Twelve Drummers Drumming

by C. C. Benison

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tom switched on his computer, hoping to divorce his mind at least for a time from the mystery of Sybella’s death and engage with the certainty of her young life, as well as with the terrible loss to her family and the anxiety in the community. He glanced at the entry in the lectionary for Sunday, June 1, and then set the booklet aside. This was no ordinary week and it would not be an ordinary Sunday. But he had barely begun to organise his thoughts when Miranda peeked around the door.

  “Daddy, are you writing your salmon?”

  “Yes, darling, the ‘salmon’s’ not quite done, but come in and talk to me.” Tom swivelled in his chair towards her. “I thought you’d gone crabbing with Emily. Wasn’t Daniel to show you how?”

  “Yes, he did. I caught lots, but a crab bit Emily so she went home.” Miranda came beside him and slipped her arm around his neck. Tom leaned his head against hers and took in her aroma. She smelled of salt water and, oddly, bacon that had gone off. Then he remembered that crabs went mad for gamy bacon. Cats, probably, too, he thought, noting Powell and Gloria curling around her legs.

  “Was Emily hurt very badly?”

  “Not really. Daniel was mostly being mean to her. I think that’s why she went home. He was nice to me, though. He helped me bring my bucket and net home.”

  “Did you give them to Mrs. Prowse?”

  “She has visitors. So I left everything outside.” Miranda reached to pet one of the cats that had leapt onto the desk. “Who is she talking to?”

  “Two policemen, from Totnes.”

  “Why are they talking to Mrs. Prowse?”

  “They’re talking to lots of people in the village.”

  “About Sybella.”

  “Yes, darling, about Sybella.”

  Miranda slid onto his knee, something he realised suddenly she rarely did anymore.

  “Did the policemen talk to you, Daddy?”

  “Yes, they were here yesterday.”

  “This is like when Mummy died, isn’t it?” She twisted her head and regarded him with serious eyes.

  “Only a little teeny-tiny bit. But you mustn’t worry. The police only want to find who hurt Sybella. It’s very sad for Colm and Celia and Declan, but we’re going to keep on living here in Thornford and you’ll start last half of term next week and Mrs. Prowse will keep trying to stuff us with rich food, and everything will be as it should be.” He rocked her on his knee.

  “Will they want to speak to me?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said lightly to the back of her head, recalling his repugnance at Bristol CID questioning her, the little girl who’d lost her mother and who had no useful information anyway.

  “That’s good.”

  “Why? Is there something you wanted to tell them?”

  “No,” she said slowly. He could see her wrinkle her nose. “They look scary. One of them has bumps on his face.”

  Tom laughed. “Now, you mustn’t be unkind. People can’t help the way they look sometimes.”

  But Miranda was no longer attentive. “Regarde, Papa.” She pointed to the French doors, partially opened to the garden, flanked by urns of pink and purple geraniums. “Monsieur Pike s’en vient par ici.”

  Fred Pike was indeed coming their way, up the brick path through the sun-drenched lawn at a trot brisker than Tom had ever seen in the man.

  “Father?” he gasped, holding one hand to his chest, leaning into the study and peering into the relative darkness. “Father …”

  “Fred? Are you all right?” The man appeared to be having a heart attack. Tom lifted Miranda off his lap.

  “Father, you must come—” An adverb died on his lips as he took a step into the study and noticed the child. His lined face strained to temper alarm as he sought to catch his breath. “Father, I think there’s something you ought to see.”

  “What is it?”

  Fred glanced again at Miranda in an agony of indecision.

  “Miranda,” Tom said, “why don’t you go and have a wash and I’ll see to Mr. Pike, okay?”

  “May I come?” she asked.

  “No!” Fred’s tone was uncharacteristically sharp.

  “No,” Tom repeated more gently, rising from his chair. “Best not. I won’t be long.”

