Body in the Transept

by Jeanne M. Dams

  He smiled. “No, it isn’t second sight. I know your neighbor, Jane Langland, and she’s mentioned you to me. Especially your—er—taste in hats. I quite like this one, if I may say so.” The smile broadened slightly, although he was much too polite to let it turn into a chuckle.

  I relaxed and laughed. “I know it’s an extremely silly one—but thank you very much, I like it too, Mr.—?”

  “Nesbitt. Alan Nesbitt.” He shook my hand.

  “And how do you know Jane?” I was genuinely curious. Jane’s orbit did not, as far as I knew, include many distinguished-looking men, except for the cathedral staff, and I knew most of them by sight.

  “I met her on official business a year or so ago.”

  I looked blank.

  “Sorry, I should have explained I’m chief constable for this county. Miss Langland’s house was burgled last year, and she came to me in great distress, convinced we had the wrong man. She was quite right, in fact. She gave me no peace until we caught the real villain.”

  I laughed. “I can imagine. Jane’s almost always right about people, and she’s a tiger for justice.” I laughed again at the thought of Jane as a tiger—a plump, gray-haired, very English tiger—and was about to voice the image when the great organ over our heads uttered a mighty chord that made human speech inaudible. I shrugged and smiled. A mellow light began to spread through the choir as the vergers lit a few congregational candles and each passed on the gentle flame. The last electric lights were turned out; the sonorous fugue rolled over us and we settled back in satisfaction. Bach, I thought dreamily. Perfect for Christmas. The great ritual was beginning.

  The service proceeded in its familiar order, with extra flourishes for Christmas. Sherebury is “high-church”—very Catholic in its practices—so clouds of incense led in the cathedral clergy in their glistening white-and-gold vestments. Vergers headed the procession in the red and blue and green cassocks of their rank, stained-glass colors that were their usual garb but looked specially chosen for the festive season. The dean followed the canons, wearing his tall dignity with a benign humility. The bishop, a small man made majestic in embroidered cope and mitre, brought up the rear, carrying his deeply carved silver crozier. And all the while the choirboys in ruffled surplices and the men in more tailored versions sang like the very archangels.

  The bishop ascended his throne, the “cathedra” for which the building was named. Not being especially fond of the bishop, I confess to the irreverent thought that he looked far too insignificant for the splendor of that chair. Carved of oak and nestled in a hooded niche of miraculously lacy marble that stretched upward for twenty feet or more, it seemed more fitting for the real Owner of the building. Everyone else took their appointed places for the stately choreography of a high-church service, and the dean began the measured poetry of Archbishop Cranmer. “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known. . . .”

  As the service wore on, the vast congregation of strangers seemed to unite in the mood of that night of miracles, joining lustily in the hymns and carols. They gave us all the old favorites: “Away in a Manger,” “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “What Child Is This.” I did my enthusiastic best until they came to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Then the pure beauty of the boy soprano’s descant put such a lump in my throat that I couldn’t sing a note. No matter that I know perfectly well they’re normal mischievous little boys, not angels straight from heaven; when they sing in that particular way I melt to a puddle.

  The sermon was brief and cheering, the communion solemnly moving. As I made my way back from the altar rail I reveled in the exalted sense of goodwill that one always hopes will last. It never does, of course. In a while I would remember my troubles. I would begin to let the little worries nag at me, and be annoyed by the fat man’s wheezes and elbowings. I would come down to earth. But even knowing that, for just one sublime suspended moment nothing could spoil the perfection of Christmas, the first Christmas and this one somehow joined as one.

  It was long after midnight, truly Christmas, when the slender congregational candles flickered their last, the bishop pronounced the benediction, and the organ broke into a final delighted riot of sound. I sat while the others began to leave, well content to let the glory flow over me until the last triumphant chord rolled away and was swallowed up in the greetings of “Merry Christmas” sounding from all sides. I heaved a huge sigh of satisfaction and rose, a trifle creakily, from the confinement of my narrow stall. A courteous hand at my elbow reminded me of Mr. Nesbitt’s presence.

