Twelve Drummers Drumming

by C. C. Benison

  “I never quite finished mine.”

  “That would be my doing. My apologies for dragging you away.”

  “I think I interrupted you when you were telling me who had keys to this place,” Tom said, climbing the stairs behind Mitsuko. He couldn’t help noticing her slight but shapely figure, encased as it was in tight black trousers and short-sleeve top.

  “No one, I don’t think,” she replied, stopping to fit her key into the lock to the upstairs flat door. “Well,” she continued, grunting a little as she pushed the door open, “Sebastian has a set … well, had a set.”

  “Had?”

  Mitsuko held the door open while Tom passed through. “Liam and I went to Tunisia for two weeks after Christmas. Sebastian volunteered to water the fig tree and a few plants in the bedrooms and keep an eye on the place while we were away.”

  “Not Sybella?”

  “No, she was away, too, around the same time—when the school term ended for Declan. Colm and Celia took them to … Cleveland, I think it was.”

  “Odd, I didn’t think Colm or Celia had family in the north.”

  “No, the Cleveland in America. The one with the rock-and-roll museum.”

  Mitsuko moved down a short hall and turned in to a narrow kitchen that ran against the back of the building. Having never been in the Drewes’, Tom was interested to see how the couple lived. His eyes took in a space that was as spare as the studio downstairs was cluttered.

  “So Sebastian had a set of keys,” he remarked, figuring the Drewes likely took most of their meals at their restaurant. He couldn’t see a crumb or a used spoon.

  “Yes, Liam took them back. I didn’t mind Sebastian having them. You know, if there’s any emergency or something. He’s very capable.”

  “Yes,” Tom agreed, mildly, sure he detected little daubs of strawberry burst along Mitsuko’s cheeks. “He is very capable. But … it seems your husband has another view.”

  “My husband,” Mitsuko responded fiercely, her face disappearing behind a stripped pine cupboard door, “has the wrong end of the stick about many things.”

  Tom heard a scraping of glass and tins, then Mitsuko’s face, strawberry daubs in retreat, reemerged. “I hope you don’t mind instant.” She held up a jar of Nescafé. “I’m feeling a headache coming on and the cafetière will take too long.”

  “Then perhaps I should leave you be.”

  “No, please don’t. I …” Mitsuko faltered. “Go into the sitting room, Tom. I’ll be in soon as I get the kettle boiling.”

  Tom’s first impression on entering the Drewes’ front room was of one of those showrooms of sleek contemporary furniture. A console table, a coffee table, the shelving—all black—and the couch—an extra-long model, sheathed in black leather—suggested craftsmanship of a particular variety or imagination, since the eye was immediately shocked by a single red pillow among the four black that backed the elongated curve of the banquette. With the exception of the green canopy of a potted fig tree, it was the only spot of colour in the room. The walls were whitewashed, punctuated with framed charcoal portraits, the blinds rolled at the windows overlooking northwesterly over The Square were white canvas, and white goatskin rugs covered the stripped pine floor. The large flat-panel TV and the Bose stereo, Tom suspected, were a concession to Liam, but they were most definitely white. Carefully chosen by Mitsuko, no doubt, not to violate her crisp aesthetic. Only one thing blighted the pristine setting: Next to the television remote control on the coffee table was a midden of lager cans, most of them twisted and crushed, along with several crumpled crisp packets. There was a discernible beery fug to the room. Since he doubted Fred Pike imbibed so openly on the job—installing the Drewes’ new toilet, in this case—only one person could have left this clutter. He lifted one of the cans and shook it, to see if there was a residual slosh. There was. His mind was sent back to his conversation earlier with Tilly Springett in the Waterside.

  “The reason,” she had whispered once Mitsuko had gone into the restaurant’s kitchen and the ladies’ conversation had been reignited, “that I’m at sixes and sevens is that I’m sure I saw Liam going up our road towards the village hall Sunday night. Which really,” she hastened to add, as though embarrassed by the triviality of the observation, “shouldn’t be something to remark on, only Liam’s just not someone I ever expect to see near my cottage at that time of night. You know how busy he is. I’m told he only seems to beat a path between this café and his flat, and I’m not on the way to either—I’m the last cottage in Pennycross Road before the village hall—and I wouldn’t have given it a second thought,” she continued breathlessly, “but for Sybella’s unfortunate … you know …” She looked at Tom pleadingly.

