Eleven Pipers Piping (30 page)

“Tomorrow’s fine, Mr. Christmas. I’ll tell Mum.” Adam stepped towards a villager who had stopped to offer her condolences.

“Are you not busy at Noze?” Tom asked John conversationally while they waited.

“We were to have a German syndicate this week, but the snow put paid to that.” He peered at the grey sky. “The weather’s turned better than expected so the Americans won’t cancel their shooting party. They’re coming on Monday. They’re already in London with their wives, probably obliged to shop, so I expect nothing will put them off coming down here.”

Tom smiled. He regarded John’s ruddy complexion. On Tuesday night, as he and Mark had stepped out of the Old School Room, he had glimpsed a quickly moving vehicle blaze for a second under the pub’s single security light as it turned off Poynton Shute onto Pennycross Road.
Land Rover
, distinguishable for its boxy frame, had registered in his mind. Land Rovers were unremarkable transport in the country, but this one had a singular feature that even in the flash of light distinguished it: the badge of the earl of Duffield on the side, which marked it as one belonging to the Noze Lydiard Estate. That John had sent his regrets to the PCC meeting when in fact he had been in the village was disappointing, but it had triggered a niggle.

“John, a question, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“Have you ever sort of shot up in bed, suddenly awake, seemingly for no reason?”

John frowned. “Not … recently, that I can recall.”

“Well, I did. Last night. And I realised something that had been
swimming around in my unconscious suddenly decided to spring into my conscious, although I suppose it could have picked a more convenient time.”

“Yes …?”

“Anyway …” Tom took a breath. He’d no reason to doubt John’s honesty before, and he felt a bit of a fool for asking. “Sunday morning you went to pick Caroline up in town, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the odd thing is, when I went up to Thorn Court after the service, your car, your Rover—at least I think it was yours—appeared to be sitting under a mound of snow and there were no tyre tracks running along the forecourt. So how …?”

John cast him a vacant look. His brow furrowed, then enlightenment gleamed in his eyes. “Sorry, I must have given you the wrong impression Sunday. I went to Thorn Court
intending
to get the Rover to fetch Caroline, but Adam here … Adam?” He flicked a glance at the young man, who excused himself from what had turned into a group of condolence-givers. “Adam had already brought Caroline in from Noze and dropped her off. Sunday morning, Adam,” he prompted.

“Yes, that’s right,” the younger man said. “I had one of the other estate vehicles and was able to drive Mum back. Her car got stuck in the snow.”

“Sorry, Tom.” John put his cap on his head. “I didn’t mean to give the impression I was the hero of the hour.”

“I see.” Tom turned to Adam sympathetically. “Then you couldn’t have known what happened.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You—”

Tom saw Adam’s eyes dart to his left, and he was suddenly conscious of a new figure at his elbow. “Judith. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you. This is Adam Moir, Caroline’s son. Adam, Judith Ingley. She lived in Thornford as a child.”

Judith tilted her head and peered up at him. “I can see the resemblance to your father. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Adam smiled wanly.

“My apologies, I think I interrupted your conversation.” Judith twined her scarf between her fingers.

“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” Tom responded. “I was saying Adam brought his mother in from Noze Lydiard on Sunday morning, but of course as there’d been all the trouble with the phones and such, neither of them was aware of what had happened—”

“Oh, I see what you mean.” Adam flushed. “Yes, I dropped Mum off at the gate to the hotel—she … she wanted to get back to Ariel—and I drove straight back to Noze, never knowing. Of course, Mum called me later and so …” He faltered suddenly.

“And then I expect with all the new snow you couldn’t get back to the village until the next day.” Tom felt the boy’s distress as if it were his own.

Adam blinked rapidly, but one tear escaped. “Sorry,” he mumbled as he struggled to regain his composure. Tom felt his heart contract with pity. Adam was, in a way, blooded by this death, initiated into the millionfold congregation that suffered the shattering loss of a loved one—a parent, a spouse, a child, a lover—and was struggling with profound and terrible feelings. He glanced at Judith, who had lost her husband only months ago. She regarded Adam, studying him, almost clinically, Tom thought at first, until he noted her unfocused pupils, suggestive of thoughts straying to another realm. John, too, had lost his spouse—more than a decade earlier—but perhaps it was this span of time that coloured his reaction to Adam’s shattered composure: No sympathy softened the edges of his broad features; rather there was an indrawing, a faint furrow to the brow, a slight narrowing of the eyes, a pinching of the lips. It was the expression of a man who sat in judgement and what he was seeing he did not like.

T
om glanced at the gauge. The needle now dipped perilously into the red that meant “empty.”

“I’d better stop for petrol,” he said to Old Bob as his car reached the outskirts of the village. “Otherwise we may find ourselves hitchhiking into Totnes.”

“Did tha’ a bit when I were a lad, puttin’ me thumb out,” Bob remarked, gesturing with his own digit. “Remember hitchhikin’ all the way to Plymouth to see Beryl Davis sing. Folk would stop for you then. Not now, I don’t think.”

“People are more cautious now, it seems.” Tom waited for a lorry to pass, then turned off Pennycross Road. He had ventured hitchhiking in Europe when he had busked his magic act for a year or so after university at street cafés and local festivals, but had met with little success. People had soured on picking up strangers. Too bad, really.

“I remember—”

“Keep that thought,” Tom interrupted slowing the car into the petrol bay of Thorn Cross Garage—or, rather, as the sign over the service bays proclaimed,
TH RN CR SS GARAGE
.

