by Alan Bradley
I stood in the center aisle and listened.
The place was filled with that utter silence which only churches can have—a silence so vast, so timeless, and so loud that it hurts the ears, an echoing vacuum of negative sound.
Could it be the crying-out of the dead who lay stacked within the walls and in the crypt below? Were they lying in wait, as Daffy had once told me, to seize the midnight visitor and drag you down with them into their coffins where they would munch on your bones until the Last Judgment at which time they would spit them out and make haste for Heaven?
Stop it, Flavia! I thought.
Why did I allow my mind to fill with such utter rubbish? I had been here before in the night and had seen nothing worse than Miss Tanty.
Miss Tanty and Cynthia Davidson.
Now that I stopped to think about it, St. Tancred’s in the wee hours was almost as busy as Victoria Station at midday.
The boat train to Heaven.
Stop it, Flavia!
I was allowing the place to get on my nerves and I didn’t like it at all.
I moved up the aisle a step at a time—a slow procession of one.
Then suddenly, in my mind, perhaps to keep me company, Daffy was pacing along behind me, chanting in a solemn, hollow voice, “’Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs …’”
Stop it, Flavia! Stop it at once!
With any luck I was just minutes away from success. Mere moments away from—
Something creaked.
Something wooden, by the sound of it.
I froze.
Listened …
Nothing.
This is ridiculous, I thought. Besides their stones, old churches are full of oak and elm. The timbers of the roof which arched above my head, the pews, the pulpit, the railings were all, once upon a time, trees in an English forest. They had once been alive—were, perhaps, still alive, settling, stretching their sinews in their sleep.
I moved up the aisle toward the organ, not daring to raise the torch’s beam to see if Saint Tancred was still dripping.
Splotches of colored moonlight came angling in through the windows making the shadows all the darker.
Now I had reached the organ, its three keyboards gleaming in the darkness like a triple set of teeth.
Something creaked. Again.
Or was it something else?
I shifted the beam of the torch and the carved wooden imp grinned at me in the gloom.
I pressed my ear to the wooden panel and listened, but there was not the faintest sound from the organ chamber.
A twist of the imp’s chubby cheeks and the panel slid open.
I stepped inside.
Here I was again. The spot where Mr. Collicutt died—the spot where, unless I was sadly mistaken, Mr. Collicutt had hidden the Heart of Lucifer.
It was simply a matter of threading the facts together in the right order, like pearls on a string. Once that was done, the solution was not difficult. I could hardly wait to explain it all to Inspector Hewitt—to deliver it up as a goodwill offering with every last bow and every blessed ribbon tied beautifully in place.
He would, of course, share the details with his wife, Antigone, who would ring me up at once and invite me round to tea once again, in spite of my past social blunders.
She would remark on the brilliance of my solution and I would say that it was nothing.
The organ pipes rose all around me—thousands of them, it seemed, rank after rank like mountain peaks of tin and wood.
Each pipe had its mouth, a horizontal slit near the bottom through which it spoke, and I was as sure as I could be that into one of these, Mr. Collicutt had shoved the Heart of Lucifer.
The question had been: Which one?
I had spent hours sitting on the organ bench with Feely, watching as she pulled out the stops which gave the organ its voice: the Lieblich Bourdon, the Geigen Principal, the Contra Fagotto, the Gemshorn, the Voix Céleste, the Salicet, the Dulciana, and the Lieblich Gedact.
In which set of pipes would Mr. Collicutt have hidden the Heart of Lucifer?
Oddly enough, it had been the cast-off row of stop knobs in his bedroom that had first put the question into my head.
“Where would an organist hide a diamond?”
It was like a riddle, and like a riddle, the answer, once you saw it, was laughably obvious.
“In the Gemshorn!”
Feely had explained that the Gemshorn pipes were the ones that were meant to sound like flutes made from animal horns—the ones that looked to me like pygmy blowguns.
There must have been two dozen of the things, ranging in length from several feet to a couple of inches. The smallest ones were too small to conceal anything, their slots too narrow to shove anything inside.
I decided to begin with the largest pipe.
I inserted my first two fingers into its metal mouth and felt both upwards and downwards—above the slot and below it.
The inside of the pipe was as smooth as a tea canister.
Very well, then—on to the next.
I couldn’t hold back a smile as I worked. Feely had complained that the organ had been out of sorts for weeks but she had mistakenly blamed it on the weather.
But I knew otherwise.
Who would have thought that a hidden diamond was giving the poor, tired old instrument a frog in its throat?
Flavia de Luce, that’s who!
“Flavia, you rascal, you,” I whispered, and shoved my fingers into the mouth of the next pipe.
There’s an unwritten law of the universe which assures that the thing you seek will always be found in the last place you look. It applies to everything in life from lost socks to misplaced poisons, and it was certainly at work here.
The only pipe I hadn’t yet checked of the Gemshorn rank was the largest and the last—the one farthest from the sliding panel through which I had entered the organ chamber.
I made a mighty stretch to reach it—said a silent prayer—and slid my hand into the slot.
My fingers touched something!
