Eleven Pipers Piping: A Father Christmas Mystery

by C. C. Benison

  “A penny for ’em, Vicar.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I was just … ruminating.”

  Tom glanced to the left, towards the village hall, the windows of which were black and lifeless. “Looks like film night’s cancelled,” he remarked as Roger’s mobile tinkled out “Ode to Joy” once more. Singin’ in the Rain had been scheduled for seven thirty. As Burns himself attested, the best-laid schemes gang aft agley, though fickle weather may not have been uppermost in the great poet’s mind. If the Burns Supper had been scheduled at the Thorn Court Hotel for January 25, Burns’s actual birthday, then Roger’s mobile might be less harrying. But as Will had explained to him, many of the Thistle But Mostly Rose hired themselves out to entertain at other Burns Suppers nearer the date, obliging the band to schedule its own celebratory meal well before or after.

  “Another cancellation?”

  “No, that was Mother, wondering if I’d arrived safely. Apparently they interrupted some programme she was watching with a weather bulletin.”

  Tom could see a frown forming on Roger’s face, illuminated by a pale light over the sign that announced their destination. Pennycross Road curved to the right forty feet or so beyond Tilly’s cottage and then ascended sharply around a high stone wall that defined the western boundary of Thorn Court Country Hotel’s expansive grounds. Cut into the wall at the base of the small hill that the hotel crowned was a gate of filigreed wrought iron adorned with the letter S.

  “It can’t be good if they’re interrupting TV.”

  “The snow’s heavy.” Tom pocketed his torch and pushed at the gate. “Goodness, perhaps this gate’s iced up somehow. Here …” He handed the box of pastries to Roger, dug his shoulder into the curlicued metal, and heaved. With a reluctant shriek along its hinge, the gate budged a few inches, creating a nascent fan shape in the fallen snow.

  “Bless!” Roger remarked. “Perhaps we should go round to the upper entrance.”

  “Wait! I’ll get it.”

  Tom pushed harder against the resistant metal, finally gaining sufficient room to slip through. “There!” he said with some satisfaction, turning to Roger, who was calculating his belly width against the gap’s.

  “Tom, I think I’ll have to get in the other way.”

  “Oh, don’t. I’m sure we can get this bloody thing to move. Caroline drove the girls down to the vicarage earlier and said it was quite slippery. She likely meant the stretch up the hill.”

  As if to confirm this, at that very moment the sweeping oval headlights of car flared against the wall opposite, followed by a black bullet shape that careened around the corner and roared towards the heart of the village.

  “Bless!” Roger gasped, backing against the wall.

  “He might have taken out the side of the village hall at that speed! How irresponsible! Did you see who it was?”

  “Too dark, I’m afraid. A sports model of some nature, I think.”

  “Well, you’re not going up that hill. Here …” Tom grasped two of the gate’s bars and immediately regretted not wearing gloves. The cold metal seared his skin. “… now that I’m on this side I can pull. If you put your things down, you can push.”

  But before Roger could divest himself of his burdens, the gate gave way with a sickening snap and Tom found himself tossed onto a low box hedge.

  “Tom! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Tom croaked. “Just a little wind knocked out of me. Give me a minute.”

  The denuded branches stabbed at his backside and thighs while his head brushed against a mound of wet snow on the other side of the hedge. He was afforded, however, a view of the starless heavens through mediations of falling flakes.

  “Good thing I’m not wearing a kilt,” he remarked between breaths, feeling pinpricks of snow tickle his skin. “Otherwise—”

  Roger interrupted him with a noisy sigh. “Bless, Vicar, I hope you’re not going to do what’s-up-your-kilt jokes this evening. We’ve heard them all.”

  “Sorry.”

  “May I give you a hand?”

  “Another minute.”

  “You remind me a bit of the time Will fell over Mrs. Dimbleby’s hedge.”

  “When was this?”

  “In the autumn. At the Race for the Roof. I was minding the water station halfway and held out a paper cup to him as he was going by and somehow he lost his footing when he was reaching for it and fell over the hedge. He was quite shirty about it, blamed me.”

