“I’ve never heard of such a thing, sir.”
“Yes, I suppose I have rather broken new ground lately,” I confessed. “Imagine a cow, the rough size, shape, and constitution of Hildy the Graze Hill Golden. Now imagine this cow were to consume the dregs of a bucket of mulled wine. What would be the prognosis?”
Puckeridge gave his left eyebrow leave to levitate of its own accord.
“A fully-grown Graze Hill Golden weighs on average seven hundred pounds, Mister Boisjoly. It would take appreciably more alcohol than you or I could drink in a week to have even the slightest effect.”
“Any given week, Puckeridge, or does this exclude boat race night?”
“It’s a rough formula, sir, but broadly applicable.”
“So, in your expert view, I’m cleared of all charges. I may need you to testify to that in the court of public opinion.”
“If it’s with respect to Miss Barnstable and Hildy, sir, I would prefer not.”
The Feast of Saint Stephen is obviously a red-letter day at Saint Stephen’s church in Graze Hill, and Mister Padget had pushed the boat out. On either side of the entrance was a wicker torch, lighting the freshly swept steps which had been strewn with golden tinsel. The doorway was trimmed with holly or ivy or whichever it is of those two that has berries. Inside the church, each aisle had its own kerosene lantern and every candle was lit, so a warm, orange glimmer billowed through the doorway and onto the snow like fluid mirth. The vicar stood in the glow, draped in mauve and ivory, and smiling brightly. Had they been in season, I’ve no doubt he would have had daisies in his hair.
As I arrived Barking was clapping his hands in the cold, rushing the entire Christmas population of Graze Hill inside. I stopped to shake Padget’s hand and pop off a little seasonal soft soap.
“Mister Boisjoly,” he said, gripping my hand like it posed a danger to himself and others. “May I say again how very gratified I am for your assistance with my little carol.”
His eyes glistened as he said this, and I saw in them the wisdom of Vickers’ proposal that I stand by my original ovation. What possible value could there be in crushing the man’s spirit, especially on the feast day of the patron saint of his own church.
“It’s a genuine honour to have been asked, Mister Padget,” I said. “I only hope that, in my modest way, I contribute something to the general acceptance of your work among the Christmas classics, the progress of which I will follow with consuming interest.”
“You’re very kind, Mister Boisjoly.” Padget finally released my hand so that he might point toward the front of the church. “Your aunt is just there, next to Monty. Isn’t this a grand occasion?”
I had to confess that it was certainly notable. Aunty Boisjoly, whose dislike of human interaction was such that she would avoid mirrors except in time of emergency, was perched on a pew at the very front of the church, chatting merrily with Monty and Everett .
I looked away, of course, and took the precaution of rubbing my eyes, but when I again took in the scene it was every bit as delusory as the initial viewing — Aunty Boisjoly was fetching in a fur stole over an ivory silk evening number, lace décolletée à volant, and bold, black sash around the waist, closed with a silver scarab clasp. All she lacked was a menacing piano theme and a villain to tie her to the railway tracks. And yet, there she was, laughing loudly and touching Monty’s forearm with an unmistakable ‘oh, you’ gesture. The key to the heart and happiness of Aunty Azalea, it would appear, was military heroism. I took in the object of her affection, bellowing some happy story about night-bombing, and I felt an affectionate, brotherly urge to sock him in the eye.
Barking quickly pulled the doors closed against the cold and menaced us all with his smouldering thurible of incense until we took our seats. Puckeridge joined Vickers, Alice and what had to have been a cook, and much gossiping ensued. Sally pinned her father between the end of a pew and the baptismal font. Cosmo was saving a seat for Everett across the aisle from Ivor, who sat on his own and blew his nose in a manner suggesting that he should remain so. Everyone was armed against the ambient temperature of the underfunded English church with woollens and scarves and convivial camaraderie. Barking had drawn thick velvet curtains over the transepts, and in time we couldn’t even see our breath anymore.
