“You were spending far too much time with her,” Liam snapped.
“I was mentoring her. I’ve said!”
“You were practically eating her face.”
“Sybella was having a little triumph,” Mitsuko explained, flicking her hair back again. “Something to do with some man she fancied. I was excited for her, that’s all. We were mates. It was a girly moment. Women aren’t as emotionally constipated as you men, and a kiss—Liam!—does not mean a snog will follow in short order.”
“Did Sybella say which man she was interested in?” Tom asked, though he was sure he knew.
Mitsuko shook her head. “The detectives asked me that, too. I don’t know. She wouldn’t say. She was strangely secretive about it. Some boy in Torquay was my thought.”
Tom regarded the couple. They were an incongruous pair. Mitsuko barely came up to Liam’s chest. With her hands now behind her back, her delicate frame clothed in black shirt and black trousers, and her black hair tumbling to her shoulders, she looked like an exclamation mark appended to Liam’s blunt mass in loose jeans and jersey. Her face was oval and smooth; her eyes, fixed on Tom, beseeching, as if willing him to her side, though he found the idea of two women, two close friends, not sharing the name of some prospective lover faintly implausible. Liam had turned his bulldogsquare head towards the lych-gate and Church Walk beyond, his expression sulky and impatient, his arms folded defensively over the Cheltenham Town lettering on his chest. Ill-paired they appeared, but each forceful in his or her own right, Mitsuko the more so, he thought. Together they were a unit despite the habitual quarreling. Was their account truthful? Had Liam turned back from the village hall that night? Had a misinterpreted kiss really fuelled a quarrel? Tom realised these questions would have been more troubling, but for the frisson he had experienced not fifteen minutes earlier at Holy Communion.
How to begin?
“I don’t wish to alarm you—either of you,” he began, running his hands down to smooth his surplice, gathering his thoughts, “but I seem to have become possessed quite suddenly by … a very unsettling notion.”
Liam flicked him an irritated glance. “Is this why you asked us to stop?”
Tom nodded, but addressed Mitsuko. “You’ll allow, as you said a moment ago, that Sybella began to see in you a kind of mentor, yes? You were helping nurture her artistic abilities—”
“So she could skive off working at the restaurant,” Liam muttered.
“—and letting her see that life was more than clubbing and drugs and such. That perhaps she had a gift, a talent.”
“Talent to annoy, more like.”
“Liam, then why didn’t you sack her?”
“You know perfectly well why.” Liam’s face reddened.
“Why?” Tom couldn’t help asking.
“Because,” Mitsuko flicked her husband an irritated glance. “As it happens, Colm was paying Liam the cost of Sybella’s wages. Margins are so tight in the restaurant trade, Tom, that it made a difference.”
“Did Sybella know about this arrangement?”
“That was part two of Sunday’s row,” Mitsuko replied. “I didn’t know about it, but Sybella did, it turns out.”
“And she accused me of hiding it from Inland Revenue!” Liam exploded.
“And were you?”
“That’s my bloody business!”
“It was hardly ‘accuse,’ Liam,” Mitsuko intervened. “Sybella was simply being her usual provocative self.” She turned to Tom. “And, no, we didn’t mention part two to the detectives. But perhaps—”
“It has nothing to do with anything!”
“Liam, please don’t go on so.”
Tom said: “Your husband may be right.”
Liam cast him a startled glance.
“This is what I wanted to say to you,” Tom continued. “The first time I met Sybella, at the Waterside, more than a year ago, she was got up a bit like a Goth—you know, the black-lacquered fingernails and heavily lined eyes, the dyed black hair, those odd, lacey skirts …”
“Yes …”
“But when I came to live here this spring, she was much toned down—still the black hair, of course, and the ear piercings—but more in emulation of … well, you. Simple, sort of.” Tom frowned. “I’m afraid I’m not good at explaining women’s clothes.”
“I admired Audrey Hepburn when I was a teenager, you see. Simple, as you say. Clean lines. Classic. A style more enduring than Goth.”
