Speaking From Among The Bones (5 page)

“Where’s your friend, then?” Mr. Haskins asked suddenly, turning from his work, his words echoing oddly from the crypt’s curved arches. “I thought he wanted to be here for the main event?”

“Mr. Sowerby?” the vicar said. “I don’t know. It’s most unlike him to be tardy. Perhaps we should wait a while.”

“This here stone’s waitin’ on nobody,” Mr. Haskins said. “This here stone’s got a mind of her own, and she’s comin’ out whether we likes it or not.”

He gave the heavy block a familiar pat, and it made a most awful groan, as if it were in pain.

“She’s hangin’ by her toenails, and no more. Besides, Norman and Tommy need to get back to Malden Fenwick, don’t you, lads? They’re here to work, and work they shall.”

He waved grandly toward his workers, one exceedingly tall, the other quite unremarkable.

Down here, in the depths of the crypt, Mr. Haskins was the ruler of his own dark kingdom, and nobody dared raise a voice against him.

“Besides,” he added. “This here’s only the wall. We won’t get to the sarcophagus till we’re through it. Fetch the rope, Tommy.”

As Tommy worked the rope up and round an overhanging shelf of masonry, Mr. Haskins turned his attention full upon me. For an awful moment, I thought he was going to tell me to leave. But he had his audience.

“Sarcophagus,” he said. “Sar-coph-a-gus. Now there’s a rare old word for you. Bet you don’t know what it means, do you, miss?”

“It comes from two Greek words meaning ‘eater of flesh,’ ” I said. “The ancient Greeks used to make them of a special stone brought from Assos, in Turkey, because it was said to consume the entire body, except the teeth, in forty days.”

Although I didn’t do it often, I offered up a little prayer of thanks to my sister Daffy, who had read this fascinating snippet aloud to me from one of the volumes of a coffin-black encyclopedia in Buckshaw’s library.

“Aha!” said Mr. Haskins, as if he had known it all along. “Well, there we have it then, straight from the horse’s mouth,” he said, meaning me.

Before I could protest what I took to be an insult, he had given the rope a fierce tug.

Nothing happened.

“Lend a hand, Norman. Tommy, give the other end a nudge—see if we can swing ’er out.”

But in spite of their hauling and pushing, the stone wouldn’t budge.

“Seems to be stuck fast,” the vicar said.

“Stuck ain’t the word for it,” Mr. Haskins said. “Well and truly bloody—”

“Little pitchers, Mr. Haskins, little pitchers,” the vicar said, putting a forefinger to his lips and giving an almost imperceptible nod in my direction.

“Something jammin’ it up, like. Let’s have a dekko.”

Mr. Haskins dropped the end of the rope and snatched the torch away from Tommy.

Holding the lamp just behind its lens, he shoved his face against the crack.

“No good,” he announced at last. “Wants more of an opening.”

“Here—let me,” I said, taking the torch from his hands. “My head’s smaller than yours. I’ll tell you what I can see.”

They were all so astonished, I think, that nobody tried to stop me.

My head went easily in through the gaping crack, and, like a contortionist, I maneuvered the light until it was beaming into the tomb from over my head.

A cold, dank draft brushed at my face, and I wrinkled my nose at the sharp, brackish stink of ancient decay.

I was looking into a small stone chamber of perhaps seven feet long and three wide. The first thing I saw was a human hand, its dried fingers tightly clutching a bit of broken glass tubing. And then the face—a ghastly, inhuman mask with enormous, staring acetate eyes and a piggish rubber snout.

Beneath it was a white ruffle, not quite covering the ink-black vessels of the neck and throat. Above the eyes was a shock of curly golden choirboy hair.

This was most definitely not the body of Saint Tancred.

I turned off the torch, withdrew my head, and turned slowly to the vicar.

“I believe we’ve found Mr. Collicutt,” I said.

I
T WAS THE HAIR
, of course, that gave it away. How many Sundays had I watched Feely galloping down the aisle for first dibs on the pew from which she would have the best view of Mr. Collicutt’s golden locks?

Perched on the organ bench in his white surplice, his head illuminated by the light of a morning sunbeam streaming in through stained glass, he had often seemed like a Botticelli cherub brought to life.

And he knew it.

