Eleven Pipers Piping (37 page)

“They’re splendid,” Tom remarked, plucking one, a vibrant aquamarine-blue fish with comically oversized fins, from the table nearest him and letting it dangle in the air off its carrying pole. “Though this one has spots.” It did, small purple circles dotted all over its paper skin. “A fish with measles?”

“I think it’s supposed to be a shark.” Mrs. Lennox frowned at the thing. “But with spots, as you say.”

“Which one is Miranda’s, I wonder?”

She glanced around the tables. “I do know, but I think I should let her surprise you later.”

“Fair enough.” Tom gently returned the shark and continued his inspection of the others. “And are they safe?”

“Installing little battery torchlights has been considered,” she replied, “but everyone seems to love the candles. More atmospheric, I suppose. See”—she lifted one, an unexceptional pink ball, for examination—“the votive candles are secured very firmly to the frame with string and glue. We’ve never had an accident, knock on wood,
and heaven knows it more often than not rains at Wassail, so water is more of a concern than fire.”

Tom was silent a moment, passing his eyes over the shapes along the tables.

“I expect you think this is all rather pagan,” Mrs. Lennox remarked, following his glance.

“What?”

“I say, I expect you think this is all rather pagan. You were frowning.”

“Was I? Oh! Well, yes, it is rather pagan. But I don’t expect Thornfordites to suddenly start worshipping Woden, so I’m not too bothered. No, I was noticing a certain … colour theme running through the lanterns.”

“Oh, yes, the violet, or lavender perhaps, for the trim or decoration. It does seem to be this season’s thing! Whether it’s crayons or jumpers, not a year goes by that the girls don’t have to have something in a certain colour, although I expect Garner Tait put the purple spots on his shark to tease the girls. See, the girls’ ones tend to be bells or stars or hearts.” She lifted one of the hearts, ivory in shade, crudely shaped, covered with smaller purple hearts. “Hearts …” She shook her head. “Wait until they find theirs broken.”

Tom frowned at her and wondered if he should ask a leading question, then thought better of it. He had another pressing appointment this morning.

“Who’s responsible for the supplies, for the lanterns?” he asked instead, lifting a piece of the purple paper.

“Ms. Ablett comes with the tissue paper and willow sticks. But the children are encouraged to come with anything they like for decoration.”

“Do you know who brought this in?” Tom rubbed the paper between two fingers. “It’s really just notepaper, I think. Not construction paper.”

Mrs. Lennox’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure. Why? Is it important?”

“No.” Tom tossed off the response, but he was beginning to think it might be.

“Actually, I have a notion it might have been Ariel Moir. I can see her—” She squinted as if reviewing the children filing in in the morning. “—carrying a small sheaf.”

“Ariel? How odd.”

“Is it?”

“Oh …” Tom groped for a satisfying response. “I’m just … thinking Caroline might have kept her from school.”

“She wasn’t here Wednesday when school reopened, but she did return yesterday, I expect in part for the lantern-making. Such an awful business! I’m sure Mrs. Moir wants to restore some normalcy for Ariel—well, as much as it can be restored, poor child. We sat the children down and had a little discussion about Mr. Moir’s death, so they would be prepared, but I must say some of them are still a little tentative. Your Miranda is very good with Ariel, though.”

“Well, as you may know, it’s something she’s gone though herself.”

“Yes, I had heard.” Mrs. Lennox blessed him with a sympathetic smile.

