“But I’m filling in as organist at Sybella’s funeral. I’ve talked with Colm about the music, by the way. That choir of his should be arriving after lunch. He’s putting them up at Thornridge, and we’re rehearsing here at St. Nicholas’s this afternoon. Anyway, as for my favourite niece—”
“The best thing for Miranda is routine,” Tom interjected. “You’ll be taking her to synagogue Saturday?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” He regarded his sister-in-law. Lisbeth had not been particularly observant, except for certain High Holidays, spent, if possible, with the Roses in London. Faith, she thought, put people’s heads in the clouds. Tom thought faith grounded you to the world. How he missed her contrariness. He’d never had a reason to think Julia didn’t share her sister’s sensibilities, but he was surprised—and thankful, for Miranda’s sake—that she had recently connected with the synagogue in Exeter.
Julia had returned to her contemplation of the fantastically contorted yew. Abruptly she grabbed his arm. “Shall we go round the tree?”
“What? Backwards? Now?”
“Yes!” Her eyes glittered.
“But—”
“You don’t have to be at the hall until ten.”
“Yes, but … it’s pagan,” he concluded, groping for an excuse not to do this silly thing.
“Oh, don’t be dull!”
Tom studied her for a moment as she tugged at his jacket. Her behaviour this morning had a maniacal edge. “All right, then,” he finally said as she led him over the grass to the base of the tree, whose stout trunk was protected by a low rough-stone enclosure. “But be warned: I may be sleight of hand, but I’m not fleet of foot. I recall stepping on your toes dancing at your wedding.”
The path around the enclosure was itself rough, worn to a red-brown hue, largely by the feet of holidaymakers to the village, and a few credulous villagers. Tom looked into the crown of branches, which twisted up to the heavens, and was reminded forcefully of something. Of course. It was of kissing Lisbeth under the yew tree in St. Oswald’s churchyard, in Grasmere, in the Lakes, where they had had their brief—and long postponed—honeymoon ten years ago. How could he have forgotten? And there was something else that had happened at Grasmere. What was it? If only Lisbeth were here to remind him.
He turned to Julia. What do you wish for? seemed the question appropriate to the moment, and when he asked it, he was stunned by the intensity of yearning telegraphed by her eyes. Had she read his mind? Might her wish be the same impossible one as his? In the wake of Lisbeth’s death, Julia had been an angel rushed to his side, and he had been enormously grateful, but in those bad days in Bristol he realised he had been witnessing her atonement for the sin of neglect for the estrangement spawned by girlhood rivalry and amplified by Alastair’s shift in affections from older to younger sibling. Lisbeth had died. Rapprochement could not happen. But if Lisbeth were here now …
Julia didn’t reply. She took his arm and together they took a first step back. Tom felt compelled to glance over his shoulder, wary that some fallen branch, protuberant stone, or errant banana peel might sabotage them, but Julia remained confidently face forwards and heels backwards.
“I remember trying to moonwalk as a kid,” he said, feeling slightly foolish, grasping for levity. He glanced towards the churchyard path, which, mercifully, was devoid of witnesses. “Do you remember? Like Michael Jackson? I never got the hang of it.”
But Julia remained mute, fiercely concentrated on their unnatural task. Soon Tom fell into the rhythm and began to find a strange peace in the pace with the revolving kaleidoscopic views of the churchyard through the screen of branches. Oddly, it all felt familiar, but then he’d probably walked backwards around something in Gravesend as a child, simply for the novelty. Thus lulled, he found his thoughts returning, as they had the previous evening, to the end-of-spring-term holiday he and Miranda had spent with Julia and Alastair the year before. After Peter Kinsey’s exhumation that afternoon—a grisly event he hoped never to witness again—it had struck him that his predecessor had been buried—and in all likelihood died—while he and Miranda were going about their holiday in the village.
What did he recall?
