Eleven Pipers Piping

by C. C. Benison

  Hugh shucked his leathers and entertained with brio, taking them through the stations of this modernist, unsanctified pilgrimage. Spicing the show and keeping the men alert was the presence in nearly half the photographs of Mrs. Beeson, the second Mrs. Beeson, as it happened, a woman fifteen years Hugh’s junior and gamer than Vicar’s Wife Mark I to suffer the skin-searing, hair-flattening effects of a two-thousand-mile cross-country tour from motorcycle sidecar. As the Beesons travelled from cool, grey Chicago to the sun-drenched climate of the American Southwest, Mrs. Beeson seemed to shed layers of clothing—there’s Holly at Cadillac Ranch—revealing a figure remarkable for shapes and curves somehow stifled in England. Tom had met Holly, of course. Ten years had passed since these projected photos, but she appeared little changed today, her heart-shaped face still smooth as a doll’s, her breasts, he suspected, still voluptuous somewhere under the sensible cardies she wore at the vicarage in Noze Lydiard. She was a bright thing, to boot, an accomplished artist who taught theatre design—and Tom, glancing with drooping lids from the bright screen to the shadow enveloping the bearded, rotund figure working the projector, couldn’t staunch a prickle of envy. You’ve done well, you old goat.

  But even the vixen charms of a younger Mrs. Beeson—there’s Holly at London Bridge, Lake Havasu—couldn’t keep Tom’s mind from going walkabout. The room was thick with warm air, dark but for the jewel glow of sky and tree on the screen; the pint of Vicar’s Ruin had glided nicely into his veins and now breached his cerebral cortex. Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino were all very pleasant, but he found himself drifting to a place nearer to hand, to The Nosh Pit in Totnes, where Detective Inspector Bliss and Detective Sergeant Blessing had planted their bottoms and held him prisoner to a mushroom-shaped table and a rather decent cup of coffee. Perhaps it was Hugh’s mention of a bout of food poisoning at a diner in Albuquerque that recalled Tom to the earlier conversation.

  “A woman’s weapon, poison, don’t you think, sir?”

  Tom had looked up from his coffee, wondering at being asked to speculate, but saw that Blessing was addressing his superior, who merely grunted in response and said to Tom, “According to the report we received, Mr. Moir’s body was found in Thorn Court’s tower. Do you know why he would have gone up there?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. It seems an odd thing to do, and I’ve thought about it since. I can only speculate that he felt ill and didn’t want to trouble us—his guests. People who feel unwell often fall into a kind of denial. Shame and embarrassment can be powerful forces, Inspector.”

  Bliss looked unconvinced. “But why the tower? The hotel is full of bedrooms if he wanted to lie down, and the Moirs’ residence is right next door.”

  “We realised at one point that he couldn’t have gone next door. One of us—John Copeland—looked out and saw no footprints.”

  “Fresh snow could have covered them.”

  “Not that quickly, I don’t think.”

  “Another question is when he went up the tower. He didn’t leave in the middle of the meal.” Blessing flipped back in his notebook. “You had your sweet, complete—” He paused to lend emphasis. “—with berry tartlets.”

  “The programme was to include various toasts and speeches, and some bagpipe music, too, I think.” Tom sipped his coffee. “But after the meal, we broke away to get some air and so forth. Some of us went into the lobby or the reception room. After about fifteen minutes we reassembled in the private dining room.”

  “And no Will Moir.”

  “No.” Tom paused. “We waited for a bit, but then his continued absence seemed strange—at first—and then worrying. So after a time, we sent out a search party.”

  “Then Mr. Moir was out of everyone’s—presumably everyone’s—sight for …?”

  “More than half an hour, I would say. Perhaps forty minutes.”

  Bliss squinted at the ceiling. “And in that time, he never tried to come downstairs, never sought help, never declared he felt unwell—Odd.”

  “Sir,” Blessing interrupted, “his precise time of death can’t be pinned down. He may have only reached the tower when he collapsed, and couldn’t move to get help.”

  Bliss appeared to consider this. “The search party consisted of whom?”