  Tom’s brows knitted. “About what time?”

  “Well, let’s see.” Her hands fluttered over her cup. “I’d been watching a film on ITV, but couldn’t quite get through it—the plot confused me, so I switched it off, oh, a little after nine-thirty, I think, and went to make a cup of cocoa, and then …”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, dear, I wish I’d looked at a clock. Closer to ten, by the time I got to bed, I would think. You see, I was drawing curtains in the bedroom and happened to look out … and saw him … Liam, that is. Oh, how odd, I thought, but didn’t think much more about it at the time.”

  “You’re certain it was Liam.”

  “Well, it was the back of him, but he does have a strong build, doesn’t he? And I’m quite sure I saw the tattoos.”

  “It’s rather dark, though, by ten.”

  “Yes, that’s true, but the lamp from the bedroom cast a little light on the road … before I closed the curtains, of course.”

  “Did he see you?”

  Tilly gave him an apprehensive glance. “I don’t know. This is why I feel like a character in an Agatha Christie. I don’t think he saw me. He had gone past by the time I got to the window. I saw the back of him, as I said. But he might have noticed the light come on when I came into the bedroom and think that I—”

  “Mrs. Springett, you mustn’t get yourself into knots. It’s most likely nothing, but—”

  “—And,” she interjected, leaning towards him, “and he was carrying something.”

  “I thought you saw the back of him.”

  “It was the way his arm—his left arm—was crooked. I’m sure he was holding something to his chest.”

  A weapon. The thought intruded, unbidden. Tom sought to dismiss it then, as he did now in the Drewes’ sitting room, but he couldn’t help the threadings of his imagination, tying a furious row Sunday evening at the Waterside to a peculiar sighting along Pennycross Road to a liquid attempt at anesthetising horror, dread, and guilt.

  Or maybe, he thought, glancing over at the Drewes’ huge telly, Liam had merely settled to watch Match of the Day 2 after a brisk trot through the village and, as the Americans were wont to say, “kick back” with the wife out of the picture. He preferred this view. But to Mrs. Springett, he could no more not exercise the moral authority that went with his vocation than he could not preside at the prize-giving at school at the end of term.

  “You really must,” he’d said to Tilly, regretfully, “take your concerns to the police. They’ll sort things out.”

  “Yes, I thought you might say that, Vicar,” she responded, but before he could reassure her that her confidences would be kept—by both him and the police—Mitsuko had whisked him away.

  Replacing the lager can with its fellows, Tom moved towards the room’s only cosy feature, a Georgian fireplace surround, painted white to blend with the walls. On the mantel, under a large mirror, a collection of black-and-white photographs in matching silver frames drew his attention. Family—Mitsuko’s, not Liam’s, he presumed—from the Japanese cast to the faces. He reached for the last photograph, but movement reflected in the mirror alerted him to Mitsuko’s presence in the room. She was carrying a black lacquered tray with two white mugs of coffee, and matching milk jug and suga
r bowl.

  “Is this your brother?” he asked, lifting the relevant picture from the mantel and turning. “I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

  “He’s an ornithologist in America,” she replied, placing the tray on the coffee table. Tom noted her lips form an irritated moue as she took in the pile of ale cans. “You might have seen his picture on the back of a book or two.”

  “That must explain it. Dosh—my mother—is an enthusiastic twitcher. She has a couple of his books, I think. Birds of Eastern North America and such.”

  “Her interests range afar.”

  “Her partner comes from Virginia. They travel there from time to time. I’ve been, too.”

  “Oh,” Mitsuko responded vaguely. She transferred the coffee things to the table and stacked the cans onto the tray.

  “What’s your brother’s name?” he asked over the metallic clatter.

  “Hari Oku.”

  “Of course. Oku’s your maiden name, then.”

  “Tom, I’m just going to remove these to the kitchen.”

