Twelve Drummers Drumming (23 page)

Then there was Money. The rural dean had shared with Tom what the police had discovered and what no one in the village knew, but for Colonel Northmore, Church Council treasurer: that in a safe-deposit box at a NatWest branch in Exeter, Kinsey had kept about £90,000 in notes—mostly twenties and fifties. Safer than keeping money under one’s bed, one supposed, but a poor hedge against inflation. Peter Kinsey might have been an eccentric when it came to his savings, but a little forensic accounting shed no light on how the money had arrived in the safe-box—there was no electronic paper trail of cashed cheques, for instance, and virtually no monies had been forthcoming from his late parents’ estate, given that the Kinsey farm had been seized by the Zimbabwean government without compensation. Meanwhile, his monthly stipend from the church was paid by direct deposit into a bank, not in Exeter, but in Totnes.

Tom knew the potential for malfeasance. People sometimes gave him £10 or £20 to put into the collection, if he did them a small favour, and it would be easy simply to keep it. Similarly, many paid cash for weddings and funerals, and though the money was shared with the organist, the verger, or the bell ringers, a priest could merely pocket the money and never declare it to the diocese. But all the
weddings and funerals and collections in Kinsey’s relatively short career couldn’t account for the sum in the Exeter bank’s safe-box. Nor had any legacies left to the church by the parish’s deceased appeared to have greased their way into the vicar’s palms.

Colonel Northmore had opened his cashbook and files for examination and defended the parish’s accounting. He had become treasurer in Giles James-Douglas’s day and even if his own banking background hadn’t made him mindful when it came to sums—which it had—he was doubly mindful when he realised the absentminded and privately wealthy James-Douglas had a vague relationship with cash. Madrun would regularly go through the priest’s clothes before cleaning and pull out pound notes of uncertain provenance and give them over to the colonel for recording and safe deposit. Northmore, according to the rural dean, had been unable to find any reason for the mysterious sum in the Exeter safe-box.

Now the question was not why Peter Kinsey had disappeared, but why he had been murdered.

Perhaps it was overconfidence—getting the hang of walking backwards—or perhaps it was a noise—the sharp sudden blast of a car horn in Church Lane—or perhaps it was a combination of the two, for just as they completed their seventh circumambulation, Tom’s heel stubbed a slight rise in the beaten path which sent him stumbling backwards. Alerted, Julia tried to grip his arm more firmly, but his greater weight was too much and he slipped, landing on his back.

“Oh, Tom! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Tom gasped. “Just give me a minute.”

He looked up into Julia’s concerned face, then past her towards the tree’s labyrinthine crown patterned against the sky. He turned his head left, then right. “Didn’t work, did it?”

Julia’s body sagged a little. “No.”

“This isn’t the age of miracles.”

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Tom insisted. “Really. It’s quite peaceful lying here. I
feel … Wait! Now I know why this yew tree lark of yours seems familiar. It’s because I’ve done it before. When Lisbeth and I finally got our honeymoon, in the Lakes, we visited Wordsworth’s gravesite, which happens to have a yew tree. I remember kissing her under it, but I’d forgotten we’d circled the tree, too—only I walked backwards and Lisbeth walked forwards. I can’t remember how many times. Probably seven. It’s always seven in these things, isn’t it? Anyway, I tripped over my feet then, too. It’s shameful I’d forgotten that, because that’s how we conceived Miranda.”

“I hope you’re not telling me you and my sister were having it off in a graveyard.”

“Sorry, I didn’t put it very well. I meant to say that Miranda was conceived while we were in Grasmere.”

“Then what’s the significance of you walking backwards and Lisbeth forwards?”

“It’s a fertility ritual,” Tom replied, struggling upright. “Which is what I expect Mrs. P. was nattering on about just now. It’s said fertility is achieved for a woman if she walks forwards around the yew and for a man by walking backwards.”

