Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel) (28 page)

Max looked at him. “Did she mean the Bottles’ dog?”

“Yes. She said it put her in mind of that Sherlock Holmes story.”

“The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

“The very one. You see, Suzanna suffers from insomnia, and the seasonal time changes make it worse. I’ve prescribed long walks before bedtime, especially now, when it’s not too cold outside. She says she walked past the train station the night of the murder and just after she passed the lane to the Bottles’ house, she heard something that made her turn around. It was the sound of a footfall, or of leaves rustling, or something. She thought perhaps it was a rabbit. Anyway, when she turned, she saw the back of someone—someone wearing a hooded coat against the light drizzle. And the someone appeared to have emerged from the path to the Bottles’ place. But it was quiet otherwise, and that was what was wrong—she realized much later that the dog would have barked at an intruder. But it was dead silent. As the dog wasn’t harmed to keep it silent—she asked around about that later—she wondered…”

This, thought Max, explained her new detective role. “Why didn’t she say something right away?”

“As I say, it took her a while to put things together. And just as she realized this might be important, Elka gave her a hard time about her habit of speaking before thinking things through. Besides, she couldn’t tell for certain where the person came from—the Bottles’ or just from the woods near their place. So Suzanna asked me just now what I thought she should do. I said she should say something to Cotton immediately, even though it may not mean much. Maybe the dog was asleep, after all.”

“Or if it was the killer,” said Max, “it was someone the dog knew well.”

*

Max parted from Bruce some time later, lost in thought. One nagging idea kept at him, and it seemed to center around something that had happened at the dinner party at the Cuthberts’ home. He remembered Bruce talking once again on his favorite topic, which could best be summed up as “The Killer Amongst Us.”

Max walked back to the vicarage, released Thea from her leash, and wandered aimlessly around the study, unable to settle, taking books off the shelves at random and putting them back. He shuddered as he put back on its shelf a modern-day edition of
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,
with its woodcuts of people being burned at the stake. Somewhere he had read that kindly executioners, taking pity on the victims, would make sure the wood smoked as much as possible, so they might die (somewhat) less painfully of smoke inhalation before the flames could consume them.

Suddenly, he took a decision. It was a long shot, but anything odd that had happened in recent days needed to be investigated. And Gabby’s reaction to that painting surely counted as odd.

Grabbing his coat, he shouted upstairs to Mrs. Hooser that he’d be back soon.

*

Minutes later, he was tapping at the brass knocker on Lucie’s door, a knocker molded in the shape of a fleur-de-lis.

Max explained his mission.

Lucie hesitated.

“Father, I need to be at the shop in ten minutes,” she told him, pointedly bending an elbow to look at her wristwatch.

“I know, and I’m so sorry. I won’t be a minute,” he told her. “I just want to look at that seascape of yours again.”

“The Coombebridge?” she said. Well, it
was
Father Max; even Lucie had trouble saying no to Father Max. “All right, go ahead. Just close the door behind you when you leave. It locks automatically.”

He thanked her and moved toward the dining room.

There it was. A painting of the sea, hanging against the black-and-white-striped wallpaper. A painting of exquisite colors—every shade of blue was represented—and pearlescent lighting, and magnificent proportions that drew the viewer inside, forcing the inevitable thoughts of the eternal sea, and the tides that unceasingly came and went—depositing debris, and dragging back the sand.

But that was all it was. A splendid painting. There were no human figures, no recognizable features to the landscape, no houses or buildings—nothing.

He stood there, remembering. Remembering how Gabby had ignored Lucie’s instructions on where to sit, as if Gabby couldn’t hear. Max had concluded that perhaps her hearing wasn’t good—he had had to repeat a question he had put to her during dinner. Now he considered that maybe she’d had her own reasons for avoiding sitting in that chair. She had wanted her back to the painting.

How had they been seated that night? Lucie and Frank each at one end of the table. Gabby next to him—Max—and Bruce Winship next to her. Melinda Bottle across from Bruce, Thaddeus Bottle at her side, and Bernadina Steed next to Thaddeus. Max looked in vain for a hidden connection, something that might have been sparked by proximity to Thaddeus.

