Eleven Pipers Piping (28 page)

“Or,” Mark said after they worked silently for a moment, “someone in the village dies under mysterious circumstances.”

“Or that, yes.”

“Like Will.”

Tom started. “Do you think the circumstances of Will’s death mysterious?”

“I didn’t at the time, but …”

“You’ve heard the rumours about the tartlets, then.”

“Oh, yes. I guess most of the village knows by now. Sorry.” He shot Tom a rueful look.

“No one said anything this evening. Usually—at least at the beginning of the meetings—everything is discussed but the points on the agenda.”

“I think everyone’s a little frightened that Karla might bite our heads off if we talk about Mrs. Prowse that way.”

“True.” Karla Skynner was Madrun’s great friend in the village. The same age, they had grown up together, gone to the same school; neither had ever married. “Anyway.” Tom landed another wet cup on the draining board. “Your story. A village, a mysterious death. How might it have happened? Means?”

“Poison?”

“Well, yes, I suppose.” Tom sighed. Mark’s imagination didn’t really seem to fly above the already at-hand, such as Saturday’s tragedy. “Motive?”

“Let’s think. Money. That’s always a good one, isn’t it? Say, a wife kills her husband to get her hands on all the insurance money.”

Tom flicked Mark a sharp glance. Was this at-hand, too? “What brought that to mind?”

Mark seemed to stare through him. Slowly, a rising crimson tide seeped into his face. “I must have seen it in a film.”

“Which film?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Tom turned back to this task. “Well, it’s none of my concern.”

“You think I didn’t make that up?”

Tom shrugged. He didn’t wish to hurt Mark’s feelings, but none of his ideas so far would handily illustrate a dictionary definition of
sui generis
.

“I didn’t mean to suggest …,” Mark began awkwardly, then stopped. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “And it never occurred to me until a moment ago …”

“What didn’t occur to you?”

“And it’s probably nothing anyway. I’m
sure
it’s nothing—absolutely nothing.”

“Well, then—”

“Tom, I know you’re the soul of discretion, so I say this knowing you’d never say a word to anyone, but the thing is—gosh, I feel awful saying this—Will purchased some additional life insurance—for quite a sum—not that long ago.”

“How would you come to know that?”

Mark grimaced. “Someone told me. An insurance broker. You know the building I work in …?”

Tom did. It was a three-storey, Wedgewood-blue structure in the High Street in Totnes, knocked together from two former eighteenth-century merchants’ houses. Tucker, Tucker & Tucker occupied the ground floor, and he knew a dance studio occupied the top. Who was piggy in the middle suffering the noise of tapping feet, he didn’t know. Mark told him: It was the Mayhew Group, a firm of insurance agents.

“But ought insurance people to be so indiscreet?”

“No, never. Well, hardly ever. But Elk—Elkanah—Mayhew is a good mate of mine; went to uni together, and he’s a piper with the Thistle But Mostly Rose. You would have met him Saturday if the weather hadn’t been so awful. Anyway, I’d run up to fetch him for a Spinning class before—”

“Spinning?”

“Indoor cycling. We go a couple of times a week before lunch. Anyway, Elk was just showing Will out the door. I guess I was a bit surprised to see Will there. Elk told me after, I expect because he was rather surprised that Will had taken out a policy for such a large sum.”

“For what sum?” Tom couldn’t help asking.

“Half a million pounds.”

