Eleven Pipers Piping: A Father Christmas Mystery Read online

  “You don’t have to be Scottish to enjoy the Burns Supper.”

  Oh, don’t you? Tom thought. It might help. He didn’t know who his natural parents were. He didn’t feel somehow they could have been Scottish, if one were permitted to feel such things. He himself felt thoroughly English, and if he were about to give allegiance to another people, it would be the French or the Italians, who had wonderful food, not the Scots, who could only have been led by a ghastly climate and impoverished soil to think a celebratory dinner should consist of offal and oatmeal stuffed into a sheep’s stomach then boiled, turnips—his least favourite vegetable—boiled, and potatoes—yes, boiled. Without reopening the refrigerator door, he could see in his mind’s eye the ham, the leftover cheese-and-onion pie, the last of the turkey orzo soup Kate had made after Christmas—any of which would make a fine Saturday-evening meal.

  “He was hardly fit for the pulpit the next morning,” Madrun continued almost fondly, licking her thumb and turning a page.

  Giles James-Douglas, who preceded Tom, but for one, as incumbent, had been vicar in the village for over twenty-five years before his death. A lifelong bachelor of considerable private means and epicurean tastes, he installed Madrun as his housekeeper when she was a young woman, turned her into a superb cook, and left both the large late-Georgian vicarage—which he bought outright from the Church—and its housekeeper to his successors. Tom, therefore, had more or less inherited Madrun Prowse, who, though a spinster, retained the honorific Mrs. He was grateful for the help, being a busy priest and a widowed father, but there were moments when she did get on his wick a bit, especially when the matchless Mr. James-Douglas slipped into the conversation. He felt, to keep up, he should get as much malt whisky as he could down his neck Saturday then spend Sunday morning conducting services at two churches with a throbbing headache and a dry mouth, and trying not to gag over the Communion wine. He didn’t fancy it. In fact, he didn’t fancy attending the Burns Supper at all, but he was chaplain to a regional pipe band and Roger Pattimore, the pipe sergeant, expected him to come and deliver the Selkirk Grace. It was churlish to say no. Having been in Thornford less than a year and still finding his way in the parish, Tom didn’t want to offend for small reasons. What he wasn’t keen on was the food—the tatties and the neeps (potatoes and turnips, so called) and that acme of culinary horrors, the haggis. When he had been a curate in Kennington, he’d had an old parishioner who told him that in Botswana, where he held some rank in the colonial administration, they had used haggises (or was it haggi?) to poison hyenas.

  Really, Tom thought, he should have gone to that pub reception, after all, and at least had a couple of greasy pasties. With such bricks in his stomach he might have an excuse to only nibble at the forthcoming supper.

  He glanced at a couple of trays on the counter and wondered what was under the linen cloths covering them. He was about to step over and lift one when, unexpectedly, tantalizingly, the aroma of roasting meat tickled his nostrils. He began to wonder if hunger was driving him to fantasy. His glance moved to the oven.

  “Am I smelling beef? Are you back up on that horse, Mrs. Prowse?”

  Madrun glanced up from the cookery book. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I thought perhaps you might be cooking a roast with a view to making a Yorkshire pudding.”

  “Well, it’s true I’m cooking beef, but it’s beef Wellington … of a kind.”

  “Beef Wellington!” Tom gave a passing thought to his food budget. “You’re serving the children beef Wellington?”

  “It’s … an adaptation of beef Wellington.” Madrun frowned at something in her book. “Minced beef, which I shaped into a ball and roasted earlier. Now it’s cooking enclosed in chopped mushrooms and puff pastry.”

  “It’s en croûte, Daddy,” a voice behind him said.

  Miranda had pushed open the kitchen door, followed by the vicarage cats, Powell and Gloria, who began a lewd and mewling pace in front of the Aga.

  “Yes, oncrew,” Madrun murmured. “That’s the word.”

  “We’re having our own Burns Supper,” Miranda said brightly, moving to the counter to examine the contents of various bowls.

  “I shaped the mince to look like a haggis,” Madrun explained.

  Tom frowned at his daughter. “I’m surprised that you and Ariel and … who else is coming to your sleepover?”

  “Emily and Becca.”

  “… had the faintest interest in Robbie Burns.”

