by Alan Bradley
There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house!
I squirmed and settled myself into the pew, closed my eyes, and folded my hands daintily in my lap. In my mind, I let the pages of the calendar tear loose and fly away, one by one, month by month. June of 1952 became May, then April, and so forth.
Christmas flew by and I was back in 1951: November, October, September, the months of summer, spring, then Christmas again.
It was 1950. I allowed the pages to slow a little: I didn’t want to overshoot.
August…July…June…and here we were.
I took a deep breath and slowly opened my eyes.
The church was the same as it always had been, but then it would be, wouldn’t it?
There was a stir of air behind me as the door opened and the Three Graces entered: Grace Willoughby, Grace Harcourt, and Annie Cray, looking much as I remembered them from the grainy photographs on the front pages of the tabloid newspapers, except that now their faces were in color.
Grace Willoughby, as tall and slender as her name, was wearing a smart black tailored suit with a cameo brooch at her throat, and had perched on her head a curved winglike thing which looked as if it had been forcibly detached from a duck. Grace Harcourt, somewhat shorter and broad-shouldered, with grayish-blond hair, wore a summer dress of dusky rose and a smart straw hat, while Annie Cray, dark, short, and squat, and rather toadlike, I thought (uncharitably, seeing as she was dead), had draped herself in a kind of loose rug or blanket in which holes had been cut out for her head and arms. A floppy-brimmed black hat gave her the appearance of a villain in a cowboy film.
I slid over to make room for them as they entered the pew. Even though the poor creatures couldn’t see me, I didn’t want to be caught staring.
More footsteps at the rear and the clatter of kneeling benches announced the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth—Lettice and Hugo—and moments later, the much lighter footfall of Hob Nightingale.
Because of the summer season, and the sparseness of the congregation, there would be no processional this morning: no choir, no organ—just the bare bones, so to speak.
As far as I knew, the entire cast of characters—with the exception of Canon Whitbread—had now taken up their positions to act out the tragedy.
And now—yes!—here comes Canon Whitbread, hurrying in from the vestry: late for the service, just as Claire had told me he had been, and empty-handed.
Which meant that the wine and wafers were already in the tabernacle on the altar.
In my mind, I lit a flame in the altar lamp to indicate that fact.
I would need to check these details later with the witnesses, of course, but lighting a flame with the mind is a powerful aid to understanding.
The canon genuflected before the altar, and without further ado, launched into the Holy Communion service.
With my acute hearing, I could actually hear his dusty words.
After the Lord’s Prayer, he began the Collect:
“Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid…”
What had Almighty God seen that morning, I wondered, as He looked into the secret hearts and desires of those three women who were about to die, and into the heart of the clergyman who was about to murder them?
Now Canon Whitbread had begun the recital of the Ten Commandments.
Well, there was no need to re-create the entire service. The part I was most interested in wouldn’t come until near the end.
In my mind, I sped up the action, so that Canon Whitbread was racing through the order of service like the Keystone Kops.
It might have been funny if it hadn’t been murder.
I waited until he and the little congregation dropped to their knees for the general Confession, then reduced the speed to normal.
Turning to face the people, Canon Whitbread now begged God to pardon and deliver them from all their sins, confirm and strengthen them in all goodness, and bring them to everlasting life.
As he did so, I was able for the first time to study his face.
My immediate impression was that the man was tired; that he had been awake for much of the night. One of his eyelids twitched incessantly; the other seemed to droop a little. The hollows of his rather gaunt face showed up as shadows, his chin and cheeks darkened with new whiskers. There had been an unsuccessful attempt to hide the morning’s bristles with a rose-tinted talcum powder. He had not taken the time to shave.
My second impression was that this was not the countenance of a killer. I had several times come face-to-face with killers. Not one of them had had the gentle features of this rather worried-looking man.
I was recalling his face, of course, from the dozens of black-and-white photographs I had seen in the newspapers, but never until now did it ever occur to me that an innocent man might have been sent to the gallows.
The very thought of it caused my blood to bubble.
I focused my attention on the hands of the man at the altar.
Having transformed the host and the wine into the body and blood of Christ, Canon Whitbread genuflected deeply and administered Communion to himself, consuming the broken host and draining the chalice. I knew already that there was no danger of his poisoning himself—that he would go on living until the day he died at the hands of the hangman.
But now he was turning again to the altar—turning his back upon those of us seated in the pews. I watched, transfixed, as he brought reverently out from the tabernacle the silver vessel—the ciborium—which contained the wafers.
I could hardly believe it! They had been there all night!
I froze the action to let my mind catch up.
Normally, with a decent attendance, Canon Whitbread would have consecrated only as many of the hosts as were needed. Any remaining would be kept in the tabernacle for use during the week, including visitation of the sick and so forth.
But this morning, with only a handful in attendance, he would make use of the hosts that were already consecrated. Of course, he had newly consecrated one of the larger wafers for his own consumption, but the rest of the congregation would be given the leftovers, so to speak.
