by Syd Moore
We passed an open field bordered by a row of young orange-leaved trees. Autumnal prettiness. I liked it. ‘Uh-huh,’ I said. ‘Although if they were taking different parts of the course they might not have read each other’s recommendations.’
‘True,’ said Sam. ‘Devlin might have known of it anyway though. If it’s a bit of a classic.’
I agreed. ‘Although, he’s not here is he? So nothing points to him.’
‘That’s correct. Oh hang on – here we are,’ said Sam. ‘You need to pull in. It’s on your right.’
I saw the church lane open up and turned into it. ‘Assuming that any aspect of Graham’s death was premeditated, and it wasn’t all randomly coincidental,’ I added. ‘Stranger things have happened at sea.’
To which he replied, ‘And stranger things have happened to thee.’
Then we high-fived.
It had become a bit of a call and response thing lately. Something to defuse the tension. Because, of course, a hell of a lot of strange things had been happening to both of us of late. We’d talked about it and wondered if it was the magnetic pull of the Witch Museum or if there was something stirring up the air. Both possibilities were equally disturbing. It was another conversation that we’d have to return to when we had time. If we ever had any down time.
The church was perched on the top of a hill. We left the car and saw that on either side of it there were two very large houses. One, a former vicarage, the other another grand house like Ratchette Hall. The owners would have been, and possibly still remained, of some standing in the village a century ago. Both builds spoke of wealth.
St Saviour’s itself looked aged in a kind of standard ‘old church’ way. Parts of it had uneven walls, with different, irregular stones embedded across them. Other wings were more symmetrical. And it was quite big for such a petite village. So maybe it had started off small and been added to over the years. Was it pretty? I wondered. No, not pretty but imposing, austere.
We trundled round the churchyard, with its grand tombs and weeping angels, to the west door, which was unlocked.
Inside, the atmosphere was one of rigid sternness and conventionality. The layout was that of a standard English church, designed to resemble the cross: nave down the middle, steps up to the chancel with choir to the sides, pews for the congregation set out in lines either side of the aisle facing the altar at the top. At the back there were more wooden pews. They looked slightly older, carved from darker timbers, and were mounted on a low platform. Presumably these were for the more affluent patrons – the slight elevation meant they had a good view of the church and altar.
Ironically I had been in more churches since I had become owner of the Witch Museum, or keeper, as Sam preferred to call my position, than I ever had before. These layouts were becoming familiar.
I breathed in. There was a slight whiff of damp and the smell of ‘old stillness’. Despite this, I had a sense of movement: a faint mechanical whirring was definitely coming from somewhere.
As I walked down the aisle the pews caught my eye. Well, more precisely the ends of them. They were really quite something. For they had been carved painstakingly into lots and lots of different creatures: dogs with wings, monkeys that looked like old men clutching their heads in their hands like that poor lost soul in The Scream. Some bore strange eagles with dodo beaks and pointy wings. Others supported blubbery sea serpents with open sucking mouths.
Three-legged owls watched me as I passed under their unblinking gaze. Griffins shrieked, scaly lions and fanged gargoyles roared – all without making a single sound. They were a strange sort of guardian to have in a place of sanctity. I wondered what their purpose was.
Sam had of course told me that gargoyles were erected on the outsides of churches both to act as spouts that conveyed rainwater down from the roof and to frighten away evil spirits. But these ones were inside, set to sit at shoulder height alongside the worshippers. And the carving technique was definitely more recent than the Middle Ages. I was no expert, but the choice of the oak and some of the sculpture style reminded me of some Victorian pieces we had in the museum. Especially the strange wooden lectern that had an eagle carved into it. It too had a wide hooked nose and a man’s feet. That piece dated to the 1880s. According to the notes that accompanied the artefact it had been a local carpenter’s private flight of fancy. To amuse his children. These pew ends, however, could not be displayed more publicly. They were there for a reason.
