Eleven Pipers Piping (41 page)

“I hope I’m not intruding,” he murmured to Judith when he reached her side.

“Not at all.” She glanced at him sharply with her shrewd button eyes and returned her attention to the gravestone, touched here and there with green lichen, rising like a spectral shaft from a patch of snow. “You’ve come at a good time.”

Tom noted the holly wreath, still in her hands, waiting to be set
against the marker. Unprompted, he stooped and scraped away the snow from the base of the marker, feeling the bitter cold sear his uncovered hands.

“Thank you,” Judith said.

“Shall we have a prayer?”

Judith nodded and set the wreath down on the mottling of dead black leaves as Tom said a short prayer for the souls of William George Frost and Irene Lynne Frost. After a minute, he stole a glance at Judith, hoping to adjudicate her mood. But in profile, her expression yielded little. The curve of her mouth was set in a contemplative frown; her eyes remained dry, though her cheeks were reddened, whether by icy air or emotion, it was impossible to tell.

“Your mother died very young,” he remarked, glancing at the date carved into the stone, bare weeks after victory had been declared in Europe.

He thought he knew how and wasn’t surprised when Judith said, “She died in childbirth—mine, as it happened.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“A home birth,” she continued. “Unfortunately, the midwife was otherwise occupied.”

“With what?”

“Another birth in the village—at Thorn Court, as it happened. By coincidence, Clive—Caroline’s father—was born the same day, the same hour—”

“Good heavens! And resources being stretched in wartime, of course.”

“I’m not sure they were stretched, as such, Tom.” Judith’s frown deepened. “I think a rich man’s wife simply commanded attention in a way that wouldn’t be acceptable today.”

Tom drew in a breath of icy air. He had no balm for this tragedy or for the injustice behind it.

“How did you know I was here?” Judith asked, turning to him abruptly.

“Eric mentioned it. The landlord at the pub. He said you’d been lunching with Old Bob.”

“That doesn’t explain—”

“He also said he thought Nick Stanhope had been abusive with you. He happened to witness the two of you out the pub window. I thought I would come to see you were all right.”

“I’m fine. I managed a care home for many years. When you have patients with various forms of dementia, you get quite used to abusive talk. Nick Stanhope’s threats are nothing to me.”

“Threats?” Tom felt a chill that wasn’t airborne. “Judith, are you certain?”

She studied him a moment with her assessing eyes and again abruptly changed the subject. “Madrun tells me you’re adopted—or twice adopted, in some fashion.”

“Yes,” Tom replied, startled, reluctant to let go his concerns. “Twice adopted, twice blessed.” He couldn’t help smiling at the adage, one belonging to the Reverend Canon Christopher Holdsworth, rector of St. George’s in Gravesend, where he grew up. “My adoptive mother, my first adoptive mother, was a singer named Mary Caroll who died—”

“Yes, I remembered the name after Madrun mentioned it. A plane crash out of Stockholm, right after winning the Eurovision Song Contest. I’m sorry.”

“I was a baby. I have no memory. I only have pictures.”

“And you don’t know who your natural parents were?”

“No. My adoptive father’s sister took me in, I guess you could say. She and her partner raised me.”

“And you were never curious about your birth parents?”

“No, that wouldn’t be true. There were moments of great curiosity, particularly when I was a teenager, and if I was in some sort of scrape with Dosh or Kate—my parents—I would think,
Well, I’ll bloody go find my
real
parents!
But on the whole, I had a happy childhood. I was raised by two lovely, loving women.” He smiled at Judith.
“They made me the man I am. I’ve often felt I would be hurting them somehow, by seeking out my birth parents.”

“I see.”

“The only time I gave it serious consideration was after I married and we were planning a child. I wondered if there might be some genetic time bomb ticking away in the background, but … well, my wife said, let’s be glad for what God gives us and not worry.” Tom glanced up at the dull sky, his attention drawn by a circling rook. “Lisbeth would have risen to it, if there had been an extraordinary challenge. Fortunately, Miranda is a challenging child in her own way, as children are.”

“You must miss your wife.”

“Terribly. Very much.” The words always sounded so banal. “I miss being married,” he added. “But you lost your husband only a few months ago.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t cut down in his prime as was … Sorry, Vicar, I didn’t mean to be so blunt. Trevor was ten years older than I, and for the last twelve years he suffered terribly from Parkinson’s. I feel I lost him years ago. His end was a mercy, really.”

