Bliss and Blessing, by contrast, were almost matey. Blessing, clearly the older of the men, though junior in rank, took the lead, asking the questions and scribbling in a notebook, while Bliss twitched and occasionally barked a question. Chorea? Tourette’s? Tom had wondered, realising belatedly that he was being drawn in sympathetically by their deficits, which may have been the strategy of this strange partnership: Sorry for them, one might easily blab all, simply to bring a little cheer to their blighted lives. He wanted nothing more than a speedy solution to the mystery of Sybella’s death. But burned once and not entirely sympathetic to a breed that had yet to find his wife’s killer or killers, his default was to hone to the line between verity and hearsay. Yes—again, they noted, having looked a little into his background—he had been the first to find the body, but—lucky old you, grinned Blessing—you weren’t alone this time. Indeed not, Tom had observed, grimly, and relayed his version of the events of the May Fayre afternoon.
And then followed what Tom thought of as the inkling question—about his own movements late Sunday.
“We’re obliged to ask,” Blessing said, setting his cup on the edge of Tom’s desk.
Tom studied the expression on his interlocutor’s face, the matter-of-factness projected by the slightly twisted mouth and the steady gaze. He felt his hand slip across the smooth wood to grip the pencil he used for jotting notes. “There’s no question then that this is—”
“We’re treating this as a homicide, sir.”
Tom’s eyes travelled past Blessing, unseeingly, to the mahogany bookcase with its jumble of coloured spines and silver-framed pictures opposite. His thoughts were assaulted by a corrosive and unexpected spurt of rage: He was suffering, as he suffered in the days and weeks after Lisbeth’s death, anger’s powerful allure. He was angry now, blindingly angry, not only that the life of a young woman of his parish had been stolen, that her father had been left bereft, but—and he recognised his self-servingness—that the sweetness of this sweet village, this haven he had sought for his Miranda, had been horribly tainted. He shut his eyes. He would not be corrupted by anger. In Bristol, he had battled anger with prayer. Needs must again, and it was only an abrupt snapping noise, like a footfall in autumn leaves, that returned him to the presence of others in the room.
“Vicar?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I—”
“Are you all right?”
Tom straightened in his chair. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Puzzled, Tom followed Blessing’s downward glance and saw the pencil broken in his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I think I’ve been willing myself to believe that no such great evil had been visited on this village. It’s the shock.”
“Perfectly understandable, sir.” Blessing said it perfunctorily. “Now, as to your whereabouts …?”
Tom took a cleansing breath and replied that Sunday he had been nestled in the bosom of his family; otherwise he had not been inside the village hall since Wednesday last when he had addressed a meeting of the Mothers’ Union.
“Do you know of any reason why anyone would wish to take Ms. Parry’s life?” Bliss brushed biscuit crumbs from his tie.
“ ‘Wish’?” Tom repeated. “You’re referring to intent? To be precise, to murder?”
“Manslaughter is a possibility, but we’re considering all possibilities.”
“No, none at all,” Tom replied numbly. Eric’s story of Sebastian’s pique over Sybella’s sketching him in the pub flitted across his mind, but it was hearsay and it was trivial.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Any idea why her body was placed in the drum?”
“None, I’m sorry to say.”
“Seems a daft thing to do,” Blessing speculated, needlessly wetting the tip of his pen with his tongue.
“Likely planned to remove it at a later hour,” Bliss added conversationally, studying the contents of his teacup. “Perhaps he was about to be caught in the act.”
Still numbed, Tom interjected slowly, “Are you supposing that someone from Thornford planned to kill Sybella?”
“Early days, Mr. Christmas, but it’s a possibility, isn’t it?” Blessing responded. “The drum suggests temporary lodgings. Very temporary. If it were some stranger happened across her, you’d think he’d just leave her body on the floor.”
“It might be ritualistic,” Bliss barked. “Sort of sending a message, like.”
“Do you think?” Blessing addressed his partner.
