A Shadow on the Wall

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  Atherton went back to the door and called through it. No one answered, but I heard footsteps somewhere above us, then the sound of quick steps on a stair.

  Moments later, a ragged-looking girl appeared in the doorway. She took one look at us, gulped, tried to perform a curtsey, and disappeared as fast as she had come.

  “The landlady is Mrs O’Reilly,” Atherton said, moving across to the fire in order to warm his hands. “A local woman, in spite of the name. Her husband was an Irishman who came here to dig dykes and stayed to take over the inn. He died ten years ago, but she keeps the place on almost single-handed. No children. She will have been badly affected by Edward’s death. Before his arrival, she stayed away from church, but she says he rekindled her faith, or some such thing.”

  “It’s very cut off,” I said, thinking of the long, dim drive and the raddled vastness of the landscape. “Why did your brother want to come here? Surely he could have had a better living elsewhere.”

  Atherton nodded.

  “Indeed he could; but it wasn’t in Edward’s nature to seek the easy way. To tell you the truth, he was something of a recluse. He remained unmarried because the thought of family life filled him with horror. All he wanted to do was tend his parish and pursue his interests in the liturgy and medieval architecture. He was desperate to come here. The church was quite magnificent once, when it was a dependency of Thornham Abbey. Edward had the highest hopes for it.”

  At that moment, the door opened again and we were treated to the sight of a weeping woman, a soiled apron fast against her eyes, stumbling towards Atherton.

  “Dr Atherton! Dr Atherton! What’s to become of us? Rector dead and gone.”

  She reached for him, and he held her clumsily, consoling her as though it was her brother and not his that had died. But her tears, if maudlin, were genuine enough, and her grief as real as any sister’s.

  Slowly, by dint of repeated words of comfort, Atherton detached the little woman and guided her to a chair. He sat down beside her, and looked up, motioning to me to take a chair myself. I was already finding the strain of standing too great, and readily joined them.

  Mrs O’Reilly blubbered a little longer, then subsided until her sobs were manageable. She was a solidly built woman of around fifty, well worn by hard labour, with a tanned face and tiny purple eyes made puffy from crying. From time to time, Atherton patted the back of her hand, but I could see he was not at ease in the role of comforter. And, after all, it was his brother who had died.

  When she had at last recovered herself sufficiently to respond to questioning, he asked her what had happened to Edward. She looked round at him, astonished.

  “What? You mean you don’t know?” Atherton shook his head.

  “I fear not. The Reverend Lethaby sent me a telegram, but it was not specific.”

  She snorted.

  “Lethaby! Much use he’s been, and much use he’ll be if he should stay on, which I pray God he will not. He didn’t tell you what happened to the Reverend Atherton, then?”

  Atherton shook his head again.

  “Well, it’s as much as I might have expected. And you come all this way without knowing what befell your brother!”

  “And what did befall him?”

  The good lady seemed on the point of bursting into further floods of tears, but with a struggle she composed herself.

  “He fell down dead of an apostolic fit, sir.”

  “That sounds very appropriate,” murmured Atherton soothingly, casting me a rueful glance. “And where was he when this dreadful thing happened?”

  “Why, in the rectory, sir. It was a very strange affair, as no doubt you’ll discover for yourself. There’s been talk, Dr Atherton, sir, as you will soon hear. Seems that when Mr Lethaby went to church this morning for matins, he found all the doors locked fast against him, and a great piece of paper on the door of the south porch, with writing on it.”

  “Writing?” Atherton wrinkled his nose. I could see the thought as though emblazoned on his forehead: surely his brother, of all people, had no pretensions to be a second Luther? “Do you have any idea what it said?”

  She shook her head vigorously.

  “No, sir, that I don’t. I’m not a lettered woman myself, though I know my figures well enough and can tell a ‘Paid’ from an ‘Owing.’ But ‘tis still there if you want to read it for yourself. And no doubt Mr Lethaby has read and understood it.”

  “Well, go on—what happened after Lethaby found the doors locked?”

