Eleven Pipers Piping (20 page)

“You do have Bumble.”

“Saved by a dog.”

Màiri smiled. “So Nick was misbehaving at the Burns Supper.” She removed a paper napkin from a holder on the table.

“I—”

“I know he’s a member of the pipe band, Tom. I don’t know if you know this, but I did see him for a wee while—”

“Er—”

“Not long, mind you. I soon realised he wasn’t boyfriend material.” She began to fold the napkin. “I also realised any connection with him wasn’t going to do my career any good.”

“Really?”

“I’m thinking of taking the training to become a police officer.
Being associated with Nick wouldn’t exactly burnish my résumé. They check.”

“But he’s ex-army. He’s started a home security business.”

“I’ve already said too much.”

Tom regarded her solemnly, deliberating whether to ask her the question that had troubled him at the Burns Supper as Nick grew increasingly obnoxious: What on earth had been her attraction to him? He glanced around at the other tables, noting that not a few Waterside patrons were casting eyes his way with what could only be described as avid curiosity. Marg Farrant acknowledged his glance with a teasing wave, while Anne Willett’s eyebrows perched above her glasses in a censorious arch. He felt rather on display.

He sighed, returned his eyes to Màiri, who continued making elaborate folds in the napkin, and asked the Nick question, prefacing it with a “I hope you don’t think this intrusive, but …”

“But?” Màiri looked up and smiled. “I know what you’re going to ask. Well, I could say Nick was a great laugh and could tell a good joke—and all of that isn’t untrue, particularly if he hadn’t had a skinful. But”—the smile broadened, crinkling her eyes—“I would have to say this: Nick Stanhope is a very fit lad—aye, a
verra
fit lad, and a girl”—she rolled her
r
’s extravagantly—“has needs.”

Tom sensed the blood pulsing up his neck, which seemed to bulge dangerously against his constraining clerical collar. He was struck by a riotous vision of Màiri naked, and then himself pantless, and then … At the same moment, he felt, on the cusp of his forties, suddenly, horribly, devastatingly middle-aged, and unprepared for this sort of flirtation—if flirtation it was and not simply reportage—and where it might lead. He must have looked like a beetroot with tumid eyes, for Màiri’s head fell back; laughter came in silvery ripples, fading only when Kerra—bless her!—interrupted with a tray bearing two cups of steaming coffee and a plate with two pear-and-chocolate croissants.

“Mr. Christmas.” She set a cup before him. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Fine,” Tom croaked. “I’m fine.”

“That’s exactly what Mr. Moir said to me Saturday night and look what happened.”

Màiri’s laughter ceased abruptly. “When?” Tom asked, startled.

“After the pudding, when everyone left the dining room for a break. He passed through the kitchen.”

“Kerra,” Tom said gently, “you’re not to feel badly. A few of us thought he didn’t look well, but he seemed determined to ignore our concern.”

Kerra received this in silence as she set a coffee cup in front of Màiri. “Adam thinks someone could have done something.”

“You’ve talked to Adam?”

“No, to Tamara. She says that’s what Adam thinks.”

“Oh.” Tom grimaced as Kerra twisted her body towards a woman importuning her at the neighbouring table.

“Of course, he would share his feelings with his girlfriend,” he said to Màiri. “I saw him earlier this morning at the hotel and he didn’t have much to say. Stoical, his mother indicated. But I expect he’s angry as well as grieved. Odd,” he murmured, a thought suddenly coming to him, “that John didn’t drive Adam back from Noze when he went to get Caroline yesterday.”

“Sorry about that.” Kerra turned back to them. “Anyway, these are fresh this morning. I hope you like them.”

“They look brilliant,” Màiri responded, taking a croissant and biting into it as Kerra moved away. “Now, where were we?”

“I think,” Tom said, reluctant to return to their previous topic, “you said you came down to Thornford on some business.”

Màiri, taking another bite, didn’t reply immediately. “Tell me about the Burns Supper,” she said finally, licking at a dab of chocolate that had fallen on her finger.

Tom stared helplessly at her lovely tongue.

“Tom?”

“Sorry?”

“The Burns Supper?”

“Oh, yes, quite. Well, you know the tragic part already.”

“Indulge me with the rest.”

“All right,” he began, mildly challenged, his mind roving over the course of the evening, uncertain upon which detail to alight, “let’s see. There was the haggis—”

“A haggis at a Burns Supper? Fancy that.”

“Well, it was a novel experience for me.”

“And …?”

“It was … interesting.”

“Tom, that’s the sort of word the Queen uses when something bores her cross-eyed.”

“Then put it this way.” Tom pulled his croissant in two, better to get at the rich filling. “It wasn’t as bloody awful as I expected, but I still wouldn’t feed it to swine.”

“I wouldn’t touch it with a caber, either. Haggis is the reason I turned vegetarian.”

“But you’re—”

“Doesn’t mean I have to eat it! I remember my parents plunking haggis in front of me when I was eight. The reek! I refused. That’s when I announced for vegetarianism. Lips that touch the flesh of poor wee lambs shall never touch mine. But enough of the bloody haggis. What else happened at your doomed Burns Supper?”

“It didn’t seem doomed at the time. Not really. Although there were undercurrents.” Between sips of coffee and bites of pastry, Tom went on to describe the evening.

“Interesting,” Màiri murmured when he had finished.

“Is that a royal ‘interesting’? Or a genuine ‘interesting’?”

“Genuine.”

“I hadn’t been to a Burns Supper before, but except for the dramatic and very cheerless ending, I’m not sure it was much different than any other Burns Supper in the realm.”

