A Fatal Winter Read online

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  In memory of Dave F, Dave L, and Ranger Mike

  ~December 2011

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With all my love to my private cheering section. Some of you are no longer with us, but you walk beside me every day. This book is proof.

  I am especially grateful for the generosity of these authors, who so warmly welcomed me to the writing community: Donna Andrews, Rhys Bowen, Deborah Crombie, Peter Lovesey, Margaret Maron, Louise Penny, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Marcia Talley, and Charles and Caroline Todd.

  Special thanks to the superstars of publishing: Vicky Bijur, Kat Brzozowski, Karyn Marcus, Marcia Markland, Andy Martin, and Sarah Melnyk. You make it all possible.

  And to Bob. You, too. Always.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Cast of Characters at Chedrow Castle

  Family Tree

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Part I

  Prologue: December 26

  Eleven Months Later: November 27

  December 3

  December 12—Evening

  December 13—Morning

  Part II

  Chapter 1. Ticket to Ride

  Chapter 2. Upper Crust

  Chapter 3. At the Maharajah

  Chapter 4. I See You

  Chapter 5. Many Are Called

  Chapter 6. A Man’s Home

  Chapter 7. A Curse on This House

  Chapter 8. In the Kitchen

  Chapter 9. A Small Repast

  Chapter 10. Down the Garden Path

  Chapter 11. Clear-and-Present Danger

  Chapter 12. Max Out

  Chapter 13. Old Friends

  Chapter 14. The Heir …

  Chapter 15.… And the Spare

  Chapter 16. A Star Is Born

  Chapter 17. Picture This

  Chapter 18. Simon Says

  Chapter 19. Wintermute

  Chapter 20. I Feel Pretty

  Chapter 21. At Dinner

  Chapter 22. Ready for My Close-up

  Chapter 23. We Are Family

  Chapter 24. After Dinner

  Chapter 25. Lost Sheep

  Chapter 26. Family Conclave

  Chapter 27. By the Sea

  Chapter 28. At the Cavalier

  Chapter 29. S.O.S.

  Chapter 30. Heard in High Places

  Chapter 31. Be My Baby

  Chapter 32. Castling

  Chapter 33. One Bad Apple

  Chapter 34. Cliff-hanger

  Chapter 35. Good King Wenceslas

  Epilogue: December 21

  Also by G. M. Malliet

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CAST OF CHARACTERS AT CHEDROW CASTLE

  OSCAR, LORD FOOTRUSTLE

  LETICIA, LADY BAYNARD

  RANDOLPH, VISCOUNT NATHERSBY

  LESTER BAYNARD and his wife FELBERTA (“FESTER”) BAYNARD NÉE OLIVER

  LADY JOCASTA JONES NÉE FOOTRUSTLE (by Oscar’s first wife Beatrice Briar)

  SIMON JONES—Jocasta’s husband

  LAMORNA WHITEHALL—adopted by father Leo Whitehall (deceased) and mother Lady Lea Whitehall (deceased)

  GWYNYTH, LADY FOOTRUSTLE NÉE LAVENER—mother of the Twyns

  THE TWYNS—ALEC, VISCOUNT EDENSTARTEL and LADY AMANDA—Jocasta’s stepsiblings

  CILLA PETRIE—assistant to Randolph, Viscount Nathersby

  MILO and DORIS VLADIMIROV—a married couple employed as the butler and the cook at Chedrow Castle

  MR. WINTERMUTE—the family solicitor

  Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

  ~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The rules for properly addressing members of the British peerage are so complex it is a wonder any of them can remember who they are without consulting Debrett’s. Wherever possible I have used the least cumbersome forms of address for my characters (for example, “Randolph” rather than “Viscount Nathersby”) and I have included a family tree to help the reader trace the relationships in this tale.

  Obviously, the Footrustle family is fictional, as is their home, Chedrow Castle.