The point was this: The hosts and the wine which were about to be administered to the unsuspecting congregation had been left in an unlocked church overnight—and perhaps even longer.
Anyone in England—and perhaps even beyond—could have sneaked in the old cyanide.
This case was becoming far more difficult than I could ever have imagined.
I needed to find out—and as quickly as possible—whether the poison had been contained in the wine or the wafers—or both.
With mounting horror—and, I must admit, with mounting excitement—I watched as he turned to face us. Annie, who had been last into the pew, was already hoisting herself to her feet and shuffling sideways into the aisle.
In her mind, there was probably some imagined heavenly prize for being first at the rail.
Well, she’d soon find out, I thought.
The two remaining Graces, Harcourt and Willoughby, were breathing down her neck.
I slowed the image down a little. I didn’t want to miss a single detail.
It flashed briefly into my mind that I could stop their motion and reverse it like a comic film, but I quickly dismissed the idea. I could only make them walk backward out of the church and home again, bottoms first. I could not really change what had already happened. I was unable to save these three women from a certain death.
“These are but shadows of the things that have been,” as the Ghost of Christmas Past told Ebenezer Scrooge.
I could not change their destiny. I might as well sit back and learn from it.
Now they had reached the rail and were kneeling. Grace Willoughby, in spite of being the last at the Communion rail, was the first to receive the host from the hands of Canon Whitbread. She crossed herself rather showily. Now it was the turn of Grace Harcourt, and finally Annie Cray.
Even thou
gh Annie’s back was still toward me, I could tell by the sudden slump of her shoulders that she was miffed, as First Place in Heaven was snatched unfairly out of her grasp.
And now for the wine. Or should I say, the Blood of Christ?
It all depended whether you accepted the hotly disputed doctrine of transubstantiation: the actual transformation of fermented grape juice into the Holy Blood of the Son of God.
It was a subject upon which I had already come to my own conclusions.
Six months ago, at a greatly trying time in my life and racked by loss of faith, I had whisked away—by a method which I’m still ashamed to reveal—a sample of the consecrated wine from Holy Communion at St. Tancred’s, and taken it home to my laboratory, where I had subjected the supposedly holy liquid to the most rigorous analysis known to organic chemistry. I had compared the fluid and its constituents at various stages of my experiment with control samples of the ordinary, or unconsecrated, wine, nicked from the same church, I must confess, at a somewhat earlier date.
I had recorded the results—which were indisputable—in the back pages of one of Uncle Tarquin’s bulging notebooks, to be discovered at some future date when the world is better prepared to receive my earth-shattering findings.
I forced my mind back from these researches to St. Mildred’s, and the imminent demise of the Three Graces.
Because there were no deacons in attendance to assist with the Holy Communion on this sunny summer morning, it was left to Canon Whitbread himself to deliver both bread and wine, and I had to admire the quiet efficiency with which he administered the hosts to each of the three communicants before returning briefly to the altar to replace the ciborium in the tabernacle and to take up the chalice.
And now here it was: the moment I’d been waiting for. I took a mental snapshot of the scene.
Canon Whitbread stood poised, chalice in hand, facing the three communicants, whose heads were bowed in preparation.
I felt a shiver run down the back of my neck, down my arms, and into my elbows.
I was about to witness murder.
But whether Canon Whitbread was the killer or not, I could not yet tell. And yet he was certainly the instrument by which cruel Fate had chosen to deliver their deaths to these three unsuspecting chatterboxes.
Reluctantly, wanting to treasure the moment, and yet impatient to see the results, I allowed the action to resume.
Again, Grace Willoughby was first. She tilted her head back slightly. I could not see her mouth but I knew by the angle of her jaw that it had opened. She lengthened her life by a fraction of a second by crossing herself again. But Canon Whitbread’s hand moved swiftly, and the deed was done.
He was already moving sideways to confront Grace Harcourt.
Grace, too, went like a lamb to the slaughter.
Kaboola!
Just like that. With death in her mouth, she was already halfway to her feet.
Now it was the turn of Annie Cray.
Why did I feel so suddenly sorry for this pathetic little figure in her Mexican donkey blanket and silly hat? Why did I want to rush up to the rail shouting “No! Stop! Don’t swallow that! Spit it out!” Why did I want to grab her by the arm and haul her out of the church to safety?
These, I would realize later, were probably the kinds of afterthoughts that came to old misers as they lay dying alone in the night, clutching at straws of salvation.
If only I had thought to…if only I had…if only…
But I was neither old nor a miser—nor was I dying.
Fate undoubtedly has her reasons, and I was merely a girl who had been sent by her to solve a mystery.
And, by Saint George and his dragon, and his white horse, Uffington, that’s exactly what I intended to do!
I studied their faces carefully as the Three Graces arose from the Communion rail and turned toward me. Was there anything in their expressions to indicate that they smelled a rat, so to speak? That they had detected even the slightest taste of bitterness?
