There was an astonished silence. Wimsey added:
“I ought to have guessed. I believe it is at St. Paul’s Cathedral that it is said to be death to enter the bell-chamber when a peal is being rung. But I know that if I had stayed ten minutes in the tower that night when they rang the alarm, I should have been dead, too. I don’t know exactly what of — stroke, apoplexy, shock — anything you like. The sound of a trumpet laid flat the walls of Jericho and the note of a fiddle will shatter a vessel of glass. I know that no human frame could bear the noise of the bells for more than fifteen minutes — and Deacon was shut up there, roped and tied there, for nine interminable hours between the Old Year and the New.”
“My God!” said the Superintendent. “Why then, you were right, my lord, when you said that Rector, or you, or Hezekiah might have murdered him.”
“I was right,” said Wimsey. “We did.” He thought for a moment and spoke again. “The noise must have been worse that night than it was the other day — think how the snow choked the louvres and kept it pent up in the tower. Geoffrey Deacon was a bad man, but when I think of the helpless horror of his lonely and intolerable death-agony—”
He broke off, and put his head between his hands, as though instinctively seeking to shut out the riot of the bell-voices. The Rector’s mild voice came out of the silence.
“There have always,” he said, “been legends about Batty Thomas. She has slain two other men in times past, and Hezekiah will tell you that the bells are said to be jealous of the presence of evil. Perhaps God speaks through those mouths of inarticulate metal. He is a righteous judge, strong and patient, and is provoked every day.”
“Well,” said the Superintendent, striking a note of cheerful commonplace, “seems as if we didn’t need to take any more steps in this matter. The man’s dead, and the fellow that put him up there is dead too, poor chap, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t altogether understand about these bells, but I’ll take your word for it, my lord. Matter of periods of vibration, I suppose. Yours seems the best solution, and I’ll put it up to the Chief Constable. And that’s all there is to it.”
He rose to his feet.
“I’ll wish you good-morning, gentlemen,” he said, and went out.
The voice of the bells of Fenchurch St. Pauclass="underline" Gaude, Gaudy Domini in laude. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. John Cole made me, John Presbyter paid me, John Evangelist aid me. From Jericho to John a-Groate there is no bell can better my note. Jubilate Deo. Nunc Dimittis, Domine. Abbot Thomas set me here and bade me ring both loud and clear. Paul is my name, honour that same.
Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul.
Nine Tailors Make a Man.
The End