Wicked Autumn (24 page)

“Funny. I mean, you’re not the first to mention it. Men have these stages too, of course. Generally involving a blonde and an expensive sports car.”

Awena nodded appreciatively. “Of course. But I’ve met women like Wanda before, and I’ve often thought their ferocious energy is as much sexual as it is targeted to organizing everyone to within an inch of their lives. Misdirected energy, perhaps, but there.”

Max thought, carefully setting down his knife and fork. Then he said, “Did you notice any particular conflicts at the Fayre—involving Wanda, or not? Odd moments? Someone there who seemed out of place?”

Awena said slowly, “We-e-ll. One thing, and I tell you this only because I know you’ll take it with a grain of salt and not rush about making a lot of assumptions. It was this: Frank was guilty that day of lèse-majesté as far as Wanda was concerned. I was passing by on some errand or other and overheard her making fun of those pamphlets of his; the word ‘tripe’ was uttered. Well, his pamphlets are rather … unique. But he just lit into her—really, he was quite angry. You know how touchy writers can be.”

Max nodded. He’d only known a few writers in his life—one a former MI5 agent who had made a vast fortune writing spy thrillers. The man was rumored to have sunk into a deep well of paranoia, making regular appearances on the various government-conspiracy, lunatic-fringe blogs and LISTSERVs. “Touchy” didn’t even begin to describe it.

“She didn’t like this response of Frank’s, I take it.”

Awena laughed—a dry, mirthless sound. “Wanda could give as good as she got. In fact, she was expanding on the theme of Frank’s general lack of talent and virility as I scarpered out of harm’s way. Wanda always liked putting the boot in.”

Just then a candle on the table sputtered and went out. Picking up some matches to relight it, Awena said, “One could so swiftly be banished to the outer darkness of Wanda’s orbit. The aggravating thing was that one was supposed to care.”

“Did you?”

“You must be joking. But I think, you know, that some people did.” Her eyes now looked worried as they met his over the candle flame. “What madness,” she said.

“Madness? Is that how you think of it? Or rather a cool calculation. This murder…” began Max, who for all his experience of the subject felt genuinely uneasy. He faltered, choosing his words with care. “The planning, the cunning. ‘To smile, and smile, and be a villain’—isn’t that how Shakespeare put it?”

She nodded. “Someone with the beatific smile of a madman, like bin Laden. I suppose we’re looking for someone like that. Only there is no one like that here.”

“How, well …
Shakespearian
it all is.”

Awena nodded. “‘At least I am sure it may be so’—in Nether Monkslip.”

“What complete wickedness.”

“Yes.”

CHAPTER 22

Quandary

He left Awena’s around ten in a good humor induced by good wine and food, unaware that this reaction to her company was typical of him. He felt exhilarated, and at peace, and able to go on. Perhaps, he thought, it was all that hawthorn. Hadn’t she said it was good for the heart?

His mind overflowed with their wide-ranging conversation that had put the world to rights, and with a few new items of interest. These had left him, alas, no nearer the solution to Wanda’s death. And solution there was, he reminded himself, if somewhat blearily. It was a matter of excavation, merely. The truth always was there, as in archeology—belowground, just waiting to be exposed by the fall of the pickax.

A lunar halo, now fading, had formed earlier around the moon, by a trick of the atmosphere appearing in the form of a silvery cross of light. It was easy to see why most cultures had worshiped a moon goddess, he thought—elusive, but in reality ever present and watchful, and designed to make us feel insignificant as we hurtle through space in the darkness.

He tarried by the wrought-iron gate that led into his front garden, quietly looking up at the anointing sky. Passersby, had there been any that time of night, might have wished for a camera, seeing a tall man in clericals, bathed in light, standing outside a house of a barely contained eccentricity, for the vicarage was a twee, lopsided building of many windows and assorted chimneys; it looked like something drawn by a child, and it always looked to be near collapse. But Max had been assured it would stand many hundreds of years more. Come summer, the front garden would be shady, giving the visitor a respite from the heat even before reaching the vicarage’s front door. In autumn, the shade cast a chill on the grass.

A puff of smoke from the chimney of Dr. Winship’s nearby cottage briefly obscured the stars. Winter was not far away.

The snap of a twig set his heart racing, and he spun in the direction of the sound, reflexively poised to defend himself. DCI Cotton appeared out of the mist, walking along Vicarage Road, and carrying a briefcase, looking like a well-dressed commuter on the way to catch a train. It was apparent he’d been waiting for Max’s return.