“I don’t know. What do you think?” Bliss turned to Tom with a smile that didn’t spread to his eyes.
“I haven’t a clue,” Tom replied. “I very much wish I did.”
“Noise haters?” Bliss suggested, shifting suddenly in his seat.
“Most people hate excessive noise, but—”
“Percussion revulsion?”
“Detective, I can hardly believe—”
“Japanophobia?”
Tom started. “Why would you think that?”
“The drum is of Japanese provenance, is it not, Mr. Christmas?” Blessing tapped his pen against his thigh.
“But Sybella had nothing to do with the drums, Japanese or not,” Tom protested. “It was her father who bought the two big ones, including the whatsit—the o-daiko drum that Sybella was inside of.”
“Ah, then maybe it was to get at Mr. Parry.” Blessing said serenely.
Tom was shocked. He couldn’t imagine anything in Colm’s background that would lead to such an act of cruelty, and he said so. In the spotlight as a pop star, Colm had surely been well scrutinised; in private life, he had been pottering harmlessly in his garden for more than fifteen years, writing the occasional film score or tune for an advert, and generously lending his musical talents to a little country church and to the amateur theatre group. The villagers were very fond of him.
“And you’ve been in Thornford Regis how long, Mr. Christmas?” Bliss barked.
“About two months.”
“Not very long, is it?”
Tom had to allow that it wasn’t. And with that the interview ended. Rising from his chair, Blessing informed him that the parish council was permitting them use of the Old School Room on Church Walk while they carried out their enquiries. They would be in touch if they thought he could be any more help to them, which suggested to Tom that they didn’t think he, townie that he was, would be. He watched them exit through the French doors into the late afternoon haze of the back garden and down the brick path with its borders of pinks and roses towards the millpond. Then he stared at his computer screen unseeingly, all thoughts of his sermon vanished from his mind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tom had had more successful confirmation classes in the past and, in part, he blamed the weather, which had grown unseasonably sultry as the afternoon wore into evening, portending that some cloud would soon take a notion to burst upon the village. In part, he blamed himself. He couldn’t stop his mind from wandering over events of the past two days, sending him to realms untouched by the content in his copy of Faith Confirmed. And he didn’t feel completely unfair blaming his three confirmands, or at least two of them, for the unholy bore the hour had been. Amber Sherwill was in his class; he knew through Madrun, who had heard it from Karla, who had overheard Mr. Sherwill say it in the post office to his wife—that if Amber completed confirmation, her reward would be an iPod. Apparently she insisted on a pink one, ghastly child, he thought uncharitably, recalling half an hour of her examining her nails, flicking her hair, and acknowledging the observations of others with an insufferable “whatever.” He had finally had to tell her to switch her mobile off. She was only four years older than Miranda, he noted worriedly. Four years! It didn’t bear thinking about.
Amber sat as far away from Charlie Pike as she could, taking the hard open-arm Queen Anne chair nearer the French doors rather than the soft, fat couch the others chose—which was a futile exercise in teenaged n
arcissism because Charlie paid her no mind anyway, and hadn’t during the previous two classes. During those last two, however, Charlie had been engaged, asking some very searching questions about Jesus’ death and resurrection. Once again, Tom had marvelled at the peculiar Pikes’ clever spawn. This week, however, Charlie did nothing but fidget, stare off into the book-crowded corners of the vicarage study, and occasionally glance at him with a kind of dull misery.