  He followed Fred out the door and into the garden. “Whatever is it?” he asked, but received no reply as Fred picked up speed and led him at an increasing pace across the lawn, down the steps to the millpond, west along the shaded path, and then up the stone steps to the churchyard, wending between the gravestones until they reached the southwest corner, in which he had been toiling earlier that morning.

  “It’s that,” Fred replied finally, pointing into the freshly dug grave.

  Tom leaned over and peered in. Cast into shadow by the over-arching beech tree, the rectangular cavity looked nothing more than what it should be—a black void. “What am I looking for?”

  “You’ll see it.” Fred’s voice was strained.

  Then he did see it. A gust of wind parting the leaves of the tree illuminated for a moment a small pale shape at one edge of the bottom of the pit. With his eyes fixed on it, he tried to make sense of the thing’s contours. Frowning, growing a little impatient, he was about to ask Fred to offer up a clue, when suddenly he realised what he was looking at.

  “Oh!” He straightened sharply. “It’s a hand!” He felt his gorge rising. “Good God … how on earth …?”

  “It’s not Ned’s, Father.”

  “Ned’s?”

  “Ned Skynner. Right here.” Fred pointed to the adjacent grave.

  “Are you sure?”

  “That coffin of his were solid.”

  “That’s right. I remember. Karla spared no expense.”

  “Besides …”

  “Besides what?”

  “It’s got a ring on it. Ned had no truck with such frippery. Boojwah, he liked to say when he were in full flight down the pub. So it can’t be Ned’s hand.”

  Tom peered back into the grave. Indeed, even from six feet up, he could make out a large golden oval covering the exposed bone of the little finger of the putrefied hand. Yes, he supposed it was a little bourgeois.

  “But how …?”

  “There were a great stone on the side nearest Ned’s I had to pull out or the coffin wouldn’t fit.” Fred pointed to a hefty reddish-grey rock now at graveside. “I’ve had surprises before, but it’s always been the bones of some poor old blighter. Never this.”

  They both gazed into the grave in silent horror. Tom thought back to Ned Skynner’s funeral. He recalled thinking then that as graves went, he’d seen more proficiently dug ones, not that he got more than a glimpse before the coffin was lowered. It seemed clear from the relative freshness of the disembodied hand that a coffinless someone had been placed in the hole sometime after Fred had dug it and before Ned’s casket had been lowered on top.

  “Well, there’s nothing for it then, is there?”

  “I expect not, Father.”

  “Will you stay here while I fetch Bliss and Blessing?”

  “Bliss and blessing, Father?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  The Vicarage

