The Haunted Season Read online

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  Again, for my mother

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to The Epistle Magazine of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Alexandria, Virginia (Lent/Easter edition), for this inspiration: “Remember that the Lord has spoken often through dreams. Who knows what God is saying to the person who appears to be sleeping.”

  My thanks also to Boris Andjelic, Alexander Bogdanov, and Stephen Redburn for allowing me to lean on their expertise. Any mistakes, as always, are my own.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  THE REVEREND DESTINY CHATSWORTH: curate newly assigned to assist the Reverend Maxen Tudor of St. Edwold’s Church in Nether Monkslip.

  MAXEN “MAX” TUDOR: a former MI5 agent turned Anglican priest, Max thought he’d found a measure of peace in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip—until murder began to invade his Garden of Eden.

  AWENA OWEN: the owner of Goddessspell, the village’s New Age shop, Awena also has come to own Max Tudor’s heart. The arrival of their child completes the couple’s joy.

  MRS. HOOSER: vicarage housekeeper and the mother of Tildy Ann and Tom.

  MS. EUGENIA SMITH-GANDERFORT: a church volunteer devoted to Max Tudor. But is she a little too devoted?

  ELKA GARTH: owner of the Cavalier Tea Room and Garden.

  LORD AND LADY BAYER BAADEN-BOOMETHISTLE OF TOTLEIGH HALL: currently in residence with the lord’s son, Peregrine; his daughter, Rosamund; and the dowager viscountess.

  BILL TRAVIS: estate manager and horse trainer at Totleigh Hall, he is rumored to have caught the eye of the lady of the house.

  CHARLES HARGREAVES: butler/valet at Totleigh Hall.

  SUZANNA WINSHIP: the beautiful, outspoken, and ambitious sister of the local doctor.

  CHANEL DIRKSON: a successful author of self-help books whose own life is barely under control.

  DR. BRUCE WINSHIP: an expert in general ailments, Suzanna’s brother revels in theories of how the criminal mind operates.

  FRANK CUTHBERT: local historian, famous author (Wherefore Nether Monkslip), and husband of Mme. Lucie.

  MISS AGNES PITCHFORD: a retired schoolmistress and a walking cross-indexed repository of all village gossip.

  NOAH CARAWAY: wealthy owner of Noah’s Ark Antiques and of Abbot’s Lodge.

  DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR COTTON: the kinetic DCI is again dispatched from Monkslip-super-Mare to investigate a most suspicious death in the placid village of Nether Monkslip.

  DR. SPROTTLE: an expert in the art of death.

  SERGEANT ESSEX: DCI Cotton’s no-nonsense assistant.

  CANDICE THOR ST. GABRIEL AND ELSPETH MUIR: former nannies at Totleigh Hall.

  THE RIGHT REVEREND NIGEL ST. STEPHEN: the bishop wants to know why Max Tudor is again involved in murder most sordid.

  LILY IVERSON: owner of a local knitting and textiles business.

  TARA RAINE: A lithe, attractive yoga instructor, she rents studio space at Goddessspell.

  MAJOR BATTON-SMYTHE: a widower with a passion for history, and for Lily Iverson.

  ADAM BIRCH: owner of the Onlie Begetter bookshop.

  MR. STACKPOLE: the sexton of St. Edwold’s Church.

  CONSTABLE MUSTEILE: an officious man with ambitions to solve a crime, any crime.

  Granted that miracles can occur, it is, of course, for experience to say whether one has done so on any given occasion.

  —C. S. Lewis, Miracles

  These are the days of miracle and wonder …

  —Paul Simon and Forere Mothoeloa, “The Boy in the Bubble”

  PROLOGUE: DESTINY

  It was springtime, with lingering cold and damp shrouding the somber London streets. The best time of year to be in a steam room.

  And as the Reverend Destiny Chatsworth was to discover, a steam room was the ideal place to be for a spot of casual eavesdropping.

  Not that she would ever eavesdrop. God forbid. That fell somewhere into the same category as gossiping. But if being wrapped up in steam somehow gave people the illusion they were alone and unwitnessed while having a private conversation, she didn’t see how it was her fault if she overheard a few things.

  Some of them rather shocking.

  Destiny being a newly minted priest in the Anglican Communion, the fees for the use of the spa facilities in the exclusive Ladies’ University Club, a women-only establishment in St. James’s in central London, would normally be out of the reach of a not-yet-employed curate. But her doting and very wealthy aunt was a member, and as a combination graduation/ordination present she had given Destiny a guest-pass stay at the LUC. Destiny’s progressive aunt was tremendously supportive of her niece’s new calling: Aunt Jane still considered it an outrage that women had had to wait until 1994 to be ordained as priests in the Anglican Church.

  With a few weeks open between her ordination and her first day as curate of St. Edwold’s in Nether Monkslip, Destiny was using the time to relax, to catch up on her reading, to shop, to get a decent haircut for once, and to reflect on the glorious new future that awaited her. The question of what to wear was a vexing one: Wearing the religious collar was, for women, a bit trickier than for the men, unless one happened to like gray flannel suits and black shirts, which Destiny did not.

