Twelve Drummers Drumming (24 page)

“When was this?”

Mitsuko’s eyes telescoped, as if she were viewing some inner landscape. “I … I can’t remember. I took absolute mounds of pictures over nearly a year. Of course, you can with digital.”

“You captured Julia and me coming out of the pub the day of Ned’s funeral. That was”—he stepped down the hall to the relevant quilt and peered at the bottom left corner—“April 6. And this one is”—he stepped to the next one, a scene at the quay—“is July 19.
And this one, a grey day, it looks, is, yes, November 13—of course, Remembrance Sunday. There’s Colonel Northmore laying a wreath at the memorial in The Square. You did record rather a lot of … Mitsuko? Are you sure you can’t remember when you took the churchyard picture? Mitsuko?”

She shuddered. “I’ll try to remember, if you think it’s important,” she said impatiently. She put her hand into the envelope and drew out a roll of masking tape. “Look, I really must put these labels up—”

He watched Mitsuko push the tape roll up her arm, then pluck from the envelope what appeared to be a white card, about six inches by three, mounted on, and framed by, black mat board. He glanced at the pool of lettering in the middle.

“How interesting!” he exclaimed. “It’s a little poem.”

“A haiku.”

“Three lines. Seventeen syllables. Very …”

“Japanese?”

“I was going to say ‘unusual.’ ”

“It was Liam’s idea.”

“Really?” Tom hoped he didn’t sound too incredulous.

But Mitsuko had tucked the envelope under her arm and was concentrated on ripping a piece of tape off her roll. “I thought it might be a trifle stereotyping, but I did enjoy writing haiku as a teenager, so I thought, well, why not? Of course, it might have helped if Liam had installed these as I’d asked him to. There’s so little time for everything …”

But Tom’s attention had become gripped by the envelope. He stared at it, his mind roiling.

“Are you all right?” Mitsuko flicked him a glance.

“Oh … just a little heartburn,” he white-lied. “Mrs. P. thought I needed to fortify myself with a full English this morning, given yesterday’s events.”

Mitsuko grimaced, whether in response to the notion of a greasy fry-up or the reality of Peter Kinsey’s disinterment was unclear.

“I was actually sort of wondering,” he began lightly, “why you didn’t put these cards up on Sunday.”

“Well, that was my intent, of course,” she responded, applying the tape to the back of the card. “But the installation took more time than I’d expected. So I said I’d have to come back in the evening, as I was going up to Bridgend in the morning, but then my mother called in a state, so …” She pressed the card to the wall next to the quay-scene quilt. “… So I left this stuff and my key to the village hall at the Waterside and asked Liam if he could please find a moment during my absence to stick these things up on the wall … or get Sybella to do it. And, of course, when I get back to Thornford, the envelope hasn’t travelled any farther than our flat. Liam said he didn’t have the time.”

Tom murmured sympathetically. But his mind had sped elsewhere, to the details of Tilly Springett’s conversation with him at the Waterside: Liam walking towards the village hall Sunday night, holding something to his chest—not a stick of some nature, but a padded envelope and, more important, a key. A key to the village hall. He studied the punctilious woman before him, painstakingly applying tape to the back of another card. Liam had said nothing to her about travelling farther than their flat with the envelope Sunday night. Nor did she know that Tilly Springett was a witness. Tilly had held her tongue. At least with other villagers. So far.

“You haven’t had Bliss and Blessing pay you a visit, have you?” he asked.

Mitsuko pushed the second of the cards against the wall. “Not yet. Liam has,” she replied, stepping back and frowning at her handiwork. “Perhaps they think I’m still in Bridgend. Why do you ask?”

“No reason, really.” Tom watched her hand dive into the envelope again. “Might I have a look at the haiku you wrote for the quilt that’s missing?”

Mitsuko turned. Tom was surprised at the wariness in her eyes. “Okay,” she agreed after a moment. She pulled all the cards from the envelope, hugged them to her chest, and rummaged through the lot. “Funny,” she said, “it doesn’t seem to be here.”

T
om paid less mind to the Neighbourhood Watch meeting than he probably ought to have. In an ordinary week, he was sure, Watch meetings probably pulled fewer than a dozen villagers from their routines. But this was an extraordinary week, and villagers seemed out in force, coalesced into a buzzing hive of worry and outrage, whose pulse he felt surround him as he perched on one of the blue plastic chairs marshalled before a table of village worthies in the small hall. Said table was for table tennis, dragged from below the stage in the large hall, unfolded, and net removed, surely because it was the only thing the Watch executive, parish council members, and police representatives could possibly crowd behind without looking like they were wallflowers at a dance. DI Bliss and DS Blessing weren’t in attendance. They were, explained a detective superintendent, a smoothie dispatched from Middlemoor, Devon & Cornwall Constabulary headquarters near Exeter, engaged in the
very real day-to-day work
of the investigation, though Tom wondered if HQ either was reluctant to trot out the untelegenic duo to an audience or was somehow unhappy with their progress.

Tom’s heart went out to the villagers. Many seemed wont to believe some malign force from outside the village bore the blame for shattering their tranquillity. The gathering seemed more an exercise in jollying everyone along, as much as anyone could be jollied in the circumstances. The DSI proferred nothing more than what Tom—and, he suspected, half of Thornford—already knew, which wasn’t a great lot.

Instead he found his mind going walkabout: Julia’s worrisome behaviour, Mitsuko’s latest disappointment, funeral arrangements for Sybella, his unfinished Sunday sermon, the sadness of being in the small hall three days after finding a young girl’s dead body in it—all had a brief audience with his frontal lobes. However—and he could barely explain himself to himself, other than to think that he needed some distraction from worry—he found rather more lizard-like portions of his brain to be active and engaged, and focused on the other uniformed person at the front of the hall: PCSO Màiri White.

