To Say Nothing of the Dog (49 page)

“Oh, no!” the curate said, looking wildly round like a housewife surprised by unexpected guests. “We’re in the midst of major renovations to the clerestory and the bell tower. The church is officially closed until the thirty-first of July, at which time the vicar would be delighted to conduct you on a tour.”

“That’s too late,” I said. “And it’s the renovations we’ve come to see. The church at Muchings End is badly in need of them. The altar’s positively mediaeval.”

“Oh, but,” he said reluctantly, “the thing is, we’re trying to prepare for the church bazaar, and—”

“Church bazaar!” I said. “What a wonderful coincidence! Mrs. Mering has just put on a bazaar at Muchings End.”

“Mrs. Mering?” the curate said, looking back at the door as if he’d like to escape through it. “Oh, but the church is in no fit condition for ladies. You wouldn’t be able to see the choir or the altar. There’s sawdust everywhere, and workmen’s tools.”

“The ladies won’t mind,” I said, putting myself firmly between him and the door. “Sawdust is exactly what they’ve come to see.”

Baine came running up with an umbrella, which he handed to me. I handed it back. “Go and bring the carriage round,” I said to him. “Tell Mrs. Mering we can tour the church.”

Which just goes to show you that hanging round Lady Schrapnell and her ancestors can teach you a thing or two about getting things done.

“Hurry!” I said to Baine, and he sprinted off through the drizzle, which was rapidly turning into rain.

“I really do not think a tour at this time is advisable,” the curate said. “The workmen are installing a new choir railing, and I have an appointment to meet with Miss Sharpe regarding the fancywork table.”

“You’ll be having a jumble sale, of course,” I said.

“A jumble sale?” the curate said uncertainly.

“It’s the latest thing in bazaars. Ah, here they are.” I bounded down the steps as the carriage pulled up, snatched Verity’s hand, and pulled her out of the carriage. “What good luck! St. Michael’s is open after all, and the curate’s offered to give us a tour of the church. Quick,” I muttered under my breath. “Before he changes his mind.”

Verity tripped lightly up to the curate, smiled brightly at him, and peered in through the door. “Oh, do come look at this, Tossie,” she said, and ducked inside.

Terence helped Tossie out and into the church, and I assisted Mrs. Mering, holding the umbrella Baine handed me over her head.

“Oh, dear,” she said, looking anxiously at the clouds. “The weather looks very threatening. Perhaps we should start for home before the storm breaks.”

“Some of the workmen say they’ve seen a spirit,” I said rapidly. “One of them went home ill after the experience.”

“How wonderful!” Mrs. Mering said.

We came up even with the curate, who was standing in the doorway, wringing his hands. “I’m afraid you will be sadly disappointed in St. Michael’s, Mrs. Mering,” he said. “We are—”

“—preparing for the annual bazaar. Mrs. Mering, you
must
tell him about your dahlia penwipers,” I said shamelessly, maneuvering her around him and into the church. “So clever, and beautiful, besides.”

There was a crack of thunder so loud I was convinced I’d been struck by lightning for lying.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Mering said.

“I’m afraid this is an inauspicious time for a tour of the church,” the curate said at the same time. “The vicar is away, and Miss Sharpe—”

I opened my mouth to say, “A brief tour, at least, since we’re here,” and didn’t have to. There was a second crack of thunder, and the skies opened up.

Mrs. Mering and the curate stepped back into the church, away from the splashing raindrops, and Baine, the ever-ready, stepped forward and shut the door. “It looks like we’ll be here awhile, madam,” he said, and I could hear Verity sigh with relief.

“Well,” the curate said, “as you’re here, this is the nave. As you can see, we are undertaking renovations.” He had not exaggerated about the sawdust or the mess. It looked nearly as bad as after the air raid. The chancel was blocked off with wooden hoardings. The pews were draped in dusty tarps. Stacks of lumber lay in front of the choir, from which there issued a loud banging.

“We are modernizing the church,” the curate said. “The decorations were hopelessly out-of-date. I had hoped to have the bell tower replaced with a modern carillon, but the Renovations Committee refused to consider it. Hopelessly hidebound. But I was able to persuade them to remove the galleries and many of the old tombs and monuments, which were cluttering up the chapels. Some of them dated all the way back to the Fourteenth Century.” He rolled his eyes. “Simply ruined the look of the church.”

