Bethany went up to London for the weekend and Arthur spent Saturday afternoon digging through the cathedral records trying to find lists of choirboys, but without success. His schedule at the university the following week was so hectic that he did not make it back to the library until Thursday afternoon. That morning Gwyn had informed him that the manuscripts had received a temporary stay of execution in the latest chapter meeting.
“One of the canons pointed out that the manuscripts are worth considerably less with their covers ripped off,” said Gwyn. “So Canon Dale suggested that we have the covers repaired and I said that nobody knows where the covers are, and we ended up tabling the whole issue. Do we know where the covers are?”
“I certainly don’t,” said Arthur. “And Oscar has no idea. If it keeps the manuscripts here, I say the covers can stay lost forever.”
He had been looking forward all day to some time in the library, and he was surprised to find as he mounted the stairs that he had really been looking forward to seeing Bethany. Since she had found the newspaper story so easily he thought she might have an idea about how to track down old choirboys. But when he arrived in the library the atmosphere seemed lifeless. Bethany’s equipment stood silent at the far end of the room, and she was nowhere to be seen.
Arthur sat at his usual table, feeling somewhat deflated, and had just been about to try, for the hundredth time, to write a section in his cathedral guide about the central tower when he heard a voice behind him.
“Arthur,” said Oscar, “escaped the Barchester prison, I see.”
“An insufferably busy week,” said Arthur, pushing back his chair. “I think the chairman invents committees to infuriate me.”
“Well, good to see you here. I was just catching up on some library correspondence. Don’t want to disturb you.”
“I say, Oscar, is Beth . . . I mean, is Miss Davis working today?”
“Gone out for tea, I think,” said Oscar. “Apparently she’s a regular down in the café these days. Did you need her for something?”
“No,” said Arthur. “Just wondered how long I’ll be able to work in peace.” Oscar suppressed a smile as he took a seat at his desk by the door. Arthur chose not to notice and turned back to his work. He had read his first and only sentence over about ten times, until the words swirled before him as meaningless strings of characters, when he thought to ask Oscar something else. “Do you know where the records of choir membership are kept?”
“Moved them to the choral office a few years ago,” said Oscar, “along with some other music-related materials. The choir rolls are in a bound book and the choirmaster got tired of coming up here every year to make the new entries.”
Ten minutes later, Arthur was in the music office, copying out the names of the sixteen 1941 choirboys onto the back of an old service bulletin. He was about to rush back upstairs when he remembered what else was kept in that office.
“Do you have the original copy of Harding’s Church Music?” he asked the choirmaster.
“Certainly, I keep it in this cabinet,” said the choirmaster, pulling a small key out of his pocket. In a moment the two men were poring over a sumptuous vellum volume produced in the mid-nineteenth century by Barchester’s own Septimus Harding. Harding had done much of his research for this book about early church music in Britain in the cathedral library, and made frequent reference to the Barchester Breviary, reproducing many of the musical settings from that book. As they turned the broad pages and admired the fine printing, Arthur thought that this book came from a time when the library was a much busier place, when it sent its knowledge and treasures out into the world not as electronic impulses but as new works of scholarship. The trade edition of Harding’s Church Music was still occasionally reprinted and was a standard reference for choir directors and music teachers around the world. If the Barchester Cathedral Library could produce something that beautiful and useful, perhaps it still had more to contribute. Maybe the library could once again be part of a network of scholars and researchers who wrote new works to share with the world.
“He produced a beautiful book,” said the choirmaster.
“He certainly did,” said Arthur.
—
“Where’ve you been all my life, Arthur Prescott?” said Bethany as Arthur entered the library. Oscar had left, and Bethany was just pulling a manuscript off shelf C. Arthur found himself hoping that she was not scanning the volumes in order, that she had not already made so much progress.
“You’re the one who went traipsing off to London,” said Arthur. “I was here all day on Saturday. And I’ve been working on our little mystery while you’ve been out guzzling tea.”
“You can’t blame me for the tea, Arthur. That’s your culture. Help me with this, will you?” The manuscript she was struggling to remove from the case was an unusually thick and heavy one, and the rending of its cover had left a loose bit of linen tape hanging from the spine. This had gotten caught under the adjacent volume. Arthur helped Bethany extract the book. When they had placed the manuscript on Bethany’s stand, she said, “There, now you’ve done at least one useful thing today.”
“I’ve done two useful things,” said Arthur. “I’ve got a list of the choirboys from 1941.”
“You don’t!”
“I do. Why else would I have said so?”
“It’s a figure of speech, Arthur,” said Bethany. “So, are any of them alive and well and living in Barchester?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Arthur, “I only just . . .”
“I thought you said you’d done something useful,” said Bethany. “You’re not too bad at coming up with primary source material, Arthur, but you’re rubbish at interpreting it.”
“I’m rubbish?”
“See, I’m picking up the English idiom. Another couple of weeks and I’ll be just like you. Now show me your list.”
Arthur handed her the bulletin on which he had scrawled the names of the choirboys and she immediately disappeared behind her laptop.
“Not much to go on, I realize,” said Arthur. “But I can ask some of the vergers if any of the names are familiar. Some of those men have been around for fifty years or more. They might remember . . .”
“This one’s dead,” said Bethany. “Herbert Foster died in 1982.”
“How do you . . .”
“The Internet is a wonderful thing, Arthur, if only you know how to use it. It’s good for a lot more than buying old books and looking at dirty pictures.”
“I beg your pardon, but I have never—”
“And James Lindsay—he’s dead as well. He was a schoolteacher.” Within thirty minutes, Bethany had found evidence that seven of the sixteen choirboys had died. “Some of these names are pretty common,” she said, “so I’m only counting the ones that seem to have some sort of connection to Barchester.” She showed Arthur how she was searching not just the local newspaper in the British Newspaper Archive, but various genealogy sites and even social media. Before Evensong, she had tracked down two survivors of the 1941 choir—one living in London and one still in Barchester at the River View Elder Care home.
“Are you a believer yet, Arthur?” said Bethany.
“Not yet,” said Arthur, “but I’m going to Evensong nonetheless. It’s the Tallis Mag and Nunc tonight.”