Eleven Pipers Piping (45 page)

and made their way into the shelter of the hut, a drafty single-storey stone building whose damp was barely vanquished by single-bar heaters high on the walls and the body heat of a hundred parents and children.

“Old Twelfth Night, Father,” a voice muttered in his ear as Miranda settled happily onto a chair before the musicians arranged at one end of the room under a swag banner trimmed with fabric apples.

“So it is,” Tom responded agreeably over the hubbub of music and chatter, turning to find Old Bob hovering by his side. “The end of the twelve days of Christmas, in the old calendar.”

“First for you and your daughter?”

“Yes. Not something we had in Bristol.”

“I had a talk with Judith Ingley ’bout—”

“Yes, I know.”

“Told you, did she?”

Tom nodded.

“Tha’s all right then.” Bob nodded.

“Bob, good on you for doing that.” He happened to glance at Tamara, guitar in hand, who smiled at him as he caught her eye, then noted Adam, seated in the front row with his sister, turn and regard him warily. “Miranda, do you want to sit with Ariel?” He leaned down and pulled up one of the earflaps of her wool hat.

She twisted her head up to him, blinking. “No,” she said abruptly, pulling off her hat.

“Are you off?” Tom turned back to Bob. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Thought I’d watch morris dancers outside.”

“Are they on?”

“Aye. In a bit.”

“Oh, well, them I’ve seen before.”

“Not this lot. They black their faces.”

“This isn’t Eric Swan’s group?”

“No, this lot’s out of Bovey Tracey. But, Father, if you—”

“I’ll come and see you tomorrow or Monday, if that suits.”

Blackface
, Tom thought, watching Old Bob leave.
That should put someone’s PC knickers in a twist
.

“Do you want to eat something? Hot dog?” He bent once again to Miranda, but she shook her head, seemingly concentrated on the music.

“I’m full from Aunt Julia’s,” she replied as Tom placed the lantern in her hand and considered whether to treat himself to some hard cider, just a little; he didn’t want to mount the pulpit with a throbbing head as he had the Sunday before. He noted the Kaifs—Victor, Molly, and Becca—easing their way down the crowded entrance corridor into the hut’s main room, Victor with Becca’s lantern in hand, Molly struggling to balance a pair of what looked like hatboxes. Tom followed Becca with his eyes as she shot to the empty seat next to Ariel, then noted Miranda’s head turn sharply in their direction, then back to the musicians again with equal force. He sensed sides taken in the rift between his daughter and Ariel Moir.

“Make yourself useful, Vic, for God’s sake.” Molly’s sharp tone pierced the bright clatter.

“I have Becca’s lantern, Molly. I don’t have three hands.”

“Here,” Tom offered, moving towards them. “I’ll take the boxes.”

Molly thrust them at him, then swept her hair back with a theatrical gesture. “I have to find the king and queen. Where
are
the king and queen?”

“The king’s over there, Molly, if you simply look.” Victor gestured towards a lad posing for his sniggering mates in a purple mantle trimmed with silver.

“Then where’s the queen? I must have the queen!”

“If I know Emily Swan, she’ll be late,” Tom remarked, casting a worried glance past the top of the boxes at Victor, who was regarding his wife with barely controlled fury.

“She can’t be late!”

“Molly, when we passed the toilets, the door to the ladies’ opened and I saw Belinda Swan inside,” Victor said with barely concealed exasperation. “Emily’s probably in there with her mother, getting into her … whatever!—coronation robes.”

“Perv, looking in the ladies’ loo.” His wife cast him a baleful glance as she shouldered back through the crowd.

“Oh, for Christ’s—” Victor’s cheeks flushed. “Take the bloody crowns with you, Molly!” he shouted after her. “Oh, never mind! Sorry, Tom. I’m … I’m getting to the end of my tether.”

“Molly seems a bit … intense this evening.”

“She’s decided to go off the medication she was prescribed and which was doing her some good.”

“Homeopathic?”