  “Thank you. I think I’m getting too old for late hours and hard seats. Lovely as that was, I’m stiff and tired and ready for home.”

  “I’d be delighted to see you home, Mrs. Martin. Unless you have other friends here . . .”

  “No, I was planning on going home alone. It’s very kind of you, but you don’t need to bother, I’ll be fine. It’s only a few steps, just the other side of the Close.”

  “No bother at all. I believe the cloister door would be the nearest, wouldn’t it?” He steered me away from the crowd going out through the nave. He was quite right. It was quite a walk through the Close to my house from the south door, while the cloister door led directly to the little gate into my street.

  “Goodness, it’s dark!” I stumbled over a paving stone in the south choir transept, grateful once again for the steadying hand. “I suppose they left these lights off for effect.”

  “Actually I believe it’s something to do with the rewiring. Did you have a coat, Mrs. Martin? It’s quite chilly.”

  I stopped in dismay. “Oh, dear. It’s in the south porch. My umbrella, too. I came in that way because this door was locked from the outside. Maybe we should go out the front after all.”

  “No, no, we’ll be able to get out, I’m sure. I’ll just go and fetch your things for you, if you’ll tell me what color . . .”

  “A new Burberry, with a red scarf in the pocket. And the umbrella has cats all over it, in bright colors.”

  Again I caught that suggestion of a chuckle as he turned away.

  “I won’t be a moment.”

  Well, what did I care if he found my taste a bit flamboyant? He was being polite about it, anyway. I was glad he had remembered the coat; I was beginning to shiver as the cold of ancient stones encircled me.

  This was the oldest part of the cathedral, the choir transept leading to the old cloister. The cloister itself, save for part of the old scriptorium and the boundary walls, had fallen to ruin centuries ago after the dissolution of the abbeys, leaving only a few moss-covered stumps of arches to bear witness to Henry VIII’s devastation. The Norman transept, however, had survived intact, lone remnant of the eleventh-century church. Impressionable folk claimed they sometimes saw a monk here, robed and cowled, walking sadly and silently the steps he had trod so many hundred years before. I devoutly wished I hadn’t remembered that story at just that moment.

  The dark quiet was oppressive. Although hundreds of people still filled the huge nave, the cathedral’s design funneled the sound away from this remote area, where the loudest noise was the echo of my own footsteps. I shivered again, not from cold this time, and then remembered the tiny flashlight in my bag. If only the batteries were still good . . . I rummaged, finally found it, and turned it on. Well, not exactly a spotlight, but at any rate a reassuring token of the twentieth century.

  I took a firmer grip on it and inched toward the cloister door. If I opened it the outside light would brighten the area, and I didn’t think I could get much colder. It wasn’t easy to get my bearings in the looming dark. Surely the Fitzalan chantry was just here on the left, and then the last of the side chapels before the door? The frail beam of light confirmed my rapidly diminishing sense of direction. But then—there were no memorial brasses here, were there? That gleam of metal on the floor—what on earth?

  It was a candlestick. My flashlight, with the perversity of its kind, brightened for a moment and then dimmed to a
mere glimmer, but the brief flare was enough to show me the unmistakable silver shape. Ornate, three feet tall, it belonged with its mate on the altar of the lovely little chapel that should be here, just next to the cloister door. I picked up the heavy object, wondering why it was there, and moved forward to replace it.

  “Mrs. Martin?”

  I turned to Mr. Nesbitt’s voice. “I’m over here, by the door. Can you see my flashlight?” Still moving as I looked back, I stumbled over something at the foot of the altar. Why, someone had left a bundle of vestments there! Or could it be . . .? As I fought for balance the tiny flashlight flew from my hand, brightened again, and swung its light crazily over the scene. The last thing I saw before it fell and extinguished itself for good was yet another gleam. The gleam, from among the heap of garments, of a fixed and staring eye.

  2

  MY RECOLLECTION OF what came next is spotty, a series of images, snippets of sight and sound, each as hard-edged and vivid as a flash photograph.

