Eleven Pipers Piping: A Father Christmas Mystery

by C. C. Benison

  “He might have.” Tom had stayed in bed later than he ought and Madrun had trailed after him through the vicarage, plying him with toast, coffee, messages, instructions, queries—none of which he had been able to properly ingest before racing off in his car through the mizzly rain to Pennycross St. Paul. Returning to Thornford from Pennycross, the engine light on his car had flashed on. Worried, he had dropped the car with Jago at Thorn Cross Garage and ran most of the way through the village to St. Nicholas’s. Tom felt extremely fizzy and tired, rather as if he had stepped off a plane himself after a very long flight. “Good thing you were available.”

  “Well, Otis would have struggled in, if he had to, so he must be quite under the weather.”

  Tom caught Colm’s meaning. Otis Croucher, St. Nicholas’s new assistant choir director and organist, was a reedy young man from Totnes with a certificate from the Royal College of Organists, no less, but with a whiff of troubled psyche, which seemed to grow more apparent with each quarterly meeting to select hymns and anthems. Finding musicians for small parishes was no easy task, but Otis seemed increasingly wont to go off into little tantrums that evinced a narrow view of music and a generous view of his own importance. That Colm had had a bubble of pop-star fame in the eighties and was loved for it by the villagers buttered no parsnips for Otis Croucher.

  “Otis didn’t struggle in last Sunday, either,” Tom told Colm. “The weather, you know. The choir was somewhat diminished, too, but we carried on. Very Dunkirk of us. Anyway, I thought you—”

  “We got to Exeter airport late last evening,” Colm interrupted. “And we were going to stay overnight at the Cumberland but I thought I’d really rather sleep in my own bed.” He shrugged. “Which, in the end, didn’t happen.”

  Tom stepped towards the vestry’s inner corner where his cassock was hanging and shot Colm a puzzled frown. “Why not?” seemed to be the requisite question.

  “Oona was in it.”

  “Is this where I do one of those double takes they do in films?” Tom asked wearily. He really wasn’t feeling too clever.

  “Yes.”

  “All right, here goes: Your ex-wife was in your bed!”

  Colm had the grace to look discomfited. “She wasn’t supposed to be. There are a number of other bedrooms at Thornridge. I told her to use the Yellow Bedroom, but of course she doesn’t take direction very well. Never did. It’s a wonder her modelling career lasted as long as it did. Anyway, I’ll be facing a decorator’s bill before too long.”

  Tom’s eyebrows went up a notch as he buttoned his cassock.

  “Celia,” Colm responded. “Seeing Oona in our bed rather set her teeth on edge. To say the least.”

  “ ‘Seeing’?”

  Colm nodded grimly. “That and more.”

  “I thought you and Oona weren’t on awfully good terms.”

  “There’s been some … thaw—since Sybella’s death, you understand.”

  Tom did. Colm and Oona’s nineteen-year-old daughter had been found murdered in the spring, a tragedy that horrified the village.

  “It was Celia’s doing,” Colm continued. “You know, she trained as a psychologist. She thought it would be therapeutic for Oona and me to try and patch things up, and so we have—at least given it a go. We talk on the phone once in a while. At any rate, Oona’d been given the push by someone, that fellow—you might recall. Oona brought him to the funeral. I wasn’t happy about it at the time. He was barely older than Sybella.”

  “Edoardo Lanzoni.”

  “Very good.”

  “I credit my housekeeper. She read out an item from one of the papers about their falling-out at breakfast some weeks ago. Underpants model or the like.”

  “That’s right. Not a bad bloke, as it turns out. Thought he might stay the course, but no such luck. Oona’s a handful at the best of times. Still, breaking up at Christmas …” Colm’s mouth twisted. “Oona was miserable, so I suggested last-minute that as Celia, Declan, and I would be away on a mini break that she get out of London, come down to Devon, stay at the house, and have a good licking of her wounds here.”

  “That seems kind,” Tom demurred, reaching for his surplice. “My sense is that it wasn’t wise, however.”

  “Oona has only a passing relationship with housekeeping, for one thing. Celia had cancelled Joyce Pike’s cleaning services for the week we were away, so the place was an absolute bloody tip when we walked through the door. Oona couldn’t manage to load a dishwasher when we were married, and still can’t.”

