Twelve Drummers Drumming (44 page)

“I found it in the village hall when we were looking at Mrs. Drewe’s quilts. It was on the floor by the wall. Where the missing quilt was.”

Tom stopped in his dabbing motions. He stared at Miranda, seeing himself again as he had been at the village hall, readying to push through the doors to the corridor between the large and small halls, impatient with his daughter’s dawdling by the skirting board. A dawning realisation possessed him. It was as if the sunshine streaming into the room was penetrating his very skull, clarifying his mind with its searching light. So rooted was he in this moment of horror that he didn’t even hear the telephone ringing beside him.

T
wo calls had come in rapid succession. Each time Tom had let the answerphone intervene. But the third ringing had stopped short, and he was unsurprised a few moments later to find Madrun at his study door, though dismayed at the change in her demeanour. Colonel Northmore sought Mr. Christmas’s presence urgently, the sister on the hospital ward had relayed, with little apparent embellishment. The implication of the message was clear in Madrun’s button eyes and pinched lips, and only Miranda’s presence had kept her from stating it boldly: The colonel was failing.

More dismaying was tearing himself away from his daughter at this fragile moment.
Oh, my clever, brave, frightened, mysterious child
, he thought, as he silently forbore the traffic into Torquay and yearned for a time, more than a generation before he was hatched, when “rest” and “Lord’s Day” had more than a passing acquaintance. Had she sensed, like some small creature, nose to the wind, some nascent change in the atmosphere that moment when she’d snatched the tee from its resting place by the skirting board? Or had it, at the very first, been only a lark—then only a “clue,” as Mrs. P.
had said—maybe, perhaps—in some Alice Roy–type fantasy over the quilt she had cleverly discerned was missing? She had never exclaimed, “Look what I found, Daddy.” Not then. And then, later, in some confused way, in the wake of Sybella’s murder, had it taken on a greater significance? Was it a puzzling thing to be hoarded, to be contemplated in private, then turned out in plain sight, among people who wouldn’t recognise it—that is, until Aunt Julia came to lunch? He had had no time to probe further.
He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me
were Jesus’ rather harsh words—childless man that He was—and so the needs of His church took sway. In these moments he ached for Lisbeth—not only would she have taken their child into her comforting arms, but she would understand instantly the insidious demands of vocation: She, too, had had to rush from the house to a patient’s side, dropping the feeding spoon, the nappy changing, the bedtime story.

He had hastily said his good-byes to the Allans, and to Julia, who offered to stay with Miranda at the vicarage or take her to Westways. He had rebuffed the latter suggestion rather too sharply and modified it with grateful thanks if she would take the key to Farthings and give Bumble a feed and a walk. At that moment, he had begun to doubt the implications of Miranda’s find, or perhaps he had wanted to, because he needed to look Julia in the eye unevasively before he snatched up his stole and his portable Communion set by its shoulder strap and made his way to the car. Alastair might have dropped the tee Sunday afternoon when he went to the village hall in search of Julia, not Sunday night. Or perhaps at some earlier time, though he was pressed to think of a recent occasion when Alastair would have been at the village hall. Too, he thought: Miranda was a child and there were no witnesses to her discovery. He turned the ignition, feeling no victory in the conjecture of the last minutes, and was about to back out into Poynton Shute when Mrs. Prowse darted from the vicarage, tea towel flung over her shoulder. At first, what she told him, as she leaned into his window, seemed silly and tangential—not to mention that it was the gleaning of
gossip—and he had been about to give her short shrift. But then he understood the implication. He understood, too, why Madrun braved his certain disapproval for making public what he had asked her to keep private: She had seen Tom in his study take the tee from Miranda’s hand. She had read the look of horror on his face.

Stepping off the lift onto the toneless corridor of the orthopaedic ward, Tom was assailed—not for the first time, nor, Lord knows, for the last—by the sickly sweet brew of hospital aromas, unvanquished by disinfectant, but his old notion to pipe in the fragrance of garden centres, clean laundry, and baking bread fell quickly from his mind, as he glanced in passing at the knot of sturdy pink women in loose blue uniforms at the nursing station, absorbed in private conversation. One of them, the ward sister, gestured to him.

“He had a difficult night,” she said without preliminary. She was thickset and starchy in bearing. Tom recognised her from his Tuesday visit. “And he was quite agitated earlier, confused and incoherent in speech. We could just make out that he wished to see you.”

“Japanese words mixed in?”

“Possibly. I only recognised ‘Gladstone.’ ”

“The late prime minister?”

“I suspect he was referencing the bag. Quite fixated on it.” The tilt of her eyebrows indicated that the ramblings of medicated patients were of little practical use to her. “You may not find him very responsive now. The doctor increased his sedative.”

“He seemed so clear yesterday.”

“Much can change at his age and in his condition. I can have Dr. Vikram speak to you. He’s the attending physician on the ward this weekend, and should be along shortly.”

“Will the hip operation be going ahead?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to speak with Dr. Vikram about that.”

Colonel Northmore’s room was at the tunnel end of the ward’s
long corridor, its door slightly ajar. Tom hesitated a moment outside, his attention diverted momentarily by a sharp, anguished cry—a woman’s cry—from a nearby room which pierced his heart, but which stopped as abruptly as it had started, leaving only the distant squeak of wheels being pushed somewhere and the faint hum of hospital machinery leaching from the walls. No one raced to the woman’s aid. He pushed the door on its silent hinges and stepped into the colonel’s room, now rendered in twilight, blinds drawn, a single soft lamp high above the bed acting as pale moon. So concentrated was he on the still and craggy visage limned by its feeble light that he failed at first to notice the other figure in the room.