A red Astra crossed Tom’s field of vision as he stepped from the path up to Thorn Court and onto the level black asphalt of the hotel’s forecourt. DI Bliss was visible in the passenger seat; he turned his head at that moment, presenting Tom with squinting eyelids in the frame of the window, but he signalled no awareness of his presence. Tom watched the car disappear through the gates and begin the climb up Pennycross Road and out of the village and recalled for one piercing moment his own sufferance of police intrusion in the midst
of crashing grief, the dread at seeing once more the CID, the jolt at hearing yet again their voices on the telephone. He felt curiously allied with Caroline, a woman whose spouse, too, had died suddenly and without warning, who was left with a young daughter to bring up on her own, and who, he suspected, was now, for the police, a person of interest, as he himself had been in the days after Lisbeth’s death. And yet there was no answer at the door to the Annex; nor could he find Caroline when he went next door and wandered through Thorn Court’s empty reception rooms. Hammering and crashing from the floor above sent him upstairs, but a boilersuited, plaster-covered worker there could only shrug at his enquiry for the mistress of the house. Finally, he found Caroline outside, tucked into a corner of the converted stables, in huddled conversation with a large, balding man in a yellow safety vest. A flexible ductwork like a great loopy noodle led from one of the upper-storey windows to the flatbed of a truck; above it clouds of grey dust rose and fell to the tempo of cascading bits of plaster and lathe and carpeting. The parking area contained a number of vans with their purposes emblazoned on them—
TAVERNER AND SONS BUILDERS, JTL PLUMBING
, further evidence that the hotel renovations had resumed in earnest.

“I’ll get right on it, Mrs. Moir,” Tom could hear the foreman say as he approached. He noted with amusement the man’s beefy hand sweep towards his forehead, almost as if he were to grasp a forelock and tug it, though hairs were few on the man’s bulldog head.

After glimpsing Tom and dismissing the foreman, Caroline said, “I’m so sorry, I’ve been delayed this morning.” She shifted the sleeve of her puffa jacket and glanced at her watch. “I knew you were coming at ten thirty.”

“You had visitors. I saw them leaving.”

“I don’t know what the police think I can tell them.” Caroline said it with some heat in her voice, leading him back towards Thorn Court’s front entrance. “I wasn’t here Saturday evening. And I didn’t cook the meal. Can’t they understand how awful this is for me?”

“They must go through their routines, I expect. You mustn’t take it personally.”

“I don’t know how else to take it.”

“Well, I mean as a personal attack.” Though saying it, he realised how at times the detectives from Bristol CID had made him feel their questions were exactly that, informed by some inexplicable animus. “I’m sure they’ll come to some resolution before very long.”

Tom could feel her body tense alongside his. In her eyes, he thought he could read a wariness—worse, a flicker of fear—before she turned her head away; the glimpse troubled and confounded him. She led him through the lobby and around the front desk to the hotel office.

“It’s warmer here,” she said unnecessarily. “The heat’s at bare minimum in the rest of the hotel. Take a seat.”

Tom chose one of the well-worn burgundy leather armchairs facing a mahogany pedal desk of late-Victorian vintage, not unlike his own in the vicarage study, and nearest a hissing gas fire set into the recess of a fireplace along one wall. Though small and windowless, the room, with its cream walls and minimal decoration, felt cosy, more like a sanctuary-retreat than the busy office of a country hotel, despite the computer, the printer, the photocopier, and the other apparatus of the modern age. A couch against one wall, covered in the same aged leather as the armchairs and festooned in sagging silk pillows, suggested decades of surreptitious naps—somehow, Tom sized the concavity, by some male figure. The room felt clubby and masculine, missing only the tabaccanalia of an earlier era, though one corner contained a narrow gun cabinet containing, he counted, four shotguns.

“Do you shoot?” he asked wonderingly.

“I can, actually. My father taught me in Australia. But I don’t. Those were my grandfather’s.” She gestured towards the cabinet. “My father carted those to Australia, then brought them back. Nick and I shared the collection when he died. Will takes—took—one of
them out once a year to shoot it at the Wassail, and that’s the extent of it.”

Still wondering at the room’s provenance, Tom found his eyes travelling up the wall over the couch with its row of framed prints to a decorative ceiling rose, which, instead of being centred and pricked with some light fixture, was within inches of the coving, its central hole plugged.

“I don’t know why my grandfather didn’t have that removed,” Caroline said, following his glance as she sat behind the desk. “You can see how the room once was.” She gestured towards the artwork on the wall, which Tom, on closer inspection, could see were architectural renderings of Thorn Court when it was a private home. The foyer then was the smaller room, much so; the office, where they were seated, the larger.