  “Besides me, Mark Tucker and Roger Pattimore … and Judith Ingley. It was Judith who found Will’s body, which I think you know.”

  “I’d wondered about that. You’d only known her an hour and yet she was already part of a search party.”

  “Mrs. Ingley is a nurse,” Tom explained. “We thought—without saying it, of course—that she might prove useful. You see, Inspector, when she first arrived, I brought Will out to the lobby to meet her to let her know that there was no room in the inn, so to speak, and she thought he looked a little unwell then.”

  “And this is after the curry course.” Blessing looked at his notes.

  Tom nodded.

  “And what made her think of the tower, do you suppose?”

  “We had eliminated all the other possibilities, so she went up.”

  “She went up. Alone?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Inspector, but we didn’t send her up. She had gone up on her own before we three arrived at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “But you did go up.”

  “Yes.”

  “And …”

  “Well, Inspector.” Tom felt a surge of sadness. “In the low light, you might have thought Will was resting.”

  “Presuming the body hadn’t been moved,” Blessing muttered.

  “Judith is a small elderly woman and Will was not a small man,” Tom remarked, adding, “But she told us she did arrange the body.”

  Tom’s body gave an involuntary jerk. His eyes snapped open and he blinked to readjust his sight to the glowing screen and its new images. Yes, there was Holly, in sunglasses, waving to the camera in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. And there she was again in front a bronze statue of Bugs Bunny on the Warner Bros. lot. And there were the two of them—both waving this time—as an attendant strapped them into the seat of a Ferris wheel. This, explained Hugh, was Santa Monica Pier, the real and symbolic end of Route 66. Tom attempted to suppress a yawn, but someone turned on the coach lamps ringing the paneled room at that very moment, catching him with his mouth stretched wider than the west door of St. Nicholas’s.

  “I trust I haven’t bored you, Tom,” Hugh remarked as he switched the projector.

  “Not at all,” Tom white-lied, aware that he had missed most of Arizona and California. Or was it New Mexico and California? He gulped back another yawn. “It was most illuminating.”

  Tom rose from his chair, thanked Hugh, and called for a round of applause.

  “I do apologise, Hugh,” he said a few moments later after Hugh had answered a few questions from the audience, “I think I nodded off for a bit. It’s been a long day. Have you thought of scanning your slides into a PowerPoint presentation?”

  “I have, and that way I wouldn’t have to cart that ghetto blaster with me for the musical accompaniment, but finding the time is always the trick. It was only chance I had this evening free.”

  “Well, thank you for coming on a winter’s night.”

  “How is your men’s group coming along?” Hugh had a trimmed greying goatee beard, which he stroked reflexively as if it were an attached pet.

  Tom watched the strong fingers ply the hairs. “I’m not sure how successful I am in integrating the Christian message, but at least we’re building fellowship.”

  “Old Giles rather let his mission work slip in his last years.” Hugh broke off his stroking and cut the light on the machine, which continued to whine as it cooled.

  “We’ve had several outings in the autumn,” Tom continued, “a guided walk to Buckland Beacon, and some of us kayaked the Dart. Haven’t I mentioned this?”

  “Ah, yes, I remember you saying something about that at the last deanery supper. Not fond of wat
er, I seem to recall.” He eyed Tom with a half grin.

  “Falling in, I’m not fond of. I can’t swim.”

  “But that’s how you met your wife. I remember that story.”

  “Fortunately, the kayak didn’t tip.”

  “You’re a brave bugger, you are, Father Christmas.”

  “And for my next trick”—Tom executed a stage gesture—“I’m going to see if I can get this lot to jump out of an airplane.”

  “I believe the notion, Tom, is to increase the flock, not cull it.”

  “I’m jumping with them.”

  “The Church frowns on taking one’s life.”

  “It’s to raise funds for a new roof for St. Nick’s.”

  “St. Barnabas’s is in want of a new boiler and I don’t think I can face another bring-and-buy. Any chance of piggybacking?”

  “None.” Tom’s grin edged higher. “I’m feeling inordinately uncharitable in this instance.”

