by Alys Clare
Celia stood in the middle of the room, staring around her as if she’d never seen the place before. She touched the bedspread with gentle fingers, then moved over to look out of the window. I waited. After what seemed a very long time, she reached up a hand and unfastened her cloak. She turned to me. ‘Where’s my travelling bag?’
‘Here!’ I said, far too brightly.
The tiny glimmer of a smile. ‘I’ll unpack,’ she said.
‘I’ll send Sallie up to help you, she’s—’
‘No.’ The single word rang out harshly. ‘I can manage,’ Celia added more softly. ‘I did not bring much.’
I watched as she unfastened her pack and began withdrawing the contents: a soft shawl, a gown, soft little slippers, what looked like a nightgown. I had never felt more useless. ‘I’ll wait for you down in the morning parlour,’ I said, backing out of the room.
It was unworthy and uncharitable, but just at that moment I couldn’t wait to get away from her.
Sallie was waiting for me in the hall, her face a picture of anxious solicitude. ‘How is she?’ she whispered.
‘As you would expect,’ I replied. Then, relenting, I added, ‘You’ve made the rooms very welcoming, Sallie. Thank you. The roses were a thoughtful touch.’
‘Did she like them? I thought she would.’
It would have been unkind to say she didn’t notice them, so I didn’t. ‘She’s unpacking now – no, she doesn’t need any help – and presently she’ll come down and join me in the morning parlour.’
‘That’s right,’ Sallie said approvingly, ‘a nice bit of early sunshine will do her good. I’ll listen out,’ she added, hurrying off in the direction of the kitchen, ‘and bring hot drinks and a bite to eat when I hear her come down.’
I went into the sun-filled morning parlour and sank down on the wooden settle. It was still only mid-morning, and already this day felt ages long.
Celia and I made little impression on the generous tray of food that Sallie brought in. I could have demolished most of it on my own, but it seemed insensitive to wolf my way through the little pies and tarts when my poor sister sat there, white-faced, hollow-eyed, picking disinterestedly at the tiniest of the cakes and making less progress than a sickly mouse.
I studied her. I wanted to bombard her with questions. What will you do? How will you manage? Have you access to Jeromy’s money? Will you remain in that huge, showy and extravagant house, or sell it and purchase something more discreet and tasteful? I kept my mouth shut. These weren’t matters for now, the first of all the days that Celia would have to live without him, and they could wait.
One matter, however, could not.
I had to tell her that Jeromy could not be buried in hallowed ground.
I said, ‘Celia, I have had a visit from Jonathan Carew, the vicar of St Luke’s.’
She nodded. She had given up on the tray of sweetmeats and pastries and gone to stand by the window. She was idly fingering the fabric of the curtain, perhaps unconsciously comparing its plain, robust practicality with the luxury of Ferrars. ‘Yes, I know who he is,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Ferrars falls within his parish, although Jeromy likes us to attend services at St Mary’s because that is where Nicolaus Quinlie worships.’
Likes. How long, I wondered, did it take for a widow to speak of her dead husband in the past tense?
But I was prevaricating. I made myself go on.
‘I’m afraid I have bad news.’
She was standing with her back to me, staring out through the window on to the sunny garden below. She had been holding herself stiffly, her carriage very upright, almost as if she had to keep her body tense in order not to collapse. As I said the terrible words ‘A suicide is not permitted in consecrated ground,’ I saw her slump.
Her iron self-control had given way at last.
I hurried forward and took her in my arms before she could fall.
I studied her closely over the next few hours and days. She was in a strange mood: distracted, distraught, frightened, almost in dread, jumping at shadows, and my hopes that at last whatever was holding back her tears had broken proved premature. After that brief collapse when I told her there could be no burial in hallowed ground, I didn’t see her weep. It was probable, I decided, that she preferred to do so in the privacy of her own quarters. She’d always been proud, and reluctant to give any sign that she was in pain or distress; no doubt it came from having two older brothers.