“From the front, you and Sybella look quite different. You, of course, have Japanese features. Sybella looked more like an English pixie. But from the back—”
“Save it, Vicar.” Liam held up a hand. “We’ve already sussed this one. From the back, Mits and Sybella are almost dead ringers. Why do you think I’m at church? I’m not here for my spiritual health, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m here to make sure no one gets any clever idea about doing my wife in—for whatever sick reason they might have.”
“Oh.” Tom felt strangely one-upped. “When …?”
“Yesterday,” Mitsuko said. “When those two CID were interviewing us at the gallery. Liam happened to remark on it.”
“I noticed it before. Never seemed worth mentioning before, though.”
“And, of course,” Mitsuko murmured, “I can’t see my back, can I? So …”
Tom’s heart contracted with new horror and pity as his mind’s eye travelled the village hall. He could see a shadowy form advance through the soft greying gloom as twilight gave way to black night, the slight figure of a young woman standing silvered by the last strands of the setting sun through the west windows, turned away, perhaps in smiling expectation of an encounter to come. A hand slides noiselessly along the smooth length of one of the wooden sticks arrayed along a table—a bachi, perhaps, or Eric’s morris stick, or the colonel’s forgotten walking stick—and swiftly, swiftly, before the woman’s conscious mind can grasp the succession of footfall, rustle of clothing, and the sharp rending of the air and cry out, she succumbs to brutal force at the back of her skull. Despite the late morning’s warmth, Tom felt his blood run cold. Did her killer not see his mistake then? When he pierced the skin of the great drum and bore her body into its pitch interior, did he not notice, in some last shred of evening light, when the strands of black hair fell back from her face, that this was not the face of a woman of East Asian ancestry?
He studied Mitsuko’s grave expression. “You’re worried someone wants to … correct a horrible mistake,” he said.
“Too right I am.” Liam answered for them, indignantly.
Tom kept his focus on Mitsuko. “You had an inkling of this Thursday morning, didn’t you, when you discovered the quilt with the photo of the churchyard had gone missing. You couldn’t remember when you took the picture—simply that it was the day of the last church inspection, more than a year ago.”
A shadow of remorse passed over Mitsuko’s features. She hesitated before replying. “It took me a few moments, but I did remember. I …” She glanced up at her husband. “I remembered the church inspection had been the day before Ned’s funeral and that that was the day Sebastian let me up the church tower to take photographs. But …”
“But …?”
“On Wednesday, Peter’s body was discovered in Ned’s grave.”
“Yes, of course …”
“Well, when you and I were in the village hall on Thursday morning, I remembered a detail about the photograph. In it, at the very bottom of the frame, there’s a figure—a tiny figure, really, from the perspective of the tower—of someone sort of leaning over a freshly dug grave—”
“Good Lord.”
“I gave it little thought when I was running up the quilt. I mentioned to you before that months passed between taking the photographs, then downloading them, then choosing among them for the artworks—”
“Can you identify the figure?” Tom interjected, his excitement mounting.
“No.” Mitsuko moaned. “I’m so
sorry. The picture was taken when the sun was very low in the sky. There were deep shadows in the churchyard below. The figure is almost in silhouette, grey-scale, and leaning over, so I couldn’t identify the back of a head when I was making the quilt. I didn’t really pay it much attention at the time anyway. I knew it was a man, somehow, simply from the general shape, but … I took high-resolution photographs, and if I had my computer still, then the figure could be enlarged, and perhaps …”
“A guess?” Tom pressed.
“At the time, when I was sewing the quilt, I thought it was likely Fred Pike doing some last-minute chores. I even alluded to it in the haiku—‘sexton digs’ were three of the syllables.”
“And you saw nothing else?”
“I was taking mostly panoramas of the whole village. And sometimes I was simply waiting for the light to shift and enjoying the view. At times I aimed my camera down for certain details, but …” She shrugged. “And I could hear very little. It’s windy up there, and the flag hadn’t come down from Easter and was making quite a loud snapping noise.”
