• TWENTY •
HOW COULD A SINGLE village, nestled miles from anywhere in the English countryside, contain both a Miss Tanty and a Miss Alberta Moon? Mathematically speaking, of course, Providence should have placed them at opposite ends of the country—one at Land’s End and the other at John o’ Groat’s.
I was thinking this as I came down the west staircase, Feely’s bagged sheet full of soot in my hand. I would scatter the stuff somewhere on the Visto, where it would sooner or later be washed away by the rain. I had already found a clean sheet in a cupboard and installed it quite neatly on Feely’s bed. I would wash this one in the laboratory, hang it up to dry in my bedroom, and return it to storage at my leisure. No one would be any the wiser.
Feely was standing at the bottom of the stairs, tapping her foot.
I almost turned and ran, but I did not. Something in me froze my legs. Oh, well, sooner or later, she would find me anyway. There was no real escape. I might as well take my medicine now and get it over with.
As I stepped awkwardly off the last step, Feely came flying at me.
I dropped the sheet, soot and all, and covered my eyes.
She seized me by the shoulders. She was going to crush the breath out of me—break my ribs, like the hulking American wrestlers we had seen in the newsreel at the cinema.
“You were magnificent!” she said, giving me a squeeze.
“Thank you!”
I broke free, not trusting her.
“A few minutes ago, you hated me,” I pointed out.
“That was then—this is now,” Feely said. “I’ve had time to consider it. Perhaps I was a bit hasty.”
I knew that this was as close to an apology as I was likely to receive from Feely in this or any other lifetime.
“ ‘Stupid old sea cow’!” Feely said, shaking her head. “You ought to have seen her face. I thought for a moment she was going to have an accident on our carpet.”
My sister could be remarkably crude when she forgot herself.
“You’re welcome,” I said, still basking a bit in Feely’s unexpected thanks and wanting the feeling to last for as long as possible.
With this abrupt ending of hostilities, my brain was suddenly bubbling over with goodwill, simply dying to share with her the news that she might have the blood of a saint flowing in her veins—to tell her about poor little Hannah Richardson, the tomb of Cassandra Cottlestone, and my discovery of Jocelyn Ridley-Smith.
I wanted to hug her, as I had hugged Daffy. I wanted to embrace her bones.
But I could not. It was as if both of us had been born north poles of the same magnet—as if, because of it, we should have been identical but were, in fact, repellent to each other—forever pushed apart by some mysterious but invisible power.
“When’s the funeral?” I asked lamely.
“Next Tuesday,” Feely said. “After Easter is out of the way.”
Although I was a little surprised to hear my pious sister refer to one of the greatest festivals of the Church as something to be got out of the way, I said nothing. I was learning, at least where Feely was concerned, to hold my tongue.
“Will they be having an open coffin?” I asked.
I was certainly hoping they would. It would be better, I thought, to remember Mr. Collicutt without the gas mask.
“Heavens, no,” Feely said. “The vicar does not approve of open caskets. In fact, he strongly discourages the practice. The Order for the Burial of the Dead emphasizes the resurrection, not the death. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.’ ”
“I expect it puts a bit of a damper on things to have a corpse lying there bang in the middle with a poker face,” I said.
“Flavia!”
“Speaking of poker faces,” I said, “I ran into Miss Tanty in the church.”
I did not mention that there had been blood dripping from the rafters.
“So I am given to understand,” Feely said.
Blast! Was there no privacy in this village?
But who could have told her? Certainly not the vicar, and even more certainly not Adam Sowerby. She didn’t even know the man. Mad Meg, of course, was out of the question.
Feely must have seen the look of puzzlement on my face.
“ ‘The successful organist,’ ” she quoted, “ ‘must have fingers long enough to reach the stops, legs long enough to reach the pedal board, and ears long enough to reach into the lives of every choir member.’ Whanley on the Organ and Its Amenities, chapter thirteen, ‘Management of the Choristers.’
“Actually, I heard it from the lips of Jezebel herself,” she admitted.
“Jezebel?”
I had made a note to pry Miss Tanty’s details out of Feely, but had hardly expected them to come gushing out before I had even, so to speak, fingered the lock.
“Oh, surely you must have noticed,” Feely said. “Those two old harpies, Miss Moon and Miss Tanty, primping and preening, hurling themselves onto the ashes at the feet of poor Mr. Collicutt. It was like watching a Roman chariot race.”
“And the perfumes!” I said, eager to join in the game. “Backfire and Evening in Malden Fenwick.”
“Jealousy,” Feely added, and I wondered for a moment why I didn’t talk to my sister more often.
But our laughter faded quickly, as it often does when it is artificial, and we were left in an embarrassed silence.
“Why would Miss Tanty cry out, ‘Forgive me, O Lord,’ when she saw the blood?”
I was assuming Miss Tanty had told Feely about the blood.
“Because she needs to be the center of attention—even when a saint bleeds.”
“She told me it was a performance,” I said, not volunteering that I had heard this later at Miss Tanty’s house. “She fancies herself a detective and wants to become involved in the case—wants someone to think she may even be the killer.”
“The killer?” Feely snorted. “Horse eggs! She couldn’t see to kill an elephant if it were standing on her toes. And as for being a detective, why, the woman couldn’t find her own bottom if it weren’t buttoned on.”
“God bless her all the same,” I said. It was a formula we used whenever we had gone too far.
“God bless her all the same,” Feely echoed, rather sourly.
“Which leaves Miss Moon,” I suggested subtly.
“Why would Miss Moon kill Mr. Collicutt?” Feely asked. “She doted on him. She brought him bags full of her dreadful homemade saltwater toffee. She even took it upon herself to wash his surplices and handkerchiefs.”
“Really?” I asked, my mind flashing instantly to the white ruffle protruding from the gas mask.
“Of course,” Feely said. “Mrs. Battle has always drawn the line at doing her boarders’ laundry.”
Which gave me an idea.
“Your ears are already long enough to reach into the lives of every choir member,” I said with a grin. “You’re going to make a whizzo organist, Feely!”
“Yes, I expect I am,” she agreed. Then, pointing to the sooty bundle on the floor, she added, “Now clean up this god-awful mess before I tell Father.”