• THREE •
IT WAS ONE OF those glorious days in March when the air was so fresh that you worshipped every whiff of it; that each breath of the intoxicating stuff created such new universes in your lungs and brain you were certain you were about to explode with sheer joy; one of those blustery days of scudding clouds and piddling showers and gum boots and wind-blown brollies that made you know you were truly alive.
Somewhere, off to the east in the woods, a bird was singing: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we-to-witta-woo.
It was the first day of spring, and Mother Nature seemed to know it.
Gladys squeaked with delight as we rattled through the rain. Even though she was considerably older than me, she loved a good run on a damp day as much as I did. She had been manufactured at the bicycle branch of the British Small Arms factory in Birmingham before I was born, and had originally belonged to my mother, Harriet, who had named her l’Hirondelle, “the swallow.”
I had rechristened her Gladys because of her happy nature.
Gladys did not usually like to get her skirts wet, but on a day such as this, with her tires singing on the wet tarmac and the wind shoving at our backs, it was no time for prissiness.
Spreading my arms wide so that the flaps of my yellow mackintosh became sails, I let myself be swept along on a river of wind.
“Yaroo!” I shouted to a couple of dampish cows, who looked up at me vacantly as I sped past them in the rain.
In the misty green light of early morning, St. Tancred’s looked like a Georgian watercolor, its tower floating eerily above the bulging churchyard as if it were a hot-air balloon casting off its moorings and bound for heaven.
The only jarring note in the quiet scene was the scarlet van pulled up onto the cobbled walk which led to the front door. I recognized it at once as Mr. Haskins’s, the church sexton’s. Beside it, on the grass under the yews, was a gleaming black Hillman, its high polish telling me that it didn’t belong to anyone in Bishop’s Lacey.
To the west of the church, almost hidden in the mist, a blue lorry was parked over against the chapel. A couple of battered ladders and a load of filthy weathered boards protruded from its open tailboard. George Battle, I thought. The village stonemason.
I skidded to a stop and leaned Gladys against the worn chest tomb of one Cassandra Cottlestone, 1685–1750 (an exact contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, I noted).
Sculpted in stone and sadly weathered, Cassandra lay atop her mossy tomb, her eyes closed as if she had a headache, her fingertips pressed together under her chin, and a faint smug smile at the corners of her mouth. She did not look as if she minded too much being dead.
On the base was carved:
I didd dye
And now doe lye
Att churche’s door
For euermore
Pray for mye bodie to sleepe
And my soule to wayke.
I noted the two different spellings of “my,” and remembered that Daffy had once told me some far-fetched story about the Cottlestone tomb. What was it?
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of raised voices from the church’s porch. I walked quickly across the grass and stepped inside.
“But a faculty was granted,” the vicar was saying. “There can be no going back now. The work is already under way.”
“Then you must stop it,” said a large man in a dark suit. With his lumpy potato face and mane of white hair, he had the appearance of a dust mop dressed in its Sunday best. “You must put a stop to it at once.”
“Marmaduke,” the vicar said, “the bishop has assured me on several occasions that there would be no—oh, good morning, Flavia. You’re out and about early, as it were.”
The large man swiveled his head slowly and let his light-colored eyes come to rest on my face. He did not smile.
“Good morning, Vicar!” I burbled. Being overly cheery at the crack of dawn is extremely upsetting to a certain kind of person, and I knew instantly that the white-haired man was one of them. “Lovely old morning, eh wot?—in spite of the rain?”
I knew I was laying it on with a trowel but there are times when I just can’t help myself.
“Wot?” I added for emphasis.
“Flavia, dear,” the vicar said. “How nice to see you. I expect you’re looking for Mr. Haskins. It’s about the floral baskets, isn’t it? Yes, I thought as much. I believe he’s up the ringing chamber tidying the bell ropes and so forth. Mustn’t have chaos for Good Friday, must we?”
Floral baskets? The vicar was including me in some little drama of his own creation. I was honored! I had barged in at an indelicate moment and he obviously wanted me to buzz off.
The least I could do was play along. “Righty-ho, then. I thought as much. Father will be ever so glad to know the lilies are all sorted out.”
And with that I leapt like a young gazelle onto the first step of the tower’s steep spiral staircase.
Once out of sight, I trudged upward, recalling that ancient stairs in castles and churches wind in a clockwise direction as you ascend, so that an attacker, climbing the stairs, is forced to hold his sword in his left hand, while the defender, fighting downward, is able to use his right, and usually superior, hand.
I turned back for a moment and made a few feints and thrusts at an imaginary Viking—or perhaps he was a Norman—or maybe a Goth. When it comes to the sackers and raiders I am quite hopeless.
“Hollah!” I cried, striking a fencer’s pose, my sword arm extended. “En garde, and so forth!”
“Blimey, Miss Flavia,” Mr. Haskins said, dropping something and putting a hand to where his heart was presumably pounding. “You gave me a fair old start.”
I’m afraid I gave a small smirk of pride. It’s no easy matter to startle a grave-digger, especially one who, in spite of his age, was as sturdily constructed as a sailor. I suppose it was his corded arms, his knotted hands, and his bandy legs which made me think of the sea.
“Sorry, Mr. Haskins,” I said, as I removed my mackintosh and hung it on a handy coat hook. “I should have whistled on my way up. What’s in the trunk?”
An ancient and much-battered wooden chest stood open against the far wall, a length of rope snaking over its lip where the sexton had let it drop—rather guiltily, I thought.
“This lot? Not much. Bunch of rubbish, really. Left over from the war.”
I craned my neck to see round him.
In the chest were several more lengths of rope, a folded blanket, half a pail of sand, a stirrup pump with a rotted rubber hose, a second length of India rubber hose, a rather dirt-clodded shovel, a black steel helmet with a white “W” on it, and a rubber mask.
“Gas mask,” Mr. Haskins said, lifting the thing and holding it in the palm of his hand like Hamlet. “The ARP lads and the fire-watchers had a post up here during the war. Spent a good many nights here myself. Lonesome, like. Strange things, I used to see.”
He had my undivided attention. “Such as?”
“Oh, you know … mysterious lights floatin’ in the churchyard, and that.”
Was he trying to frighten me? “You’re pulling my leg, Mr. Haskins.”
“P’raps I am, miss … an’ p’raps I amn’t.”
I grabbed the grotesque, goggle-eyed mask and pulled it on over my head. It stank of rubber and ancient perspiration.
“Look, I’m an octopus!” I said, waggling my tentacles. Muffled by the mask, my words came out sounding like “Mook, mime um mocknofoof!”
Mr. Haskins peeled the thing from my face and tossed it back into the chest.
“Kids have died playing with them things,” he said. “Smothered ’emselves to death. They’re not meant for toys.”
He lowered the lid of the chest, and, slamming shut the brass padlock, he pocketed the key.
“You forgot the rope,” I said.
Giving me what I believe is called a narrow look, he dug in his pocket for the key, snapped open the hasp, and retrieved the rope from the chest.
“Now what?” I asked, trying to look eager.
“You’d best run along, miss,” he said. “We’ve work to do, and we don’t need the likes of you underfoot.”
Well!