Twelve Drummers Drumming (27 page)
His thinking was racing ahead of his conversation, but he had this inexplicable urge to tell this attractive young woman, this police person—of all creatures; after being womanhandled by Bristol CID he wasn’t awfully fond of the police—everything about himself. He looked at his glass of wine. He’d hardly had a sip.
“At any rate,” he began again, “Kate went up to Davenport’s in London and bought me a ‘World of Illusion’ magic kit, and that was that. By fifteen, I was a table magician at a hotel in Gravesend and while I was at university—the first time—I gigged in pubs and bars around Canterbury doing close-up magic for extra money.”
“Did you ever figure out the ring trick?” They had moved on to a quilt depicting several pensioners at the bus stop near Thorn Cross. Màiri leaned in to read the haiku next to it.
“Oh, yes.” Tom smiled. “I had a set of five golden rings—well, they weren’t really gold, just gold-coloured—that I used to amuse and confuse. But by then I had got a bit more serious about magic as a career. I’d read religious studies at the University of Kent, which made me eligible to be a tea boy on British Rail, and had busked around Europe for a year or so working street cafés and local festivals. When I got back, I improved my skills with a master conjurer, developed The Great Krimboni persona, started doing large parties and corporate gigs, and even a few stints on a cruise—”
He stopped. He could see Màiri’s attention had been drawn away. He was boring her!
“Shall I intervene, do you think?” she asked.
“What?” Tom turned. He followed her gaze towards the south end of the hall, opposite the stage, where a cleft had opened in the multitude and the din had fallen to a whisper. The pallid London reporter, who must have slipped back into the hall post-fag, was being escorted out again. Karla Skynner had his left ear pinched firmly in her right hand. “Such language will not be tolerated at a public event in this village, Mr. Macgreevy,” she could be heard barking above his helpless cursing. Tom noted the other reporter in the room blanch.
“My question was rhetorical,” Màiri said, as Karla pushed the
outside door open with a swift kick. “She’s remarkably forceful for such a wee thing.”
“She’s one of the more fiercesome churchwardens I’ve had in my career.”
“I noted that from your meeting this afternoon.” Màiri stepped to another quilt as the hubbub resumed in the room. “She wasn’t keen on your verger’s dereliction of duty. Did you get to the bottom of it? I noticed you had Sebastian stay behind.”
“No, Sebastian prefers his privacy. But he told me something very interesting—” Tom was about to mention a curious concurrence of events the day the church architect arrived the previous year, but he was cut short by Madrun jabbing a tray at his elbow. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Prowse,” he said, taking one of two tiny remaining pastries. “Has Mitsuko got you serving these creations as well as baking them?”
“I’m lending Kerra a hand. She had her first day at the Waterside today. She’s feeling a little overwhelmed at the minute.”
“Kerra is Mrs. Prowse’s niece,” Tom explained to Màiri, who murmured between bites, “These are absolutely brilliant. What’s the filling?”
“Yew berries.” Madrun frowned at Màiri before quickly turning back to Tom.
“Yew berries!” Màiri’s eyes widened.
“Apparently Mrs. Prowse’s yew berry tartlets are famous locally,” Tom told her. “They’re—”
“You really must circulate, Mr. Christmas,” Madrun interrupted. “I believe Mitsuko wanted a word, for one.”
“Of course,” Tom said humbly as Madrun moved towards the doors to the corridor to the small hall, then made a face at Màiri. The policewoman was staring aghast at the remains of the pastry she was holding.
“She’ll poison someone …” she began, hastily brushing a flake of pastry from the corner of her mouth with her other hand.
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But apparently Mrs. Prowse has
been serving them for more than a quarter century with no loss of life. She’s extremely careful about removing the seeds.”
“A health warning wouldn’t go amiss!”
Tom glanced around the crowded room, noting Mitsuko kissing two men with short clipped beards who had just arrived. “Perhaps I should circulate, as my housekeeper has more or less commanded.”
“But you haven’t told me what brought you to the Church.”
“Oh! Well …” Tom displayed the tiny pastry between his thumb and forefinger. He found himself loath to leave her company. “It was something very like this.”
“I didn’t know pastry cups could have such a profound effect.”
