Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel) (18 page)

Max had the grace to blush ever so slightly, but still he didn’t cave. Cotton had to hand it to him.

Cotton looked at him, the handsome priest who had set aflutter the hearts of every maiden and matron in Nether Monkslip and surrounding villages. Church attendance had skyrocketed, and Max had been the recipient of countless gifts of hand-knit scarves, socks, and jumpers, most of them multicolored and of an indescribable awfulness. Cotton assumed Max donated the items to the poor. The local soup kitchens must be a riot of color these days.

Max looked back at his friend. His alert, kinetic, fiercely intelligent friend, whose interest in order and justice matched Max’s own. The new prosecutor was going to be a problem for Cotton, Max knew, if Cotton’s marching orders suddenly became all about making the numbers look right—closing the case, throwing a bone to the press, all with a high-handed disregard for the truth. More than one innocent prisoner had swung by a rope made from the threads of a prosecutor’s ambition. A single honest cop or two couldn’t thwart that kind of systemic corruption.

“The trouble is,” said Cotton, taking a thoughtful sip of his ale, “we don’t have a lot of forensic evidence to go on. No fingerprints or hair samples that shouldn’t have been there, for example, or that can’t be accounted for by the usual visitors to the house.”

“We’ll get there,” said Max with calm assurance. “Slate is easily cut into slabs if you know where to place the chisel. It opens up and peels off in layers, just like this case will do.”

“I’m glad you’re so confident.”

“Not confident so much as … determined,” said Max. “We have to clean up this mess—this latest mess—for the sake of all the villagers.”

“Drain the swamp,” said Cotton.

“Yes. That’s precisely it. This village seems to be attracting something—I don’t know how to say it. Something dark and dank and—and very
old.
”

“The village is said to be the site of a long-ago murder,” said Cotton. “I’ve always wanted to know more about that.”

Max nodded. “We go for centuries without a murder, and now this. We’re practically awash in a crime wave.”

“Remind me. What murder was it, back then?”

“I don’t have the details. It was up on Hawk Crest. I think that’s how Nunswood got its name. It must have been a nun murdered.”

“Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Oh, yes. No doubt someone in the Writers’ Square will get around to investigating it one day. Trouble is, if it’s Frank, he’ll get half the facts wrong.”

“Poetic license.”

“Writing without a permit, more like. Anyway, we’ve got to stop
this
crime wave in its tracks, to mix my metaphors, and the only way to do that is to catch whoever killed Thaddeus.”

Cotton, who still thrilled to that “we” whenever they were discussing an investigation, nodded solemnly. He had rather come to count on Max to see the connections most people would miss.

The two men sat for a long time, going over the case, lingering after most of the pub’s lunchtime patrons had departed. The pub owner issued an order to his staff to let them be.

Cotton reverted now to a previous thought, part of a conversation he’d had earlier at the station with his assistant, Sergeant Essex.

“Since Thaddeus was more a stage actor, we know little about his private life. Anyone in television or movies would get more press.”

“I doubt he’d be pleased to hear that,” said Max.

“We’ve managed to sniff out some gossip about his life before Melinda. The agent was very useful in that regard.”

Max was nibbling on a slice of apple. “Oh?” he said.

“Thaddeus’s money came largely from the life insurance policy he had on his first wife, not from his career as a playwright.”

“He talked as if his career was a great success financially,” said Max.

“Well, he was a bit of a phony.”

“More than a bit,” agreed Max.

“I keep forgetting you had the advantage of knowing the man in real life.”

“I wouldn’t call it an advantage.”

“Point taken.”

“Still, that sort of bamboozle—it’s just a bit on the dishonest side,” said Max. “It’s not major crime. It’s more indicative of the type of man he was—that ego would shine through so much, it was difficult to see the soul beneath the bombast.”

“Here’s where it gets interesting, I think,” said Cotton. “Melinda claims not to have known the source of his wealth was not his career, but his wife’s life insurance policy. He had a policy that gave him four hundred thousand pounds on her death.”

“Could anyone be that naïve?” Melinda, he recalled, had said the first wife was rich.

Just then, the bereaved widow happened to be passing by on the High Street, wearing white jeans, short black boots, and a slouchy black jumper. She carried shopping bags in both hands. Both men watched as, framed by the window, Melinda lightheartedly skipped over a puddle.