  And so she approached her stay at the late-nineteenth-century club as a special treat, and with a sense of saying good-bye to luxury—not just to such stately accommodations and fine food but also to having time free to pamper and indulge herself. Leaving university always meant putting away childish things, but perhaps this was even truer in her case. Destiny was nothing if not earnest in her desire to shine a pure light on an ever-darkening world. And to look appropriately dressed while doing it.

  The LUC (its members called themselves the LUCkey ones), which dated to 1885, was modeled on every men’s club in London: all leather armchairs, crackling fireplaces in winter, and rustling newspapers. There may have been a bit more floral print in the reading room upholstery and window tiebacks, and crocheted doilies protecting the tabletops, but those were the main differences. In recent years, a modern spa had been installed at great expense, and thus not without rancor and lingering ill feeling among the members of the club’s General Committee, many of whom felt that the availability of chess and backgammon boards, having provided sufficient licit diversion for decades, should continue to suffice. Discussions over the spa had reached the same fever pitch as discussions over the movement to modernize the name of the LUC, with Miss Haverdam threatening to chain herself to the fence if this scandalous proposal succeeded.

  While men were now permitted to stay as guests in the en suite second-floor rooms, few took advantage of this offer, deterred no doubt by the undeniably, not to say stridently, feminine air of the place. Men, in any event, were strictly forbidden the use of the spa amenities, a concession needed to get the plans for the new spa past the eagle eye of the General Committee.

  The new spa was in essence a glamification of what
had once consisted of little more than a large wading pool, a sluggish Jacuzzi (“in reality, a large petri dish for mold,” as more than one member had described it), and rows of rickety metal lockers. The result, something like a cross between a small school gymnasium and a recently excavated Roman bath, still was more functional than luxurious. But to Destiny Chatsworth, it was like the antechamber to heaven itself. Undressing before an empty locker in the spa’s dressing room, she reflected with no little wonder at the good luck that had befallen her. To soon be working for Max Tudor! The Reverend Max Tudor! She had known Max from when they were students at St. Barnabas House, Oxford, where he—close to completing his degree as she was just beginning her studies—was already legendary, viewed as a rising star in the Anglican firmament. That he had chosen to become vicar of a small village like Nether Monkslip, when he could have had his pick of parishes, surprised no one who knew him. So to be specially invited to apply for the position as his curate … well. It was a feather in her cap, a sign of how hard she’d worked and how far she’d come, and she had to stifle the very human impulse to brag openly. Although she did take every opportunity to insinuate the topic gently into every conversation, she hoped she’d be forgiven for it.

  As she disrobed the body she thought of as attractively, even Rubenesquely, plump, she could not help but notice the lithe young woman to her right, who was applying extravagant amounts of perfumed body lotion. Destiny pegged her as a yoga practitioner, and possibly a habitué of the beaches on the Continent. She had skin tanned to a uniform shade of milky tea, which suggested either a stay at a nude resort or frequent recourse to a solarium. Even the aureoles of her nipples blended into the surrounding skin, giving her the plasticized appearance of a Selfridges store dummy awaiting its next costume change.

  This superb physical specimen, having draped itself in designer clothing and heels, left behind an old copy of Bild magazine on one of the locker room benches. Destiny, who seldom had time for light reading, began leafing idly through the pages, reflecting as she did so that Duchess Kate was starting to show the same uncanny knack for attracting bad press into her life as had Duchess Fergie—for wearing not quite enough clothing just as a camera lens was pointed straight at her backside. Despite the perks of the job, Destiny wouldn’t trade places with her. Not for longer than an hour. Just long enough to see the parts of Buckingham Palace that were closed to visitors. (Destiny was, among other things, a history buff.)

  She put the magazine aside, leaving it for the next person. Somehow, this sort of tabloid “news” had in recent years lost much of its appeal for her.

  Once vainer than Little Women’s Amy March (and still given to perusing fashion magazines as if they alone held the secrets of the universe), Destiny had, at the age of thirty-five, undergone what most would call a conversion but she thought of as a wake-up call. The first thing that had had to go was her job. She had spent many years in the world’s most superficial pursuit (copywriting) in the most superficial of industries (advertising). When the press had begun to reveal more and more that the products she polished and shellacked to a glossy sheen were often produced by slave labor, or were created by destroying the environment, it provided one of the catalysts that propelled her out of her old life and into her new.

  Now clutching about her a too-small towel, Destiny warily approached the steam room with all the reluctant wonder of a missionary being asked to witness a pagan ritual for the first time. She had, in fact, never set foot in a steam room before, and she was sure there must be a certain etiquette involved. Did one knock on the door, or just burst in unannounced? Not to mention, surely some sort of safety measures were called for, and she didn’t know what they were. If she were to collapse in there alone, would someone come to her aid before she lost two dress sizes? The whole thing was so, well, so Finnish—so very foreign to a girl conventionally raised in a two-up, two-down terraced house in a Plymouth suburb.