“They can if there’s thousands of them, along with tables groaning with other delicacies.” He paused to pop the pastry into his mouth. “I was on a cruise ship, the
Star Odyssey
, in the Mediterranean. I had gigged on cruise ships a time or two before, but this time the ever-present still, small voice in my head—no, I’m not mad—it’s the one that had been telling me all along that what I was doing in life wasn’t quite the thing—anyway, the voice got louder.” He watched Mitsuko weaving through the crowd and gave a passing thought to hailing her. “I had a bit of a Damascus moment at the buffet table,” he confessed, watching her disappear through the doors to the small hall. “Have you ever been on a cruise?”
“Never.”
“The buffets are grotesque, glory be’s to dissipation—a medieval banquet barring roast swan and larks’ tongues in aspic. Worse, you order off the menu, if you like; you can order eight dishes—or ten, or all of them!—and just have a nibble of each, because the price of food is included in the fare. And people do it.
“Once, late at night, after my last performance, I happened to be on deck and watched as the ship released an enormous tide of un-nibbled nosh into the sea. In the moonlight, the mess of it gleamed like an oil slick. The next morning, when I trotted down to the twenty-four-hour breakfast buffet, I came over all mad-keen to turn
over the tables of eggs Florentine and bananas flambé and denounce the den of excess.”
“Like Jesus with the moneylenders in the temple.”
Tom raised an eyebrow.
“I have a vague affiliation with Presbyterianism,” Màiri told him. “I’m a north-of-the-border lass, you realise.”
“Well, it was a little like that. Only I’m not sure I wanted to turn the
Star Odyssey
into a house of prayer. Or would have had any success. At any rate, my appendix had been acting up and was fit to burst so I had to be taken off ship at Barcelona. While I was recuperating I had time to consider whether I wanted to spend life on a luxury barge doing little more than amusing people between bites of
tournedos au poivre
or whether I couldn’t be of service in some other way. So when I returned to Southwark, I started going to the Cathedral, and before long—”
But Màiri was no longer listening. Her face had taken on an alert expression replicated by others in the room as the chatter, as though by an unseen hand fiddling a radio knob, fell to a hush. Tom noted Kerra, her tray empty by her side, hesitate before the door to the passageway connecting the large and small halls, then turn awkwardly to face the room, inadvertently becoming a centre of attention as people’s heads swiveled towards the source of the furious voices—Liam’s bass and Mitsuko’s soprano. Listening to the Drewes arguing was becoming village sport. Tom motioned to Kerra to join him and Màiri.
“His bark is worse than his bite,” he said of Liam, echoing Marg Farrant’s comment, though he wasn’t sure he believed it—then or now. “How’s your first day on the job been?”
Kerra blinked back tears. “Awful,” she said. “Aunt Madrun warned me.”
“Liam has a sort of … artistic temperament.” Tom groped for a soothing explanation.
“He was okay until two detectives arrived.”
Again?
Tom thought, glancing at Màiri.
“Then I couldn’t seem to do anything right.”
“If he’s being bullying to you, you come and see me,” Màiri told her.
Kerra smiled tentatively. “I’m taking kung fu classes at Totnes.”
“Well, good for you then. Go take a look at that quilt nearest the stage, while you’re waiting. I think you’re in it. Have you had a chance to look at it?”
“No.”
“Go on with you, then.”
“Even hurricanes blow themselves out eventually,” Tom called after her. Conversation was returning to its previous hum in the room. “I mean”—he turned back to Màiri—“an argument can’t go on forever.”
“True. It took a thousand years, but even England and France managed to patch it up.” She ran a finger around the rim of her wineglass. “I assume DI Bliss and DS Blessing interviewed you, too.”
“I couldn’t be very helpful, I’m afraid. They spent more time being speculative in front of me. Wondered, for instance, if perhaps Sybella had been killed to somehow get at her father.”
“An apparently motiveless crime is a bit wearing on a detective. They’re digging through all sorts, not only here in the village but Sybella’s London connections, her family connections …”
They stepped around one of the bearded fellows who had been talking with Mitsuko earlier. He and his compatriot were both studying the wall.
“Perhaps the intent is to amplify the complexity of the other works through the use of negative space,” one could be heard saying.
“Mmm,” the other demurred. “Or perhaps it’s a statement about the vacuity of village life, that there is a profound absence of meaning at its very heart.”
Màiri leaned towards Tom and whispered: “Whatever are they talking about?”
“I think they don’t know a quilt has gone missing,” he whispered
back, taking in the aroma of the scent she was wearing. “Mitsuko reported the loss, yes?”
“And I’ve forwarded the report. It seems like more than chance a piece of art would disappear from the village hall where a young woman was murdered the very same night.”
“Did Mitsuko tell you what the picture in the quilt depicted?”