Padget started proceedings with a fast-bowl directly from Stephen’s Speech to the Sanhedrin and then delivered the surprise knuckle-ball of Paul’s Inaction Before the Lapidation. All quite effective, if a little old-school.
“I can’t tell you how moved I am to see so many of you here today of all days,” announced Padget after the readings. “Our little community has been tried and tried hard during this festive season, and we have shown ourselves equal to the test. Miss Boisjoly…” Padget looked directly at her and she, amazingly, looked right back. “...Miss Azalea Boisjoly has not only come out, during a most difficult time, to observe this holy night with us but she’s agreed to perform the accompaniment to the premiere of what I hope — and what I have been assured — will join the canon of English carols.”
And sure enough, bookies would have been shooting themselves if they’d given odds, Aunty Azalea stood, gave a little bow to the congregation, and walked to the ageing upright piano which stood perpendicular to the altar.
“And her nephew, Mister Anthony Boisjoly, has agreed to sing for you my own composition, Archdeacon Saint Stephen.”
Applause exploded around me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Whither Wanes the Weather Vanes
Aunty Azalea was already reeling off a jazzy little medieval intro before the mists cleared and the intractability of my situation became clear. She must have committed us both to a show-stopper duet and I, in a dazzling display of deluded diplomacy, had doubled down.
I considered my options, from feigning a heart attack to actually having a heart attack, when I saw Aunty Azalea’s girlish smile and mischievous squint, and her shoulders oscillating to the raucous harmony of In dulci jubilo. Perhaps I was going to make a fool of myself. Possibly I was about to offend the memory of the first Christian martyr. But what I was not going to do was disappoint my Aunty Azalea on this of all nights.
I joined her at the piano and withdrew from my pocket Padget’s lyrics. A quick glance determined that they hadn’t improved with age, and I was reminded that some of the words were blurred beyond recognition. I decided that the keenest strategy would be to cross that bridge when I came to it.
I knocked out the opening verse with few casualties.
“Famed far and wide for charity
Not to mention perspicacity
Saint Stephen spread the word of God
In a manner many found quite odd”
I scanned the audience and saw roughly what I expected. Even Soaky Mike was staring wide-eyed as though I’d just stood up in Saint Stephen’s church of Graze Hill and read out the best bits of Lady Chatterley's Lover .
Aunty tapped out a little refrain, and I pushed out the chorus…
“So faithful was Saint Stephen he
When found accused of blasphemy
He looked up and saw the son of man
Standing at God’s own right hand”
Those who are authorities in such matters say that if your audience isn’t talking amongst themselves or in some other fashion distracted, you’re doing well enough. By that measure, I was on theatrical fire, and the congregation regarded me with the solicitude with which I understand crowds in Place de la Concorde would gather round the guillotine during the later stages of the revolution.
Bolstered by this support, I gave full voice to the next verse…
“Saint Stephen was accu-u-used”
Looking ahead, though, I realised that I couldn’t make out the last line.
“Quite falsely was abu-u-used”
I was rapidly approaching catastrophe, like a locomotive engineer at full tilt glancing casually up from his paperback to see that the bridge is out.
; “He was dragged before the Sanhedrin…”
Rhymes with ‘Sanhedrin’, I thought. Vickers had something that would serve. What was it again? Who proceeded to make fun of him? No, not that. The closer I got to the last line, the further from my mind was Vickers’ proposition, and for some reason all that remained as I reached the point of no return was what Ivor had suggested…
“For whom he played his mandolin.”
Even Aunty Boisjoly raised an eyebrow. Soaky and Sally, Vickers and Puckeridge, and Cosmo and Everett looked at each other for confirmation that I had just reported that Saint Stephen, in his final moments, had entertained the jury with a few crowd favourites on the old lute. Ivor smiled broadly like a ninny who’d just been given some sort of lifetime ninnyship award. Padget pursed his lips and furrowed his brow and I allowed myself to fancy that he was trying to remember whether or not these were the words he’d written.