  PART I

  PROLOGUE

  DECEMBER 26

  Good King Wenceslas looked out On the feast of Stephen

  Oscar, Lord Footrustle, was in his castle, spying from the squint in his private chamber overlooking the Great Hall. The little window was concealed in the wall decorations, and in this manner had lords and masters through the centuries kept an eye, literally, on the goings-on at Chedrow Castle—retreating to the solar, as the room was called, to peer stealthily at the Great Hall antics through small openings in the thick walls. There was a larger squint overlooking the castle grounds and the fields beyond, and the Eighth Earl Footrustle now shuffled over to again take up a somewhat hunched position, for the squints were created in an age when men tended to be half a foot shorter.

  He wrapped his woolen robe tighter against his aging body, a body still lean from years of shooting and fishing and on occasion riding to hounds—in general, a life spent killing things, for which he made no apology. That was the way of life, and of death. It was the shooting season now, and he missed the camaraderie. He used often to shoot with friends—eight guns, twelve beaters, three pickers-up. But he didn’t like being out in the cold any longer, in more ways than one.

  He had a shock of thick white hair, which he smoothed now behind his ears, but his once-tan skin was now damaged and spotted from the outdoor life.

  He’d been handsome once, and bore the remains of that handsomeness still. Any vanity he’d had on this score had been tempered by his prolonged encounter with his second, much younger wife. He accepted now that he was old.

  But on a slow night—and they were all slow lately—he could pretend he was one of his ancestors, girded in leather and fur, and on the watch for invasion by land, or for betrayal from within. On the south-facing wall of the solar was a window that looked over the sea, a window enlarged and made modern in later, safer centuries—no attempt at invasion from that direction could ever go unnoticed, either.

  But tonight’s spying was hardly satisfactory, could indeed hardly be called spying, for the scene he looked out on was bleak and barren, a cold frost blanketing the ground under a bright moon.

  It was the night after Christmas, and not a creature was stirring.

  What the scene was missing was people. There was a certain amount of wildlife, but Oscar was a man more captivated by humanity, its foibles and failures, and having few people around to inspire and divert didn’t suit him. After a long career in London, he missed the hurly-burly, and was coming to realize the idea of retirement was much more captivating, and more fun to brag about to those less fortunate, than the reality of being retired, with time hanging heavy each day. He was too isolated out here, that was the problem. Yesterday, he and his sister Leticia had celebrated the holiday together, just the two of them. Well, along with that half-witted Lamorna—he supposed that made three. There were the servants, of course, as he still thought of them, but that hardly counted for company. Indeed, it would be standing at the top of a slippery slope to start inviting the servants in for family occasions.

  Should he move back to the city, he wondered (not for the first time)? Or should he—wouldn’t it be easi
er … yes. He could invite his family to visit. Even to come and live with him awhile. It’s not as if they had anything keeping them at home. It would even be rather nice to see the twins—briefly. What were they now, thirteen years old? Fourteen?

  He made a wheezing sound, a noise like a door swinging open and shut on rusty hinges. It might have been a laugh.

  Of course they’d all come running, he thought. The lot of them. They all think they’re going to inherit from me, so all they have to do is sit and wait. Hah! Lazy, leeching band of so-and-so’s. I’m only seventy-five. I’ll live to bury them yet.

  Just then, in the distance, was a movement—a flash of bright blue against the white and gray world. It was Jake Sloop, the farmer who lived nearby. What was he doing? Stopping and bending, gathering. Gathering wood, Oscar supposed. He sold firewood in Monkslip-super-Mare sometimes, not always legally, and he often stopped by the castle to see if he could sell some to Doris, the cook. The words to the old Christmas song came into Oscar’s mind: “… a poor man came in sight, gath’ring winter fuel.” The radio and telly this time of year were relentless in their playing of such songs; he felt he’d been forced to memorize the words to all of them.

  Oscar hadn’t ever known what it was to do manual work—his wealth had been inherited, and his vaster wealth came from thinking—from the blinding flashes of insight that had turned inherited wealth into a far-flung empire. The sight of old man Sloop made him think, long and hard, and in the end he decided it was time to get in touch with his loving family.

