The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches

by Alan Bradley

  “The Air Vice-Marshal?” I asked from the corner of my mouth.

  “Something like that,” Daffy replied. “She parachuted into Arnhem.”

  “Good lord!” I said, although it didn’t take much imagination to see her doing it. The woman was a cannonball with stripes on its sleeves.

  We both of us jumped as our elbows were pinched.

  “Please shut up,” Feely said in a low voice. “This is a funeral—not a mop fair.”

  She shot us a villainous look and moved off alone in the direction of the porch, her music clutched far too tightly in her fist. Nobody tried to stop her.

  The vicar met us at the lych-gate, and we stood in awkward silence as Harriet’s coffin was removed gently from the hearse by the six pallbearers, all of them men, and all of them strangers, except for Dieter, upon whose broad shoulder Harriet’s head was now resting. Tongues would soon be wagging in Bishop’s Lacey, I knew.

  “Father insisted,” Daffy whispered.

  I tried to give Dieter a grateful smile but could not catch his eye.

  Now the vicar was leading us towards the church. Worn with a purple stole over a black cassock, his surplice was blindingly white in the April sunshine.

  In the porch, Mr. Haskins, who served as both sexton and verger, his chin tucked tightly in as a sign of office, indicated by hand signals that we were to follow him.

  The pews were already packed with people, and the dozens left standing at the back and in the side aisles fell suddenly silent as the organ began to play a haunting melody. I recognized it at once as G. Thalben-Ball’s Elegy, which Feely thought she had been practicing in secrecy for days.

  Here, on the left, was Jocelyn Ridley-Smith with a new attendant whom I didn’t recognize. Poor Jocelyn: He believed that I was Harriet, and I couldn’t help wondering whose funeral he thought he was attending. I gave him a reassuring smile which he returned with as much of a courtly bow as he could manage from a sitting position.

  Over there, looking strained, was Cynthia Richardson. She and Harriet had been particular friends and I realized with a start that this funeral could well be even harder on her than it was on me.

  At the end of a row of pews, in his wicker wheelchair, was Dr. Kissing. Although I managed to catch his eye, he gave not a flicker of recognition. Our acquaintance, I realized—at least publicly—was not one he wished to advertise. He was Father’s old headmaster and no more.

  Our small procession made its way up the center aisle behind the pallbearers, and as Harriet’s coffin was placed with military precision on wooden trestles outside the chancel gates, Mr. Haskins wigwagged us with broad ceremonial gestures to our private seats in the transept.

  Dogger, Dieter, and the Mullets were seated directly behind us. It was comforting just to know that they were there. Dieter had obviously changed his mind—or had it changed for him—about remaining on the sidelines.

  By leaning forward, I could see almost to the back of the church. Most of the village of Bishop’s Lacey had already crowded themselves inside and were busily looking up the Burial of the Dead in the Book of Common Prayer.

  My heart gave a little leap. There on the aisle sat Inspector Hewitt and his wife, Antigone. He leaned slightly towards her, speaking quietly, and she nodded gravely.

  I wanted to wave but because it wouldn’t have pleased certain people, I didn’t.

  Antigone Hewitt had once invited me to tea and I had made a hash of it. I’d been waiting for a chance to beg her forgiveness in person but so far had not had the opportunity.

  I had last seen her a little more than a week ago when she had driven us home after the Easter service. She had promised to take me—just the two of us!—on a shopping trip to Hinley. “A girls’ day out,” she had called it.

  Of course the tragic news of Harriet had come at that time, and it now seemed doubtful that such a giddy outing was likely to take place in the foreseeable future.

  At the end of our pew, Lena and Undine edged crabwise into their places beside me. Lena was wearing a black tailored suit, and Undine, in a red velvet dress, had a black bow tied in her hair.

  “I hadn’t realized it would be such a cavalcade,” Lena muttered to no one in particular—perhaps to me. “Push over.”

  Somewhere in one of the twisty mazes at the back of my brain, a single shred of silver confetti fell. But it was no more than a single flake in a blizzard of images.

  Undine raised a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern to her face, as if she was shortsighted, and under cover of the book, stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes grotesquely.

  I mouthed an improper word at her which I’m sure she understood, since she now widened her eyes, sucked in a noisy and greatly exaggerated breath, and let her mouth fall open as if in shock.

  She whispered something into Lena’s ear, but I didn’t care.

  The organ swelled into a song of triumph, the glorious music causing me to feel suddenly as if caterpillars were crawling up my spine.

  All eyes were upon my mother’s coffin, and every last one of us gasped as a sudden beam of sunshine broke through the stained-glass windows to illuminate the Union Jack.

  Daffy and I stared at each other in astonishment. It was as if Harriet’s funeral were being stage-managed in Heaven.

  Now the vicar was coming forward. He paused for a moment until Feely had brought the elegy to a hushed conclusion and then spoke those words I was afraid he was going to speak, the words I had been dreading: “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

  This is real! This is actually happening!

