Eleven Pipers Piping (51 page)

“Don’t forget that Nick threatened Judith.”

“So she told you.”

“Are you suggesting Judith fabricated it?”

Blessing shrugged. “She’s not here to be questioned, is she? I suppose making vague threats falls within Nick Stanhope’s MO, as I’ve come to understand it. He was discharged from the army for threatening to shoot an officer, wasn’t he? Hotheaded lad.”

“Hotheaded enough to shoot someone, perhaps.”

“But is he stupid? Shooting someone with your own shotgun would be stupid. Forensics will tell the tale. Miss Neels told us last night that Nick was shooting with his own twelve-bore, one of his dad’s. That he left the Wassail at the time he did—some few minutes before Mrs. Ingley’s death—may simply be poor timing. And don’t forget Adam Moir wandered away, too, at a significant moment. We’ve taken his shotgun away for examination, and Miss Neels’s, as a precaution. Now we have to find Nick and get his. Don’t know where the bugger is, though. He’s not at his flat, we haven’t located his vehicle, and he’s not answering his mobile.
That
seems suspicious.”

“You might try the hotels.” Tom told the sergeant about Oona Blanc.

“Lucky sod.” Blessing whistled.

Tom gestured to the shotgun on the table. “Then this is likely a fourth gun.”

“It would appear so, unless it’s been in your garden all week covered with snow. Wet won’t be good for it. Beautiful, isn’t it? Look at the scroll engraving and the grain in the walnut. Must be worth a few bob.”

“It’s more of a terrifying beauty, Sergeant.” Tom looked sideways at the thing that may have ended a life, and might nearly have ended his.

“I will grant you, Vicar, that if this does prove to be part of Mr. Parry’s collection and prove to be the murder weapon, then those with recent access to Thornridge House will be under greater scrutiny, and that includes your Nick Stanhope, who was also at the Burns Supper.”

“He’s not my Nick Stanhope, Sergeant.”

“But he’s
your
prime suspect, isn’t he?” Blessing flicked Tom a sly glance. “For me, a man who poisons someone isn’t the sort who next goes out and shoots someone else. Two different homicides, two different perpetrators, if you ask me. One planned, the other rash.”

“But surely, Sergeant, if this Purdey proves to be the murder weapon, that suggests some planning. If it were Nick, then he would have had to have placed the shotgun earlier in the orchard, or in my garden, which would be easy enough to do in the Stygian darkness of this village, and then fetch it at the opportune moment.”

Blessing shrugged. “Possibly. But can you imagine Nick Stanhope slipping taxine into a haggis or a curry or a—”

“Perhaps we underestimate Nick Stanhope, Sergeant.”

“Then Nick Stanhope is our man, by your calculation.”

Shifting his bulk on the couch, glancing over at his cluttered desk and the tasks that demanded his attention, notably finishing compiling parish statistics long overdue, Tom thought back to his reply to the sergeant: “I can’t really think who else.”

He had taken a deep breath then and he took one now, though this breath was induced more by self-doubt. Was he shopping Nick to the authorities simply because—he couldn’t run from it—he disliked the man? The ground had been laid when he heard that Nick had been partnered briefly with Màiri White, then cultivated at the Burns Supper where Nick proved himself an utter bore by mocking the twinning of his surname and vocation, an opening gambit so unoriginal and unclever that it almost always lowered anyone in Tom’s estimation. His dislike had flourished as he bore witness to Nick’s boorish behaviour at the dinner, his callousness to his sister,
his flirtation with property developers, rumours of gambling and debt—it went on.

Still, he felt a little like David consigning Uriah to the front of battle where odds were good he’d get the chop and leave to mourn his widow, Bathsheba, a
woman very beautiful to look upon
, if he remembered the Scripture correctly. Not that Nick was anything like Uriah, an honourable chap unlucky to have a wife King David fancied rotten. And not that Màiri gave the slightest indication she’d like to resume her relationship with Nick. Màiri was, however, beautiful to look upon.