Only his third confirmand, Penella Neels, was thoroughly engaged this Tuesday evening. She was one of eight women who collectively owned Thorn Barton, once the manor farm, dedicating it to organic produce and humanely raised dairy cows. Penella had taken confirmation classes at thirteen, but when the bishop arrived for the confirmation service, a bout of measles had kept her at home. Now, nearly twenty years later, she was keen to finish the job, though Tom wasn’t sure why, as she did rather go on a bit about patriarchy, the Church’s wretched treatment of women, and the like. He had thought earlier that perhaps a few of her seven cohorts had recruited her as an eco-feminist fifth columnist in the Church. If so, the undermining was bound to work, because he had been finding her—well, except perhaps for this lackluster evening—thoroughly charming. Much depends on delivery—as he had learned in his magician touring days as The Great Krimboni—and Penella delivered her comments with a kind of sweet earnestness, her head tilted, her blue eyes raised heavenwards like an ecstatic saint, one finger daintily buttressing her chin. She had a splendid set of bosoms, too, which her casual attire did little to conceal, behooving Tom to keep his eyes north of the buttressing finger, as any priest worth his stipend knew these days. He enjoyed sparring with her, as he had once enjoyed sparring with Lisbeth, who, not unpredictably, took a view that some of the tenets of Christianity were apt to strain credulity.
“I mean,” Penella had said earlier, nibbling on one of Madrun’s almond biscuits, “with the Virgin Birth, don’t we have an entire religion founded on an oxymoron?”
Tom had been startled out of his reverie. His mind, which was much on Sybella, had been trailing around a conversation he had had earlier with Madrun, after Bliss and Blessing had left. “I was curious, Mrs. Prowse,” he had said to his housekeeper as she was bending down in the kitchen garden, cutting asparagus stalks, “why Colonel Northmore wanted to have a cup of tea inside the village hall yesterday when there was a very good tea tent outside?”
Madrun had straightened up and blown away a strand of hair that had landed near her mouth. “The noise, he said. All the kids running about.”
“But in the small hall noisy kids were in some concentration—Mrs. Hennis’s Twelve Drummers Drumming group.”
Madrun shook dirt from the asparagus stalks. “Actually, the colonel was looking for his walking stick. He said he’d left it in the village the day before—”
“Sunday.”
“Sunday, when he’d wandered in while out walking Bumble. I expect he was interested in the setting-up for the fayre … or perhaps wanted to get a glimpse of Mrs. Drewe’s quilts.”
Tom had regarded the evening meal’s vegetable accompaniment with a certain relish (with hollandaise, please). “Colonel Northmore doesn’t need a stick or a cane to walk.”
“No. It’s more a …”
“Affectation?”
“Yes, that’s the word.”
“And, of course, he did find the stick. He was holding it when Daniel crashed into him.”
“We found it on the floor in the kitchen.” Madrun regarded him with mild surprise, then a little consternation, then shock as a certain intelligence passed between them. But at that moment Tom’s mobile rang, diverting his attention. There had been no name on the screen; the number was unfamiliar; and it had a London prefix. He smelled “press” and, as he had at Bristol, after Lisbeth’s murder, he wondered how they had managed to get his private number. Madrun had deciphered his frown instantly. “I didn’t give it to them,” she’d responded. “I know better than that. If you go inside, I think you’ll find your answerphone is full. After Mr. Kinsey disappeared, the rural dean told me quite expressly not to talk to the papers.”
Bugger and a dozen other swearwords, Tom had thought, striding across the lawn and into the vicarage study to listen to his phone messages, all of them reporters enquiring about the time of Sybella’s funeral (they somehow knew the date even though he had determined it with Colm only that morning), which they used as an excuse to seek his views on the recent tragedy in Thornford Regis. One had addressed him as “Father Christmas” and snickered through his entire delivery. The last call had been from the diocesan communications officer, an efficient woman with a cut-glass accent, and so he had spent the time before confirmation class assembled, between bites of supper served to him on a tray unhappily by Madrun, working on a suitable press statement. He had switched his phones off for the class, but now, sitting contemplating Penella’s question, he could see the light on the answerphone registering a new call.
Penella shot him a perplexed glance and even Amber was arrested from the study of her fingernails. Only the sullen Charlie remained oblivious, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes on the floor.
“Sorry,” Tom said, “my wife—my late wife—once asked the very same question about the Virgin Birth.”
He noted a new, sympathetic interest in his female listeners’ eyes, the “widower effect,” as he thought of it. As usual, it made him uncomfortable. He hastily interjected: “She took a wry view of some Christian tenets.”
