Twelve Drummers Drumming

by C. C. Benison

  “Is there anything you’d care to tell me?”

  “Well, I …” Mystified, sensing he was being mocked, Tom regarded the battered face. “I once had an ingrown toenail.”

  “Not really what I meant, sir. I was wondering—unofficially, of course—why you were here in Torbay Hospital on this very pleasant afternoon.”

  “I’m about to pay a pastoral visit.”

  “To Phillip Northmore? I think you’ll find the old gentleman is very much under the weather.”

  “Oh, I’d heard—” Some instinct stopped Tom from further speech.

  “Heard what?”

  “Well, I expect there are ups and down when you’re in Colonel Northmore’s condition, that’s all.”

  “Mmmm.” Blessing’s mouth formed a thin line.

  “Was Colonel Northmore at all helpful to your investigation?”

  “No, I can’t say he was.”

  “I am sorry. I’m sure if he weren’t dazed by medication, his intent wouldn’t be to be uncooperative. He’s ex-military, as you know.”

  “That’s as may be, Vicar.” To Tom’s puzzled frown, he added: “Name, rank, and serial number seemed all Colonel Northmore cared to discuss. Or was able to discuss. In effect, sir.”

  “Might the reason lie in the subject of your enquiry?”

  “Funny you should ask. We were thinking of paying you a visit on the very subject, Detective Inspector Bliss and I, but here you are. We seem to find our attention meandering to Mr. Sebastian John. Enigmatic fellow, don’t you think?”

  “Well …”

  “Whereabouts at the time of Ms. Parry’s death uncertain, for one.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if he was having a meal with the colonel at Farthings Sunday evening. He often does.”

  “Time of death is well past the supper hour, Vicar. Mr. John told us he left the colonel’s before nine.” Blessing lifted his notebook as if he wished to check something in it. “I should wait for the detective inspector to finish his … ablutions, I suppose—”

  “Well, then …” Tom made a move to turn, relieved. “I’m happy to meet you later at the vicarage.”

  “—But as you’re here, perhaps you can tell me how Mr. John happened upon Thornford.”

  “Wouldn’t it be best to ask him?”

  “We can’t seem to locate him at the minute. You wouldn’t know his whereabouts?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. And,” Tom continued, praying God to forgive the falsehood, “I really know very little about him. I more or less inherited him when I came to Thornford, as I inherited the choir and the bell ringers and the members of the church council. Sebastian carries out his duties very capably so I’ve never had a reason to ask any more of him than that he carry on in the same manner.”

  “He was absent from Ms. Parry’s funeral yesterday.”

  “Yes, well, he seemed to have some private reason for not attending.”

  “And you didn’t find that … unusual?”

  It was on the tip of Tom’s tongue to say he was starting to find everything in Thornford unusual. Reluctantly, he replied, “Yes, I did, but there seemed little point in insisting, and as we can perform the funeral rites without a verger …”

  Blessing pocketed the notebook. “And the two of you have never had a chat, over a drink, say, at the pub, about the good old days—yours and his?”

  Of this Tom could be truthful. “No. But surely, Detective Sergeant,” he added, “you of all people have the resources to look into someone’s background.”

  “We do, Vicar, and we will.”

  “Colonel, you’re looking well.”

  This time Tom’s lie was white. He leaned over the hospital bed and laid his hand on the old man’s. He realised in an instant it was the wrong thing to say, for the patient shot him such a withering glance from below a grey cliff of eyebrow that he might just as well have melted into the linoleum. Adding force to the lie was a new presence in the room—a cardiac monitor, tracking the rhythm of the colonel’s heart with a slow steady beeping.

  “Looking better, rather,” Tom backtracked. This, at least, was the truth. A certain acuity had returned to the colonel’s gaze, though the face over the coverlet was gaunt and the cheeks stubbly. Tom glanced at the tubing connecting his arm to the glistening ampoule dangling below an IV bag on a pole and wondered that the old man’s body had adapted to the morphine, easing his pain, but not clouding his mind as it had on his earlier visit.

