Eleven Pipers Piping

by C. C. Benison

  “Did last weekend’s concert go well?”

  “Cancelled, wasn’t it, what with all the snow.”

  “Cancelled?” Tom frowned. “I never thought to ask what happened. They must have all bunked in at Noze during the storm.”

  “Who? Caroline? With Tamara and Adam? Oh, I suppose.” Jago took Tom’s credit card.

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “There comes a time when a father doesn’t want to know where his daughter spends her nights. Or,” he mumbled darkly, “with whom.”

  “Adam’s not such a bad lad.”

  “Adam’s a plonker.”

  Tom smiled. “Think you’d approve of any man your daughter went out with?”

  “Like as not.” Jago swiped the credit card with a certain ferocity. “The shoes?”

  “I can take them up then. Have you got them here? I’ll leave them in the car.”

  “Tamara works at Drake’s Coffee House on Saturday mornings, though.”

  “Then that’s perfect. I’m picking up some books at a shop on Cathedral Close, too. I can drop them off to her then.”

  Jago reached below the counter and pulled out a wrinkled Morrisons carrier bag. At that moment, somewhere behind the wall mounted with a rack of crisps, peanuts, and pork scratchings packets, a toilet flushed.

  “I remember,” Bob continued, as if there had been no interval of petrol-purchase, bladder-relief, and cheese-and-onion-crisp-buying, “when Bill Frost and me ’itchhiked up Tiverton way for …” His wrinkled face distorted at the effort of remembering. “Not sure why now. Anyway, this were near end of th’ war, before Bill got wed. Petrol were rationed, so it were th’ only way t’get about.”

  “Were you in the service?” Tom pulled back onto the main road.

  “Might have been, by ’44 we was eligible and wanted to join up, but they wanted us on the land, Bill and me. We worked the Stanhopes’ farm in them days, before they sold it.” Bob rattled the crisp packet in an effort to open it.

  “Should you be eating those? Jago tells me you have diabetes.”

  “Don’t matter.”

  The undertone made Tom glance at him sharply. “Bob …?”

  “As I were about to say, Father, weren’t a lot of other lads about then, so many off t’war and all, that we had our pick, y’know. Of course, there were all these Yanks stationed here,” he added darkly. “Tha’ didn’t help none. Anyway …”

  Crisp packet opened, he proffered it to Tom, who slipped his hand in and pulled out a crisp unseen, keeping his eyes on the road, which cut past a few remaining Thornford cottages and into a funnel of hedgerows along Bursdon Road drab with winter.

  “Anyway, Father, it were at Tiverton where Bill met Irene, who became ’is missus. She were from London. Her parents sent her to live with some great-aunt who were landlady of a pub. Thought she would be safer. Not sure she were.” He chuckled.

  “Strange how life-altering a chance meeting can be.” Munching the crisp, Tom reflected on his own transformative experience: If he hadn’t fallen off a punt into the Cam when he’d been at the vicar factory in Cambridge, if Lisbeth hadn’t seen him flailing about—he being the only one at school not to earn his swimming certificate—and pulled him out; if he hadn’t looked into her remarkable green-flecked eyes and worshipped the very bones of her from that very instant, wherever would he be today? Most likely not, he thought, glancing at Bob, driving through deepest Devon with an octogenarian wearing pink lady’s spectacles.

  “Have you spoken much with Judith Ingley … Frost that was?” Tom gave his tongue a taste and wondered how far past their sell-by date those crisps were. He glanced at Bob munching unconcernedly away, crumbs falling onto his jacket. “I saw you come out of the village hall with her this morning.”

  “No. Just t’say hello. She remembered me, though.”

  Tom pursed his lips in thought. They were coming to the junction of Bursdon Road and the A435 near where Caroline had abandoned her car Saturday evening, and he was curious to see the spot, but he also had a vital question for Bob that had been gnawing at him.

  “When we were talking in the pub Sunday,” he began, slowing the car, “you said Judith’s father had died when he fell off Thorn Court’s roof—”

  “Aye.”

  “—but you seemed to suggest it was no accident.”

  “Aye, ’e were pushed.”

  “Who pushed him?” Tom stopped the car at the junction and glanced right.

