Twelve Drummers Drumming-A Mystery by C. C. Benison

Author:C. C. Benison [Benison, C. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective, holiday, cozy
ISBN: 0385344457
Google: idX4FsJPgLQC
Amazon: B004LROUWW
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Published: 2011-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Third time today.”

“What?”

“I say, it’s the third time today we’ve run into each other.”

“Hardly ‘run into.’ ” Màiri White eyed him, sipping something pale from a plastic flute glass. “The first two were scheduled events.”

“That’s true,” Tom responded awkwardly to this blunt truth. “But somehow I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Oh, aye. ‘What’s the plod doing at a cultural event?’ you ask yourself.”

“That’s not it at all.” Tom was dismayed “I just thought … I don’t know what I was thinking … that you live over at Pennycross? That …?”

That you have a husband/boyfriend/partner/four cats/three dogs/two children/and a budgerigar in a pear tree—all of which so absorb your off-hours you don’t have a moment to catch a rerun of The Bill, much less swill pinot grigio at an art opening.

“… That … that …” he continued stammering.

A smile plucked at the corners of Màiri’s mouth. “You’re an earnest bugger, Tom Christmas. I’m no stranger to the odd art opening, and I think Mitsuko Drewe’s a clever lass, and I like to see what she’s up to, but I’m mainly here to keep my eye on you lot in this murderous village.”

“Hardly mur—”

“Keep your eyeballs in your head, Vicar. No one can hear us.”

It was true. The village hall’s large hall had a herring-barrel quality to it this Thursday evening, with folk edging and twisting around each other for advantage in art inspection and nosh acquisition, ratcheting up the volume into a range more hubbubby than murmurry, with only the hanging quilts acting as damper. It seemed like tout le village—as Ghislaine might have said—had come out.

“It’s a bit of a crowd, isn’t it?” Màiri said.

“You’re not in uniform,” Tom observed, noting her light blue jumper and neat black trousers over her slender hips.

“I don’t live in the bloody thing, you know. Not like you.” She gestured towards his neck. “You’ll asphyxiate yourself.”

Tom ran his finger around his dog collar and let his tongue hang unfetchingly outside his mouth. “It’s my housekeeper’s cooking. I think she’s fattening me up for market.”

“What market?”

“I’m not sure,” he replied, though the marriage market flitted through his head as an implausibility. He thought he discerned a certain cunning in Madrun: Perhaps her intent was to transform him into a ball of butter, so unattractive no woman would ever think to displace her in the vicarage.

“I don’t recognise some of these people.” Tom changed the subject, looking over Màiri’s shoulder. “Of course, I haven’t been in Thornford long enough to know everyone. And not everyone comes to church.”

“I think there’s one or two who aren’t here to appreciate the art.”

“You mean—?”

“Takes all sorts,” she murmured darkly.

Tom grunted. He was familiar with the voyeuristic response to crime. After Lisbeth’s death, he had observed a few strangers in the sanctuary, gazing not at the stained glass or the memorial plaques, but at the stone tiles near the south porch that had once been stained with blood. And his first Sunday returned to the pulpit, though he

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