by Nine Tailors
He lay for some minutes quivering upon the leads, while his senses slowly drifted back to him. At length he wiped the blood from his face, and pulled himself groaningly to his knees, hands fastened upon the fretwork of the parapet. An enormous stillness surrounded him. The moon had risen, and between the battlements the sullen face of the drowned Fen showed like a picture in a shifting frame, like the sea seen through the porthole of a rolling ship, so widely did the tower swing to the relentless battery of the bells.
The whole world was lost now in one vast sheet of water. He hauled himself to his feet and gazed out from horizon to horizon. To the south-west, St. Stephen’s tower still brooded over a dark platform of land, like a broken mast upon a sinking ship. Every house in the village was lit up; St. Stephen was riding out the storm. Westward, the thin line of the railway embankment stretched away to Little Dykesey, unvanquished as yet, but perilously besieged. Due south, Fenchurch St. Peter, roofs and spire etched black against the silver, was the centre of a great mere. Close beneath the tower, the village of St. Paul lay abandoned, waiting for its fate. Away to the east, a faint pencilling marked the course of the Potters Lode Bank, and while he watched it, it seemed to waver and vanish beneath the marching tide. The Wale River had sunk from sight in the spreading of the flood, but far beyond it, a dull streak showed where the land billowed up seaward, and thrust the water back upon the Fenchurches. Inward and westward the waters swelled relentlessly from the breach of Van Leyden’s Sluice and stood level with the top of the Thirty-Foot Bank. Outward and eastward the gold cock on the weather-vane stared and strained, fronting the danger, held to his watch by the relentless pressure of the wind from off the Wash. Somewhere amid that still surge of waters, the broken bodies of Will Thoday and his mate drifted and tumbled with the wreckage of farm and field. The Fen had reclaimed its own.
One after another, the bells jangled into silence. Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity and Batty Thomas lowered their shouting mouths and were at peace, and in their sudden stillness, Tailor Paul tolled out the Nine Tailors for two souls passed in the night. The notes of the organ rose solemnly.
Wimsey crept down from the tower. Into the ringing-chamber, where old Hezekiah still stood to his bell, streamed light and sound from the crowded church. The Rector’s voice, musical and small, came floating up, past the Wings of the floating cherubim:
“Lighten our darkness …”
THE THIRD PART
THE BELLS ARE RUNG DOWN
The bronze monster had struck him dead.
JULIAN SERMET: THE ROSAMONDE
FOR FOURTEEN DAYS AND nights the Wale River ran backward in its bed and the floods stood in the land. They lay all about Fenchurch St. Stephen, a foot above the railway embankment, so that the trains came through snorting and slowly, sending up a wall of water right and left. St. Peter suffered most, its houses being covered to the sills of the upper windows, and its cottages to the eaves. At St. Paul, everything was flooded eight feet deep, except the mound where church and rectory stood. The Rector’s organization worked brilliantly. Supplies were ample for three days, after which an improvised service of boats and ferries brought in fresh food regularly from the neighbouring towns. A curious kind of desert-island life was carried on in and about the church, which, in course of time, assumed a rhythm of its own. Each morning was ushered in by a short and cheerful flourish of bells, which rang the milkers out to the cowsheds in the graveyard. Hot water for washing was brought in wheeled water-butts from the Rectory copper. Bedding was shaken and rolled under the pews for the day; the tarpaulins dividing the men’s side from the women’s side of the church were drawn back and a brief service of hymns and prayer was held, to the accompaniment of culinary clinkings and odours from the Lady-chapel. Breakfast, prepared under Burner’s directions, was distributed along the pews by members of the Women’s Institute, and when this was over, the duties of the day were put in hand. Daily school was carried on in the south aisle; games and drill were organized in the Rectory garden by Lord Peter Wimsey; farmers attended to their cattle; owners of poultry brought the eggs to a communal basket; Mrs. Venables presided over sewing-parties in the Rectory. Two portable wireless sets were available, one in the Rectory, the other in the church; these tirelessly poured out entertainment and instruction, the batteries being kept re-charged by an ingenious device from the engine of Wimsey’s Daimler, capably handled by the Wilderspins. Three evenings a week were devoted to concerts and lectures, arranged by Mrs. Venables, Miss Snoot and the combined choirs of St. Stephen and St. Paul, with Miss Hilary Thorpe and Mr. Bunter (comedian) assisting. On Sundays, the routine was varied by an Early Celebration, followed by an undenominational service conducted by the two Church of England priests and the two nonconformist ministers. A wedding, which happened to fall due in the middle of the fortnight, was made a gala occasion, and a baby, which also happened to fall due, was baptized “Paul” (for the church) “Christopher” (because St. Christopher had to do with rivers and ferries), the Rector strenuously resisting the parents’ desire to call it “Van Leyden Flood.”