  “I thought Will looked put out at the finish line. I think he came in fourth.”

  Tom allowed his body to slide off the hedge, a task made easier by the slippery surface along his waxed jacket. He landed in a heap in what in better weather would be a bed of roses, but was now a quilt of snow.

  “Still,” he continued, scrambling up and brushing damp clumps from his sleeves, “Will raised a very good sum for the church roof repairs. The Race for the Roof was a splendid idea and he was willing to organise the entire event, as you know.”

  “Perhaps that’s why …”

  “Perhaps that’s why what?”

  “Why Will has become so snappish of late. He takes too much on. He manages this hotel with Caroline.” Roger pointed up the steep path through the marshalling of cypress trees towards Thorn Court, as sinister as a sorcerer’s castle behind the veil of snow but for the redeeming glow from the ground-floor windows. “He rehearses twice a month with us pipers. He plays cricket and coaches the Under-fifteens—well, used to coach. He’s a member of the amateur dramatic society and been in all the plays, except the last one.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, Harry’s death, I think. Didn’t want to be too much in the public eye, though he was marvellous the year before in Abigail’s Party as the henpecked husband.” Roger handed Tom the box of pastries. “And Will sits on the parish council, though … I expect there’s a bit of self-interest there.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Will is anti.”

  “Vivisectionist?”

  “No, development.”

  “Of course, yes, I did know that.”

  Indeed, at lunch on Sunday, Will had been agitated about Moorgate Properties, developers based in Newton Abbot, making discreet enquiries into available parcels adjacent to Thornford on which to build new homes—forty or fifty of them, all with white masonry and slate roofs, all identical, all as sore on the eyes—Will declared in his Australian twang—as a rank of sheep pens. Thornford’s frail network of narrow lanes would be flooded with more cars, a hazard to children and horse-riders, and a swath of fields designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty would be spoiled. Will didn’t say, but seemed to suggest, that such a development threatened to devalue the village as a holiday destination, no hotelier’s wish, and his every gesture and twitch seemed intended to solicit Tom’s agreement.

  Tom, however, thought the fence a fine place to perch that afternoon. Yes, despoiling the English countryside was an idea with little merit; he could understand that—he loved his walks in the countryside with Bumble. But, he said, rising to open the wine, mightn’t there be an argument for new housing? He meant, of course, affordable housing, of which there was little in the village. Marg Farrant, one of the steadfast and true of the Flower Guild, had remarked to him only the other day how desperately her daughter and her husband wanted to live in Thornford to be near her, but found themselves priced out of the market. From the corner of his eye, as he poured the wine, he had seen Will rapping his knuckles in random jumps along the edge of the dining table until Caroline’s slim hand slipped across and squeezed her husband’s larger, sinewy one, not wholly successfully, into submission. Tom barely had time to register surprise at Will’s agitation—and acknowledge his own yearning for such a tender wifely touch—because it was that moment in which Madrun sounded her grief over the Yorkshire pudding. Afterwards, the subject was forgotten. Will was, if anything, subdued through the meal. They talked about the weather, a political scandal that
was the lead story in The Sunday Times, the vagaries of fund-raising for a country church, and the controversy over national curriculum tests—tacitly avoiding parish council news, food failures, and cricket.

  “What are your views?” Tom asked Roger as they stepped up the sloping path. By their feet, solar garden lights, tiny perfect circles illuminating the unblemished snow, guided the way through the darkness towards the hotel’s front door.

  “Of a new housing development? Bless, I don’t know. I must say I could use the trade. It’s all very well everyone wanting me to be open at seven in the morning if they run out of milk, or open at eight at night if they’ve run out of fags, but then they go off and do their main shopping at Totnes or Paignton.”

  “Well, here we are.” Tom heard Roger grunt when they had reached the hotel’s forecourt. Here the snow, glimmering in the soft golden glow of the coach lamps on either side of the entrance, was blemished by a splodge of footprints. Narrow trails of tyre tracks disappeared into the darkness. “Good, we’re not the first.” Roger shone his torch down the forecourt towards the old stable block, converted to a hotel garage. “Not many cars, though,” he observed.