I wondered if my house was really the right place for her. Would she fare better with our mother to fuss over her and our father to advise her on her future? I suggested it, in a roundabout way – I didn’t want her to feel she was unwelcome at Rosewyke, so I asked her if she’d prefer a busier household, with more family activities going on to take her mind off her grief – but she understood exactly what I meant. ‘No, Gabriel, I don’t want to go to stay at Fernycombe. Mother would drive me out of my mind.’
She didn’t elaborate. I believed I knew, though, what she meant. I had sent word to Rosewyke informing our parents of Jeromy’s death, and Mother had sent Samuel back with a long letter to Celia, presumably expressing her shock and distress. Knowing our mother, however, I was pretty sure she had also included several pages of sound, sensible advice.
I doubted that Celia would have read it. I didn’t think she was ready for advice just yet.
As the endless days went on, her continuing silence began to worry me. She answered if I asked her a direct question, and once or twice she managed a soft ‘Thank you’ when Sallie performed some little service for her, but otherwise she barely said a word. She didn’t do anything: she sat for hours, hands folded in her lap, eyes gazing into the middle distance, and each evening she retired to her bedchamber as early as she could, saying merely that she was tired.
I would have been willing to bet, however, that she didn’t sleep.
It was not healthy, this suppression of her grief, and I tried constantly to work out how best to help her out of the stone cell in which she seemed to have imprisoned herself. In most cases, as Jonathan Carew had remarked, the pain of bereavement appears to be eased by the formal ceremony of the funeral; it is as if interment marks the moment when those who grieve know they must pick themselves up and walk on. But there could be no traditional funeral for poor Jeromy. I didn’t know what happened in the case of those who died by their own hand: I ought to have asked Carew, but at the time it hadn’t occurred to me. I had something in my mind about suicides being buried at crossroads, but somehow I couldn’t see the intellectual mind of the vicar of St Luke’s endorsing such a practice.
The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Celia’s prolonged silence and withdrawal were, in part at least, because she could not move out of the terrible grey state of having lost her husband yet not having buried him. Under other circumstances, she might now be throwing herself into arranging the funeral service – which would undoubtedly be something in keeping with Jeromy’s wealth and position, perhaps in the big church where Nicolaus Quinlie and his rich friends worshipped – and making sure all those well-fed, important and influential people knew the precise date and time. Then there would be the funeral feast to prepare, with Ferrars buffed and polished till it shone and every room filled with the smell of lilies.
I arrested my imaginings. I wasn’t being fair to my sister and she didn’t deserve my criticism, even if it remained unspoken. She hadn’t asked to be in this awful position.
If only Jeromy hadn’t killed himself.
Then I thought, I am a doctor. A medical man. What would happen if I were to throw doubt on the verdict of suicide? And just how much doubt would be required? Would Jonathan Carew relent and bury my late brother-in-law at the mere suggestion that he might not have died by his own hand, even if I wasn’t able to prove it beyond question?
It was surely worth the attempt.
Theophilus Davey leaned back in his chair – it creaked in protest – and drew in a deep breath. Ah,
sweet air! He knew he shouldn’t have moved the corpse, strictly speaking, but, faced with imminent revolt from his staff, not to mention his wife, he felt he’d been left with no alternative. When it had been brought to his notice (by the resourceful Jarman Hodge, who had complained longer and louder than anybody about the stink) that there was a cool crypt with a stout, lockable door in an empty property on the edge of the village, and that the owner of that property was willing, for a consideration, to allow its temporary use as a morgue, it had seemed like a gift from heaven. Accordingly, yesterday evening Theo had ordered four of his men to cover the corpse and transport it to its new resting place. Then he had himself cleaned the cellar, rolling up his sleeves and scrubbing away at the trestle on which the body had lain so long until all but the worst of the stains had gone. Then he had scattered bunches of herbs – lavender, sage, rosemary – and lit a fire in a small brazier, on which he burned pieces of wood soaked in fragrant oils. The stench was still detectable if you went right into the cellar and sniffed hard, but who in their right mind was going to do that?