“The churchyard. I understand she took a number of pictures from atop the church tower overlooking the village.”
“She couldn’t remember when she took the pictures when I spoke to her this morning,” Tom said. Or claimed she couldn’t, Tom considered, thinking back to his encounter with Mitsuko on almost this very spot earlier in the day. Her behaviour, her wariness, her impatience—in light of what Sebastian had revealed in the vicarage garden this very afternoon—now seemed to him peculiar. How could she not remember what day she had been atop the church tower? It had been the day
before
she had taken the photo of Julia and him exiting the Church House Inn, the afternoon of Ned Skynner’s funeral.
The day before the funeral had been the day of the quinquennial church inspection, Tom thought. The day when Peter Kinsey was last seen. A funeral, an absent vicar, a once-in-five-years inspection—surely this conjunction of events would have resonated, even if months went by before you examined the photos you had downloaded into your computer. He wasn’t prepared to express his qualms to Màiri, but he believed it served the greater good to name the day Mitsuko had taken her photographs from on high. But before he could do so, a conjunction of normally unremarkable events hushed his mouth. Mitsuko stepped into the large hall from the passageway. Her face was burning, her features fighting to regain composure. At the same time—and this was particularly odd—Madrun stepped into the large hall from the
outside
door, a full tray of pastries in hand. Each woman caught the other’s eye. Each turned away in haste.
Thornford Regis TC9 6QX
30 M
AY
Dear Mum
,
We are all girding our loins for the day ahead, what with poor Sybella’s funeral, and I must get on with Mr. Christmas’s breakfast shortly as I’m sure the day will be very taxing for him. Porridge, I think. It will stick to his ribs. I haven’t made porridge in such a long time but I was at the v. hall last night for Mitsuko Drewe’s
party
art show, helping Kerra serve, and Mr. Christmas was talking with PCSO White from over Pennycross way, who is Scottish (from Perth originally, I think), and I thought something homely like oatmeal would be just the thing for next day’s breakfast. Funny how the mind works! Mr. Christmas spent too much time talking with PCSO White last night—Mairi, as she says you must call her. There’s supposed to be a little accent over the “a” in her name, but I can’t make this old typewriter do accents. Perhaps I should shift to a computer as Mr. Christmas suggests, but I am fond of this old thing. Mairi parted ways with Nick Stanhope around Easter, as I may have
mentioned. He’s in the security business now, and was seeing another woman in Totnes, so she’s well rid of him, but she is rather striking looking and I could see Mr. C. was taken with her. He has been without a wife for some time, poor man, but Mairi wouldn’t do as a vicar’s wife as she’s too blunt and apt to offend. I’m afraid I got a bit sharp with Mr. C. and told him he must circulate. I wouldn’t want people talking about him the way they talked about Mr. Kinsey who was too attentive to the ladies, in such situations, as I’ve said many a time. I shouldn’t wonder it wasn’t one of the men in the village who put an end to Mr. Kinsey! I wonder if he will be buried in the churchyard? Buried
again,
I should add, as he was sort of buried there once, wasn’t he? When I was in Pattimore’s yesterday, Venice Daintrey was in the queue and she said Flo had been in Torquay to have lunch at the Imperial and spotted Oona Blanc getting out of a car, then slap a woman who was standing by the car door. Her assistant presumably. Up to her old ways I guess. I’ll tell you tomorrow how she behaves at the funeral, although I expect you’ll see tomorrow’s papers before you get my letter and probably something on TV. I spotted two of those vans with towers in the road out my window already this morning. They’re setting up a big TV screen in the churchyard because the church won’t hold everyone and there’s to be loudspeakers outside. It’s a bit like Diana’s funeral. Do you remember us all here in the vicarage watching it? I remember Mr. James-Douglas’s nephew was so inconsolable, he ran through two boxes of tissues! Of course, Sybella’s funeral won’t be like that. Which reminds me, I was passing the church yesterday and what should I see but Mr. Christmas and Julia Hennis walking around the yew tree backwards, arm in arm. If Mrs. Hennis wants a child, she should be walking around the tree 7 times
forwards.
