The Grave's a Fine and Private Place: A Flavia De Luce Novel

by Alan Bradley

  “Hob didn’t give direct evidence. He’s underage. But he gave a statement to the police saying that, since he was seated in front of the three victims, he would hardly have noticed anyway. Smart as a whip. A very clever thinker, our Hob is, for so young a lad.”

  I realized that no matter how fascinating Claire’s story might be, there were several things I needed to do at once. I could always catch up on the details later.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, glancing at Dogger, “but I think it would be best if we got back to the Oak and Pheasant.”

  Dogger, bless his finely tuned soul forever, nodded assent and began to get up out of his chair.

  “I wonder if I might trouble you to drive?” I asked Claire.

  She scrambled to her feet and took Dogger’s elbow, as if in friendship.

  “Of course,” she said.

  And a few minutes later we were riding in comfort back toward the inn, with Claire at the wheel and Dogger beside her.

  “I shouldn’t feel right riding in the passenger compartment,” Dogger had insisted.

  “First time I’ve ever driven a Rolls-Royce,” Claire told us. “Actually, it’s the first time I’ve ever ridden in one. I shall be spoiled forever.”

  I glanced over at Dogger, who was gazing out with seeming disinterest at the passing riverbank.

  “I shall see you in, then take the shortcut home.”

  “No need,” Dogger said. “I am quite all right. It was pleasant seeing you again, Claire.”

  He offered his hand and she took it.

  I’d swear that a look passed between them, but I couldn’t be sure. My heart gave a little lollop.

  Had I been witness, this morning, to a carefully produced drama? Had Dogger staged an episode in order to be in the company of Claire Tetlock? Would Dogger even be capable of such a thing?

  There are times when eyes and ears are not enough, times when you need to go inside yourself, to listen to the Whisperers in the Pit who, although they may sometimes shock you, are very seldom wrong.

  After seeing Dogger to the door and waving goodbye to Claire, I made a beeline across the road to St. Mildred’s.

  I needed to be alone.

  ·EIGHTEEN·

  THE CHURCH, AS I had hoped it would be, was empty.

  Inside, I made a slow circuit of the nave and the chancel, reading the ancient memorial marble tablets that seemed to cover every inch of the walls, and a grim old lot they were, most of them recalling in stifling detail the lives of military men back to the time of “William Conker,” as Mrs. Mullet referred to the tour operator who had brought the de Luces to England in 1066.

  Everything was coated heavily with dust, some of it, I knew, the remains of those happy warriors and their loved ones, who must be jammed, judging by the number of plaques, heel-to-jowl inside the walls and underneath the floor’s stone slabs. You couldn’t walk down the aisle without having Sir Morton Stackpole and “Maud his dearly biluved wife” rise up in a cloud to greet you, as if they had been too long without company, and settle in a chummy way on your hands, your face, your neck, and in your hair.

  On the Epistle side of the church, just outside the chancel, let into the floor at the foot of the lectern, was a bit of stone: a gray-flecked square of marble, no more than three and a half or four inches on each side. In the crumbling antiquity of the church, its relative lack of age had caught my eye. In short, to someone with my powers of observation, the marble stuck out like a sore thumb: too new, too polished, too freshly chiseled.

  I got down on my hands and knees to examine the surface, On it, carved in half-inch letters, was the word G.L.O.W.

  Glow?

  What on earth could that mean? Could it possibly be a family name? I had never met or heard of anyone with the surname Glow, but in England such a thing is not beyond belief. Or was it, perhaps, a discreet marker placed by some organization, such as the General Laborers and Office Workers, to commemorate a certain occasion, or a gift of money to one of the church funds?

  There was no point wasting time in speculation. I would simply ask the present vicar for an explanation: Clemm, I believe Mr. Palmer had said his name was—the plump gentleman who had come to the riverbank with Constable Otter.

  I made a second circuit, pausing this time to run my fingers along the back of the pew—the second row from the front—where I deduced from all accounts that the Three Graces must have met their end, or ends. There wasn’t a trace left of their passing—which in a few cases can be remarkably messy, cyanide working as it occasionally does. If such was the case, someone had done a wizard job of mopping up.

  I slid gently sideways into the pew, closed my eyes, clasped my hands, and tried to project myself into the past: into the minds of those three old ladies at the very moment the poison had taken hold.

  There would have been, at first, the realization that the sacramental wine was stronger than usual. Perhaps a cracked or otherwise defective cork, overlooked by Canon Whitbread, had allowed it to go sour—although I recalled from my chemical readings that, in 1922, the Holy Office had given permission to the Archbishop of Tarragona, in Spain, for the sacramental wine to be treated with either sulfurous anhydride or potassium bisulfite to keep it from going off.

  That, of course, was the Roman Catholic Church, which is far more advanced in such matters than the Church of England.

  After that first taste, there would have been a couple of blissful moments which would, alas, be their last; and then the sudden onrush of sensations: the taste of bitterness, the burning in the throat and bowels, the tightening of the jaw, the foaming at the lips, the perspiration, the inability to move any of the muscles—not even time, probably, for a final “Uh-oh.”

