Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel) (24 page)

“I’m alphabetizing the nail varnish bottles: Pagan Rose, Primrosey, Silverlight, and so on. It will make it easier for you to find what you want.”

“I really would rather you d—”

Suddenly, there was a clatter. Gabby dropped the bowl she’d been using to apply color to her customer’s hair, and Annette dropped the small jar Awena had just handed her.

“What?” said all three women simultaneously. BBC Radio 4 droned on in the background, now with news of the escalating euro crisis.

Gabby and Annette set about clearing up the mess. When they’d finished, Gabby tugged nervously at her sleeves, as if they chafed.

“Well, how clumsy can we get in our old age?” she said.

“Speak for yourself,” said Annette. But there was humor in her voice. “You’ve been on your feet all day. Why not take a rest? I’ll take over what you’re doing when I’m done here.”

“Thank you,” said Gabby, clearly relieved. She consulted briefly with her client. “I was almost finished. But I do feel a little peculiar.”

She inhaled deeply to settle her breathing. Awena and the others were reminded that Gabby was getting along in years.

“Thank you,” she repeated. The rouge dotting her cheeks stood out against her suddenly colorless skin.

Subject: What to do?

From: Gabrielle Crew ([email protected])

To: Claude Chaux ([email protected])

Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 1:46
P.M.

Dear Claude—I find my mind keeps returning to that misty winter morning in Raven’s Wood. That morning when I knew what Melinda was thinking.

I had another recipe from Awena that I was anxious to try, this one for pasties made with mushrooms and lentils, and I knew a few mushrooms remained in the woods despite the cold.

I was lost in my own thoughts and so I almost literally bumped into Melinda: I heard a rustling of leaves and I looked up to find her there, carrying a wicker basket just like mine. That in itself was simply not her style, and I wondered how she knew to use a wicker basket to collect mushrooms, so the spores can escape and propagate the area. Someone must have told her, probably Awena, although anyone schooled in country ways would know it.

“I’m collecting mushrooms for our supper,” she told me. I nearly laughed aloud at the thought of Melinda preparing anything not purchased, wrapped in cling film, from a supermarket in Staincross Minster. First of all, unless you know what you are doing, you can easily kill yourself: Many species around here that are safe to eat also resemble mushrooms that will send you to meet your Maker. You have to know the smell and color of the dangerous versus the safe ones, and that comes from the experience of being a countrywoman. I have always thought it wonderful that in France you can take your mushrooms to a pharmacist, where they are trained to identify which mushrooms are safe and which not. But that is the beauty of a nation that lives and dies by its food.

The poisonous Yellow Stainer, common to this area, may not kill you but it can make you very ill indeed, and if you are elderly—elderly like her husband, Thaddeus, for example—well.… Besides, what she had in that basket was not a Yellow Stainer. It was a death cap, and that is what Melinda was collecting. The death cap! A tiny sliver of which can be fatal.

In some shock, I pointed this out to her and she—reluctantly? yes, reluctantly—took the mushroom from her basket and threw it to the ground. I picked it up so some animal or another human wouldn’t be poisoned by mistake. It was very odd behavior on her part indeed. Almost as if she planned to return to the spot once I had gone and retrieve it.

But this was months ago and nothing has happened since—well, until now.

All I had to go on even then was instinct. That guilty look on her face. I imagined that I knew what she was thinking. No—correction—I didn’t imagine anything. I
know
Melinda was up to no good.

But the path to hell is paved with the bones of people who don’t know when to mind their own business—at least I hope it is. I’m certainly not going to tell the police. Not the least of the reasons for my reticence is a complete distrust of the authorities, of any authority. This DCI Cotton seems like a sound man, but he has a case he needs to close, and he may be under pressure from higher-ups to do so.

Perhaps I can find a way to learn what the police are thinking. What harm could it do to ask around? It would put my mind at ease.

I am getting old now, nearing seventy. And there was I, hoping for peace in my old age!

As much as we think we have learned from living a long life, from long experience of making choices, it only becomes harder to know what is right. Max Tudor would say we see through a glass darkly, a dim reflection of the truth. And he’d be right.