  Bob was silent a moment, gnashing at another crisp. The salty aroma of cheese and onion pervaded the car’s interior. He brushed crumbs from his jacket and mumbled, “Can’t zay for sure.”

  “You mean there was no police investigation, no charges, no trial? Surely at the very least it was manslaughter.”

  “ ’Tweren’t no proof, you see, Father. And I were only one who saw it.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I were in the garden, near south wall, clippin’ one of them box hedges. This were in summer—July I think it were, maybe August—and ’appened I looked up. I knew Bill were goin’ up th’ roof to fix the weathercock. I heard noises comin’ from up there, but I paid no mind. But then, as I say, ’appened I looked up—don’t know why, to look at one of them rooks maybe—when Bill were climbing the ladder by the tower, and I saw it.”

  “What exactly?”

  “A stick of some sort comin’ out th’ tower window. It went—” Bob mimed a quick stabbing forward thrust with his gnarled hand. “Tipped the ladder, like.”

  “You mean …?”

  “Aye. Fell to the pavement. Died on the spot, Bill did. A blessing, that were.”

  “Good Lord!” Tom shuddered. “And you’re sure it was no accident?”

  “I’z can see it plain as day, Father.”

  “And you have no idea who would have acted so … criminally?”

  Bob was silent another moment. “I ’ave me suspicions. Weren’t any of staff. We all got on. And guests don’t make sense. And it weren’t old man Stanhope; ’e worked you hard, but he were fair … most times. ’Sides, front door of the hotel were open and ’e were at Bill’s side right after.” He crumpled the empty crisp packet into a tight ball. “No, I think it were old man Stanhope’s boy.”

  “Clive? Caroline and Nick’s father?”

  “Aye. He were a bad’un, that lad.”

  “But still—”

  “Bill ’ad rowed with him, not the day before. I know, I ’eard they voices when I were near th’ toolshed. Clive came out. Never seen him look so fizzed.”

  “Do you know what they were rowing about?”

  “I couldn’t hear th’ words proper, and Bill wouldn’t say.”

  Tom imagined the immediate aftermath in those more deferential days nearly half a century ago: Arthur Stanhope, though having reinvented himself as a hotelier, still a man of substance and figure of consequence; Bob, a mere labourer, perhaps already evincing signs of the eccentricity that led to the incarnation on his left; the police tugging their forelocks—though perhaps that was overlarding the image. “Have you told no one this?”

  “Thought to tell Father Giles a time or two. It’s played on me mind over’t years now and again, all this, y’see. But he weren’t like you.”

  “Sorry?”

  “He liked to talk. Bit of an old woman, Father Giles, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  Tom suppressed a smile.

  “Seein’ young Judith—well, not so young now, is she?—brought back memories.” Bob’s voice faltered. “Bill were my best mate in them days. I didn’t pay proper mind to ’is memory, did I? And I let myself …”

  “Yes?”

  Bob worried the crisp packet ball as he talked. “Old man Stanhope made life easier for me after tha’, you see. I think he thought I knew something. Gave me freehold to my cottage when ’e died, for one thing.”

  “I see.” Tom tried to keep the disappointment from his voice. A wicked man accepts a bribe in secret to pervert the co
urse of justice—the Proverb flitted through his head. He glanced over at Bob, at the wrinkled lips surrounded by white stubble, at the skull sans bobble hat knobbly as a potato. Wicked, no. Uncertain, frightened, doubting, yes. Who of us didn’t blind ourselves to what is right simply to ease life’s burdens?

  “And what of Judith?” Tom asked after a moment’s silence. “Was she still living in Thornford when her father died?”

  “She were, but she left soon after—up north to school, I think. Never saw her again after tha’, until now.”

  “And I presume you didn’t confide your … misgivings about her father’s death to her at the time.”

  “She were so young, Father. ’Er whole life were ahead of her and Bill couldn’t come back, could ’e?”

  “What about now? Will you say anything to her?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Tom took a long breath. “Bob, do you think you may have wronged Judith?”

  Bob was quiet awhile. “P’raps,” he said at last. “In a way.”

  “A sin of omission rather than commission, I think. It’s not too late to make reparations of a sort, if you’re of a mind.”

  “Oh, Father, I don’t know.”