“I don’t think they bothered to move the furniture when they moved the wall. The desk and sofa are impossible to get through the door. The gun cabinet is built in. Even Van Haute, the hoteliers my father sold Thorn Court to, never tried.” Caroline shifted absently through the stack of post in a tray. “Still, it’s lovely to have Grandfather’s things so close to hand.”

“You were fond of your grandfather, I remember you saying when we last talked.”

“Yes.” Caroline glanced at him. “He was lovely to me, at any rate. I was his only grandchild—at the time. Nick, of course, was born some time after he’d died. I think grandparents often have fonder relationships with their grandchildren than their children, don’t you? They must work all the fright and worry from their systems. I know my father and grandfather did not rub along too well together, to say the least.” Her smile was mirthless. “And I’m sure some of the older villagers might take a different view of my grandfather. He was a businessman after all. When you’re in business, sometimes you have to do unpalatable things.”

“I wonder what we shall be like as grandparents?” Tom opened his jacket.

“One has to get through parenting first.”

“Yes, that’s true. You do have Adam on his way, though.” He smiled. “You may be a grandmother sooner than you know … or wish.” He was jolted to see Caroline’s face shudder suddenly, as if a cold wind had blasted it. “I’m so sorry. That was gauche. I didn’t mean to suggest … of course Adam is very young …”

“He’s twenty.”

“And Tamara is very set on getting her education, so I don’t think—”

“I’m not being a snob, Tom.” She looked at him, apology in her eyes. “I don’t care that her father runs a garage. I run a hotel. I’m not sure there’s a great difference. My grandfather would be appalled to know his great-grandson was an underkeeper, but it’s a different world. For heaven’s sake, a prince of England married a party planner’s daughter.”

“Then?”

“I—” She faltered. “Sometimes … girls, women get it into their heads—you probably don’t know this, being a man—to have a baby, to get pregnant, regardless of the consequences.”

“I suppose.” Tom frowned, confused. “I tend to associate that with naïve teenage girls, though. Young teens. Tamara is nineteen, but she’s a very smart young woman, from what I can tell, who is very much set on her education. A baby would be the last thing on her mind, surely. You would know better, of course. You’ve seen them together.”

“Tom, it’s something else. It’s …” She stopped, seeming to rein in some strong emotion.

“Good heavens, what? Caroline, you look absolutely shaken. I’m sure Tamara’s no trouble. She’s going to be, I think, some sort of environmentalist. She’s quite single-minded—”

“Like her aunt?”

“Oh, surely …!”

“I’m sorry, I’m overwrought.”

“Mrs. Prowse is keeping a stiff upper lip, but I think she’s quite upset to think she may be accused—”

“Tom, you must tell her that I hold her responsible in no way. Really. The idea is too outlandish.”

“Well, I’m sure Madrun will be greatly relieved to hear it. But I don’t understand your concern about Tamara and Adam.”

Caroline’s expression remained drawn. “I’m sure in many ways Tamara would be a fine match for my … well, somewhat immature son, but … Oh, look, I shouldn’t be concerning myself about their relationship. Not now, not when Adam has just lost his father. He’s too young to have lost his father. Will wasn’t much older when he lost his mother.”

“You’re too young to have lost your husband,” Tom said gently.

“And you’re too young to have lost your wife.”

“But your suffering is fresh, Caroline, raw.”

“I’m finding the waiting almost unbearable, Tom. At least with Daddy’s funeral, there was only a three-day wait. But with the snow and the inquest, and now the police, and my mother—she won’t arrive from Sydney until Monday and I should give her a day to rest …” She sighed. “We must get on with it, mustn’t we?”

“I find it helps in healing. Do you know Will’s wishes?”

“He had them written down. I thought there might be a copy in the Annex, but I couldn’t find it, so I retrieved the papers from the bank.”

“Yesterday? I saw you pop out of Barclays and go down the High Street.”