  Oku, Tom pondered as Mitsuko bustled the offending detritus from the room. Oku. The name seemed to ring in his memory. Oku. Oku-ku-k’joob. I am the walrus! A childhood memory of Kate crooning Beatles songs to him slipped in and out of his consciousness. No, that wasn’t it. What was it? Oh, yes, it was intermixed in the colonel’s ravings at the hospital the afternoon before. Perhaps he had been hallucinating about Mitsuko, for what was logic to the hallucinating mind?

  “Hari works at the Smithsonian.” Mitsuko reappeared. “Akemi—my sister—works in London as a fashion buyer. And of course,” she gestured towards a picture of an older couple, “those are my parents.”

  “Your father manages the Sony plant at Bridgend—is that correct?” Tom recalled this among the flotsam and jetsam in Julia’s précis of the village folk.

  “Managed. He retired last year.” Mitsuko perched on the edge of the leather couch, black jeans melding with black leather. “He came from Japan to open the plant in the seventies.”

  “And stayed on.”

  “Yes … well, more than half his life has been here and he loves it. He’s taking Welsh lessons in retirement and is involved in Welsh folk dancing—at least until this operation. I think my mother sometimes entertains the idea of moving back to Japan—she has a sister near Tokyo—but Akemi and I live relatively nearby, and Hari visits often …”

  “You were born … here?” Tom took the seat with the red cushion.

  “Yes. Hari’s the oldest. He was born in Japan, but Akemi and I were born in Wales. So despite appearances,” she drew an imaginary circle around her face, “the only Japanese I know are a few remembered words and phrases from childhood that my mother taught me. My father was quite adamant that we stick to English.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid I’m no use to Japanese tourists lost in London.”

  Tom smiled in return. “Have you visited? Japan, I mean.”

  “No. I … it was never really encouraged. Other than my mother’s sister and a cousin, there’s little family there. My father was an only child, you see, and …” She stopped and stared into her coffee.

  “And …?” Tom prompted, after a moment.

  “Oh …” Mitsuko shrugged and shifted in her seat. “It’s nothing, really. There’s an estrangement of some nature. My father never speaks of my grandfather.”

  “Speaks? If your grandfather’s still alive, then at least there’s a chance for reconciliation, yes?”

  Mitsuko’s mouth formed a tight frown, then she said: “The Japanese are a long-lived people. I shall live to be a hundred, I expect.” She brought the coffee to her lips at last. “Oh, that’s very good.” She sighed. “I needed that.”

  Tom lifted his cup and likewise took a sip, wondering at her oblique response, but aware that her mind had other preoccupations. The coffee was hot and certainly strong.

  “Would you like me to ring the police?”

  Mitsuko started. “Whatever for?”

  “To report your stolen items,” he replied, taken aback.

  She stared at him; then her alarm vanished. “Oh! Of course, that’s what you meant. Sorry. I was thinking about … No, Tom, thank you—I’ll ring them. I have the registration number for the laptop and the other things somewhere.” She looked away and sighed. “I think reporting to the police is really more a formality for our insurer. I’m sure my laptop’s gone for good, poor thing. Besides, the local constabulary has more important things to worry about, doesn’t it?” She turned back to him. In the blackness of her pupils, he thought he detected a new unease. “Sybella, I mean,” she added.

  “The CID will be busy,” he agreed, trying to suppress a surge of unpleasant memories that attended his wife’s homicide investigation. “Theft would probably land in some other pigeonhole.”

  Mitsuko lifted her legs and folded her body into the corner of the couch. “Maybe I should be grateful the laptop was stolen.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “It’s managed to distract me. On the drive back from Wales, Sybella didn’t leave my thoughts. But the news reports were so sketchy—they talked about her death being treated ‘as suspicious.’ I kept fiddling with the dial on the radio for something more precise, but all they seemed focused on was Sybella’s parentage: ‘Eighties pop star’s daughter dies’—that sort of thing—until I was driving into the village. Then the news said it was confirmed as homicide. I expect it’s been in the papers.”

  Tom nodded assent.

  Mitsuko leaned over and placed her cup on the coffee table. “But it didn’t say how.”