  In truth, Tom wondered about the practical effect as they crossed the bridge over the Dart and entered Totnes: It was no hard fact that Clive Stanhope ended Bill Frost’s life, but Arthur Stanhope’s coddling of Bob seemed to give it the awful shimmer of truth. Would it liberate Judith Ingley in some fashion or simply burden her with an ancient, yet newfound, horror? All the protagonists were dead and buried; there was no hope of worldly justice now. But, he thought, God in heaven was wronged.

  “I’ll think about it, Father. P’raps best Judith not know. I’m not sure. What could she do now? Best she never know, p’raps.”

  But Tom couldn’t help himself wondering as he turned into Coronation Road: Perhaps Judith did know. She had struck him as no fool from the first instance. Perhaps she had known all along.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  At The Happy Pair, a shop on the High Street in Totnes tucked between Oxfam and GoodGreens, run by a happy pair of elderly Fabians swaddled in corduroy, few of life’s material wants and needs seemed absent. Tom found he could, for instance, if he wished, buy a mousetrap, clotted cream, dog biscuits, wrapping paper, gluten-free fettuccine, organic parsnips, Bruce Lee DVDs, baked beans, batteries, baby food, Royal Wedding tea towels (left over, at a knockdown price), ships (wooden model kits) and shoes (flip-flops) and—yes, really—sealing wax. It was next to that last item on a shelf of items tangentially related to the arts of communication that he espied a goodly supply of typewriter ribbons, which Madrun had asked him to fetch if he had any time left on his pay-and-display ticket after his hospital visits.

  He did have time. Mrs. Hex, who had seemed to be convalescing well from her surgery, had been rushed into surgery that afternoon with internal bleeding. Mr. Johnson had, unbeknownst to him, been released that morning and taken away by his son to recuperate at his home near Buckfastleigh. The trip into town had not been the most useful expenditure of time. He had left Old Bob in the hospital’s outpatient clinic, where he would be sure to be some little time, as the ailing, in the wake of the snowstorm, were stacked like cordwood and the doctors were falling behind, and walked to the town centre troubled by the old man’s disclosure. A crime unreported, a witness affected by guilt, a young woman quitting the village—chased by a shadow?—and never returning. And then, in the car, as he drove into the hospital parking lot, a new and unhappy revelation. Tom understood why Bob was telling him these things: The old man trusted his discretion, which was gratifying and humbling. And he understood that Judith’s arrival in the village had stirred old memories. But why tell him, Tom, at all, now? Because, Bob said, blunt as a bag of dead bats, “I’z ain’t long for this life, Father. I needs to get things off me chest.” And there, in the car, in the pay-and-display outside Totnes Hospital, he told Tom that, as he put it, “Me kidneys are shot.” Suddenly, the man’s peculiar spectacle frames seemed inconsequential.

  “Hello, Mr. Christmas.” A shy voice broke into Tom’s thoughts. “I’ll just squeeze by you here.”

  The aisles in The Happy Pair were narrow and Briony Hart, for that’s who was edging around his backside, reached for a packet of birthday candles on a shelf next to the one Tom had been staring at.

  “What are you buying?” She opened the packet, which wasn’t sealed, and looked in.

  “My housekeeper needs a new typewriter ribbon.” Tom plucked a second and third one from the rack. Why not? Unlike organic parsnips, they didn’t go off.

  “Oh,” Briony said. “Do they need ribbons? How interesting. I’ve never seen a typewriter … outside of films.”

  Tom smiled weakly. It was all very well having someone as young as Briony on the PCC, but such folk could unthinkingly make you feel old at times.

  “That reminds me,” Briony continued, “I’ll email you the council minutes this evening. I’m nearly finished.”

  “Lovely,” Tom responded, though no rush would have done. Her predecessor took six weeks to decipher his scrawls. “How’s everything at GoodGreens?” he asked, poking about his brain for a conversational gambit.

  “Ooh!” Her voice fell to an excited whisper. “We’ve just had two detectives in.”

  “Whatever for?” Tom asked, though with sinking heart he could guess.

  “About Mr. Moir’s death, I think. Well, no one knows for sure. They asked to see Fatima, the manager—well, the real manager, since Mrs. Kaif hardly ever stops by.” Briony regarded him expectantly.

  “Oh, dear” seemed the most judicious response.

