Eleven Pipers Piping: A Father Christmas Mystery Read online

  “I must say, Will, in this light the room looks very handsome.”

  “Good, though I can’t really tell. It all looks more or less brown to me. Thank God for Caroline’s good taste.” To Tom’s puzzled frown, he added, “I’m colour-blind, didn’t you know?”

  “Sorry, I did. Cricket ball to the head was the culprit, wasn’t it?” His eyes, roaming helplessly over Will’s head looking for a dent, landed on his broken nose.

  “It was to the back of the head,” Will explained. “I’ve been hit more than once. Anyway, we had the reception rooms redone five years ago, when we took over. They’re fine. No, it’s the bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs that need upgrading. Some of the plumbing is from the early sixties, when Caroline’s grandfather had the house converted to a hotel.”

  “Enterprising of him.”

  “It was. I have to admire the old bugger. Most characters like old Arthur Stanhope—”

  “Caroline’s grandfather?”

  Will nodded. “—were driven to paralysis by the new tax regime after the war. Running a hotel’s expensive and complex, though, but Caroline loves it. It’s like she was born to it.”

  “I thought she was, in a way.”

  “True.” Will permitted a short laugh. “She spent the first ten years of her life here, and it always remained a kind of …”

  “Eden?”

  “When we were in Australia and Adam was very small, she would describe it to him as though it—and Thornford—were something out of some old children’s story. Swallows and Amazons. Enid Blyton. Anyway—”

  Will’s attention was caught by the sight of two bluff men entering the room, rubbing their hands from cold, brushings of snow falling from their outerwear.

  “Gentlemen,” he called, moving to greet them, “there’s a coat tree in the lobby.”

  The two were unknown to Tom, but he wasn’t surprised. Having lived less than a year in Thornford, he still found many villagers were unfamiliar to him. At times, he rather wished that folk would wear those little sticky HELLO, MY NAME IS ____ badges for a season, so he could get caught up. Several of the other band members, all of them clad in Devon tartan green kilts and black Prince Charlie jackets, he did know. He had talked briefly with two of them—Jago Prowse, Madrun’s younger brother and owner of Thorn Cross Garage, and Mark Tucker, his new treasurer on the parochial church council. Victor Kaif he could see slouching by the brass guard at the fireplace, the light from the crackling fire bronzing his attenuated, tawny features. His glass held no translucent liquid. Orange juice, Tom suspected, and wondered if Victor, being a homeopath, took no alcohol. He was in conversation with a man whose back was to Tom, but he recognised in the broad shoulders and the black hair shot with grey the figure of John Copeland, sidesman at St. Nicholas’s, a man like himself both an adopted child and a widower. Well, he thought, at least one member of the Thistle But Mostly Rose besides Nick had braved the weather. John was gamekeeper and shoot manager at the Noze Lydiard Estate, ten miles north of Thornford.

  His hand hovered over an oatcake with smoked salmon and what tasted, from the previous two he’d eaten, like crème fraîche. Would it be piggy to have yet another one? he wondered, mindful of the dreaded meal to come. Roger joined him at that moment, frowning at his watch and then glancing at the carriage clock over the mantel.

  “Tut,” he said, lifting an appetizer from the platter. “You’ll spoil your supper.”

  “And what would you be doing?” Tom watched him pop the entire morsel into his mouth.

  “This is my first one! I’ve been seeing everything’s all right in the kitchen.”

  “I believe your sporran is ringing.”

  “Bless!” Roger fumbled with the leather pouch at his crotch and pulled out his mobile. “Olly!” he shouted heartily, then frowned. “Well,” he sighed, snapping the phone shut, “that’s the last one reporting in. How disappointing. We don’t have the numbers we should, and we have so much food.”

  “How many, then?”

  “Let’s see. We have no drummers. We have”—he glanced around the room and counted on his fingers—“eleven pipers. And we have you. That makes twelve.”

  “That’s all right, then. Thirteen at a dinner is said to be bad luck.”

  “Perhaps we should seat you in the middle, like the Last Supper.”

  “If you’re thinking of da Vinci’s picture, then we’d all be sitting on one side, which might be a bit odd.”