  “Then this is the last time I favour you with my holiday snaps.”

  Tom laughed. “Stay on and have another drink with us.”

  Hugh’s eyes travelled to a corner of the room where several of the men were gathered in a conversational knot by a framed set of Hogarthian engravings. “Best not.”

  Tom followed the direction of Hugh’s gaze. “Drink-driving?” he asked, but he sensed the reason lay elsewhere.

  “It’s been some time since I’ve seen John Copeland,” Hugh said after a pause.

  “But he lives at Noze,” Tom protested, mildly startled.

  “On the estate, not in the village.”

  “Still …”

  “Did you not know he was married to my sister?”

  “Good heavens, no. I had no idea. Then … oh!” The fate of the woman in question dawned on him. “I’m so sorry. She can’t have been very old.”

  “Regina wasn’t yet thirty-five. Much too young. Did you know?”

  “Yes, John did tell me once.”

  Hugh’s lips thinned to an uncompromising line as his glance returned again to John. “I’m afraid I’ve never been able to quite forgive him. Despite the commands of my faith.”

  Tom noted that John’s gaze had turned their way and felt a prickle of guilt along his spine. “Sounds fraught,” he murmured, watching Hugh edge the carousel back into a frayed cardboard box.

  “I’ve said too much as it is, Tom, and I really must be getting back to Holly.” Hugh grabbed for his CD player, as if suddenly impatient to leave. “I expect I’ll see you again at the next deanery meeting, rescheduled for … when is it?”

  “Wednesday week.”

  “Right.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “I’ll get kitted up in the loo.” Hugh reached for his outerwear. “Me squeezing into these leathers is not the most edifying of sights.”

  Tom beamed at him and thought that this was likely so.

  Tom squinted at the spiderweb of circles on the board, concentrated his attention, inhaled, then, as he exhaled, launched the last of his three darts. He laughed in surprise as it embedded itself in the bull’s ring. He was usually rubbish at the game.

  “I didn’t realise that it was Hugh’s sister you’d been married to,” he remarked to John as he went to pull his darts from the board and chalk up his score.

  “I thought my ears were ringing.” John stepped up to the line on the floor and frowned at the board. The two had moved from the upper room to a corner of the bar below. Most of the others of the St. Nicholas’s Men’s Group had left for home and hearth; a few lingered for a final half to observe the pub quiz, in progress; John had suggested darts to Tom, an alert that something was on his mind. John never lingered; there was often some evening chore at Noze. Tom had never seen John play darts in the Church House Inn at all.

  John’s second and third darts hit the double-twenty section. “What did he have to say?”

  “Hugh? Not much, really.” Tom lined up for his turn while John fetched his darts and recorded his score. “Other than mentioning your kinship by marriage.”

  John’s face darkened. “Did he tell you that I killed my wife?”

  Tom’s hand fell to his side. He felt the dart spike his thigh. “No, he did not,” he responded, surprise lost in a flash of pain. “I suppose I should ask if you did, but I expect if you did, you would be a guest of Her Majesty somewhere, not here with me playing 501.”

  “If Hugh had had his druthers, I’m sure I would be locked away. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Tom rubbed at his trousers where the dart had pierced. “I’d understood she’d been taken by cancer.”

  “That’s what I tell folk. Regina was in stage three breast cancer, but her treatment was not going well, and the prognosis was poor. She would have died of cancer before long, though Hugh refused to believe it. No, she died accidentally.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Tom lifted the dart, but his eyes strayed from the board to John. “Then why would Hugh—?”

  “Because her body was found at the bottom of the stairs in the castle ruin at Noze.”

  Tom frowned. “Are you suggesting that it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I’m sure she didn’t intend to die in that way. Are you going to throw that dart?”

  “Then she intended to die another way?”

  “Regina had no intention of dying at all, if she could help it. She feared death—she didn’t have her brother’s Christian faith, nor mine—but she was emotionally troubled. Was all through our marriage. She attempted a few times to take her own life, but without success. One time I found her unconscious with a near-empty bottle of her antidepressants on the bedside table. Another time she tried a paracetamol overdose. There was a consulting psychiatrist at the hospital who took me aside and said—well, she put it in some fancy language, but the rub is, Regina never intended to kill herself. She knew when I would likely be back and timed her attempts so she would be caught in time—rescued.”

