Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel)

by Malliet, G. M.

  “Perhaps I should go and visit them, even though they’ve not joined St. Edwold’s.”

  “I’ll go,” said Awena. “I’ll visit her when I know the Greatest Star Ever to Shine on the West End is not around. I’m liable to get much further that way. And it’s a woman she needs to talk to—that is my sense of things.”

  “All right,” said Max. “You’re right. I can see that.”

  “Besides, I think she’s used to trying to manipulate men to get what she wants. It will save you hours if I go, since we’ll be able to cut through all that.”

  And so it was decided. Although Awena kept the details of her conversation with Melinda confidential, Max gathered that Melinda had been grateful for the offer of friendship. Once Awena learned Melinda was a great reader (somewhat to Awena’s surprise), she made sure the newcomer was included in the village’s book club meetings. Awena also mentioned the local writers’ group was always open to new members. Again to Awena’s surprise, Melinda expressed an avid interest.

  Max, after briefly returning his wandering attention to his sermon, thought how much he welcomed Lucie’s dinner invitation as a novelty that would take his mind off Awena’s absence. For his mind dwelt on Awena more than he had thought possible: She had quickly become a mainstay in his life. Several times a day, watching something on the telly or reading a book, he would turn in his chair to make some comment or to share a joke with her and be caught up short, realizing she was gone. It all somehow led him to think of what the world—his world—would be like without her in it ever again, and his heart would seize up with despair, his breath caught by the starkness of the vista painted by his imagination. Then he would give himself a mental shake—she was only miles away—and return to the task at hand. But still the shadow would have fallen on his day.

  Max again checked his watch. It was not a good time of day to call her. Awena had set times for daily meditation, Max knew—not unlike his own prescribed Anglican practice.

  A shaft of sunlight just then broke from behind a cloud, enveloping the village in a haloish spring glow. “From you have I been absent in the spring,” thought Max. And he sighed, this time with a sublime happiness that radiated through his heart and his soul. He was as content in his personal life as a man could be without imploding from sheer joy. His concerns, if they could even be labeled as such, were minute. Yes, his sermon for the week would not quite come together, but he’d think of something—he always did. There was a recurring stain on one wall of the church of St. Edwold’s, but that would be corrected by a new roof, paid for out of a wholly unexpected benefice from a wholly unexpected benefactor. A small patch of skin on his right arm stung from a cooking wound he’d dealt himself the evening before. The local writers’ group was erupting with the usual skirmishes, and he was fending off requests to join and pour oil on those troubled waters: He had enough to do getting the sermons written. That several of the members were suggesting he, as a former MI5 agent, might write a spy thriller was added inducement for him to stay away. For one thing, he was bound by the Official Secrets Act from disclosing most of what he had done and who he had been during his years with the agency. For another thing, no. Just: no.

  These were all, however, minor, negligible irritations. He was grateful. He was content, as content as any man could ever be. He had Awena in his life and she looked set to stay there, always at his side, at least in spirit—a perfect way to describe Awena at any time. What more could he ask?

  There was a stirring behind him, the whisper of small feet brushing against the carpet. A mouse might make such a noise. But this particular mouse was a child named Tom. His mother, Mrs. Hooser, had earlier brought a huge breakfast tray into the vicarage study. The boy must have followed her in and remained behind.

  “That’s so kind,” Max had said to her, “but really, you don’t have to do this.” He’d started to say he’d eaten already but then realized she might catch him in the lie, as there were no traces of such activity left in the kitchen as normally there would be. Mrs. Hooser cooked with a heavy hand in the carbohydrate and bacon-grease departments.

  “Nonsense!” she’d said, in her musical accent, as if she might burst into song. “I’ll not be leaving you to starve on my watch.”

  I am so very far from starving, he’d thought. Apart from the wonderful meals he shared at Awena’s house, there were any number of other tempting dining options, for Nether Monkslip was fast becoming a gourmet’s destination, as witnessed by the recent opening of the White Bean restaurant.