  “I expect the weather is slowing people down.” Tom glanced up through the tumbling flakes of snow to Thorn Court’s belvedere tower, his attention caught by the upper window’s sudden illumination. “I wonder who’s gone up there at this time of the evening?”

  Roger followed his glance. “Whatever would one do with it, I wonder?”

  “With what?”

  “The tower. Oh, sorry, Tom. I was reflecting on a conversation I overheard in the shop before Christmas. Two men were discussing this property, Thorn Court … for development.” He turned his beam onto the garden they’d passed through moments earlier, now a hummocky white blanket spreading down to Pennycross Road below. “Bless, you could put ten cottages here, I expect. More.”

  “Oh,” Tom exclaimed, startled by the idea of the hotel’s grounds, ravishing in the spring and summer with vivid tangles of flowers, vanishing into slate and mortar. “Do you know who the two were?”

  “I’ve not seen them before. Moorgate Properties types, I shouldn’t wonder. Funny what you hear standing in a shop all day. People think you’re invisible. Anyway, they were saying the hotel could be converted into flats, then speculated about what to do with the tower.”

  “But wasn’t Thorn Court designed by some notable nineteenth-century architect?”

  “I think so.”

  “It must be at least Grade II listed. They’d have to leave the tower, but more to the point,” Tom continued, “Caroline and Will can’t possibly be thinking of selling. He spoke so strongly against development last Sunday lunch, and, of course, they’re going to all the expense of renovating and upgrading.”

  “Bless! Caroline would never sell. Except for the period between her father selling it and her buying it back, her family has held this property for nearly two hundred years. I’m not sure there’s anything she loves more.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tom, I don’t believe you’ve met my brother-in-law, Nick Stanhope.” Will motioned to his right. “Caroline’s brother,” he added unnecessarily.

  “Half brother.” Nick shifted his whisky glass to his left hand, took Tom’s in his right, and shot him a taunting smile. His grip was firm, crushing, as if testing Tom’s mettle while his eyes, blue, bright, and sharp, held Tom in an ironic thrall. Tom glanced from them to Will’s, which were similarly blue, but clouded, opaque, as if he had something else on his mind. Only a slight twitch of Will’s eyebrows, so light and blond as to be almost invisible, suggested irritation with Nick’s gratuitous explanation.

  “We share a father. Or shared, rather. But sod that.” Nick took a draining gulp from his glass. “More to the point, Vicar, are you ready for a night of debauchery?”

  “I think Tom has an early call in the morning,” Will interjected in a weary tone.

  “Old Giles used to crawl up the pulpit Sunday morning after, I hear.”

  “Nick is building a home security business—a point of conversational interest,” Will added, frowning as his brother-in-law shook his empty glass in his face. “And Tom, of course, is the incumbent at St. Nicholas’s. The Reverend Tom Christmas.”

  “Father Christmas? Oy, where’s my prezzie, Father Christmas? I asked for a shiny new shotgun and never got it.”

  “Nick, shut it.”

  “Just bring the bottle over, Will. There’s a good lad,” Nick called as the kilted figure departed towards a sideboard, then muttered darkly, “misery guts.” The hard grin snapped back. “You’ll want topping up, too, Father Christmas.”

  “I wouldn’t want to slur the Selkirk Grace,” Tom demurred. So this, he thought with a spurt of envy, was Nick Stanhope, paired for a spell—said wagging tongues—with Màiri White, the village bobby (more properly known as the Police Community Support Officer) who materialized in the village at intervals on her electric bicycle, a caution to those contemplating anti-social behaviour but a temptation to Tom contemplating the privations of his widowhood. He felt an unaccountable skip in his veins if, say, he glimpsed her outside Pattimore’s shop holding one of her informal “surgeries” about village issues. There would go his silly bloody feet, carrying him witlessly down Poynton Shute when his appointment was in the other direction, past PCSO White, all for the chance to exchange a smile and a greeting and have a glimpse of her open, attractive face under her regulation bowler hat. Giddy teenagers had more poise.

