Eleven Pipers Piping: A Father Christmas Mystery Read online

  Eleven Pipers Piping is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Douglas Whiteway

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House

  Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Benison, C. C.

  Eleven pipers piping: a mystery/C. C. Benison

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-33984-7

  1. Vicars, Parochial—Fiction. 2. Devon (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9199.3.B37783E44 2012

  813’.54—dc23 2011042715

  www.bantamdell.com

  246897531

  Cover design: Marietta Anastassatos

  Cover art: Ben Perini

  v3.1

  Cast of Characters

  Inhabitants of Thornford Regis

  The Reverend Tom Christmas Vicar of the parish

  Miranda Christmas His daughter

  Bob Cogger Retired farm labourer

  Florence Daintrey Retired civil servant

  Venice Daintrey Her sister-in-law

  Liam Drewe Owner of the Waterside

  Café and Bistro

  Mitsuko Drewe His wife, an artist

  Briony Hart Shop assistant

  Victor Kaif Homeopath

  Molly Kaif His wife

  Becca Kaif Their daughter

  Caroline Moir Owner of Thorn Court

  Country Hotel

  Will Moir Her husband

  Adam Moir Their son

  Ariel Moir Their daughter

  Penella Neels Co-owner of Thorn

  Barton farm

  Colm Parry Organist and choirmaster

  at St. Nicholas Church

  Celia Holmes-Parry His wife, a psychotherapist

  Declan Parry Their son

  Roger Pattimore Owner of Pattimore’s, the

  village shop

  Enid Pattimore His mother

  Fred Pike Village handyman and

  church sexton

  Joyce Pike His wife

  Charlie Pike Their son

  Madrun Prowse Vicarage housekeeper

  Jago Prowse Her brother, owner of

  Thorn Cross Garage

  Tamara and Kerra His daughters

  Karla Skynner Postmistress and

  newsagent

  Tiffany Snape Her assistant

  Eric Swan Licensee of the Church

  House Inn

  Belinda Swan His wife

  Daniel, Lucy, Emily, and Jack Their children

  Mark Tucker Accountant

  Violet Tucker His wife

  Ruby Tucker Their daughter

  Visitors to Thornford Regis

  The Reverend Hugh Beeson Vicar of St. Barnabas,

  Noze Lydiard

  Colin Blessing Detective Sergeant, Totnes

  CID

  Derek Bliss Detective Inspector,

  Totnes CID

  John Copeland Gamekeeper and shoot

  manager at Noze Lydiard Estate

  Judith Ingley Retired nurse

  Nick Stanhope Home security company

  owner

  Màiri White Police Community

  Support Officer

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Cast of Characters

  The Vicarage

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  The Vicarage

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  The Vicarage

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  The Vicarage

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Vicarage

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Vicarage

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Vicarage

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The Vicarage

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Hotel Playa de los Doce Días

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  The Vicarage

  Thornford Regis TC9 6QX

  10 JANUARY

  Dear Mum,

  I hope you’re prepared for snow! I switched on the radio once the Teasmade had done its job this morning and the Met was issuing a severe weather warning for the entire country. We are to be inindat inud inundated! And we WILL be by the time this letter reaches you, so I hope you and Aunt Gwen are all right in Cornwall. You must have Aunt Gwen phone me if you think there’s anything I can do at this end, though last time we had an enormusous dump of snow in the West Country the phones went down. And the electricity went off too. It really was quite a to do, wasn’t it! I know lots of folk have no weather memories, can’t remember what year had what conditions. In fact, Old Bob asked me while I was getting a loaf at Pattimore’s the other day, when was the Great Storm of 93? It was in 1993, Bob, I said, not batting an eye. (I do think he’s not very well.) But that was a great wind storm. Both you and I remember the last great snow storm, don’t we? Maureen did pick her moments. No one could drive out of the village. No ambulance could get in. Dr. Philpot had got himself stuck in Torquay. And it was Christmas Eve day. I can still see the spot on Mr. James-Douglas’s dining room rug where Maureen’s water broke. Well, not “see” it as such. Of course it cleaned up easily. Poor Mr. J-D, I think at first he was more worried about the state of his Tabriz rug than the state of Maureen. And he did go out and shop for that enormusous canopy bed soon after Maureen gave birth to Tamara on his old one. (What a trial it was getting that bed into the vicarage!) Anyway, you and I did splendid work as midwives, didn’t we? Even Dr. FussPhilpot couldn’t find a reason to caution us later. And now your granddaughter is at university at Exeter. Time has flown, hasn’t it? It was so lovely seeing her at Christmas with all of us in Cornwall. She’s coming down to perform in Totnes with her old group Shanks Pony tonight, but I can’t go, as Mr. Christmas has the Burns Supper at the hotel and Miranda is having her first sleepover in the vicarage with some of her friends. I’m not sure Mr. C is looking forward to the haggis. I once fed him my very good braised lambs’ kidneys with onions. He ate most of it, but I could sense organ meats weren’t his cup of tea. I think Miranda fed most of hers to Bumble! I was not pleased! Anyway, I think Mr. C will be surprised at the B. Supper, but I shan’t tell him what the surprise is and spoil it. Molly Kaif is cooking the Supper, by the way. I don’t think she’s the best caterer hereabouts, but it’s good that she’s coming out of her shell, poor woman, though it’s a bit odd she’s chosen to do so at the Moirs’.
Well, Mum, I must get on with the day. I’m doing a special meal for the girls this evening and I’ve been asked to contribute something to the B. Supper, so there’s that to cook too, and Mr. C has a wedding in Pennycross this afternoon, which will keep him busy. Mum, I just glanced at the window and even though it’s so dark this early in the morning, I could see a snowflake fall on the glass. I expect it’s starting. Oh dear, I wonder what the next days will bring? Last time, with all the snow, it felt like the whole village was maruned marooned. We coped wonderfully, though, didn’t we? Still, I wouldn’t wish for the sort of drama we had last time. A cosy fire and the sudoku machine Mr. C bought me for Christmas will suit me until it all blows over. Cats are well and still sulking over the dog, though Bumble does try to make friends. Love to Aunt Gwen. Glorious day! We hope!