  “Oh, we don’t. Or at least they don’t,” Miranda added obliquely.

  “Then …?”

  “It’s because of Zak Burns.” Miranda shook her head so her pigtails slapped against her cheeks.

  Tom turned to Madrun helplessly.

  “I believe he was the last winner on X Factor.” Madrun raised a censorious eyebrow.

  “It’s because of Emily.” Miranda shrugged. “She thinks he’s …”

  Oh, blast, Tom thought: The word to follow is probably cute, hot, or cool. He sighed inwardly. There was something awfully cunning about Emily Swan. Perhaps having two older brothers and an older sister, and living over a pub, made her more worldly wise than the other two girls joining Miranda at the vicarage for her first sleepover: With a brother nearly a dozen years older moved away from home, Ariel Moir lived the life of an only child, like Miranda, while Becca Kaif had lost her only brother to suicide, in August—a terrible tragedy for the village, and it had—cruelly—made Becca into an only child, too.

  “… nice,” Miranda said at last. “Emily thinks he’s nice.”

  Nice seemed a good noncommittal word to latch on to, and Tom did. He couldn’t help not wanting Miranda to leave the sweet, dreamlike realm of early childhood, to be swallowed up in schoolgirl pop-star crushes, with bedroom walls covered in posters of boys with peculiar haircuts and ludicrous trousers, though, come to think of it, his bedroom, when he had been ten years old, had been covered with posters of men with peculiar haircuts and ludicrous trousers. But all of them were magicians and magic had been his passion in those days. It had led to a career in magic—for a time—so at least his bedroom walls had not proved a waste of space, so to speak. He glanced at Miranda’s furrowed little brow and wondered what was passing through her furrowed little grey matter.

  “And do you think this Zak Burns is nice?” Tom asked.

  “Oh … he’s okay, I suppose.”

  He watched her reach into a bowl by the sink, pull out a finger of raw potato, and bite into its end.

  “Are you making chips?” he asked Madrun, trying to keep yearning from his voice. A plate of hot chips slathered in salt and malt vinegar would go down a treat at this very moment.

  “Yes, chips for tatties,” she muttered over her cookery book; then she looked up. “You really can’t expect little girls to want boiled potatoes, can you, Mr. Christmas.”

  How gratifying to be schooled about children’s tastes when he had spent not a little time easing Madrun into the notion that Miranda’s—nor his—tastes did not run to Gordon Ramsay on a daily basis.

  “So, I suppose you could say your Burns Supper is a kind of posh burgers and chips.”

  Madrun looked up again. “Well, if you must.”

  “Then may I stay? Please.”

  Miranda giggled. “Emily says, ‘No boys allowed.’ ”

  Except, presumably, for the spectre of young Mr. Burns, crowned with fifteen minutes of fame, Tom grumped. “Then what are you doing for neeps?”

  “I’ve made fruit crumble for pudding,” Madrun answered. “Bramleys, Bosc pears, wortleberries, blackberries, yewberries, tayberries, strawberries—I’ve had quite the run this week on the frozen berries I picked and put down in the fall—”

  “Clever Mrs. P. They’ll never detect turnip in that.” Tom was full of admiration.

  Madrun looked enormously pleased, if enormous pleasure could be counted in a slight upturning of the lips. “Mind you don’t say anything.” She shook a warning finger at
Miranda.

  “I won’t.” Miranda paused, then raised her own finger to her lips. “Well, I won’t until after.”

  “After will do. I suppose it’s one way to have children eat their vegetables.” She addressed Tom.

  But Tom’s attention had been drawn to Miranda, who had skipped to the kitchen door and was looking through the glass into the garden. “Papa! Regarde la neige! N’est-elle pas merveilleuse?” she said, falling into French, as she often did when she was excited. In the darkness of early evening in January, the farthest end of the sloping garden, where trees screened the millpond in summer, seemed a void, soft and black, but where light spilled from the vicarage windows, demarcating the base of the old pear tree and two wicker chairs, all blazed white, diamond bright.

