“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.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“The thing is, there’s a lot we need to talk about.”
“Yes, yes.” Rory closed the cover of the typewriter. “I know. But I haven’t much time. I have to go out in three quarters of an hour.”
“Why do you suddenly want to practice your shorthand?”
“Julian Dawlish-Fenella’s friend-he knows the editor of Berkeley’s.”
“The weekly?”
“I’m doing a piece on spec for them about tomorrow’s meeting.”
“That’s marvelous.”
“If they use it.” He rubbed his eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Damn it, it could make all the difference. It’s the first sniff of real work I’ve had, work that could lead somewhere, since I came back to England. That’s why I was keen to see the undercroft, to get an idea of the layout.”
“Of course. Poor Mr. Fimberry.”
A trick of the light.
“Beggars belief, doesn’t it? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that goat’s skull under the table in the Ossuary. Why didn’t he just leave it in the dustbin? Why put it in the Ossuary? And why did he want to show it to Father Bertram?”
“Because he thinks it might be the devil,” Lydia said. “That’s my theory. So it’s safer on consecrated ground until Father Bertram can see it. There’s a sort of logic to it.”
“Mad as a hatter, in my opinion.”
“He’s ill,” Lydia said, thinking of Colonel Alforde. No more war. “You can’t blame him for that.”
Rory glanced at his wristwatch. “Would you mind if we start? I promised to meet Dawlish for a drink, and I haven’t used my shorthand for months, not properly. And it’s like speaking a language, you see. If you don’t use it for a while you have to get your ear in again.”
“Does it matter what I talk about?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got it all worked out. I think it will be best to start with something completely unseen, completely unexpected. And then try something political from the paper-something with the same sort of vocabulary as they’re likely to be using tomorrow. Afterward I’ll try and read it back to you.” He smiled at her. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I know it’s an awful lot to ask.”
“It’s all right. We’ve had supper-there’s nothing else I need to do.” That was untrue. If you didn’t have servants, Lydia had discovered, there was always something you needed to do. “I’ll just talk away, then. Are you ready?”
He picked up his newly sharpened pencil and turned over a page in his shorthand pad. “Fire away, Lydia-oh damn. Sorry. Mrs. Langstone, I mean.”
“It doesn’t matter. You can call me Lydia if you want.”
“As long as you call me Rory. Right, Lydia. I’m as ready as I ever will be.”
“I talked to Mrs. Renton,” Lydia began, her cheeks a little pinker than before. “I showed her the skirt and the note. She used to do sewing for Miss Penhow. Mr. Serridge introduced them. She even made some clothes for her.” Lydia watched Rory’s pencil traveling across the paper. “Then Miss Penhow moved to the country, and she lost touch.” She paused again. “As a matter of fact I went to Rawling yesterday.”
The point of the pencil snapped. “What were you doing in Rawling, for God’s sake?”