  Much love,

  Madrun

  P.S. I’m still investigating the Yorkshire problem! I’ll let you know when it’s solved.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Did they not feed you after the wedding, Mr. Christmas?”

  “I dropped into the reception for only a minute,” Tom replied, conscious of the passing figure of his housekeeper, as he continued his contemplation of the bounty in the vicarage refrigerator. “I didn’t have a chance for a bite.”

  He barely knew the young couple he had married that afternoon—Todd and Gemma—other than to have a brief preparatory discussion with them the month before. He had never seen them in church, nor had he seen their families or friends, and didn’t expect to see them again, unless the couple wished their baby baptised—which mightn’t be far off, given that the bride, wearing a meringue with a train half a mile long, had fairly waddled up the aisle at St. Paul’s, the second of the two churches in his charge. Her plump face, when she’d pushed back her embroidered veil, had looked much like a blazing beetroot, he recalled, staring at a jar of the pickled variety inside the door of the fridge. Sweat had sparkled in tiny beads along her exposed hairline—this despite the glacial damp of the nave in s—which some might have construed as the effect of energy expended getting up the aisle, but which Tom interpreted as a dew born of anticipation and triumph.

  The groom, however, had been a figure of bemusement, his face a kind of Belisha beacon, one moment as blanched as that leftover rice pudding in its puddle of cream on the second shelf, the next as pink as the Virginia ham one shelf below. Tom shouldn’t have fancied their chances at marital success—they were much too young; he was a farm labourer and she was a health-care aide of some sort and they were living with his parents—but for some reason he did, and could only chalk it up to a decade’s experience splicing couples of varied sorts. He imagined them receiving their sixtieth-anniversary card from the Queen (or the King, as would most probably be then) where other couples, more advantaged, would fall by the wayside. “When betrothal is brief, the marriage lasts long,” he recalled his father-in-law saying, quoting some bit of Jewish wisdom when he was trying to reconcile himself to his daughter’s elopement. How wrong he had been, at least in Tom and Lisbeth’s case.

  “The reception was at The Pig’s Barrel,” Tom told his housekeeper.

  “A January wedding and a pub reception. Sounds a hurried affair.”

  “A little, perhaps,” Tom responded noncommittally. He rarely went to wedding receptions anyway, unless he knew the family well. Receptions could murder the best part of a Saturday afternoon, and it wasn’t as though he didn’t have anything else to do—polish his sermon, for instance. He’d dropped in at Todd and Gemma’s only because he’d seen the very attractive village bobby, Màiri White, pass through the The Barrel’s doors when he went for his car after the ceremony and couldn’t resist the allure of a chance encounter. But, alas, when he arrived, Màiri was ensconced, back to him, at a table full of—damn!—men. Anyway, snow, ominously forecast to bung up northwestern Europe for the weekend and more, was beginning to fall in earnest and so getting home to Thornford seemed more imperative than being stood like a lemon at The Pig’s Barrel.

  He looked past the edge of the refrigerator door, wondering if Madrun was about to launch into a mini inquisition over the newlyweds. Customarily, she would have ushered them into the vicarage study when they came for their marriage interview, but the wedding had come together all in a rush during busy Christmas week, which Madrun had spent with her aging mother in Cornwall, thus depriving her of an opportunity to inspect and pass verdict on events at home.

