With the unpredictability of English weather, clouds had already started to gather, and the rain that Lucy had thought should accompany the proceedings began just as everyone was setting off for the parked cars, flurrying people into searching for umbrellas and scarves. Elderly ladies were helped along the wet path and sorted into the various vehicles, and there was much talk of soon being at the house where it would be warm.
Lucy, who had dashed back to retrieve someone’s gloves, saw Edmund helping people into his car; she saw him turn to look for her, and then to indicate that he would come back to collect her in about fifteen minutes. Lucy waved back to tell him not to bother because there were enough cars around for her to get a lift to the house. She delivered the errant gloves to their owner, who was an elderly great-aunt, and then helped her along to the car she was travelling in.
‘We’ll see you at the house, Lucy, will we?’ said the aunt, getting carefully into the remaining passenger seat of an already-crowded car.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Do tell me, dear,’ said the aunt, lowering her voice. ‘Is there a will?’
‘I believe,’ said Lucy gravely, ‘that it’s missing.’
‘Missing? How dreadful.’
The car drove off, the aunt twittering happily to the others about the missing will, and it was only after they had gone that Lucy realized all the other cars had left as well. She muttered an oath quite unsuited to the occasion and the surroundings, scooted back to the sketchy shelter of the lychgate, and foraged in her bag for her mobile phone. Or had she left it in her own car, parked at Aunt Deb’s house? Damn and blast, yes she had!
They would realize what had happened, of course, and somebody would drive back to the church for her, but it might be a while before that happened, and in the meantime the rain was coming down in torrents. Lucy was just wondering if she could sprint back to the church and find the rector to ask to use his phone, when she saw a man coming around the side of the church, his coat collar turned up. He stopped at the sight of Lucy, hesitated, and then came towards her.
‘Are you stranded?’
‘It looks like it. I was part of the funeral, but there seems to have been a mix-up over the cars.’
‘Deborah Fane’s funeral? I could give you a lift to the house.’ He was thin-faced with dark brown hair and expressive eyes and hands.
‘Could you? I mean, are you going there anyway?’
‘I wasn’t especially going, but I can take you. I know where the house is. My car’s parked in the lane over there.’
Lucy had no idea who he was, but he had a nice voice. He was probably somebody local; a teacher from the local school or one of the village’s doctors.
‘Funerals are always harrowing, aren’t they?’ said her companion as they drove off. ‘Even for the elderly, and especially when they hand you all that ghastliness about resurrection and only having gone into another room to await friends.’
This was so precisely in tune with Lucy’s own sentiments that she said, without thinking, ‘And that panacea they always offer about, not dead, merely sleeping. That’s quite grisly if you interpret it literally. Um – I’m Lucy Trent, by the way. Deborah Fane was my aunt.’
‘Do you read Edgar Allen Poe by any chance, Ms Trent?’
Lucy smiled involuntarily. ‘Today I wanted to read a modern poem about a lovely dotty old lady who got a kick out of being old and dotty.’
‘Was it called Warning by any chance?’
‘Yes, it was! Aunt Deborah would have adored it, but my cousin Edmund thought it wasn’t suitable.’
‘I met your aunt a few times,’ he said. ‘And I think you’re right that she’d have liked the poem. Oh – I’m Michael Sallis. I’m from a Charity called CHARTH. Charity for Rehabilitating Teenagers made Homeless, if you want the whole thing. We pick them up off the streets, dust them down, teach them a few basic social skills, and then turn them loose again, mostly on a wing and a prayer. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.’