The relief was unspeakable. Theo eased his conscience by reminding himself that no imminent end to the situation had been in sight; he had had a visit from the vicar of St Luke’s Church, Tavy St Luke’s, who, when Theo had informed him of the cause of death, explained the church’s stand on suicides, which seemed to Theo to be depressingly firm. What with Theo’s reluctance to release the body – which had been rapidly lessening, he admitted to himself, as putrefaction had advanced – and the vicar’s stand on burying it, the corpse of that poor man looked likely to be around for a while yet.
It was strange, he reflected briefly a moment later, that he had just been thinking about the dead man when his visitor was announced …
‘Someone to see you, Master Davey,’ Tomas yelled from the outer office.
‘Who is—?’ Theo began.
But before he could complete the query, Gabriel Taverner strode into the room.
Mildly surprised at how pleased he was to see the man, Theo said, ‘Good morning, doctor. What can I do for you?’
He decided to keep to himself his musings on the odd coincidence of Gabriel’s having arrived at precisely the moment when his own thoughts had been on the corpse of the late brother-in-law. It wouldn’t do for a coroner to acquire a reputation as a man given to fey fancies. It wouldn’t do at all.
Gabriel stood over him, hands resting on Theo’s desk, a frown on his face. ‘I think you’d better sit down,’ Theo added mildly. ‘You have the air of a man with something on his mind.’ You also look rather threatening, looming over me, he might have added. Gabriel Taverner was a broad-shouldered man, heavily built, quite tall; the shoulder-length hair and the heavy gold earring enhanced the impression that this wasn’t a man to tangle with. There was something wild about him; as if he couldn’t be relied upon to be totally civilized …
Gabriel pulled up a chair and flung himself into it. Briefly he rubbed his hands over his face, quite vigorously, as if he was washing, then looked Theo straight in the eyes and said, ‘My sister can’t bury her late husband as she would wish because he’s a suicide and the church won’t permit it.’
‘So I understand,’ Theo remarked.
Gabriel nodded. ‘No doubt you have had other such cases.’
Theo considered. ‘I’m not sure that I have,’ he said. ‘However, the vicar of St Luke’s has been to see me.’
‘Ah.’
‘You know him?’
‘I’ve met him, yes. He—’
‘He is only doing his job,’ Theo said gently. ‘He cannot do other than follow his church’s ruling, and if you have come to ask me to intervene and try to change his mind, I cannot do so.’
‘No, I know,’ Gabriel replied quickly. ‘And I too understand that Jonathan Carew has no choice.’ He paused, and Theo thought he could detect some struggle going on in his mind.
‘So,’ he prompted after a while, ‘why have you come to see me?’
Again, the frank look. Then Gabriel said, ‘I only saw the body briefly. It looked as if Jeromy had killed himself, but, under the circumstances, it is surely right to make absolutely sure.’
Theo nodded. ‘Because, if there is the smallest room for doubt, then a good, Christian man such as Jonathan Carew would surely be charitable and come down on the side of compassion, and permit your sister to bury her husband with due pomp and ceremony.’
‘Er – yes, precisely so,’ Gabriel agreed.
Theo thought. Then he said, ‘Two things I must tell you. Firstly, that I asked a local barber surgeon his opinion, and he agreed with your assessment.’
‘But I only—’ Gabriel began hotly.
Theo held up a hand, and Gabriel fell silent,
‘Secondly, you should not, strictly speaking, be any further involved in this matter, the deceased having been a relative by marriage.’
‘But I’m already involved!’ Gabriel protested. ‘You yourself involved me when you came to my door asking me to view the corpse!’
‘Ah, but then neither I nor you knew who he was,’ Theo countered.
‘I – I—’
It was quite painful, Theo decided, watching Gabriel fumble around for counter-arguments. He decided to put the doctor out of his misery.
‘If you are asking what I believe you’re asking,’ he said with a faint smile, ‘then the answer is yes.’
‘Yes,’ Gabriel echoed. He was eyeing Theo warily.
