although excitement would have been the better-chosen word.

  Together they scooched past the hallstand and into the sitting room, where they were subsumed into the type of decorating scheme designed to defy winter by blooming all year long. There was a certain bold dreadfulness to the scheme that was, as with the décor at Wanda Batton-Smythe’s, a stirring reminder that, come what may, there would always be an England. Wallpaper fought with cretonne for floral dominance (Laura Ashley v. William Morris in a duel to the death); gimcracks and gewgaws adorned every available surface, many of them probably gifts from a grateful (or not) student populace. Most items had the look of having been chosen to please a somewhat elderly lady of presumably sentimental inclination. With all the newspapers and periodicals scattered about, Max felt as if he’d stumbled into an Edwardian reading room, or a stage set for an instructive Victorian entertainment.

  A cat jumped onto the back of Miss Pitchford’s overstuffed chair, then peered over her mistress’s shoulder to appraise the visitor with that look of distant yet apoplectic contempt only cats manage to achieve. Max found himself engaged in a brief staring contest, which of course he could never win, the cat’s baleful glitter never faltering, its hard heart never softening. Max, uneasy (what was it about these creatures that made them so self-possessed?), dragged his gaze over to Miss Pitchford’s more benign but no less all-encompassing gaze.

  Max knew what the topic of their discussion eventually would be. There was no other current topic in Nether Monkslip. Without leaving her house, Miss Pitchford seemed to know most of what went on in the village, what had gone on, and what was likely to go on after she had passed to her snoopy reward. So over tea, a complicated business that would put a Japanese tea ceremony in a geisha house to shame, he got Miss Pitchford to tell him what she knew of the Batton-Smythe family. Since Miss Pitchford’s goal was to pry information from the Vicar, their goals were not, at first, in sync. First forcing upon him little plates of sandwiches and cakes and peering at him over the rim of a Crown Derby cup before taking a delicate sip of Earl Grey, she said, with a beguiling smile that would have fooled no one, “Always such a pleasure to talk with a real man of the world.”

  Oh, Lord, wondered Max. What does she want now? Something to do with the flower rota, no doubt. He smiled at her expectantly. But instead she said, “Detective Chief Inspector Cotton reminds me so much of you. He was here on Monday. I insisted on speaking to the man in ch
arge, and I was not going to be seen going into that horrible little pod thing.”

  Max decided an ambush might be best. Otherwise, Miss Pitchford and the point might never meet. “DCI Cotton tells me you saw Wanda,” he said. “And that she was muttering something.”

  “Lovely to know you have his confidence. Yes, that is correct. She was looking through her handbag for her key.”

  “You’re quite certain she said ‘key’?”

  Her teaspoon clattered slightly against the bone china saucer.

  “There is nothing wrong with my hearing, Vicar,” she said firmly.

  True or not, that ended that for now. Max decided to try angling in from another direction.

  “Did you know Wanda and the Major’s son?”

  Rather sharply: “Of course I did. I was his teacher, wasn’t I?” Max felt almost as if she might rap his knuckles if a ruler were to hand. “A wild, dreamy child he was, too. Quite talented.”

  “The Major did mention Jasper’s girlfriend the other day. I gather he felt she might be a stabilizing influence.”

  Miss Pitchford raised one pale eyebrow with schoolmistressy skepticism, a look that said, “You might very well think that,” but instead she said, “How very interesting.” Her cheeks flushed a slightly darker shade of rosy pink at the extremely vague sexual reference, and her cup clinked faintly as she set it back on its saucer. Miss Pitchford, for all her hardened campaigner experience with the young and their hormones, was rather like that, thought Max.

  “More tea, Vicar?”

  There was a pause while Miss Pitchford fussed about some more with the tea and the sugar bowl. Then she sat back in her chair and went on, “Jasper—the thing about Jasper was that he was like a foundling child. So creative and artistic—so driven to create. Does that sound to you like either of his parents?”

  Max had to admit it did not.

  “Mind you, I’m not suggesting anything in the way of … improper carryings on. No, indeed! Jasper was the natural child of the Batton-Smythes, I’m certain of that. I simply mean that it is so interesting to see a child grow up to be so different from its parents. One wonders, you know.”