Twelve Drummers Drumming (30 page)

The bells of St. Nicholas’s began their dolorous peal as six young men carried Sybella’s flower-draped casket through the cool shadow of the south porch into the blazing noon sun of the churchyard. Tom felt the light blast his eyes, and for a feverish moment the grass and
trees flared a sickly cellophane lime and the near-cloudless sky retreated into an inky blue. The feeling of discombobulation, of time being out of joint, did not leave him as he preceded the coffin past the ancient markers along the path and down the steps to the bottom terrace to the plot beside Ned Skynner’s. He wondered if he was coming down with something, perhaps a bug picked up in that soup of infection, the hospital, during his visit to Colonel Northmore. Or perhaps it was having musical accompaniment at a committal that lent the scene a faintly surreal quality: Revelation Choir followed behind the coffin, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” majestic and mournful, drifting in and out of the tombstones and rising to startle the rooks in the trees. Or perhaps it was the memory of having followed this path barely two days before, on the heels of Fred Pike, to witness the horror of Peter Kinsey’s hand, like a dead fish, flopped out of the red soil. He noted with dismay as he took his place at the foot of the grave that the police—or Fred—had left things in less than pristine condition. Having been reopened then resealed, Ned’s grave looked like a lumpy misshapen loaf of earth. Tom was surprised Fred hadn’t shaped and smoothed it, and he would have to have him do so before Karla caught sight. He glanced about to see if she had inserted herself into the procession. She had. Indeed, quite a number of the congregation followed, though family and friends only was the custom at a committal. Villagers, visitors—mourners many, curious some—dispersed themselves among the gravestones, seeking purchase on thin strips of grass and along the high stone wall that enclosed the churchyard. Most moved almost reflexively to flank the Parrys on one side of the grave, leaving Oona and her companion solitary figures on the other, their shadows foreshortened in the midday sun.

The pallbearers brought Sybella’s coffin to the lip of the grave at the moment the choir, as if by a miracle of timing, drew out the last bittersweet note. The silence that followed seemed naked, raw. Only a swan, beating its wings against the waters of the millpond, preparing
to soar in short flight, broke the preternatural calm. Tom inhaled the pungent miasma of the damp earth. Then he began the familiar words:

“The Lord is full of compassion and mercy …”
As he spoke he sensed a sudden motion to his left. Oona was removing her sunglasses, though if there was any time for eye protection, it was now, in the blazing sun.
“Slow to anger and of great goodness,”
he continued, lifting his eyes from his text to glance her way, momentarily stunned at the sight of her eyes. They were not, as he might have expected, red-rimmed with the effect of weeping, but empurpled like bruised fruit. More arresting than this were her pupils, needle sharp and dangerous.
“Slow to anger and of great goodness,”
he repeated, hastily seeking the comfort of the page, yet aware of his skin prickling, as if he could feel a storm rising on the edge of the moors.
“As a father is tender towards his children, so is the Lord tender to those—”

But he was stopped by a sudden cry. Her spike heels had embedded themselves in the grass, and Oona pitched dangerously towards the grave. Her companion lunged to right her, and did so—to the collective gasp of the assembled—but she instead thrashed against his grip with a miraculous strength for one so thin, which sent him stumbling backwards towards the base of the beech tree.
“Cara!”
he shouted, as he tumbled over an exposed root. But his exit was nothing compared to the sight of Oona, shoeless, her imprisoning skirt hiked up to her hips, stalking the perimeter of the grave, scattering startled mourners, a blazing stare directed at Colm, whose face quickly went through a panoply of emotions—surprise, concern, denial, then anger—as he turned in a goalkeeper’s stance to shield Celia and Declan.

“Father tender towards his children!”
Oona spat as she advanced, and everyone waited with suspended breath for Colm to defend against the rain of blows made famous in Oona Blanc
vs
. various assistants tallied by tabloid press court reporters.

But Tom’s attention was diverted from the impending brawl by another commotion. Some man, young, lithe, exceptionally tall, encumbered
by a leather bag strapped to his shoulder, was cutting a swath through the mourners, camera at the ready, sending people spinning out of his way. One of the choir members snatched at the cameraman’s bag, growling deeply, but without success. Unthinkingly, Tom snapped shut his prayer book and dashed towards Colm, unsure whether he intended to block the stranger from his intrusive mission or intercede with the flailing Oona. But it was too late. As the camera flashed in a staccato of mechanical shrieks and the crowd gasped in astonishment, Oona swung an open hand—a left hand—against her former husband, who had unwisely raised the wrong arm in defence. But in the melee that followed, it wasn’t Oona or Colm, Celia or the nameless Italian, or even Declan, who was even more aggressive than he’d been in the village hall, that remained seared in Tom’s memory. It was something glimpsed through an opening in the flailing limbs, and it was immediately teasing and troubling. Tom didn’t believe in such things. In fact, he held out firmly against necromancy in all its forms. But, really, he couldn’t help it: He felt as though he had seen a ghost.

“D
ora is Thornford’s funeral fairy,” Venice Daintrey confided, sidling next to Tom, who was hesitating over a casserole dish of considerable proportions, the grey gelatinous surface of its offering punctuated by gobs of some darker material, possibly meat. “Although I can’t think how
that
got on the table. I daresay someone’s made a mistake in the kitchen.”