  Part of me had believed, somehow, that until these words were actually pronounced over her body, there was still hope, however vague it may be, that Harriet was still alive. Yet now—and this was difficult to understand—the vicar’s assurance that Harriet should live and never die were the very words that made her death official: a death which had become all too real and was being all too visibly celebrated before our very eyes.

  I shuddered.

  Beside me in the pew, Lena, under cover of pretending to wipe away a tear, had produced a small silver compact and was now secretly examining herself in close-up.

  Now the vicar had passed on to “I know that my redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body; yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold.”

  As he spoke, a wonderful idea popped into my mind!

  Why don’t they embed the dead in blocks of plate glass and bury them in crypts beneath transparent floors? In that way, the deceased would easily be able to see God for themselves, and He to see them, to say nothing of the fact that the descendants would be able to keep an eye on their ancestors’ return to dust during a quiet Sunday stroll.

  It seemed like a perfect solution, and I wondered why no one had ever thought of it before. I would make a note to mention it to the vicar at a more appropriate time.

  “I said, I will take heed to my ways: that I offend not in my tongue. I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle: while the ungodly is in my sight.”

  He was already into the Thirty-ninth Psalm and we had barely begun.

  I knew that the Thirty-ninth was not the longest of the psalms—not by a long chalk—but it would be followed by the Ninetieth: “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations,” and so forth. After that would come the Lesson: part of one of Saint Paul’s rather lengthy letters to the Corinthians, the one which ended with “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

  I let my attention wander.

  Across the church in the opposite semitransept, the stained-glass windows gave off a glorious glow. I remembered with pleasure the catalog of chemicals that had been used in their manufacture hundreds of years ago: manganese dioxide for the purples, iron or go
ld for the reds, salts of ferric iron for the brown skins, and silver chloride for the yellows.

  In one of the panels, a brawny man dressed in lion skins like a circus strongman lay sleeping with his head in the lap of a woman in a red dress who was cutting his hair with what appeared to be sheep shears. From behind a hanging drape in the corner of the room, half a dozen men were craning their necks for a view of the operation.

  When I was smaller, I had believed—because Daffy had told me so—that the woman, whose name was Brenda, was a barber apprentice and that the men hiding behind the curtain were the examiners who either would or would not grant her a barber’s license.

  The characters were, of course, Samson and Delilah, and the onlookers were the lords of the Philistines at Gaza, who were paying her to betray him.

  Below the scene was a beautifully lettered yellow scroll with the words in black:

  In the next panel, Samson was toppling the two pillars between which he had been chained, as the spectators, with comical looks of astonishment on their faces, tumbled headfirst from the roof like so many ninepins.

  The sound of organ music dragged my mind back from Gaza. We were standing to sing a hymn. I had returned just in time to join in the first line.

  “Who would true valor see,

  Let him come hither;

  One here will constant be,

  Come wind, come weather

  There’s no discouragement

  Shall make him once relent

  His first avowed intent

  To be a pilgrim.…”

  It was that grand old hymn from Pilgrim’s Progress, which John Bunyan had written while in prison. Rather than the watered-down version which had been allowed to creep in about fifty years ago, Feely had chosen to use the original words, which, in the book, Mr. Valiant-for-truth had spoken to Mr. Greatheart. The melody was called “Monks Gate,” she had told me, and it was a ripsnorter! I could hardly wait for the last verse.

  “Whoso beset him round

  With dismal stories

  Do but themselves confound;

  His strength the more is.

  No lion can him fright,

  He’ll with a giant fight,

  But he will have a right

  To be a pilgrim.”

  Dame Agatha Dundurn, her old military face upturned to the light, was putting her whole heart into it, as if she had written this mighty battle song herself and had finished leading, just moments ago, the overthrow of all the forces of evil.

  Daffy, too, was singing her heart out, and what a lovely voice she had! Why had I never noticed it before? How could I have missed it?

  I suddenly realized that there’s something about singing hymns with a large group of people that sharpens the senses remarkably. I stored this observation away for later use; it was a jolly good thing to know for anyone practicing the art of detection. Perhaps that was why Inspector Hewitt so often came to church.

  I shot a glance in his direction just in time to see Antigone give his arm what she probably thought was a secret squeeze.

  Now the organ and the congregation were taking a great breath before launching into the final verse—and my favorite part:

  “Hobgoblin nor foul fiend—”

  Oh, how I adored the hobgoblin and the foul fiend! They were the making of this particular hymn, and if I had my way, more songs of praise would be required to include such interesting creatures.

  “—Can daunt his spirit,

  He knows he at the end

  Shall life inherit.

  Then fancies fly away,

  He’ll fear not what men say,

  He’ll labor night and day

  To be a pilgrim.…”

  As we sat down, the vicar gave Daffy an almost imperceptible nod. She picked up her bundle of papers and walked briskly to the lectern, where she shuffled them until I thought I’d go mad.

  She produced her spectacles from somewhere and put them on, which gave her the appearance of a grieving owl.