I was going to ask Sam what he thought of them but he was beckoning me to one side. The speed at which his hand moved, suggested impatience. Then he said, ‘Come on, stop dallying. Here’s one. An effigy. No tomb though. Just the top.’
I passed under the glare of an ambiguous-looking sphinx and came to Sam’s side. He had one hand on the wall. The other was on his thigh, balancing his weight as he bent into a shallow recess and squinted at the features of the prone statue lying there.
Here, then, was our great avenging medieval knight.
Looking like he was having a nap.
In a natty tunic.
He had one hand on the hilt of his sword, another on its shaft, clutching it tight. Seriously if this were a Carry On film there would be some serious innuendo flying about right now.
Lower down, pointy chain-mail feet rested on something that could have been a reclining dog.
His face was generic. Not like a real person. More like the impression of one: slanty eyes, straight nose. Mouth just a line, slightly curved down, a smattering of an Inspector Clouseau moustache above it.
I reached out to touch it, wondering absurdly if there might be something there – perhaps a residual energy left over from their march to Ratchette Hall?
But I felt nothing. Of course. Just cold smoothness under my fingertips.
I don’t know why I had thought I might pick anything up. I guess I was thinking about my grandmother and her clairaudient abilities. But there was nothing there. Nothing that I could pick up on. Or was aware of. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
‘Why has this been displayed?’ asked Sam as I removed my hand. ‘I thought it had been resealed and buried.’
But he had taken off to the north side of the church.
‘Because,’ I called over. ‘It’s quite beautiful.’ Indeed, there was something absurdly peaceful about this sleeping knight. Still. Not moving. At peace with the world.
That is, if he hadn’t got up and walked the earth on All Hallows’ Eve.
‘It’s strange isn’t it?’ called Sam from the other side. ‘That people had this sort of thing carved. I am wondering if it’s the ancient equivalent of a photograph.’
I left the sleeping statue and walked over to him.
‘There’s another one here,’ he said. ‘This is certainly more enduring than a photograph. And more prominent. It would have been a show of status to the world. Or at least the parishioners.’
I cast my eyes to the floor as I detected a difference in the surface underfoot. I was treading on something that was a whole lot flatter than the roughly evened tiles. A tombstone. With a cross carved into it. ‘Were these guys crusaders?’ I asked. ‘Like …’ I tried to remember where I’d seen this sort of thing before.
‘Ah yes,’ said Sam. ‘Good thinking.’
I found the memory match and pulled it out with triumph. ‘That’s it. Like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There was that old dude in the temple, with the grail. He was guarding it. He had this cross on his tunic.’ I pointed at the symbol beneath my feet.
The rectangular grey stone was smooth and polished from centuries of shoes hobbling over it. Funny place to want to rest forever, I thought. But I suppose you’d always have company. At least on a Sunday.
Sam crumpled against the further wall and then straightened his face. ‘Really Rosie, are all your references from children’s films?’
‘Yeah. And telly. And internet. And books. You?’
His laugh echoed round the whitewashed walls
of the church.
‘There’s a cross here,’ I said. ‘But that bloke, the knight with the Clouseau moustache back there, he didn’t have one on his tunic. Not that I could see.’
Sam turned and bent into another recess. ‘No, you’re right. Nor does this one here.’
‘So what does that mean?’ I asked catching up with him. ‘They weren’t holy?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Only that they didn’t take part in the holy crusades.’
I peeped over Sam’s shoulder to survey the new knight. He looked more or less like the last one. Except this one’s face was a bit more eroded. You had to bend right in to see it. I didn’t really like the look of him. He was darker, his eyes deeper, the mouth more pinched. And it felt like he was trying to ignore us and face the wall. This guy had both hands on his sword, gripping it firmly, like he was a heartbeat away from unsheathing it and plunging it into someone. Oh yeah, this one was definitely less Carry On, more Hammer Horror.
‘So what did the knights actually do?’
‘Good question,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve not had much to do with them: Knights of Christ. Religious warriors.’
‘Oh god,’ I said and rolled my eyes. ‘Worst kind.’