When no one came out to serve them, and thinking better of embarking on an impatient bout of honking, Tom stepped from the car and studied the filling pump, which, with no credit card slot, was clearly not intended for self-serve. He glanced around the yard and noted a flatbed lorry with what looked like a load of building materials on it, a half-red, half-butterscotch vintage Mini, an old motorcycle, several saloon cars of more recent vintage, a mini cab with its bonnet open, and nothing with a human form.

“Halloo,” he called into the garage’s service bay, a shadowy cave illuminated by a single naked bulb. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he noted a pair of dungaree-encased legs stretching out from under a car.

“Jago?”

The legs twitched. Tom heard a soft thud followed by a string of curses. The body of a stocky middle-aged man in a boilersuit rolled out on a wooden dolly. On his forehead was a spot of grease like a black bindi; in his hand was a pair of snips. He glared up at Tom, but his expression softened when he saw who it was.

“Sorry to trouble you.” Tom reached in his pocket for his billfold. “Look, I’ll fill it myself and leave you fifty pounds.”

“No, don’t do that.” Jago rubbed his forehead, turning the grease spot into a black smudge. He scrambled off the dolly and yawned. “I need to stand up. I must have nodded off.” He snatched a flannel from a hook by the door and rubbed at his hands.

“That looks like Caroline’s car.” Tom glanced at the hulk of a Subaru Estate as they passed from the darkness of the service bay into the light of the afternoon.

“It is. It’s not in bad shape. Pound out the dents where the tractor
hit it and it should be right as rain. I was just under, giving it an oil change. The Moirs have been a bit negligent lately with maintenance on their vehicles. And I can’t say I’ve seen yours in here and you’ve lived here for nearly a year.”

Tom pulled back the petrol tank cover as Jago lifted the hose from the pump. Something Thorn Cross Garage’s owner said confused him. “A tractor? What was a tractor doing on the streets of Totnes?”

Jago inserted the hose, frowned. “I don’t know. Is this a riddle? What
was
a tractor doing on the street of Totnes?”

“You said this morning that someone had hit Caroline’s car where she parked it.”

“That’s right. She left it just off the A435 where Bursdon Road intersects.”

“What? But that’s barely halfway to town.”

“I think she got stuck or reckoned she couldn’t go on in that bloody weather Saturday and abandoned it. At any rate, she left it in the lane into Upper Coombe Farm, by a hedgerow, the AA guy told me. But by Monday, it was under a mound of snow and when Dave took his tractor out on Tuesday to do God-knows-what, he nicked its fender and bent it into the tyre.”

“I just assumed someone had hit it in town. Then however did Caroline get to Totnes?”

“Walked?” Jago’s eyes darted over the figures clicking on the petrol pump.

“I suppose she must have.” Tom calculated the distance: It was at least a couple of miles. Not impossible.

“Or someone gave her a ride on the A435.” Jago squeezed the pump handle. “Though walking might have been faster in Saturday’s conditions.”

“We were just talking about hitchhiking, Bob and I.”

“Oh, have you got Old Bob with you?”

Tom bent to look into the car’s interior. “Well, I did. Where’s he got to?”

“Toilet, likely. He’s diabetic, did you know? Makes him a frequent visitor.” Jago replaced the hose. “Either you or my sister goes up to Exeter some Saturdays, yes?”

“Me this Saturday. Why?” Tom followed Jago across the pavement into a tiny office where the aroma of motor oil and car exhaust was particularly intense.

“Tamara’s been wanting a certain pair of her shoes she forgot to take with her when she moved to Exeter.”

“Did last weekend’s concert go well?”

“Cancelled, wasn’t it, what with all the snow.”

“Cancelled?” Tom frowned. “I never thought to ask what happened. They must have all bunked in at Noze during the storm.”

“Who? Caroline? With Tamara and Adam? Oh, I suppose.” Jago took Tom’s credit card.

“You didn’t ask?”

“There comes a time when a father doesn’t want to know where his daughter spends her nights. Or,” he mumbled darkly, “with whom.”

“Adam’s not such a bad lad.”

“Adam’s a plonker.”

Tom smiled. “Think you’d approve of any man your daughter went out with?”

“Like as not.” Jago swiped the credit card with a certain ferocity. “The shoes?”

“I can take them up then. Have you got them here? I’ll leave them in the car.”

“Tamara works at Drake’s Coffee House on Saturday mornings, though.”

“Then that’s perfect. I’m picking up some books at a shop on Cathedral Close, too. I can drop them off to her then.”

Jago reached below the counter and pulled out a wrinkled Morrisons
carrier bag. At that moment, somewhere behind the wall mounted with a rack of crisps, peanuts, and pork scratchings packets, a toilet flushed.

“I remember,” Bob continued, as if there had been no interval of petrol-purchase, bladder-relief, and cheese-and-onion-crisp-buying, “when Bill Frost and me ’itchhiked up Tiverton way for …” His wrinkled face distorted at the effort of remembering. “Not sure why now. Anyway, this were near end of th’ war, before Bill got wed. Petrol were rationed, so it were th’ only way t’get about.”

“Were you in the service?” Tom pulled back onto the main road.

“Might have been, by ’44 we was eligible and wanted to join up, but they wanted us on the land, Bill and me. We worked the Stanhopes’ farm in them days, before they sold it.” Bob rattled the crisp packet in an effort to open it.

“Should you be eating those? Jago tells me you have diabetes.”

“Don’t matter.”

The undertone made Tom glance at him sharply. “Bob …?”

“As I were about to say, Father, weren’t a lot of other lads about then, so many off t’war and all, that we had our pick, y’know. Of course, there were all these Yanks stationed here,” he added darkly. “Tha’ didn’t help none. Anyway …”