They’d left Bristol after services at St. Dunstan’s and after Sunday lunch, arriving in Thornford in time for a late tea and their first glimpse of the Hennis home, Westways, perched on Thorn Hill, with—as estate agents might say—excellent views of the village below. Alastair had not been home to greet them. It was an indication, Tom thought at the time, of his disenchantment with their visit. Had he been golfing? It had been early April and a cool day, so perhaps not. Or perhaps he had been on call, as he often was weekends and evenings, his pager ringing, and him popping in and out. Tom couldn’t remember. What he did recall was the wood fire crackling in the grate that afternoon, Julia’s groaning tea, like the ones Grannie Ex provided when Dosh and Kate took him to his grandmother’s thatched cottage at Sevenoaks, and a mellowness slink up his limbs. All that was shattered when Alastair finally appeared. He’d noted a hardness come into Julia’s face at the sound of the door opening to the first-floor living rooms, followed a moment later by an impatient rebuke when Alastair said he’d already eaten.
It was then he sensed the rift in the Hennis marriage. Perhaps there had been evidence earlier, but he had noted nothing the last time he had seen them together—at Lisbeth’s funeral in London (where he had been blinded by grief)—nor had Julia alluded to anything when she came to Bristol soon after to comfort Miranda and help sort through Lisbeth’s effects (but, again, his mind had been elsewhere).
At Westways, the evidence could be totted up in averted eyes, strained smiles, curt nods, a scrupulous courtesy trotted out only for guests, and this: Alastair was sleeping apart, in the small ground-floor suite. When the two were together in the house, a deadly calm prevailed, like the atmosphere before a vicious squall, but none came.
Away from her husband, Julia had been returned, like a maiden released from a spell, to her agreeable self. As it was her half-term holiday as well, she’d arranged a series of entertainments for them. Alastair drove daily to the Cadewell Health Centre in Torbay Hospital in Torquay, once or twice paid a home visit to one of his few private patients in the village, and played golf when he could, except for the Tuesday when Julia substituted for Colm at the organ at Red Ned’s funeral and took Tom along on what would become a life-changing episode. Alastair took Miranda to crazy golf at Abbey Park, then a meal at McDonald’s. Miranda returned to Westways thrilled with her uncle, and Tom had to concede Alastair’s attention to Miranda was unaffected and genuine. He’d tried probing Julia a little about the state of her marriage that day. (There were not many moments when Miranda wasn’t present.) He was sure aftershocks remained from the miscarriage two years earlier. But she deflected enquiry, insistent his visit be cheerful. And maybe, he thought guiltily to himself now, as he encircled the yew once again, he had been too fatigued by his own heartache to respond to the emotional state of another. He had wanted peace, and he had been finding it in Thornford.
What had they done on the Monday, on the first full day of their visit? A lazy morning walk through the village, then down to the quay, where Miranda fed the swans, then up the path by the millpond to St. Nicholas’s. The church had been locked—a recent, and regretted, move in the wake of the theft of a couple of Jacobean funeral stools—so they had toured the churchyard, where Ned Skynner’s freshly dug grave reminded Julia of her Tuesday duties as organist and which had stirred Tom to accompany her, to view the church interior, rather than visit Paignton Zoo. After lunch that Monday, Julia had driven him and Miranda to Totnes for the prosaic, but comforting, family task of grocery shopping at Morrisons. Monday evening had been a simple supper of linguine marinara and asparagus and artichoke salad at home with the four of them around the kitchen table, followed later by a Disney DVD—fine viewing for Miranda, but dull for adults. Tom had been almost relieved when Alastair was pa
ged before they’d even opened the DVD to attend to Enid Pattimore, the variety of whose medical conditions was, Julia said, legendary.
Tuesday had been Ned’s funeral and the peculiar—though not at that point worrying—nonappearance of Peter Kinsey. Wednesday, Julia had given them a tour of Dartmoor, with the morning at Widecombe-in-the-Moor and lunch at Princetown. It was in this austere and lonely landscape of craggy tors and great sweeps of heather, before ominous afternoon dark clouds chased them back towards the safety of the South Hams’ high hedgerows and soft downs, that “Where in the World Is the Reverend Peter Kinsey?” had its innocent beginning. But through Thursday morning (to Plymouth) and by Friday, after lunch at the Waterside (to Agatha Christie’s home), as Kinsey failed to make his whereabouts known and consternation grew to anxiety, the game began to lose much of its enchantment for Thornfordians such as Julia. Saturday, he and Miranda returned to Bristol.