  In the end, she entered the room slowly, without flourish or announcement, and carefully shut the glazed door behind her. She could just make out two other bodies inside, sitting with legs dangling over an upper wooden ledge. Deep in conversation, they paid her no mind as she entered. They both were wearing white towels wrapped turban-style about their heads and sarong-style around their bodies, so their only identifying markers were their red and pink pedicures. A wall of steam obscured their faces. Destiny tucked herself onto a seat nearest the door, settling into place on a lower bench. She wished she’d thought to wrap her own hair in a towel, as the steam would turn it into the sort of Bride of Frankenstein coils it reverted to when left to its own devices.

  All was silence for a long while. Destiny, wondering if she was supposed to chant Viking songs or something, found the novel experience of damp silence so restful, she soon fell asleep, head back and mouth open. She awakened on hearing, in some subconscious way, the two words that had been on her mind for months, and she fully awoke to a shushing sound from one of the women.

  “Nether Monkslip,” she had heard one of them say. She was sure she hadn’t been dreaming.

  Then: “It’s all right,” the other woman said. “She’s sound asleep.”

  Destiny assumed she’d been snoring, a habit brought to her attention by more than one peevish roommate or ex-boyfriend. But some instinct—the tone in the second woman’s voice—prevented her from announcing her newly alert state. Instead, she resumed making a snuffling noise interspersed with a snort she hoped approximated the sound one boyfriend had described as the noise a train loaded with panicking donkeys might make as it pulled too fast into the station.

  Instinct—plus the fact that she also had heard, very clearly, just as she had awakened, the word murder.

  When God hands you a coincidence like that, she thought, it is probably good to pay attention. Required, even. There would, or so she reasoned, be ample opportunity to make her presence known to the women once she knew exactly what it was they were saying about her soon-to-be new home. To say anything now, she’d be butting into a conversation that didn’t include her. It would be quite rude, really.

  She couldn’t tell much about the women from their voices as they resumed their conversation. In a locker room, there was ample opportunity to observe the vast variety and shapes of the human body: the yoga practitioners versus the foodies, as it were. Here in this pea soup–like fog, given that the women were dressed in identical towels, there were no visual clues. With their hair covered, and arms and legs mostly obscured in clouds of moist air, they were hard to identify or classify. She would have hazarded that they were both Caucasian, and that was about as far as she was prepared to go.

  From their voices, they were young. One quite young, the other possibly older. Well spoken. Posh. Their upper-class accents sounded alike to her ears, except that one had a deeper voice.

  Now one woman said, “I can’t tell you how ready I am to leave him. But the stupid prenup…”

  “The solicitor did warn you.”

  “Yes, I know, thanks. I really never thought it would be an issue. I thought I could cope. I didn’t think it would get to be this bad. He’s changed so.”

  “They all do, once the courtship is over.”

  “Not yet. I don’t believe that.”

  “That, my dear, is because you are a romantic. And look where it’s got you.”

  “Duh. I feel some days as if I’m living out a life sentence. A nice, cushy life sentence. The only thing that livens up that village is the occasional sighting of that heavenly vicar, and he’s taken now.”

  In good conscience, Destiny asked herself later, what could I have done? Snapped my towel at them to get their attention? Loudly cleared my throat and announced that I knew exactly whom and what they were talking about?

  But she kept quiet, in fact, because this seemed too good an opportunity to learn more about her soon-to-be village and its people. Nether Monkslip—the village she thought of as battle stations.

  Max Tudor’s galvanizing
effect on the female half of a population she had already witnessed for herself, many times.

  But above all, of course, there was that word: murder. Had one of the women said “I could murder him”? Or was it “I’m going to murder him”? That there had been in the past, or would be in the future, a murder? Destiny wasn’t sure exactly what she had heard or what she had dreamed. Only that one word jumped out of the air, as if illuminated in flashing neon lights.

  The one word seemed to hang there still, like a word in a cartoon balloon.

  Murder.

  She again wrestled, but fleetingly, with the thought of chiming in, of announcing herself, but she quickly dropped back into her role of eavesdropper. Well, it was not really eavesdropping, was it? So she assured herself. She sat in plain view—couldn’t get much plainer, now could she, nearly naked as she was in this scanty towel?—and the women themselves made little attempt to hide their discussion or even to lower their plummy voices. They assumed discretion, rather like the wealthy and privileged might when speaking in front of their servants. Or perhaps it was anonymity they assumed, like strangers passing time in a train. Destiny had overheard the most amazing arguments and confessions whilst sitting on trains. People assumed they were among people they’d never see again, and somehow it lowered their inhibitions.

  Funny she should think of that—that film Strangers on a Train, because now one of the women said something about its being a service to humanity if someone would please rid the world of Harold. Or did she say Harry?

  The other woman grunted something unintelligible. Then she went on, her voice lower now, saying something like “Too bad: We could have done a swap, helped each other out. Like in that old film.”

  An unintelligible reply, then: “But God knows where he went to, and good riddance. I’d have been glad of a helping hand.”