  The landlady’s hands were busy in her lap, scrunching her apron round and round into a tight ball, then releasing it. I noticed the serving girl’s head peep round the door, her eyes huge in a pallid face, then pull away again.

  “Seems he—meaning Mr Lethaby, sir—went straight to the rectory and knocked, but had no answer. That was when he grew concerned. Seeing as he had no key, he hurried to Albert Ryman’s house, as is the churchwarden, for he knew Albert does keep a spare set of keys for church and rectory both.”

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “but in a parish as small as this, surely the curate must have lived in the rectory himself.” I glanced at Atherton. “You did say your brother had neither wife nor children.”

  He nodded.

  “Yes, that would indeed have been a suitable arrangement. But, as I told you, Edward was not of a gregarious temperament. And, to be honest, Lethaby is not an easy man to be with. Edward needed him, for, in spite of appearances, this is quite a wide parish, when you take the outlying farms and some small hamlets into account. However, he resented the idea of sharing his home with another man, and insisted that Lethaby live in a little cottage of his own at the end of the village. The arrangement seemed to suit both of them, although Lethaby has never been happy with his own quarters. Conditions there are rather basic, to say the least.”

  “I see.” I turned back to Mrs O’Reilly. “I do apologise, Mrs O’Reilly. Please go on.”

  “Well, sir, the Reverend Lethaby and Albert Ryman, they upped and headed back down to the rectory like hares, and let theyselves in. I heard this from Albert’s wife herself, otherwise, sir, I’d never have believed a word on it.

  “They’d noticed the curtains in the rector’s bedroom were still closed, so they reckoned as he might have been took ill in the night, knowing as he were so sickly already. So, upstairs they went and knocked on rector’s door, and again no answer.

  “‘This looks bad,’ said Albert, though Mr Lethaby was just stood there all come-over like, and not knowing what to say or do. It was Albert took courage and opened the door, and what he saw, Alice—that’s his wife, sir—reckons he won’t forget if he lives till he be two hundred.”

  She paused, partly, I thought, for effect, partly, in all fairness to the good woman, in order to steel her nerves for the description that followed.

  “The Reverend Atherton—God save his soul—was kneeling bolt upright in the middle of the floor, and at first Albert thought he were in some sort of trance. But a second look, and it was clear he were stone dead, and a look on his face that would turn milk. A horrid look, as though he’d seen something he oughtn’t to have seen, and his eyes as near as popped out of his head.”

  “That’s enough, Mrs O’Reilly,” I interrupted. “I’m sure Dr Atherton doesn’t want to hear all this.”

  Atherton placed a hand on my hand and shook his head.

  “It’s all right, really. Let her go on. I want to know everything.”

  She glanced at him, then at me. I nodded, and she picked up courage to finish her tale.

  “Well, sir, it weren’t just the look on Rector’s face that gave Albert such a nasty turn. It was—” she lowered her voice, and glanced round the room, as though to make sure no one else was listening—”something heathen, or so Albert reckoned. The rector were kneeling there in a circle of some kind, with candles all round him, dozens of them, some gone out, some still burning. He had his Bible in one hand, and a cross in the other, and a look on h
is face like he’d seen the devil.”

  Her hand inadvertently made the sign of the cross over her breast, a gesture, I later learned from Atherton, she had acquired from her Catholic husband. Atherton looked at me, almost with reproach, as though his brother’s singular death served as confirmation of what I had so strenuously tried to deny on our first meeting. For myself, I felt only shame that I had not acted sooner, though God alone knows what action I might have taken to prevent such a fearful turn of events.

  “The Reverend Lethaby offered to stay behind and take care of the rector. Albert, meanwhile, headed along for March, where he found Dr Sillerton, and brought him back at once. When they came to the rectory, Mr Lethaby had somehow or other managed to lay the rector on his bed. All the candles and whatnot had been cleared from the room, saving for the Bible and the cross. And Lethaby says to Albert he’s not to utter a word about any of that to anyone, though he told his wife, as a man ought to, and I had it from her.