  “Yes, it is marvellous, isn’t it,” he responded, joining Miranda to witness the thin veil of snow shimmering in the air. He put his hands on Miranda’s shoulders and felt the straps of her dungarees. He could sense her anticipation: This would be her first full experience of snow, though in the garden outside it was neither particularly deep (patches of stiff grass were visible) nor terribly crisp (wet, more like) nor very even (the terrace had less than the lawn). But it might be before long, if the weather folk read the signs and portents correctly. Shifting weather partly informed his unwillingness to tarry at the wedding reception at Pennycross. Temperatures had dropped through the afternoon; patchy ice had formed in the lanes between Pennycross and Thornford, and the landscape glimpsed between the hedgerows was bleached and undifferentiated in the watery winter light. Perhaps the snow wasn’t so marvellous, after all. Perhaps Madrun had been right: A fallen Yorkshire doth herald tempests drear. Or suchlike.

  His stomach growled in response to the thought of food.

  “Lions and tigers, Daddy,” said Miranda whose ears brushed his shirt below his chest.

  “You could hear that?”

  “I could hear it over here, Mr. Christmas. You could have a biscuit, I suppose …” Madrun began, making Tom feel not unlike Bumble, soon to be rewarded for being a good doggy.

  He turned. Madrun was studying her watch.

  “… or perhaps not. Best not to spoil your supper. Aren’t you expected soon?”

  Tom glanced at his own watch. “Oh, yes, I suppose.” Then he glanced again, longingly, at the fridge—a huge double-door chrome American model, surely the largest fridge in the village outside the commercial ones at the Church House Inn, the Waterside Café, and the Thorn Court Country Hotel. “But isn’t there much standing about first, drinking whisky and the like?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to a Burns Supper.”

  Startled, Tom was about to ask how she knew, more than he, what he was to expect from such an event, but Miranda interjected, “Are they no-girls-allowed?”

  “They are,” Madrun replied stoutly.

  “That’s not fair,” Miranda said.

  “But yours is no-boys-allowed,” Tom protested.

  “Really, Daddy!”

  “Really, Mr. Christmas!”

  Faced with remonstration to what he thought was reasoned observation, Tom backed down, supposing, in a split second of reflection, that most of human history was no-girls-allowed. Even Jesus, whom he thought a rather forward-thinking chap, hadn’t put a woman among His disciples. He was a bit snippy with His mother, too.

  “Never mind. There’s Bumble off his head.” The sound of a frenzied Jack Russell barking could be heard on the other side of the kitchen door. Powell and Gloria stiffened into parodies of alert felines. “Someone must be coming to the front door. Race you!” he called to Miranda.

  And yet somehow Miranda made it to the front door first and pushed it open. Ariel Moir and Becca Kaif seemed to pitch in on a gust of wind as Bumble darted between them and dashed into the front garden.

  “Bumble! Get in here!” Tom shouted over their heads.

  But the dog, now a scurrying, grey shadow against the black stone of the wall dividing the vicarage grounds from Church Walk, had turned dervish in the novel ground cover. Tom could dimly make out four wiry legs wriggling in the air as Bumble churned his back in the snow and made happy growling noises.

  “Bumble!”

  “Yes, Bumble, there’s a good dog,” called another voice, feminine but authoritative, clear and ringing, and Tom’s attention turned to a shadow moving up the path, various soft shapes hanging from each hand. Caroline Moir emerged into the halo of the light over the porch, her cap of fine, fair hair blazing almost as white as snow itself. In the same light, her pale heart-shaped face and large, luminous blue eyes lent her a tentative, fragile air, but Tom had been deceived before by this tender vision. In his first week in Thornford, on an exploratory evening walk towards one of the green lanes that radiated from the village into the countryside, he had witnessed Caroline tear after—then tear into, politely but very firmly—a young man whose bullmastiff had fouled the road and who had paid no heed to the bright red dog-waste bin, not five feet away, which the parish council provided. She had not seen Tom pass during the encounter, and he was glad, for she had been introduced to him earlier as a member of St. Nicholas’s choir, and he simply couldn’t remember her name—a hazard of early days in a new parish. The man with the mastiff had glimpsed him, however, and though they occasionally crossed the same path, the man always turned his head away, as if tugged by some string of embarrassed memory. Bumble, too, seemed to know the effect of her voice, for he flipped right-side up at her command, darted over, and leapt up to imprint her camel coat with his damp paws.

  “Stop it, Bumble—inside!” Tom commanded, and this time the dog obeyed him, inserting himself between the girls who were taking off their jackets.