  “More cry for help than anything, I expect.” Tom raised a second dart. “Still, that’s a hard way to live, John. For you, I mean.”

  “She was a bright thing when we married,” John said as Tom’s dart missed the board altogether. “I had no idea the sorts of moods she could fall into—the anxiety, the depression, the anger. Her family knew, Hugh knew—I think they were secretly glad to hand her off to someone.

  “She never really took to country ways,” he continued. “The Beesons were Londoners. I met Regina through Hugh who was vicar at a church near the Encombe estate in Dorset where I was an under-gamekeeper. I think Regina thought she was marrying that fellow—what’s his name?—from that book, you know …”

  “What book?” Tom raised his third dart. He inhaled and exhaled twice to steady his hand.

  “There was great fuss about it way back. I can’t think of the name.”

  “Oh, you must mean Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” He launched the dart, which, perversely but satisfyingly, sank dead centre. “She thought you were Mellors?” Tom tried to keep the scepticism from his voice. He had a vague recollection of Lawrence’s novel, having read it as a teenager mostly for the bits presumed salacious. Mellors was a sort of demon lover, but aloof and gruff, tall and lean, with fair hair if he remembered correctly. The woman, Lady Chatterley, whatever her first name was, was faithful and dutiful and a bit dull, he thought—until she met the gamekeeper. Of course, the John Copeland before him at the dartboard was close to fifty, no longer a young man, though still handsome in a fleshier bullish way. But twenty-odd years earlier, he might have filled the contours of a highly developed romantic imagination. He said as much, thinking he was choosing a diplomatic response until John cast him a dark frown.

  “I mean in terms of class,” he hastened to explain as he went to pick up his darts. “Mellors was supposed to be working-class and Lady Chatterley some sort of minor aristocracy. I don’t think that applies here.”

  “Not unentirely.” John stepped up to the line and pe
ered at the dartboard. “The Beesons think they’re a cut above. Hugh is High Church, as you know, though you wouldn’t think so with all this rough motorcycle show of his. Had us marry at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, no less.” He launched the dart, which scored another double twenty. “Still, things seemed all right at the beginning, even though no child happened along. I thought we’d have kids right off. Anyway, after a time, cracks began to show. If I were out for hours at night lamping, she’d think I was with another woman, for instance—that sort of thing. Accuse me of all sorts. There’s not much romantic about gamekeeping, Tom. Maybe you don’t know, being a townie yourself.”

  “I think I can guess.”

  “It’s bloody hard work—and it’s not easy on wives, I’ll admit that. Meals at all hours, wet dirty clothes for the wash all the time, never time to go into town for a meal or a film, night work, as I said. I thought things would get better when I was hired soon after as gamekeeper and shoot manager at Noze. I could delegate, at least. There was a lad before Adam came on. But …” He raised his second dart. “And I’m not always easy to live with—I admit that, too. If the wind’s wrong on a shoot day, it can put you in a foul temper.”

  Tom paused to wave good-bye to two departing members of the men’s group, who regarded them curiously. “Then how,” he said, dropping his voice as John’s dart scored a triple eighteen, “did your wife come to be found at the bottom of the stairs at Noze Lydiard Castle?”

  “We had had an argument. I can’t remember what it was about now. Something silly. Regina’s illness seemed to make her even more moody. Despairing one moment, euphoric the next. Hateful, then begging forgiveness. She was frantic I was going to abandon her. And usually during these episodes, I would go out and work on the estate and be back in a few hours when she had calmed down. But this particular day—it was a Sunday afternoon in November, the middle of the shooting season—instead of even just going for a walk or going out to one of the outbuildings to play my pipes, I took the car into Torquay.” He threw his next dart with sudden ferocity; it hit the wire and fell to the floor. His face reddened. “It was an impulse. I was worn out.