During the latter part of his and Miranda’s visit, curiosity had grown over Kinsey’s movements in the hours after his Sunday services. At the time, unfamiliar with the village dramatis personae, Tom could barely piece together the information, most of which came from an increasingly worried Julia. Later, installed as vicar of St. Nicholas’s, with the village folk a panoply of familiar—or almost familiar—faces, Tom found that the pieces, burnished by time and fuelled by speculation, fell better into place: That April Sunday, with Madrun visiting her mother in Cornwall, Peter Kinsey had taken his lunch with Florence and Venice Daintrey, who had waved him off at about two-thirty. Several witnessed him walk through the village to the vicarage. Several more witnessed the vicarage windows glow as daylight died. There had been no evensong that Sunday.
Kinsey had been alive next Monday morning when Eric saw him pull his Audi into Poynton Shute and turn up Pennycross Road and out of the village. Religiously, one might say, Peter Kinsey deserted Thornford Mondays, his one true day off. Where he went, he kept, with equal religious conviction, to himself, though Marg Farrant had once spotted him coming out of a private gallery in Exeter—perhaps not a complete surprise as Kinsey had read art at Oxford—and even Julia allowed that she had once seen him lunching alone at an outdoor café in Torquay. Kinsey had not disappeared with his car, however. He had returned to Thornford late that Monday afternoon, but instead of driving into the village, he had taken the car to Jago Prowse’s garage at Thorn Cross, troubled by an engine warning light flashing ominously on his dashboard. Jago had offered to drive him to the vicarage in his own car while Kinsey’s was being serviced and the offer had been gratefully accepted. Jago might have been the last person to see him alive. Certainly—so far—he was the last person to admit to seeing Peter Kinsey alive—which, to his disgust, had made him a subject of intense police scrutiny as the disappearance finally gained the attention of authorities.
What had he and Kinsey talked about in the car, the coppers wanted to know? Not bloody much, Jago, a man given to bluntness, had responded. Or at least that was how Madrun described it to Tom much later. The weather, the price of petrol, how Jago’s daughters were getting on. Small talk. Yes, the vicar seemed in good spirits, as much as Jago bothered to notice. He’d been up to Exeter, Vicar’d said. No, he didn’t bloody know why. It was none of his business anyway.
A search of the car garnered little more than the usual effects of a childless and fairly fastidious man—an AA road atlas to Britain, a Devon street atlas, a good pub guide, a pair of prescription sunglasses, a tire-pressure gauge, several CDs, and a well-thumbed copy of that day’s Times. Jago had repeated the list to Madrun, who had savoured the details, but, alas, could find nothing more meaningful in them than the police could.
The very thought of Madrun, and there she was, hoving into view along the path, no doubt having posted her daily missive to her deaf mother. “I hope you two know what you’re doing,” she called after them.
“We’re hoping to be granted a wish,” Tom called back, feeling very silly but trying hard not to sound it for Julia’s sake.
“That’s not all that might happen!”
“What do you mean?”
But Madrun’s reply was lost as he and Julia disappeared behind the yew’s trunk.
“Are you not going to the Neighbourhood Watch meeting?” Reappearing, Tom glimpsed Madrun’s back.
“Can’t, Mr. Christmas,” she called over her shoulder. “I have pastries for this evening and your luncheon to prepare.”
“I’m going to be sixteen stone before very long, if she doesn’t stop this incessant cooking,” he muttered to Julia. “I feel like a French goose, sometimes. Perhaps she has plans for my liver. Foie vicar … Julia?”
But his sister-in-law remained silently concentrated on their ritual. “And that ‘not all that might happen’ was ominous, don’t you think?” he added, going over in his mind the other myths attached to yew trees. “What do you think she meant?”
Julia made no verbal response. She jabbed his ribs with her elbow.
“Yes, I see your point, or feel it, rather,” Tom responded, lapsing into silence. Only two more goes around this bloody tree, he thought, letting his mind return to the Kinsey conundrum.
At first, the question had been, Why did the priest disappear? Madrun’s view—and it had been shared by others—was that Kinsey was about to be found out about something and that whatever it was it was so devastating that career ruin and prison sentence loomed like a tor over Dartmoor.
That meant Sex or Money.