“Even I admit homeopathy doesn’t cure everything. No, a doctor in town prescribed them. Here, give me those boxes.” Victor set Becca’s lantern at his feet, took the boxes, and put them between two jam jars alit with candles on the shelf that ran along three of the hall’s walls. “Celia Parry was doing Molly some good, too, I think, but then she and Colm flew off to Barbados—”

“But only for a week.”

“Molly feels … abandoned nonetheless.”

“You haven’t abandoned her, Vic.”

“No, but …” Victor flashed him a guilty look. “On top of it all, I had the police around today.” He lowered his voice. “Have they talked to you about last Saturday?”

Tom nodded.

“They’ve taken my computer and my printer—or, I should say, computer
s
and printer
s
, from the clinic in town and from home. They had a warrant. They wouldn’t say why, despite my protests, but Molly says your housekeeper had a letter asking her to make some of her yew tartlets for the Burns Supper.”

“Yes, she did.”

“But why would they
think
—” Victor’s voice rose sharply, then he caught himself. “Why would they think,” he began again, his voice reduced to a murmur, “that I would write such a thing?”

“They didn’t say?”

“No. Have they taken anyone else’s computer? Nick’s? John’s?
Yours?
”

Tom shook his head. “Not mine at any rate.” He paused. “Victor, I think their interest likely stems from the colour of the paper used for Madrun’s note. It was that lavender shade—or violet, some version of purple—the same shade as the paper and cards in your case, when I bumped into you on Tuesday.”

“It’s madness!” Victor exploded through clenched teeth. “If I were to hatch some plot that involved your housekeeper’s baking, I would never use my own computer or my own printer … or my own paper, come to that. How stupid do they think I am? And how do they know what colour the clinic’s stationery is? Don’t tell me
you
shopped me to the police?”

“I must admit I was surprised when your case flew open and scattered it about. But no, I said nothing to the police. I thought it was a coincidence, then I started to see that colour of paper everywhere—it’s on the crowns Molly made, for instance.” Tom gestured to the nearby boxes. “And the girls were using it to decorate
the lanterns they were making at school. Mrs. Lennox says it’s the colour fad of the season.”

Victor gestured impatiently. “I gave a box of the paper to Becca, yes, but if paper that colour is so bloody widely disseminated, that doesn’t explain why those detectives would single
me
out. It was horribly embarrassing having my computer carted away like that—as if I …” His eyes roved the room wildly. “… looked at kiddie porn or something equally appalling.”

Tom took a cleansing breath. “I’m not sure it was only you they were singling out.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are two adults in your household, aren’t there?”

“Yes …?”

“Well, you more than I know how Molly has suffered since … Harry’s death. She hasn’t been quite herself, has she.” He watched a shadow pass over Victor’s face. “I went to your cottage yesterday afternoon to return Becca’s torch. She left it at ours last weekend. Those two detectives, Bliss and Blessing, were coming from your cottage …” He paused, noting Victor’s eyebrows knit with perplexity. “Molly didn’t tell you they had visited? She didn’t say that she had—”

“No.”

“Oh.” Tom’s heart sank. “Victor, please be mindful of Molly’s state of mind when I tell you this: She confessed to the detectives—and she told me—that she had poisoned Will.”

“What!”

A few heads had snapped in their direction. Tom gave them reassuring smiles, then said to Victor, whose face was shot through with anxiety and anger, “Victor, it’s a measure of their disbelief that they didn’t fetch her in for further questioning. They’re not complete monsters. They do know what your family has endured and Molly’s state of mind.”

“Then why have they removed
my
things?”

“Eliminating all possibilities, I’m certain,” Tom replied, though he wasn’t at all certain. Bliss and Blessing may have had a change of heart.

Or of mind.

A large white plastic cup filled with a cloudy brown liquid passed under his eyes.

“You look like you could use a wee drink,” said a lilting voice in his ear.

“I wouldn’t describe this as ‘wee,’ ” Tom responded as he took the cup from Màiri. He sipped the local scrumpy. It tasted both earthy and vinegary. “But thank you. I was considering going out to fetch one myself.”