  He wanted next year’s festivities to be different.

  And they would be.

  ELEVEN MONTHS LATER: NOVEMBER 27

  Deck the halls with boughs of holly …

  “Poinsettias are not poisonous,” said Suzanna. “It’s an old wives’ tale.” For old wives like you, she added mutinously, if silently.

  “They are so too poisonous. They’re highly poisonous to cats,” retorted Elka Garth, owner, sole proprietor, and chief cook and dishwasher of the Cavalier Tea Room and Garden. She had been reading up on the care of poinsettias on the Web, where she had come across the warning.

  “Then keep the fucking cat out of the church,” said Suzanna.

  Elka reeled back in a somewhat stagey posture of horror. She was used to Suzanna. All the Nether Monkslip villagers were.

  “Really, Suzanna!” she said, just to keep in form. “You might remember where you are.”

  Suzanna, caught up in the fizz of the moment, had actually forgotten she was standing in the narthex of St. Edwold’s, where she and Elka had repaired to continue what had escalated from casual discussion to simmering warfare. They had gone there to talk away from the ears of the church handyman Maurice, who was again painting over the persistently recurring water stain on the church wall.

  “Sorry,” she said, automatically.

  Elka, seizing the momentary advantage, pressed on: “Luther lives here. He’s the official St. Edwold’s mouser. But we can’t afford to have another debacle like last year. Don’t you remember the nativity scene, when one of the lambs burst out crying when one of the angels pulled its ears, and Mary dropped the baby Jesus, which fortunately had not been a real baby, of course. Actually, she didn’t so much drop it as it came unwound from its swaddling clothes and sort of rolled naked down the chancel steps. The children didn’t quite know what to do and several more of them burst into tears. They thought they’d be held accountable, you see, for all of its going tits-up so quickly. It doesn’t do to have children younger than five up there. If they haven’t taken their naps that day, well—what can you expect? It would be like sending me on stage before I’d had my coffee in the morning.”

  Suzanna had just stared at her throughout this recital. “Jesus,” she said at last.

  “Precisely,” said Elka. “I mean, not precisely, it was a baby doll, but you do see why we can’t have anything go wrong this—”

  Suzanna cut her off. “Yes. Say no more. Please.”

  She sighed heavily, her buxom figure straining the fabric of a bright red woolen dress that wrapped and tied at her waist. She wore tan knee-high boots of a buttery leather and an antique brooch of holly leaves and berries, and she’d recently had her thick blond hair swept into an updo at the Cut and Dried Salon. She knew she looked smashing.

  Although why I bother in this one-donkey town, she thought, where the only male of any viable interest is the vicar, who is not taking the bait, is beyond me.

  “Mice,” she said now, enunciating slowly in her husky voice, “have rights, too. Did you ever think of that? We’d be doing them a favor—entire families of helpless mice. Fathers and mothers, struggling to raise tiny newborns, under constant threat from Luther. What’s one life weighed against so many?” Suzanna loved cats, and would never see any animal harmed, but Elka, she suddenly realized, was driving her quite, quite mad. Even if hell prevailed, she would never allow herself again to be paired with Elka Garth on the church flower rota. Never, never, ne—

  Suzanna’s thoughts hung suspended in midair, for just then, the Reverend (and extremely dishy) Max Tudor came into view, walking down the High. Blundered into the situation, as he would later recall it.

  Elka turned toward him, relief making her plain round face shine. Suzanna tucked a stray wisp of hair back into her French twist and began smoothing the fabric of her skirt over her hips. Both women approvingly watched his approach. He had a loping gait, and the long stride and easy movement of the athlete.