There was nothing to do but push on. I waded cautiously into the chorus, which passed largely without comment, and then the bit about Stephen facing the charges unpertur-ur-urbed , his soul, apparently, undistur-ur-urbed, and how his bearing was ser-a-phic and his face, by all accounts, ang-el-ic. I needed a stiff drink, and we weren’t even to the bit about Abraham.
“Saint Stephen told the ta-a-ale
Of the origins of Isr-a-el
And unto all of them he said…”
And there we were again. What looks like a smudged thumbprint and rhymes with ‘said’? Lots of things rhyme with ‘said’. Dead... dread... someplace-else-instead. I had no time and no inspiration. At least the first time this happened I’d had Ivor’s absurd, French-surrealist symbolism from which to draw. Now there was only Saint Stephen… the feast of Saint Stephen… Good King Wenceslas. I knew the moment it came to me that it was a mistake to pursue this stream of consciousness, because now all I could think of was Good King Wenceslas, tracking a peasant through a snowy wood, and telling his page…
“...In my footsteps thou must tread...”
...or something very like that. Nevertheless, it was an exponential improvement over ‘For whom he played his mandolin’ and only Padget seemed to notice the departure from the original libretto.
There’s no need to list in detail the rest of the crimes against God and man that I committed that evening. Stephen had a vision, as we all know, which left the throng so incensed (which, happily, rhymes with lack of evidence) that they threw their coats at the feet of Saul (who, serendipitously, would come to be known as Paul) , and from there it only need be added that Padget’s final couplet paired atoned with stoned, and our long, painful journey came to a merciful end with a tinkling little coda of Aunty Azalea’s own improvisation.
T’was a silent night.
It was Ivor who broke the stillness with enthusiastic applause and, in an unexpected touch of mordant irony, he called for an encore.
Padget led us through a few dependable hymns and an homily on the theme of, I believe, honesty. Finally, he dished the wafers and wine and with a collective, convivial sigh of relief a cocktail party atmosphere prevailed in the nave.
I fell into conversation with Everett and Cosmo and we were soon joined by Barking, who had been collecting hymn books and extinguishing candles.
“Extraordinary performance, Anty,” said Everett, shaking my hand and simultaneously incarcerating my elbow in a manner suggestive of all-in wrestling. “Remarkable. Are you a professional? Well, you should be. Transporting, that’s the word. Like we were there, bearing witness as Saint Stephen was battered into martyrdom. I don’t mind saying I was moved, Anty, truly moved. I think I might have cried a little. I mean, I didn’t, of course, I’m not a little girl, but I might have.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself, Anty,” added Cosmo. “Particularly the chorus, the bit about the vision. How did it go again?”
“You know, I think I’ve forgotten.”
Barking approached, then, with something of the demeanor of the dutiful sheepdog who’s just noticed that it’s past dinner time. “Yes, a very strong performance, Mister Boisjoly,” he said in what I felt to be a somewhat perfunctory review of the recital. “I expect you’ll want to be getting along, gentlemen. It’s not getting any warmer out there.”
“I say, Mister Barking, I meant to ask you something about the statue of Major Fleming,” I said. Barking gave me one of those tight smiles that do the exact opposite thing that smiles are supposed to do.
“Oh, yes? What was that?”
“If it’s not intruding on your artistic process, did Flaps ever sit for you?” I asked. “Or, more precisely, did you ever visit him at Tannery Lodge?”
Barking furrowed his brow, as though either trying to recall or wondering why I was asking such an obscure question when there was so much going home to be done. He looked from Cosmo, to Everett, and then to me. “Yes, of course. Several times. Twice. I think. Once, anyway. Why?”
“It’s just that Cosmo here tells me that the place was lousy with war memorabilia — letters, medals, perhaps a captured German helmet with its spike ironically repurposed as a cigar punch. That sort of thing.”
“Yes, that’s right,” confirmed Barking. “Most distracting, if I’m honest. Inevitably something would remind him of a story and we got very little actual sitting done.”