“I don’t think the village has seen a vicar with a wife in thirty years,” Penella mused. “Not that I’m old enough to really know.” She tilted her head fetchingly. “I expect it’s difficult being a vicar without having a wife.”
“I do have Madrun,” Tom responded lamely. “She’s a great help.”
“But not quite the same, is it?”
“Er … no.” He glanced at Amber, who had taken to peering at Penella with what looked like a womanly scepticism far beyond her thirteen years. She turned to Tom:
“So, like, what was your answer to this, like, you know, whatever …”
“Oxymoron,” Tom supplied, giving a passing thought to Amber’s barbaric syntax. “I believe I said something to the effect of—”
Just then Madrun bustled into the room. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Christmas, but Penella is wanted at the farm urgently. I answered the phone in the kitchen. Indira has gone into labour.”
“Oh!” Penella leapt up. “I’d best rush. Vicar, I am sorry. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave.”
“We might as well end here then,” Tom responded, glancing at his watch. “It’s getting late. Which hospital?” he added.
“No hospital,” Penella replied over her shoulder, rushing out the study door.
“Indira is a cow,” Madrun explained.
“Whatever,” Amber declared, rolling her eyes and snatching a biscuit off the tray. She made to dart after Penella.
“Amber, wait. Perhaps Charlie might walk you home. You know, because …”
The girl peered at him suspiciously, then her eyes widened. “Oh! You mean because of Sybella.”
“Or I could call your father.”
“Don’t! I mean—” She flicked a glance at Charlie and seemed to weigh some option. “Like, my dad’s coming anyway. I’ll meet him up the road. I’m okay. It’s not dark yet.”
Fibber, Tom thought, as she snatched up her copy of Faith Confirmed, but argument seemed futile. He looked worriedly after the departing girl as Madrun lifted the tray and presented it to Charlie, who had remained mute during the exchange.
“Take the last one with you,” she said.
Charlie picked up the biscuit and nibbled its edge with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. He seemed disinclined to follow the others, cocking his head instead towards a nearby shelf as if the spines of the books thereon were of overwhelming interest. Tom looked at Madrun, who raised a comprehending eyebrow and glided out of the study. Tom got up and closed the door. Tho
ugh clergy were cautioned against being alone with teenagers, he decided he’d take a chance. The boy, sunk into the sofa’s blue and white striped chintz, looked utterly miserable.
“What did you tell your wife, Mr. Christmas?” he asked, almost his first words for the past hour. “About the … birth.”
“That if you believe in God the impossible becomes possible.”
Charlie stared at him, then looked away. “Did your wife believe in God?” he mumbled.
“Yes. In her own way.” Tom resumed his seat and leaned towards the hunched-over boy. “Charlie, I think something is troubling you,” he said, prepared for the usual adolescent agonies. “Is there anything I can do?”
The boy’s eyes met his again. His hands had begun a paroxysm of twisting. “I think …” he began, his voice cracking. He gulped and started again. “I think Sybella died … because of me.” The last words came out in a rush while his eyes, still holding Tom’s, filled with a kind of horror.
“I see,” Tom responded slowly, praying for a little time. He had expected parental or school difficulties and would have been very much happier if they were. “Now why would you think that?”
“Because I was with her in the village hall Sunday night.”
“Late?”
“Not really. Sort of around nine-thirty or ten or so.”
Tom took a deep breath. “And why were the two of you in the hall at that time of the evening?”
Charlie’s face flushed. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I can’t promise that, Charlie.”
“But you’re a priest!”
“Charlie, I’ll do my best to keep your confidence, but if I think the police need to be involved then I’ll have to take it further.”
The boy released a soft moan. “It was her idea.”
“Meeting in the hall?”
Charlie nodded.
“Whatever for?”
Charlie studied his feet. New trainers, Tom noticed. “She said she would sell me some stuff … drugs.”
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