Churchill had paid an autumnal visit to Uncle Tar at Buckshaw, and as they strolled together beside the Ornamental Lake, Churchill had offered a cigar (which, since his particular weakness was Pimm’s No. 2 Cup, Uncle Tar had politely refused) and said: “There is war in the wind, Tarquin. I can smell it. England can ill afford to lose a de Luce.”
I could almost hear the voice of that bulldog man uttering the words, which certainly had a Churchillian ring to them.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mullet,” Father was saying as my thoughts came back to the present. He was thanking her not for her tales of dire doings in the churchyard, but for the toad-on-the-road whose remains she was now removing from the table.
Daffy, marking her place in The Monk with one of the crepe paper serviettes we had been forced to adopt since “Hard Times” (her words) had fallen upon us, slipped silently from the room.
Father was not far behind her.
“Tell me about the sows in the churchyard, Mrs. Mullet,”
I said, now that we were alone. “I’ve become quite keen on Bible studies recently. In fact I’ve been thinking of starting a scrapbook of New Testament animals and their—”
“That isn’t safe for ears the likes of yours,” she replied, rather snappishly, I thought. “Alf says Mr. Ridley-Smith, the magistrate, tipped ’im off that ’tisn’t safe to be ’angin’ about that church till a elephant of justice ’as been served, which makes good sense to me.”
“Oh, piffle,” I said, changing tactics. “It’s no more than village gossip. Father’s always warning us about village gossip, and I think he’s quite right.”
I could hardly believe my mouth was saying this.
“Oh, village gossip, is it?” Mrs. Mullet snorted, putting down the stack of dishes she had been carrying and planting her hands on her hips. “Then tell me, if you please, miss, why they ’ad to call Dr. Darby to give Missus Richardson a shot after what she seen in the churchyard?”
I let my mouth loll open. If I could have drooled at will, I would have.
“Tell me,” I begged. “Please—what was it?”
Mrs. Mullet bit her lip, fighting like mad the urge to be discreet.
“A ghost a-comin’ up out of ’er grave! That’s what!” she said in a low, harsh voice, her eyes, wide as saucers, nervously scanning the four corners of the room.
“In daylight!” she added. “In broad daylight!
“Mind you, I’ve said nothin’.”
Although I was still a little shaky from my nightmare, I was soon pedaling back toward the church, as if drawn by a magnet. The fresh air would do me good, I thought: a bit more oxygen to spike the old seawater.
Even as I approached the churchyard, I could see that my way was barred. Although the blue Vauxhall was parked in a different spot from where it had been yesterday, it was still uncomfortably close to the front door. It was not Sergeant Woolmer who sat in it this time, but Sergeant Graves, my sister’s failed suitor.
I skidded to a stop, dismounted from Gladys, and ducked down behind the stone wall. How could I get past the man?
It is remarkable how the human mind works.
I was thinking of the church—which reminded me of hymns—when what popped into my head, as if by magic, were these words: “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.”
Hymn 373.
Of course!
Right there, growing wild along the wall, were the first flowers of spring: crocuses, snowdrops, primroses—even a huddle of daffodils which had likely been turfed out after some funeral or another and had taken wild refuge in the shelter of the stones.
I picked a sampling of these and gathered them into a quite decent bouquet, whose blues, yellows, and whites were dazzling in the morning sun. As a final touch, I removed one of my white hair ribbons and gave it several turns round the stems, tying it into an elaborate, and actually quite pretty, bow.
Then I walked up the path to the church door as bold as you please.
“Flowers for the altar,” I said, waving the bouquet under the sergeant’s nose as I swept past him.
What man would dare stand in my way?
I had almost reached the door when Sergeant Graves spoke.
“Hold on,” he said.
I stopped, turned, and raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Sergeant?”
He suddenly went all casual, shrugging and examining his fingernails as if what he were about to say didn’t matter, as if it were nothing—no more than an afterthought.
“Is it true what they say about your sister? I’ve heard she’s getting married.”
“Why, whoever told you that?”
I was fishing.
“The police hear things,” he said sadly, and as he spoke the words, I noticed that for the first time since I had met him, Sergeant Graves was not wearing his perpetual boyish smile.
“It might be only a rumor,” I said, unwilling to be the one to break the sergeant’s heart.
For a moment we stood staring into each other’s eyes: just a couple of human beings.
And then I turned away and stepped into the church.
To keep from hugging him.
The interior was a cool, dim, tinted twilight, and was filled with that vague and unnerving vibration that churches have when they are empty, as if the souls of those in the crypts below are singing—or perhaps cursing—at a pitch too high or too low for the rest of us to hear.
But what I was detecting now was no choir of souls. A choir of hornets was more like it: a rising and falling—what was that word that Daffy loved to use? Ululation? Yes, that was it, ululation: a faint howling, like the wail of distant air-raid sirens snatched away now and then by the wind.
I stood motionless beside a stone pillar.
The sound continued, echoing back from the vaulted roof.
I could see no one. I took a cautious step or two—and then a few more.
Was it coming from the organ casing in the chancel? Had a pipe become stuck? Or could it be the wind howling through a hole?
I remembered suddenly that I had come back to the church yesterday—before being distracted by the corpse of Mr. Collicutt—to look for a broken window through which a bat might have entered.
I tiptoed up the carpeted steps and into the chancel. The humming was louder here.
How odd! It almost seemed as if—yes, it was a tune. I recognized the melody: “Savior, When in Dust to Thee.”
Feely had been singing it as she practiced on the piano just a few days ago:
“Savior, when in dust to thee, low we bow the adoring knee.”
I had lingered in the hall to listen to the rather gruesome words:
“By the anguished sigh that told, treachery lurked within thy fold …”
Feely sang it with such feeling.
I remember thinking, They just don’t write hymns like that anymore.
The haunting words were running through my head now as I crept stealthily along the nave, all of my senses on alert for the source of the weird whining.
A floorboard creaked.
I turned my head slowly, the hair at the back of my neck standing on end.
There was nobody there. The humming stopped abruptly.
“Girl!”
It came from behind me. I spun round on my heel.
She was sitting in an oak clergy chair at the end of the choir stalls, whose elaborately carved wings had kept her hidden until I had come directly alongside. Hugely magnified eyes stared out at me through thick lenses which were also reflecting, in a most unsettling way, the dripping stained-glass colors of John the Baptist’s severed head.
It was Miss Tanty.
“Girl!”