Twelve Drummers Drumming Read Online Free PDF Page B

Yes, “tear” wasn’t the word. The word was “slash,” or, rather, two slashes, neatly and crisply executed, one vertical, the other horizontal, forming a perfect Greek cruciform, with flaps of drum skin, released from tension, curled outwards from the new central opening. Whoever had cut the membrane had done it swiftly with a good sharp instrument. Then, as he had at St. Dunstan’s in Bristol, when he journeyed across the dimly lit nave towards the porch of the south door on the lookout for his curiously delayed wife and noted hymnbooks pitched onto the stone floor, Tom felt a twinge of unease. At St. Dunstan’s, he had quickened his pace, flung open the door to the porch, and gasped at the walls defiled by graffiti, stark even in the half-light of a November afternoon. He had stood almost in awe at the violence of the act, though that, unlike this vandalised drum, had less the mark of method. He felt stirrings of anger now as he had then, furiously picking up the hymnbooks before stumbling across the body of his wife and having his world crash around him. He must have made some involuntary movement, for Julia glanced at him sharply, and meaningfully, as though she could sense what was flashing in his brain.
    “Tom—” she began gently.
    But Colonel Northmore was beside them, walking stick in one hand, and Bumble, his Jack Russell, on a lead, in the other, Madrun flying behind, mug of tea in hand, the light glinting off the cat’s-eye spectacles she wore in fashion and out. “Disgraceful!” the colonel barked, then coughed, as though speaking cost him some effort. “Can’t imagine how that would happen.”
    Julia opened her mouth as if to retort, but turned her head away instead. Tom saw an accusatory look sharpen her eye like a needle. He moved to comfort her, but in doing so caught, just for a moment, the desertion of a devilish twitch to the colonel’s stone face, the endof a smile so fleeting, so uncharacteristic, he had to remind himself that it had been there. But at that moment he also caught the whiff of something else, a subtle, pheromonal presence in the hall’s unventilated air. It reminded him of moments in his ministry; it was a familiar, though never welcome, scent, not one characteristic of village halls in rural England. And when he smelled it, repulsion contended with pity. Only in one instance—that fateful afternoon at St. Dunstan’s—did pity sweep every other emotion aside.
    “Hey, there’s something in there,” Daniel shouted, pointing. Though fourteen and gangly, he was nearly as tall as Tom.
    Yes, there was something in there, but what? Tom’s anxiety grew as he moved to block Daniel from advancing nearer the drum. He glanced at Charlie, whose pocked face had gone as white as a new starched surplice.
    The breach in the drum skin was almost at eye level for Tom. He arched himself forwards, pushed one of the leathery flaps aside, and peered in. The interior was grey shadow, and in that shadow lay another—darker, more substantial. As his eyes adjusted to the thin light the membrane permitted, he could make out the contours of a figure supine in the basin of the drum, knees bent slightly to one side as if seeking comfort in the tiny space. A woman, he recognised instantly. The feet, opposite him, at the drum’s far end, were small and pointed in winklepicker boots. One arm rested awkwardly across the stomach like a pale stick. The face, turned in sympathy with the legs, was pushed forwards by the curve of the drum and partly obscured by a disarray of dark hair. But glinting along the scallop of one exposed ear was a row of small silver loops. His heart crashed. He stretched to seek purchase along the drum and looked into the figure’s face. There, along the ridge of her left eyebrow, were two more tiny silver hoops. That confirmed it.
    “It’s Sybella,” he said in a half whisper, turning to his expectant audience, glancing at his daughter. “She’s asleep.”
    He was a