  “I apologise for not coming sooner,” he continued. “Mrs. Prowse told me on Thursday that you wanted to speak with me. But the week turned rather more … eventful than I would have expected.”

  Colonel Northmore held his eyes for a good long time, and Tom wondered if he would have to explain again, as he had had to the young couple he had married only an hour before at St. Nicholas’s, the black ring around his own.

  “I hope the police haven’t upset you,” he rambled on, bereft of further conversation. “I understand they were here a little while ago.”

  But the colonel’s intent look was one not of curiosity, but of rumination. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind. “Padre,” he said, his voice thick with phlegm, “I want to tell you something …”

  “Yes …”

  “When I was in Omori—”

  “The POW camp near Tokyo, yes?”

  “—I killed a man.”

  Tom frowned, startled. “Oh, dear,” he murmured, a feeble response he regretted instantly.

  “Wrong thing to do.”

  “Yes, usually.”

  “Shouldn’t have done it.”

  “It does tend to sort of bend one of God’s commandments, Colonel.”

  “Didn’t set my mind to do it.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. I’m sorry,” he continued, noting an incipient glare forming in the colonel’s eyes. “I don’t mean to sound cavalier. You’ve rather caught me off guard with this.” He pulled forwards one of the plastic chairs from the corner of the room and sat down. “Tell me the story, if you wish.”

  “Why I asked you here in the first place, padre.” There was the ghost of a harrumph in his tone.

  “And are you wanting to make a formal private confession of sin?”

  The colonel’s head turned against the pillow. He regarded Tom fretfully for a moment. “Hear me out, padre.”

  “Certainly.” Tom was puzzled by the colonel’s response.

  “Japs were savages, I’ve told you.”

  “Yes, Colonel, you did.”

  “You can’t imagine the hatred we felt for them. The NCO who ran the show was mad as a March hare. A brute. But so were the guards, the orderlies—all of them. Barbarous. Swore we would get our revenge when the time came.”

  Northmore stopped. His gaze seemed to turn inward.

  “And did the time come, Colonel?” Tom prompted. He anticipated the details with a certain heavy heart.

  “Eh? The time? Yes it did. Remember Takayama—one of the guards—ordering us to line up in the yard. ‘War is over. No work today. War is over,’ he said. Told us to paint ‘POW’ in large letters on the barrack’s roof. The emperor had surrendered, you see, padre. But more than a fortnight passed before we were found. And when we were …” The colonel’s face crumpled around the edges and his eyes filmed suddenly. His voice choked. “… I’ll never forget the joy and relief.”

  Tom’s heart went out to the old man. He could only imagine such release from long suffering.

  “Didn’t really want revenge, then,” the colonel continued. “Flogging them for killing your friends or making your life an utter hell seemed senseless. We hated them with such hatred no act was fitting punishment. Simply wished to get home.”

  “I’m sure you did …”

  “But I told you I killed a man. And I did. The day before the B-29 spotted us …” He stopped. “I’ve never been a brash fellow, padre. There are only two instances where I’ve behaved with utter foolishness. The other I will tell yo
u in short order.

  “NCO had fled,” he continued. “He had grown more and more erratic after the emperor’s surrender. But Takayama had been little better. An animal. Strutted about with a kendo stick. Do you know what they are, padre? Bamboo things. Longer than a cricket bat. He would beat us with it. During the lull, while we waited, when there was ‘no work today, no work today,’ I came upon Takayama inspecting something in one of the latrines. Don’t know what, but I took no time to learn. His back was to me, his kendo stick was leaning against the wall. Didn’t think. Snatched it up and lashed the back of his head.” He paused, his breath was ragged. Tom noted the patterns in the cardiac monitor above grow more erratic. “I killed him. A wonder I had the strength. I was near nine stone by then.”

  He looked at Tom, his expression stark. “It was cowardly, shameful.”

  “Colonel, I can barely imagine the hell you went through,” Tom responded in a calming tone, one eye fixed worriedly on the monitor.

  “Tiny things, the Japanese,” the colonel continued, oblivious. “Were back then, by comparison. Weak as I was …”

  “Yes?”