There was a lump inside the pipe—a dried lump, like a petrified prune.
I felt the thing, gently outlining its size and shape with my fingertips.
It was, perhaps, the size of a walnut, and about the same texture.
I wiggled it and with a hollow snap the thing came free and dropped into my hand.
Careful, I thought. Don’t let it fall down inside the pipe.
I worked the object slowly, carefully toward the slot until at last I was able to draw it out into the light of the torch.
What bitter disappointment!
It was nothing but a lump of old putty.
I wedged the torch between two of the organ pipes, and using the thumbs of both hands, dug my nails into the lump and split it open as if cracking an egg.
The Heart of Lucifer!
My heart gave a bound and I’m afraid I said something quite unsaintly which I would not be proud of later.
Brought to life by the torch’s beam, the huge diamond lay in my hand, shooting off sparks of light into the surrounding darkness like a new sun hatching.
As I had suspected, Mr. Collicutt had stuck the stone inside an organ pipe.
How clever of him, I thought, and how much more clever of me to figure out how to find it.
The Heart of Lucifer! Imagine!
I could hardly wait to tell Father.
I was holding the giant gem between thumb and forefinger, turning it from side to side, sending reflections dancing in their thousands, when a voice behind me said:
“Seize her, Benson!”
And then everything happened at once. Someone grabbed my upper arm and dug powerful fingers into my muscles. My entire arm went weak.
I spun round, kicking out at my attacker even as I twisted away, having the pleasure of feeling my shoe meet shin.
“Damn you!” a pained voice said. “I’ll teach you to—”
And then the torch went o
ut.
My elbow had knocked it from between the organ pipes and it hit the wooden floor with a dull thud.
We were now in total darkness and I opened my mouth to scream. But I did not.
Rather, I did something I expect I will never forget.
Hands grabbed at me and slipped off again as I pulled back and banged among the pipes. The wind chest was somewhere in the corner. Perhaps I could scramble up on top of it and hide behind—
Powerful hands had seized one of my ankles and were twisting … twisting—
And then the torch came on. Someone had retrieved it from the floor and was shining the beam directly into my eyes.
“Where is it?” thundered a voice from the darkness behind the light.
The voice of Ridley-Smith, the magistrate. I was sure of it.
“Hand it over,” another voice demanded, and my arm was wrenched almost out of its socket. I could see strange fingers digging into my whitening wrist.
“Hand it over and be quick about it.”
“Hand what over?” I gasped. “Let go of me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The stone!” a voice rasped, hot in my ear. I could smell the man’s breath and it was nothing to write home about.
My first reaction was to stall for time. How long would it be before help could arrive?
An hour? It might as well be an eternity.
Benson (for I could now see with my own eyes that he was my attacker) seized my shoulders and gave me the kind of shake a terrier gives a rat.
I could feel my brain slapping against my brainpan.
“No games,” he hissed, his temper short. “Hand it over.”
I held out my empty hands in front of me.
“There must be some mistake,” I told him, trying my best to stare with open-eyed honesty into the torch’s blinding beam. “Honest.”
Another shake, more painful than the first.
“You’re hurting me,” I told him, my head spinning. “Let me go.”
Another bone-rattling shake.
I couldn’t take much more of this. There was no escape. Both Benson and the magistrate were barring the only way out of this hellish chamber.
I needed to change tactics.
Slightly.
“All right,” I said. “I know that the two of you murdered Mr. Collicutt.”
The shaking stopped. First point went to me.
“Right here,” I added, gesturing with my hand to take in the entire organ chamber, my breath coming in gasps. “I know that—you and your men—have been tunneling in from the churchyard—to steal the stone—for ages—maybe years. I know that you, Magistrate Ridley-Smith—came across the account—of the Heart of Lucifer—in the Public Record Office—the documents held at Chancery Lane. You hid it there in a pile of ancient charters. Who else but someone in the legal professions would have access?”
I was breathing heavily—as overwound as a six-shilling clock.
The Magistrate said nothing. I hadn’t been convincing enough.
“Mr. Collicutt was one of your—” (What was the word? Flunkies? Hirelings? Daffy would know.) “Employees,” I settled for, aware even as I said it that it was a pretty weak choice of words. “He double-crossed you. You had a falling-out. You murdered him right here in the organ chamber. Method? Diethyl ether. Murder weapon?”
I paused dramatically. Stretch it as long as you can, I thought.
“A handkerchief soaked in ether and held in place by a gas mask. And then you dragged him off through the tunnel and dumped his body in the chamber on top of Saint Tancred’s tomb.”
There was a dead silence during which Benson let go of my shoulder.
“That’s why you forced the bishop to withdraw his faculty. You knew what they would find when the tomb was opened, and it was too late to move the body again.”
During all of this, Magistrate Ridley-Smith had remained silent. But now he spoke, his words curiously soft in the stone chamber.
“Is that what you think?” he asked. “Is that what you honestly think?”
“Yes!” I shot back, trying to inject a certain tone of accusation into my voice.
“I’m afraid you have sadly misinterpreted the facts, young lady,” he said.