I remembered the way he would toss his head and quickly run all ten fingers through his glowing curls before making them pounce on the keys for the anthem’s opening chord. Feely once told me that Mr. Collicutt reminded her of Franz Liszt. It was not so long ago, she said, that there used to be found, in the keepsake boxes of ancient ladies who were freshly dead, the remnants of reeking
cigar butts that had been smoked in another century by Liszt. I had meant to have a poke through Feely’s belongings to see if she were hoarding the cork tips of Mr. Collicutt’s Craven A’s, but it had slipped my mind.

All of this went whizzing through my brain as I waited for the men to enlarge the opening and confirm my discovery.

Not that I wasn’t shocked, of course.

Had Mr. Collicutt died because I’d counted corpses on my fingers? Had he been made a victim by some dark and unsuspected magic?

Stop it at once, Flavia!
I scolded myself.
The man was obviously dead for ages before you tempted Fate to hand you another cadaver
.

Still, the man was dead. There was no getting round that.

While part of me wanted to break down and cry at the death of Feely’s golden-haired Prince Charming, another part—a part I couldn’t quite explain—was awakening eagerly from a deep sleep.

I was torn between revulsion and pleasure—like tasting vinegar and sugar at the same time.

But pleasure, in such cases, always wins. Hands down.

A hidden part of me was coming back to life.

Meanwhile, the workmen had brought a number of sturdy planks to lever the heavy stone forward, as well as to serve as a makeshift ramp, down which it could be manhandled to the floor.

“Easy, now—easy,” Mr. Haskins was telling them. “Don’t want to squash ’im, do we?”

Mr. Haskins was completely at home with corpses.

At last, after much grating and a couple of curses, the stone was removed, and the chamber’s contents became clearly visible.

The gas mask strapped to the corpse’s face glinted horridly, as only wet rubber can, in the shuddering light.

“Oh dear,” the vicar said. “Oh dear. I’d best ring up Constable Linnet.”

“No great rush, I’d say,” said Mr. Haskins, “judgin’ by the smell of him.”

Harsh words, but true. I knew in great detail from my own chemical researches the process by which the human body, after death, digests itself, and Mr. Collicutt was well along the way.

Tommy and Norman had already produced handkerchiefs and clapped them to their noses.

“But before I do so,” the vicar said, “I would ask each of you to join with me in a short prayer for this most—this most—ah,
unfortunate
individual.”

We bowed our heads.

“O Lord, receive the soul of this, thy faithful servant, who has come to great misfortune alone and in a strange place.”

A strange place indeed! Although I didn’t say so …

“And perhaps, also, in fear,” the vicar added, after taking a few moments as if fishing for the proper words. “Grant him, we beseech thee, eternal peace and the life everlasting. Amen.”

“Amen,” I said quietly.

I almost crossed myself, but I fought down the urge.
Although our family patronized St. Tancred’s because the vicar was one of Father’s dearest friends, we de Luces, as Daffy liked to say, had been Catholics for so long that we sometimes referred to Saint Peter as “Uncle Pete” and to the Blessed Virgin Mary as “Cousin May.”

“Flavia, dear,” the vicar said, “I’d be indebted to you if you’d come up and help me deal with the authorities. You’re so much better at this sort of thing than I.”

It was true. There had been several occasions in the past upon which I had pointed the police in the proper direction when they were hopelessly stumped.

“I’d be happy to, Mr. Richardson,” I said.

For now, I’d seen all I wanted to.

Outdoors, it had rained, and the vicar and I stood waiting side by side in the porch, strangely tongue-tied by what we had just witnessed.

The police, when they arrived in their familiar blue Vauxhall saloon, were wearing their best poker faces. Inspector Hewitt gave me a curt nod and a fraction of a smile as he stepped from the car. Detective Sergeants Woolmer and Graves were their usual selves: Woolmer like a large and surly dancing bear (the Vauxhall groaned audibly with relief when he hoisted himself ponderously out of it!) while Graves, young, blond, and dimpled, was grinning at me ear to ear. As I have said, Sergeant Graves had a first-rate crush on Feely, and in a number of ways, I hoped he would be the one to march the divine Ophelia (Ha ha! Pardon me if I laugh!) to the altar.
One more detective
in the family would give us something to talk about during the long winter evenings
, I thought.
Guts, gore, and Tetley’s tea
.

Sergeant Woolmer gave me barely a glance as he hauled his photo kit from the car’s boot. I looked away, and nodded pleasantly at Sergeant Graves, who was carrying a familiar case.