  “Bless, it’ll be more like the Mad Hatter’s tea party, with all of us crowded at one end. Perhaps I should suggest to Will that Kerra remove a number of the place settings.”

  “Or, when we want a clean plate, we could all simply shift down one.”

  “If you recall the story, Tom, only the first person had the advantage of a clean plate. Everyone else was lumbered with someone else’s dirty one.”

  “You’re quite right.” He wasn’t sure if it was hunger or the whisky or the effect of the whisky on an empty stomach that had enjoyed little more than a finger of pizza in the last several hours, but he was starting to feel a bit giddy. “When does the show begin?”

  This time Roger looked from the clock, the big hand of which nudged seven thirty, to his watch.

  “Shortly,” he said. “I’ll just have a word with Will.”

  “Some hae meat and canna eat,” Tom recited. “And some wad eat that want it.” He had practised his accent for the Selkirk Grace with Màiri, who happened to be a Scot. They had met by chance in the snaking returns queue at M&S in Torquay the day after Boxing Day, he returning a shirt a size too embarrassingly tight, which his mothers had bought him for Christmas (Madrun’s cuisine was ruining his boyish waistline, which retreated spinewards the moment he espied Màiri), she returning an electric underblanket (she already had one). They had whiled the time rolling r’s and adding epenthetic vowels until Tom impetuously suggested a coffee afterwards at the shop’s café and Màiri declined, as she had a briefing with her sergeant. He should have known. She was wearing her uniform.

  “But we hae meat and we can eat,” he continued, banishing Màiri from his mind, larding the line with an enthusiasm he didn’t feel for the haggis to come.

  “Sae let the Lord be thankit.”

  A murmur of amens arose from around the table. If reciting four lines was singing for your supper, Tom decided, sitting back down in his chair, then he might take more bookings.

  “Very good, Vicar,” said a voice to his left, as the rumble of male voices in Thorn Court’s private dining room rose in scattered conversation.

  Tom was distracted momentarily by the sight of Kerra Prowse, smartly dressed in a black skirt and blouse, appearing from the door leading from the kitchen, and walking past the unpeopled end of the table where place settings for those absent had been removed. Under her upraised palm was a very large, laden tray. Real food at last! he thought, taking a deep breath, seeking some satisfying aroma in the atmosphere. And oddly, the aroma was satisfying, quite satisfying. He thought he caught a whiff of … but, no, it couldn’t be, he reconsidered, as Kerra removed a plated soup bowl from her tray and placed it in front of him.

  “Thank you,” he said belatedly.

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Christmas,” Kerra responded crisply, slipping a steaming bowl in front of John.

  “I intended that for you,” Tom murmured to John, as Kerra passed on to Will, seated at the head of the table. “Hmm,” he added, inhaling the heady aroma, grateful for its unchallenging familiarity, “chicken soup.”

  “Cock-a-leekie.”

  “Of course.” He picked up his soupspoon and poked it into the broth, pausing over the garnish, which appeared to be a crosshatch of glistening black leather.

  “Prunes,” John said, either reading his mind or noting his hesitation.

  “Ah. I’d been told to expect a surprise. I doubt this is it, though.” Tom avoided the garnish and lifted a spoon of the broth. “I didn’t realize until we had the Moirs at ours for lunch
Sunday last,” he said in a low voice, seeking a conversational gambit, as John, he had discovered at PCC meetings and at church services, was a man of few words, “that Will’s son worked with you at Noze.” He flicked a glance at Will, concerned lest his host think he was talking out of turn. But Will was looking away, engaged with Roger, who sat to his left.

  “Adam’s been with me for a while now. He’s a good lad.”

  “Just he and you?”

  “That’s it. These days, you don’t need the full-time staff to manage a small shooting estate like Noze. On shoot days, we hire locals for beaters and pickers-up and such.”

  “Quite the operation.”

  “Nothing like when I was young. My father was gamekeeper at an estate up north, much bigger than Noze. There were seven men on staff.” He turned to look at Tom. “Why do you ask?”

  “About Adam?” Tom lifted his spoon. “At lunch, he told us about a professional forager, so called, Fergus somebody, camping out on your land—”

  “Not my land. Earl of Duffield’s.”