  “If she was having parties or the like, I’m sure we would have heard about it in the village. I don’t think anyone even knew Oona was in the vicinity.” Tom pulled the surplice over this head. “Besides, she would have been snowed in for the first few days. We all were. You were lucky to get out of the country.”

  “We were one of the last flights out of Exeter airport.” Colm’s horsy teeth blazed in his bronzed face. “Lucky us.” Then his expression grew grave. “But here’s why I wanted a word, Tom. When we found Oona in our bedroom—or, rather, when Celia found her, as she went upstairs first, and started in to shrieking—Oona wasn’t alone.”

  “Ah.”

  “I really do think that new bed linen would suffice, but Celia is set on a new suite, fresh paint, new carpeting—the lot.”

  “Is it important who Oona was with? You needn’t tell me.”

  “It was …” Colm leaned back to look round the door into the sanctuary. The murmuring and cheery hellos of the early arrivers—the bellringers, choir members, sidesmen—echoed along the stone walls. “It was Nick Stanhope.”

  His embroidered green stole slipped from Tom’s hands. “Nick? I wouldn’t have thought he and Oona travelled in anything like the same circles.”

  “They don’t. I hired Nick’s firm to do some upgrades to our security system, thinking he might best do it while we were off in Barbados. But when we got back last night, half the doors were unlocked, the house unalarmed. Apparently, he was distracted by Oona.”

  “Was that his excuse?”

  “Essentially. Anytime Oona wanted him—and she didn’t want him for his way around a fuse box—she’d set off the alarm. Of course, I was furious. It’s like going off and leaving two teenagers to mind your house. I’ve got hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of recording equipment, and there’s the art, and Celia’s jewellery. Oona’s past reforming, but I was set to give Nick a bollocking for his irresponsibility.” He drew a breath. “However—”

  “I’m presuming you didn’t invite Nick and Oona to stay the night,” Tom interjected. “In another bedroom, of course.”

  “Too right I didn’t.”

  “You wouldn’t have asked where they were going, would you?”

  “I was past caring. Doesn’t Nick have a flat in Torquay? Why?”

  Tom reflected on his brief interview with Bliss and Blessing in his study last evening. If they were to act on what he had told them—that Judith told him that Nick had threatened her—then had they pulled Nick in for questioning?

  “I should tell you what’s befallen Caroline,” Tom began, avoiding a direct response to Colm’s questions. “Since you’ll note her absence in the choir this morning.”

  “But I do know. That’s why I’m hesitant to make trouble for Nick. I hired him as a favour to Caroline, but now that she’s suffered this terrible tragedy, I don’t want to add to her troubles. But it’s not simply that, Tom. It’s—”

  “But how could you know? Surely the South Devon Herald isn’t delivered in Barbados.”

  “I finally gave in and let Declan have an iPhone for Christmas. He spent the whole holiday texting his mates back here. He’s the one who learned of it, so I went to the hotel’s computer. The paper’s online and had a piece about the inquest. It was shocking. Poisoned? I take it the police haven’t gotten far with their enquiries.”

  “No, I’m afraid they haven’t.”

  “And then this morning—” The church bells began to
ring their changes. Colm frowned. “I should get to the choir vestry and into my kit. I’ll be quick: This morning, after Otis called me, I switched on the radio while I was getting some breakfast and heard this appalling story about some woman being shot at the Wassail. Were you there?”

  Tom nodded.

  “Grim?”

  “You might imagine.”

  Colm appraised Tom’s expression, then gave a grunt of understanding. “Before Otis phoned, I did a little tour of the house to see in the daylight what other mess Oona might have made. I went into the gun room—”

  Something in Tom’s face made him stop. He continued, “You didn’t know I had a gun room, did you?”

  “Not until I happened across a back issue of Country Life at Caroline’s earlier in the week—the one featuring you and Thornridge House.”

  “Celia’s idea. I didn’t want the intrusion, but she’d had the whole house done up and pouted for days until I gave in. Anyway, the gun room and its contents were entailed with the house when we bought it. Shooting is one aspect of country living in which I haven’t the remotest interest, but my financial advisor said the guns—they’re all Purdeys and Churchills—are a good investment, and of course Celia finds them … decorative. Shall we …?”