“Got the dabs organized, have you?” I asked pleasantly, showing him I remembered that his specialty was fingerprints.

The sergeant colored nicely, even though I was merely Feely’s sister.

Like Santa Claus in the American poem, they spoke not a word but went straight to their work. They filed into the porch, bound for the crypt, leaving the vicar and me standing alone together at the door.

“How long has he been missing? Mr. Collicutt, I mean.”

“Missing?”

In spite of having telephoned for the police, the vicar still seemed somewhat in a daze.

“We hadn’t really thought of him as missing. Departed, I should say. Oh dear! No—that’s hardly the correct word, either.”

I said nothing: a useful tool that I had added to my kit by closely observing Inspector Hewitt at his work.

“Mrs. Battle said he came down that last morning for breakfast just as he always did. A single slice of toast only. He was always careful of his figure. Needed to keep his waist in shape for the pedal work. Oh dear, I’m gossiping.”

“When was that, exactly?” I asked, as if I’d known it all along, but forgotten.

“The Tuesday after Quinquagesima, as I have reason to remember,” the vicar said.

“About six weeks ago,” I said, counting rapidly backward in my head.

“Yes. Shrove Tuesday.”

“Pancake Day,” I said with a dry gulp as I remembered for an instant the plate of rubbery flat tires Mrs. Mullet had set before us on that unfortunate morning.

“Indeed. The day before Ash Wednesday. Mr. Collicutt was to have picked up Miss Tanty and driven her to Hinley for her ophthalmological examination.”

Miss Tanty, who sang in the choir, was a retired music mistress whose sheer physical bulk and full-strength spectacles gave her the appearance of an ancient omnibus with enormous acetylene headlamps bearing down upon you in a narrow country lane.

Hers was the voice that could always be heard rising above the rest of the choir during the
Magnificat:

“My soul doth mognify the Lord …”

Everything about Miss Tanty was mognified.

Both her glorious soprano voice and her bottle-glass gaze were capable of making wet chills ooze down your spine.

“When he hadn’t arrived by nine-fifteen,” the vicar went on, “she rang up Mrs. Battle, and was told by Florence, the niece, that he had gone out the front door at eight-thirty on the dot.”

“Did no one report him missing?”

“No. That’s the thing. Crispin—Mr. Collicutt, I
mean—was so much involved in various music festivals that he was seldom at home during the week. ‘You shall make great savings on the kippers and cabbage,’ he told Mrs. Battle, when she first took him in as a boarder. And then, of course, there was that rather odd comment he made about—but I must say no more. Cynthia is forever telling me that I have a propensity to prattle, and I do believe she’s right.”

Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife, was Bishop’s Lacey’s equivalent of smallpox, but I didn’t let that thought distract me.

“Who was the man with the white hair?” I asked, changing the subject abruptly. “The one you were talking to in the porch?”

A shadow crossed the vicar’s face. “Marmaduke Parr,” he said. “From the Diocesan Office. He’s the bishop’s—”

“Hit man!” I blurted. I had learned about hit men from listening to the detective Philip Odell on the wireless: “The Case of the Copper Cupcake.”

“—secretary,” the vicar said, trying not to smile at my little joke. “Although I must admit Marmaduke
is
rather a—how shall I put it
?—determined
individual.”

“He doesn’t want Saint Tancred’s tomb to be opened, does he? He’s ordered you to stop.”

But before the vicar could answer, Constable Linnet, Bishop’s Lacey’s arm of the law, came pedaling up the path and swung off his bicycle directly in front of us as neatly as a cinema sheriff dismounting his horse. He leaned the bike against a yew tree, flipped open his notebook, and licked the tip of his pencil.

Here we go again
, I thought.

The constable began by asking both of us for our full names and complete addresses. Although he knew them perfectly well, it was important, because of his superiors, to have an unblotted notebook—even if it
was
written in pencil.

“Stay here, mind,” he said, unbuttoning the breast pocket of his uniform and tucking the notebook away. He waved an official forefinger at us, and disappeared into the porch.

“Poor Crispin,” the vicar said after a very long time, as if thinking aloud. “Poor Crispin. And poor Alberta Moon. She’s going to be devastated—simply devastated.”

“Alberta Moon?” I asked. “The music mistress at St. Agatha’s?”