15 JANUARY

Dear Mum
,

It was lovely to get your note yesterday. It quite bucked me up. Mr. Christmas is quite adaman sure I have nothing to worry about really. The inquest opens in the v. hall later this morning, but Mr. C says there is no reason for me to attend, as he is sure it will be only a preliminary sort of thing and likely won’t last half an hour. I was quite relieved by this, but when I went to the post office yesterday, Karla said of course it’s only preliminary as the coronorer will be wanting the police to get on with their enquiries and that they’ll reconvene later once they know a thing or two. They’re going to treat it as a suspicious death, she said, and I wish she hadn’t used those exact words. Having our good Prowse name attached to a “suspicious death” makes me feel very downcast. Jago was peevish with me yesterday on the phone wondering why I don’t just buy my soft fruit at Sainsbury’s or Morrisons or even Pattimore’s like everyone else, which of course
I do! But I can’t abide the waste of all the local edable edible wild foods. Besides it was Dad who started me on this when he showed me his secret spot to find morels all those years ago—you know where it is, but I daren’t write it down lest someone besides you and Aunt Gwen should read this letter! How Mr. James-Douglas loved my braised chicken with morels and leeks! Anyway, Kerra must have heard Jago carrying on on the phone, so she came around to the vicarage yesterday for a visit and we had a nice cup of tea in the kitchen. Will Moir’s death has shaken her too, I’m sure, and I worry that she is blaming herself for what happened, as she was serving the meal. I asked Kerra if Molly said anything about the pastries I sent over with Mr. Christmas that night, as I can’t think who might have sent me that note and Molly seems likely as she was the cook for the Burns Supper, but Kerra said both of them were so run off their feet that they hardly talked about anything other than getting the
foot
food served. I asked who laid out my tartlets and Kerra said Molly put one tartlet on each plate with the cranachan, but because only half the Thistle But Mostly Rose reached the hotel in the storm, she put the leftovers on a silver platter, which Kerra put on the table if the men wanted extras. I must admit Kerra and I looked at each other and she wondered out loud if Molly might have tampered with the tartlets, as she is an odd sort of woman, really, and her husband is a homo homeopath and they use all sorts of poisons, but she has had terrible troubles lately with her son’s death and all so I really shouldn’t say this, but then neither of us could reckon how the wrong tartlet would have got into Will Moir’s hands. Molly didn’t tell Kerra to put THIS plate in front of THAT man and when she put the platter down on the table as nice as you please, Molly didn’t say, turn it this way or that way so that a particular tartlet would be near Will’s hand. We are both very puzzled. I’m sorry her first experience serving at Thorn Court went poorly. I thought once it was
renovated, it would be a much smarter place for Kerra to work part-time than at the Waterside, although if Nick Stanhope is set to hang about the hotel as he seems to be doing these days, then maybe it won’t be. Kerra said Nick took a liberty with her right in front of her father that night, which Jago was not best pleased about, but then Nick had the cheek to try it on again with her when she came upon him in the serving pantry. You mustn’t worry, Mum. Kerra has a strong will like her father and won’t put with that sort of malarkey. She’s up to her orange belt in karate, she told me, and I think Nick Stanhope felt the benefit of it that night! Serves him right. He’s one of those men who thinks he’s God’s gift and wants taking down a peg or two. Chip off the old block, says our houseguest, Judith, who knew Clive Stanhope when she was young, as the Frosts worked for the Stanhopes, as you remember, of course. My memories of Clive Stanhope are after he’d married that very nice Dorothy Lindsay and they’d had Caroline. Then there was some scandal about some other woman—can you remember her name? I can’t—which sent them off to Australia for a “fresh start”? I think Clive’s father died around the same time. Maybe Karla remembers. I shall ask her when I take this letter to post. Anyway, I was going to say, when I was at the post office yesterday and Karla was going on about Will’s death being “suspicious,” Enid Pattimore came in through the door, took one look at me, and went back out again, as if I were Typhoid Mary. Mum, I wouldn’t say this to anybody else, but I was very hurt, though of course I didn’t show it. I can’t think the last time I felt so cut by someone. Enid has always bought my pastries at the May Fayre and the bring-and-buy bake sale and has eaten them at the Harvest Festival and all those times when Mr. James-Douglas was incumbent, she came with Roger to Sunday lunch at the vicarage, which I cooked! Karla said to pay her no mind as it’s just her