On the fourteenth day, Wimsey, passing early through the churchyard for a morning swim down the village street, noticed that the level of the water had shrunk by an inch, and returned, waving a handful of laurels from somebody’s front garden, as the nearest substitute for an olive-branch. That day they rang a merry peal of Kent Treble Bob Major, and across the sundering flood heard the bells of St. Stephen peal merrily back.
“The odour,” observed Bunter, gazing out on the twentieth day across the dismal strand of ooze and weed that had once been Fenchurch St. Paul, “is intensely disagreeable, my lord, and I should be inclined to consider it insanitary.”
“Nonsense, Bunter,” said his master. “At Southend you would call it ozone and pay a pound a sniff for it.”
The women of the village looked rueful at the thought of the cleansing and drying that their homes would need, and the men shook their heads over the damage to rick and barn.
The bodies of Will Thoday and John Cross were recovered from the streets of St. Stephen, whither the flood had brought them, and buried beneath the shadow of St. Paul’s tower, with all the solemnity of a muffled peal. It was only after they had been laid in the earth that Wimsey opened his mind to the Rector and to Superintendent Blundell.
“Poor Will,” he said, “he died finely and his sins died with him. He meant no harm, but I think perhaps he guessed at last how Geoffrey Deacon died and felt himself responsible. But we needn’t look for a murderer now.”
“What do you mean, my lord?”
“Because,” said Wimsey, with a wry smile, “the murderers of Geoffrey Deacon are hanged already, and a good deal higher than Haman.”
“Murderers?” asked the Superintendent, quickly. “More than one? Who were they?”
“Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul.”
There was an astonished silence. Wimsey added:
“I ought to have guessed. I believe it is at St. Paul’s Cathedral that it is said to be death to enter the bell-chamber when a peal is being rung. But I know that if I had stayed ten minutes in the tower that night when they rang the alarm, I should have been dead, too. I don’t know exactly what of—stroke, apoplexy, shock—anything you like. The sound of a trumpet laid flat the walls of Jericho and the note of a fiddle will shatter a vessel of glass. I know that no human frame could bear the noise of the bells for more than fifteen minutes—and Deacon was shut up there, roped and tied there, for nine interminable hours between the Old Year and the New.”
“My God!” said the Superintendent. “Why, then, you were right, my lord, when you said that Rector, or you, or Hezekiah might have murdered him.”
“I was right,” said Wimsey. “We did.” He thought for a moment and spoke again. “The noise must have been worse that night than it was the other day—think how the snow choked the louvres and kept it pent up in the tower. Geoffrey Deacon was
a bad man, but when I think of the helpless horror of his lonely and intolerable death-agony——”
He broke off, and put his head between his hands, as though instinctively seeking to shut out the riot of the bell-voices.
The Rector’s mild voice came out of the silence.
“There have always,” he said, “been legends about Batty Thomas. She has slain two other men in times past, and Hezekiah will tell you that the bells are said to be jealous of the presence of evil. Perhaps God speaks through those mouths of inarticulate metal. He is a righteous judge, strong and patient, and is provoked every day.”
“Well,” said the Superintendent, striking a note of cheerful commonplace, “seems as if we didn’t need to take any more steps in this matter. The man’s dead, and the fellow that put him up there is dead too, poor chap, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t altogether understand about these bells, but I’ll take your word for it, my lord. Matter of periods of vibration, I suppose. Yours seems the best solution, and I’ll put it up to the Chief Constable. And that’s all there is to it.”
He rose to his feet.
“I’ll wish you good-morning, gentlemen,” he said, and went out.
The voice of the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul: Gaude, Gaudy, Domini in laude. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. John Cole made me, John Presbyter paid me, John Evangelist aid me. From Jericho to John A-Groate there is no bell can better my note. Jubilate Deo. Nunc Dimittis, Domine. Abbot Thomas set me here and bade me ring both loud and clear. Paul is my name, honour that same.
Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul.
Nine Tailors Make a Man.
A Biography of Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was a playwright, scholar, and acclaimed author of mysteries, best known for her books starring the gentleman sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. The Los Angeles Times hailed Sayers as “one of the greatest mystery story writers of [the twentieth] century.”
Born in Oxford, England, she was the only child of Reverend Henry Sayers, headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School and then rector of Bluntisham village. Sayers grew up in the Bluntisham rectory, then won a scholarship to Oxford University, where she studied modern languages and worked at the publishing house Blackwell’s, which in 1916 published Op. 1, Sayers’ first book of poetry.
In 1922 Sayers took a job as a copywriter for London advertising firm S. H. Benson, forerunner to the famous Ogilvy & Mather. There she created several popular slogans and campaigns, including the iconic, animal-theme Guinness advertisements that are still used today.