  Colm indicated the chancel.

  “I was in the gun room,” he continued, lowering his voice, as they exited the vestry, “and noticed that one of the shotguns seemed to be missing.”

  Tom halted them at the rood screen. “Are you sure?” he whispered, glancing through the carved oak into the nave to see the sidesmen, John Copeland and Russ Oxley, stuffing copies of the order of service into hymn books. Fred Pike moved towards the choir vestry for his cassock.

  “I admit I hardly pay attention to the bloody things, but one of the cabinets looked to have a shotgun missing. I could be mistaken, of course, and there is an inventory list—somewhere—that I could check against. I wasn’t overworried about it until I heard the story of the shooting on the radio and thought—can this be a coincidence? According to the story, the police aren’t ruling out homicide. If you’re going to shoot someone, it occurred to me, best to do it with someone else’s gun, am I right, Tom?”

  “Yes,” Tom allowed, “that does make some sense.”

  “Of course, all kinds of people have shotguns in the country so I suppose all kinds of people could have done this terrible thing.”

  “Who knows you own shotguns?”

  “Readers of Country Life? I don’t know—all sorts. Friends who come to stay. Relatives. Some from the village—Joyce Pike twice a week. Molly Kaif’s been coming quite regularly for therapy from Celia, which I probably shouldn’t say, but I know you’ll keep it to yourself.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Molly’s told me anyway. But who has access to your gun room?”

  “Half the county has had access to my house, what with my security system disabled best part of the week.”

  “Do you keep the gun room locked?”

  “No, but the gun cabinets are. Not,” he added ruefully, “that the keys are difficult to find.”

  “And the cabinet wasn’t broken into?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there’s nothing to do, Colm, but report the missing shotgun to the authorities. You have a firearms certificate for it, yes? Then if they find it, they can examine it and at least eliminate it as the possible weapon.”

  Colm worried his fingernail. “Which brings me back to Caroline. It’s not only Nick who’s been hanging about my house. Anyway, I’m not awfully concerned about his fate at the moment. It’s Adam.”

  “Adam?”

  “He comes over regularly to service the guns, keep them in good nick and so forth, so they don’t lose their value. If I report the loss—particularly while they’re investigating this woman’s death—then the police are naturally going to turn their attention to Adam. I understand they have a job to do, but I also know from my own experience when Sybella died how … intrusive they can be. I’m sure Adam and Caroline—and Ariel—are already suffering terribly. I don’t want to burden them with more. The shotgun’s only a thing. Perhaps I have misplaced it. Besides, if this woman’s death is no accident, what motive could Adam possibly have in shooting her? Or Nick, for that matter?”

  Tom bit his lip rather than reply. Indeed, he had thought of little else during his fitful sleep. Of course, Nick, of the three in possession of a shotgun at the Wassail, had the best opportunity to shoot Judith. The call on his mobile that had taken him away from the orchard: a setup of some nature? Adam had reported Nick’s “smile” at the time of the call. Was Nick smiling in anticipation of a rendezvous with Oona? Or because some plan of his was about to commence? And what motive? Colm asked. Tom could only assume Judith posed some threat to Nick, though she had dismissed his threat to her. And now means. What shotgun had Nick been using? He assumed, as Nick had been a Gun at the Wassail before, that he possessed his own firearm. But only an impulsive fool would use his own traceable weapon. Nick was impulsive, but not a fool. Perhaps there was method in his leaving Thornridge House unlocked and unalarmed. If the weapon used to shoot Judith Ingley were ever found, if it wasn’t weighted and thrown into the millpond, and it turned out to be one from Thornridge House’s gun room collection, Nick could claim someone, anyone, could have come and helped himself—or herself—to it.

