The Haunted Season (10 page)

“Funny you should say … I've always loved to travel and I want to travel a lot more once I've collected my degree. If I collect it…” His voice trailed off and his eyes drifted from Max's face. Again, Max had the sense of something withheld. “Anyway, I have this feeling that from my first moments, I've been on the move. Probably because my family has one foot in Spain and one foot in England, although we're hardly ever in England these days. Something to do with saving on taxes. No idea…”

Peregrine was pothering on about nothing, and he knew it. He found Max's ability to listen with his whole attention very flattering, if unnerving. He was more used to being ignored.

Or he should have been used to it by now. He often felt like an adopted pet—the Easter chick or rabbit that is fought over by siblings for a while and then abandoned when the novelty wears off, particularly when the creature's cute fluffiness starts to fade. He had always felt thus and could not ascribe a reason or a date to the feeling. He simply was not a favorite of his father. This was all the more baffling because he was the only male child. He could have understood it better, perhaps, if he'd had a handsome, clever older or younger brother to compare him to. But to be compared to nothing and no one and come up short … well. His sister didn't count, although his father didn't seem to have a lot of use for her, either.

And no pun intended on the short. He couldn't help it that he was short. And dark. He felt that parents were required to overlook such things.

Then his mother had died, and the last person who had had even a passing, token interest in him was gone forever.

Now Father Max was looking at him as if he could read his mind on all of this, could at least sense some of the loneliness he felt. It gave Peregrine a moment's courage, enough to say, “I'd like to drop in sometime. If we could keep the invitation open. I'd like that very much.”

“Perhaps you'll get a chance to meet my wife,” said Max kindly, reacting to that unspoken loneliness in the boy. “We have a new baby, a son named Owen. We like showing him off and we've shown him to all the village now. In some cases, half a dozen times. We'd love a new audience to wow.”

Peregrine smiled, acknowledging the welcome and the caring behind the gesture.

“All right,” he said, rather gruffly. “I'll be heading off back to the house now. Thanks.”

And with a wave of his large square hand, he was off.

*   *   *

Max, continuing on his way, saw two figures in conversation by the entrance to the stables. One was a well-set-up man—muscular, broad, and tall. He had the plaid sleeves of his woolen shirt rolled up to ensure no one could overlook the fact. The woman he was talking with wore a large scarf covering her hair, in much the style of Queen Elizabeth II touring her own royal stables. This woman was large, on the plump side, and decades younger than the monarch, and her gaze up at the man before her was doting and adoring. Even from a distance Max could see the attraction. In a cartoon panel, there would have been thunderbolts of electricity zapping in the short distance between them. But was it mutual?

They spotted Max, and he felt it would have been churlish to pretend not to have seen them, as well. Did he imagine it, or was there a swift change of topic as he approached? As a vicar, he was somewhat used to this. People tended to sanitize their speech in his presence. He was less used to people nearly jumping apart at his approach. It was a rather instinctive, surreptitious move they both had made, and he wondered what, if anything, it meant.

“I'm not sure about tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps,” the man had been saying. Now it became, “Of course, the foal needs watching and I'll stay with her tonight—make sure she's all right.” A slight switch of topic and yet, Max was certain, a switch that had been made for his benefit.

The man turned to him with a smile. In line with recent Hollywood trends, his face showed a day-old stubble of beard.

“Bill Travis,” he said, holding out his hand. His grip was predictably strong, the grip of a man used to hauling tack about and reining in wild horses. The powerful grasp did not come across as showing off, but as an unconscious display of innate power; he exuded command and presence, and from the young woman's happy and enthralled expression, this fact had not escaped her. “You probably know Rosamund,” the man added, indicating the young woman at his side.

Rosamund, Max thought, was rather pretty, as plump and rosy as a Renoir maiden at a country dance. Standing near Travis, who was about six feet tall, made her appear dainty by comparison, but she was muscular, with what looked to be an athletic, sturdy frame beneath the fleshy surface. The tendrils of hair escaping from her scarf were corkscrew curly, and she wore enormous purple glasses with green temples, behind which her eyes gleamed with a keen intelligence as she turned her gaze to meet Max's. She would not, he sensed, have been the same person without those glasses, which clearly were not cosmetic, but composed of a strong prescription. She was one of those people who would peer about like a mole without them.

