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.
Now, as I knelt beside her, I wanted to feel revenge.
But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
Should I stay beside her? Keep watch over her until the sun came up?
Perhaps I should run to Dr. Darby’s house for help. Or rouse the vicar from the vicarage.
These thoughts were racing through my mind when there was a soft footstep behind me. I leapt to my feet and spun round.
There stood the vicar, his face white as ashes.
“Oh dear,” he was saying. “Oh dear. I feared it would come to this.”
Not What are you doing creeping round the church in the middle of the night? Not Why are you crouching over my beloved wife? Not What have you done to her?
Just “Oh dear. I feared it would come to this.”
Come to what? I wondered.
And when it came to that, what was Cynthia doing creeping round the church in the middle of the night? Could it have been she who—
I couldn’t allow myself to complete that impossible thought.
“I think she fainted,” I said rather stupidly, and I caught myself, incredibly, wringing my hands.
“This is not the first time,” the vicar said, almost as if to himself, shaking his head. “No, I fear it is not the first.”
Not knowing what to do, I stood there like a lug.
“Flavia, dear,” he said at last, kneeling beside Cynthia’s crumpled body. “You must help me get her home.”
The words seemed odd and strained. Why not let her regain consciousness before hauling her back to the vicarage?
It wasn’t as if she were drunk in a public place and needed to be whisked out of sight before the parishioners found her out.
Or was it?
No, it couldn’t be. I hadn’t detected the slightest smell of alcohol, and I prided myself on my ability to sniff out the ketones.
“Of course,” I said.
The vicar lifted his wife as easily as if she were a doll and moved quickly with her down the center aisle toward the door.
I followed him through the churchyard’s cold wet grass to the vicarage, glancing round to see if there were faces peering out from behind the ancient tombstones, but there were not. The intruders had made their getaway.
I dashed ahead up the vicarage steps and held open the door.
“In the study,” the vicar said as I flicked on the dim bulb in the little foyer.
The study, as usual, was a landslide of books. I shifted several stacks of tinder-dry volumes from the horsehair sofa to the floor: the same sofa, I noted, upon which Mad Meg had been stretched out at the time of the Rupert Porson affair.
The vicar arranged my coat as carefully round his wife’s body as if he were tucking a child into bed.
She stirred slightly and gave out a little moan. He touched her face tenderly.
Cynthia’s pale eyes opened and moved uneasily from side to side.
“It’s all right, darling,” the vicar said. “Everything is all right.”
Her eyes found his, and it was then that the miracle happened.
She smiled!
Cynthia Richardson smiled!
I had always thought of the woman as rat-faced, although perhaps I was a little prejudiced. The fixed grin of her protruding teeth, canceled out by a perpetual frown, gave her the look of a terrible-tempered rodent.
Yet Cynthia had smiled!
And to be perfectly fair, I would have to admit that her smile was of the sort that is generally described as radiant.
No Madonna had ever gazed down upon her child with such a tender look; no bride had ever smiled up at her groom with such love as Cynthia Richardson gave to her husband.
It almost brought tears to my eyes.
“Shall I run for Dr. Darby?” I asked. “I can be there and back in a jiff.”
The truth was that I wanted to leave them alone in this moment. I was an intruder.
“No,” the vicar replied. “Rest is what she needs. Look, she’s already asleep.”
And it was true. With part of that wonderful smile lingering at the corners of her mouth, Cynthia had nodded off.
A small snore confirmed it.
“What happened?” the vicar asked, rather tentatively.
“She must have—had a shock.”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Tell me,” he said gently. “We have all night.”
One of the things I love about our vicar, Denwyn Richardson, is the fact that he
accepts me as I am. He does not ask idiotic questions.
He does not want to know, for instance, what I was doing at two or three o’clock in the morning, emerging, covered in grave dirt, from the paneling of his church.
He does not want to know why I am not at home, tucked up into my own little bed, dreaming childish dreams.
In short, he treats me as a grown-up.
It is a gift.
To both of us.