  How pleasant it is, as you sit in an ancient church, to ponder poisons, surrounded as you are by the towering toxicity of the stained-glass windows. The yellow cloak of that staring saint, for instance, was most likely achieved by adding cadmium, which, with its several compounds, is quite poisonous; whereas the startling emerald green of all that glassy grass at Galilee is most likely due to arsenic.

  To say nothing of the lead.

  Such happy thoughts are proof that I have become an adult. I am now ruled by not only what I see, what I hear, what I taste, and what I smell, but also, and perhaps most important, by what I think.

  That very thought in itself ought to be certain proof that my brain has developed satisfactorily.

  Pleased with myself, I turned the attention of my expanding brain to my surroundings.

  Old churches, like old humans, give off occasional creaks and groans as bits of dried wood and old stones shift in their sockets. Also like old humans, they tend to hum a bit, although it’s nothing to be alarmed about.

  The slightly sickening smell of long-departed lilies and longer-departed perspiration hangs like an invisible mist in the air. There is an almost imperceptible whiff of roast beef, as if the ghosts of John Bull and his fellow squires were banqueting in the crypt. Added to this, almost as an afterthought, is the dry, pious odor of Bibles and hymnals.

  Why do the printers of these books use so sober-smelling an ink? Why don’t they stir your nostrils and your imagination with the sharp, tantalizing stink of, say, the News of the World, or the Daily Mirror?

  To verify this observation, I reached out and lifted a Bible from the book rack of the pew in front of me, and gave it a sniff. Slightly moldy, but still recognizable as a Bible. I’d put money on being able to identify one in the dark.

  As is almost always the case, the book was bound in black, the title stamped in gold on the cover and spine. This particular edition contained not only the Bible, but also the complete Book of Common Prayer, along with maps of the Holy Land, charts of weights and coins of Scripture, and botany of the Bible (from which I was delighted to learn that the Vine of Sodom in Deuteronomy is in fact a kind of giant milkweed with poisonous juice which, in spite of its tasty appearance, dissolves, upon being bitten, into smoke and ashes): all of t
his in one handy—although slightly bulky—volume. It was a churchgoer’s dream, a Boy Scout knife for Bible class.

  But something had caught my eye. The word “poison” had leapt at me off the page.

  Yes, here it was: Deuteronomy 32, verses 32 and 33:

  For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: Their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:

  Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.

  If I had stuck my finger at random into the Bible as fortune-tellers do, I couldn’t have hit upon a more apt entry. Wasn’t this a direct warning against poisoned wine?

  Could “the poison of dragons” and “the cruel venom of asps” refer to gossip?

  Both passages were underlined in pencil.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, I turned slowly back to the flyleaf, almost afraid of what I might find.

  Written in black gall ink, the words made my eyes swim:

  Anne Elizabeth Cray,

  Hassock Cottage, Volesthorpe

  Annie Cray! Of the Three Graces: “Faith, Hope, and Treachery,” Mrs. Dandyman had called them.

  And of the three, Annie Cray was Treachery.

  Was it possible that she had brought this Bible to church the day of her murder, and that it had lain here unnoticed ever since? Two years had passed since Annie and her fellow gossips had been trundled off to meet their Maker. Could it be that the police—the whip-smart Constable Otter included—had overlooked the harmless Bible nestled in its book rack, not two feet from where the dead women would have lain?

  Obviously, it was. Hadn’t Claire Tetlock told me that the pew was believed to be haunted? That no one would sit in the spot where I was sitting now?

  Besides, a Bible or a hymnbook is as invisible in a church as the walls and windows. No one would think to take a second look at the contents of the book rack.

  It had lain there all this time, untouched, waiting for someone with the eyes to see.

  Waiting for me. Flavia de Luce.

  As I flipped the pages idly, the names of the books in the Old and New Testaments, the page numbers, as well as the numbers of the chapters and verses, fluttered by like those animated cartoons which you make by drawing, in the corner of each page with a pencil, a slightly different sketch of a galloping horse or a stick man having his hat blown off by the wind.

  I was riffling through Revelation when I had one.

  A revelation, I mean.

  It must have been the flying numbers, racing by before my eyes at dizzying speed: Perhaps not, but something in my freshly attentive brain went Click! as clearly audible—inside my head, at least—as the slow breathing of the ancient oaken beams above my head.

  For an instant, I felt as if I myself had swallowed cyanide: My mouth went dry and my breath snagged in my throat.

  Slowly, so as not to break the spell, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the crumpled bit of paper I had found in Orlando’s pocket.

  The numbers danced before my eyes: 54, 6, 7, 8, 9.

  I had supposed them at first to be the numbers of hymns, but I was wrong.

  What if they were books, chapters, and verses?

  With trembling hands I turned to the general index. Beginning with Genesis, I counted off the entries. The fifty-fourth book of the Bible was the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy.

  I followed my finger to chapter 6, and then to verses 7, 8, and 9:

  For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

  And having food and raiment let us be therefore content.

  But they that will be rich, fall into temptation, and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.

  A passage about drowning found in the pocket of a drowned man?

  It was beyond coincidence.

  But what did it mean? Could it have been a warning? A threat? And if it was, who gave it or sent it to Orlando, and how did it come to be in his pocket?