He sighed again, and thought of the evening past, as it might have been, if the Wassail had been its traditional harmless diversion, if he and Màiri had slipped away to the pub down Yealm Road—just a man in a clerical collar and a very fetching woman who wasn’t his wife. People might assume they were meeting on church business, mightn’t they? On a Saturday night? Not bloody likely. Perhaps they would assume she was his wife, after all. Why wouldn’t they? He wouldn’t be the only priest with a wife—what, fifteen?—years his junior. Look at Hugh Beeson. His second wife was well younger than he, the dog!

Or he might simply have removed his collar, ripped it from his shirt, and, possessed by volcanic passions like the hero of a clerical bodice-ripper (if such literature existed), cast it into the tempest raging over the moors, watching it disappear, tumbling and turning, disappearing behind a tor. Màiri had said she’d have him home in good time (as God somehow forgot about His priests when proclaiming Sunday as a day of rest). Oh, no, she wouldn’t! He’d have her knickers off quicker than David had Bathsheba’s after Uriah’s body was DHL’d home on his shield. Oh, yes, he would!

Tom lifted his lids and blinked rapidly. A tendril of some dream vanished. What had he been brooding on?

Moors, bodices, knickers, and collars.

Knickers and collars?

He remembered.

He ran his finger between his Adam’s apple and his dog collar, the sign of his consecration, the symbol of his being yoked with Christ, the outward reminder to all he encountered that God was present and that he, Tom Christmas, was His representative. He only removed it for sleep, for showers, occasionally for some grubby task—for honest, practical reasons, not dishonest ones. The collar repelled some people, but it attracted more, opening doors and possibilities for connection, and he was humbled to wear it. Yet there were moments when the collar did feel a little like a tourniquet: He was a floating head, divested from the rest of his body, and set apart from the rest of humanity. If he were single, unencumbered, and employed, say, as one of the workers tearing up Thorn Court’s carpeting, then he might explore all sorts of interesting possibilities with Ms. White. But he was not. A man needs a maid, but a priest needs a wife.

He raised his left hand and studied it a moment. He took his right thumb and pushed it along the smooth surface of his wedding ring, twisting it around and around. It was a simple band, purchased from a jeweller on Green Street, a short walk from his rooms in Westcott House, Cambridge. He remembered the afternoon, a Friday near the end of Easter term, the weather sublime, the light dancing along the cobbled lane as he waited for Lisbeth—he was ridiculously early—to join him for their rendezvous. But intoxicated by joy and impatient to get on, he had passed into the shop on his own, where the owly proprietor cheerfully laid out almost his entire selection on a length of black velvet along the glass counter. He remembered dismissing the very ring he was now twisting around his finger. Made of white gold, it had a middle band of pink, a colour that prompted a visceral masculine dismissal. But it’s
rose
gold, the jeweller smiled, and Tom was enchanted. Rose gold for Lisbeth Rose.

Who existed only in memory.

Someone—who? he searched his mind unfruitfully—had suggested to him that this day, this minute, would surely come.

It had.

He took a breath to steel himself, gripped the ring between thumb and forefinger, and executed a sharp, swift jerk. The pain was instant, a cutting at the base of his knuckle. He took another breath and tugged again, more cautiously this time, but without result. And then—
bugger it!
—again. He splayed his hands like two starfish and stared at them with dismay. Had time so swelled the joints? When Lisbeth placed the ring on his finger at the registry office in Shire Hall eleven years ago, it had seemed to melt its way down his flesh like butter onto hot toast. He tried to banish the memory of that happy morning, the hasty, giggly, I-can’t-believe-we’re-doing-this civil ceremony, Richard, a fellow ordinand, his supporter, dropping the ring, Fiona, Lisbeth’s maid of honour, just off an all-night call shift at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, helplessly yawning, all of them staggering off to The Granta for a quick wedding breakfast, then—weirdly—back to studies and, like a couple of celibates, back to their own rooms in college for a few weeks before they could arrange married accommodation. He couldn’t bear to dwell on the first hours of their marriage, not now, not this minute—and this time with ferocity born of determination frustrated, pulled and tugged, squeezed and pinched until his damned resistant knuckle succumbed to the greater damned resistance of the metal band and the thing flew past his fingernail.