Max turned back to look at Cotton. “Well,” he said, “let’s assume for the moment, then, that she’s telling the truth. It doesn’t really matter, does it? He was wealthy, relatively speaking. Prenup or no, she probably would have received enough to live on in a divorce settlement.”

“If he died, however, she’d inherit the lot,” said Cotton.

“I just don’t see her as clever enough to pull this off and get away with it.”

Outside, Melinda, switching her umbrella from one hand to the other as she juggled her shopping, dropped one bag in the puddle. Instead of an outburst of annoyance, her giggle could be heard. Is she
on
something? Max wondered. He could perhaps ask Bruce Winship if he’d given her something to calm her down. If so, he’d overdone it.

“Why not?” Cotton asked. “She’s getting away with it so far. There is no proof she did anything but live in the same house as the murdered man. Her fingerprints, for one thing, are useless as evidence. Even if there were incriminating fingerprints, which there are not.”

“Right. And no murder weapon. And even if there were a weapon left in the bedroom, her prints on it might not mean a lot.”

“Max, however we dress it up, Melinda is the obvious suspect. She was right on the scene and he treated her like dirt under his feet—so I’m told by everyone, including you.”

“You didn’t see her that night when she came to the vicarage to fetch me. She was completely undone.”

Cotton, who was thinking, You are such an old softy, Max, said, “I saw a woman pretty well pulled together, ostrich feathers and all.”

“By the time your lot arrived, she’d composed herself. Maybe she took a tranquilizer to calm her nerves.”

“It’s most foolish for people to talk to the police when they’re sedated. We want them in the raw, as it were, anyway.”

“I’m sure,” said Max. “Even so…”

“Then there’s this business with the estate agent. With Bernadina Steed.”

“What business with Bernadina Steed?”

“Ex-lovers,” said Cotton. “She was a former lover of Thaddeus Bottle. Don’t tell me you didn’t know?”

Max, remembering back to the dinner party, thought of the body language. Bernadina and Thaddeus had stood too close together during the before-dinner drinks. And later there’d been that certain awareness of each other’s presence.…

“I guess I knew without knowing,” he said. “Something seemed to be going on. You’re sure it was an ‘ex’ situation?”

“So Bernadina says.”

“I wonder if they were planning a rematch. They seemed friendly enough.”

Cotton said, “I never quite believe anyone who claims to be just good friends with an ex-lover. Human nature doesn’t work that way. If you were as friendly as all that, you’d still be together, wouldn’t you?”

“One does have to wonder how much his wife appreciated this warm friendship with Bernadina,” said Max.

“I don’t think she cared. She had Farley to keep her warm.”

Max sighed. “I can’t help but wish she’d been discreet about that—half the village seems to have been on to them—but I’ve urged her to be frank with you now. You’d have found out anyway.” He sighed again. “What messes people create for themselves.”

“It keeps both of us in business, at any rate,” said Cotton. “Where would the world be without policemen and priests? Anyway, our actor and playwright may have been lured to Nether Monkslip by the estate agent, Bernadina—it’s one theory. She, however, claims ‘all that’ is in the past and they’d entered the ‘just good friends’ stage.”

“She told you this?”

“Actually, I learned it from Annette Hedgepeth at the Cut and Dried. There are no secrets at the Cut and Dried. Abandon hope of a private life, all ye who enter there.”

“There’s nothing suspicious, is there, about the death of Thaddeus’s first wife?” Max asked. The bread and cheese were gone, and he was left with an enormous slab of onion on his plate. Somehow that didn’t appeal, and he pushed the plate to one side.

“No. Straightforward—nothing to arouse suspicion. Cardiac arrest.”

“We might have thought the same about Thaddeus’s death,” Max reminded him. “Maybe we were
meant
to think that. For a man his age, that would be expected.”