“Was that Victor Kaif looking furious as a box of badgers?”

“He’s had rather a bad day, I gather, and I think I’ve made it worse.” He explained. “But perhaps you know more than I?”

“Not really. I’m merely the village bobby.”

“You
do
know something.”

“All I hear is that the DI Bliss is not a happy bunny. He and Blessing have few leads and I’ll wager someone is breathing down their necks. Is that Tamara Prowse on guitar? She’s very good, isn’t she?”

Not immune to deliberate subject-changing, Tom asked, “What brings you to this event on a dreary winter’s eve?” Over her shoulders, Màiri wore a thick woolen ruana of a deep royal blue that accentuated the bright blue of her eyes. Nice. Her dark hair, released from its workday braid, fell naturally in deep long waves over her shoulders. Nice, too. He noted leather boots, as well, not the wellies everyone else was shod with. Smart.

“I could say my car brought me—and it was no easy task finding parking, I’ll tell you—but I came for the great pleasure of this ancient
ceremony. Thornford’s Wassail is known the length and breadth of these blessed isles, from Land’s End to John O’Groats.”

“It is not.”

Màiri laughed. “I came because I was at a loose end. A girl likes to get out on a Saturday night from time to time.”

Tom glanced at his watch. “It’s all of five fifteen. The Wassail’ll be finished by seven.”

“The night will still be young, then, will it not?”

“Well—”

“Och, Tom Christmas, for a man with a Cambridge education, you’re thick as two short planks. We’ll go have a proper drink after, and not at the Church House, aye? I know an excellent pub down Yealm Road, away from prying eyes, and don’t worry, I’ll have you home in good time. I know Sunday’s your big day.”

His under-rehearsed sermon tripped through his mind, as did finding some excuse to Miranda and Madrun for an unscheduled break in his—albeit dull—Saturday routine. He felt a tickle in the pit of his stomach, a surge farther south, and his nose seemed to discover some subtle scent from Màiri that vanquished all the prosaic damp smells in the hut. He smiled at her. He knew the pub she meant. The deanery met there once, in the autumn, for its monthly whinge. It was more country inn than mere pub.

“I expect I could be persuaded,” he responded with a feint at nonchalance, moving his left hand reflexively to the clerical collar peeking from his open jacket, nearly spilling his scrumpy with the other.

“I’ve noted you still wear your wedding ring.” Her eyes followed his hand.

“Difficult to remove,” he said, aware that ambiguity freighted the words.

“The collar comes off, though.”

“Yes, it slips off.”

“I’d hate to think you were sewn into it. Does it ever choke you?”

“Only sometimes.”

Slightly unnerved by his little spurt of lust, by the possibilities of the evening ahead (
it’s just a drink!
), and by the challenge temptation presented (
is it just a drink?
), Tom laughed nervously. But Màiri’s attention had been drawn to the middle distance, where two figures were cutting a swath through the swarm of parents and children in good measure because each had a shotgun cocked in the crook of his—and her—elbow. One of them was Penella Neels, a resident of the farm at Thorn Barton who had been an adult confirmand in Tom’s confirmation class in the spring. She smiled broadly and greeted him with a silly finger wave. He couldn’t hear her giggle above the general hubbub, but he could interpret the gesture and the blush that rose to her pretty cheeks.

“She fancies you,” Màiri remarked over the rim of her plastic cup.

“Oh, quite unlikely.”

“They’re not all disinclined to men at Thorn Barton, you know.”

“I know.” Thorn Barton, the former manor farm, was owned collectively by eight women dedicated to organic produce and humanely raised dairy cows. “Besides, it appears she might be with Nick.”

“Lucky old her,” Màiri murmured dryly. “I’m not happy their bringing shotguns in here with all these kids running about. I’ve a mind to go speak to them.”

“I’d be surprised if they weren’t fetching Adam. I’m told he’s one of the Guns.”