It was done.

The ring was off.

Now, through eyes misting with grief and pain, he gazed at his naked fingers, his bachelor hands, as they once were and were again, and at the ring, a circlet of reflected fire, that once proclaimed he belonged to someone else. He drew the band closer, tilting it to catch the light from the flames. Yes, there it was, carved on the inside,
only a little worn, a lovers’ knot with their initials entwined:
TLC
&
LLR
.

Tom Livingstone Christmas and Lisbeth Lillian Rose.

He felt his throat constrict, then a cry, so low it was almost a growl, broke through. He’d said
good-bye my love
to her once, at her funeral. Now, he was saying it again, and for good.

M
rs. Prowse, thank you,” Tom muttered thickly, rubbing crusted tears from his eyes as he took the proffered cup of tea. “I must have nodded off.”

“The rural dean phoned. I took the call in the kitchen.”

Tom glanced at the instrument of torture on his desk. “I didn’t hear it ring.”

“I think you more than nodded off, Mr. Christmas.”

Tom struggled to his feet while balancing the cup and shuffled towards his desk, nearly tripping over Powell—or, possibly, Gloria—who had slunk into the room through the open door.

“He did seem anxious to speak to you,” Madrun added in a reminding voice. “May I take this?” She lifted the newspaper from the carpet.

“Yes, go ahead. I’m done with it.”

“I do hope they don’t spoil the roses.”

Tom followed her eyes through the French doors to the garden,
where shadows stirred in the greying afternoon light. “Are they still here?” He placed his teacup on a mound of books on his desk and looked at his watch, jolted to register that he had slept more than an hour. He rubbed along his neck, where a crick knotted the tendons.

“I can’t imagine what they might find.” Madrun turned to the door.

“Have they come for Mrs. Ingley’s things?”

“Not yet.”

“Then I’ll get onto that task.”

“Don’t forget the rural dean. I believe word has reached him.”

“Ah.” He shared a meaningful look with his housekeeper. He appreciated Charles’s concern, but he feared he would have to wait for a response. “That task” had priority.

Before settling into the office chair, he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the folded document Madrun had handed him that morning. He’d barely glanced at it then; now he unfolded it. He sat down, switched on the anglepoise lamp, pushed aside some of the desktop clutter, and smoothed the creases, tufted with age, flat against the oak surface. He should have handed it to DS Blessing that morning at St. Nicholas’s, he supposed, but Miranda and the shotgun had driven such tasks from his mind. It was only a yellowed birth certificate anyway, and its content tangential at best to Judith’s homicide investigation. Madrun had been terribly excited by her find. She had speculated rather doggedly that Clive Stanhope had to be the father of Judith’s child, until finally Tom gave in and admitted it was so, sternly extracting a promise from her
not
to let this juicy tidbit stray from the vicarage for the time being, as news of a new twig on the family tree via the village rumour mill might further distress Caroline Moir.

The certificate usefully contained Judith’s son’s full Christian names, however, an aid to his task of informing him that his mother had died, which Tom had told the detectives he would undertake, thinking it kinder that the information come from someone who
had acted host to her for a week. But it was a cheerless duty, compounded by the violent manner of Judith’s death. As he reached for the mobile that Madrun had found among Judith’s things, his mind slipped unbidden to the grim phone calls he’d had to make in the hours after Lisbeth’s death. How would Anthony Ingley react to this very unexpected call?

He set aside the mobile and reached instead to remove the teacup from its precarious perch on the book pile. He took a sip, and spent a procrastinating moment over the Certified Copy of an Entry of Birth, as it proclaimed itself. Yes, the date of birth told the tale—about seven months after Judith left Thornford for good. Place of birth was registered as Furness House Nursing Home, Leeds, perhaps somewhere near the hospital where she took her training. Name and Surname of Father: blank. Name and Maiden Surname of Mother: Judith Mina Frost. (Certainly not “Judith Stanhope” formerly Frost.) The date of registration was a fortnight after the birth.