  When Tom refrained from further enquiry, Briony continued in a soft voice, “Maybe they think Mrs. Kaif is involved.”

  “Briony,” Tom responded gently, “they may simply be checking sources of—”

  “Taxus baccata—taxine, I know. We use it in remedies for gout and rheumatism and some skin conditions and such, but all we have in the shop are tinctures, a few drops in water. They’re prepared in Wiltshire where Mrs. Kaif’s parents live, so there may be”—Briony’s eyes widened—“barrels of it there, gosh! But still … as I said, Mrs. Kaif is hardly ever in the shop especially these days, you know, not just because of her catering business, but because, well … Anyway …” Her eyes darted past his shoulder, widened again, and her cheeks flared. “I’d best get back. It’s Fatima’s birthday. Gosh, I hope these are enough candles.”

  As she scuttled up the aisle, Tom turned to see the source of her alarm. Two men, large of size and navy of suit beneath coats of black leather, appeared to be bearing down on him, though, in fact, their eyes were busy scrutinising the laden shelves.

  “Bugger it,” barked the younger of the pair, Detective Inspector Bliss, distinguishable by his jutting nose and greying choirboy’s fringe of hair, shouldered past him.

  “Oh, hello, Vicar.” The older, though junior-ranked Detective Sergeant Blessing, a man with skin pitted like a pavement, flicked him a glance of recognition.

  “I thought you might have set up shop in Thornford.” Tom plucked a bottle of Wite-Out from the shelf and gave a passing thought to its utility. Did Madrun concern herself with typos? Or did she have a lifetime’s supply of Wite-Out tucked into a cupboard somewhere?

  “Undecided.” Blessing frowned at the items in Tom’s hands. “I think you’ll find buggy whips in the next aisle, if you’re looking.”

  “They wouldn’t keep typewriter supplies if there wasn’t a need.”

  As Bliss continued up the aisle, Blessing swiped his finger over a boxed typewriter ribbon near the back of the shelf and displayed to Tom the result—a clot of dust. “Still, our investigation might go easier if people did use typewriters rather than computers, typewriters having more of a ‘signature.’ ”

  “Ah, I take it you’ve talked with Mrs. Prowse.”

  “We have indeed. Her pastries are legendary. And we’ve taken aw
ay the note she received for forensic examination. I’d ask you to come to the station to give us your dabs, sir, but”—Blessing shot him a mirthless smile—“they’re on the national database, of course.”

  “Of course.” Tom had had his fingerprints taken shortly after Lisbeth’s death.

  “For elimination purposes, of course.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Not that a priest mightn’t poison a parishioner.”

  “Name one outside of fiction,” Tom said mildly as a passing shopper, overhearing, glanced from his exposed clerical collar to his face with creeping horror.

  “I’m sure if I look, I’ll find one. Anyway, the inspector and I were looking to speak to you, too.”

  “I’ll be back in Thornford later this afternoon.”

  “What about a quick word now? I’d suggest The Nosh Pit just up the street a bit. I think DI Bliss will be agreeable … once he finds what he’s looking for.”

  “And what is he looking for?”

  “Oh … some balm or other.”

  “Has he ever thought to try homeopathy for … what ails him?”

  “I don’t think that would find favour at the moment, do you, Vicar?”

  The Nosh Pit was a Totnes institution, a paean to the town’s countercultural reputation, with bead curtains, tables shaped like mushrooms, and artfully graffiti’d walls. Situated where the High Street curved past Castle Street, its front window afforded an advantageous view of the narrow, steep thoroughfare bordered by arcaded shops. By midafternoon, the winter skies were already darkening and the gold of the shop lights began to eclipse the pastels of the shop façades. Tom pressed his hands against the thick china of the cup and felt the heat seep through his skin as he watched Blessing scribble in a notebook.

  “You must understand,” Tom continued, lifting the cup to his mouth, “that everyone had had rather a lot to drink that evening.”

  “Even you, Mr. Christmas?” Bliss barked, shifting in his seat as if he would never find a comfortable position. The inspector had ordered a cup of hot water.

  “I tried to be sensible, but I hadn’t much to eat most of the day, so perhaps the scotch did affect me rather more than I thought. Still, I think I was reasonably clearheaded.”