“But you have a son.”

“Yes, I have a son.” Judith glanced again at her parents’ gravestone. “I’ve been thinking about nature and nurture, you see. That’s why I asked you about your parents—your many parents. You say your adoptive mothers made you the man you are, but are you sure? You seem to me a man of compassion and good humour—mightn’t those be legacies of your birth mother or father, just like the colour of your hair or the shape of your eyes?”

“Well, of course, I can’t know for certain, but I think if nature and nurture were running the course at Cheltenham, I’d more likely put my money on nurture. It’s the optimist’s view, I suppose.” He wrapped his own scarf tighter. “I have a sense you disagree.”

“When I was younger I would have been inclined to your views, but I’m not so sure now. Watching families when they visited the
care home, I could see the same … traits on display, from grandparent to grandchild, like little mirrors reflecting one another.”

“Mightn’t that be nurture as much as nature?”

“Possibly.”

“John Copeland, whom you met, is adopted. So was Will, I understand. I wonder if they are reflections of their natural parents or their adoptive parents?”

“I wonder.” Judith twisted her mouth in thought. “A better example might be Nick Stanhope. He’s aggressive, inconsiderate, belligerent, probably reckless, perhaps conscienceless, but”—her eyes crinkled as she smiled up at him—“I’m not so past it that I can’t see he wouldn’t be attractive to women—young women.”

Tom grunted, thinking of Màiri White and her comparable musings. “Nature or nurture?”

“He’s very much like his father was.”

“You knew Clive Stanhope well enough, I presume.”

“My father and I lived over the old stables, now the garage, if you recall me saying.” She glanced at her parents’ gravestone. “And of course we were the same age—almost to the hour. Clive was likewise brash and self-involved and yet, I must say, attractive. Does Nick, then, come to his essential qualities by nature or by nurture?” She turned her attention back to him, regarding him candidly. “He is the son of a murderer, after all.”

Tom was silent.

“You do know this,” Judith persisted, peering at him. “Of course you do. I can see it in your eyes. Bob Cogger told you when you took him to town the other day.”

“Old Bob?”

“He wasn’t old fifty years ago. He has a last name,” she added dryly.

“Did you know in those days how your father—”

Judith cut him off sharply. “I certainly suspected something. My father was meticulous, careful, cautious. He wouldn’t take risks—not
when he was the only parent to me. He would have assured himself that ladder was secure on Thorn Court’s roof when he went up the tower. It’s impossible that it was an accident!”

“And you didn’t voice your doubts?”

“No.” Her expression was stony. “The shock at first, I suppose. Then … it’s all a blur now. I was barely eighteen. Arthur Stanhope was my father’s employer. My family had worked for the Stanhopes for several generations. Arthur was an intimidating presence. I’m sure he had a quiet word with the local constabulary. There must have been an inquest, but I don’t recall. ‘Accident’ or ‘misadventure’ was the probable ruling. It would have taken Bob to come forward and say what he had seen, but he …”

“Was persuaded otherwise.”

“I don’t blame him. He was almost in tears at the pub earlier talking about this, and I do know his prognosis. Chronic renal failure. It’s not good.” She absently brushed at a bit of lichen on the gravestone. “Anyway, Bob wasn’t the only one. I had applied to take up nursing on school-leaving, which my father would have been hard-pressed to afford, but Mr. Stanhope—Arthur—offered to pay for my training. I wanted desperately to get away and make a new life anyway, so … in the end, Arthur Stanhope bought my silence, too, didn’t he? Although I suppose I didn’t recognise it as such at the time.”

Tom studied her a moment, trying to imagine the young, frightened girl who was now this elderly, self-assured woman. “What led you to think Clive Stanhope was responsible for your father’s death?”

“His shadow,” she intoned.

“Shadow?”