Max heard a mewing sound and turned to see a marmalade cat squeezing itself out from beneath the stable wall. She did not stay to be petted, but seemed to be on a mission. Max heard behind her a chorus of small mewling voices.

“That is Marbella,” Rosamund informed him. “She's just had her kittens—we've no idea exactly where or how many. Three or four, from the sound of it. She won't let us near, of course. She comes out to find her own food and they carry on until she returns. Cook has been leaving out leftovers for her. I don't suppose you'd like a kitten when the time comes?”

Max shook his head. “I love cats, but my dog has had a lot to deal with lately, already. We've just introduced a baby into the household.” Max never missed a chance to insert this news into the conversation whenever he came across someone who might not know the glad tidings. “But Thea's really been lovely about it. Concerned and protective.”

Rosamund made satisfactory cooing sounds to express her pleasure at this update. Bill Travis looked as if he might want to guy-punch Max on the shoulder but thought better of it.

“Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt,” said Max. “You were talking horses, not a subject on which I am any sort of expert.”

“Yes, I was saying we have a foal, close to being a filly now, who seems to be going off. I've had the vet by to look at her. I don't dare leave her for long.…” He turned his head, as if he might rush off right then to look in on the animal.

No, thought Max, that was not what you were saying. That was not the topic at all. But aloud he said, “That's too bad.”

Bill Travis nodded. “She's an expensive piece of horseflesh.”

“I meant,” said Max evenly, “that it's especially difficult for us humans when animals suffer. They can't tell us where it hurts.”

As if realizing how callous his statement may have sounded, Travis said, “She
is
a nice creature and I don't like to see her suffer, of course. But she's losing rather than gaining. We will soon have to take a decision on what to do.

“We can't,” he added, “afford to let sentiment get in the way of progress.”

 

Chapter 6

MURDER IN THE WOODS

Max was to remember these conversations a week later as late one evening he retraced his steps to the manor house. He had come in answer to a summons from Lord Baaden-Boomethistle; as it happened, he had been planning a walk with Thea to clear his head at the end of a long day, and the woods around the manor house provided an attractive venue. Awena had settled the baby in for the night, and when last seen, she was shelling English peas for their dinner. They would start the meal with pumpkin soup, she'd promised: while the rest of England had seen much of its crop rotted by the damp, the southwest of England had enjoyed a bumper crop.

Whatever the lord wanted, it did not seem to be an emergency, and probably it could have waited. But the man sounded unlike himself on the phone—unsettled and subdued, and he could not be induced to say what the matter was.

“I'll tell you when I see you,” Lord Baaden-Boomethistle had said. “I'll have Hargreaves set out the good whiskey, shall I? I'm taking Foto Finish out for exercise—I ride every evening—but I'll be back in good time to share a drink with you. There's something I'd like to take your mind on.”

The blatant bribery made the summons all the more intriguing, so Max agreed he would see him in a few hours. He was told to come around the back of the house (which he understood to be an honor meant for family, rather than a demotion in status) and to find his own way to the study, as it was Hargreave's evening off.

In the end, it was a fruitless visit. Max arrived at the house a few minutes early and, leaving Thea by the steps with a command to stay, made his way down the hallway, taking the turns as he remembered them. But there was no answer to his knock at the study door.

“Hmm,” he said aloud, thinking,
This doesn't seem right.
The lord was abrupt in manner and used to having his way, but standing up an appointment would not, in the world in which he lived, be the done thing.

Max tried the door handle, a polished brass affair probably copied from something at Buckingham Palace. It turned. He gave the wooden door a push.

There was the promised whiskey on a tray, with two clean glasses waiting.

And the massive polished desk, a desk on which to plot wars and takeovers and strategies.

But there was no Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, a fact Max found curiouser and curiouser. Rudeness just to be rude was not in the man's makeup.

Max spent fifteen minutes cooling his heels, taking advantage of the unlooked-for chance to admire the artwork, the paintings and statues and cabinets filled with exquisite curios of porcelain and jade. But he was impatient, wondering what had gone wrong, why he had been summoned in the first place, just to be stood up.