hippocon hypocon
being so fixated on her health, Enid that is, and getting worse. I
suppose I shouldn’t have talked about my worries about the yewberries with Judith, but she could see I wasn’t my usual self after my conversation with Mr. C, so I couldn’t really NOT tell her, could I, Mum? Nice to have someone in the house who likes a good natter. I do miss Mr. J-D sometimes! Maybe Judith thought Florence Daintrey would keep it to herself, but she hasn’t seen Florence in more than 40 years so she doesn’t know what a cow she can be! Or maybe she forgot what village life is like. Anyway, Mr. C wasn’t quite his usual sympathetic self when he returned from visiting the Daintreys on Tuesday. Hoisted on your own petard, he said to me, or something to that effect, which I thought was a bit unfair as some of the talk I’ve heard in the village has been useful to him in the past! He did relent and say it would all come out anyway, what with this inquest and all. Still, to be cut by one of my oldest friends! Anyway, and you’ll be proud of me, Mum, after a few moments to gather my wits, I marched right across the road to Pattimore’s to give Enid a piece of my mind, but she had shot upstairs and there was only Roger in the shop and he wasn’t going to have his mother troubled. I did get out of him, though, that it wasn’t he him he who sent me the note asking for some baking for the Burns Supper. He said the first he’d learned of it was when he and Mr. Christmas were walking up Pennycross to the hotel last Saturday. I asked him who was on the pipe band’s menu-planning committee and he looked at me like I was mad. Of course, being men, they never think of these things. Apparently, at a band practice in November, someone said what do you fancy for your Burns Supper? and Nick Stanhope plumped for curry and they all agreed. I don’t know why they didn’t simply hire a private room at an Indian restaurant in Torquay, if it’s curry they wanted, but Will had said they could have Thorn Court, and I suppose Molly was the logical choice as chef. My experience is most everybody loves curry, but no one much cooks it, not properly, unless they’re Indian, or like
Molly who went a bit native when she married Victor who really isn’t very Indian at all. They might have asked me as I make a very good curry now. Mr. J-D never cared for it, but after Mr. C moaned on a bit a few months back how he hadn’t had curry in ages, I dug out the Madhur Jaffrey I’d bought at a book stall at the May Fayre years ago, and made a prawn
berroni biran
and rice dish, which he loved. Anyway, best I didn’t do the curry for the Burns Supper as who knows what people would be saying about me now! Well, I mustn’t dwell on this, must I. Worse things happen at sea, as Dad used to say. I’m so glad the weather is warming. The snow has made a good start at melting and Miranda’s snowman in the back garden looks a bit past caring. No banana frown now! Bumble snatched it off the ground and thought it a great treat, though I’m not sure if bananas are suited to dogs. The good news is that the Wassail is going ahead after all Saturday. Miranda says now they can start making their lanterns for the lantern procession! Well, I should wrap this up, as there is breakfast to get on with, as usual. I think Judith is staying on with us a few more days, though the roads have been passable enough that a detective constable from town was able to get through to take a statement from Judith, as she was the first to find Will’s body. Also, an estate agent from Leitchfield Turner is coming from Totnes tomorrow to show her the Tidy Dolly, which she is thinking of buying, but I’m not sure how keen she really is. If you’re retired with a bit of money, why not just buy a cottage in the village, put your feet up, and smell the roses? I asked. I like to keep busy, Judith said, which I understand as I do too. And she has been busy, walking about the village, fetching her car from Thorn Court and driving around the countryside, and she’s been busy on Mr. Christmas’s computer, too, so I think she’s trying to see if Thornford is the sort of place she’d like to stop in, life being circular, ending up in the place you started—a bit like you, Mum! Since she lost her husband a few
months back from Parkinson’s, which must have been very hard, she must still be in a bit of a state. Must go. The cats are pleased that the snow is melting, as am I. We are all as well here as can be hoped at the moment. I will be very glad when this day is over, but I hope yours is good. Love to Aunt Gwen
.

Much love,
Madrun

P.S. At least the weather won’t keep Karla and me from Tenerife, but now I’m worried this inquest will!

P.P.S. Letitia Woolnough rides a mobility scooter, by the way. It’s a very distinguished black and it looks quite smart I think
.