Eleven Pipers Piping

by C. C. Benison

  Still, Tom mused, shivering a little as the question formulated in his head and Mr. Ellery returned with the extra copies, what were the limits to marital love and protectiveness?

  Moments later he was inside the warmth of the Drake, grateful for its atmosphere redolent of castor sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate, plunging him into a torrent of childhood memories of visits to his Grannie Ex’s cottage in Sevenoaks where his grandmother was always, it seemed, up to her elbows in flour. There, at one of the tables near the window, were Gemma and Todd, talking with a young woman, seated at the next table, with a music case propped on a chair beside her like a misshapen lover.

  “Oh, hello. Do you all know each other?” Tom asked, recognizing Tamara Prowse as the lone figure and wondering why she wasn’t bustling about serving.

  “Tamara was—what?—three years behind me at school, I think.” Gemma motioned him to an empty seat before which sat a steaming mug of coffee and a plate with two Chudleigh buns, strawberry jam, and clotted cream. “I remembered Tamara because she was brilliant as … who were you again?”

  “Olivia Twist.”

  “Of course. In Olivia Twist, the musical. You were only fourteen.” Gemma sipped her coffee daintily.

  “Your father asked me to bring you these.” Tom handed Tamara the carrier bag with the shoes. Tamara peeked in, frowned, then rolled her eyes.

  “Dad’s forgotten I’m coming home for the weekend.”

  “Of course! Your aunt told me that. That’s why you have that with you.” Tom nodded towards the case.

  “Well, partly …” Guilt flashed in her eyes.

  “Are you busking, then?”

  She nodded. “I managed to get a pitch here on the Close when I moved here in September. Didn’t you once busk, Mr. Christmas? Aunt Madrun told me you did.”

  “You were a busker?” Gemma seemed to regard Tom for the first time as if he were something akin to a normal human being.

  “Magic, not music.” Tom sat, set his bag of books on the floor and lifted the mug of coffee, savouring the aroma. “I busked through England and parts of Europe for a time when I was around Tamara’s age, between terms and the like. Sleight of hand, card magic, a bit of mentalism. I had a little fold-up table.” He grinned. “Great fun.”

  “Ooo, gives me shivers thinking about singing—or doing anything!—in front of a bunch of strange folk in the middle of the street. My stomach was in knots just saying my wedding vows, and I knew most in the church, didn’t I?” Gemma smiled at her husband and reached for his meaty hand with her pink pointy fingers.

  “You did well.” Tom tore a piece off one of the buns and slathered it with clotted cream.

  “Don’t tell Dad I’m busking, Mr. Christmas. Please. He thinks I’m working here at the Drake.” Tamara pulled her mobile from a pocket and frowned at it. “He doesn’t know, and he’ll have a fit if he does. He’ll think someone’s going to rob me … or worse. And please don’t tell my aunt. You know what she’s like.”

  She glanced up from her mobile and caught Tom’s eye. Her mouth widened to a generous grin. He could see why she might have gained a prime busking location in the city, jumping some regulatory queue or other. Tamara had thick honey-coloured hair pushed up into a glorious Medusa swirl framing the broad, pale expanse of her forehead. Her jawline was delicate, but determined; her green eyes warm, radiating a kind of nervy intelligence. Really, he thought, she was remarkably beautiful, yet seemed somehow unaware of her effect (Todd stole shy glances at her), which only added to her charm.

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Tom replied.

  “It helps pay for the extras, and I love playing, but …”

  “It’s not music you’re studying, is it?”

  “They closed the music department some years ago. I’m studying conservation biology.”

  “A practical course is much more sensible,” nurse Gemma piped up, offering the wisdom of her advanced years.

  But Tamara had returned her attention to her mobile.

  “Still nothing?” Gemma enquired.

  Tamara shook her head. “Adam,” she explained to Tom. “He’s supposed to be coming to drive me to Thornford. I thought he’d be here by now.” Her thumbs danced over the mobile’s tiny keyboard. “There. I hope he hasn’t switched his off.” She looked pensive a moment. “Poor Adam.”

  “I’m sure he has a lot on his mind.” Tom glanced through the Drake’s window towards the cathedral, veiled in a thin mist.