While working as a copywriter, Sayers began work on Whose Body? (1923), a mystery novel featuring dapper detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Over the next two decades, Sayers published ten more Wimsey novels and several short stories, crafting a character whose complexity was unusual for the mystery novels of the time. Handsome, brave, and charming, Wimsey has a few defining flaws, including his tendency to prattle, fear of responsibility, and perpetual nervousness caused by shell shock inflicted during World War I. Sayers once described him as a cross between Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster. Her writing was praised by fellow mystery writers Ruth Rendell and P. D. James; James said that Sayers “brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.”
Set between the two World Wars, the Wimsey novels are more than typical manor-house mysteries. Sayers used her knowledge of various topics—including advertising, women’s education, and veterans’ health—to give her books realistic details. In 1936, she brought Wimsey to the stage in Busman’s Honeymoon, a story which Sayers would publish as a novel the following year. The play was so successful that she gave up mystery writing to focus on the stage, producing a series of religious works culminating in The Man Born to Be King (1941), a radio drama about the life of Jesus.
Sayers continued writing theological essays and criticism during and after World War II. In 1949, she published the first volume of a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. She was halfway through the third volume when she died of a heart attack in 1957. Although she considered this translation to be her best work, it is for her elegantly constructed detective fiction that Sayers remains best remembered.
Sayers in the garden of her Oxford home, around 1897. She holds her two toy monkeys, Jocko and Jacko.
An 1899 studio portrait of Sayers, around six years old. (Photo courtesy of I. Palmer Clarke/Cambridge.)
The Sayers family circa 1905. Dorothy (about age twelve) posed with her family outside their home at the Bluntisham rectory. First row, left to right: Gertrude Sayers (aunt), Dorothy. Second row, left to right: Anna Breakey Sayers (grandmother), Mabel Leigh (aunt). Back row, left to right: Reverend Henry Sayers (father), Ivy Shrimpton (cousin), Helen Mary Leigh Sayers (mother).
Seventeen-year-old Sayers wearing a pageant costume in 1908.
Sayers with friends, posing as shipping magnate Sir Hugh Allen, in 1915.
A studio portrait of Sayers taken in 1926.
Sayers’s husband, “Mac” Fleming, at home in 1930 behind overflowing boxes of Sayers’s fan mail. A family friend sits to the right. (Photo courtesy of the Tropical Press Agency.)
Sayers’s husband, “Mac” Fleming, standing in doorway.
Sayers in 1950, at the unveiling of a plaque at the S. H. Benson advertising agency, where she once worked as a copywriter. The plaque was placed at the foot of a spiral staircase in the agency, a tribute to a character in Murder Must Advertise who plunges down a similar staircase.
All images used by permission of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1934 by Dorothy L. Sayers
copyright renewed © 1962 by Lloyd’s Bank Limited
cover design by Katrina Damkoehler
978-1-4532-5894-1
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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EBOOKS BY DOROTHY L. SAYERS
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
A SHORT TOUCH OF KENT TREBLE BOB MAJOR (TWO COURSES)
THE FIRST COURSE: THE BELLS ARE RUNG UP
THE SECOND COURSE: THE BELLS IN THEIR COURSES
A FULL PEAL OF GRANDSIRE TRIPLES (HOLT'S TEN-PART PEAL)
THE FIRST PART: MR. GOTOBED IS CALLED WRONG WITH A DOUBLE
THE SECOND PART: LORD PETER IS CALLED INTO THE HUNT
THE THIRD PART: LORD PETER IS TAKEN FROM LEAD AND MAKES THIRDS PLACE
THE FOURTH PART: LOR
D PETER DODGES WITH MR. BLUNDELL AND PASSES HIM
THE FIFTH PART: TAILOR PAUL IS CALLED BEFORE WITH A SINGLE
THE SIXTH PART: MONSIEUR ROZIER HUNTS THE TREBLE DOWN
THE SEVENTH PART: PLAIN HUNTING
THE EIGHTH PART: LORD PETER FOLLOWS HIS COURSE BELL TO LEAD
THE NINTH PART: EMILY TURNS BUNTER FROM BEHIND
THE TENTH PART: LORD PETER IS CALLED WRONG
A SHORT TOUCH OF STEDMAN'S TRIPLES (FIVE PARTS)
THE FIRST PART: THE QUICK WORK
THE SECOND PART: NOBBY GOES IN SLOW AND COMES OUT QUICK
THE THIRD PART: WILL THODAY GOES IN QUICK AND COMES OUT SLOW
THE FOURTH PART: THE SLOW WORK
THE FIFTH PART: THE DODGING
A FULL PEAL OF KENT TREBLE BOB MAJOR (THREE PARTS)
THE FIRST PART: THE WATERS ARE CALLED OUT