  Thornford Regis TC9 6QX

  29 MAY

  Dear Mum,

  I hope you’re sitting down because you won’t believe what’s happened! Now they’ve found the body of Mr. Kinsey who disappeared all those months ago and it looks he’s been done in, too! Well, that’s what everyone is saying. You don’t go sleeping in open graves, do you? Because that’s where he was found! Do you remember when Karla’s father died last year, while I was visiting you? Well, it looks like someone had gone and tucked Mr. Kinsey’s body into his Ned’s grave before they planted Ned. Poor Karla. She’s disgusted because they’ve had to disturb her father’s coffin to get at Mr. Kinsey. Anyway, yesterday after lunch, the two detectives from Totnes who saw Mr. Christmas on Tuesday had only just started interviewing me in the kitchen when
Mr. Christmas interrupted and he didn’t look his usual self. He’d gone all serious and asked the detectives—Bliss and Blessing were their names. Weren’t there Blessings up around Staverton way? I’m sure I was at the big school with a Sandra Blessing. Anyway, Mr. Christmas asked them to come with him. He was quite insistent. As they hadn’t finished with me, I was going to come, too, but Mr. C. asked me to stay with Miranda, which made it seem all very mysterious somehow. At any rate, before the day was done, there were police cars and a van and the churchyard taped off so no one could enter and a team of people in white suits to dig up the body. They wouldn’t let Fred do it, not that he wanted to. I forgot to say that it was Fred who found the body, as he was digging a grave for Sybella at the time. I gave him tea at the vicarage, he was that shattered! And oh my aren’t we all? I probably could have given tea to half the village who came down to the church yesterday afternoon when the news got around, but most went into the pub for something stronger. I suppose you could say the good thing is that that mystery is solved, since it’s been troubling folk for a long time. But the really troubling bit now is who put Mr. Kinsey in Ned’s grave? And why? At least I know it wasn’t me, as I was with you at the time of Ned’s death and didn’t get back for his funeral, which Karla hasn’t quite forgiven me for, even though you were having your hip replaced. Just think—you’re my alibi! Anyway, I do feel sorry for Mr. Kinsey. I know we didn’t really get on, but I wouldn’t wish such a sad end on him. I know some around here thought he’d got amnesia and would suddenly come to on some street in London or somewhere. Anyway, Mr. Kinsey had no family so there’s no one who will grieve terribly I expect, although the village is in a state of shock. A state of more shock, I should say, what with Sybella’s death. He was an only child and he had lost his parents some years ago. Both of them killed, as it happens, but then they stayed on at their farm in Rho Zimbabwe when they should have got out. Become an awful place, according to what I hear in the news! At any rate, I always thought Mr. Kinsey had disappeared because he was about to be caught out about something. I think that’s what the police thought, too, as one of them was in the vicarage for a time last year going through his diary and sorting through his post, which I told you about before. But I guess they never found anything certain. The police that is. Now that it looks to be murder it’s all very different. Poor Mr. Christmas looked wretched over dinner. I’d done lovely salmon and dill fishcakes that were one of Mr. James-Douglas’s favourites and Mr. C. barely touched his plate. But then he was up and down the whole time. He wouldn’t leave things to the answerphone. He was on with the rural dean and the Bishop and the police and Thompson’s, the funeral people, and with Sebastian and Mrs. Hennis but anyway Sybella’s funeral is still set for tomorrow and I expect there’ll be even more press attention now—TWO dead bodies in TWO days! I think this is what’s troubling Mr. Christmas. You know the terrible thing that happened to him in his last parish, of course. I think he thought Thornford would be a nice place for him and Miranda, but look what’s happened! I’m not sure how this is affecting Miranda, as she is such a bright child! I was in her room after supper picking up clothes for today’s wash and she was playing with her Barbie doll who was wearing a Burberry and carrying a magnifying glass and she was pretending Barbie was a detective, only she calls her Alice instead. I was turning out the pockets of her clothes and sorting what bits and bobs should go in the bin and I pulled out this odd little yellow wooden thing shaped like a gnome’s hat and she said, no, that’s a clue! So perhaps she is “sublimating” as Celia Parry calls it. I went to a couple of her talks at the WI and she was on about people channeling the negative things in their lives into positive action as a kind of therapy or something like that. She does make the most ordinary things seem complex! Celia, that is. A little of Celia always goes a long way, I must say, though I suppose I shouldn’t go on about her as her stepdaughter’s funeral is tomorrow. Must go and start breakfast. Cats are well. Jago tells me Kerra went round yesterday to the Waterside and got the serving job. She starts today. I have my fingers crossed. Love to Aunt Gwen. Make sure you have a good day.

  Much love,

  Madrun

  P.S. Fred Pike made off with my potato peeler when he was here yesterday. Good thing I have two!

  P.P.S. I should go to the meeting at the v. hall later this morning as someone important from the police is coming down from Exeter to talk to us, but I told Mitsuko Drewe I’d make my famous yewberry mini-tarts for the opening of her art exhibition at the hall this evening. Life goes on, it seems! I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

  P.P.P.S. I worry about you worrying about us in Thornford, but you mustn’t. Mr. Christmas says what has happened in the village this week has happened for particular reasons that have nothing to do with any of us at the vicarage. At any rate, I’m sure the police will have it all sorted out before terribly long.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Do you know,” Julia intoned, “it’s said if you walk seven times backwards around this yew, you’ll be granted a wish?”