Perhaps they were confused. Of course, you know what it means when a
man
goes around backwards 7 times. We’ll have to wait and see. That Penella Neels from Thorn Barton was at the v. hall last
night, too, by the way, giving Mr. Christmas funny looks. I managed to cut her off with my tray of nibbles. Useful things, trays of nibbles. You can always interrupt people with them. Which reminds me—I heard something astonishing at the v. hall last night. I was in the kitchen in the small hall. I’d gone in to get another tray of food, but there was no one there, so I picked up the tray that was waiting. Just then both Liam and Mitsuko came in, almost at the same time. I guess Liam had been in the toilet. I’m not sure why Mitsuko had left her guests in the large hall. But they began to argue. I know what it was—Liam must have come out of the toilet and seen Mitsuko through the doors to the large hall kissing someone, because that’s what started it. I think some smart friends of Mitsuko’s had come to Thornford for the opening, and she had probably given them one of those greeting kisses people seem to do now, and that really set Liam off. He’s what you call insanely jealous, and I think it’s getting worse! Anyway, he accused her of all manner of things. But Mitsuko, bless her, gave as good as she got—even accused him of murdering Mr. Kinsey! Then burying him, all because he thought she was having an affair with
him
the vicar, Mr. Kinsey that was. The idea isn’t all that outlandish, Mum, as I’d often seen Mitsuko and Mr. Kinsey with their heads together, and I don’t think it was to talk about the flower rota. Anyway, Mitsuko got
very
stroppy. She’s such a tiny thing. You’d never think she could be so forceful, at least not in that way. She is rather good at getting her way with the flowers for the church and such, but she’s much more subtle at that. The thing is—she said she had
proof
that Liam had been up to no good with Mr. Kinsey and of course Liam said, what proof? And Mitsuko said, as if I’m going to tell you. And it went on like that for a bit, while here’s me dreading that they’re going to come into the kitchen and find me. Liam backed down a bit and said he had been doing his VAT returns that evening, which was more than a year ago, as the Waterside was closed Mondays on the off season—which
didn’t seem to me much of an alibi, unless he does his VAT returns with some sort of VAT Returns Club which I’m sure doesn’t exist and would be very dull in any case. Now I think of it, I don’t know why Liam was defending his whereabouts for the evening of Mr. Kinsey’s disappearance. But I suppose the whole village knows Jago was the last person to see him, in the early evening that Monday. So if Mr. Kinsey had any disappearing to do it would have to have been then. Or after then. On the other hand, Mr. Kinsey might have
disappeared
been murdered in the middle of the night, for all anyone knows. There’s worse. Mitsuko then accused Liam of killing poor Sybella because he is jealous of her friendships with women, too. I thought that was the limit! I once thought that perhaps Mitsuko and Liam had rows because they liked rowing. Or at least I thought this after Celia Parry talked about the different ways couples communicate in one of her WI talks. But Mitsuko was quite over the top. As you might imagine, Mum, there I was in the kitchen rooted to the floor, feeling really
very
awkward. I thought about going over and knocking their two heads together, but they had said some very embarrassing things I didn’t want them to know I knew. Anyway, when I peeked around the kitchen door, Mitsuko was about to leave through the door through to the large hall and Liam’s back was to me, so I took the tray, which was getting rather warm on my fingers, and slipped out the fire exit, which is right by the kitchen. Of course, it was a bit peculiar being outside alone holding a tray with nibbles on it, so I was obliged to walk around the v. hall and come back in through the main doors. I didn’t think anyone would notice, but Mr. Christmas happened to be standing inside the doors and he gave me a most peculiar look when I walked in. Of course he knows something odd happened as I’m sure everyone heard Mitsuko and Liam rowing but he hasn’t asked. And I’m not sure whether to tell him what I overheard or not, as he does tend to frown on what he sometimes calls “talebearing.” There was
nothing Mr. James-Douglas liked more than a good old natter about village doings, but Mr. C. isn’t very encouraging in that regard. I’m sure he’ll eventually get used to the way we do things down here. I was going to tell you about Mitsuko’s wonderful art quilts, but I must go and start that oatmeal! Cats are well. Love to Aunt Gwen. Hope your day goes well
.
Much love
,
Madrun
P.S. I am keeping my eye on Kerra as is Jago. She is quite safe working at the Waterside, so you mustn’t worry. Jago went down with Kerra and let Liam know he’d better mind his manners. He also says he is going to drive Kerra to and from, especially after dark—although I don’t think Kerra is too happy about her old dad treating her like a kiddie
.
P.P.S. I am worried about your leg. I’m glad the doctor there is going to run you through some tests
.
P.P.P.S. I did find an hour to see Colonel Northmore in hospital yesterday. He doesn’t look well, I’m sorry to say. And he’s quite keen for a visit from Mr. Christmas, but the vicar has so much on his plate right now. I said I’d see what I could do
.
