Twelve Drummers Drumming (37 page)

“What did you say?”

“I kept my counsel—”

“Thank you.”

“—for the time being.”

In renewed silence, they passed the post office and Pattimore’s, then travelled up Orchard Hill, turning west through the shadows of lofty oaks demarcating the entrance to Knighton Lane, to Farthings, Colonel Northmore’s home. As Sebastian opened the picket
gate piercing the privet hedge and they passed under an arched trellis heavy with red climbing roses, Tom thought about his few parting words with the old gentleman. Alastair had absented himself, and the colonel seemed to sink into torpor, his face grey. Despite this, obliquely, before he himself left, Tom wished the colonel to know he understood the sacrifice he believed he was making.

“I understand Lord Kinross—the late Lord Kinross—was cited for his heroism in the war and for his sacrifices in the prison camp. His intercessions saved many Allied lives.”

The colonel turned his face back from the wall to stare at Tom. He said nothing, but his rheumy eyes filled with incipient tears.

“And, Colonel,” Tom added gently, “I believe I know one of his descendants.”

The older man didn’t respond immediately, but an intelligence passed between them. Tom could see a new worry disturb the colonel’s features.

“What will you do?” he croaked.

Tom replied, “I don’t know.”

“Wrong,” the colonel groaned, before the lids sank over his eyes and he made a feeble dismissive gesture at Tom, who said a quick and silent prayer and left.

Now, standing on the polished parquet floor of Farthings’s hallway, watching Sebastian attach a leather lead to the excited Jack Russell’s collar, he wondered—as he had on the drive back from hospital—what the colonel meant. If only the old man wasn’t so parsimonious about starting a sentence with a subject. What was wrong? Who was wrong? He? I?

“As I see it,” Tom told Sebastian, stepping first back into the lane and holding the gate open for Sebastian and Bumble to pass, “Colonel Northmore must have it in his head that you might be responsible for Peter Kinsey’s death or he wouldn’t go so far as to say that
he
was.”

“Phillip has been more than kind to me.”

“The question is: Why would he think—?”

“Because,” Sebastian cut in, “according to a court of law, I’ve killed a man before. I suppose it’s not unreasonable to think that having done it once, I might do it again.”

Tom flicked a glance at him, at the strong hands holding the straining lead as Bumble snuffled deliriously along the hedgerows. “But the colonel has been your sponsor, your patron, your friend, the keeper of your secret. He must be one of those who believe you
didn’t
kill your brother, despite the findings of the court.”

“We’ve never discussed it.”

“What?”

“We’ve never discussed the circumstances of my brother’s death, Phillip and I.”

Astounded, Tom could only grope for words. “But …?”

“You think he’s taken an awful chance …”

“Well … I …”

“He was devoted to my grandfather, and to my grandfather’s memory. I believe Phillip feels he owes my grandfather a boon. In a way, helping me find sanctuary here is part of that payment, though, of course, he’s never said.”

“The colonel told me this afternoon he had killed a man—a Japanese—in prison camp. Do you know this story?”

Sebastian shook his head.

“I’m not sure I believe it,” Tom continued. “I think the colonel’s had time to ruminate while he’s been in hospital. He may have concocted this tale to support the notion that he would be capable of killing someone again, namely Peter Kinsey.”

Sebastian flashed him a look of doubt.

“I asked him if he wanted to make a formal confession, ask for God’s forgiveness and take absolution. He more or less waved me off. Do you understand? The colonel may be prepared to lie to protect a man, but I don’t think he would be prepared to offend God.”

Sebastian received this without comment, looking upward momentarily as if seeking some answer from the sky, a warmer, deeper
blue in the late afternoon. They walked on, past meadows that glinted through glimpses into gaps in the hedgerows, only their footfalls on the stony path and the occasional remonstration from unseen sheep breaching the silence.

“Why,” Tom asked finally, pulling at one of the tall grasses poking through the soil, “are you pottered away down here in the Devon countryside anyway?”

“Why are you?” Sebastian responded mildly.

“You know perfectly well. A safe haven for my daughter—though perhaps I should rethink that notion after this week’s events. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“Well, why not live here?”