“Alastair.”

The head turned sharply. Eyes flicked him a wary glance. “Tom. What are you doing here?”

“The colonel’s asked to see me,” Tom replied evenly, dropping his Communion set on a nearby chair and moving to the bedside, of necessity pushing his earlier disquiet about Alastair from his mind. The colonel’s transformation shook him.
How frail he looks
, he thought, noting even in the shallow light the grey skin, the wrinkled liver-spotted hand above the white sheet pierced by the IV drip line. The colonel’s septum was now clipped by an oxygen feed that hissed faintly. His mouth, with lips dry and cracked, was open, his breathing a barely audible wheeze.

“Colonel,” Tom pushed the food trolley aside, leaned towards his ear, and spoke calmly. “It’s Tom Christmas. Can you hear me?” His hand absently reached for the colonel’s. He registered the loose papery skin, its limpness, its warmth.

“Tom, would you mind stepping from the room?” Alastair said. “I’m attending to the colonel.”

Tom glanced at the beeping cardiac monitor, seeking some truth about the patient’s condition in the glowing green lines, but the patterns appeared rhythmic and regular.

“Tom?” Alastair said impatiently. He was dressed casually, as if he was on his way to or from the golf course.

“But—”

“I won’t be a minute.”

Tom dropped the colonel’s hand and retreated into the hallway. Again, a tortured cry assailed his ears; again, no one responded. He frowned. Precipitated by a troubling thought at the edge of his consciousness, he edged towards the narrow window set into the door to glimpse Alastair going about his business. Alastair’s back, however, was to him, blocking the IV pole. Despite the room’s low light, he could make out Alastair’s movements: a hand reaching into a pocket, then disappearing in front of his chest, the motion repeated, upper arms shifting minutely. The top of the pole, a few inches above Alastair’s head, stirred slightly. Alastair was engaged in some sort of adjustment to the colonel’s medications, presumably, though what else it could be, besides the sedative Dr. Vikram had ordered, Tom couldn’t imagine. Then, the troubling thought half slipped past the border of his conscious mind and his stomach lurched. Something was amiss. What could it be? It was as if his brain were unwilling to fully grasp what his eyes were seeing. And then, when it did, when the sound—faint, but perceptible—of the cardiac monitor kicking into frantic staccato bursts penetrated the thick door, his blood ran cold.

“Stop! Stop what you’re doing!” He pushed through the door to see the lines on the screen bursting into wild patterns, then plummet. Tom reached the colonel’s bedside in time to see the old man’s lids suddenly fly open and his head jolt towards Tom, as if to take in his presence. His eyes stared, as if at some unseen marvel; his mouth rounded, as if in astonishment, and then the animating light in his eyes, once so fierce and vivid, vanished. The colonel now stared with empty eyes. The cardiac monitor emitted a single solid tone. Shocked, gasping for breath, Tom turned to Alastair, who had moved towards a container mounted on the wall.

“You are an unchristly monster.”

“I’m a
what
?”

“You heard me. Doctors don’t administer drugs into IV lines,
which is what you were doing.
Nurses
administer drugs, on doctor’s directives.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My wife was a doctor—”

“I’m aware of that.”

“—and I’ve paid many hospital visits, Alastair. I know the protocol.”

“What on earth makes you think I was putting anything into his drip?”

“I think if I examine what you’ve put into that … thing on the wall over there, I’ll find a needle and a vial of something.”

“I’m his doctor. The colonel’s treatment is none of your business.”

“You’re
not
his doctor.”

“I am bloody too his doctor.”

“Not when he’s in hospital for orthopaedic surgery. You’re his GP, that’s all! You have no
medical
reason for being here.”

“I’m a doctor, I’ve been the colonel’s GP for a number of years, and I have every right to look in on his well-being.”

“You were
killing
him, Alastair!” Tom banged his fist on the food trolley. “Deliberately.”

Alastair’s eyes narrowed. His voice was sharp and indignant. “I’ll have you for slander if you keep on with this.”

“No! I’ll have you for—”

But Tom found his words cut off as the door suddenly opened into the room and the ward sister bustled in. Wordlessly, she checked the colonel’s pulse and breathing; grimly satisfied with what she found, she closed his eyelids and moved around the bed to switch off the cardiac monitor. The machine’s insidious tone stopped.

“If you two gentlemen would care to leave …” She gestured towards the door. “I’ll have Dr. Vikram make the declaration.”

“Sister.” Tom fought to calm his voice. “Dr. Hennis and I need to have a private conversation, so I wonder if you might leave us and come back in a moment or two.”

The nurse bristled. “This is most inappropriate.”

Alastair ran his hand through his hair. “Leave him with me, Sister. I think Father Christmas here”—he injected the honorific with a note of disdain—“wishes to say a few prayers for the departed. You see, Phillip Northmore was a great character in our village. By the time you find Dr. Vikram,” he ushered her towards the door, “we’ll have finished up here.”

“Nurses—bloody cows, the lot of them,” he remarked through his teeth when the door had barely closed behind the woman. “Now, what the fuck are you on about, Tom?”

“You’ve deliberately taken Colonel Northmore’s life.”