Tom surveyed the expanse of white linen, down which he’d trundled, stopping at the stations of the nosh, adding cold ham, pasta salad, and the inevitable sausage rolls to his plate, mindful of restraint in his helpings (gusto being unseemly at a funeral reception), though he couldn’t help noting that Venice had heaped her plate as if fuelling for battle. The food—hot and cold, savoury and sweet—was lavish and faultless. So, too, was the presentation. It was a pageant of white china, crystal, and silver, set on a three-pedestal dining table in an exquisitely proportioned room designed by Nash in the early nineteenth century and respectfully updated in the early twenty-first as a paean to harmony and serenity. Dora Speke’s casserole
dish, the green shade of mushy peas garlanded with a mimsy pattern of orange and yellow flowers, stood out like a blister.

“Be brave, Vicar,” Florence Daintrey murmured throatily, leaning around her sister-in-law to address him.

Tom lifted a scalloped serving spoon and pierced the casserole’s shiny skin, the first guest to do so, though he had hardly been the first at the queue. He was familiar with funeral fairies, women aroused to action by the news of death, no matter how remote the acquaintance. Their contribution usually arrived in the form of a casserole; their motive (he recognised this thought as uncharitable, if nonetheless true) often id-ridden eagerness to share the spotlight.

“Perhaps you should have Dr. Hennis look at that eye,” Florence added.

“It’s nothing.” Tom dabbed at the tender flesh with his free hand, careful not to stick his fork into his eye, adding injury to insult. “It’ll go away.”

“She ought to be arrested.”

“It really wasn’t Oona’s fault.”

“Nonsense.”

“I got in the way of her elbow.”

Florence shot him a withering glance.

“I’m not making excuses. I was trying to stop Oona pitching into the grave when her elbow—”

“Oh.” Venice cut him off with a disappointed frown. “Flo and I were rather speculating in the car coming up. None of us could see properly in the churchyard, being at the back.”

Tom watched a forkful of salad pass Venice’s lips. “I expect there’ll be pictures in the papers—at least one of the papers.”

“I suppose he was a paparazzi, then.”

“A paparazz
o
, I think, Ven.”

“There’ll be a run on the newsagents tomorrow morning,” Venice continued, ignoring her sister-in-law, her eyes scanning the room. “Perhaps I should get an order in with Karla. I wonder if she’s
thought to order extra copies. You wouldn’t happen to know which paper he was with, would you, Vicar?”

“No, I would not,” Tom replied dryly. One doesn’t stop to question a freight train when it’s barrelling towards you. The photographer had only a few seconds of weaving and bobbing around Colm and Oona as the latter released a farrago of post-slap invective against her ex-husband for dragging their daughter to this godforsaken village before the choir’s basso profundo, as big as Lenny Henry, charged up and grabbed his camera arm with a meaty hand. This spun Oona towards the grave edge. Tom lunged to stop her fall, but as she struggled to right herself, flapping her arms like a startled pigeon, her right elbow smacked into Tom’s left eye. Only the Italian, who had scrambled back to his feet, managed to catch Oona before she tumbled onto the coffin. She spun into his arms and released a howl of grief so unrestrained everyone scattered among the gravestones was stunned into embarrassed silence. It was between the duck and the lunge, before the poke in the eye, through the arabesque of twisting arms, that Tom’s vision was gripped by a phantom presence. He could put a name to it now, but it was absolutely bloody ridiculous to do so. Sybella was in a coffin; she wasn’t wandering spectrally about the churchyard witnessing her own undignified committal. If he’d had this hallucination
after
Oona’s elbow met his eyeball, he’d have credited it to retinal shock. But as it happened
before
 …

“Never mind.” Venice interrupted his thoughts, waving a fork in the general direction of a knot of people visible in the next room gathered by a white grand piano. “I’ve spotted Karla. I shall go have a word with her.”

Tom watched her waddle across the Aubusson and reflected on Colm’s munificence in having the whole village—well, nearly—up to his home, to mingle among family—a number seemed to share Colm’s sloped nose—and London friends. At the gate to Thornridge House, some minder Colm had hired had vetted the out-of-town crowd, and PCSO White and some constable Tom had never seen before vetted the locals, to ensure no unwelcome intrusions as
there had been in the churchyard. He suspected many villagers had never been inside Thornridge House. They were deferential and doleful, as would be expected at a funeral reception at the Big House, but they were also avid with curiosity. He could see it in the roving eyes, sidelong glances, and fingers slinking out to stroke some bit of fabric. He spotted Julia, framed in the French windows, looking at him with some intensity over the rim of a glass of sherry. He had a prickly sensation that she had been doing so for some time. He excused himself to Florence and went over.

“Not eating?” he asked.

Julia shook her head. “It looks very good … well, except for that bit—”

“Apparently Dora Speke’s casserole went walkabout.”

“Ah.”

Tom edged his fork into a sausage roll. “Revelation Choir was splendid, don’t you think? And you were wonderful, too, of course.”

“Mmm.”

Tom glanced at her. She caught the glance and seemed to struggle with something to say.

“Your eye …”

“A bit of best British beef on it and I’ll be right as rain.”

“I think Alastair would tell you putting bacteria-laden meat on a mucous membrane would be a poor idea.”

“Joke.”

“Oh.” Julia downed the rest of her sherry, then clutched the glass to her chest. An uncharacteristically awkward silence ensued. Behind him, Tom could hear people murmuring and greeting one another, their collective drone broken by the occasional titter or mutter. Over Julia’s shoulder, through the French window, Thornridge’s shimmering lawn beckoned in the middle distance, a haven from the polite and artificial society of the funeral tea.