  The first memory is the scream, an obscene sound, a terrifying, shocking outrage that crashed off stone walls, echoed and re-echoed from vault to pavement, splintering the Christmas peace. Only when Mr. Nesbitt reached me and took both my arms in his strong hands did I realize it was I who was desecrating the night. The sudden knowledge that one is making an utter fool of oneself can be as effective against hysteria as a wet towel in the face. I stopped with a kind of strangled gargle, gulped once or twice, and tried to speak.

  “I—is it—” My voice trembled as much as my knees. This was ridiculous. Pull yourself together, old girl. I took several deep breaths, hugged myself tightly, and tried again, without much more success. “I can’t quite see—but there’s—something—”

  “Sit down.” It was not a suggestion. He lowered me firmly to the floor. “Stay there.” I suppose I obeyed, but this is one of the transitions I’ve lost. The next I remember, I was standing up and someone had organized some light—feeble but blessed—and people were gathering.

  I saw the dean, half in and half out of his cassock, his clerical collar springing wildly free of a single button, but with dignity and authority unimpaired. The growing crowd—vergers, clergy, a few straggling parishioners, the choirmaster, and a gaggle of eager choirboys—parted like the Red Sea as he moved quietly through them, his raised hand stopping the boys in their tracks.

  “Why, Mrs. Martin,” he said mildly. “Whatever is the matter?”

  Several hundred watts of electricity could hardly have dispelled the age-old shadows; a single lantern was woefully inadequate. But what light there was gave me, in one horrifying instant, an all too-clear picture of the thing lying at the foot of the altar. I tried to speak, but the thin thread of sound couldn’t be heard beyond my own lips.

  It was Mr. Nesbitt who said, as one accustomed to being obeyed, “You’d better send the boys away, Dean.” He had moved to block their view. “We have something of a problem here. Will you and one of the vergers stay, please, while I call for some assistance. No one must touch anything. And perhaps someone—oh, Margaret, good. Could you take Mrs. Martin to some place where she’ll be comfortable, and stay with her for a bit? She’s had a nasty shock.”

  Authority recognizes authority. Margaret Allenby, the dean’s wife, moved toward me while the dean gave the choirboys into the keeping of their director and shooed the lot on their reluctant way. Then as he came closer his face turned so white that I started babbling. “It’s all right, Dean. I mean it’s not the ghost or anything. It’s just a real person, a real dead person, that is. I think it must be Canon Billings, you see, and surely nobody could look like that and be alive, could they?” At the end of which remarkably silly speech I looked down again at the cassock on the floor, and the thing in it, and everything began to collapse in on itself and draw down to a single point of bright light.

  I INSIST THAT I didn’t quite faint. I’m not a fainting person. The idea made me so indignant that I rallied a bit. Someone, probably the dean’s wife, shoved me down onto the altar rail and pushed my head between my knees, and the world opened out again. But it apparently took me a while to focus, because by the time I realized how extraordinarily uncomfortable I was and tried to get off that miserable stone perch, nearly everyone had gone. Mrs. Allenby was sitting awkwardly beside me, an arm around my shoulders to make sure I didn’t fall, while the dean, with a green-faced junior verger, kept watch over the body. The dean looked extremely tired and worried, but his lips moved silently and I realized that he was performing part of his ritual for the dead.

  “There, now,” said Mrs. Allenby as I raised my head. “Feeling better, are you, dear?”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. I cleared my throat. “Fine. Really. I think I’d better stand up, though. My bones won’t take that rail anymore.” My firm assertion of independence was spoiled by a totter that nearly landed me on the floor. Mrs. Allenby tactfully held me up until I could stand more or less on my own two feet. This time I kept my eyes steadfastly away from the foot of the altar.

  “Well, my dear, what a frightful thing!” Mrs. Allenby launched into a gentle flow of talk, insulating me with words from too much thought. “I’m sure I don’t know what I’d have done, finding him like that, poor man. Now you’re to come with me—can you walk a bit, do you think?—and have a little restorative. I know they say it isn’t the thing, but I maintain a spot of brandy is steadying in a crisis, and Kenneth always keeps some here, because you never know, do you? That’s right, just round old Stephen’s tomb, here we are. That’s the most comfortable chair; I know it looks ready for the scrap heap, but it’s lovely to sit in, at least till it comes to the getting out, and then I always need a hand up. Now you drink this right down.”