  “—harvesting dandelion leaves and chickweed and berries and the like—some of it for sale in town at the Tuesday market. Something about you nearly shooting him?”

  Tom smiled, but John looked offended. “I thought he was a poacher—”

  “And he turned out to be a fervid vegetarian, his jacket stuffed with purslane or something.”

  “I didn’t ‘nearly shoot him.’ ” John flashed a dark glance in Will’s direction as he bent towards his soup. “I don’t know how that got about. But he was trespassing, so I escorted him off the estate. In my dad’s day, you could still crack a few heads, but the law’s different now.” The last words were tinged with bitterness.

  “A friend of Adam’s, it turns out, this Fergus.”

  “Took courses in gamekeeping with Adam in Hampshire, but some anti turned his head.”

  That prefix again, Tom thought, lifting his spoon. Anti-development? -vivisectionist? -war? “You mean, not keen on shooting?” he asked.

  “An anti-blood-sports townie bitch, is what I mean.”

  “Ah, cherchez la femme,” he responded, startled by John’s uncharacteristic eruption of feeling.

  John bent towards his soup and nodded. “Jago’s daughter holds the same views,” he said in a low voice.

  “Kerra?”

  “No, the older one. Tamara. She’s up at Exeter these days, at university.”

  “Yes, I know. She came to lunch with Adam. They seem to be paired.”

  “Which is why Adam said nothing to me about this Fergus character trespassing. Tamara has her hooks well in.”

  Laughter rose in Tom’s throat. Tamara struck him as eminently sensible, Adam as rather gawky. Love-and-marriage, horse-and-carriage, a cosy-cottage-just-for-two seemed an unlikely outcome. They were both so young.

  “Are you suggesting Tamara is out to convert Adam to all things green and environmental?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Be patient.”

  “I’ve learned to wait.” John leaned away as Kerra came up behind to retrieve their soup bowls. Tom glanced at his profile and thought his words oddly freighted. There was a certain gravitas to John Copeland; his seriousness helped lend Sunday-morning services at St. Nicholas’s an added dignity. He suspected John still carried the burden of at least one private sorrow: His wife had died more than a decade before; they’d had no children. He had not remarried. Perhaps he was reluctant to commit himself, or, Tom thought worriedly, watching Kerra round the table and pick up Roger’s and Nick’s bowls, perhaps John had worn a rut down life’s pathway and become set in his ways.

  A high-pitched shriek snapped him out of his reverie. He glanced through the candle flame to see Kerra jerk her body, her laden tray tipping dangerously towards the unfamiliar man seated to Nick’s left. The shadowy light captured the smirk on Nick’s face; little imagination was needed for anyone on Tom’s side of the table to suss what had passed. Seated on Nick’s right, however, Jago merely raised a startled glance.

  “Kerra?” he said.

  “It’s nothing, Dad.” Kerra’s free hand straightened her skirt.

  “Nick!” Will barked. “We’re having none of that here.”

  “It’s just a bit of fun.” Nick cast his brother-in-law a look of cold disdain.

  Understanding flickered across Jago’s face. “You keep your bloody hands off my daughter.” He elbowed Nick’s shoulder.

  “Dad, it’s all right!” Kerra was insistent.

  “Sorry,” Nick muttered, his sour expression giving lie to his words. Then he shot out of his seat. “I’m going for a pee,” he announced, petulant as a child.

  “Nick, for heaven’s sake, we’re about to have the haggis. And that’s the servery door … oh, never mind.”

  “Make sure that’s all you do out there!” Jago shouted after him as Nick pushed through one of the two doors on the far wall. He folded his arms over his chest and glowered.

  “I apologise for my brother-in-law’s behaviour.” Will’s cheek twitched below his left eye.

  Jago shrugged. Roger, to his right, shifted his bulk. “Vic?” he prompted. “You might—”

  But Victor Kaif was already rising to leave. Tom watched him pass through the second door into the connecting hall, an awkward silence descending in his wake. Tom glanced at the other pipers down the table, men he didn’t know, roast-beef faces above black bow ties red with discomfiture or drink. Many, as if orchestrated, reached for whisky glasses all at once; others found a point of interest in their silverware or the arrangement of thistles and heather in a crystal bowl in the centre of the table.