  “I barely remember my mother,” she said at last, her voice quavering only a little but suddenly small in the vastness of the church. “I was not quite three years old when she went away, so that I have only memories of a bright shadow who fluttered on the peripheries of my little world. I don’t remember what she looked like, nor can I recall the sound of her voice, but what I do remember is how she made me feel—which was that I was loved. Until she went away.

  “After she was gone, I stopped feeling loved and began believing that my sisters and I must have done something horrid to drive her away, although I could not for the life of me think what that might have been. We have never been given, you see, any reason for her leaving. Even now—now that she has been returned to us—we still don’t know the reason why she left.

  “I hope you won’t mind my speaking so frankly, but the vicar told me that I must say what I felt and be honest about it.”

  Could this possibly be true? Could it be that Feely and Daffy hadn’t the faintest inkling of Harriet’s activities? Was it possible that Aunt Felicity, who had been, and presumably remained, the Gamekeeper, intended to withhold the truth from them forever?

  I looked over at Father, and he was just standing there—so cleanly shaven, so still, and so upright that I could have wept.

  Daffy had paused and was looking from one member of the congregation to another. There was dead silence, and then a nervous shuffling of feet.

  “By what we have observed yesterday and today,” she went on, “one can only presume that my mother’s body has been returned to us for burial by a grateful government, and for that, at least, I must express our thanks.”

  The church had again in an instant gone so quiet you could hear the breathing of the saints in the stained-glass windows.

  “But it is not enough,” Daffy continued, her voice now louder and accusing. “It is not enough for my father—nor is it enough for my sisters, Ophelia and Flavia. And it is not nearly enough for me.”

  Somewhere behind me Mrs. Mullet let out a sob.

  Daffy went on. “I can only hope that one day we shall be entrusted with the truth. We the bereaved deserve nothing less.

  “The word ‘bereaved’ comes down to us from the Old English word beréafian, meaning ‘to be deprived of’—to be stripped, to be robbed, to be dispossessed—and it describes accurately what has happened to what is left of our family. We have been robbed of a wife and mother, stripped of our pride, and are soon to be dispossessed of our home.

  “And therefore, I beg of you your prayers. As you pray today for the repose of the soul of our mother, Harriet de Luce, pray also for those of us who have been left behind, bereaved.

  “We shall now join in singing another of my mother’s favorite hymns.”

  I wanted to applaud, but I didn’t dare. “Bravo!” I wanted to shout.

  A vast and ominous silence hung in the church. The multitude were staring at the roof, at their shoes, at the windows, at the marble memorial tablets on the walls, and at their own fingernails. No one seemed to know where to look.

  “Play, Feely!” I begged her mentally. But Feely let the silence lengthen until several people began coughing to break the tension.

  And then the music came. Those six stunning notes sprang from the throats of the organ pipes!

  Dah-dah-dah-DAH-dah-dah.

  They were unmistakable.

  People looked at one another as they recognized the tune, first in astonishment and disbelief, but then with growing smiles at the sheer audacity of it.

  Daffy began to sing in her fine, loud voice: “Ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay, ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay …”

  And then someone else—I think it was, incredibly, Cynthia, the vicar’s wife—took up the words. Others joined in, somewhat uncertainly at first but growing in confidence with every beat: “Ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay, ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay …”

  And now even more, until practically everyone in the church was singing: “Ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay, ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay …” />
  The booming bass of Mr. Haskins, the verger, came echoing from somewhere back behind the font.

  The vicar was singing, Inspector Hewitt and Antigone were singing, Dame Agatha Dundurn was singing—even I was singing: “Ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay, ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay!”

  Feely finished off with a flourish of trumpet stops, and then the organ fell silent, as if suddenly embarrassed at what it had done.

  As the music faded and died up among the beams and king posts of the ancient roof, Daffy folded her papers and walked placidly back to her seat beside Father in the transept.

  Father’s eyes were closed. Tears were trickling down his face. I placed my hand on top of his on the rail but he seemed not to notice.

  People were still smiling at their neighbors, shaking their heads, whispering to one another, and everywhere except in the de Luce pew, a lingering glow hung in the air.

  I turned round and looked at Dogger, but his face was, as they say in the thrillers on the wireless, inscrutable.

  Daffy and Feely cooked this up together, I thought. Behind closed doors they had plotted it note by note. I wished they’d let me in on their plan. I might have advised against it.

  But now the vicar was coming forward.

  “Now is Christ risen from the dead,” he said, without batting an eye, “and become the first-fruits of them that slept.”

  As if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth; as if something wonderful hadn’t just happened in his church—a miracle, perhaps; as if “Ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay” hadn’t been the last words upon his lips, and upon everyone else’s to boot.

  “For since by man came death,” he was now telling us, “by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” and on and on from there, wading through all those lovely words about the glories of the sun and the moon and the stars, until at last, as I knew he must, he came to that inevitable passage:

  “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

  Just like that. We had been torn from a jolly good singsong and plunged back into grief. I was struggling with my feelings, staring at the stained glass as if help could possibly come from there, as if hope could possibly spring from the colorful chemicals of the glass.