  “Doctor said it was an apostolic fit that took your dear brother, and no doubt it’s a fitting thing in the clergy to go that way when their time comes, though for myself I can’t see what’s apostolic about seeing the devil.”

  She paused, sneaking fearful glances right and left again, as though expecting the devil himself to walk into the room.

  “The strange thing is,” she went on, “that, no sooner had the doctor finished with the rector, than he was called to Mrs Manning’s house to see her William. You know who I mean, sir, don’t you?”

  Atherton nodded and looked at me.

  “William Manning was the choirboy who fell ill. You may remember that my brother mentioned him in his notes.”

  “Yes, indeed. I was meaning to ask if you knew what became of him.”

  “Well, he fell into a fever, then a coma of some sort, and I understand his life has been feared for ever since.” He turned to Mrs O’Reilly. “Don’t tell me the boy succumbed as well.”

  She shook her head, and for the first time a smile appeared on her lips.

  “Why, no, sir—quite the opposite. He’d come out of his spell that very night, and was up and eating breakfast, as bright and lively as he’d ever been, thank God. The doctor gave him a looking over and said he could be back at school in a week or so, when he’d got his strength back. It’s like a miracle, sir.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it, truly I am,” declared Atherton, and he too smiled. “It has brought some sunshine into what has been one of the darkest days of my life. I pray the boy continues to improve. But where is my brother now, Mrs O’Reilly?”

  The landlady looked despondent again.

  “He’s still in the rectory, sir. Mr Lethaby wanted to lay him out in the church and to set someone there all night to pray over him, but it seems that when Albert went to find the keys of the church, both those belonging to the Reverend Atherton and those he keeps himself were gone.”

  Atherton looked at her in amazement.

  “But who could have taken them?”

  “Albert reckons as it was the rector. He’d been with Albert a couple of days before, and he’d been alone in the room where the keys are kept. They’ve looked all through the rectory, but when I last heard, none had been found.”

  “My brother evidently wanted to keep people out.”

  “So it appears,” I said. “Look, Atherton, if you don’t mind, I’d like very much to see this inscription, if it’s still on the church door as you say.”

  “It is, sir,” broke in Mrs O’Reilly. “The Reverend Lethaby wanted to have it took down, but Albert argued with him and said it should stay where it is till someone comes out from the cathedral, for if there’s trouble over the matter of the keys, the writing on the paper may be a sort of evidence to show the rector was responsible.”

  “I heard the bell tolling as we came to the village,” I said. “How did they get into the tower if the church is locked?”

  “The bell tower’s quite separate from the body of the church. That’s to say, it has its own entrance. I take it that wasn’t locked?”

  “No, sir. It was the only door left open, and the key to the bell chamber had been left with Ezra Stukeley, the sexton. He went up this evening to toll the passing bell for your brother, forty-nine rings as I counted.”

  “Yes, that would be right: a ring for every year of a man’s life.” He paused, musing. “Forty-nine years,” he said. “Not long at all.”

  “No, sir. My husband lived near twenty years above that. It’s a grievous thing for a man to be taken in his prime.”

  A silence followed, filled with rumination on mortality. Atherton shifted on his seat and looked at me.

  “Are you up to a walk?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Then let’s be off.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It had grown dark outside. Dark, and very cold. Gas had not reached Thornham St Stephen, much less electricity, and the only lights were those that glimmered out, as though by accident, from a couple of half-shuttered windows. Mrs O’Reilly had lent us a lantern, and, while Atherton went a pace or two ahead with it held high, I hobbled behind on my crutches. The road was a bed of frozen mud, but preferable to me as a surface on which to move than the cobbled pavement on either side.

  “An apoplectic fit,” murmured Atherton as we passed the grocer’s shop.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “That must be what Mrs O’Reilly meant. But what can have angered Edward to such a pitch that he dropped down dead?”

  I took a deep breath before answering.