They exchanged greetings and Max ushered him inside, where Thea gave Cotton the once-over and then disappeared. The two men had not spoken except in passing for several days. Max offered the policeman a glass of wine, which had been a gift from a parishioner, and of such a rare vintage he had put off finishing the bottle himself—it was the kind of special treat that needed to be shared, not drunk in solitude. Now he doled out a glass for both of them with a flourish and a final, sommelier-like twist at the end of each pour. He turned his attention to the fire, for the night had turned chilly, then said, “You have news?”

Cotton tweaked the perfect crease of his trousers before sitting in one of the fireside chairs. He said, “Developments, big and small. My people have found the discarded auto-injector in the pond in Raven’s Wood.”

“You’re not serious. Constable Musteile…?”

“No. But I’m letting him take credit for now. He would anyway, and feeling that he’s solved the case already may keep him out of harm’s way for a bit. But that’s all by the way. The real news is that even though it’s waterlogged, it looks as if the auto-injector had been tampered with, and the antidote substituted with something innocuous. Tap water, at a guess. It was very subtly done—Wanda wouldn’t have noticed the difference. Well, not unless she’d had to use it and found it … useless.

“But even better,” he went on, “in going through her things at Morning Glory Cottage, we found this note.” He showed Max a single page of foolscap, with writing in block letters. Max saw the words:
I CAN WAIT NO LONGER. MEET ME. THE USUAL WAY. DESTROY THIS.

“No prints,” Cotton informed him. “Nothing about the page to provide a lead—even with a handwriting sample for comparison, it will be hard to trace who wrote this. So what’s it about? Blackmail? An anxious lover?”

“We are talking about Wanda, are we not? A lover is hard to imagine. Still harder, blackmail. Although, as a pillar of society in her own mind, I suppose she would be vulnerable to that threat.”

“There’s more,” said Cotton. “Wanda kept a diary. Not a ‘Dear Diary’ type of thing, alas, but more a calendar of appointments. A bound book, wrapped around with an elastic band, with receipts and fabric swatches and so on stuffed into a pocket at the back. The pages are bound and numbered, so we know the volume is intact—no missing pages ripped out. In it she notes the usual kind of thing: dates for the dentist, the hairdresser, menu items to purchase. Some appointments had a star by them but there was no pattern to that. The doctor might get a star one time, and not the next.”

“That is interesting. Not much help, but interesting.”

“It is helpful, actually, but in a negative sort of way. We’ve spoken with the various receptionists involved at the various establishments, and the dates don’t match up. Sometimes they do, but not always.”

“So … what’s the thinking? She was keeping a fake calendar because…?”

“That, we don’t know. We’ve looked at the hard drive of her computer, hoping she had a password-protected calendar, but no.” Cotton jumped up. As usual, his default mode was one of combat readiness. The line of his jaw and the cords of his neck looked as taut as wire.

“I also have news of a negative, no-help sort,” Max told him. “It seems there was no shortage of food contributions that day. Guy Nicholls was roped into donating. And Miss Pitchford. And Awena Owen.”

“We know. Elka Garth, the woman who owns the bakery and runs the tearoom in the village, made similar donations—was perhaps the key contributor. People are being very up-front about that, but why wouldn’t they be? They know how easily we can check up on who donated what, given time.”

“There may not be time to spare.”

“Believe me, I know. We’ve talked with Elka at length, of course,” Cotton continued. “The baked goods that did for Wanda could have come from her shop—her being a baker by trade rather puts Elka in the spotlight. She is adamant that Wanda could not have taken one of her peanut biscuits by accident.”

“Yes, she told me that, too.”

“But Wanda had peanut—what shall we call it, peanut residue?—in her mouth and it came from somewhere.”

“Peanuts are used in a lot of ways, as filler, sometimes finely ground, aren’t they?” asked Max. “I think we also have to consider the supposition that Wanda got hold of the peanuts unawares, perhaps not through one of Elka’s confections.”

“Or at least not a confection so clearly containing peanuts,” replied Cotton.

“You don’t think…” Max began.

“I don’t think what?”

“Elka might have been careless. Gotten some peanut residue mixed up in something else she provided to the Fayre. A moment’s chaos in the kitchen … it would be easy enough to do.”

“She swears not,” said Cotton. “Says she was extra careful about that sort of thing because of Wanda—Wanda had made her aware of the danger.”