Sam continued to look at the stone soldier. ‘Really? Why?’
‘They have faith. Faith is all about blindness. It’s illogical. It demands that you overlook its flaws just so you can have it. Then when you have it, you don’t let anyone budge you. However convincing their argument might be. However sympathetic you might be to them.’
Sam didn’t reply. I followed his gaze and saw that he was looking at the feet. The knight’s shoes were resting on a large coiled snake-like creature. ‘The dog over there,’ he said, ‘symbolises loyalty generally. Which suggests the man may once have done something good in his life for which he was awarded recognition posthumously. Strange that this one hasn’t got a similar pet.’
‘So, this one was a baddie?’ I thought about the sword back at Ratchette Hall, torn from the body of a six-headed serpent.
Sam shrugged. ‘It all depends on your perspective really. Say “barbarians” are attacking a village and stealing their sheep, because their own community has got no food, no live stock. Knights come to the aid of the village and slay the barbarians, the other settlement’s warriors. Thus they sentence the defeated community to slow and painful death by starvation. Who’s the hero? The defending knight or the barbarian that tried to save their people?’
I nodded, though he couldn’t see, and recited one of my grandfather’s sayings. ‘Perspective is a shifting sand, right?’ And we looked at the statue.
‘They’ve both got their fingers though,’ Sam pointed out.
And indeed they had.
I pulled back and looked over the pews again. It was so quiet. No traffic. No voices. Just the wind. As I listened I became aware of the whirring sound again. It was coming from the back of the church.
I broke off and made my way to a large jagged hole in the wall at the rear. It looked like someone had knocked through but not finished it properly. ‘Ah,’ I said to myself as I got closer. ‘This one must be the tomb they discovered earlier in the year.’
The section had been crudely covered on the outside with a makeshift wall and tarpaulin sheets overhead that were partially transparent and thus let in the daylight. They had been fastened into place securely though and didn’t flap. The space was about three metres square and looked like a bad builder’s bodged extension, only half-finished. The type that would turn up on DIY SOS. I could see it now – the vicar despairing that the builders had done a runner. Appealing to the public to sort the chaos out.
Except this wasn’t any ordinary extension. There was the beginnings of a wall, but the floor had been partially dug up. Work must have halted when the ground fell through into a previously unseen cavern. There were several lengths of blue-and-white tape cordoning the hole off, and a sign that hung down into the gap in the wall that read ‘No entry. Work in progress.’ Half of the strands of plasticky tape had, however, been pulled aside and thrown onto the floor so the whole ‘Keep Out’ vibe wasn’t coming across that strongly. With that in mind I did what I do best and ignored it. Then I walked into the space and scrutinised the hole.
There was an old wooden ladder peeping out the top. I, of course, got hold of it and clambered down several rungs, onto another floor a good few feet lower than the rest of the church. It was like a cave-room, very low-ceilinged, only five feet high. I was forced to hunch over and squat. As my eyes became accustomed to the dimness, I realised that it was shaped similarly to the other recesses in the church where the other knights lay. Though this recess was obviously subterranean and, I felt, possibly older.
Dark, dank, damp, part of the wall over the tomb was glistening slightly. The air smelled of vegetation and vegetative decay with a huge dose of mustiness sprinkled in, despite the efforts of the rotating fan that was connected to an extension lead. There was a note sellotaped onto the floor in front of it: ‘On no account turn this fan off.’
The blower was pointing at a tomb. That is, I assumed it was a tomb – it was rectangular and carved from heavy stone, brownish in parts. The sarcophagus had a lid, but no effigy atop it. However, as I continued to stare I realised the top had had been pushed open so that the stone coffin lid was half ajar, revealing a tantalising opening – a triangular window into the tomb.
Intrigued, I crept over and squinted into the darkness. Unable to see much, I took out my phone and shone the light into it. There was another coffin within, its lid off and nowhere to be seen. As far as I could see, the tomb was empty. Not entirely surprising, I thought, and was about to call out to Sam, when a haughty voice above me, shouted, ‘Hey you! What do you think you’re doing there?’