Shrugging, Max left the room, and left the house, pulling the door closed shut behind him.

The bells of St. Edwold’s rang out the hour as he left.

Subject: Bernadina

From: Gabrielle Crew ([email protected])

To: Claude Chaux ([email protected])

Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 3:48
P.M.

Well, well, well. Bernadina Steed, you will not be surprised to know, is also having an affair with “Melinda’s” Farley. I saw them talking together, and I’m afraid there’s no question of what is going on. Body language is such a giveaway.

Poor Melinda really knows how to pick them! I am debating whether to tell her. What a ruckus that would stir up, though, and what would be the point?

I’ve been so preoccupied by all of this. So nervy! I actually let the scissors slip today, and dropped a bowl of hair color. I must get a grip.

You see, I’ve remembered one other thing. Not long after I saw Melinda gathering mushrooms, her husband fell ill. She told me herself he had “a tummy.” I didn’t, to be honest, connect the two incidents right away. The flu was making the rounds of the village about that time.

But that’s how I was so sure what she was thinking, what she was planning—what she was up to. She must have gone back to pick more mushrooms on her own, more of the death cap. Well, what is done is done. Melinda’s wanting to kill Thaddeus is certainly understandable—practically justifiable homicide. Talk about “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” The man was pure bombast.

Anyway, I plan to invite her over for tea, to try to get a sense of which way the investigation is going. The police seem to talk with her more often than anyone else in the case. I suspect she’s in their crosshairs but doesn’t know it.

Maybe I should invite them both over—Melinda and Farley? Reassure them their secrets are safe with me. What do you think of that idea?

I send all my love, your Gabby

Max walked slowly back to the vicarage from Lucie’s house, his thoughts chasing one another in circles. What was it that was nagging at him? What
was
it?

The case, it occurred to him, was like an Impressionist painting: If you stood very close, you saw a blur of colors and dots. From far back, it was like viewing a completely different painting, where it all came together.

Back in his study, he pulled out his notebook and pen and flipped through the pages until he found a sheet that didn’t contain notes for a potential sermon. He hesitated, then wrote boldly at the top, with a surge of hope, “MOTIVES.” This was followed by several bulleted points:

• Revenge

• Money?

• Anger?

• Loss?

• Blackmail

Max paused, then added:

• Love

Since the subject was Thaddeus, revenge seemed the most likely motive. Anger suggested a spur-of-the-moment crime, and this didn’t bear that hallmark. Who, after all, in his right mind would carry about with him a knife or dart dipped in poison, just on the off chance he might need to use it? No, this was clearly a planned crime, although the question of a “right mind” loomed large. The grim Scripture quotes slipped through his door indicated a slippery grasp on the situation. Someone in complete control would have maintained silence.

Max put down his pen and wandered over to the one wall of the vicarage study that contained personal treasures: his own collection of small seascape paintings. The works of artist Coombebridge, who lived in nearby Monkslip Curry, featured largely in the collection. Max had purchased most of the paintings unframed, and the owner of Noah’s Ark Antiques had found antique gold-leaf frames to fit. The frames, which Noah had to all intents gifted to Max, still cost more than Max had paid for the paintings themselves. This situation rapidly had reversed itself: The formerly obscure Coombebridge had caught on in a major way, partly because his chaotic private life was a bit of a scandal. Max didn’t know the current value of the works; he had bought them only because he liked them and had thought the artist had great talent that should be encouraged.

Max sat in one of the leather chairs before the now-extinguished embers in the fireplace and stared at the paintings, thinking back to the dinner party. He remembered Lucie being animated, anxious that her guests enjoy their meal, and her husband, Frank, being uncharacteristically reserved. And he thought of the strange anomaly of Thaddeus stealing from his hostess at the end of that splendid evening. He never doubted Lucie was telling the truth about that—for one thing, he felt he knew Lucie’s rock-solid nature well, and it was too wild a story for her to make up.

He remembered Gabby changing her assigned place at the table.
Was
it not because she’d wanted to sit next to him, as he had flattered himself at the time, but because she’d wanted not to sit next to someone else? Or had wanted
to
sit nearer to someone?

