Wicked Autumn (21 page)

“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 charge, 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.”

“Shakespeare was a glover’s son, they say.”

“There you are,” she replied, clapping the flat of her hand against the chair arm, as if that settled the matter conclusively. Absurdly pleased, Max felt as if he’d been given a gold star for the correct answer. “Jasper was more inclined to oil and watercolor painting than to poetry, but the principle’s the same, you see.”

Max, recalling the paintings on the walls of the Batton-Smythe sitting room, felt certain now that they were Jasper’s. He’d have to ask, or go in for a closer look at the signature next time he was at the house.

“You say he was wild…” Max spoke quietly, and yet Agnes Pitchford seemed to sense something forbidding about the man who sat before her. Her next words were spoken tentatively, as if examined with great care before being released into the room.

“Ye-s-s. The wanderlust showed up early. He loved picture books, you know. Travel books. France, Italy, Peking, Sophia. Bombay was a favorite. Of course, he had the usual problems of a youth living in a small village or on a remote farmstead. It is isolating for youngsters, and for those who have some difficulty making friends … well, for them there can be special problems to overcome. I think the other children found Jasper a bit of a wet fish—is that expression still used?” Max nodded. “That is why programs like the Young Farmers’ Clubs are such a blessing,” she added brightly. “Brings them all together, so they can mix. I remember he made friends with young Larry Hawker—his parents kept the Sumner farm outside the village until they sold up and moved away. Couldn’t make a go of it.” There was a pointed emphasis to her words; Max wondered if she was indicating that a farmer’s son was slumming it for Jasper. “So, Vicar, what exactly have you learned from the police?”

Max dodged the bullet as best he could. “It is difficult to know,” he said. “Most people are accounted for, if only somewhat accounted for. They were manning the stalls or browsing around the stalls, or trying the tests of strength, or simply sampling the food.”

This was greeted with a puzzled stare. “The what, dear?”

“The food.”

“I thought you said ‘the mood.’ Well, not
quite
all,” said Miss Pitchford demurely.

“What do you mean?”

“Well. It’s just that I…”

“Go on,” Max said flatly, keeping the eagerness from his voice and hoping it didn’t show on his face.

“It’s just that I wanted to buy a knitted tea cozy—one of those designed to look like a head of lettuce, so clever—but no one was at Lily’s stall. There was a handwritten sign propped up there that read
BACK IN TEN MINUTES
. However, that’s just one example of someone who was not where she was expected to be the whole time,” she added. “I’m sure there were a few others.”

Max sighed. He was sure there were.

“You yourself were at the Fayre all day?”

“Most of it,” she replied, not apparently offended by the hidden question as to her own whereabouts. “Even though Saturday is normally my baking day. One has to make allowances for a special event like Harvest Fayre. I did my baking the day before. On cleaning day,” she added, to clarify this difficult point for him.

Indeed, DCI Cotton had told Max he had been most persistent, slogging through the details of Miss Pitchford’s activities, all, according to her, of a nature not only innocent but irreproachably civic-minded. Looking about him at her clearly seldom-used front room (there had been much internal debate, he was certain, as to whether the discussion of Wanda’s passing merited such formality), Max’s eye fell on her collection of seaside souvenirs as internally he marveled at their sheer volume and dreadfulness.

“I don’t suppose…” he began. How to ask this? “I don’t suppose any of your baking involved peanuts?”

She surprised him with a girlish, trilling giggle. For a moment he could see the young woman she had once been. “You
are
a devil, Vicar. Yes, as a matter of fact, I did make some biscuits with peanuts. Is it being said I tricked Wanda into eating one? Perhaps got her to look the other way and then stuck one in her mouth?”

He grinned somewhat sheepishly. “I suppose it is absurd of me to ask.” Although this he didn’t suppose for a moment. The deadly biscuit had come from somewhere, from someone’s kitchen.

“Of course, I did see her, and few other people did. Or, will admit that they did.”

That was precisely true. How many might be out there unwilling to come forward, for whatever reasons? He looked about him, at the cherished accumulations of a lifetime, at the bookshelves stuffed with her favorite reading, so indicative of personality: Austen, Dickens, and the Brontë sisters, of course, along with what looked to be the complete works of several French authors—Flaubert, Maupassant, Proust.

Not everyone was like Miss Pitchford, who would see it as a moral obligation to report all she knew to the police.

“Can you tell me how it was you came to see her?” he asked now.

“I had to answer,” and here she blushed prettily again, “a call of nature. I wasn’t going to use one of those horrible portable things they’d set up for the Fayre. No indeed. The spread of germs—well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. So I was headed toward home and who should I see but Wanda?”

“Really? What time was this?”

“Just before noon. She was headed toward the Village Hall—must have been. I was just starting to walk down St. Edwold’s Road, from the fields.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“That nice detective asked me the same. So dashing! No, she didn’t. She was completely preoccupied. Rummaging in her handbag for her key.”

“So she said nothing to you?”

“No, she was just muttering about her key.”

“How did she look?”

“The same as always—but rather flushed and flustered. She didn’t even see me, I’m certain of it, and I didn’t want to see her, if you know what I mean. She’d try to corral me into doing something or other. So I picked up my pace and made my escape.”

Max sat, very still, suddenly alert. The onset of a vague unease caught him by surprise, but it was tinged with a familiar harking back to his old training. Something she had said … a disconnect somewhere … The cat, sensing a kindred spirit, opened her eyes wide, and cocked her head for a better view of a fellow natural-born hunter.

“What?” said Max.

“Wanda always reminded me of women in wartime,” Miss Pitchford was saying. “One just had to get on with it. People’s feelings didn’t matter—there was no time for that.”

“Surely, though, Harvest Fayre … It’s hard to see that in a national context.”