  He thought he sensed a reciprocal heed on her part—her smile seemed awfully warm—but he felt constrained, even after ten months in Thornford, to make some sort of overture. In part, he wasn’t sure he was ready to let his heart be vulnerable a second time, expose it to a chance of breaking. Before he had been called to priesthood, before he met Lisbeth, his heart had been a buoyant sort of thing, quick to bounce back from failed affairs. But his love for Lisbeth had been swift, sudden, surprising, and all-consuming, and it had been his shield through the years against cassock-chasers, more even than the clerical collar banding his neck. His fingers strayed to its surface, starched and ironed at Madrun’s hand. He was a man in holy orders and yet, without a wife, he was a man lingering, uncertain, on the shores of some sea of romance. Others might set sail in pursuit of love untroubled; few were as formally constrained as he.

  “Ever get hot under the collar?” Nick smirked, gesturing towards Tom’s neck, splashing a drop of whisky on his Prince Charlie jacket.

  “Only when I bathe,” Tom responded dryly, having entertained the hackneyed question more than once. What, he was beginning to wonder, had Màiri found so winning about Nick Stanhope? “That must be an ancestor of yours.” Tom gestured towards a large, gilt-framed oil portrait over the mantelpiece of a solidly prosperous Victorian gentleman in a frock coat and high collar nudging long side-whiskers. Shared with Nick was the generously curved mouth with its hint of petulance and the short fringe of jet-black hair, glossy as an animal’s, combed forwards to cover the incipient widow’s peak. Shared, too, was the faintly bumptious gaze.

  Nick turned to look. “I haven’t a clue.”

  “It’s your …” Will had reappeared with a crystal decanter and was holding it over Nick’s glass. “Great-great-grandfather Josiah Stanhope. The son of the man who had Thorn Court built. It was painted by William Gush.”

  “Worth anything?”

  “It doesn’t matter what it’s worth, Nick. We’re not selling it.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, have a drink, Will.”

  “And it’s firmly affixed to the wall, too, so don’t get any—”

  “What do you take me for?” Nick said through his teeth. His neck bulged over his black bow tie. “Let me remind you again, brother-in-law, that you owe me—”

  “Gentlemen,” Tom interrupted in a low voice. “Perhaps another time …?”

  Will turned to him, his mouth a grim line. “I’m sorry, Tom.”

  �
��If you think you’ve landed in the middle of a family row, Vicar, you have.” Nick trained his laser eyes on him.

  “Nick, for God’s sake!”

  “Caro and Will forget that I didn’t grow up here in this sodding pile so why would I be sentimentally attached to it? Great-Great-Grandfather Josiah can go fuck himself. There, I’ve said my piece, and I’m not saying any more on the subject tonight.” Nick snatched the decanter from Will’s hands, splashing scotch on the Axminster. “Give me that. You don’t seem to be drinking anyway.” He pasted back on his hail-fellow-well-met grin. “We’re going to enjoy ourselves this evening, Vicar, depend on it. Now, let’s see who else needs a drink.”

  Tom flicked a glance at Will. His face, under the shock of straw-coloured hair, bore the marks of strain: pallid skin stretched tightly over the strong sharp bones, smudging in the hollow of the eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Tom,” Will said again.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Tom responded reflexively.

  Will shook his head and smiled wanly. “Happy families, eh?”

  Tom returned a sympathetic smile. “All alike, according to Tolstoy.” Then, before he could think, the rest of the quotation slipped from his lips: “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

  The skin below Will’s right eye twitched suddenly. “Yes, I … I think he’s probably right.” He turned to look over the room. Tom followed his gaze. When Thorn Court was the private residence of the Stanhopes, he thought this might well have been the drawing room. The proportions were agreeable—the space was neither grand nor boxy—and the predominant colour was equally agreeable—a gentle sage-green wash over the walls, setting off the gold and dark red chintz of the upholstery. With the sconces turned low, the draperies closed, and the fire blazing, the room seemed to pulse and glow, like a cocoon lit from within.

  Will turned back to Tom. “Caroline and I foolishly involved Nick financially in the business when we purchased Thorn Court. He was content to let us run things when he was in the army, but since he was … discharged two years ago … anyway, he’s not happy about us renovating.”