The local police community support officer, PCSO White had stopped by on her electric bicycle as he and Miranda were moving into the vicarage two months earlier. At the time, surrounded by partially opened boxes, the detritus of a life interrupted, and one small, vivacious child, he had paid scant attention to the uniformed figure with the Scottish accent. It had been a courtesy visit and he’d observed the courtesies. Glimpsing her
sans
uniform at the May Fayre three days earlier, however, had been somewhat of a revelation. He had a notion she might be unattached, knew she lived at Pennycross St. Paul, site of the other church in his benefice, and was aware she hadn’t attended any of his services.

A little earlier, after leaving Mitsuko and joining the villagers stepping into the small hall, he’d noted Màiri White and found himself wondering if she had had a partner (what brought her to Devon?). As she approached him (she was wearing her uniform, damn), he wondered what she looked like naked.

“A change from Monday, I expect, Vicar,” she observed, turning
to survey the room, before he could register anything in her eyes, which were the blue of … something poetic, he thought. Cornflowers? Lisbeth would have sniggered at a reference so impossibly wet.

“ ‘Tom’ is fine.”

She turned to him, her brow crinkled slightly. A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “I’m pleased to hear it, but … do you commonly refer to yourself in the third person?”

Tom felt a blush creeping up his neck. “I meant, you may address me as ‘Tom.’ ” As soon he said it, he realised he sounded a complete prat. “
May
address” indeed, he groaned inwardly as he watched her smile gather force.

“Well, then, you may address me as Màiri. Long on the
a
and a wee roll of the
r
wouldn’t go amiss.”

Tom tried, but failed the
r
test. Over-rolled it.

“Never mind.” PCSO White lifted an eyebrow. “ ‘PCSO White’ will do in a pinch.”

“ ‘PCSO’ for short?”

“But not forever, I don’t think.”

“PC, then? Joining the regular force?”

“Perhaps.” Her smile turned enigmatic. “And you? Bishop’s throne? A yen for Lambeth Palace?”

“I’m happiest in the trenches.”

“Not happy trenches at the minute, are they?”

“No, they are not,” Tom agreed, eyeing the villagers filing into the room. None had been in the small hall when Tom had found Sybella’s body. Colonel Northmore was in hospital; Madrun was likely busy rolling pastry with Miranda helping her; Julia was managing a milkless cup of tea; and the boys were probably up Gratton Lane with a football, more likely to be the targets of Neighbourhood Watch than its advocates.

“Do you happen to have any news on Peter Kinsey’s death?” he asked PCSO White.

“I understand the pathologist’s report has come down, if that’s what you’re after.”

“And …?”

She looked at him, seeming to weigh something in her mind. “I should keep my gob shut, but—as he died on your patch, so to speak, and as he was a previous incumbent, and”—she lowered her voice—“as long as you keep it to yourself—”

“I will.”

“—the DSI, I expect,” she nodded towards a man in a smart suit by the tennis table, “may not be forthcoming just yet about cause of death—”

“Oh?”

“Still early days. Sometimes they like to keep cause close to their chests to see if they can catch out any possible suspects. Anyway, between you and me, it appears the Reverend Mr. Kinsey died from severe head trauma.”

“Merciful God, another one.”

“It’s not an uncommon way to dispatch someone, Vicar … Tom.”

Tom accepted the likely truth of this reluctantly. “In the wider world, I suppose. But this is a little end-of-the-road village. It’s supposed to be … arcadian.”

“You’re naïve.”

“I realise I’m indulging in wishful thinking.”

“You know what Sherlock Holmes said of village life, don’t you?”

“Something to prove your point, I’ll wager. What is it?”

“ ‘… That the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.’ ”

“I might point out that Sherlock Holmes is fictional.”

“You might, but it would do you little good.” Màiri studied his face. “I understand your unwillingness to disavow the”—she groped for a word, then smiled—“
wickedness …
of village life.” The smile vanished. “I know about your wife, and I’m very sorry.”

“You’re well informed.”

“It’s my business to be so, I’m afraid.”

They both noted Mitsuko enter and survey the room.

“A case in point,” Màiri remarked softly.

“You mean her husband,” Tom murmured, for Liam had been flickering in the corner of his mind since PCSO White had passed on the intelligence about Peter Kinsey’s death.
All Clergy Are Bastards
.

“No, I meant her recent burglary. What did
you
mean?”

“Oh!” Feeling he had been caught out tittle-tattling, Tom stammered. “I just meant … I mean …”

Màiri said evenly, “Tom, I know all about Liam Drewe’s conviction for GBH. But I think the whole village does, too, does it not?”

“I suppose it does.” Tom groaned. “I’m beginning to discover how difficult it can be to have a private life in a place this small.” He heard the rue in his own voice: He had a sudden wild notion to ask Màiri if she fancied a coffee sometime, but instantly thought better of it. If he was seen at the Waterside with her in anything but her uniform, it would be all around the houses before he’d settled the bill. And if he was seen with her in a café outside the village, it would look like he was sneaking about. And, anyway, she might rebuff him. And—good heavens!—he was having anxieties he hadn’t had since he picked up the phone in his rooms at Cambridge to thank the delightful Lisbeth Rose, again, for rescuing him from the turbulent (ha!) Cam and invite her out for a meal.

“At any rate,” he heard Màiri say in a low voice as Mitsuko approached them, “I doubt Mr. Drewe is the only man in Thornford to have had trouble with the law.”