  “Perhaps it wasn’t anger that provoked the fit, but fear,” I said. “From what Mrs O’Reilly told us, I begin to think your brother lived in mortal dread of something, and that he sought to banish it with his candles and crucifix.”

  “Bell, book, and candle . . . Yes, I think you may be right.”

  The church loomed up out of the darkness like the shadow of a great ship on an ocean without waves. It seemed no more substantial than that, yet its presence seemed oppressive and cold.

  “You do not think my brother suffered?” Atherton asked tentatively. I heard the plea for reassurance in his voice, but, much as I might have wanted to, I could not in all conscience give him false comfort.

  “On the contrary, I fear he may have suffered greatly,” I said. “I wish it were otherwise, but I think not. Not in body, I do not mean that, but in spirit, very greatly.”

  “I see. And now—do you think his sufferings are over?”

  I could not find the courage to answer. At that moment, we came to the south door, protected from the elements by a large stone porch. Even in the insufficient light that came from the lantern, I could see that the porch was a late addition to an original Norman entrance, the latter adorned with fine carvings.

  Atherton raised his lantern, and we saw at once, pinned to the door, a sheet of white paper bearing Edward Atherton’s letterhead. On it, in a fine hand, Atherton had written out two quotations from Scripture, separated by a cross, as follows:

  This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it.

  †

  And he set the porters at the gate of the house of the Lord, that none which was unclean in any thing should enter in.

  That was all. No signature, no further inscription of any kind. Just a bare prohibition, and an injunction against uncleanliness. What abomination had Edward Atherton sought to guard against?

  “The first is from Ezekiel,” I said. The second is familiar, but I forget its source. First or Second Chronicles, perhaps.”

  “What can it mean?”

  “Well, obviously your brother wanted to keep people out of his church.”

  “Don’t be such a dolt. Of course that’s what he was doing. But why? For one thing, he had absolutely no right in canon law.”

  “Are you quite sure of that?”

  “Pretty sure. He would require permission from the rural dean, and very considerable grounds for his decision.�
�

  “Such as?”

  Atherton shrugged.

  “You’d have to ask a churchman, I’m afraid. Perhaps if the sanctity of the church had been compromised in some way.” He shivered, looking uneasily round him.

  “I don’t like it here,” he said. “I think we should leave.”

  I too shivered. It was cold and dark, but something else troubled me, something much less material. Here, at the church door, where I might have expected an odour of sanctity, I sensed only evil.

  “I agree,” I muttered, and, leaning on Atherton’s arm, I hobbled back to the village.

  Lethaby was waiting for us in the rectory study, already installed there, as Atherton remarked to me later, as if God Himself had set him down in it. A bright fire roared in the hearth, and I—habitue of the college cellar that I am—detected in the air a faint perfume of fine sherry recently decanted. Lethaby rose languidly, one hand extended towards us, the other held tightly behind his back.

  He was a man of medium height, but thin, so that he seemed taller than he really was. His thinness was that of one who contrives to woo others with a show of asceticism and a general air of self-denial, yet the man impressed me quite otherwise. Our short acquaintance did nothing to dispel my first impression, indeed the better I came to know him, the more certain I grew that Simon Lethaby was cant personified.

  “This is Professor Richard Asquith,” Atherton said, introducing me. “He has come from Cambridge to lend me moral support.”

  Lethaby’s eyebrows lifted slightly and fell again. I could see his emotionless eyes summing me up.

  “Asquith, eh? The author of An Analytical Description of Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica, am I not right?”

  I answered that he was, and he offered me his hand and a thin smile to go with it.

  “A magnificent book,” he said, “if a trifle over the head of a mere amateur like myself.”

  He said this with such an air of superiority that I very nearly recoiled.

  “You are familiar with Dee?” I asked. “It seems a curious interest for a cleric.”

  “I read much in the period,” he answered. “It was a time of great crisis for the Church. Queen Elizabeth herself is a fascinating woman.” He paused, at a loss to account for my presence, and turned back to Atherton.