And I thought—for some peculiar reason—of the dead Mr. Collicutt.
Mr. Collicutt, of course, had not lain in his blood on the highway with a bunch of lace at his throat—but he might as well have.
It came back to me in a flash like a news reporter’s camera.
He had been wearing a bunch of lace at his throat.
Or something very much like it.
The Highwayman had died for love, hadn’t he? To warn him that the inn was swarming with King George’s men, the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, Bess, had shot herself in the breast.
They had both died.
Would there be another victim in Bishop’s Lacey? Were Mr. Collicutt’s killers already plotting to silence someone else—someone who had loved the unfortunate organist?
I moved slowly up the center aisle, touching the ends of every row of pews with my fingertips, absorbing the security of the ancient oak.
There was just enough light to make my way up the chancel steps to the organ without using the torch.
Back to business, I decided.
Although the wall panel was nearly invisible, Feely had opened it easily. Would I be able to find the latch?
I ran my fingers over the polished wood and the carved moldings, but they were as solid as they looked. I pressed here and there—it was no use.
The face of a carved wooden imp grinned at me saucily in the shadows. I touched his puffed-out polished cheeks and gave them a twist.
There was a click and the panel slid open.
I stepped carefully inside.
Closing the panel behind me, I switched on the torch.
Praise be to Saint Tancred, the patron saint of Evidence!
There on the floor, in the beam of light, were Feely’s footprints and my own in the dust. Nobody had walked over them. The police had seen no reason to examine the organ case. Why should they, after all? It was nowhere near the spot where Mr. Collicutt’s body had been hidden.
Even Mr. Haskins hadn’t been in here to extract the bat from the organ pipe—I could spot the prints of his grave-digger boots a mile away—which meant, most likely, that the bat’s carcass was still at the bottom of the sixteen-foot diapason.
Rest in peace, little creature, I thought.
The thing had got in through the coalhole, I supposed, during the nighttime comings and goings of whoever had stuffed Mr. Collicutt into the wall of the crypt.
I gave the pipe a tap with my knuckles, but nothing stirred. The bat was almost certainly dead.
My torch illuminated a couple of fresh gouges in the wood of the organ frame. I dropped to my knees for a closer look.
Yes, there could be no doubt about it—
“Crikey!”
I nearly leaped out of my skin as, in the far corner, the wind chest gave out a dry wheeze. The tombstone of Hezekiah Whytefleet had settled, forcing wind into the organ’s works.
There was also a hissing behind me.
I swung round the torch’s beam and at once spotted the source of the noise. Set into the wooden ductwork was a round, drilled hole, slightly smaller in diameter than a lead pencil, and it was through this that the air was hissing.
On the floor directly beneath it was a dried red stain.
As I took a step forward, something crunched under the sole of my shoe.
I knew even without looking that it was glass.
My own laboratory work had made me quite familiar with the principle of the manometer: that liquid-filled, U-shaped glass tubing which was used to measure air pressure.
It made good sense that the organ would have been fitted with such a device to measure the pressure from the wind chest. The tube, marked in inches, would, until recently, have been partially filled with colored alcohol, its level giving the required reading, very much like an outdoor thermometer.
All that now remained of the manometer, besides the gritty glass crumbs on the floor, was the jagged ring of hollow glass where it had been snapped off level with its wooden socket.
The rest of the glass tubing, if I were any judge at all, I had seen clutched in the hand of the late Mr. Collicutt.
It was here on this spot, in the very heart of the great organ that he had loved and played, that the organist met his death.
I was sure of it.
I didn’t have a pocketknife to scratch away a sample of the red-colored stain, but that wasn’t much of a problem. To avoid contaminating it with my fingers, I would unscrew the back of the torch and use the tin casing as a makeshift scraper.
It was only as I pointed the beam at my knees that I realized what I had done to my clothing. My best black coat looked as if I had been rolled in ashes. It was streaked with slime from the grave, caked with mud from the tunnel, and covered over with a layer of dust. Another item to be consigned to the flames.
My face, I supposed, was no better. I ran the back of my hand across my forehead and it came away darkened with disgusting juices.
Better have a good washup, I thought. I hoped there was a source of water somewhere in the church. If so, and given the number of hours until daylight, I might even manage to make myself respectable in time for breakfast.
Of course! I thought. The font!
I stepped carefully out of the organ chamber and into the apse, taking care not to wipe myself against the ecclesiastical furniture.
If need be, I might even make a raid on the Communion wine to use as a spotting solution.
I let out a dry snort at the thought of the vicar’s likely reaction. The look on his face—
A piercing scream shattered my thoughts.
I spun round and found myself face-to-face with an apparition dressed all in black.
My blood ran cold. It took my startled brain several seconds to recognize this seeming phantom.
It was Cynthia Richardson.
She had seen me come floating out of a blank wall, my clothing, if anything, more grave-stained than before.
Her mouth was still hanging open from the scream, her eyes bugging out.
“Hannah!” she gasped.
Her eyes rolled up into her head and she crumpled to the floor as if she had been shot in the heart.
My spine was suddenly a trickle of ice water.
“Hannah” had been the name the vicar had cried out in his sleep, the night he and Cynthia had been trapped by a storm at Buckshaw.
“Hannah, please! No!”
I could still hear his tortured whisper in my mind.
I had wondered then who Hannah might be, and I wondered now as I stared down at the unconscious Cynthia Richardson.
Unconscious? Or was she dead?
Had she died of fright? People had been known to do that.
I knelt down beside her and put a finger to the angle of her jaw, just as I had seen Dogger do on more than one occasion. The strong, steady pulsing was impossible to miss.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t killed her after all.
Next thing was to make sure that she was comfortable and breathing properly. From my Girl Guide training in first aid I remembered that shock victims must, at all costs, be kept warm.
I peeled off my heavy coat and covered her, thinking how pitifully small the woman was: scarcely bigger than me.
As I listened at her mouth to the breath rushing in and out—in and out—I thought about the time Cynthia had caught me climbing the altar to scrape a sample of blue zafre from a medieval stained-glass window for chemical analysis. Cynthia had put me over her knee and spanked me on the spot, making improper use of a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern.
It was almost comical, in retrospect, but not quite. I had still never completely forgiven her for the first real punishment—other than from my sisters, of course—that I had ever received in my life.