  When Max had learned his housekeeper’s children were being left alone in the late afternoons with only periodic look-ins by a neighbor, Max had told Mrs. Hooser to have them come to the vicarage instead. The girl, Tildy Ann, now did her homework at the vicarage kitchen table. It was hard to say what her younger brother, Tom, did exactly. Max would often turn from working at his desk to find the child sitting with rapt fascination and endless patience, waiting for Max’s attention. The boy was preternaturally quiet—so much so that Max suspected he was under threat of some dire punishment from his sister if he disturbed the vicar at his work. Max had overheard her once promise to shellac him if he didn’t behave. Tildy Ann stood in loco parentis to Tom, since Mrs. Hooser, a single mother, was too overwhelmed most days to take on the job.

  Often Max would find Tom pretending to read one of the massive tomes from the study’s bookshelf, his dark head bent with intense interest over a book that weighed nearly more than he did, as he petted Thea, Max’s Gordon setter and a silent (usually sleeping) partner in this vicar vigil. Sometimes, the pair of them would have fallen asleep, waiting for Max to do something. In Thea’s case, the something was always to take her for a walk. What Tom wanted, apart from Max’s presence, it was more difficult to say.

  Max, as he headed toward the kitchen to make some hawthorn tea, noticed Tom’s shoelace had come untied. Also that the boy seemed to have cut his hair himself. More likely, from the tattered look of things, his sister had cut his hair for him, using the rounded plastic scissors he’d seen her using for her paper dolls.

  Max first tried teaching Tom how to tie the lace himself; the child willingly gathered one side of the bow in one fist, holding it for dear life. But his fingers were still too small and his movements too clumsy to loop the matching lace around the stem, and he kept wrapping the lace around his fist instead.

  As Max was tying a double bow on the boy’s shoe, the sound of breaking ornaments confirmed that Mrs. Hooser was dusting in the next room. Max gathered his newfound contentment around him like a cloak before going to investigate, more out of curiosity than annoyance. Tom and Thea padded in his wake.

  Subject: Hello! And an Update

  From: Gabrielle Crew (gabby@TresRapidePoste.fr)

  To: Claude Chaux (Claude43@TresRapidePoste.fr)

  Date: Thursday, March 22, 2012 6:48 P.M.

  Claude—How lovely to receive your warm e-mail on a cold and blustery English day.

  Aside from the weather, Nether Monkslip is a lovely village, quite cut off from the world—a drowsy sort of place. It is just what I needed—right now, at this point in my life. The loss of Harold was a rude jolt, a reminder, as if I needed reminding, that life goes by too quickly. We must all seize our own happiness as we can.

  You asked if I had made new friends here. Indeed I have! The villagers are wonderful about keeping me included. And living over Frank and Lucie’s shop, with its little white ceramic pig propped beside the front door, I feel very much at the center of village doings. Tomorrow I’m having dinner at their new home. As I have said before, they have treated me from the first like a long-lost relative. I nearly am a relative, as you know. These distant relationships mean more as time passes and fewer of us are left behind.

  What a coincidence it was to open a magazine and see Lucie’s village pictured in its pages. Well, the article actually was about a restaurant in the village, the White Bean, but the village itself is fast becoming what the young people
would call a “foodie destination.” Fortunately, I think, the village really cannot sustain a huge influx of people. To a man and to a woman, they keep themselves to themselves and they like it that way.

  I’m sorry I have to rush, but tonight is the crochet circle I told you about and I’m running late now. It is true that the older one gets, the busier one gets. I’ve been asked to join the local writers’ group, as well—I don’t know about that! My scribblings I’ve always held private. But I did want you to know that, as always, I think of you.

  Rushing now,

  Your loving Gabby xox

  CHAPTER 2

  Writers’ Square

  Thursday, March 22, 7:15 P.M.

  Later that same evening, Adam Birch was telling his fellow members of the Writers’ Square the story of Nunswood, the thicket near the ancient menhirs up on Hawk Crest, and how it came by its name. He held the legal pad on which he had been writing all that afternoon, clutching his pen tightly in his fist like a child learning to write, a picture of concentration as the words had spilled from the pen.