  Tom flicked a glance at his sister-in-law. Julia was staring intently at the enormous old tree whose circumference of gnarled, tangled branches stretched and twisted across the northwestern portion of the churchyard to the very roof of the lych-gate. It was this observation rather than a morning greeting that escaped her lips when Tom—on his way to see if Bliss and Blessing were settling well into the Old School Room—had noted her step through the lych-gate and followed her. Bluish shadows like bruises marred the skin under her eyes, and the muscles of her neck above the grey T-shirt—which looked like a hasty choice of apparel for an otherwise fastidious woman—were taut. Her hair was still damp from a shower—or some dousing—and she had that vaguely unfinished look Lisbeth would sometimes have between a wash and the application of a spot of makeup.

  “Actually,” he responded, feeling a sudden keen pang of yearning for his wife and her morning face, “you told me that when Miranda and I visited last year. Are you off to the Neighbourhood Watch meeting then?”

  “No. We’re out of milk, so I was going down to Pattimore’s.”

  “A roundabout way to get to Pattimore’s, through the churchyard, isn’t it?” Tom observed.

  “I fancied the walk.”

  Tom’s puzzled gaze followed Julia’s. He could find nothing compelling about the ancient tree to warrant such study. “Were you wanting a wish granted?”

  “Wouldn’t we all want a wish granted?” Her eyes turned to his. He was shocked to see depths of misery in them.

  “Yes, of course we would.” He paused. “Julia, you look—”

  “I didn’t sleep very well.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?” Her tone was sharp.

  Taken aback, Tom retorted: “I didn’t sleep well either, Julia. The last few days have been troubling. The fabric of this very pleasant village has been torn—and twice in one week. All of us are affected. That’s why—”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right, Tom. I’m being selfish.”

  “Hold on,” he backtracked. “I mean, you’ve a right to feel—”

  “You don’t have to be so bloody agreeable, you know,” Julia interrupted, pushing a damp strand of her hair back over her ear. “Sorry.” She looked up at him sheepishly, then gave herself a little shake as if to rid herself of some cobweb.

  “Don’t be. I think I know how you’re feeling, so here’s me being disagreeable: In the wee hours this morning, I was thinking that somewhere in Bristol the man—man, presumably—who killed my wife is walking around free. I left Bristol because I couldn’t bear the thought of it. Now I’m living here in Thornford, and the same thing is happening. The police in Bristol were inept—or unlucky, I don’t know—but the two detectives fannying about here fill me with no more confidence than the two in Bristol did. I want the killer or killers or whoever is creating this havoc justly run to ground. I don’t want to have to uproot my child a second time!”

&nb
sp; “I’m not sure I’ve heard you so angry before.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve felt quite this angry before—at least not since Lisbeth’s death.”

  Julia regarded him sombrely. “How is my niece coping?”

  Tom snatched a calming breath before replying. “If you mean, are there echoes of the days after her mother’s death, then I would say she doesn’t seem to be too visibly affected. I think Sybella’s death has stirred some memories—Miranda crawled on my lap yesterday, which she hasn’t done in a long time, after the detectives came calling. But Peter Kinsey is an abstraction as far as she’s concerned. I told her we can’t play ‘Where in the World Is the Reverend Peter Kinsey?’ anymore because he’s been found, and he was in the village all along, but he died. She seemed to accept this. The details I’ve spared her, however.”

  “Perhaps children take things more in their stride than we think.”

  “I’m not sure. It’s difficult to have a sense of oneself as a nine-year-old.”

  “I remember envying that Lisbeth had budding breasts when I was Miranda’s age and I didn’t.” Julia’s eyes closed. She shuddered.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No. It was the vision of Peter in the—”

  “Try not to think about that part, Julia.”

  She opened her eyes, the expression in them mournful. “I’ll take Miranda for a treat somewhere.”

  “I wish you could take her away from the village tomorrow, but—”