Tom frowned. “Why didn’t you say something to me on Thursday?”
Mistuko glanced up at her husband, who responded with a sour look. “I thought …” she began, then sighed and rushed on. “And this is why I lied about that particular haiku label being missing. I thought that the figure in the photo might be Liam, who—”
“I was up to my fucking eyeballs in VAT returns that evening!”
“—who was not at all fond of Peter.”
“I wouldn’t trust him as far as—”
“We shared an interest in art, Peter and I. That’s all. But my absurd husband thought otherwise.”
“Clearly,” Tom spoke quickly to quash further argument, “someone thinks you’re a witness to Peter Kinsey’s murder … or at least his burial—”
“But I’m not. Not really.”
“—hence the theft of the quilt, and then the theft of your laptop and camera—”
“Mitsuko,” Liam interjected, “there’s still your memory, and there’s only one way to steal your memory, isn’t there?”
“But I have no idea who that little figure in the quilt might be.”
“Well, whoever it is doesn’t know that, right?”
Mitsuko’s face sagged. “I can’t bear to think Sybella died by mistake.” She looked off towards the oldest of the churchyard gravestones that lined the path to the lych-gate. “Perhaps the thefts and her death are unrelated. Perhaps she was the intended victim, not that that makes anything better.”
“Mits, we’ve been through this. You were the intended victim. I know it.”
“Did Bliss and Blessing ask you if you thought anyone in the village would have any reason to take your life?” Tom asked her.
“They asked, yes.”
“And what did you tell them?”
Mitsuko hesitated. The glance she flicked at Tom was furtive. “I said I had no idea.”
“And were you being truthful?”
“Not completely.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“The Drewes not with you?” Julia removed one unshod foot from its resting place on the chair opposite.
“No.” Tom set his half pint of Vicar’s Ruin on the table and slipped into the emptied seat. He glanced past his sister-in-law’s shoulder out the pub window and watched an attractive young couple walk by the old red phone box and continue up Church Walk hand in hand. He was conventionally dressed in light summer trousers and a dark blue shirt, but her top was eye-catching—wildly colourful, batiked, vaguely African. Tom felt a pang: he and Lisbeth in an earlier day.
“Fancy seeing Liam, of all people, in church for a Sunday service, football jersey and all,” Julia remarked, wriggling her foot back into her shoe. Tom could feel the force of her curiosity. “You were gone a long time. I nearly gave up and set off for home.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Bad morning? You look more troubled than when I found you outside Sebastian’s.”
“I think I can fairly say I’m very troubled.”
The mention of Sebastian reawakened the quandary of the hour before the service: to go to the police with news of Sebastian’s flight or not to go? Much depended on whether he believed Sebastian responsible for the murder of one, if not two, people in the village. Tom had put his face up to the window of the Old School Room when he’d passed from the church to the pub, but the space had been dark. The door when he tried it was locked. Perhaps like God (but unlike priests), the detectives rested on the seventh day. What, he wondered, would he have done if the lights had been on and the door open?
There was the phone. He might ring DI Bliss and DS Blessing, but simply sitting here in the pub over a half made him realise how resistant he was to the notion. On the other hand, if he delayed, he might rightly be accused of withholding vital information. Yet on still another hand—if, Shiva-like, one were permitted more than two—to shop Sebastian was to expose his identity and, if he were to be believed, expose him to some unspecified danger. Prayer would be the thing, but as Tom gave his mind over to this felt need, he could hear the cautioning voice of the woman who could maintain a medical practice, raise a child, chair committees, sing in a choir, and pull together dinner for six at a moment’s notice—his wife: “Life is a practical task, Tom. Fine to ask God’s advice, but never wait for the answer.” Sharing his dilemma with Julia would be another thing. She was like Lisbeth in many ways, but not in a vital one—she was perhaps less wise in judgement.
