Aha! So that was it! Mrs. Ridley-Smith was the sad-eyed woman in the photograph on Jocelyn’s wall.
“Was she ill?” I asked. “Before Jocelyn was born, I mean.”
“She was nervy,” Alf said. “Kept to ’erself, like. Spent all ’er time with ’er soldiers.”
He was watching me to see my reaction.
“Soldiers?”
“Tin soldiers. Thousands of ’em.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Tin soldiers? A grown woman playing with tin soldiers?
“She bought them for Jocelyn?” I asked.
“No, she died when ’e was born, remember.”
“Perhaps she was keeping them for when he was older.”
Alf smiled. “No. She had ’em since she was a girl. ’Anded down from ’er military ancestors. Each one ’ad added to the collection. It was ’er ’obby, like.”
“Soldiers,” I said. I could scarcely believe it.
“Soldiers,” Alf said, bending and picking up, piece by piece, the scattered pieces of cutlery from the floor. These he replaced in neat rows on the table, naming each as he set it gently into position.
“First Division ’ere,” he said. “First Madras European Regiment. Second Division here—First Madras and Bombay European Regiments.
“Third Division, ’Is Majesty’s Thirty-ninth Regiment of Foot, one of ’em—and God only knows which one—bein’ ’er great-great-great, or whatever ’e was, grandfather.
“Fourth Division, the Bombay European Regiment, and ’ere, two thousand sepoys, the native foot soldiers, the First Bengal Regiment, Royal Artillery.
“That’s us, then,” he finished. “All present and accounted for.”
“But what about the Nawab?” I asked. “What about his fifty thousand fighters?”
“Oh, they were there, right enough,” Alf said quietly. “Old Beatty said she ’ad a little toy figure for every one of ’em. Every last blinkin’ one.”
He let this sink in.
“You mean—?” I asked.
“That’s right, miss,” he said. “ ’Ad a room built special. Kept it locked up tight as the Treasury, she did. Nobody allowed in but ’erself. Old Beatty only knew about it ’cause ’e was called in one time to carry ’er out when she’d fainted. That didn’t stop ’im ’avin’ a good look round, though.”
I edged forward on my chair, begging with my eyes for more.
“The whole battlefield at Plassey, she ’ad, laid out like a model. Exact scale replica of the real thing. ’Uge, it was. Rocks, ’ills, pipe-cleaner trees. The Bhagirathi River was a mirror, tinted blue. Wonderful clever with their ’ands, the Indians. Filled the whole room, wall to wall to wall to wall. Marvelous to see, Old Beatty said.”
“And Mrs. Ridley-Smith—?”
“Locked ’erself away in there from mornin’ to night, movin’ the figures around, fightin’ the Battle of Plassey over and over and over again.”
“But her husband,” I said. “The magistrate, the chancellor—did he think she was—”
“Right in the ’ead? Nobody knows. ’E never mentions ’er name.”
A chill went through me. I would not think why until later.
“ ‘Depressed,’ they calls it nowadays. Back then it was more likely ‘the vapors’ or some suchlike.”
“What about her family? Were they like that, too?”
“Solid as rocks, the lot of ’em. Soldiers, lawyers, nabobs in the East India Company back to the year dot. They left ’er pretty well alone with ’er toys, at least accordin’ to old Beatty.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mullet,” I said, scraping back my chair and giving his hand a shake. “I’d better be getting along. I don’t want anyone to be worrying about me.”
The truth was, I needed to talk to Dogger immediately.
It was a matter of life and death.
As I pedaled past St. Tancred’s, my eye was caught by a crowd milling outside the front door of the church.
I skidded to a stop.
The vicar was standing in the porch, his hands raised.
“Gentlemen … gentlemen,” he was saying.
I parked Gladys against the wall and crept slowly forward through the crowd, trying not to be noticed. Most of the people were from Bishop’s Lacey, but a few of them were not.
One of the strangers was a tall, thin man in a gray trench coat and red bow tie with a notebook in his hand. At his side was another, shorter man, similarly dressed, holding a press camera up to his eyes.
“But they’re saying it’s a miracle, Vicar. Surely you can spare us a few words?”
The vicar tried without success to smooth down his disarranged hair, which was blowing in the wind. As he did so, a flashbulb went off.
“What did you think when you saw the blood?” another man called out. “We were told someone threw away their crutches. Is it true?”
A murmur went through the crowd.
“Gentlemen, please. All in good time.”
“What about the corpse in the crypt, Vicar?”
I could already see the sensational headlines in tomorrow’s Hinley Chronicle and The Morning Post-Horn and so, I knew, could the vicar.
THE CORPSE IN THE CRYPT! SAINT WEEPS BLOOD!
With that kind of publicity, the bishop would soon have him paddling to a new post somewhere up the Amazon. The press was ruthless, but then so was the Church.
“Gentlemen, please … we must remember that today is Good Friday. Nothing must be allowed to profane—”
“Let me through,” I shouted. “It’s an emergency. Please let me through.”
I pushed my way into the crowd and stepped up beside the vicar. Taking his elbow in my hand, I said in a stage whisper just loud enough to be overheard by the newspaper reporters, “I’m afraid she’s taken a turn for the worse, Vicar. The doctor says she may not last. They need you to come at once.”
I hopped from foot to foot, squinting horribly, trying to force a tear to my eye.
The vicar looked at me as if he had just awakened suddenly on another planet.
“Please,” I whimpered, then added in a loud and rising wail, “before it’s TOO LATE!”
I pulled at his arm, swung him round, dragged him into the porch, slammed the heavy door shut, and shot the iron bolt.
“Phew!” I said. “What a siege. Just like in Ivanhoe. We can sneak out through the vestry.”
The vicar looked at me for a moment with empty eyes. He was even more shaken than I had thought. This whole business was taking its toll, to say nothing of his troubles with Cynthia.
I walked him to one of the back pews and sat down beside him.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I told him. “I’ve almost got it figured out.”
His face, shaded with mauve from the colored windows above, turned reluctantly toward me.
“Oh, Flavia,” he said. “If only that were true.”