  “Oooh, he’s all wet!” one of them shrieked.

  “These are Ariel’s,” Caroline said, handing him a purple backpack and a rolled sleeping bag. “And these are Becca’s.” She handed him a second set, this one pink, then brushed some snow from her hair. “Are you sure you’re ready for this, Tom?”

  “I’m afraid it’s Mrs. Prowse who will bear most of the burden of the sleepover.” Tom dropped the girls’ gear on the deacon’s bench. “I’m going to the Burns Supper at your hotel.”

  “Of course. What was I thinking?”

  “Would you care to come in for something warm?”

  “I can’t. I mustn’t linger. I think I’m parked illegally in someone’s spot.”

  “Oh, you drove the girls here.” The hotel wasn’t far up the road.

  “I’m going into Totnes to join Adam and Tamara for supper. Tamara and her group are performing at the Civic Hall. Although if this snow keeps falling I may have a sleepover of my own, in town.” Caroline cast him a faltering smile. “Anyway, it might be best to leave you males to your own devices. Burns Suppers have a certain reputation.”

  “Perhaps,” Tom responded lightheartedly, tugging at his dog collar, “their chaplain will be a restraining presence.”

  A look of half-startled wariness seemed to cross Caroline’s face. She stared at Tom a moment, as if entertaining some private care. “Oh, I should doubt it,” she responded at last, forcing an awkward laugh.

  “Caroline,” Tom began, puzzled by her response, “are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She paused. “I’m … perhaps a little concerned about making my way to town. It was quite slippy coming round the lane a moment ago and I wonder how the roads will be out of the village. I don’t think I’ve seen so much snow outside of a ski holiday the family took in Switzerland before Ariel was born.”

  Responding to the sound of her name, Ariel said, “Mummy, have you got my camera?”

  “Oh, yes, dear, it’s right here.” Caroline reached into her coat pocket. “Now, you remember what we talked about.”

  “Yes, Mummy,” Ariel said with a sigh.

  “And mind,” Caroline continued, bending down, drawing her daughter into her arms, and lowering her voice, “how you behave towards Becca.” />
  “Yes, Mummy.” Ariel sighed again, enduring her mother’s hug.

  Caroline held on to her daughter for a moment longer than the wriggling girl seemed to wish, then released her. “There. Now be good.” She rose and addressed Becca. “The pair of you. I’ll be having Mrs. Prowse give me a full report.”

  She gave a tentative smile as the girls, divested of their outerwear, raced down the hall towards the sitting room.

  “And speaking of Mrs. Prowse, any more fallout from the great Yorkshire debacle?”

  “Oh, it’s a puzzle being pondered at some length.”

  Caroline’s smile managed to widen. “I see. Anyway, I shall leave you to it. Best of luck.”

  St. Nicholas’s bells rang the quarter hour as she turned back down the path, reminding Tom that six thirty was the appointed time for the Burns Supper to begin. Holding Bumble by his collar, he regarded the departing figure with disquiet. Through the demands of managing a hotel, Caroline carved out the time to lend her rich, slightly breathy alto to the church choir, faithful to the Thursday-evening practices and Sunday-morning services, where her white robe and silvery-blond hair lent her an almost ethereal air. But lately she’d had episodes of missing both, excusing her absences lamely, uncharacteristically—usually some consequence of short staffing. She and Will had closed their hotel after Christmas for renovations to take advantage of the low season, and this had given Tom the opportunity to have them for a meal, in part a belated thanks to Will for organizing Race for the Roof, the half-marathon fund-raiser for the church in the autumn. But that afternoon—unexpectedly, for he had found them simpatico on other occasions, imagining that Lisbeth, if she had been alive, would have taken to the accomplished and astute Caroline—conversation had not flowed with particular ease. He had a sense of another conversation, private and passionate, adjourned, to be resumed after tendering good-byes at the vicarage door. At the table, Caroline had seemed to watch Will like a sparrow hawk.

  “Come on,” he muttered to Bumble, closing the door, “we need to get you dry.” He lifted the seat of the deacon’s bench, pulled out an old bath towel, and began rubbing down the dog’s rough coat. Looking up, he noted Madrun coming down the hall from the kitchen bearing a tray with four fluted glasses containing what looked like champagne.