Either that or:
“We Three Kings of Leicester Square,
Selling ladies’ underwear,
So fantastic, no elastic,
Only tuppence a pair.”
—until Feely flung a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern at my head. One thing I have learned about organists is that they have absolutely no sense of humor.
“Feely,” I said, “I’m freezing.”
I shivered and buttoned up my cardigan. It was bitterly cold in the church at night. The choir had left an hour ago, and without their warm bodies round me, shoulder to shoulder like singing sardines, it seemed even colder still.
But Feely was submerged in Mendelssohn. I might as well have been talking to the moon.
Suddenly the organ gave out a fluttering gasp, as if it had choked on something, and the music gargled to a stop.
“Oh, fiddle,” Feely said. It was as close to swearing as she ever came—at least in church. My sister was a pious fraud.
She stood up on the pedals and waddled her way off the organ bench, making a harsh mooing of bass notes.
“Now what?” she said, rolling up her eyes as if an answer were expected from Above. “This stupid thing has been misbehaving for weeks. It must be the damp weather.”
“I think it died,” I told her. “You probably broke it.”
“Hand me the torch,” she said after a long moment.
“We’ll have a look.”
We?
Whenever Feely was frightened out of her wits, “I” became “we” as quick as a flash. Since the organ at St. Tancred’s was listed by the Royal College of Organists as a historic instrument, any damage to the dear old thing would probably be considered an act of national vandalism.
I knew that Feely was already dreading having to break the bad news to the vicar.
“Lead on, O Guilty One,” I said. “How do we get at the guts?”
“This way,” Feely answered, quickly sliding open a concealed panel in the carved woodwork beside the organ console. I hadn’t even time to see how the trick was done.
Switching on the torch, she ducked through the narrow opening and vanished into the darkness. I took a deep breath and followed.
We were in a musty Aladdin’s cave, hemmed in on all sides by stalagmites. In the sweep of the torch’s beam, organ pipes towered above us: pipes of wood, pipes of metal, pipes of all sizes. Some were as small as pencils, some like drain spouts, and others as large as telephone posts. Not so much a cave, I decided, as a forest of giant flutes.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing to a row of tall, conical pipes which reminded me of pygmy blowguns.
“The Gemshorn stop,” Feely said. “They’re supposed to sound like an ancient flute made from a ram’s horn.”
“And these?”
“The Rohrflöte.”
“Because it roars?”
Feely rolled her eyes. “Rohrflöte means ‘chimney flute’ in German. The pipes are shaped like chimneys.”
And sure enough, they were. They wouldn’t have been out of place among the chimney pots of Buckshaw.
Something hissed suddenly and gurgled in the shadows and I threw my arm round Feely’s waist.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“The wind chest,” she said, aiming the torch at the far corner.
Sure enough, in the shadows, a huge leather trunklike thing was slowly exhaling with various bronchial wheezings and hissings.
“Super!” I said. “It’s like a giant’s accordion.”
“Stop saying ‘super,’ ” Feely said. “You know Father doesn’t like it.”
I ignored her and, threading my way among some of the smaller pipes, hauled myself up onto the top of the wind chest, which gave out a remarkably realistic rude noise and sank a little more.
I sneezed—once—twice—three times—in the cloud of dust I had stirred up.
“Flavia! Come down at once! You’re going to rip that old leather!”
I got to my feet and stood up to my full height of four foot ten and a quarter inches. I’m quite tall for my age, which is almost twelve.
“Yaroo!” I shouted, waggling my arms to keep my balance. “I’m the King of the Castle!”
“Flavia! Come down this instant or I’m telling Father!”
“Look, Feely,” I said. “There’s an old tombstone up here.”
“I know. It’s to add weight to the wind chest. Now get down here. And be careful.”
I brushed away the dust with my hands. “Hezekiah Whytefleet,” I read aloud. “1679 to 1778. Phew! Ninety-nine. I wonder who he was?”
“I’m switching off the torch now. You’ll be alone in the dark.”
“All right,” I said. “I’m coming. No need to get owly.”
As I shifted my weight from foot to foot, the wind chest rocked and subsided a little more, so that I felt as if I were standing on the deck of a swamped ship.
Something fluttered just to the right of Feely’s face and she froze.
“Probably just a bat,” I said.
Feely gave a shriek, dropped the torch, and vanished.
Bats were high on the list of things that turned my sister’s brains to suet pudding.
A further fluttering, as if the thing were confirming its presence.
Picking my way gingerly down from my perch, I retrieved the torch and dragged it along the rank of pipes like a stick on a picket fence.
A furious leathery flapping echoed in the chamber.
“It’s all right, Feely,” I called out. “It is a bat, and it’s stuck in a pipe.”
I popped out through the hatch into the chancel. Feely was standing there in an angled beam of moonlight, as white as an alabaster statue, her arms wrapped round herself.
“Maybe we can smoke it out,” I said. “Got a cigarette?”
I was being facetious, of course. Feely was death on smoking.
“Maybe we can coax it out,” I suggested helpfully. “What do bats eat?”
“Insects,” Feely said blankly, as if she were struggling awake from a paralyzing dream. “So that’s no use. What are we going to do?”
“Which pipe is it in?” I asked. “Did you happen to notice?”
“The sixteen-foot diapason,” she said shakily. “The D.”
“I have an idea!” I said. “Why don’t you play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor? Full throttle. That ought to fix the little sod.”
“You’re disgusting,” Feely said. “I’ll tell Mr. Haskins about the bat tomorrow.”
Mr. Haskins was the sexton at St. Tancred’s, who was expected to deal with everything from grave-digging to brass-polishing.
“How do you suppose it got into the church? The bat, I mean.”
We were walking home between the hedgerows. Scrappy clouds scudded across the moon and a raw crosswind blew and tugged at our coats.
“I don’t know and I don’t want to talk about bats,” Feely said.