“Yes. So she says.”

“They—the forensics guys—think that maybe, with a lot of sifting and sorting of ingredients and a chemical analysis, they can determine whose batch of what was responsible for the death, but is it worth it, knowing that? Anyone could have made sure Wanda ate a fatal item—not necessarily a peanut biscuit, and not necessarily a food item that the killer had donated to the Fayre.”

“That is part of what is so clever about this, don’t you think? We could search forever and not find the ‘murder weapon,’ so to speak.”

Cotton, now staring at the crown molding, surprised him by asking, “How does this crime strike you? Masculine, or feminine? Because no matter what anyone says, there are some crimes—poisonings, for example—that still tend to skew feminine.”

Max said ruminatively, “Perhaps. Just as the reaction to crime can follow certain patterns, have you noticed? After 9/11, women tended to want to plant gardens of remembrance. Men wanted to build new towers, more towers, bigger, taller, better towers. ‘Try knocking
this
down’—that kind of thing. But to answer you, I get no sense of there being a masculine or feminine sensibility behind this crime. It could have been committed by anyone who wanted a method that was hard to trace back to any one individual. It’s rather a sneaky crime, rather than a forthright one, don’t you agree?” DCI Cotton nodded. “But this whole masculine/feminine question may speak to my ideas about Wanda’s character,” Max went on. “She doesn’t seem the type to have aroused sexual jealousy, for example—would you say?”

“You knew the woman better than I, but no. I’m not getting that kind of picture at all. If I were looking for that kind of reaction, I’d look to someone like Suzanna Winship. Trouble of that nature must follow Ms. Winship wherever she goes.”

Max sipped his drink. “Undoubtedly,” he said.

“There’s somewhat of a sticky wicket for Noah, your antiques man, I’m afraid. He was seen hanging about the Village Hall that day, by Frank Cuthbert. He’s some kind of writer, I gather.”

“Yes. Frank is … some kind of writer. He has a vivid imagination, to say the least. Does Frank say that Noah went into the building?”

“No. But what makes Frank’s statement notable is this: Noah never told us about being in the area. When I called him on it earlier today, he simply said he had forgotten—he’d been for a walk (he said he got someone to manage his booth in his absence), and his steps had taken him in no particular direction.”

Max looked at the flames, seeming not to hear what Cotton had said.

“Did Wanda or the Major have financial problems?” Max asked at last.

“Quite the opposite. She came into a tidy sum—property, jewelry, cash—when her mother died.”

“So … the Major is…?”

“Sitting pretty. He inherits the lot. There’s a sizable life insurance policy, also, for which he is the beneficiary.”

“I see,” said Max slowly. “And
his
whereabouts at the crucial time?”

“The Major’s whereabouts are not well accounted for. You told us you chatted with him at the Fayre, but after that, his ‘position,’ as I’m sure he would call it, was abandoned. He says he got tired of sitting and reading and went to stretch his legs and use the gents.”

“Daring to leave the booth unattended? That is interesting. As if he knew Wanda wouldn’t be there to check up on him.”

“I thought of that, too. He says she stopped by, and perhaps he felt that having been recently checked up on, it was safe for him to leave for a few minutes, at least. Frankly, since the husband is always the first to be suspected, I’m surprised he doesn’t offer a better accounting for his time. As you probably are aware, the husband is always top of the charts in these matters.”

“A real alibi,” said Max, “is so often unverifiable. Don’t you find?”

Cotton nodded distractedly, his fair hair standing on end—surely a sign this polished and sophisticated man was at the end of his tether—and his face a scowl of frustration. He returned to his seat but Max knew the illusion of repose would be only temporary.

“I don’t suppose,” Max said slowly, “there’s anything suspicious about the mother’s passing? Wanda’s mother?”

The look Cotton gave him was admiring. He all but whistled. “You are a suspicious one, aren’t you? A regular Miss Marple in Holy Orders. We’ll look into it, but the fact is, she was quite old, and unless questions were raised at the time, well—I’m not sure what could be done about it now. Without strong evidence to the contrary, we’d have to assume a natural death.” He heaved rather a large sigh. “We certainly have a job of work to do in terms of checking alibis and general paperwork, in all directions. We looked at Wanda’s bank records as a matter of course and noticed the uptick in the finances at the House of Batton-Smythe. She also had a private account, and that’s where she stashed the serious money.”