“Some other time, perhaps-I have one or two things to do.”

“Just for a couple of minutes? You see, because of the meeting tomorrow, Father Bertram has entrusted me with the key of the Ossuary. He can’t be there tomorrow himself, you see-there’s a diocesan committee at Westminster, so he’s asked me to liaise with Sir Rex in his place.” He took off his rain-flecked pince-nez and polished them on his tie. “It’s a very good opportunity to see the encaustic tiles. I probably won’t have a chance to show you tomorrow-these meetings can be a little hectic, and I shall have to be on hand to help.”

“It’s very kind of you, Mr. Fimberry, but I’m-”

“We’d love to,” Rory interrupted. “Thank you so much.”

“Oh,” said Fimberry, disconcerted. He added gloomily, “Well, yes, I suppose the more the merrier.”

Lydia glanced at Rory’s face. She felt his touch on her arm and wondered why this was important to him. “All right. If it really won’t take long.”

“Follow me.”

He set off toward the chapel. Rory mouthed “Thank you” to Lydia. Fimberry held open the door in the little forecourt in front of the east wall of the chapel. It led into a flagged corridor running the length of the building and sparsely lit with electric wall lights.

“This way,” Fimberry said. “This is all that remains of the cloister, by the way. Sadly altered, of course.”

On the left was a row of windows looking out into darkness; on the right was the south wall of the chapel, a patchwork of masonry studded with blocked openings. The place smelled damp. Lydia watched Fimberry’s shadow flickering first in front and then behind him, along the wall and along the floor, but never in one place for long and never quite where you expected it to be. In the gloom at the end of the corridor a flight of stone steps rose up to the entrance of St. Tumwulf’s Chapel.

Fimberry glanced back at them. “We’ll save the chapel itself for another day, Mrs. Langstone. There is so much to see, and so little time!”

“Sorry about this,” Rory murmured behind her. “I’ll explain.”

“This is the undercroft,” Fimberry said, waving to a door set three steps down from the floor level of the cloister.

“May we see in there too?” Rory said, darting down the steps and trying the latch. The latch lifted and the door opened.

“Very well. But mind the steps, Mrs. Langstone, they can be treacherous. Just a moment-I’ll turn on the lights.”

A line of bare light bulbs came to life, revealing the stark outlines of a long, low whitewashed room bisected on its east-west axis by a row of wooden posts.

“Victorian,” Fimberry said dismissively. “The interior had to be almost entirely refurbished when the Church bought St. Tumwulf’s in the eighteen seventies.”

Lydia looked around. Rows of chairs and benches had been set out. Near the door were tables holding crockery and urns. At the east end, five high-backed chairs stood behind a table on a low platform.

“It looks as if the Inquisition will soon be in session,” Rory said.

“Sir Rex and his people made the arrangements. Well, there’s not much to see here. Shall we move on to the Ossuary?”

“Does Father Bertram let the undercroft to anyone who asks?”

“Oh no.” Fimberry looked shocked. “That wouldn’t be appropriate. One couldn’t have atheists here, for example, or communists or people of that sort.”

“But Fascists are all right?”

“Father Bertram was actually presented to Signor Mussolini when he last visited Rome. He was most impressed. One can’t deny Il Duce gets results.”

“I thought the Pope didn’t like him much,” Rory said. “Mussolini, I mean, not Father Bertram.” Lydia punched him lightly on the arm in an attempt to shut him up.

“Father Bertram says that the Holy Father and the Italian government have had one or two differences but they will soon be sorted out. After all, Mussolini’s a son of the Church.”

Fimberry shooed them back to the cloister and led them to another, much smaller sunken doorway set in the wall just before the flight of steps leading up to the chapel itself. He took out a bunch of keys from his raincoat pocket, unlocked the door and pulled it open. He switched on another light.

“Here we are. Come and stand by me, Mrs. Langstone, and you’ll be able to see properly. This is a good time to come because the chairs are usually stored in here. We’re directly under the ante-chapel.”

The high, windowless room was long and thin. It smelled mysteriously of cats. In the far corner was a heavy table with bulbous legs.

“They say that this is where the bodies of the faithful lay before they were secretly interred beneath the undercroft. Do look at the ceiling: the rib vaulting is original.”

“How nice,” Lydia said, feeling she should contribute something to the conversation. “Is it very old?”

“Late fourteenth century at a guess.” Fimberry squeezed past the table and stabbed an index finger at the far wall. “Now you see the tiles? They were covered with layers of whitewash but I scraped it off. No doubt they were used to patch the mortar by some long-forgotten builder. Almost certainly they came originally from the floor. This tile’s nearly complete-look, it’s the arms of the See of Rosington. That one is probably a scallop shell, the pilgrim badge of the shrine of St. James of Compostela. Isn’t it interesting?” He turned back to Rory and Lydia in the doorway of the Ossuary. “The past seems so close to us here, so close that one can actually touch it. Quite literally in this case.” Smiling, he leaned across the little room and ran the middle finger of his right hand over the putative scallop shell. “Don’t you feel it sometimes, Mrs. Langstone? The touch of the past?”

“Mr. Fimberry,” Lydia said suddenly. “What’s that in the corner?”

“What?”

“Down there.” She pointed. “On the floor between the table and the wall.”

The shadow of a table leg ran across something pale and jagged half-covered by a rag. A trick of the light, Lydia thought; it can’t be anything else. Rory stirred beside her. She heard him sucking in his breath.

A trick of the light?

21

SOMETIMES you think it’s a game to him. He has luck on his side too. Even Jacko was his ally in the end. You can’t trust anyone.

Friday, 18 April 1930 Jacko bit his mistress last night when I tried to make him jump down from the sofa. Not hard, but even so I was VERY cross. I shut him in the scullery. Unfortunately he howled so much that Joseph let him out. I did not come down for breakfast today but stayed in my room. At lunch, Joseph said he had talked to Rebecca this morning and she had told him that there was another reason why she needed to hand in her notice. Her sister has been very ill with influenza, and so has her little boy, Rebecca’s nephew, and Rebecca wants to be able to spend more time looking after them during their convalescence. They live on the other side of the village, quite a distance from here. Joseph has decided not to insist on her working out her month’s notice. He has told her she may leave after supper tomorrow, and he will run her over to her sister’s in the car. He thought it would be kinder to her and her family, and also better for us in the long run because servants are never very satisfactory when they are working out their notice, and it will be better for us to find her successor sooner rather than later. He will pay her up to the end of the week. I put the best face on it I could. I was tempted to remind him that it is usually the mistress of the house who has the management of the indoor servants. But it didn’t seem quite the right moment. What is done is done.

After this, you know there will be no more daffodils from her sweet Joey. All that’s over and done with now. Rebecca will soon be gone. Poor, foolish Amy doesn’t count.