Ha, I thought. I know what he’s up to! Young lady, indeed!
He was going to sneak round the back and try to win me over with fake respect.
“Have I?” I asked, as coldly and condescendingly as I could manage given the situation.
“You have indeed,” he answered, putting such heart into his words that for a moment I was almost tempted to believe him. Had I detected in his voice a sense of being shaken?
“You have indeed,” he repeated. “The truth is quite the contrary.”
I let him see me bite my lip. How much longer could I stall?
“O, blessed ladies of the Altar Guild,” I prayed. “Sprout wings! Now! Fly to my defense!”
“What is the truth?” I heard myself blurt, recalling vaguely that Pontius Pilate had once used similar words but in quite different circumstances.
“The truth is that we tried desperately to revive Collicutt. Benson used a length of hose from the tower. Connected it to some sort of valve in the organ here. Tried to give him air. But it was no use.”
The air hose? I hadn’t thought of that! It would certainly explain the exploded intestines.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
Even as I spoke I heard a sudden stirring in the church behind Benson and the magistrate, followed by the hollow banging down of a kneeling bench onto the stone floor.
Rescue was moments away!
“Help!” I shouted in as high-pitched and bloodcurdling a voice as I could manage. “Help me! Please help me!”
There was a shuffle of footsteps.
And then a large face appeared over the magistrate’s shoulder—a face with glasses as thick as the Heart of Lucifer.
It was Miss Tanty!
“What’s going on here?” she demanded.
•TWENTY-SEVEN•
Never—not in my dopiest dreams—would I have believed I’d be so happy to see the woman.
I brushed roughly past Benson and Magistrate Ridley-Smith and took shelter behind Miss Tanty, peering round from behind her ample skirts.
“What’s going on here, Quentin?” she repeated, looking accusingly from one of my attackers to the other, and then at me, her thick spectacles focusing that frightful gaze like twin burning-glasses.
“A misunderstanding,” the magistrate said, with an apologetic and counterfeit chuckle. “Nothing more.”
“Misunderstanding,” Benson echoed, as if entering his own plea.
“I see …” Miss Tanty said, wavering on the brink of what to do. She seemed to be of two minds, or perhaps even more.
For a long time she stared at them in silence, and they at her.
“Come along, girl,” she said suddenly and, whirling round, seized my arm.
I winced. I hadn’t realized how much Benson had hurt me.
Without another word, she led me to the center aisle, and down it we marched together, like some nightmare bride and groom, toward the door.
Outside, the fog had lessened, although the air remained cool. The churchyard was empty. It was still too early for the ladies of the Altar Guild. No one was in sight.
Out the door and down the walk we went toward the road, Miss Tanty pulling me along like a toy dog on a string.
I must have hung back.
“Come along, girl,” Miss Tanty repeated. “You’ve had a bad shock. I can see it in your eyes. We need to get you warm. Get something hot and sweet into you.”
I couldn’t have agreed with her more. My knees were already beginning to tremble as we turned east toward Cater Street and Miss Tanty’s house.
I was suddenly exhausted, as if someone had opened a spigot in my ankle and let my energy pour out onto the ground.
The idea of a cup of tea and a fistful of c
ookies was both oddly comforting and oddly familiar. Like a fairy tale once heard and long forgotten.
We were walking quickly now as we turned into Cater Street.
“I forgot Gladys!” I exclaimed, stopping suddenly. “My bicycle. I left her in the churchyard.”
“I’ll fetch her while you have your tea,” Miss Tanty said. “I shall ring someone up and have them drive you home.”
I had a sudden, ridiculous vision of the someone—Miss Gawl, perhaps—herding me along the narrow road to Buckshaw with a shepherd’s crook—or a bishop’s crozier—as if I were a wayward lamb.
“It’s very kind of you,” I said.
“Not at all,” Miss Tanty replied, with the most awful and comforting grin.
We reached her house so suddenly that we might have been transported there by magic carpet.
Is this what shock does? I wondered. Warps time?
Was it possible to be in shock and yet, at the same moment, observe oneself being in shock?
Miss Tanty fished in her pocket for a key and unlocked the door, which was odd, I thought, since nobody in Bishop’s Lacey locks their doors.
As we stepped inside and she shot the bolt behind us, the parrot called out from the conservatory, “Hello, Quentin. All hands on deck!” and it whistled four notes which I recognized as the opening of Beethoven’s fifth symphony.
“Dah-dah-dah-DUM!”
Hello, Quentin? I thought. That’s what the bird had said when I was here before. It was also the name Miss Tanty had called Benson. No, wait—Benson’s name was Martin.
She must have been addressing the magistrate?
“Sit down,” Miss Tanty commanded. We had now magically arrived in her kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
I looked round at my surroundings and they were blue. It’s odd but true. That’s chiefly what I remember about it: Miss Tanty’s kitchen was blue. I hadn’t noticed it before.
On the table was a milk pitcher full of decomposing lilies, a small breadboard and half a loaf of Hovis bread, an electric toaster, a pewter candlestick with a partially melted candle, and a box of matches.