Which is why I broke my long-standing rule and not only took responsibility, but also volunteered information.
“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” I said. “I gave her a start. She thought I was someone else.”
The vicar raised a sad eyebrow. He didn’t need to do more.
“She said ‘Hannah,’ ” I told him. “And then she collapsed.”
There was one of those long silences during which, through embarrassment, you’re aching to say something but, for fear of even greater embarrassment, you don’t.
“Hannah,” he said slowly. “Hannah was … our daughter.”
I felt something horribly heavy descend upon me: as heavy as all the universe, and yet invisible.
I said nothing.
“She died when she was four,” the vicar said. “I killed her.”
• FOURTEEN •
I COULD HARDLY find the breath to speak.
“Surely not,” I managed.
Another eternity passed before the vicar spoke again.
“Seven years ago, Christmas week. I had taken her with me to the railway station in Doddingsley to pick up the holly for the church, as I always do. Hannah loved Christmas … always wanted to be a part of everything.
“Someone stopped me on the platform—a former parishioner—hadn’t seen her for years—wanted to wish me compliments of the season, you see, and I let go of Hannah’s hand—only for a moment, you understand—but—
“The train … the train—”
Suddenly tears were rolling down his cheeks.
I watched my hand reaching for his.
“I shouted at her—tried to call her back—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, aware even as I spoke, what useless things, really, words of sympathy are, even though they’re sometimes all we have.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
“Had she lived,” the vicar said, his eyes swimming, “she would have been your age. Cynthia and I often think how much you—” He stopped abruptly. “Cynthia and your mother were great friends, you know, Flavia. They were to become mothers at the same time.”
Another part of the puzzle that was Harriet fell into place.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” the vicar asked. “The good people of Bishop’s Lacey have conspired to silence. Hannah’s death is not to be spoken of. They think we don’t know, you see—but we do.”
“But you mustn’t blame yourself,” I blurted, filled with a rising anger. “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”
The vicar gave me a sad smile which signaled that my words changed nothing.
“Where is she buried?” I asked with sudden boldness. I would take flowers and place them with great ceremony on the little girl’s grave. I would put an end to this pathetic silence.
“Here,” the vicar said simply. “In the churchyard. Close by the Cottlestone tomb. We couldn’t, at first, afford a stone, you see. A country vicar’s purse does not—and later … well, later was too late. Still, Cynthia goes there often to visit, but I’m afraid I—”
I shivered as the full horror of his words crept upon me.
Their child was buried at the very spot from which Cynthia had seen me burst forth from the earth. And later, in the church—
How could I ever make amends?
“She thought I was Hannah,” I said, taking the first step. “I was looking round inside the organ casing for clues. I must have seemed to her to have come through the wall.”
As I spoke, Cynthia gave a soft moan and rolled her head from side to side.
“I’m glad you were in the church,” I said. “I wasn’t quite sure what to do.”
“I followed her there,” the vicar said softly. “I often do. To ensure that she comes to no harm, you see.”
Cynthia stirred.
Gently, he lifted my disgusting coat from her shoulders and handed it to me, replacing it with the afghan that was folded at the end of the sofa.
“I’d best be going,” I said, taking the hint.
As I shrugged into my coat, small clods of clay fell to the carpet.
I was already at the door when the vicar spoke: “Flavia—” he said.
I turned back. “Yes?”
His eyes, still wet, met mine. “Be careful,” he said.
That’s another one of the things I love about Denwyn Richardson.
Buckshaw by moonlight was a scene from a dream. As I rode toward it along the avenue of chestnut trees, the house was half illuminated by a pale silvery light, the other half in darkness, its long black shadow crawling away across the Trafalgar Lawn toward the east, as if trying to reach the safety of the distant trees.
I parked Gladys against the brick wall of the kitchen garden and glanced at the upstairs windows. There were no lights and no white faces staring down at me.