  “… Weak as I was, I picked him up and … pushed him into the latrine. If anyone knew I’d been responsible, he didn’t say. People looked the other way in those last days. And I was an officer, padre, a lieutenant then. I behaved disgracefully.”

  A young birdlike nurse flitted in at that moment and quickly triangulated the monitor, the patient, and the priest with her sharp little eyes.

  “Try not to excite the patient, Father,” she ordered, darting over to the bed. She peered at the colonel’s face, then with swift motions tucked the coverlet, adjusted the pillows, and felt along the constraining tubes and wires emanating from the colonel’s body to assure their efficacy.

  “We were talking about old times.” Tom watched her flying hands. “The war.”

  “Talk about peace, then, and see if it doesn’t have an effect.” She granted both of them a practised smile. “You must rest, Mr. Northmore. I don’t want to come in here again.”

  She passed back through the door into the corridor. Tom got up from his seat and went over to the door to ensure it was sealed. “Colonel,” he said, “I’m very sorry this episode has been weighing on your mind. You were under great duress in that prison camp in that long and terrible war, but I know you know that doesn’t release you from responsibility for your action.” He laid a hand against the bed’s cold metal guardrail and looked down at the old face. “Shall we pray together? This would be a moment to ask for God’s forgiveness and—”

  “No.” The tone was sharp.

  “Colonel …?”

  “Not yet, not yet.”

  “I don’t understand …?”

  “There’s something else, padre. I must tell you about Peter Kinsey—”

  “I presume Mrs. Prowse told you that he’d been found. Or at least his body.”

  “I killed him, too.”

  Tom blinked, then blinked again. Had he heard correctly? He rubbed his ear and stared at the colonel. “I’m sorry … did you say you …?”

  “I killed him.”

  Tom blinked a third time. He fought to keep his lips from curling into an indulgent smile. “Now, Colonel, you know that isn’t true.”

  Phillip glowered at him. “I am telling you, padre,” he said more forcefully, “that I killed Peter Kinsey.”

  Tom lifted his eyes from the colonel’s and watched a prick of clear liquid, like a crystal, form at the top of the ampoule, swell into a tear, then slip from its mooring and dissolve into the tiny pool of liquid just as another drip cascaded down the length of plastic vein from the ampoule into the colonel’s hand. He had been mistaken. The clouds may have vanished from the colonel’s eyes, but not from his mind.

  “Now, why would you have wanted to do that?” There seemed little recourse but to indulge the old man’s delusions, though Tom recognised—too late—his own pandering tone, as if he were indulging a whim of Miranda’s, for indignation sharpened Phillip’s features. Tom rephrased the question, this time with the gravity of a high court judge.

  Mollified somewhat, Phillip replied, “Wasn’t my intention, padre. Lost control of myself.”

  “Rather as you had at Omori.”

  The colonel grunted assent. “I demanded that Kinsey meet me that evening.”

  “The evening of …?”

  “The evening before that fool Ned Skynner was buried. Been avoiding me.”

  “Kinsey, I presume.”

  “Didn’t care for the fellow.”

  “Ned?”

  “No. Kinsey. Spotted him as counterfeit right off. American teeth, don’t you know. My daughter had some fitted for her. I ask you!”

  “She is an actress, Colonel.”

  “Smile like a snake in Eden.”

  “Your daughter’s?”

  “No! That blaggard Kinsey. Pay attention, padre. Suppose Catherine can’t help herself. Always such a hopelessly vain child.”

  “Is she aware you’re in hospital?”

  “No idea.”

  “I should like to call her, if no one has already.”

  “Waste of time.”

  “Nonetheless. Do you have a number?”

  “In a book by the hall phone at my house. Sebastian has a key. He’s been walking Bumble.”

  “On the subject of Sebastian—”

  Phillip’s unencumbered hand flapped dismissively. He glared up at Tom, his face reddening. “I have killed a man, Mr. Christmas.”

  Tom sighed inwardly. He rather hoped the colonel wouldn’t make the claim again. He sank back down in the chair. “Yes, of course. Let’s see. Peter had been avoiding you, I believe you said.”