I must get back to work now. But I think that writing to you, Claude, is what has kept me from going mad. Thank you for being there in spirit, in my spirit. Your presence in my heart is a late gift to me.

Love always, your Gabby

Max had lit a fire against the chill that had crept into the afternoon, and now he sat at his desk, making notes for his sermon for Palm Sunday, a few days away. The smell of the burning logs was restorative, a much-needed tonic to the senses. Max had just officiated at the funeral of a middle-aged man in a neighboring village, a man who had almost certainly committed suicide after a long spell of unemployment. The cause of death officially had been accidental overdose, to spare his widow. It might even have been true. The doctor had made that choice, and Max had gone along with it. What earthly difference did it make now?

Not all that long ago, Max reflected, suicides were given roadway burials at a crossroads to emphasize their outsider status.

A television documentary program droned forgotten in the background. It had come on the air after a cooking show Max had found himself watching for no particular reason. He admired the skills involved in preparing a meal, and watching someone else do it was almost like having dinner without the work and the calories. It had taken him a while to realize that his meal-by-proxy habit had developed under the reign of Mrs. Hooser and her ghastly cuisine.

Thea slept before the fire. Done on one side, she had rolled onto her back to toast the other. She slept the sleep of the just, paws and nose in the air, her soft ears fanned out on either side of her head.

Max, wanting a drink, glanced at his watch. The sun wasn’t yet over the yardarm. No doubt prompted by the day’s sad duties, a memory of his old colleague Paul flashed through his mind, a memory brief but sharp, all the sharper for being so unexpected. But it was a memory of Paul alive, and laughing—they had been drinking together, watching a boat race, and Max had said something, presumably something amusing, and Paul had turned to him, startled into a great shout of laughter. The image came to Max now with the clarity of an old photo found in turning a page of a scrapbook. But with this image in his mind came also the scent of the cold breeze coming over the water, the cheers of the spectators, and the full force of the being that was Paul, alive in that startled laugh.

Max had tried very hard to crawl permanently into a bottle when Paul had been killed. It seemed the only possible, the only sane response. But even the taste of his favorite single-malt whiskey had become vile, and remained for a long time foreign to his palate.

Paul’s death—the butchery that was his murder—had been the defining event of Max’s life. He had emerged from what he recognized now as a clinical-grade depression and begun the halting steps toward recovery, a recovery that included a new capacity to measure life not in years, but in moments. Not too long afterward, by a circuitous route that included mindless wandering in Egypt, he had found himself reading theology, studying for the priesthood.

It wasn’t as if his time with MI5, his time of being a young man, had been sacrificed in vain.

It was that it was someone else’s turn, he had thought.
Someone else’s turn.

Maybe someone else would do a better job.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t in the course of his career stopped guys who needed to be stopped—he knew he had. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t saved lives here and there—he knew he had done that also, and perhaps saved hundreds more he didn’t even know about.

When he’d been recruited into MI5, he’d been enormously flattered, as if he’d been singled out for his brains, his looks, his breeding. How much had pride been part of his enthusiastic response? How much knowledge had he really had of what he was in for—how soon he would be crushed, compromised by the choices he’d been forced to make? He’d been twenty-one, for God’s sake.

The age when the young everywhere were recruited to causes by the middle-aged, by the old.

There was a sudden shriek from the telly and he turned to see a creature being devoured by a larger creature. Too much reality, he thought, rising to switch off the set. Thea had rolled over in the instant, alert to predators.

He scooped up from his desk the pages he’d been working on, forcing his mind to his task, but he again found himself stuck for a conclusion to his Palm Sunday theme. Pacing the room, he picked up the book he had been reading the night before and just as quickly set it aside. A thriller didn’t call to him when there was so much that was thrilling in his own cozy little world.

So he was in a somber frame of mind, and doing all he could to will himself out of it, when Awena appeared, metaphorically parting the clouds. There was a creak of the door opening into his study, and there she was, a bright flower against the room’s dark paneling. Somehow she had slipped past the guard of Mrs. Hooser.