“Clive’s. I saw it—on the stairs leading to the tower. Sorry, Vicar, I don’t mean to be melodramatic. In those days, at weekends or between terms at school, I worked as a chambermaid at Thorn Court—it had been a hotel for only a few years. I was changing the linen in a bedroom facing the forecourt, one of the grander rooms
with a bay window, when my father fell. I heard a crash above me, then I saw his body plummet before my very eyes. I heard the scream.” She shut her eyes momentarily, as if to ward off the pain of the memory. “I flew from the room and as I reached the stairs I glimpsed Clive’s shadow against the wall of the staircase up to the tower. You’ve been up with me—there’s a window on each side of the lower part of the tower. It was quite early in the morning, a bright day in summer, and the low sun created a shadow of Clive coming down the stair. I knew it was him, the way you know someone from the back of a head or an idiosyncratic gait seen at a distance. I even called out to him, ‘Clive, come quick!’ ”

“And he didn’t come.”

“No. He later claimed to have been nowhere near the tower. But I knew he had—or, rather, it came back to me sometime later that he surely had been, and that he was lying.”

“But why would he do something so cruel, so criminal?”

Judith shivered visibly.

“Would you like to go inside somewhere?” Tom offered. “We can go to the vicarage or back to the pub.”

Judith drew her scarf tighter around her neck. “I’m fine, really. Coming to Thornford has stirred many memories, the strongest ones not happy ones necessarily. You’re kind to endure my company for so long. I feel I may have outstayed my welcome.”

“You’ve been no trouble at all.”

“I expect you’d like an answer to your question.”

“You’re under no obligation.”

“I think you disappoint a few folk in the village, Tom.”

“Oh, really? Why?”

“Because you’re not keen to gossip.” She smiled up at him.

“I suppose I am a dull fellow that way. But I very much dislike tittletattle.
The words of a talebearer are as wounds
, says the Proverb. Unless the information is true and more—honourable in some fashion—I’m inclined to turn my ear away. However, I must confess”—he
smiled back—“I have my eyes and ears in the village. Mrs. Prowse is a font of knowledge and is rarely disinclined to speak her mind when she feels moved to do so. Miranda, too, usually keeps me abreast of this and that. So really, they both let me remain on my high horse.”

Judith laughed. “You always refer to Madrun as ‘Mrs. Prowse.’ Very old-fashioned. Harks back to the day when cooks and housekeepers were always ‘Mrs.’ no matter what their marital status.”

“That seems to be the footing we got onto, but I don’t think she ever addressed the previous incumbents with anything less than the proper honorific, and she expects the same in return. Oddly, I prefer it. Although I do use the occasional ‘Mrs. P’ out of earshot.”

“Well, I shall tell you what I have not told your Mrs. P, as she is, as you suggest, terribly inquisitive and unlikely to keep it to herself. At the time of my father’s death, I was pregnant …”

“Yes?”

“… with Clive’s baby.” She regarded him. “Are you shocked?”

“No. A little surprised, perhaps.”

“That’s because you’re more than a generation younger than I. Attitudes changed so rapidly. When I was a teenager, pregnancy out of wedlock was still a disgrace. I dreaded telling my father, but finally I had to, before I began to show. The ignorance in those days was appalling. No advice bureaus, no discussion of birth control, no options but to give the baby up or have a backstreet abortion. If my mother had been alive, perhaps it all would have been handled differently. But my father had his own views, masculine, protective ones, I daresay. He believed I had been seduced, raped—I could hardly make my poor father believe that I had been more than willing.”

Judith paused to glance at the gravestone. “My father was a very kindly man. Never raised his voice—at least not in my hearing—but that day, I could see it come over him, a kind of cold rage. I don’t know quite what he did, but he must have put the fear of God into
Clive somehow. The next day Clive would have nothing to do with me.”

“You hadn’t told Clive first about the pregnancy.”

“No. I … I suppose I had some vague romantic fantasies of marrying him, but I knew it would never be on. I was … well, not really the right sort, was I? A servant girl, you might say—all very Barbara Cartland if it had worked out—and, really, I’m not sure I really fancied being anyone’s wife at that stage in my life.” She paused. “Anyway, I suspect Clive had never been spoken to like that before, even by his own father who stood for no nonsense.”

“But, Judith, to do what he did!”

“Impulsive, arrogant, thoughtless—that was Clive’s nature. All the Stanhopes have the taint, I think. I doubt Clive made any plan to do it. He simply seized the opportunity when he saw my father on Thorn Court’s roof. He stupidly thought if he could eliminate my father at that moment,
his
father wouldn’t find out. Which was ridiculous, as my condition would eventually become evident and questions would be asked.”