  “My boyfriend’s father died last weekend,” Tamara explained to the newlyweds. She dropped her mobile next to her empty mug.

  “How awful!” Gemma gushed, then frowned. “He can’t have been very old.”

  “Not very,” Tamara replied. “That’s what makes it even more sad.” She looked over at Tom as if seeking permission to elaborate. “It seems someone may have poisoned him.”

  Gemma gasped. “I read that in the paper! Do they know who yet?”

  “I’m afraid it’s all very much a mystery,” Tom answered for Tamara, hoping to stem further speculation.

  Birdsong suddenly punctuated the Drake’s ambient clatter of clinking china, silverware, and low conversation, stopping only when Tamara snatched up her mobile.

  “Here he is,” she said brightly, her eyes darting over the message on her screen. Her face fell. “Oh, he hasn’t left Noze yet!” She looked at her watch.

  “Then why not come back with us,” Tom offered. “Miranda’s at synagogue with Julia Hennis. I’m fetching them in about twenty minutes or so. You could come with us to lunch at Julia’s. She’d be delighted to see you. And we wouldn’t be long. We’d have plenty of time to get back to Thornford in time for the Wassail.”

  “Well … it’s very kind of you, Mr. Christmas. I would like to get home sooner than later. I haven’t seen my bandmates since before … it must have been early December for a concert at Ashburton. We need to go over a few numbers.”

  “That’s right. You were scheduled to perform at the Civic Hall at Totnes last Saturday?”

  “The show did go on, but much reduced in performers and audience, I think—mostly to those who could walk to the hall. But Adam and I were trapped here in Exeter, what with the snow and all. We couldn’t get out.” Tamara’s thumbs flew again over her mobile. “Hard to believe the difference a week can make.”

  “Isn’t that true!” Gemma murmured silkily, glancing at her new husband.

  “You were to join Adam’s mother …,” Tom began.

  “They’re readjusting the gun pegs at Noze,” Tamara interrupted as birdsong alerted her to her screen. “Some American shooting syndicate is coming on Monday. Those poor pheasants,” she muttered. “So wasteful.”

  “But—” Todd shifted in his seat as if roused to counterargument.

  “Adam says he won’t be able to leave for half an hour.” She looked towards Tom. “Yes, Mrs. Moir was to join us. I don’t know how she made out. By the time we knew we wouldn’t be able to leave Exeter, the mobile service stopped working. Anyway, Mr. Christmas, I’d be very grateful for the ride. I’ll text Adam and tell him I’m coming with you.”

  As Tamara concentrated on her task, Tom puzzled over her words. Adam said he had brought his mother to Thornford from Noze on Sunday morning, but clearly that couldn’t be true. Trapped in Exeter on Saturday, but able to navigate the roads Sunday? Unlikely. How, then, had Caroline returned to the village that morning? If she had reached Totnes and attended the concert alone, how had she managed to travel to Noze? And did she have keys to her son’s quarters on the shooting estate? Much as he loved his mothers, Tom wouldn’t have given a key to Dosh or Kate when he moved to London. What young man wants to live independently knowing his mother might barge in on him unexpectedly? Where had Caroline spent last Saturday night?

  “There!” Tamara said with satisfaction. “I’ll just nip into the loo first.” The birdsong sounded yet again. “That was fast.” Standing, she adjusted the screen away from the window lig
ht. Tom noted her eyebrows climb.

  “He has another idea?”

  Tamara appeared discomfited. “I don’t know if I should say this. It’s very strange.”

  “What is it?” Gemma asked.

  The pink of embarrassment touched Tamara’s cheeks. “He says I’m not to talk to you.”

  “To me?” Gemma frowned. “He doesn’t know me from—”

  “Adam?” Her husband laughed.