  For his part, Max was thinking of his sermon for the next day, which was Advent Sunday. He was preoccupied by metaphors for this time of waiting, an occasion that too often had nothing to do with patience and calm, but with frantic rushing about and shopping and overindulgence. Simultaneously, he was giving some advance thought to his Christmas Day sermon. Always so important to get right, he told himself. In actuality, Christmas was his favorite holiday and working on the sermon a particular pleasure. What was most to be avoided, as always, was providing a sense of dreary, never-ending monotony with a sermon that would have parishioners wondering, with Tom Stoppard, “Where is God?”

  Max was so preoccupied, in fact, that initially he did not recognize what was at stake in the women’s discussion.

  “Hello, Father!” said Elka, shouting her greeting and not-so-gently elbowing Suzanna aside as he approached. “Poinsettias are poisonous to cats, aren’t they?”

  Max, startled by the question, fell unwittingly into the trap.

  “I believe I’ve read somewhere they can be toxic.”

  Elka whipped her head round to look at Suzanna, the Told you! plain if unspoken.

  “But only mildly,” he said, opening the church door. “It’s the holly berry that can be extremely toxic.”

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, his gaze wandered to either side of the altar, where copious sprays of both offending items were beautifully arrayed, reflecting hours of effort by both women.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Suzanna, who had also supplied the holly berries, driving all the way to Monkslip-super-Mare to collect the donation from the flower shop, looked crestfallen. As if to underline the point, Luther chose that moment to sprint in front of the altar in pursuit of some unseen and possibly imaginary quarry.

  “I’m sure something can be arranged,” Max said, with a bright but feckless optimism that, given his knowledge of his contentious parishioners, bordered on insanity. Still, he was hoping the generally amenable Elka would volunteer a home for Luther. Or even that Suzanna would, given the circumstances.

  “Allergic,” said both women in unison.

  “Awena?” he said hopefully. Awena, the village’s so-called New-Agey Neopagan, was known to have a soft spot for animals.

  The women shook their heads in unison.

  “I happen to know she’s in London,” said Suzanna. “Shopping for decorations for her holiday party.” Thank God. She could just picture Awena trotting along right about now, swinging her lit
tle basket (probably full of eye of newt or whatever a neopagan would haul about with her), and Max’s eyes lighting up at the sight.

  “Well, of course,” Suzanna continued, “she’s calling it a holiday party to be inclusive, but she told me she was doing her solstice shopping. The party’s being held on the winter solstice, did you realize? That’s a big festival for someone of Awena’s … persuasion.”

  “Yes, and there will be a full moon and a total lunar eclipse that night besides,” said Max, smiling his oblivious smile. “That’s rather rare, I understand. Sounds to me like the perfect time for a birthday celebration. Especially this birthday celebration.”

  “Right,” muttered Suzanna. “All we’re missing now is a star in the east.”

  If she had hoped for a stronger or more disapproving reaction from Father Max, as the villagers called him, she was disappointed. She was not alone in noticing the vicar’s fondness for Awena. To be fair, it was a fondness shared by most of the villagers, of whatever religious persuasion.

  The trouble with Awena was that everyone liked Awena so. Suzanna herself liked Awena, which made her recent dislike all the more puzzling and irritating. Suzanna acknowledged to herself that all this made no sense at all. But it was the Reverend Max Tudor’s evident awareness of Awena, all the while Suzanna was practically throwing herself into his arms, that was feeding this aversion. What Suzanna didn’t need right now was competition. Max Tudor was a tough enough nut to crack as it was.

  “Anyway,” she said. “She won’t be here for a while. Maybe you can get your Mrs. Hooser to feed him, at least until Awena gets back.”

  Max bridled at the notion of Mrs. Hooser, the woman who “did” for him with an incompetence bordering on domestic sabotage, being in any way “his.”

  “Thea…” he began.

  “Thea is the gentlest dog that ever lived.” It was Elka’s turn to press home the advantage. “She’ll get along fine with Luther. She’ll welcome the company, more like as not.”

  “I don’t know…” said Max. “I have to be in London myself, the early part of December, for a symposium of sorts.”