AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Mr fford Croft is organising it already. Do you need to arrange a place to . . . a laboratory, I mean . . .?’ He did not know what she would need. He had never had occasion to attend an autopsy.
She smiled. ‘No, thank you. I have my own laboratory, and it is fully equipped. We just need a van in which we can carry the coffin, and the body, from the graveyard. I will need a little assistance with lifting the body, and that kind of thing. Are you good for it? She might be too heavy for just two of us. And you can assist at the autopsy, passing me instruments, and so on. Do you think your stomach will stand it?’ She looked at him with amusement, but it was not unkind. He knew she was trying to steer a course between not using him, on the one hand, and taking for granted that he could hold down his dinner when faced with the sight and, above all, the smell, of a two-month-old corpse.
He was not at all sure he could do that, but the embarrassment of vomiting, or even fainting, was not as bad as that of refusing even to try. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. He nearly added, ‘I’ll try,’ but changed his mind.
‘Good. Then you may pick me up here, at half-past eleven tonight. I have some preparations to make, and I dare say you have also.’ She smiled. ‘Wear something warm, apart from a greatcoat. Graveyards are always cold at midnight, and standing around is not particularly pleasant. Not like a brisk walk. And it will be cold in the laboratory too. Believe me, it is better that way. And, Mr Pitt . . . thank you for including me in this task. The least we can do is find that there is nothing to discover, as a certainty, not just a guess.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Perhaps you’d better make it a quarter past eleven. There will not be much traffic, but I always find it is better to build in a quarter of an hour for unforeseen events.’
He went out into the hallway where Membury was waiting. ‘Thank you, Miss fford Croft,’ Daniel said. ‘Until a quarter past eleven.’
At exactly a quarter past e
leven he knocked on the fford Crofts’ front door, and it was opened immediately by Membury. Miriam was standing just behind him, wearing a plain, dark overcoat, and a shawl over her head. Apart from the hall light on her bright hair, she could have been somebody’s housemaid out keeping an illicit appointment. Daniel was glad he also had dressed in his oldest, most casual clothes. He felt he looked disrespectful, but how could one be respectful digging up a corpse, and then cutting her open?
Miriam came outside, thanked Membury briefly, and said, ‘Good evening.’
He led her to where the horse-drawn van he had hired was parked, helped her up beside the driver, and shortly after they set off.
It was no time to make light conversation. They rode through the fair, moonlit night in silence. It was not cold, but there was a rising wind and it blew in the leaves of those streets that were lined with trees.
They reached the graveyard without delay, and therefore were early. It was ten minutes before they saw anyone else arrive, and Daniel was happy they had paid the driver for the extra time so they could wait in the van, rather than stand outside in the wind. The gravediggers arrived, accompanied by the sexton. Daniel showed them the order again, and the sexton read it by the lantern light. Then, as he put it in his pocket, he gave the signal to the gravediggers to begin.
Daniel stood beside Miriam, then suddenly realised he was to the leeward of her, and the wind was strengthening, and moving shreds of cloud across the moon. He moved down to the other side of her, so he was sheltering her. The wind rattled the branches of the ancient trees at the far edge of the graveyard, and rustled the dense yews. They were dark, impenetrable. Why did they so often plant yew trees in graveyards? They were poisonous. They crowded together, like silent ornaments to death. The earth underneath them was black and seemed always to be damp.
Half a dozen lanterns were hung on poles that swayed in the wind, and the lights danced over the ground. It was mostly bare. There was not room enough between the graves for much to grow.
The gravediggers started to dig, carefully piling the earth so they could put it back again afterwards. They moved rhythmically, used to working the spade.
The process seemed to go on for ever, the spades getting only fractionally deeper every few minutes. No one spoke.
Then there was a sudden, sharp gust of wind and one of the lamps fell to the ground with a crash of glass on metal. Both gravediggers were standing in the hole they had created. The sexton was on the far side of the pit. Daniel was the closest, and he took a long dozen steps and bent over. The flame was out, and he could smell the acrid sharpness of oil.
‘You need to go inside to light that,’ the sexton told him. ‘Take the one over to it, or they’ll both go out. I’m telling you.’
Daniel took both lamps and walked over between the gravestones until he reached the church doorway, and the carved arch that decorated it. He put the lamps on the ground, took the cover off the lighted one, and very carefully lit the other from its flame. He covered them again and set out back. From a distance, they looked a spectral group, only the heads of the gravediggers now visible. Miriam seemed out of place, with the wind blowing her skirts and the ends of her shawl. The sexton was indistinguishable, like one of the carved stone figures signifying grief. Daniel made his way back to them just as the gravediggers stopped and asked for ropes.
It was backbreaking, lifting the coffin out of the earth. Even with Daniel and the sexton both helping, it took them several minutes to get it up and manoeuvre it onto the waiting handcart. Daniel was warmed through, except for his hands, by the time they were finished and were trudging through the gravestones back to the van by the roadside. The coffin was loaded on, and there was just room for Daniel to sit on the end, backwards, while Miriam sat up in front and the driver finally persuaded the horse to move. It seemed to have been asleep on its feet, impervious to the activities of men.
When they reached the fford Croft house, Miriam opened the back, tradesmen’s entrance for them, and Daniel and the driver, with a deal of effort, set the coffin down by the door.
‘I’ll go and get the butler and the footman,’ Miriam said quietly. ‘No doubt you could use a hot cup of tea?’ she said to the driver. ‘And a piece of cake?’
‘Yes, ma’am, that I could,’ he agreed.
‘Then wait here,’ she ordered, and opened the back door with a key.
The driver looked at Daniel, as if he were about to ask for an explanation, then he thought better of it. Perhaps he did not really want to know.
Membury and the footman appeared and helped take the coffin into the house and down the back stairs to the cellar.
Miriam made tea in the deserted kitchen for the driver and Daniel and herself, and served it with thick slices of Madeira cake.
By three o’clock, the driver had departed with an extra reward for his civility. Membury and the footman were long returned to their own beds, and Miriam had informed Daniel that the spare room was made up for him, because he was expected to report to the kitchen at 6a.m., and by half-past six to be ready to perform the autopsy.
He had breakfast in the kitchen. It still felt like the middle of the night, although it was only about five weeks before the longest day of the year; it was full sunlight and the dew was already gone from the herbs in the small beds he noticed outside the back door. He ate hungrily, knowing it would waken him up sufficiently to pay attention. He had finished his third slice of toast with sharp Seville orange marmalade before it occurred to him that, considering the job he was about to assist with, he might have been better with an empty stomach. Too late now to cancel!
At half-past six on the dot, Miriam appeared at the cellar door and said, ‘Good morning,’ brightly. ‘Don’t worry, Membury and the footman helped me with the coffin. It’s open. We can remove her and begin.’ She did not bother with any polite questions as to how he had slept, or how he felt. She was ready to begin, and she expected him to be also.
Determined to live up to his promises, Daniel followed her inside. The cellar must have been half the size of the ground floor of the house. It was perfectly arranged to be an autopsy room, with large tables, running water, and plenty of space to put a coffin. Other doors led off into further rooms. He presumed it was for analysis, experiments, and maybe even ice boxes to store a body afterwards, until it could be buried.