“I think, Sebastian, if I wanted to create a new identity or live in anonymity, I’d slip into London’s teeming masses. Or move to another country. I don’t think I’d pick a gossipy little village, however out-of-the-way it is. Thornford has visitors. There are a number of holiday cottages for hire. We don’t live in isolation. I know you look quite different than you did a dozen years ago, but you’re still taking a chance.”

“I’m up at Thornridge House with Colm most days. Few go there.”

“There’s the pub.”

“I usually have my face in a magazine or newspaper.”

“The church.”

Sebastian smiled for the first time. “Tom, you know how meagre the attendance figures are for the Church of England.”

Tom grunted, twisting the grass in his fingers. “You really haven’t answered my question: Why are you living in Thornford under a false identity?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“I simply can’t. That’s all.”

“I’m your priest.”

“Leave it alone.”

Tom watched Bumble tear after a sparrow that had flitted onto the path. The lead pulled taut. “That
Sun
reporter knows who you are, though he doesn’t seem to have done anything with the knowledge—yet.”

“I glanced at the papers in the post office.”

“And what about your father? This stroke the reporter mentioned?”

Sebastian didn’t respond; instead he said, “Did you know there is a ghost that walks this lane?”

“Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“Mrs. P. knows all the lore. I shall have to ask her.”

“Little to tell. It was a curate who murdered his vicar. Sometime in the seventeenth century. They would take contemplative walks this way, apparently.”

Tom shot a glance at Sebastian. “And ought I to take a warning from this?”

“I merely mention it, as a point of interest. I did say ‘curate.’ Sorry.”

Was he? Ahead Tom could see the path narrow, the trees grown closer to its edge, their black boughs knitting into a canopy. Soon he and Sebastian would be well away from the village, from its homes and cottages, and not far from the headland that tumbled down to the water below. He glanced at Sebastian’s strong back—the straining dog had pulled the man slightly ahead—and felt for the first time a stab of anxiety, perhaps as some antediluvian might have felt if he had happened upon Cain who killed his brother Abel. He could turn back—his thoughts were for Miranda—but then his mind passed over a certain posture of Sebastian in the vicarage garden only two days before and he took a little heart. He tossed aside the grass stem he had been torturing.

“I’m told,” he said, “that you weren’t your usual self—or the usual
self everyone’s come to know—on the evening before Ned Skynner’s funeral last year.”

“Who told you that?”

“I think you can guess if I tell you that you went into the pub well before your usual time and that you appeared to be somewhat … agitated.” Tom refrained from using Eric’s exact phrasing—
“like he’d been handed a death sentence and National Lottery winnings at the same moment.”

Sebastian tugged at the lead to bring Bumble back from his inspection of some olfactory offering by a crumbled stone wall that marked the end of the civilising hedgerows. “I
was
agitated. I’d gone into the church to help Mitsuko back down from the tower. You recall that I told you the quinquennial inspection had been that Monday, the day before Ned’s funeral, and that Mitsuko had asked if she might go up the tower? She wanted up around the supper hour—something about the quality of the light for photographs, with the sun low in the sky—and said she’d be half an hour or so, so I left her on the roof of the tower and went back to my cottage. I said I’d come and help her back down. Have you been up yourself?”

“No.”

“There’re some tricky bits climbing around the bells, for one thing. And I didn’t want Mitsuko to injure herself. In a way, I shouldn’t really have let her up. I doubt the church’s insurance would cover an accident in such circumstances, but Peter wasn’t around that day to ask, and Mitsuko can be quite persuasive. So at some point, I left my cottage and went back to the church.”

“About what time?”

“I’m not sure. Shortly after seven?”

They passed under a leafy archway, into a twilight of long shadows and ribbons of pale sunshine. The path turned stonier, cruder, the ruts deeper where rainwater lay pooled long after vanishing in the pastures and meadows. Tom felt the spongy patches against his heels, the legacy of Tuesday evening’s rain, and the cool air along his
face. It was here, on his own walks, that he usually—usually, but not this instant—felt his spirit lift.