  “No,” Tamara replied, her expression grave. “You, Mr. Christmas. Adam doesn’t want me talking to you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Tom followed Miranda through the vicarage gate onto Poynton Shute and around to the entrance to the Old Orchard, two and a half acres of glebe land sloping gently down to the millpond, which had been ceded to the parish decades earlier. The last rays of the weak winter sun silvered the gnarled branches of the apple trees either side of the beaten, muddy path and cast pale grey shadows over the grass wet with a welter of dead leaves and mashed husks of decomposed apples. Tom inhaled the fermented air and shivered in the damp as they took the fork in the path that dipped under a bower of dark trees and squeezed through a crude opening in the boundary hedgerow to the adjacent property where the Scout Hut blazed like a cottage on a lonely moor. Ahead of them, other villagers trailing the same path blended into the jostling revellers. Some joined the queue at a tented food stall to one side of the hut offering barbecued fare and plastic cups of hard cider. Others gathered under a tented stall opposite the hut where various baked goods were on offer, which is where Tom glimpsed Madrun and Judith as he reached for Miranda’s lantern, raising it high so it wouldn’t be crushed as they threaded past a merry chorus singing,

  Here we come a-wassailing

  Among the leaves so green,

  Here we come a-wand’ring

  So fair to be seen

  and made their way into the shelter of the hut, a drafty single-storey stone building whose damp was barely vanquished by single-bar heaters high on the walls and the body heat of a hundred parents and children.

  “Old Twelfth Night, Father,” a voice muttered in his ear as Miranda settled happily onto a chair before the musicians arranged at one end of the room under a swag banner trimmed with fabric apples.

  “So it is,” Tom responded agreeably over the hubbub of music and chatter, turning to find Old Bob hovering by his side. “The end of the twelve days of Christmas, in the old calendar.”

  “First for you and your daughter?”

  “Yes. Not something we had in Bristol.”

  “I had a talk with Judith Ingley ’bout—”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Told you, did she?”

  Tom nodded.

  “Tha’s all right then.” Bob nodded.

  “Bob, good on you for doing that.” He happened to glance at Tamara, guitar in hand, who smiled at him as he caught her eye, then noted Adam, seated in the front row with his sister, turn and regard him warily. “Miranda, do you want to sit with Ariel?” He leaned down and pulled up one of the earflaps of her wool hat.

  She twisted her head up to him, blinking. “No,” she said abruptly, pulling off her hat.

  “Are you off?” Tom turned back to Bob. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Thought I’d watch morris dancers outside.”

  “Are they on?”

  “Aye. In a bit.”

  “Oh, well, them I’ve seen before.”

  “Not this lot. They black their faces.”

  “This isn’t Eric Swan’s group?”

  “No, this lot’s out of Bovey Tracey. But, Father, if you—”

  “I’ll come and see you tomorrow or Monday, if that suits.”

  Blackface, Tom thought, watching Old Bob leave. That should put someone’s PC knickers in a twist.

  “Do you want to eat something? Hot dog?” He bent once again to Miranda, but she shook her head, seemingly concentrated on the music.

  “I’m full from Aunt Julia’s,” she replied as Tom placed the lantern in her hand and considered whether to treat himself to some hard cider, just a little; he didn’t want to mount the pulpit with a throbbing head as he had the Sunday before. He noted the Kaifs—Victor, Molly, and Becca—easing their way down the crowded entrance corridor into the hut’s main room, Victor with Becca’s lantern in hand, Molly struggling to balance a pair of what looked like hatboxes. Tom followed Becca with his eyes as she shot to the empty seat next to Ariel, then noted Miranda’s head turn sharply in their direction, then back to the musicians again with equal force. He sensed sides taken in the rift between his daughter and Ariel Moir.

  “Make yourself useful, Vic, for God’s sake.” Molly’s sharp tone pierced the bright clatter.

  “I have Becca’s lantern, Molly. I don’t have three hands.”

  “Here,” Tom offered, moving towards them. “I’ll take the boxes.”

  Molly thrust them at him, then swept her hair back with a theatrical gesture. “I have to find the king and queen. Where are the king and queen?”

  “The king’s over there, Molly, if you simply look.” Victor gestured towards a lad posing for his sniggering mates in a purple mantle trimmed with silver.

  “Then where’s the queen? I must have the queen!”

  “If I know Emily Swan, she’ll be late,” Tom remarked, casting a worried glance past the top of the boxes at Victor, who was regarding his wife with barely controlled fury.

  “She can’t be late!”