As for Sex, the youths of Thornford Regis remained unmolested—at least by the clergy—as far as anyone knew. No one believed Peter Kinsey was anything other than unrepentantly heterosexual and psychologically sound. But the question was: If he was a normally functioning heterosexual male, who might be receiving the benefits of his attentions? Was it anyone in the village? It wasn’t unusual for a priest to be the object of a misplaced and inopportune infatuation. But any wise priest in an unmarried state would be a fool to have a dalliance, with, say, a married woman in his parish. Nonetheless some thought Peter Kinsey seemed unusually attentive to Mitsuko Drewe, for one. And to Violet Tucker, for another. And to Penella Neels, for a third (though she was unmarried). This Tom had learned late yesterday afternoon when he’d gone into the Church House Inn for something large and liquid after the exhumation—unthinkably unpleasant to witness—was complete. A single topic dominated conversation in the pub, packed with folk who had trotted down towards the church thanks to the bush telegraph, but been barred from the churchyard by the strength of the local constabulary.
Then there was Money. The rural dean had shared with Tom what the police had discovered and what no one in the village knew, but for Colonel Northmore, Church Council treasurer: that in a safe-deposit box at a NatWest branch in Exeter, Kinsey had kept about £90,000 in notes—mostly twenties and fifties. Safer than keeping money under one’s bed, one supposed, but a poor hedge against inflation. Peter Kinsey might have been an eccentric when it came to his savings, but a little forensic accounting shed no light on how the money had arrived in the safe-box—there was no electronic paper trail of cashed cheques, for instance, and virtually no monies had been forthcoming from his late parents’ estate, given that the Kinsey farm had been seized by the Zimbabwean government without compensation. Meanwhile, his monthly stipend from the church was paid by direct deposit into a bank, not in Exeter, but in Totnes.
Tom knew the potential for malfeasance. People sometimes gave him £10 or £20 to put into the collection, if he did them a small favour, and it would be easy simply to keep it. Similarly, many paid cash for weddings and funerals, and though the money was shared with the organist, the verger, or the bell ringers, a priest could merely pocket the money and never declare it to the diocese. But all the weddings and funerals and collections in Kinsey’s relatively short career couldn’t account for the sum in the Exeter bank’s safe-box. Nor had any legacies left to the church by the parish’s deceased appeared to have greased their way into the vicar’s
palms.
Colonel Northmore had opened his cashbook and files for examination and defended the parish’s accounting. He had become treasurer in Giles James-Douglas’s day and even if his own banking background hadn’t made him mindful when it came to sums—which it had—he was doubly mindful when he realised the absentminded and privately wealthy James-Douglas had a vague relationship with cash. Madrun would regularly go through the priest’s clothes before cleaning and pull out pound notes of uncertain provenance and give them over to the colonel for recording and safe deposit. Northmore, according to the rural dean, had been unable to find any reason for the mysterious sum in the Exeter safe-box.
Now the question was not why Peter Kinsey had disappeared, but why he had been murdered.
Perhaps it was overconfidence—getting the hang of walking backwards—or perhaps it was a noise—the sharp sudden blast of a car horn in Church Lane—or perhaps it was a combination of the two, for just as they completed their seventh circumambulation, Tom’s heel stubbed a slight rise in the beaten path which sent him stumbling backwards. Alerted, Julia tried to grip his arm more firmly, but his greater weight was too much and he slipped, landing on his back.
“Oh, Tom! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Tom gasped. “Just give me a minute.”
He looked up into Julia’s concerned face, then past her towards the tree’s labyrinthine crown patterned against the sky. He turned his head left, then right. “Didn’t work, did it?”
Julia’s body sagged a little. “No.”
“This isn’t the age of miracles.”
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Tom insisted. “Really. It’s quite peaceful lying here. I feel … Wait! Now I know why this yew tree lark of yours seems familiar. It’s because I’ve done it before. When Lisbeth and I finally got our honeymoon, in the Lakes, we visited Wordsworth’s gravesite, which happens to have a yew tree. I remember kissing her under it, but I’d forgotten we’d circled the tree, too—only I walked backwards and Lisbeth walked forwards. I can’t remember how many times. Probably seven. It’s always seven in these things, isn’t it? Anyway, I tripped over my feet then, too. It’s shameful I’d forgotten that, because that’s how we conceived Miranda.”
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