Max Wight had once told me that when the original of Millet's painting was exhibited in America, the sale of prints had been sluggish at best until someone thought of changing the name from Angelus to Burying the Baby.
It was beneath this print, I guessed, that the coffins were customarily parked. Since the spot was empty, it was obvious that Rupert's body, if it were still on the premises, must be in another room.
To my right was an L-shaped partition. There had to be another door behind it.
I peered round behind the half-wall and found myself looking into a room that was nearly the twin of the first. The only difference that I could see was that the flocked wallpaper was black and pink-cream, and the print on the far wall was Holman Hunt's Light of the World, in which Jesus stands at the door like Diogenes seeking an honest man, with a tin lantern in His hand.
Beneath its dark frame, on trestles, was a coffin.
I crept towards it on tiptoe, my ears tuned for the slightest sound.
I ran my fingers along the highly polished woodwork, the way one might caress a piano lid before lifting it to reveal the keys. I put my thumbs under the join and felt it lift slightly.
I was in luck! The lid was not screwed down. I lifted it and looked inside.
There, like a doll in a box, lay Rupert. In life, his personality had made him seem so much larger, I had forgotten how small he really was.
Was I frightened out of my wits? I'm afraid not. Since the day I had found a body in the kitchen garden at Buckshaw, I had developed a fascination with death, with a particular emphasis on the chemistry of putrefaction.
In fact, I had already begun making notes for a definitive work which I would call De Luce on Decomposition, in which I would outline, step by step, the process of human cadaveric decay.
How exciting it was to reflect upon the fact that, within minutes of death, the organs of the body, lacking oxygen, begin to digest themselves! Ammonia levels start to rise and, with the assistance of bacterial action, methane (better known as marsh gas) is produced, along with hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, and mercaptan, a captivating sulfur-alcohol in whose structure sulfur takes the place of oxygen — which accounts for its putrid smell.
How curious it was, I thought, that we humans had taken millions of years to crawl up out of the swamps and yet, within minutes of death, we were already tobogganing back down the slope.
My keen sense of smell told me that Mr. Sowbell had used a formalin-based embalming fluid on Rupert (a two-percent solution of formaldehyde seemed most likely, with a slight bouquet of something else: chloroform, by the smell of it) and by the slight green tint at the end of Rupert's nose, I could tell that the undertaker had skimped on the ingredients. One could only hope that the lying-in-state at the BBC would be a closed-coffin affair.
Better hurry up, though, I thought. Mr. Sowbell might walk in at any moment.
Rupert's pale hands were folded across his abdomen, with the right hand uppermost. I took hold of his fingers (it was like lifting linked sausages from the icebox) and pulled upwards.
To my amazement, his left hand came with it, and I saw at once that they had been cunningly sewn together. By twisting the cold hands and bending down for a better look beneath them, I saw what I was looking for: a blackened channel that ran from the base of his left thumb to the tips of his first and second fingers.
In spite of Mr. Sowbell's embalming efforts, Rupert was still giving off rather a scorched smell. And there could be no doubt about it: The burn on the palm of his left hand was the precise width of the lever that operated Galligantus.
A floorboard creaked.
As I closed the coffin lid, the door opened and Mr. Sowbell walked into the room. I hadn't heard him coming.
Because I was still in a half-crouch from inspecting Rupert's burned fingers, I was able to come slowly to a standing position.
"Amen," I said, crossing myself extravagantly.
"What on earth — ?" said Mr. Sowbell.
"Oh, hello, Mr. Sowbell," I said in an appropriately hushed tone. "I just dropped in to pay my respects. There was no one here, but I thought a quiet prayer would be in order.
"Mr. Porson had no friends in Bishop's Lacey, you know," I added, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket and wiping away an imaginary tear. "It seemed such a shame, and I thought it would do no harm if I — I'm sorry if — "
"There, there," he said. "Death comes to us all, you know, old and young alike...."
Was he threatening me, or was my imagination overheated?
"And even though we expect it," he went on, "it always comes as a shock in the end."
It certainly had for Rupert — but was the man being facetious?
Evidently not, for his long face maintained its professional polish.
"And now if you will excuse me," he said. "I must prepare him for his final journey."
Final journey? Where did they get this claptrap? Was there a phrasebook published for the undertaking trade?
I gave him my ten-years-old-going-on-eleven smile, and faked a flustered exit.
The bell above the door of the St. Nicholas Tea Room jangled merrily as I stepped inside. The establishment, a bit of a climb at the top of the stairs, was owned by none other than Miss Lavinia and Miss Aurelia, the Puddock sisters: those same two relics who had provided the musical prelude to Rupert's spectacular demise.
Miss Lavinia, in a nook at the far side of the room, seemed to be locked in mortal combat with a large silver samovar. In spite of the simplicity of its task, which was the boiling of water, this Heath Robinson contraption was a bulbous squid of tubes, valves, and gauges, which spat hot water as it gurgled and hissed away like a cornered dragon.
"No tea, I'm afraid," she said over her shoulder. She could not yet see who had entered the shop.
"Anything I can do to help, Miss Puddock?" I offered cheerily.
She let out a little shriek as her hand strayed accidentally into a jet of hot steam, and the china cup she was holding crashed to the floor, where it flew into a hundred pale pieces.
"Oh, it's the little de Luce girl," she said, spinning round. "My goodness! You gave me quite a fright. I wasn't expecting to hear your voice."
Because I could see that she'd scalded her hand, I fought back my baser urges.
"Anything I can do to help?" I repeated.
"Oh, dear," she said, flustered beyond reason. "Peter always chooses to act up when Aurelia's not here. She's so much better with him than I am."
"Peter?" I asked.
"The samovar," she said, wiping her wet red hands on a tea towel. "Peter the Great."
"Here," I said, "let me — "
Without another word I took up a bowl of lemon wedges from one of the round tables and squeezed each of them into a jug of iced water. Then I grabbed a clean white table napkin, immersed it until it was soaked, wrung it out, and wrapped it around Miss Puddock's hand. She flinched as I touched her, and then relaxed.
"May I?" I asked, removing an opal brooch from her lapel and using it to pin the ends of the makeshift bandage.
"Oh! It feels better already," she said with a pained smile. "Wherever did you learn that trick?"
"Girl Guides," I lied.
Experience has taught me that an expected answer is often better than the truth. I had, in fact, quite painfully looked up the remedy in one of Mrs. Mullet's household reference books after a superheated test tube seared most of the flesh from a couple of my fingers.
"Miss Cool has always spoken so highly of you," she said. "I shall tell her she was 'bang-on,' as those nice bomber boys from the RAF used to say."
I gave her my most modest smile. "It's nothing, Miss Puddock — just jolly good luck I got here when I did. I was next door, at Mr. Sowbell's, you see, saying a prayer or two at Mr. Porson's coffin. You don't suppose it will do any harm, do you?"