  “I think the police sometimes like to keep certain details to themselves.” He had hoped to keep the speculation from her ears. “It helps them in their investigations.”

  “Oh.” Mitsuko began a rhythmic stroking of the hair framing one side of her face. She pulled a few glossy black strands forwards and examined them, the way Lisbeth had sometimes when she was tired or anxious, ostensibly looking for split ends. “But you must have an idea,” she said, regarding him through the scrim of her hair. “I’m sure the whole village knows by now. They usually do.”

  “Well, I think people have guessed,” Tom responded. “Given the kinds of questions the police have been asking.” He paused. His heart sank a little. He could sense Mitsuko’s apprehension and he knew the root of it. “Sybella died from a blow to the head.”

  The hair fell from her hands and swayed onto her breasts. She stared at him, her face parchment white.

  “I’m sorry” was all he could think to say.

  “Then you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It is rather a small village. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “But that’s what people are thinking, isn’t it?” Tom thought guiltily of his little flock only an hour before on the millpond. His lack of response was acquiescence. “It was years ago. It was an accident. Liam never meant to hit that man at that club. He paid his debt.” Mitsuko continued to stare at him, her face a palimpsest of fear; then she glanced away. “I know he has a dreadful temper. I know he can be irrational about”—she stopped herself suddenly—“about things. Oh, God, they’ll ask us questions, won’t they?”

  “Who?”

  “The police.”

  “They’ve already had a conversation with your husband, I’m afraid. You and Liam were her employers. But I don’t think you need worry unnecess—”

  “But it was Sunday night she was killed, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure they’ve pinpointed an exact time, but yes. Or early Monday morning.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “What is it?”

  “I … it’s nothing.”

  Tom raised both eyebrows.

  “Really, Tom, I can’t say.”

  Tom gazed unseeingly out the window towards the holiday cottage across The Square and pondered his situation. He took no pleasure in being a conduit of tittle-tattle; he despised tittle-tattle. Neither w
as his intent to give the Drewes an opportunity to prevaricate before the law. But he felt a need to at least forewarn them, to give them time to look into their hearts that they might not bear false witness.

  “You were in the Waterside’s kitchen Sunday evening, around supper time, yes?”

  Mitsuko blinked. “Yes.”

  “But you left by the delivery door.”

  “Yes … but how …?”

  “I wasn’t there, if you’re wondering that. But there was a local couple at a table and—”

  “And they heard us rowing. Oh, God,” she said again, closing her eyes as if to stave off some awful truth. “Surely they didn’t hear what the argument was about. Please tell me they didn’t hear that.”

  “Mitsuko, I think simply the fact that you and Liam and Sybella were rowing in the restaurant a few hours before Sybella’s death will be enough to pique police interest. I don’t know what it was about. I don’t want you to tell me what it was about, and it may be utterly irrelevant. But it’s best if you don’t try to—”

  “I can’t, Tom! If I tell them, they’ll think—”

  “Think what?”

  The new and strident voice filled the room. Tom looked over the back of the couch to see Liam, his arms like tattooed hams crossed over his shirtfront.

  “Think what?” Liam said again, louder this time.

  “What are you doing here?” Mitsuko unfolded her lithe form and twisted to face him. “What about the lunch trade?”

  “I’ve closed the place. What’s he doing here?”

  “You wouldn’t come back and help me.”

  “I have a restaurant to run.”

  “Well, you’re not running it now, are you?”

  “I don’t want you hanging about with the likes of him.”

  “He’s my priest, Liam. That’s all. That’s all it is. That’s all it ever was.”

  “Get out.” Liam’s eyes burned into Tom’s. He jerked his thumb towards the door.

  Tom suppressed an adrenaline rush of anger and glanced at Mitsuko, wondering if 5 The Square was a safe haven for a tiny woman, but her return glance betrayed no new anxiety. Sorry, she mouthed to him silently as he rose. Giving a passing thought to the challenge of blessing them that curse you, he manoeuvred past her legs and the coffee table, their eyes meeting again when his shins brushed her knees. He opened his mouth to apologise, but a flicker in her eyes—sharp and bright, like a match struck in a black cave—stopped his tongue. He was certain it was fear.