  “They say the nun was a ‘real’ sister of one of the monks at the abbey—his blood relative, you see—and she passed through Nether Monkslip with a group of nuns on their way to found a nunnery near Temple Monkslip. The legend is she’s buried on Hawk Crest, with its steep, winding path leading to the top—buried at a secret location within Nunswood. Her grave is rumored to be not far from the menhirs, near the healing spring.”

  “Not quite healing enough, then, was it?” said Suzanna. “If she died, I mean.”

  “They say she was murdered,” said Adam. “There’s no cure for being murdered.”

  The members of the Writers’ Square sat in one of the many homey nooks of Adam’s bookshop, The Onlie Begetter, where stacks of old books were used as table legs, and coffee-table books were used as tables, lending a new meaning to the term. They gathered around a real table, a square wooden one—a coffee table scattered with pens and notebooks and novels and magazines, and illuminated by two Tiffany-style lamps and by the golden, cozy glow of the fireplace. The shop, offering both new and “antiquarian” books, featured a stained-glass window of Saint Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writing. Local antiquarian Noah had rescued the ancient find from a church scheduled for demolition.

  The Writers’ Square group had been named after much heated discussion, and in the end took its name from the square table they used for their meetings. Besides, it sounded so much more avant-garde than “Writers’ Circle.” They were determined, Frank in particular, to be avant-garde if at all possible.

  Adam had been unusually busy that day, as the deadline loomed for the monthly magazine he used to promote his shop; he wrote it all himself, and set the pages using the desktop publishing software that had come bundled with his computer. Suzanna often was heard to remark that it looked as if the layout had been done by a man wearing sunglasses in a darkened, windowless room, with crooked columns of text unevenly spaced, sentences that mysteriously disappeared in mid-flow, and uncaptioned photos having no evident bearing on the topic at hand. A review of the latest legal thriller, for example, might be illustrated by a photo of a wild boar. It was called the Village Voice and it was hugely popular amongst the habitués of the Hidden Fox, the Cavalier, and the Horseshoe.

  Waiting for Adam to put out the CLOSED sign on the shop door, Suzanna Winship and Elka Garth had poured themselves coffee in the shop’s little kitchen alcove.

  “Have you been to Cut and Dried since Gabby started working there?”

  Suzanna shook her head.

  “You should give her a try,” said Elka. “She’s very trendy.”

  “Since when is blue hair trendy?”

  “Well, her own hair is bluish, but that’s just her style. It’s that white so white, it looks blue in certain lights—very flattering. She’s really good at sizing you up.”

  Suzanna leveled a gaze out of her chocolate brown eyes. “No one is good at sizing me up.” She examined one manicured hand. “Many are called; few are chosen. That place is like something out of Miss Pitchford’s day—she who, by the way, would call it ‘the hairdresser’s.’ These days, except for an emergency updo, I go to Alfonse at the Do or Dye in Monkslip-super-Mare.”

  “You should try Gabby,” Elka repeated. “Remember when I tried to cut my own fringe a few weeks ago? I looked like I’d had my head half chewed off by a wild animal. Gabby’s the one who fixed it. Free of charge.” She fluffed out the hair now lightly feathered across her forehead. “She’s ever so good.”

  Suzanna eyed her critically. Apart from the half-inch outgrowth of white root showing skunklike at the part, Elka’s hair was showing vast improvement lately. Elka worked long hours, seldom taking time out for herself. She even looked as though she might have dropped half a stone from around her middle. She was wearing her jumper turned inside out, and one of her hoop earrings was on backward, but even so …

  “We’ll see.” Suzanna, in jeggings, heels, and an oversized cashmere jumper, settled against the cushions on one of the sofas. “But Alfonse is just getting used to me. It’s hard to make a change. One feels one is being unfaithful somehow.”