  But Madrun’s back was to him. He could see one hand resting against one cheek as she contemplated the array of cookery books marshalled behind the glass of a ceiling-high barrister’s bookcase. He guessed her preoccupation lay not with the hapless couple. The Sunday before, after her return from Cornwall to Thornford Regis early in the New Year, she had cooked a joint, accompanied with roast potatoes and parsnips, green beans with caramelised shallots, and, of course, Yorkshire pudding. Tom and Miranda had been in the sitting room with their guests, Will and Caroline Moir, their daughter, Ariel, their son, Adam, and his girlfriend, Tamara, when their conversation had been riven by a piercing cry—such as he had never heard before—from the kitchen. Heart racing, expecting to find Madrun horribly burned or cut, Tom dashed into the kitchen, the others at his heels. Instead, they found her, oven-gloved, staring aghast into a steaming dish, the door of the Aga behind her a yawning maw. Nestled inside the dish’s black and aged sides was a vast and even expanse of tawny gold—quite lovely to look at and smelling heavenly. Despite his still-coursing adrenaline, he had felt his stomach growl.

  And then Miranda, on tiptoe, glanced into the pan and declared: “Oh, it’s a dropdead!”

  A kind of moan slipped from Madrun’s throat as she turned and placed the hot dish onto a trivet on her worktable, next to the roasted beef and several bowls of thawing berries, which a little later spilled around a heavenly pavlova.

  “But I’m sure it will taste wonderfully,” Caroline had interjected quickly, and the others had murmured concurrence. Dropdead was his daughter Miranda’s coinage for a Yorkshire pudding that failed to rise. Her mother’s often hadn’t. Lisbeth had been a blasé sort of cook whose Sunday lunches were sometimes a fiesta of Waitrose ready meals. When Lisbeth died, their French au pair, Ghislaine, tried her hand at English fare but could never quite get the knack of certain dishes, Yorkshire pud among them. Tom, who had never made one in his life, couldn’t understand how a simple concoction of eggs, milk, and flour could be so temperamental and cause so much distress. There had been much crestfallenness back in Bristol when the Yorkshire, pulled from the oven, looked more like Norfolk-in-a-pan than Staffordshire-in-a-pan—flat rather than hilly. Lisbeth would feign indifference, but Ghislaine wept at her first failure. But then they were all in shock in the wake of Lisbeth’s sudden, violent death.

  Madrun’s, on the other hand, were always a tremendous success—puffy and light, glorious umber hillocks set against deep golden valleys, a sponge to sop the rich brown gravy she would produce from the organic beef acquired from the farm shop at Thorn Barton. But not last Sunday. The pud simply looked … sad. After her initial distress, she had pulled herself together and brought forth an otherwise fine Sunday lunch in the dining room, although she remained subdued throughout. Since then, she’d had Fred Pike, the village handyman, in to look at the Aga, which Fred had pronounced fit as feathers on a duck, scrutinised the sell-by dates of the flour and milk, and had a barney with Roger Pattimore down at Pattimore’s, the village shop, over the freshness of his eggs. She had adjured Tom to check on his computer to see if there were any chat rooms or forums devoted to Yorkshire pudding—the word failures didn’t pass Madrun’s lips; mysteries was substituted—and there were a few, not unpredictably, in the Internet age, but he had white-lied and said there weren’t because—and this he didn’t say out loud—for heaven’s sake, it was too silly. All this bother for a simple—and not wholly necessary—side dish.

  “You heat fat in the pan first, don’t you?” Tom had asked a couple of da
ys later when he found Madrun lifting her glasses from the chain around her neck with one hand and pulling the very pan to her face with the other for close examination. “Then why don’t you do a pudding now and experiment with some vegetable oil? That’s a sort of fat, isn’t it?”

  “Really, Mr. Christmas,” Madrun had snapped, her tone indicating the suggestion infra dig. “It must be beef fat.” And then her eyes shot open behind the lenses and a flash of enlightenment lit up her features. “I shall have to have a strong word with the girls at the farm shop.”

  Tom later learned from one of his parishioners that there had been some unpleasantness up at Thorn Barton when Madrun arrived at the shop to question the aging of their beef, or lack of aging, or some such thing. Sainsbury’s had made a larger-than-usual food delivery to the vicarage on Thursday, so Tom suspected Madrun and the women at the farm shop were keeping a bit of space between them for the time being.

  “Sometimes, Mrs. Prowse, things happen for no reason,” Tom said finally, trying to keep exasperation from his voice.

  Madrun flicked him a disapproving glance, as if he were being theologically unsound, and said, “It’s an omen. I feel it in my bones.”

  Tom, who at the time was struggling to put the lead on Bumble preparatory to a walk up Knighton Lane, had bit his tongue and said nothing, because, of course, there was nothing to say: He was disinclined towards omens, particularly if they came in the form of collapsed savoury puddings.

  Now his housekeeper had pushed back one of the glass doors of the bookcase and pulled out a cookery tome. Opening the book to the index at the back, she studied him a moment over the rims of her spectacles. “You’ll let all the cold out, if you keep the refrigerator door open like that.”

  “Yes, sorry.”

  “You may be pleasantly surprised this evening, you know, Mr. Christmas.”

  Tom made a demurring noise as he closed the door. “Perhaps if I lined my stomach with a glass of milk.”

  “Mr. James-Douglas used to love the Burns Supper.”

  “I expect from his name he had a bit of Scots in him.”