  “Molly, when we passed the toilets, the door to the ladies’ opened and I saw Belinda Swan inside,” Victor said with barely concealed exasperation. “Emily’s probably in there with her mother, getting into her … whatever!—coronation robes.”

  “Perv, looking in the ladies’ loo.” His wife cast him a baleful glance as she shouldered back through the crowd.

  “Oh, for Christ’s—” Victor’s cheeks flushed. “Take the bloody crowns with you, Molly!” he shouted after her. “Oh, never mind! Sorry, Tom. I’m … I’m getting to the end of my tether.”

  “Molly seems a bit … intense this evening.”

  “She’s decided to go off the medication she was prescribed and which was doing her some good.”

  “Homeopathic?”

  “Even I admit homeopathy doesn’t cure everything. No, a doctor in town prescribed them. Here, give me those boxes.” Victor set Becca’s lantern at his feet, took the boxes, and put them between two jam jars alit with candles on the shelf that ran along three of the hall’s walls. “Celia Parry was doing Molly some good, too, I think, but then she and Colm flew off to Barbados—”

  “But only for a week.”

  “Molly feels … abandoned nonetheless.”

  “You haven’t abandoned her, Vic.”

  “No, but …” Victor flashed him a guilty look. “On top of it all, I had the police around today.” He lowered his voice. “Have they talked to you about last Saturday?”

  Tom nodded.

  “They’ve taken my computer and my printer—or, I should say, computers and printers, from the clinic in town and from home. They had a warrant. They wouldn’t say why, despite my protests, but Molly says your housekeeper had a letter asking her to make some of her yew tartlets for the Burns Supper.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “But why would they think—” Victor’s voice rose sharply, then he caught himself. “Why would they think,” he began again, his voice reduced to a murmur, “that I would write such a thing?”

  “They didn’t say?”

  “No. Have they taken anyone else’s computer? Nick’s? John’s? Yours?”

  Tom shook his head. “Not mine at any rate.” He paused. “Victor, I think their interest likely stems from the colour of the paper used for Madrun’s note. It was that lavender shade—or violet, some version of purple—the same shade as the paper and cards in your case, when I bumped into you on Tuesday.”

  “It’s madness!” Victor exploded through clenched teet
h. “If I were to hatch some plot that involved your housekeeper’s baking, I would never use my own computer or my own printer … or my own paper, come to that. How stupid do they think I am? And how do they know what colour the clinic’s stationery is? Don’t tell me you shopped me to the police?”

  “I must admit I was surprised when your case flew open and scattered it about. But no, I said nothing to the police. I thought it was a coincidence, then I started to see that colour of paper everywhere—it’s on the crowns Molly made, for instance.” Tom gestured to the nearby boxes. “And the girls were using it to decorate the lanterns they were making at school. Mrs. Lennox says it’s the colour fad of the season.”

  Victor gestured impatiently. “I gave a box of the paper to Becca, yes, but if paper that colour is so bloody widely disseminated, that doesn’t explain why those detectives would single me out. It was horribly embarrassing having my computer carted away like that—as if I …” His eyes roved the room wildly. “… looked at kiddie porn or something equally appalling.”

  Tom took a cleansing breath. “I’m not sure it was only you they were singling out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are two adults in your household, aren’t there?”

  “Yes …?”

  “Well, you more than I know how Molly has suffered since … Harry’s death. She hasn’t been quite herself, has she.” He watched a shadow pass over Victor’s face. “I went to your cottage yesterday afternoon to return Becca’s torch. She left it at ours last weekend. Those two detectives, Bliss and Blessing, were coming from your cottage …” He paused, noting Victor’s eyebrows knit with perplexity. “Molly didn’t tell you they had visited? She didn’t say that she had—”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Tom’s heart sank. “Victor, please be mindful of Molly’s state of mind when I tell you this: She confessed to the detectives—and she told me—that she had poisoned Will.”

  “What!”

  A few heads had snapped in their direction. Tom gave them reassuring smiles, then said to Victor, whose face was shot through with anxiety and anger, “Victor, it’s a measure of their disbelief that they didn’t fetch her in for further questioning. They’re not complete monsters. They do know what your family has endured and Molly’s state of mind.”