He struggled to remember where the card had been before she’d moved it, for their hostess, Lucie, had avoided the boy/girl assignments usual to these affairs.

It seemed to him now that in moving the card, Gabby had avoided sitting next to Bernadina Steed. Could that have been it? Some sort of grudge match with Bernadina? That was rather typical of the village, these sudden spring storms that came up in friendships, storms that soon evaporated, leaving behind only minor damage. The church flower rota; a perceived or actual snub during the organizing of the Harvest Fayre; a squabble over the choice of reading for the Nether Monkslip book club. He often had been forced to play the peacemaker in these situations, for some of the skirmishes had approached a near-deadly standoff before cooler heads prevailed.

However, he’d been under no impression that Gabby and Bernadina had had any sort of previous relationship, or even that they’d met each other before the dinner party. In fact, he’d formed the distinct impression they’d not met before that evening.

It was Bernadina and Thaddeus who had had a prior relationship.

And so, clearly, had the Cuthberts with the Bottles, as evidenced by the photograph taken of the two couples together at the White Bean.

Suddenly struck by an idea, Max jumped up from his chair. Tom Hooser, who, as Max pondered, had wandered quietly into the study, and whom nothing startled, gazed up helpfully from his coloring book, as if wondering if Max’s hair had caught fire and he needed some water. Max took Tom by the hand and left him in the care of his sister in the kitchen. After shouting a farewell up the stairs to Mrs. Hooser, Max grabbed his coat and jumped in the Rover to drive to Monkslip Curry.

As he drove off, he saw Awena talking outside the Cavalier with Gabby and Melinda. He pulled over to say hello.

“We’re going for tea,” Awena told him. “And later I’m getting some fresh eggs from the Stauntons. I thought maybe a mushroom omelette for tonight?”

“Sounds good,” said Max neutrally, on the off chance the other women didn’t know these food preparations were intended for him. “I’m going to…” he began, and realized it was too difficult to explain. He was going to what? Even he didn’t know.

“I’ve an errand to run,” he amended. “See you soon.”

*

“I’m interested in what lies beneath,” Coombebridge was saying. He stood next to Max, staring with admiration at one of his own paintings, which rested in a half-finished condition on an easel in his artist’s studio.

So am I, thought Max.

The locals called him Painter Coombebridge, but Max knew his Christian name was Lucas. He knew this because any book purporting to provide a comprehensive retrospective of painters at work along the South West coast of England always devoted several illustrated pages to Coombebridge’s work. He was a legend as much for the quality of his painting as for the scandalous, wanton nature of his all-too-public private life, and was probably now at the stage of fame where neither element could be separated from the other. His talent had made him famous, it seemed to Max, but his notoriety had made him rich.

Max had amassed his small collection of Coombebridge’s seascapes before he knew much about the man, captivated by the artist’s mastery of light playing on a darkened sea. A dealer in Monkslip-super-Mare (as it happened, a former lover of the artist) had been granted exclusive rights to display and sell the works. The seascapes, so whimsically acquired from her gallery, were often a source of solace at the end of Max’s long working day.

The artist himself was short and muscular, with pale eyebrows that sprouted like sea grass over his—yes—sea green eyes. Max knew he was approaching his eightieth year, which was impossible to believe, for he had the vigor and the sturdy build of a man half his age. His gaze and his hands were steady, and he looked set to create for easily another twenty years. Dried paint was in his hair and all over his clothing; the walls and floor of the studio were blotchy with paint and clearly had been used as a palette, a place to mix his colors before applying them. Brushes sprouted everywhere from assorted containers, like dried-flower arrangements. Randomly pinned to the walls or lying about were images torn from newspapers and magazines. Max could discern no unifying theme: There were buildings of stone and salt-and-pepper shakers and sunsets and blocks of color and dogs and, generally off in the distance, humans. Oddly, there was a magazine photo of the infamous, handsome Lord Lucan, the focus of a long-ago murder investigation, missing and presumed by many to be dead. Max remembered that the working theory was that his friends in high places had helped the man escape justice.