He was so preoccupied dusting off the back of his trousers that at first he didn’t pay attention to the low keening that challenged the chirruping birds in the churchyard, but when he turned back to Julia, he was startled to see her face crumpled with misery, her mouth biting the fleshy part of her hand between thumb and forefinger in an attempt to suppress the piteous sound. But it didn’t work, for as he reached out instinctively to hold her in her distress, her hand fell away and a raucous sob escaped her lips. Her face only inches from his, she stared at him despondently. But before he could ask her what in heaven’s name was the matter, she turned and darted out through the lych-gate and into Church Lane, turning not towards Pattimore’s but towards home.

R
ather than turn left into the small hall as everyone else was doing, dutifully obeying the arrow on the sign, “Neighbourhood Watch Meeting,” Tom turned right to the large hall, following Mitsuko Drewe, who was carrying a lumpy padded envelope. He had some information for her. He stepped into the village hall’s larger room just in time to hear Mitsuko release a sound that fell somewhere between a shriek and a gasp.
Jesus wept
, he thought, glancing back at Watch chairperson Anne Willett to see if she had heard—she had, and gave him the sort of judgmental frown he expected she’d once used when she’d been principal of Thornford Regis Primary.
Two
distressed females in one morning, he thought, with a sinking heart.

For not unlike Julia, whose sightless staring at the yew tree had augured distress, Mitsuko was looking intently at the wall. Her body, in black vest top and matching knee shorts, was rigid.

“Mitsuko?” he ventured. He hoped he would have more success with Mitsuko’s unhappiness than with Julia’s. He had considered chasing after her earlier, but he doubted he could be useful, and
falling down had temporarily hobbled his backside, making any chasing, in the literal sense, painful.

Mitsuko kept her eyes on the wall. “There’s a quilt missing.” Her voice was heavy as lead.

“Then Miranda was right.” Tom joined her. “She said there ought to be one there. I think I mentioned we were in here looking at your artwork on Monday afternoon,” he explained when she turned a puzzled frown to him.

“So it was gone by then.”

“Apparently.”

“This is so unfair!” Mitsuko exploded. “I’ve spent a year preparing this exhibit. And it’s set to travel to Dartington this summer and Exeter in the fall. And this
on top of
having my computer and camera stolen!”

“I can imagine someone being keen on one of your quilts,” Tom soothed. “They’re exceptional.”

“They’d be welcome to
buy
one!”

“Yes, there is that.”

“If it’s someone from the village, they’re not going to get away with it for very long—people will notice if you’re hanging one of my quilts in your sitting room.”

“If your missing quilt wound up covering someone’s bed, then perhaps it could be kept secret.”

“It’s
art
! It’s not intended to cover a bed.”

“Of course.” Tom had a notion of purchasing one for Miranda’s bed, since she had been so taken with them, but apparently he was a philistine.

“It must be someone from outside the village.”

“But who from outside the village would have known you were hanging these quilts last Sunday?”

Mitsuko twisted her mouth in thought. “No one,” she said, after a moment. “At least that I can think of.”

“Then …?”

“Maybe someone at the fayre?”

“But with so many people about?”

“They’re only lightly filled with batting, Tom. They do fold up.”

“Still, it was gone missing by the early afternoon, when I was here with Miranda. And she had been viewing your work earlier with Emily Swan. And there was a fair bit of traffic in and out of the village hall, all day. Many of the women don’t care to use the port-a-loos outside, for one thing. And,” he continued, ticking off items on his fingers, “there were the Twelve Drummers Drumming kids going in and out. And there were some setup crew here after nine, adding the finishing touches. Any number may have decided to have a sneak preview of your work.”

“I would have insisted this room be kept locked, as I paid to have it for a fortnight, but the same key opens all the doors in the village hall, so it would have been futile.”

“You need to report this.”

“The police didn’t take a blind bit of notice when I phoned yesterday about my computer theft. All I was given was a report number for my insurer. And I’m sure my art will get short shrift given the events of the—”

“Unless …”

“What?”