“Once again, human conflict stands in the way of art,” I sighed. “It’s a wonder Michaelangelo ever got David to stand still long enough.”
“Not going to stop you knocking together the memorial for a Spring unveiling, is it Trev?” contended Everett.
“Well…”
“Of course not,” said Everett, and then added as a stage aside, “The man’s a juggernaut. Nothing stops him when he snaps into action. Like a gale force. Wouldn’t put it past him to smelt the bronze himself if the money runs out again.”
“I don’t suppose you noticed among the mementoes a complete set of the memoirs of Charles à Court Repington,” I said to both Cosmo and Barking. “Roughly 621 pages per volume, handsomely bound with brass thingamabobs.”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“No, well, I expect it wouldn’t have stood out, much, among the field artillery and parade banners.”
“What’s all this about memorabilia?” asked Everett.
“It’s been nicked,” explained Cosmo.
“Let’s say it’s been moved, at some point, to parts unknown,” I said. “I’d just like to get an idea of when that might have been. Do you recall the last time any of you saw Flaps?”
“Would have been the weekend prior,” said Everett. “At the Cow.”
There was convulsive nodding agreement to this and in that moment I noted that Soaky was in conversation with Mister Padget, leaving Sally free to indulge her passion for brooding in doorways. I excused myself and joined her.
“How’s Hildy?” I asked, with carefully measured solicitousness — not too dispassionate, not too ‘sorry I poisoned your cow.’
Sally, however, turned a warm, seasonal smile on me and said, “She’s very well, now, thank you Mister Boisjoly. I’m sorry if I were a little short with you.”
“Think nothing of it,” I said and added, as backup, a cavalier wave of the hand.
“Lovely bit of singing, that. I expected two blokes dressed as a horse to trot across the stage, and I was all keyed up to shout ‘he’s behind you!’”
“There might be something to that,” I said. “At first blush, you’d think it unlikely that the Stoning of Saint Stephen could take its place alongside Dick Whittington and his cat , but I once saw a panto in Richmond which combined Humpty Dumpty with the story of Gunga Din . Queen Victoria was played by a giant hen.”
“Is there nothing you can’t get in London?”
“Actually, yes, there is,” I said. “A drink at ten o’clock in the morning. Unlike the free citizens of the northern frontier, we’re still subject to the Defence of the Realm Act, which compels us to drink at home until noon. I mean, if one wants
a drink. Doubtless there are other things one can do while waiting for the pubs to open.”
“It’s the law here, too.” Sally said this in a vague, let’s-talk-about-something-elsey tone.
“Just not enforced, as such. Do you always open the pub at ten?”
“In the winter. If I didn't, no one would have anywhere to go at all.”
“And it frees you to shut a bit early, too, doesn’t it? And visit the dens of iniquity in that notorious hive of pleasure and vice, Steeple Herding.”
“Do you not have any of your own business that you could mind?” asked Sally.
“Heaps. Don’t get me started. I’ve been putting off a second fitting of a new set of opera tails since late October, and as we speak I’m neglecting my duties as Master of Handicaps at the Juniper Gentlemen’s Club. Do you know it?”
“No.”
“These are just examples, you understand, but family comes first,” I said. “You can ask anyone — whenever an aunt of mine is accused of murder, I drop everything. I speak in general terms, you understand — the principle applies to any member of the extended Boisjoly clan, and all capital crimes.”
“How do you know she didn’t do it?” Sally steadied an analytical eye on my aunt, who was in that moment dangling freely off Monty’s every word.
“Intuition,” I replied. “Same way and to the same degree that you know Hildy didn’t do it. What’s more, I’m confident that some combination of knowables will prove that Aunty Boisjoly not only didn’t do it, but couldn’t have. For instance, the general consensus appears to be that the last time anyone saw the major, prior to yesterday, was the Saturday before.”
“I already told you that.”
“So you did. And how did he appear at the time?”
“Same as ever. Happy to talk your ear off and run up a bill.”
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 13