• TWENTY-NINE •
I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH about the Easter service. To me, it was no more than a blur of singing, standing, kneeling, and parroting responses.
I was told afterward that Feely was brilliant, that the choir sang like angels (even without Miss Tanty), and that the keyboard work set a new standard of musical virtuosity in Bishop’s Lacey. Of course, I had only Sheila Foster’s word to go on, and since Fossie was Feely’s best friend, I wouldn’t bet a bundle on her opinion.
The unwritten rule for exiting St. Tancred’s was “Front rows first,” so that after the benediction, as we bolted for the doors, we always had the opportunity to see who had come in after us.
As we shuffled toward the back of the church, there, completely unexpected, about four rows from the back and seated on the aisle, were Inspector Hewitt and his wife, Antigone. Because I was still suffering some embarrassment over my brash behavior last time we had met, I needed to proceed with caution. Should I look away, perhaps? Give an elaborate greeting to someone on the far aisle and pretend I hadn’t seen her? Fake a coughing fit and stumble past with eyes squeezed shut?
I needn’t have worried. As I hove alongside, Antigone got to her feet, reached out a slender gloved hand, took my arm, and pulled me to her.
She whispered in my ear.
And when she had finished, I’m afraid I fairly beamed. I even shoved a fist into her seated husband’s surprised face and insisted on giving him a hearty shake.
No wonder he adored the woman!
Outside, everyone was gathering in knots in the churchyard to gossip and pretend they were exchanging Easter greetings. Even though the real old chin-wagging wouldn’t take place until the later service, the villagers of Bishop’s Lacey put on rather a good show for such an ungodly hour—except for Father, who came out the door, gave the vicar a token handshake, and walked slowly off toward home, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground.
I decided definitely in that instant to tackle him. As soon as I got back to Buckshaw I would march straight in and demand to be told what was going on— What was the situation with Buckshaw?
I would demand to hear the gist of his mysterious telephone call and why it had thrown him into such a tizzy.
I had not seen the estate agent since the day he’d pounded in the For Sale sign at the Mulford Gates. Perhaps Dogger would know.
Yes, that was it—I would consult with Dogger before bearding Father in his den.
I was idling beside a gravestone waiting for the Hewitts to emerge when Adam came strolling toward me.
“How’s the narcissine holding up?” he asked. “Any pain?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to share my inner workings with Adam Sowerby, MA., FRHortS, etc., even if we were partners, so to speak, bound together by my most solemn pledge.
Not that that meant anything.
“Wizard stuff,” I said in as offhand a manner as I could manage. “A neat trick. Wherever did you learn it?”
“As I told you,” he began, “in my wanderings up the Limpopo—”
And then he stopped.
“Actually,” he said, “Mad Meg taught me. As a boy, I stayed with an auntie at Malplaquet Farm. One day on my summer rambles I ran across Meg at the old gibbet in Gibbet Wood. She was digging for moss from dead men’s skulls.”
Even though it hurt, my eyes widened.
“All nonsense, of course. And yet …”
“And yet?” I asked.
“When it comes right down to it, she was my first instructor in botany.”
“I think she’s a witch,” I told him. “A Christian witch, but still a witch. Rather like the woman in the story Daffy read to us who could believe in the banshee and also in the Holy Ghost.”
Adam laughed. “She’s what they used to call a ‘simpler.’ Someone who gathers herbs in the wild and sells them to the chemists.”
“Meg?”
“Yes, Meg. Sells them to the doctors, too, but don’t let on I told you.”
I must have looked skeptical.
“Where do you suppose the chemists and apothecaries got all their knowledge about plants? Most of those old boys have never set foot in the countryside.”
“From the simplers?” I guessed.
“Right. From the simplers, the old women who gather the plants of the woods and hedgerows. Centuries of secrets handed down in whispers. And where do you think the physicians learn the same secrets?”
“From the chemists and apothecaries.”
“Bull’s-eye!” Adam said. “It’s a pleasure having you as a partner, Flavia de Luce. I predict that we have great things ahead of us.
“Speaking of which,” he added, “here comes one of them now.
“Ah, Inspector Hewitt,” he said. “I knew it would be only a matter of time.”
The Inspector wasn’t quite scowling, but he was not the same man I had seen just minutes ago in the pews. Somewhere between church and churchyard he had put on a new face, and an official one at that.
Antigone had been held back at the church door, the vicar clutching her hand and whispering into her ear. Both were blushing.
“Well?” the Inspector said, looking from one of us to the other. He was not tapping his foot, but he might as well have been.
“It was a plot,” I said. “Magistrate Ridley-Smith is the ringleader. He’s been using local workmen. Mr. Battle, the stonemason, is one—and his helpers, Tommy and Norman. I don’t know their surnames. His man, Benson, is another. They’ve been tunneling into Saint Tancred’s crypt for ages—perhaps years.
“Come and I’ll show you,” I said, waving toward the back of the churchyard. “They tunneled in through the old Cottlestone tomb.”
“No need,” the Inspector said. “We’ve already seen it.”
At the word “we” he glanced away and I saw Detective Sergeants Woolmer and Graves walking toward us through the churchyard.
“Good work, Inspector!” Adam said. “I’ve been making a few inquiries on my own and—”
“So I’ve been told,” the Inspector interrupted, rather coldly. “We’d appreciate it if you’d leave the detecting to us.”
Adam smiled as if he’d just been given the largest compliment in the world.
“Actually, I can tell you that the magistrate and his associates have been detained. There is no further need for your … assistance.”
“Splendid!” Adam said. “Then I can assume that you’ve also recovered the Heart of Lucifer?”
There are blank looks and there are blank looks, but Inspector Hewitt’s took the biscuit.
He looked from Sergeant Woolmer to Sergeant Graves as if for assistance, but they were equally baffled.
“Suppose you tell me about it,” he said at last, still in command.
“Delighted to,” Adam replied, and he began at the beginning.
He told of the person named Jeremy Pole, and of his discovery at the Public Record Office, of the scribblings of Ralph, the Cellarer at Glastonbury Abbey, and his discovery of the words adamas and “oculi mei conspexi”—“I have seen it with my own eyes.”
I couldn’t have given a better description myself.