“Unless someone came through on Sunday afternoon when you were installing these quilts, took a fancy, then came back later.”

Mitsuko said testily, “You’d think people would be home digesting their Sunday lunches. Really, I don’t know why I’m bothering to have an opening. Half the village seems to have wandered through here one day or the other.”

“The opening is still on?”

“Yes, Colm’s insisted.” Her temper eased. “He’s being very gracious.”

“Can you recall who passed through on Sunday?”

Mitsuko tapped the envelope against her cheek. “Well, Sebastian was very kindly helping me. It took much more time than I’d thought it would to install these quilts. You can see,” she explained, pointing, “how wires had to be hooked to those rafters to hold the
doweling rods that hold up the quilts. Anyway, Fred stepped in early on—this was before the toilet crisis—with his son. Charlie was due at the Twelve Drummers rehearsal next door …” She paused. “Fred!”

Tom shook his head.

“No, you’re right, of course. Not his thing.”

“Fred does have your extra set of keys to your flat,” Tom said. “Which was what I came to tell you. I asked him about it yesterday in the pub. However, he has no particular intelligence about your alarm. Sybella switched it off for him on Sunday, as you told me earlier, and it was off when he delivered the toilet on Tuesday.”

“Liam says he has no memory whether it was on or off Monday. Off is my guess. Our insurer won’t be pleased.” Mitsuko sighed noisily. “Anyway, who else was through here Sunday afternoon? Well, there was Liam. He showed up with my mobile and a message to phone my mother. I’d left my mobile at the Waterside and he couldn’t get through to me on the village hall phone because the drums were so loud no one could hear it ringing.” Mitsuko paused in thought. “And Colonel Northmore walked in with Bumble—I think to register a complaint about the peace of the Lord’s Day being ruined by the drums, though I don’t know why—Farthings is well out of earshot, I should think. Or maybe it was to talk with Sebastian. I don’t know. As I say, it was hard to hear at times. Anyway, the colonel came in here and looked around—in that disapproving way of his, of course, and then when—”

“When?”

“Oh, nothing.” She looked away. “He’s a silly old man.”

“Is that everybody?”

“The Daintreys poked their heads in, I recall. And Alastair came in, near the end of rehearsal. He was waiting for Julia. They had some golf club do to get to. That’s it, as far as I know. Of course, sometimes I was up a ladder or otherwise distracted, so someone else might have wandered in.”

Tom absently ran his forefinger over the rim of his dog collar. A little shiver travelled his spine. There couldn’t possibly be
two
malefactors wandering through the village hall in a single evening,
surely? He looked at Mitsuko. Her face remained stamped with irritation. Hesitating to broach a connection between the missing quilt and Sybella’s death, he said instead:

“You’re not thinking of running up a replacement on your sewing machine?”

Her glance told him she thought he was thick for asking. “I haven’t the time or the material. And, of course, all the Thornford pictures are stored in my computer, which has also gone missing.”

Tom looked over at the nearest quilt. The scene was the forecourt of the primary school, complete with clumps of bright-coloured children at play. In the left corner he noticed a detail that had escaped him when he’d viewed the quilts with his daughter. Mitsuko had incorporated into her design the date stamp the digital camera imprinted on every picture, if programmed to do so. It was an autumn scene, and if the touch of rust on the trees hadn’t given it away, the date did: October 24 of last year.

“What is the subject of the missing quilt?” he asked her.

“I was particularly fond of that one,” Mitsuko responded sulkily. “It was lovely—a view over the churchyard towards the millpond and the river taken in the early evening.”

Tom frowned, trying to visualise it. “But how—?”

“From atop the church tower.”

“Really? It’s so inaccessible. How did you get up?”

“The church architect had been scrambling around one afternoon. Sebastian had been accompanying him. So I asked if I could go up the tower after they were done. Sebastian said it was okay.”