  “Oh, I do know what you mean. It’s like a divorce, isn’t it? You simply—”

  Frank Cuthbert had sat quietly throughout this discussion in an overstuffed chair by the fireplace, scanning his notes and sipping his glass of red wine. He wore rose-tinted glasses and a turtleneck under his tweed sports jacket, and his bristly white beard and hair had gone uncombed in his haste not to be late for the meeting. He looked like a bereted woodland creature emerging from the brambles after some sort of massive literary struggle for survival. Sadie, his bichon frise, lay somnolently at his feet, nose buried in her paws.

  “Ladies, if you wouldn’t mind…” he interrupted importantly, as Adam joined them. “Your pages?”

  Pages was a professional term Frank had heard used somewhere. He liked tossing it into the conversation, along with the word script, which he condescendingly had explained to the group was short for manuscript.

  Suzanna took a seat and began leafing through a copy of Write What You Know magazine. “There’s an ad in here for a ‘Certified Poetry Therapist,’” she said, briefly turning the open magazine so they all could see. “I never heard of such a thing, have you? What next, a comic book therapist?” She held the periodical at arm’s length, reading aloud. “‘Poetry can be a powerful tool for unleashing secret healing and creative forces in the psyche.’”

  “You can be certified to do that?” asked Elka.

  “I think one had probably better be, don’t you? I wouldn’t want amateurs probing around my psyche.”

  “I’m sure that’s all well and good for some,” said Frank brusquely. “But poetry is beyond the realm of our expertise in this group. Now, ladies, if I could just—”

  “I don’t think you need expertise. I think you only need a heart,” said Elka earnestly.

  “If having a heart were the only qualification, we’d all be famous,” said Frank.

  Elka hesitated. “I was encouraging Gabby to join us, you see. She told me she writes poetry sometimes.”

  Frank was hugely reluctant. “We’d have to put it to a vote.”

  “There are only four of us, with Awena gone.” Awena, always a leavening influence, was absent because of her class at Denman College. With the group’s encouragement, she was writing a book that encompassed her philosophy, her seasonal tips, her recipes, and her herbal remedies. Suzanna was predicting an Oprah endorsement. “We’d need a tiebreaker,” said Elka. “As you know, we’ve had some attrition lately … the Major.”

  The Major lived alone now, surrounded by Benares brass, his retirement activities supervised with languid contempt by a Persian cat. He had dropped out of the group some time ago, as he found writing interfered with his golf game. He had been working on a military history of the world and had found this to be a mushrooming project. But the chapters he had
shared with the group, characterized as they were by sweeping yet achingly dull summaries of historic events, would remain with them forever, as Suzanna had observed.

  Similarly, Melinda Bottle, not long ago arrived in Nether Monkslip, had participated in the group when it had met on Saturdays, although participated might be too strong a term, since she seemed to have only a nodding acquaintance with the written word. She once submitted for the group’s consideration an index card containing a home recipe for an avocado face mask. Elka had correctly surmised that the group meetings were an excuse for Melinda to get out of the house and away from her husband, who was reputed to be somewhat of a tyrant.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Suzanna, after some further discussion. “If Elka vouches for Gabby, that’s good enough for me. A poet would provide a nice sort of balance.”

  Adam now picked up his legal pad to continue his read-aloud. The Writers’ Square did not exist, as it might first appear, as an arena for its members to get on one another’s nerves. These budding authors were, for the most part, extremely gentle with one another’s creations. Anything that seemed to imply criticism generally came from one source, and that source was similarly accepted (for the most part) as just being true to itself.

  “You don’t feel,” said Suzanna, when Adam had stopped to draw breath, “that the phrase ‘blue as the sky’ has been just a tad overused in describing the color of someone’s eyes?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Adam. “I rather thought so, too. But it’s deucedly hard to describe eyes, when you think about it. How would you have handled it?”

  “I would have said her eyes were blue,” answered Suzanna.

  “And you call yourself a romance writer?” asked Frank.

  “I take your point,” said Suzanna. “Steamy blue eyes, then. My hero has steamy blue eyes, but go ahead and borrow that if you like.”

  “But you can’t—” began Elka.

  “What can’t I?”

  “Your hero is already steaming quite a lot, from what I’ve read of your book. He steams and smolders throughout. I would use another word for his eyes.”