• TWENTY-TWO •
WE WERE BUCKETING ALONG the road to Bishop’s Lacey in Adam’s open Rolls-Royce, Nancy, the wind whistling round our ears.
“They decided to do it straightaway before anyone’s the wiser. The vicar tipped me off,” Adam said, shouting above the noise of the car’s cutaway body. “I knew you’d never forgive me if I didn’t let you in on it.”
“But why?” I asked, perhaps for the third time. “You didn’t have to.”
“Let’s just say I’m a kindly old gaffer.”
“No,” I told him firmly. “I want the truth.”
“Well,” Adam said, “I’ve always believed that when the bones of the great are exhumed, it should always be done in the presence of the youngest person practicable—the one who is going to live the longest; the one who will carry down the years the memory of coming face-to-face, as it were, with history.”
“And I’m the youngest person practicable? Is that the only reason?”
“Yes,” Adam said.
Blast the man!
“Then, too,” he went on, “I thought you might like to be first in the queue to have a squint at the Heart of Lucifer.”
Now I was grinning like a fool.
The Heart of Lucifer!
I was struck with a sudden and remarkable idea.
“If what you say is true,” I told Adam, “and it turns out that Saint Tancred was a de Luce, doesn’t that mean that the Heart of Lucifer would belong rightfully to Father?”
“The Church might think otherwise,” he said, after thinking about it.
“Oh, bother the Church. If they’re stupid enough to dump a priceless diamond in the grave, they can’t have wanted it very badly. It’s probably under one of those peculiar laws like flotsam and jetsam. I’ll ask Daffy. She’ll know.”
Daffy had read aloud to us one of Victor Hugo’s novels in which the laws of flotsam and jetsam were explained to the point that you became seasick.
“One way or another, it’s bound to be interesting,” Adam said, “although if I were you, I shouldn’t get my hopes up much.”
He must have seen at once the dampening effect his words had on me.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”
I kept quiet.
“Thinking that perhaps we should make a swap. Scandal for scandal. Tit for tat.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” I said, not willing to give up my advantage a second too soon.
“You tell me what you found in Collicutt’s bedroom, and I’ll tell you the results of his autopsy.”
He grinned at me, daring me to say no.
“Done!” I said. “It was money—and quite a lot of it. Six hundred pounds, hidden under his bed in a Players cigarette tin.”
“Phew!” Adam whistled, and then he laughed. “And the police missed it?”
“Evidently,” I said, and he laughed even more.
“Now, then,” I told him, “it’s your turn. The autopsy. How did you find out about it? Did you pump Dr. Darby?”
“Dear me, no! The good Dr. Darby is much more discreet than that. I merely had a word with my cousin Wilfred.”
I must have looked blank.
“Wilfred Sowerby, of Sowerby & Sons, your local undertakers. Furnishers of Funerals and Furniture. Bit of a tongue twister, that.”
Of course! I had forgotten about their connection.
“The ones who chose Death while your side of the family chose Life,” I said. “Yes, I remember now.”
How like the de Luces, I wanted to say, but it was not a thought I wanted to share.
“Yes,” Adam said. “The Dismal Sowerbys.”
“And?”
“And what?”
He was playing the fool again.
“Ah, yes. The autopsy,” he said when I did not rise to his stupid bait. “Cousin Wilfred was most enlightening. Rupture of the internal organs. Everything from the esophagus to points south of the equator. Wilfred said he’d never seen a blowout anything like it. Quite spectacular, he said.”
“Caused by?”
I could hardly contain myself, but I kept still.
“They haven’t a clue. At least, not so far.”
I needed to change the subject. Quickly.
“Huh,” I said, as if I weren’t interested. “Fancy that.”
We went along without speaking for a minute or so, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts, and then I said, “Hold on—how can they be going ahead with opening Saint Tancred’s tomb? I thought the bishop had forbidden it.”
“The bishop, it seems, has had a change of heart. As has Chancellor Ridley-Smith.”
“What?”