It was difficult to tell. There is something about receiving Holy Communion which causes even the most jolly person to look as if their face has just been suddenly and unexpectedly starched and hung out on the line to dry. The face of the average communicant is not a happy one, and the faces of the Three Graces were no exception. Pious, is the word I’m looking for.
Although it may be blasphemy to say so, the features of these three women as they made their seemingly sightless way back to their seats reminded me of nothing so much as that famous painting The Blind Leading the Blind by Pieter Bruegel.
I watched intently as they shimmied hip to hip into the pew. With a muffled thump the kneeling bench went down and they were on their knees.
Less than a minute to zero hour, I remember thinking, as I began counting.
The first sign came precisely thirty-three seconds later as Grace Harcourt let out a slight hiccup. She covered her mouth quickly with a white-gloved hand and kept it there. Her other hand was at her heart.
Potassium cyanide—when changed to hydrogen cyanide by the body’s stomach acids—is one of the swiftest of the deadly poisons. Only carbon monoxide and some of the other gases kill so quickly. Unconsciousness can occur within seconds. Even so, I was surprised at the speed with which it took her.
Grace slumped farther forward, her right shoulder coming to rest against the back of the front pew. I watched as she drew a couple of noisy breaths and collapsed slowly sideways, her summer hat falling to the floor, her chin coming to rest grotesquely against the polished oak seat of the pew, her eyes staring blindly up at the hammer beams above.
While I was still marveling at the sight—and still fighting the instinct to leap to her assistance, as I had done once before with a victim of cyanide—Grace Willoughby jerked suddenly halfway to her feet, looked round in wild-eyed panic, and flopped, backward at first, and then sideways, into the pew.
She seemed unaware of her already dead friend beside her.
One of her legs twitched, then kicked convulsively—and was still.
It was not a graceful death.
Now only Annie Cray remained, still on her knees, her eyes fixed fiercely on the altar, upon which Canon Whitbread was replacing what remained of the consecrated Elements.
Then Annie, too, crumpled: slowly, beautifully, lightly, like a falling leaf that has detached itself from the parent bough and launched itself upon the air, rocking slightly from side to side, lower and ever lower, until settling on the welcoming earth.
It was just that easy.
I was happy that none of them had died that ghastly, frothing, foaming death that sometimes signals cyanide.
And now, Canon Whitbread turned toward us and began to pray:
“Our Father which art in Heaven…”
If there was, actually, such as place as Heaven, the Three Graces were already safely in it. I couldn’t help smiling at the thought as the canon went on:
“Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.”
Had God already forgiven the trespasses of these three gossips, even as they lay entangled among the furniture of a country church? Was forgiveness as fast as cyanide?
For their sakes, I hoped so.
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”
Yes, that was the thing, wasn’t it? To deliver us from evil, which was surely still among us. Somewhere, not far from this very spot, was the person—or persons—who had callously murdered Grace Willoughby, Grace Harcourt, Annie Cray, and—yes, I was now quite sure of it—Canon Whitbread himself, albeit in a very complicated way.
To say nothing of his son, Orlando.
Father, Son…and Holy Ghosts.
In a weird way, it had all begun to make sense.
Not seeming to have seen what had happened before his very eyes, Canon Whitbread recited quickly, and qu
ite quietly, the prayer of thanksgiving. He then began the closing prayer:
“Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank Thee, for that Thou dost vouchsafe to feed us,” and so forth.
As he spoke, I turned to glance at Lettice and Hugo Farnsworth, who were clutching one another, wide-eyed, like a pair of frightened monkeys in a tree. In front of me, Hob Nightingale was fiddling idly with the buttons of his jacket, apparently lost in some kind of boyhood daydream.
I turned my attention again to Canon Whitbread as he gave us the final Blessing:
“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of His son Jesus Christ, our Lord: and the blessing…” (here, he made the sign of the cross) “…of the Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and remain with you always. Amen.”
Only then did he let out a howl of such unearthly agony that surely it must have been heard in the farthest reaches of Hell.
When I summoned up the courage and turned to look at the Three Graces, I saw to my amazement that they had begun to become transparent; to shimmer and to dim. I could clearly see the floorboards and part of the kneeling bench through Annie Cray’s feet and legs.
Loss of opacity, I remember thinking. A slight change in the index of refraction. A trick of the light.
But in spite of my clutching at scientific straws, the Three Graces were becoming ever less and less substantial, fading away before my very eyes.
Even as I watched, they had become vague and indistinct, like receding nebulae in the haze of the starry heavens, until at last they gave a faint and final shiver…and were gone without a trace.
And to tell you the truth, I was devastated by their loss.
On the verge of tears, I sat there motionless for many long minutes in a perfect vacuum which, although previously unknown to science, is now known to me.
It was as if the world around me had darkened. My vision narrowed until only the altar remained visible at its center, lighted now by the low rays of the suddenly cold, weak sun lancing in through the stained-glass windows.
Somebody seized my shoulder.