He smiled a rather protruding smile at Tossie. “Would you care to see the nave, Miss Mering? We’ve put in all new electric lighting.”

Verity came up next to me. “Get his name,” she whispered.

“When our proposed plans are completed,” the curate said, “the church will be a fully modern church which will last hundreds of years.”

“Fifty-two,” I muttered.

“I beg your pardon?” the curate said.

“Nothing,” I said. “You’re modernizing the tower, too?”

“Yes. It and the spire are being completely recased. It’s rather rough here, ladies.” He offered Tossie his arm.

Mrs. Mering took it. “Where is your crypt?” she asked.

“The crypt?” he said. “Over here,” he pointed in the direction of the hoarding, “but it’s not being modernized.”

“Do you believe in the world beyond?” Mrs. Mering said.

“I . . . of course,” he said, bewildered. “I’m a man of the cloth.” He smiled protuberantly at Tossie. “I am of course merely a curate at present, but I hope to be offered a living next year in Sussex.”

“Are you familiar with Arthur Conan Doyle?” Mrs. Mering demanded.

“I . . . yes,” he said, looking even more bewildered. “That is, I’ve read
A Study in Scarlet.
Thrilling story.”

“You have not read his writings on spiritism?” she said. “Baine!” she called to the butler, who was neatly standing the umbrellas next to the door. “Fetch the issue of
The Light
with Arthur Conan Doyle’s letter in it.”

Baine nodded, opened the heavy door, and disappeared into the deluge, pulling his collar up as he went.

Mrs. Mering turned back to the curate. “You have heard, of course, of Madame Iritosky?” she said, steering him firmly in the direction of the crypt.

The curate looked confused. “Is she something to do with jumble sales?”

“She was right. I can feel the presence of the spirits here,” Mrs. Mering said. “Have you any history of ghosts here at St. Michael’s?”

“Well, actually,” the curate said, “there is a legend of a spirit having been seen in the tower. The legend dates back to the Fourteenth Century, I believe,” and they passed beyond the hoardings to the Other Side.

Tossie looked after them uncertainly, trying to decide whether she should follow them.

“Come look at this, Tossie,” Terence said, standing in front of a brass inscription. “It’s a monument to Gervase Scrope. Listen to what it says, ‘Here lies a poor tossed tennis ball/Was racketed from spring to fall.’ ”

Tossie obediently came over to read it, then to look at a small brass plate to the Botoners, who had built the cathedral.

“How quaint!” Tossie said. “Listen. ‘William and Adam built the tower, Ann and Mary built the spire. William and Adam built the church, Ann and Mary built the choir.’ ”

She moved on to look at a large marble monument to Dame Mary Bridgeman and Mrs. Eliza Samwell, and then an oil painting of “The Parable of the Lost Lamb,” and we proceeded round the nave, stepping over boards and bags of sand, and stopping at each of the chapels in turn.

“Oh, I do wish we had a guidebook,” Tossie said, frowning at the Purbeck marble baptismal font. “How can one tell what to look at without a guidebook?”

She and Terence moved on to the Cappers’ Chapel. Verity paused and gently tugged on my coat-tails, pulling me back. “Let them get ahead,” she said under her breath.

I obediently stopped in front of a brass of a woman in Jacobean costume dated 1609. “In memory of Ann Sewell,” it read. “A worthy stirrer-up of others to all holy virtues.”

“Obviously an ancestor of Lady Schrapnell’s,” Verity said. “Have you found out the curate’s name?”

When would I have had the chance to do that? I thought. “You think he’s Mr. C?” I said. “He did seem taken with her.”

“Every man seems taken with her,” she said, looking at Tossie, who was hanging on Terence’s arm and giggling. “The question is, is she taken with him? Do you see the bishop’s bird stump?”

“Not yet,” I said, looking round the nave. The flowers in front of the choir hoardings were in plain brass vases, and the sawdust-covered roses in the Cappers’ Chapel were in a silver bowl.

“Where is it supposed to be?”

“In the fall of 1940, standing against the parclose screen of the Smiths’ Chapel,” I said. “In the summer of 1888, I have no idea. It could be anywhere.” Including under one of those green tarps or somewhere behind the hoardings.

“Perhaps we should ask the curate where it is when he comes back,” she said anxiously.

“We can’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“First, it’s not the sort of thing that would be in Baedeker. The average tourist, which is what we’re supposed to be, would never have heard of it. Second, it’s not the bishop’s bird stump yet. It only became the bishop’s bird stump in 1926.”