“When I went into the church sanctuary,” Sebastian continued, “I could see past the rood screen. I noticed the vestry door was open and the light on. I thought that a little odd. Only a few people have keys to the vestry, and I wasn’t expecting any one of them to be there at that time of evening, so I went to have a look.” He paused, glanced at Tom, then looked off towards the shell of a derelict shed that had captured Bumble’s interest. “I found Peter on the vestry floor.”

Tom wished he could see Sebastian’s eyes, as if the truth might be registered there, but his verger, having tugged at the lead, now crouched in the shadows and called the dog towards him.

Impatient, Tom asked, “And …?”

Sebastian groped along Bumble’s collar and unfastened the clip. “He was dead.”

He rose from his haunches as the dog, released, bounded joyously down the lane.

“Were you sure?” Tom watched Bumble dart into a sprawling shrub and a bird flit out the top. “Perhaps—”

“I was quite sure, Tom.” He flicked him a meaningful glance, and Tom understood in an instant: There was no novelty here. For Sebastian, this was déjà vu—one way or another. According to the archived news stories, he had been discovered in one of the bedrooms at Tullochbrae, the Allans’ Highland home, over the body of his dead brother, clutching the murder weapon, a fireplace poker.

“I suppose the obvious question is why you didn’t ring the police straight off. I think my first presumption would have been that there had been an accident, or that Kinsey had had a heart attack or the like, not—”

“He was lying prostrate,” Sebastian interrupted with some exasperation as they continued down the path. “There was a trickle of blood at the back of his hair, the verge was on the floor, and—”

He let dangle the residual thought.

“And what?” Tom pressed.

“When I stepped out of my cottage earlier to fetch Mitsuko, I saw Phillip walking up Poachers Passage, turning towards The Square. I thought at the time it was odd to see him there, at that hour, and without Bumble. I was going to call out to him, but I was needing to get to Mitsuko, and he was walking away with”—he squinted as if in recollection—“with uncharacteristic haste.”

“And then,” Tom prompted, “two minutes later, when you saw Peter’s body in the vestry, you thought perhaps …” He left the rest unsaid, thinking:
Three people now placed the colonel in the vicinity of the church at a crucial time
. He watched Sebastian’s lean, strong fingers wind the dog lead into a coil and waited for a response. When none came, he continued, “Why would you think that? Why would you think the colonel might have killed Kinsey?”

Finally Sebastian spoke: “Phillip was troubled about something.”

“About the paintings that used to hang in the Lady chapel?”

“Then you know.”

“He told me this afternoon at hospital.”

Sebastian flicked him an irritated glance. “I knew how angry and offended Phillip was, and so …” He bit along the edge of his lower lip. “I’m afraid Mitsuko flew right out of my head after seeing Peter lying there. I must have passed into a sort of daze, because next I knew I was in the pub, not quite sure how I got there. Walked, of course, but …”

In his mind’s eye Tom imagined the flight out of the church and down Church Walk. But was Sebastian shocked at finding Peter Kinsey dead after seeing the colonel moving up Poachers Passage, or shocked at having rashly killed his old schoolmate before the colonel had even stepped into the church?

“… Then, finally, I remembered Mitsuko up in the tower. I left the pub and went and helped her down. I don’t think she noticed how late I was. She’d got caught up in the views and photographing
everything. She was thrilled, talkative, oblivious to my mood. Then, when she’d gone, I went back into the church, to the vestry.”

Sebastian stopped and turned to him. A crack of sunlight flashed across his face, setting his bronzed skin and fair hair aglow. “And when I got there …” He raised a shielding hand against the sun so that his eyes fell into shadow. “When I got there, the body was gone.”

“What!”

“It had disappeared. Vanished. I remember simply staring at the floor. I wondered whether I was dreaming it all. It was like the women at the Tomb—”

“Only without the angels to supply an explanation.” Tom regarded him sceptically, feeling an urge to push the man’s hand away from his face so he could read his eyes. “No evidence of a body having been there? Blood …?”

“Nothing. Though the verge was still on the floor where it had been. I left it. Left the vestry, locked up the church, and returned to my cottage.”

“And didn’t look around the churchyard?”

“I did, but as it was nearly dark …”

“But then, when the village grew concerned about the disappearance of its vicar, you did nothing.”