‘The body has been removed, as no doubt you’ve guessed by the pleasant air of my house,’ Theo went on. ‘Since I don’t really want there to be any witness to our clandestine excursion, I suggest you present yourself back here at nightfall.’
Comprehension dawned on the doctor. ‘You’ll take me to see the body?’
‘I will.’
I really hadn’t anticipated Theophilus Davey agreeing to my request. Not so readily, anyway, although when I made my careful way under cover of the growing darkness to his house, I certainly wasn’t going to start questioning his decision.
He must have been looking out for me, because he had the gate on to his yard open as I rode up. ‘Leave your horse here,’ he said softly. ‘It’s quite a short walk, and we’re less likely to be seen on foot.’
I dismounted and led Hal into the yard. There was a row of three stables on the left, and Theo’s bay mare put her head enquiringly over one of the half-doors as I tethered my horse in the adjoining, empty stall. Theo and I hurried out of the yard and he fastened the gates behind us. I glanced up at the house, and noticed a light shining from an open window in the upper storey. Had Theo a wife? Family? Now wasn’t the time to ask, but, if so, then they must have been overwhelmingly relieved when the dead body was removed out of the house.
But just then there came the sound of a singularly sweet and pure voice, singing an ancient lullaby. I had turned away but now spun round, looking up at the window again.
Noticing, Theo said softly, ‘My youngest has a touch of colic and my wife is trying to soothe him into sleep.’
‘She sings most beautifully,’ I remarked. ‘What a lovely voice!’
Theo grinned. ‘It’s not always so pleasing to the ear,’ he said. ‘Elaine can bellow like a sailor when the children are unruly.’
I caught a glimpse of his expression as he stared up at his house. His wife, I guessed, could bellow all she liked and he would not think the less of her. He was, it seemed, a man very content in his marriage.
We set off out of the village, going westwards towards the last of the light in the sky. I could smell the salt and seaweed of the sea, and part of my mind registered that the tide must be coming in. Warleigh Point was only a mile or so ahead, I calculated, so we weren’t far from the river.
After a short while Theo muttered, ‘That’s the place,’ pointing to a large stone house that stood back several yards from the road, its hedges high and unkempt, its roof sagging and in need of repair.
‘Does nobody live there
?’ I asked.
‘No. The man who owns it inherited it from an elderly uncle and is trying to decide if the price he might eventually get for it is worth the expenditure of having it made fit for sale.’
We went in through the gate – leaning sideways and attached by a broken hinge and a length of twine – and walked up the path to the front door. Theo produced a key, and we were inside. Theo struck a flint and lit a lantern hanging inside the door, indicating for me to do the same with its pair. Then he led the way along the stone-floored hall to a low archway giving on to stairs leading down. The stairs were stone, like the floor, and steep and narrow. I grasped a rope attached to the wall with my free hand, not wanting to slip and fall on top of Theo.
The stench wafted up the steps to greet us.
Theo found two more lanterns, which he lit from the one he carried and placed on the trestle on which the body lay. A glow of golden light illuminated the small crypt, giving plenty of light for me to work by. There was no excuse not to begin.
I unwound the layers of cloth covering the corpse. It lay with the right side uppermost, legs bent towards the chest, hands still clasping the weapon that had ended life. Apart from the fact that it was lying on its side rather than sitting up, it looked as if the body was in exactly the same position as when the blade had gone in.
‘You have preserved the evidence very carefully,’ I remarked.
‘I have,’ Theo agreed. ‘I had a feeling we hadn’t heard the last of this one.’
I inspected the chest and the abdomen, moving the garments aside so that I could study the bare flesh. The weapon had pierced the skin just below the ribs on the left side, driven in at an upward angle. The blade was still held in the putrefying flesh, although the firm grip was weakening as the flesh began to disintegrate. Then I pushed the doublet and shirt down off the shoulders so that I could look at the corpse’s back. Just under the shoulder blade, the tip of the weapon was sticking out, surrounded by a crust of dried blood.