  I read the remaining lines of Timothy, which, although they were few, contained the famous saying that the love of money is the root of all evil, and that those who covet it have pierced themselves through with arrows.

  Poor Orlando was fortunate, in a way, that whoever had it in for him hadn’t used a crossbow.

  But what had it all to do with money? As far as I knew, Orlando had been as poor as a church mouse, brought up by a rural clergyman who had to embezzle funds from the collection plate in order to heat the vicarage.

  There were so many unanswered questions. Why, for instance, had someone chosen Saint Paul’s First Epistle to Timothy as a warning? Surely, there were many much more threatening passages in the Old Testament, such as those in which God is shaking His fist at Moses and his tribes.

  Could it be that the Timothy letter was the only reference in the entire Bible to drowning? If that was the case, it would prove beyond a doubt that Orlando’s killing was meditated. It takes a certain amount of calculation to select a biblical text and then plan and execute a murder to match.

  It would have been too much to ask—too much of a coincidence—for the fat black volume in my hands to contain a Bible Concordance and, of course, it did not. I would need to get my hands on one of these at the earliest possible moment to check out the drowning angle.

  Again I opened the pages of Annie Cray’s Bible in search of inspiration. Anything would do: I needed help.

  Like the attached Bible, The Book of Common Prayer contained a great deal of reference material: a calendar of the church year, including the various saints’ days; a table of the Moveable Feasts according to the several days that Easter can possibly fall upon; a complicated set of tables of rules for finding the Golden Number and, once having found it, determining the date of Easter in any given year.

  It was like a holy treasure hunt.

  Fortunately, I had learned something about the topic from our own vicar, Denwyn Richardson, in Bishop’s Lacey, who, having caught me fishing—illegally—in the river behind St. Tancred’s, had sat down beside me in the warm summer grass and begun rattling on about one of his greatest enthusiasms: The Book of Common Prayer and How to Use It.

  He had delivered several sermons upon the topic, not only from the pulpit, but also at various meetings and functions in the parish hall. If there was a single topic which the Anglican parishioners of Bishop’s Lacey were prepared to be quizzed upon at the Golden Gate, it was The Book of Common Prayer.

  Not only were there charts and tables of the saints’ days and holy days, but also complex decrees about which chapters and verses of the Old and New Testaments were to be read aloud as lessons, depending upon the calendar and the time of day.

  “It may seem rather left-handed,” Denwyn had said, “but it’s all perfectly logical. It all comes down to the moon, Flavia, when you stop to think about it.”

  Which, I suppose, is as good a thing to base a religion upon as any.

  But just when I thought I had wrapped my mind around the codes and calendars of Christian prayer, Denwyn had mentioned, almost apologetically, that there was also an alternative table of lessons, and it was this which we used at St. Tancred’s, rather than the original.

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Because the bishop wishes it,” he had said, slipping me a furtive wink after a hasty glance round to make sure that no one was watching.

  So there it is, then, I remember thinking. Down here on earth, a bishop is mightier than the moon.

  Although this was an obvious case of misguided thinking, I did not say so to Denwyn. The poor man had a living to earn.

  I dragged my mind back to the present—to the Alternative Tables.

  If St.-Mildred’s-in-the-Marsh used the same timetables we used in Bishop’s Lacey, I ought to have an answer in two flicks of a dead lamb’s tail.

  Timothy 1 ought to be easy enough to spot.

  I let my eyes float slowly down the long columns, like
a deflating balloon, beginning with the first Sunday in Advent, which, of course, would be in December—then onward through Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter.

  Surprisingly, Timothy did not make his appearance until several Sundays after Trinity, at which time he was taken out for a rather good trot.

  Ah! Here he was: First Timothy, chapter 6, verses 7 to 9—the very verses I had found listed in the dead Orlando’s pocket!

  My blood was already beginning to jingle.

  With the knowledge absorbed during Denwyn’s riverside lecture, as well as various exposures at Girl Guide meetings, I was able to work out—with remarkable speed and efficiency—the precise date of that reading in the present Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifty-Two.

  But they that will be rich, fall into temptation, and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.

  Those now-chilling words would be read aloud from the lectern as the Second Lesson of Evensong on the third Sunday after Trinity. Here, at this very spot, they would echo among these very stones and hammer beams.

  June the twenty-ninth. Tomorrow evening!

  The first Sunday—and just two days—after I fished Orlando Whitbread’s drowned body out of the river.

  Had it been planned?

  Was this a message—or a warning to others—from Orlando’s killer?

  ·NINETEEN·

  THE TIME HAD COME to “shrug off the mantle of the present,” as Daffy puts it when she’s reading her beloved Dickens, and project myself two years into the past to the morning of the three earlier murders.

  The successful solving of any crime depends, more than anything, upon accurate reconstruction, which is the closest thing we have in the modern world to time travel. Most detectives wouldn’t admit that it’s a form of self-hypnosis, but they have their reputations to think of.

  Think how the court would laugh—even the magistrate on the bench in his wig and robes—if the detective, asked how he came to a certain conclusion, replied: “I put myself in a trance, M’lud.”