Finally he gave up, leaving by the back entrance, through which he had entered, collecting Thea, and making his way back home.

*   *   *

Nether Monkslip nestled at the base of Hawk Crest, which overlooked the same river that ran past the base of Totleigh Hall. From the top floor of his vicarage, Max could see the river sparkling in the sunlight on good days, carrying its cargo of diamonds to the sea. The tang of seawater from the south often floated on the air, mixing with the scents of cultivated soil and pastureland and the flowers of carefully tended gardens. Max thought it was as close to heaven as one could hope to find here on earth.

It was past the hinge of the day and the sky had lost much of the light; only dying rays of the sun had shimmered through a curtain of falling leaves as he and Thea ambled away from Totleigh Hall. It was getting cold, and he wore his heavy woolen coat for the first time that season. Its collar smelled of a scent Awena often wore, a smoky herbal fragrance.

The forest's evening rush hour had been stilled. There was only the occasional scuffling in the undergrowth to signify his presence had been noted. Thea, hearing something that only dog radar could detect, tore off down one of the forest paths winding its way back toward Totleigh Hall and the lake. It had been some time since she had been on an extended walk, so Max decided to let her enjoy herself awhile longer.

Eventually she came back, bringing with her a small branch of just the right size and shape for games. Obligingly, he began to throw it for her, watching with pleasure as she bolted away, her silky ears flying. He had always thought Gordon setters were one of the loveliest of the breeds, with their shiny black-and-tan coats, their intelligence, and their loyalty. He thought Thea to be outstanding on all these counts. Of course, he acknowledged, he
would
think that; a rescue dog, she had been his companion for so long, he could not imagine life without her. He had wondered if the baby would make her feel displaced from the center of the universe, but she had welcomed Owen as a sort of added bonus to her life, an additional, if shockingly small, human being to love and defend. She had fallen immediately into her new role of protectress, glancing from Max to Owen and back to Max again, as if to say, Yours, right? Okay, stand back. I got this. And she never willingly left the baby's side from that day forward, sleeping at the foot of his crib at night and beside his bassinet in Awena's shop during the day. She would come to fetch either Awena or himself a moment before the baby started to fuss for food or comfort.

The moon made a fleeting appearance from behind the skeletal trees, and Max idly watched its sliver of light come and go through the partings in the overhead canopy. Earlier in the year, they'd had an enormous supermoon, but now it was only a small silver crescent in the sky, like a coin that had been clipped too often. Gray threads of cloud were woven through inky blue as the day deepened past twilight, but even though the smell of rain was in the air, Max thought it might be some hours before a storm reached Nether Monkslip. Rainstorms had been frequent in recent weeks, and the scent of wet earth and composting leaves surrounded him.

The trees' branches rustled softly in a quickening wind, throwing off their leaves, but still they managed to shield the manor from what the Dowager Baaden-Boomethistle no doubt thought of as the vulgar gaze. Thea returned to Max, who again threw the stick for her, this time deeper into the forest; he continued on the rough footpath as she went off the track to find it. A thin fog lay low to the ground; even though they were some miles from Monkslip-super-Mare, traces of sea fret often crept inland. Max knew that from a distance he would appear to be walking on air, an image that pleased him. He heard the river tumbling in the distance and imagined a gleam of moonlight frosting its surface.

Thea's game had brought them nearer the lake, where a chill coming off the water hinted at the winter to come. Max thought he could hear the sound of crickets; surely they would have but days to live now. Through an opening in the trees he glimpsed the formal gardens surrounding the house, with evergreens shaped into symmetrical forms. In the shade and darkness, they looked like giant human figures. This imposed civilization seemed barely to hold back the untamed forest surrounding the estate. Where Max walked might in ancient times have been part of a green path, a wide track used for herding animals. He had a sense that the cloak between the prehistoric and modern worlds had worn thin here, as Awena would have it; that he was walking in some forgotten holy place, perhaps a burial ground, or a place of sacrifice. Nether Monkslip, as he had learned, was dotted with places like that.