“Then what are you troubled about, Tom?” Julia affected a smile. “Other than perhaps me? Or everything that’s happened this week … or …” The smile faded. “Please … I don’t think I can bear any more bad news.”
Tom glanced around the pub. Fortunately, the corner that some members of the congregation normally commandeered after church had emptied. Sunday lunches beckoned. Still, he lowered his voice. This he could share with someone. It would be public knowledge before long. “I had a sort of revelation in church.”
“Really? Are you on the brink of dementia?”
“Julia, I’m serious.”
Julia looked faintly aghast.
“I don’t mean I was visited by the Holy Ghost.” Tom hastened to clarify. “I mean, I came to realise something—something devastating. But then so did Mitsuko and Liam, so I can’t say it’s a revelation unique to me.”
He explained. As he did, he watched wonder and horror advance in Julia’s dark eyes. When he had finished, her face crumpled. “Colm! He lost his child because …”
“Because of mistaken identity.” Tom finished the thought, worrying his fingers around the edge of his glass. “Perhaps. It’s only conjecture, but it’s a conjecture shared. Oh, let it not be true. If it is true, it’s beyond heartbreaking.”
“And Liam comes to church acting as bodyguard because he thinks his wife is not safe.”
“They’re going again to the police, Mitsuko and Liam.”
“Then the questioning will start all over again.”
“Yes, I expect so,” Tom responded miserably. He looked past Julia again, through the window, alerted to the earlier couple, now turning down Poynton Shute. He noted the woman’s dark hair pulled into a ponytail with the same colourful material of her shirt. He said without thinking, and then with immediate regret: “Mitsuko is less bothered about her safety than Liam, though.”
Julia plucked the sliver of lemon from her glass. “Really? Why?”
“Oh … no reason. It’s just …”
“I have a feeling you’re not telling me something.”
Tom regarded his sister-in-law. A talebearer reveals secrets—the proverb flitted through his mind—but he who is of a faithful spirit keeps a secret. But was it a secret? Mitsuko had banished Liam, it was true. “You’d better get back to the Waterside,” she’d urged him. “Kerra Prowse can’t cope all by herself, not on her fourth day of work. I’m perfectly safe with Tom.” When Liam obj
ected in his demanding way—“What do you mean you’re not being completely truthful?” he’d snapped at his wife. “Who in the village would want you dead?”—she’d snapped back, “It’s nothing! I want to have a private conversation with my priest. Go! Begone, husband! For heaven’s sake, Liam, no one is going to do me in in broad daylight.”
Liam clamped his jaw shut and departed, his footfalls crunching furiously on the shingle. A certain gravity had settled along Mitsuko’s fine features as she studied the back of her husband. Abruptly, leaflike, a tremble passed through her slight figure.
“You’re shivering,” Tom had said.
“At a memory,” Mitsuko responded, “but some sun would feel good.”
They took the path from the shadowed north porch around the east window to a bench near the south porch dedicated to Lydia Northmore, which the colonel had had placed many years before to afford a meditative view of the churchyard.
“It happened last Sunday,” Mitsuko began, recoiling a little at the brass plaque before settling onto the curve of the wooden seat, “when I was installing the memory quilts. Colonel Northmore wandered in with Bumble. I expect he was drawn by the activity setting up for the fayre and all, and hadn’t thought he would find me there. Not that he goes out of his way to avoid me, but I rarely get more than a polite, but strained, nod if we pass in the road. Will you sit?” She looked up at him, shading her eyes against the sun with her hand.
“Sorry, yes. I was just—” Tom felt the warmth seep through his surplice and cassock into his back as he sank onto the bench’s sun-bleached wooden slats.
“—looking at Sybella’s grave,” Mitsuko finished for him. She turned her head towards the lowest terrace, where a mound of fresh earth proclaimed the recent burial. She shivered once again, despite the warm air. “It’s so horribly unfair.”
And then for the first time in Tom’s presence, silent tears fell down Mitsuko’s face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I managed to get through the whole week without this happening, but …”
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