Màiri ran her fingers along the rim of her coffee cup. Tom stared at them, at their pink tips and pearly manicure, as he waited for her to respond. Faintly mesmerised, he wondered what it would be like if those very fingers travelled along his … well, really, any part of his anatomy would do.

“I was having a chat on the phone with my sergeant at Totnes station,” Màiri began after a moment, “sorting out what presence we could possibly have in this weather—which isn’t much—when he happened to say that the postmortem results were in on Will Moir.”

“Mmm …?” Tom was only half attentive.

“Will had a heart attack, all right. However …”

Tom refocused on her face. He saw the muscles settled into sombre lines and felt the first bloom of unease.

“I don’t have the precise details, but …” She glanced at the other tables and dropped her voice. “Something was found in his system.”

“Something …?” He leaned nearer to hear her better.

“Taxine.”

The word resonated from hospital visits or, possibly, conversations with his late wife. “Isn’t it a cancer drug or the like? Or is it Taxol? Don’t tell me Will had cancer and didn’t tell anyone?”

“No evidence of that in the PM. Tom, I’m telling you this on the quiet because you may be personally affected by the consequences. Or your household may be.”

“Now you have me frightened.”

“Do you remember our first real conversation, last spring, at the village hall, at the opening of the art exhibition?”

“Yes.”

“Your housekeeper had prepared some pastries for the event and was helping Kerra serve them. Do you remember what they were?”

Tom frowned, worried. “Yes …”

“And did you not have the same thing for afters at the Burns Supper, with the cranachan?”

“Well, yes … I mentioned them a moment ago when I described our meal.”

“Tom, taxine is a poison. It’s made from the leaves, bark, seeds, roots—in fact, any part but the berries—of the yew tree.”

“Oh, God!”

I
t wasn’t a conversation Tom anticipated with unalloyed pleasure. After lunch, after a perfect winter meal of Tuscan bean soup, crusty bread, and Devon Blue cheese, after Miranda drifted away to her room to read her latest Alice Roy and Judith retreated to hers for a postprandial nap, Tom found himself trailing about the kitchen, clearing plates and running a cloth over the cooker, tasks that wouldn’t normally preoccupy him, given the press of church work on any given day—even on a Monday, his usual day of rest.

But this wasn’t a usual Monday. The entire village, indeed the entire island, was bogged off from its usual patterns of production and consumption and driving around like mad, and though endless paperwork awaited him in his study, Tom felt he could rightly break from his patterns as well. When he asked Madrun if he might lend a hand by loading the dishwasher, she regarded him askance.

“No, Mr. Christmas, I think it best if you didn’t.”

“Oh.”

“You’re not very good at it, you see.”

“I’m not?”

“No, you’re not. I’ve observed you. You need to be more … punctilious. You should always load from the back, thus, with the larger plates first.” She demonstrated. “And then you should nest the cutlery—see, the spoons in this part of the basket and the knives in this. And then …”

“I
am
schooled,” he said humbly when she had finished.

“We had the dishwasher installed in Mr. James-Douglas’s day. For a time he would put in a single cup and saucer and then start it running. I had to put a stop to that, of course!”

“Yes, I agree, a terrible waste.”

Madrun made a dismissive noise and peered at him. “Would you like me to make you a fresh cup of tea to take away with you?”

“Tea would be very nice.”

“Then I shall bring it along to you in your study.” She bustled, reaching for the kettle.

“Actually, Mrs. Prowse, I wondered if you might join me in a cup?”

“Oh?” She was arrested plugging the instrument into the socket and frowning at the clock. “It’s only gone two.”

“Yes, I know it’s not your teatime, but if you would indulge me.” He took a deep breath. “There’s something very important I’d like to discuss with you.”

Madrun’s eyebrows slipped up her forehead. “Your study, then, in ten minutes, Mr. Christmas?”

“Unless there’s somewhere else you’d care to talk?” His study—the thought occurred to him—had a sort of intimidating formality, yet the other rooms in the vicarage seemed suddenly too public, easily breached by daughter or guest. He was anxious this conversation be confidential and nonaccusatory.

Madrun seemed to read his mind. Her features betrayed a flash of concern. She said sceptically, “Mr. James-Douglas sometimes
joined me in my rooms when he had something important to discuss.”

“If you’d like …” Tom responded, a little startled. Thornford Regis’s vicarage had been his home for less than a year, yet he had never been in Madrun’s suite of rooms on the top floor, which seemed somehow inviolate.

“Take the back stairs, Mr. Christmas. I shall be up in nine minutes.”

Tom’s searching eyes couldn’t help going first, upon entering Madrun’s aerie, to the mahogany desk and round-back chair by one of the dormer windows where, he was sure, lay the instrument that visited his every daily awakening. Yes, there it was. Red, surprisingly, as red as a pillar box, a colour he didn’t associate with typewriters. And the design was modern, in a mid-twentieth-century way. He had somehow expected an Edwardian contraption with tiny round keys that required a thorough bashing; it was the only way he could account for the
clacketty-clack
that carried down to his bedroom. He peered closer.
OLIVETTI
said the raised letters at the back, and above the keytop
VALENTINE
—the model presumably. This likely accounted for the colour, but had it, too, been a gift with some sentiment attached? This wasn’t the hour for wondering such things. Inserted in the carriage, peeking above the paper guide, was a piece of stationery with
THE VICARAGE
clearly visible at the top, tomorrow’s letter to old Mrs. Prowse in Cornwall at the ready. Tom grimaced at what it might contain.