“What was it till then?”

“A cast-iron footed pedestal firugeal urn. Or possibly a fruit compote.”

The sound of hammering behind the hoardings stopped abruptly, and there was the ghostly sound of swearing.

Verity glanced at Tossie and Terence, who were pointing at a stained-glass window, and then asked, “What happened in 1926?”

“There was a particularly acrimonious Ladies’ Altar Guild meeting,” I said, “at which someone proposed the purchase of a bird stump, which was a sort of tall ceramic vase popular at the time, for the flowers in the nave. The bishop had recently instituted cost-cutting measures for the running of the cathedral, and the proposal was voted down on the grounds that it was an unnecessary expense and that there must be something around somewhere they could use; i.e., the cast-iron footed pedestal firugeal urn which had been in storage down in the crypt for twenty years. It was thereafter referred to somewhat bitterly as ‘the bishop’s notion of a bird stump,’ and eventually shortened to—”

“The bishop’s bird stump.”

“But if it wasn’t the bishop’s bird stump when Tossie saw it, how does Lady Schrapnell know what she saw?”

“She described it in considerable detail in her diaries over the years, and when Lady Schrapnell first proposed her project, an historian was sent back to identify it in the spring of 1940 from the descriptions.”

“Could the historian have stolen it?” she asked.

“No.”

“How can you be certain?”

“It was me.”

“Cousin,” Tossie called. “Do come see what we’ve found.”

“Perhaps she’s found it without us,” I said, but it was only another monument, this one with a row of four swaddled infants carved on it.

“Isn’t it cunning?” Tossie said. “Look at the dearum-dearum babies.”

The south door opened, and Baine came in, sopping wet and clutching the issue of
The Light
inside his coat.

“Baine!” Tossie called.

He came over, leaving a trail of water. “Yes, miss?”

“It’s chilly in here. Fetch my Persian shawl. The pink one, with fringe. And Miss Browns.”

“Oh, that isn’t necessary,” Verity said, looking pityingly at Baine’s bedraggled appearance. “I’m not cold at all.”

“Nonsense,” Tossie said. “Bring both of them. And see they don’t get wet.”

“Yes, miss,” Baine said. “I shall fetch them as soon as I’ve brought your mother her book.”

Tossie put her lips in a pout.

“Oh, look, Cousin,” Verity said before she could demand Baine go get the shawls
now.
“These misereres show the Seven Works of Mercy,” and Tossie obediently went into the Girdlers’ Chapel to admire them, followed by the black marble altar tomb, assorted fan vaulting, and a monument with a particularly long and illegible inscription.

Verity took the opportunity to pull me ahead. “‘What if it isn’t here?” she whispered.

“It’s here,” I said. “It didn’t disappear till 1940.”

“I mean, what if it isn’t here because of the incongruity? What if events have changed, and they’ve already moved it down to the crypt or sold it at a jumble sale?”

“The bazaar’s not till next week.”

“Which aisle did you say it was in in 1940?” she said, starting purposefully toward the back of the nave.

“This aisle,” I said, trying to catch up, “in front of the Smiths’ Chapel, but that doesn’t mean that’s where it is now—” I said, and stopped because it was.

It was obvious why they had put the bishop’s bird stump in this particular aisle. In 1888 the light in this part of the nave had been very dim, and one of the pillars blocked it from the view of the rest of the church.

And one of the ladies of the Altar Guild had done the best she could, obscuring the upper levels with large, drooping peonies and twining ivy over the centaurs and one of the sphinxes. It was also newer, and therefore shinier, which tended to hide some of the details. It didn’t look half bad.

“Good Lord,” Verity said. “Is that it?” Her voice echoed back and forth among the fan vaulting. “It’s absolutely hideous.”

“Yes, well, that’s already been established. Keep it down.” I pointed at a pair of workmen at the back of the nave. One of them, in a blue shirt and blackened neckerchief, was shifting boards from one pile to another. The second, his mouth full of nails, was hammering loudly on a board laid across a sawhorse.

“Sorry,” Verity whispered contritely. “It was just rather a shock. I’d never seen it before.” She pointed gingerly at one of the decorations. “What
is
that, a camel?”

“A unicorn,” I said. “The camels are on this side, here, next to the depiction of Joseph’s being sold into Egypt.”

“And what’s that?” she said, pointing at a large group above a cast-iron garland of roses and thistles.