  “Man was a thief.”

  “How so?”

  “Fingers in the collection plate, for one.”

  Tom raised an eyebrow.

  “In effect.”

  “You’d best explain, Colonel.”

  “Decline in St. Nicholas’s income.” Phillip shifted under the bedclothes, then winced. “Didn’t notice at first. Not when Kinsey first arrived. Attendance grew—interest in the new vicar, don’t you know. But revenues didn’t match.”

  “There are swings and roundabouts, Colonel. Perhaps the jumble sales didn’t do as well.”

  Phillip shook his head. “Figures lower in every case.”

  “Significantly?”

  “Sufficiently. Fiddled the fees for weddings and funerals, too.” The colonel interrupted his thoughts. “Removed the fee list from the board in the south porch and began charging more.”

  “But a church may add a surcharge, if need be.”

  “Never discussed at the PCC. And Kinsey asked people for banknotes. Pocketed the extra and didn’t declare it to the diocese.”

  “How did you know this?”

  “A fellow who works with me on the Campaign to Protect Rural England remarked the Christmas before last on the fee his son had paid for his granddaughter’s marriage at St. Nicholas’s. It was three hundred pounds more than the fixed sum. Knew it wasn’t right.”

  “Did you ask Peter about it?”

  “Said Richard was mistaken. Said he had no idea why the fee list wasn’t displayed in church. Arrogant bastard. I asked around, you know. Discreetly. See if others had paid more. They had.”

  Tom calculated quickly. If one officiated at, say, twenty weddings a year, that, plus the intermittent funeral, would net you in excess of £6,000, with Inland Revenue none the wiser—a tidy addition to one’s stipend.

  “But, Colonel, why didn’t you tell someone of your concerns at the time?”

  “Wanted to catch him out.”

  “And did you?”

  His face shuttered. “New broom,” he said cryptically.

  “What?”

  “Kinsey. Wanted to sweep out the old. What he thought was old. He wanted to apply for a faculty to move our Victorian pews and replace them with chairs. I ask you! Fought him on that one. Roge
r and I. And won.” A thin smile played along his lips, only to vanish. “Lost on the redecoration, though.”

  “I understand a number of artworks were taken down when the sanctuary was repainted. You wanted them back up?”

  “I wanted them returned.” The colonel spoke with sudden vehemence, his face flushing again. He winced in pain.

  Tom looked anxiously at both the drip and the cardiac monitor. “Colonel, are you all right? Shall I call the nurse back?”

  “No,” Phillip gasped. “Let me have a minute.”

  As Tom watched the old man’s features recompose themselves, he considered that though parishioners could get murderously exercised about changes to liturgy or decoration, they were rarely led to murder itself.

  “There are a number of paintings and suchlike stored in the vestry,” he pointed out.

  “Two missing.”

  “Miss Skynner mentioned two had gone out for repair or restoration and still hadn’t returned. I think she said they once belonged to your father.”

  “They did. Father sold them to Giles, who put them in the Lady chapel.” He looked meaningfully at Tom. “They’re Guercinos.”

  “Art isn’t my strong suit, I’m afraid, Colonel.”

  “It was Kinsey’s.”

  “Ah, yes, he read art at Oxford.” Tom had a glimmer of the road the colonel was rambling. “He would have known who Guercino was, likely.”

  “He was Italian. Seventeenth-century. Baroque.”

  “And valuable, yes?”

  “Father had an eye for beauty. Guercino was little regarded when he acquired the paintings. Not much more so when Giles bought them.”

  “But now?”

  “One sold at Christie’s last autumn for twenty-three thousand pounds.”

  Tom made a silent whistle. But it wasn’t strange something so valuable could go so unnoticed in a little church tucked into the countryside. The eye soon grows oblivious to the familiar. A few churchgoers regret the loss of a thing or two for a moment after they’re removed, but then they’re quickly forgotten.

  “Kinsey sold them.”

  “Then this must account for much of the ninety thousand pounds found in that safe-box at the NatWest in Exeter. Colonel, this is difficult to take in. Peter Kinsey was generally well regarded by—”