Ralph Waldo Emerson had said that nature always wears the colors of the spirit. So, thought Max, did Awena. Springtime yellow and pink were the choices for today’s gauzy, sweeping gown, gathered high at the waist by a wide belt of bronze fabric. She wore thin sandals, which he knew without question were vegetarian, for Awena literally walked the talk. Her toenails had been buffed to a natural pink gloss.

Max scooped her into his arms and they kissed. After a long while, Max stood back, searching her luminous eyes, touching the face that glowed so pearl-like, the skin incandescent and soft.

He led her to the sofa, where she rested curled in his arms, her head against his chest. Both were filled with wonder and relief at finding the other sound and whole and unchanged. Slowly, they began to speak of the light nonsense that weaves lives together. How was the course received? Did he get a chance to look in on Mrs. Tribble as she’d asked? Would the rain never stop?

On they went, talking softly, catching up on each other’s news.

Awena, of course, had heard all about the murder, but she knew Max would tell her what he could in his own way and time. And eventually, the subject drifted there, Max saying what little he knew as fact, and leaving out many of his suspicions.

He lifted the hair off the nape of her neck and then watched as it fell back into place, smooth as water.

“Your hair is beautiful,” he said.

“I’ve just come from the Cut and Dried,” she said. “Everyone was there. Including Melinda. She often is. And—you know, Max, there was this odd moment.… I’m still wondering what it meant.…”

“Oh?” said Max. “I…” And here he hesitated. Melinda’s behavior and emotional reactions seemed to him to be all over the map, but his moral obligation was to avoid anything approaching gossip. Maybe the grief, so lacking when Max had talked with her and Farley, was finally seeping in. “I hope that’s a good sign,” he said at last. “That she was out and about, doing normal things.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Awena vaguely.

“What did you mean by ‘odd moment’?”

“Oh. That had to do with Gabby and Annette, not Melinda. It’s a bit hard to describe, but Gabby was working on a client and I think she may have seen or heard something that upset her. Or Annette did. Or maybe Annette was just reacting to Gabby, because Gabby dropped a bowlful of hair color, you see, and Annette dropped a jar about the same time. There was a lot going on—the place is hopping, with all that’s been going on in the village.”

“It’s not like Gabby to overreact, I wouldn’t have thought.”

“Nor I.”

“What did she hear? Or see?”

“Do you know, I thought about it on the way over here, and what she seemed to be reacting to was the BBC broadcast. But that makes no sense at all.…”

Max waited.

“BBC Radio Four was broadcasting the news headlines,” Awena went on. “It was something about the prime minister and a visit to the U.S.—New York or Washington. He’d be attending a play and having some sort of fancy dinner. I’m sorry to say I didn’t pay close attention because, frankly, it didn’t seem important or even remotely interesting.”

She sat up, pushing against Max’s chest.

“Cotton seems to be following up a lead.”

“Who says?” Max asked.

“The Greek chorus over at the salon, of course,” replied Awena.

“I think we can agree on this: Everything said in this village gets distorted by the time it gets to the third telling.”

“They are
so
excited to be part of an investigation.”

Max was trying to envision Cotton attempting to conduct his investigation, exposed to a wave of chemicals, and to women—and sometimes men—with foil and clips in their hair, and with dye painted at their temples.

“Of course,” said Awena, “it could have been the tattoo.”

“What tattoo?”

“The customer Gabby was working on had a tattoo on the side of her neck. She was coloring this woman’s hair, sectioning it off, and as she pulled the hair from the woman’s neck, I saw the tattoo. It may have been that. Unless she heard someone talking about something that upset her. They were all talking at once—a lot of it was Hollywood nonsense.”

Max said mildly, “Many people feel that way about tattoos, particularly people of Gabby’s generation. They find them off-putting.”

It was, he reflected, all one with the current trend of piercings and tattoos and other adornments, trends Max himself did not understand. It reminded him too much of slavery and branding, of prison camps. The next generation would probably go back to spats and pocket watches, or whatever would most startle or shock their elders.