Perfect, I thought. I needed time to concoct a chemical cleaning solvent. I would mix something in a coal scuttle—something involving ammonia and one of the chlorine-based oxydizing agents. Or perhaps petrol: I could easily siphon a gallon from Harriet’s Phantom II. I would ball up my filthy coat, immerse it for half an hour, then hang it out the window of my laboratory to dry in the wind. It would be as spotless and fresh-smelling as if it had been dry-cleaned by Armfields, in Belgravia.
As I opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, I realized how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten for ages and my stomach was hanging against my spine like an empty saddlebag. I would cut some bread from the pantry and take it upstairs to toast over the open flame of a Bunsen burner.
I was halfway across the kitchen when a solemn voice, like the tolling of a passing-bell, said: “Flavia.”
It was Father.
At first I hardly recognized him. He was seated at the table in dressing gown and slippers. I had never before seen him dressed in anything other than his usual outfit of shirt, tie, vest, jacket, trousers, and mirror-polished boots.
“I was at the church,” I began, hoping to gain some advantage, even though I couldn’t imagine what it was. “Talking to the vicar,” I added lamely.
“I’m quite aware of that,” he said.
Aware? Had the vicar turned rat on me?
“The chancellor telephoned.”
I could hardly believe it! Father forbade use of “The Instrument” as he called it, except in the most dire emergency. He felt about the telephone the way a condemned man feels about the scaffold.
“He advised me to stop your messing round the church during these excavations. Thinks you’re liable to do yourself an injury.”
And how did he know I was messing round the church? I wanted to ask.
The answer was obvious: His toady, Marmaduke Parr, had told him.
“It’s not only that,” Father went on. “As you very well know, a murder has been committed in the crypt.”
I offered up a small prayer of thanks. At least it hadn’t been Inspector Hewitt who had rung up, ordering me to keep away.
“Did he mention poor Mr. Collicutt? The chancellor, I mean?”
“As it happens,” Father answered, “he did not. But nevertheless, I want you to stay—”
“Mrs. Richardson fainted at the altar,” I put in before he could say another word. “She mistook me for her daughter, Hannah.”
Father looked up at me, his face harshly lined in the cold moonlight. He had not shaved, and the stubble of his whiskers glittered cruelly. Never had he looked so old.
“The vicar told me about her,” I said. “I didn’t ask.” r />
The kitchen clock ticked. Father let out a long sigh.
“I can’t see you,” he said, after a while. “My eyes are not what they once were. Bring a candle from the pantry. Don’t put on the electric light.”
I fetched a pewter candlestick and a box of wooden matches, and a minute later, by the flickering light of a wax candle, we were facing each other across the kitchen table.
“Denwyn and Cynthia have not had the easiest of lives,” Father said.
“No,” I replied. I was learning that the best conversations consisted of keeping quiet and listening, and speaking, when one spoke at all, in words of a single syllable.
“He blames himself,” we both said at the same time.
It was incredible! Father and I had spoken the same three words at the same instant—as if we were reciting in unison.
I did not dare smile.
“Yes,” we both said.
It was downright eerie.
Father had only talked to me—really talked, I mean—on one other occasion, which was the time he was incarcerated in a jail cell in Hinley, charged with the murder of Horace Bonepenny. On that day, he had talked and I had listened.
Now both of us were speaking at the same time.
“It was an accident pure and simple, or at least as pure and simple as any accident can be. Tragic. Still, in the circumstances, there was nothing for it but to get on with things. There was a war on. Everybody, in one way or another, was suffering loss. It was a bad time to be deprived of a little girl.”
“Were you here when it happened?” I asked, shocking myself. Where did this sudden boldness come from?
A shadow crossed Father’s face. The kitchen clock ticked on.
“No,” he said after a moment. “I wasn’t.”
He had, as I well knew, been with Dogger in a prisoner-of-war camp. It was not a topic of discussion at Buckshaw.
How odd, I thought: Here were these four great grievers, Father, Dogger, the vicar, and Cynthia Richardson, each locked in his or her own past, unwilling to share a morsel of their anguish, not even with one another.
Was sorrow, in the end, a private thing? A closed container? Something that, like a bucket of water, could be borne only on a single pair of shoulders?