Cotton nodded, concentrating on finishing his meal. There was a paper rack near their table, holding several of the more recent tabloids and a few magazines, no doubt reading material left behind by patrons. Max’s eye was caught by an old issue of
Glossamer Living
magazine, the same copy that was in a stack on his desk at the vicarage. One of the headlines across the front held the words
NETHER MONKSLIP—FOODIE HEAVEN
, which was no doubt why the magazine had caught his eye. He reached out and plucked it from the rack, turning to the page indicated on the front. There he saw a photo of the new White Bean restaurant. It was an indoor shot, a crowd scene—photographed to make the place look more crowded and popular than perhaps it had been that night. Max held the page closer, for something a bit odd had caught his eye: He could see a waitress at the back, holding a tray, and glaring across the room. Max followed the line of her sight: She appeared to be looking at a table that held four people, and she was staring with unguarded contempt at someone at that table for four.

“Look at this,” Max said, holding out the magazine so Cotton could see. “That’s Thaddeus and Melinda. That’s the backs of their heads anyway. I’m sure of it.”

“Hmm,” said Cotton. “I believe you’re right. Who are they with?”

“Lucie and Frank Cuthbert. Their faces are a bit blurred, but it’s them. Look at the waitress, though. See the look on her face.”

But was it Thaddeus she was looking at? His wife? Lucie and Frank? There was no way to tell. The waitress looked stricken. No, more than that: She looked really, really angry.

Heads nearly touching, the magazine sideways on the table between them, the two men looked at the photo together.

“Is it important? We could get lab analysis done, facial recognition, yada yada,” said Cotton. “We’ve started spotting a lot of criminals by the shape of their ears, would you believe it?”

“There’s no need for all of that. It’s a photo of Thaddeus and Melinda; I am certain. Notice the earrings she’s wearing—very distinctive. They might be the pair of earrings she told us she lost. And his hair—even from the back, that can only be Thaddeus.”

Cotton held the photo up to his nose. “Okay,” he muttered at last into the magazine. He set it down and looked at Max. “You’re right. So why is the waitress looking at him like she’d like to slice him up and offer his entrails as the main course?”

“We can’t be sure it’s Thaddeus she’s looking at.”

Again, the photo went up to Cotton’s nose.

“Have you thought about getting some eyeglasses?” Max asked mildly.

“The carrying case ruins the line of my suit,” said Cotton. He put down the magazine. “Again you’re right. She
might
be looking at Melinda. Just a small chance she’s looking at the other couple—Lucie and Frank. She’d mostly see the backs of
their
heads from that vantage point.”

“Right.”

“Melinda could tell us the circumstances,” said Cotton. “I’ll ask her. Then I’ll have a talk with the waitress.”

“Her name is Kayla Prince,” said Max, “and she’s a St. Edwold’s parishioner.” Max hesitated. “Would you mind if I had a word with her first? Knowing Thaddeus, the topic might be a rather delicate one for her to talk about, and she might be more willing to talk about it with someone in a less than official capacity.”

“You think they had an affair?” asked Cotton.

“Perhaps,” replied Max with judicious hesitation. “Given that it’s Thaddeus we’re talking about, and that he clearly had a roving eye. But it could be almost anything, really—again, given that it’s Thaddeus. There is an enormous difference in their ages, not that that ever stopped a man like him.”

Cotton soon afterward gathered his things and took himself off to have Max’s Bible quote sent to forensics, and then to have another word with Melinda. Max stayed behind a few moments, staring at the onion on his plate, thinking and planning his strategy.

“If your current way of seeing isn’t working, open your mind to the opposite path” was one of Awena’s sayings. Since something continued to bother him, he sat quietly for a moment, trying to pin down what it could be.

The pub owner, recognizing the signs, tactfully left Max alone.

Max eventually made his way out of the Horseshoe, his eyes blinking against the tentative rays of sunshine outlining gray clouds in gold. He walked over to the White Bean on River Lane. The restaurant was closed at this time of day, but he found the place unlocked. He pulled back the door onto a new world, a Nether Monkslip of the future, for the restaurant was as different from the huddled, dark Horseshoe as day is from night.

The place had been equipped with spaceshippy fixtures of gleaming stainless steel. Mobiles in artistically stylized shapes—gulls or fish—hung from the ceiling. Each table held a vase of dried herbs and flowers, their stems anchored by the white beans of the restaurant’s name, the seeds functioning as a sort of gravel. The large open space was designed so the chef and his assistants were on constant display to the patrons while preparing the food, like people putting on a puppet show. From the doorway, Max could see that an enameled cast-iron pot stood bubbling on the cooker. He stood, he realized, at the vantage point from which the magazine photographer had taken his shot of the restaurant.