Snapping round I saw a black silhouette peering down over the edge of the hole. His voice suggested he wasn’t happy about me having disregarded the ‘Keep Out’ sign.
‘What?’ I said, limply. ‘I was just interested in the hole. What is it?’ Pleading stupidity has never made for a great start: ignorance of the law is no excuse. I knew that. I reminded people about it.
The bending man wasn’t buying it either. ‘It’s a very important part of the church restoration,’ he snapped. As I moved towards the opening I could see light falling on grey crinkled hair crowning a high forehead and egg-shaped face. ‘Very important,’ he repeated, then knotted his lips into a pout. I spied a dog collar peeping over a purple jumper. ‘Would you mind stepping out right away? NOW!’
I shrugged. ‘Okay.’ And began to ascend to the surface via the ladder. ‘Sorry.’
I was halfway up when he suddenly shrieked. ‘Stop!’
Which I did.
The guy’s face was going a really crazy shade of red.
He gasped. ‘What have you done? To the tomb? It’s open! Where’s the effigy?’
Then a brown boot loomed over my face. I backed down the ladder to avoid it connecting.
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I protested as corduroy trousers and a large squidgy bottom came into view. ‘I just came down to have a look. The tomb was like that.’
The ladder rattled against the muddy wall and the man jumped into the cramped space. Feet hitting the ground with a squelch, he spun round and fastened his eyes on the empty tomb. ‘Oh no no no!’ he cried. ‘Where’s the effigy?’
He half-crouched half-leapt at the sarcophagus and ran his hand over the surface. Then he looked into the crack. ‘And, oh my goodness?’ Twisting instantly, the vicar jabbed an angry digit straight at my chest and looked me up and down as if I was concealing something on my person. ‘What … where? You Jezebel! What have you done with the body?’
CHAPTER SIX
It took a trip to the car and a thorough inspection of all possible storage areas (boot, glovebox, coffee holder, small CD case under the passenger seat) to convince Father Edgar that neither myself nor Sam had snaffled the body and coffin top.
When he fi
nally saw the light, so to speak, we decided the police should be informed.
The local dispatch noted down the details and said they’d send someone over. But we all got the feeling we weren’t going to hear the dulcet squeal of blues and twos in the immediate. Father Edgar announced they had CCTV over both doors, so whoever had taken them would be recorded on there. Then he went outside the church to make a ‘private’ call.
‘Well, I’m glad we’re off the hook,’ said Sam once we were alone again.
I smirked. ‘You definitely haven’t got them in your pocket then?’
Sam cocked his head to one side. ‘Oh don’t, Rosie. He was obviously in a state of shock. And who can blame him? You wouldn’t expect a desiccated cadaver and a stone effigy to be at the top of your everyday burglar’s wish list.’
‘Mmm. True that. Which begs the question – who has stolen it and why? Or maybe the other way round. In terms of importance. And is it the knight with the missing finger? I guess it must be. The other two looked pretty intact.’
Sam sat down on one of the pews with a carving of a Griffin spreading its eagle wings. ‘Oohhh chilly,’ he said and pulled his jacket tighter. ‘It’s so draughty here.’ He moved up the pew a little. ‘Well,’ he unfolded his arms and pointed towards the Clouseau-esque effigy. ‘You’re right. He’s got all his fingers. And so has the one up there.’ His head rolled forwards to the northern knight and bobbed twice. ‘So I guess yes, we must presume the missing digit has come from the vanished man in marble.’
‘Do you think someone wants us to believe this body has gone AWOL on purpose and is now terrorising the neighbourhood?’
Sam crept up again and rubbed the rear legs of the griffin, clawed like a lion’s. ‘Well, I’ve not heard anything about marauding corpses on the radio and I imagine Monty would be down here like a shot, if there were any suggestion of such.’
I looked back at the hole at the rear of the church. ‘Well deduced, Watson. But it could suggest such a thing to some people.’