  She handed me a small glass of liquid fire, and if I didn’t “drink it right down,” I certainly sipped gratefully, and it helped.

  As did my surroundings. I was in the small room set aside for people who turned up at the cathedral with problems too urgent to wait for an appointment with one of the clergy in his own office. The room was a perfect example of that kind of dignified, self-assured shabbiness that the English upper classes specialize in. A faded, once-fine rug lay on the floor. Cracked leather chairs provided, as promised, solid comfort. It was a pity the fireplace held only an electric heater instead of the crackling logs that belonged there, but the warmth was welcome. It seemed a place of peace and rather solemn good cheer.

  After an interval the dean entered the room, his calm, quiet manner not quite hiding his worry. Accustomed all his life to dealing with human failings, familiar with every sin in the calendar, he was nevertheless badly shaken by the sudden death of his own canon in his own cathedral. He came straight to me, with Mr. Nesbitt right behind him.

  “I see my wife is looking after you, Mrs. Martin.” His voice was filled with sad kindness. “I’m so sorry you should have had this dreadful experience. Are you feeling better?”

  “Quite all right, thank you.” Social lies are useful; if you say often enough that things are fine you may begin to believe it. “But, oh, Dean, I’m sorry I made such a fool of myself. I suppose everyone in the place heard—”

  “No, dear,” said Mrs. Allenby soothingly. “The acoustics in this place are very odd. I shouldn’t think anyone in the nave heard a thing, and we managed to shoo away most of the people who turned up. And how could you possibly help it? I’m sure it would have been a terrible shock to anyone, finding him in the dark that way.”

  Mr. Nesbitt cleared his throat, and the dean took over.

  “Yes, of course, Alan. I’m afraid, Mrs. Martin, if you’re really feeling yourself again, there are some questions Mr. Nesbitt needs to ask you. This is the chief constable of Sherebury, who happened to be in church tonight, and came round to help. . . .”

  “We’ve met,” I said, pleased to hear that my voice sounded almost normal. “But why . . .?”

  “The police in this country,” Mr. Nesbitt began, “as you may not know, Mrs. Martin, m
ust investigate all cases of sudden death, even when we have no reason to believe it’s anything but an accident.” He sounded apologetic. “It’s a shocking time of night, I know, and I do quite realize that you’re feeling a trifle upset, but I’d like to ask you just one or two questions.”

  I was flooded with instant, foolish apprehension. How many mysteries had I read with just those words addressed to the chief suspect? Idiotic as it was, I had to swallow hard before I could respond with anxious cooperation.

  “Of course I’ll do anything I can to help. Not that I really know anything, but ask whatever you like.”

  “For a start, how did you happen to—be in the chapel? It’s out of your way to the door.”

  I felt sure he had started to ask how I happened to fall over the body, and I was grateful for the euphemism. “Oh, that was the candlestick. It was on the floor, and it glimmered, sort of, in the light of my flashlight. So I picked it up to put it back . . .”

  “Pity you picked it up, in the circumstances, but a perfectly natural thing to do. Can you show us, later, just where it was?”

  That little shudder of apprehension came again. I tried to ignore it. “It was awfully dark, but I’ll try. Oh, for heaven’s sake, what did I do with it? It was heavy, I remember—I suppose I dropped it when—”

  “It’s all right, dear.” Margaret Allenby intervened again. “You did drop it, but we found it, it’s quite all right. It fell on—that is, it wasn’t dented, or anything of that sort. I always thought that pair particularly hideous, anyway.”

  I didn’t care to follow up all the non sequiturs in that speech, and apparently Mr. Nesbitt didn’t either. He sighed. “If you can show me where you put it, Margaret, I’ll have to have it checked for fingerprints. Not a bit of use, of course, that heavy carving won’t show a thing, but one goes through the motions. I’m afraid I’ll have to have your fingerprints as well, if you handled it, and Mrs. Martin’s. For comparison.”