Except for a starched white doily for a collar, she was dressed all in black bombazine, as if her clothing had been stitched together from the cloth under which the photographer hides his head before squeezing the rubber bulb.
“Girl! What are you up to?”
“Oh, good morning, Miss Tanty. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
My words were greeted with rather a rude grunting noise.
“You were skulking, and don’t pretend you weren’t.”
In ordinary circumstances, someone who spoke to me like this never saw another sunrise. In my mind, at least, I dealt out poisons with a happy hand.
But in this case, because I needed information, I decided to make an exception.
“I wasn’t skulking, Miss Tanty. I brought some flowers to put on the altar.”
I shoved them almost into her face and the huge goggles moved from side to side, examining the blooms and stems as if they were colored serpents.
“Hmph,” she said. “Wildflowers. Wildflowers have no place on the altar. A girl of your breeding ought to know that.”
So she knew who I was.
“But—” I said.
“But me no buts,” she said, holding up a hand. “I am Chairman of the Altar Guild, and as such, it is my business to know what’s what. Give them here and I shall throw them on the rubbish heap on my way out.”
“I heard you humming,” I said, putting the flowers behind my back. “It sounded lovely, what with all the echoes and so forth.”
Actually, it hadn’t sounded lovely. “Eerie” was more the word. But Rule 9B was this: Change the Subject.
“Savior, When in Dust to Thee,” I said. “One of my favorite hymns. I recognized it even without the words. You have such a wonderful voice, Miss Tanty. They must always be simply pleading with you to make phonograph recordings.”
You could feel the thaw. In an instant, the temperature in the church went up by at least 10 degrees Celsius (or 283 degrees Kelvin).
She patted her hair.
And then without a word of warning, she drew in a deep breath and, with her hands clasped at her waist, began to sing:
“Savior, when in dust to thee, low we bow the adoring knee.”
There was no doubt she had a remarkable voice: a voice that, because of the way in which (at least at close range) it rattled your bones, might even have been called “thrilling.” It seemed to originate from somewhere deep in her body; from down among her kidneys, I guessed.
“By thy deep expiring groan, by the sad sepulchral stone,
“By the vault whose dark abode …”
Her voice swept over me in waves, enveloping me in a kind of warm dankness. She sang all five verses.
And what feeling Miss Tanty put into the words! It was almost as if she were taking you on a guided tour of her own life.
When she had finished, she sat transfixed, as if dazed by her own powers.
“That was super, Miss Tanty!” I said—and it was.
I don’t think she heard me. She was staring up into the colored light, at Herodias and Salome, those two triumphant women etched in acid into glass.
“Miss Tanty?”
“Oh!” she said with a start. “I was somewhere else.”
“That was magnificent,” I said, having had time to choose a more refined word.
Her great bulging eyes swiveled round and focused on me like a pair of spotlights. “Now then,” she said. “The truth. I want the truth. What are you up to?”
“Nothing, Miss Tanty. I just brought these flowers …”
I produced them from behind my back. “… to place on the altar …”
“Yes?”
“In memory of poor Mr. Collicutt.”
A hiss came out of her.
“Give them here,” she rasped, and before I could protest, she stood and snatched the posies from my hand.
“Don’t waste your crocuses,” she said.