  And then, suddenly, everyone broke into conversation, as if kindled by the tension in the room. Mark Tucker, who was sitting to his right, said in Tom’s ear: “Did you know the ancient Romans had a kind of haggis?”

  “I was rather hoping it was confined to a single ethno-cultural group.” Tom glanced at Mark, who seemed to be fiddling with something along the side of his leg.

  “Your first?”

  Tom nodded. “You?”

  “Third. I’ve been with the Thistle But Mostly Rose for four years, but Ruby was born at the New Year two years ago, so …” He trailed off. “Anyway, I was going to say that there’s a story that Marcus Aurelius poisoned his co-emperor, Lucius somebody or other—can’t remember the chap’s name—by using a knife smeared with poison on one side. You see, he gave old Lucius the half touched by the poisoned side of the blade. Clever, yes? Well, wicked, of course, but quite clever. I think I could use that.”

  “Should you, though? The consequences might not be wholly agreeable.”

  “No, I meant in some writing.”

  Tom regarded his seatmate. Mark was almost ridiculously fair-skinned, round-jawed, and cherubically curly on top. With his black horn-rims, he looked every inch a young accountant, which he was. He had accepted an appointment the previous year as the new treasurer on the parochial church council and Tom was enormously pleased with his proficiency at accounting and his ability to explain some of its more abstruse aspects without making everyone else in the group cross-eyed with boredom. It was as though Mark were born to accountancy. Both his father and his uncle were accountants, and he worked for them at Tucker, Tucker &Tucker in Totnes. Tom suspected he had been a sweet, agreeable little boy who had never questioned following in his father’s footsteps, until recently. He was reminded that Violet Tucker, Mark’s wife, and a young member of the Flower Guild, had broadly hinted that she wished he might sit down and have a bit of a man-to-man with Mark, who was having his midlife crisis well in advance of his peers. Mark, it seemed, was thinking of throwing accountancy over to—and here Violet rolled her eyes in despair—write. And not simply novels, but “bestsellers.” Possibly including poisoned knives.

  “You’re not by any chance reciting the address to the haggis, are you?” he asked Mark.

  “How did you guess?”

  “Well, for o
ne thing, you just pulled that knife out of your sock.”

  “Ah, my sgian dubh.”

  “And your anecdote about Marcus Aurelius suggests research.”

  Mark lifted the black-handled knife, the tip of which looked worryingly sharp. “Yes, I was rooting around. I wanted to make sure I plunge the knife in just so.” He made a stabbing motion with the instrument. “There was some jolly useful stuff on YouTube.”

  “I thought the master of ceremonies made the address.”

  “Yes, well …” Mark hesitated. “Will called earlier in the week and asked if I wouldn’t mind. And of course I didn’t. I’ve been practising for days. You did well with yours.”

  “Mine was only four lines.”

  Mark patted his chest. “No danger. I’ve written it out, just in case. I’ve always fancied a bit of acting, but putting bits of Gaelic to memory is a task.”

  “I wonder why …,” Tom began, then stopped himself. The change of personnel was none of his business.

  “Because …” Mark seemed to intuit the question, then hesitated, adding in a low voice, “He said he simply didn’t feel up to it.”

  They both stole a glance across the gleaming linen at Will. The low light cast unforgiving shadows on his lean features, accentuating the heavy lines on his brow and the bracketed flesh around his lips, downturned now as if he had descended into some private rumination. His lids then sank slowly over his eyes, not, Tom thought, in fatigue, but more in prayer attitude. But when a weary sigh followed, and Will’s body slumped a little in his chair, Tom felt an odd flicker of alarm. Indefatigability was Will’s usual mien. But then, Tom reflected, Will had seemed preoccupied much of the evening, as he had been at lunch the previous Sunday. He was about to turn back to Mark and lob a question about his adventures in writing when Will’s eyes shot open. He stared at them.

  “What?” he said.

  Mark replied. “I was just telling Tom that I would be addressing the haggis.”