  And then, a coincidence. Thinking about it later, Tom preferred the word coincidence. In this instance, he didn’t wish to use the godly word providence. Colm was about to part company for the choir vestry, but the sound of the stout south porch door creaking open on its hinge (most arrived for church through the north porch) caught their attention. And then, before they could carry on to their next tasks, a new and horrifying sight: Miranda stepping up St. Nicholas’s crooked aisle in her green wellies and her crimson jacket. On her hands was a pair of remarkably bright yellow gloves reaching well up into her coat sleeves. And in her outstretched arms, carried like a lamb to sacrifice, was a shotgun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The couch was soft and fat and a few inches too short to accommodate Tom’s height—six feet, one inch—or length, when he was supine (or very nearly), as he was now. The choice had been: elevate the feet (over the armrest) or the head (against the other armrest). Even to lie down any which way for a moment was to invite the sleep that his body craved, but the sight of the couch, a marshmallowy confection of blue-and-white-striped chintz, was as tempting as the bed of Delilah and so he was settling upon its gentle surface for a minute—for just a minute!—taking care to elevate his head (not his feet) so that he wouldn’t sink under the waters of Lethe. Madrun had laid a fire in the grate. It crackled slowly, sending a golden glow over the carpet. Outside, the rain continued in its mizzly fashion, pit-pit-pitting against the panes of the French windows that on warm days opened his office to the vicarage garden. On an ordinary Sunday afternoon, he might have repaired to the sitting room couch or to his bedroom, flopped down, unfolded The Observer, cast his eyes over its columns with great intention, and then slipped, without guilt, through postprandial torpor into sleep full-stop. But this troubled Sunday afternoon, his racing mind countermanded his weary body and The Observer fell to the floor. Out in the garden, his garden, amid the shrubs and the very last of the snow, scene-of-crime officers were mucking about looking for some shred of evidence of a killer’s presence. They had been concentrated on the Old Orchard in the early morning. It was Miranda’s discovery that refocused their attention.

  The mental picture of his child bearing a firearm jolted him anew, but at the time, as she moved through the transept, Tom felt constrained to hide his horror and revulsion behind a mask of delight for her initiative. Bumble, scrabbling through the remnant of a snowbank, dissolving in the rain, against the boundary wall between the vicarage garden and the Old Orchard, had laid bare the trace of a curious object, sending Miranda, discerning reader of Alice Roy novels, racing to the kitchen for a pair of rubber washing-
up gloves.

  “Regarde ce que Bumble a trouvé, Papa, she beamed, straining to raise the instrument, heavy in her child’s hands. “Mais ne le touche pas! Il pourrait y avoir … fingerprints!”

  The French word eluded her, which was just as well. Tom had instinctively moved to grab it, desperate to remove the dangerous thing from his daughter’s grip. Mercifully, the choir members were at the back of the church in the choir vestry robing themselves; the bellringers were one floor above, busy shadows behind leaded glass. Besides Colm, only Fred, John, Russ, and—inconveniently—churchwarden Karla Skynner bore startled witness to this spectacle, the last entering from the north porch as Miranda entered from the south and casting Tom a glare so censorious he rushed to usher Miranda to the vestry.

  “Do you think Mrs. Ingley was killed with this?”

  Her bluntness shook him. His heart, already racing at the proximity to this instrument of death, an obscenity in the house of God, gave an uncomfortable thud, and the worry pierced his mind that Miranda was becoming tempered to violent death.

  “Darling,” he began gently, pulling her to him, “we won’t know until the police look at it.” He glanced at Colm, who was leaning over the table examining the shotgun. “But I’m sure they’ll think you’re brilliant.”

  Colm had phoned the police on his mobile. “I can only presume it’s mine,” he said to Tom, “and I very much wish it weren’t.”

  While the congregation was singing “O Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness,” Tom noted Detective Sergeant Blessing step into the church and take a pew near the back, next to Tilly Springett, who shot him a glance of startled recognition. The sergeant sang heartily—Tom could hear his bass-baritone rumble below the reedy voices of his flock—ending the Epiphany hymn with a full-blooded chord that set a few heads turning. The sergeant appeared to listen, too, with rapt attention to Tom’s sermon, or at least he affected the ability to look attentive, which was more than some did, such as Adella Sainton-Clark, who spent his sermons filling in the sudoku challenge cut from The Sunday Times as if she didn’t think he could see what she was doing. Attendance had been heartening, however; in part—he theorised—a fallout from last Sunday’s storm-stayed multitude; in part, too, a visceral response to the sensation and menace of the last week, though he would have preferred villagers drawn simply by the Christian message.