The Reaper

Thirteen

There was a complication when Rachel went with Cynthia to register the death. Neither of them much liked the fussy little man who took them through the form, but that need not have mattered. When they'd supplied all the information, including things Rachel considered unnecessary, such as her own date of birth, he asked if she had decided about the method of disposal.

Cynthia glared at him as if he'd broken wind. "That's a horrible way of putting it."

He said, "Madam, I know of no phrase that expresses the matter more tastefully."

"You could say his last journey. 'Have you decided anything about his last journey?' "

"It wouldn't do. People would think I was talking about the hearse."

"There must be better words you could use. Let's face it, you're dealing with someone who has just lost her dear husband."

"Personally," he said, drawing himself up, "it jars with me when people speak of losing their relatives, as if they expect them to turn up at a lost property office."

"Leave it, Cyn," said Rachel. Turning to the registrar, she said firmly, "I've chosen cremation."

"That was the deceased's wish?"

"He expressed no wish. That's my decision."

He said, "I only ask because there are certain formalities that your doctor may not have explained. Before a cremation can be authorised, a second doctor must examine the-er-remains."

"Why?"

"The law requires it, Mrs. Jansen. Just a safeguard. The doctor will visit the mortuary. It needn't concern you."

"But it does concern me. We've supplied the death certificate. What's all this about?"

Cynthia, trying to be helpful, said, "You can get one of Dr. Perkins' partners from the health centre."

"Not a partner," the registrar corrected her. "This must be an independent opinion from a medical practitioner of at least five years' standing. He must certify that he knows of no reasonable cause to suspect that the deceased died either a violent or an unnatural death, or a sudden death of which the cause is unknown."

Cynthia said, "He was being treated for heart disease, for heaven's sake."

"That's the point of a second opinion. If there's any uncertainty, that doctor informs the coroner, and a post mortem is held."

"I don't want that," said Rachel impulsively. "I hate the idea of it. We'll have him buried."

"Don't let him sway you, love," said Cynthia.

"I've decided."

The registrar said, "I should warn you that a burial is more expensive."

"So be it. Gary has suffered enough. I want him laid to rest without any more doctors interfering."

Otis, when she told him on the phone, sounded surprised.

"I just want to get on with the funeral," she explained. "No red tape. No second opinions. I know what doctors are like. It could have been referred to the coroner. This way, we can give him his send-off, as planned, on Tuesday."

"Do you have a plot?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"A place in a cemetery."

"That plot. Yes. At Haycombe. I wouldn't want him in Fox-ford churchyard."

Jazz sessions can be found in most towns most weekends, but funeral gigs are something else. Foxford had seen nothing like it. Come to that, the whole of Wiltshire had seen nothing like it, and maybe the whole of England. From an early hour on Tuesday morning, people started claiming the prime positions along the village street. They stood about waiting, cheerful without being rowdy. Some sat or stood on the drystone walls and a few dropped cigarette packets and drink cans into village gardens, but no serious damage was done and the mood was respectful. The cars, minibuses and coaches were directed into one of Norman Gregor's fields at the approach to the village. Free, but compulsory parking, with a police barrier to enforce it.

In the two days since it was arranged, Gary's New-Orleans-style send-off had caught the public imagination to such an extent that jazz bands were being bussed in from as far away as Brixton to join the procession. The story had been in the Sunday tabloids, on television and radio. Camera crews were setting up at all the obvious vantage points along the street and above it on scaffolding. The service would be relayed on loudspeakers because there was no way everyone could crowd into the church.

Rachel was caught off guard by all the interest. Having suggested the street procession herself, she could hardly call it off, but she had no idea that the jazz community would find it such a draw. The phone had gone so often over the weekend that she'd had to have her calls redirected to a public relations agency. They made it clear she was not available for interviews.

Others in the village were happy to talk, and Gary got a better press than he deserved, because no one wanted to be heard speaking ill of the dead. In death, a pig of a man had become not just a Very Important Person but a great lad, popular all round, who loved his jazz, liked his pint in the local and had a good word for everyone. Never gave a hint of his heart problem. To be cut down at forty-two was cruel.

The organisation of the music was taken over by a black trumpeter from Bristol who called himself King Gumbo and had a sixteen-strong band. In keeping with New Orleans tradition, the shuffling progress to the church was to be solemn and plaintive, a slow blues march. Other bands would take their cue from King Gumbo's beat. Later, after the cremation, there would be another procession through Foxford, when the mood of the music would become playful and irreverent.

Not everyone in the village thought all this was a good idea. One or two called it a freak show and worse, but the majority were willing to keep an open mind and joined in cheerfully. Otis Joy had announced the arrangements in church on Sunday, urging everyone to respect Gary's love of jazz, move to the rhythm and rejoice in the Lord.

The main assembly point was in front of the Foxford Arms (not yet open for business). King Gumbo, magnificent in black tails with gold satin lapels and epaulettes, top hat, white gloves and a huge gold-fringed Gumbo Jazz Band sash across his chest, marshalled the marchers as well as anyone can marshal jazz musicians. Five bands and several solo players-totalling seventy or more-drew up in formation across the street, brass instruments gleaming in the pale October sun.

Hats were removed in respect when someone spotted the hearse approaching the village along the lane. What wreaths covered the big black Daimler! The roof rack was a mass of colour and the coffin hardly visible for floral tributes shaped into trumpets, saxophones, tubas and drums. Rachel's wreath was a huge music stave made of white Arum lilies. She arrived with two of Gary's jazz friends and took her position behind the hearse. She was in a new black coat with artificial fur trimming and a black straw hat. When she saw the crowds she had a moment of panic and thought of going straight to the church, but having suggested the whole thing she had no choice except to join in.

A whistle blast from King Gumbo at the head of the procession alerted everyone. The Gumbo band drummer began a slow beat. Responding to a plaintive note from King Gumbo's muted trumpet, the saxes took up the touching blues melody "Spider Crawl." Trumpet and clarinet combined and spoke to each other between the twelve-bar chord sequence. Further back in the line, other bands blended in. Swaying, taking tiny flat-footed steps, the leaders of this extraordinary cortege took the first steps up Foxford's street towards the church. The hearse crawled behind them and after the hearse came Rachel, walking alone at the head of; a column of mourners from the village.

The strains of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" took oven The crowd listened respectfully, many swaying to the music. Gary, everyone agreed, would have approved.

They took almost forty minutes to reach the church, only six hundred yards off. At regular intervals King Gumbo stopped and bobbed and swayed to the beat, and everyone was compelled to do the same. The hearse-driver quietly cursed and kept the engine running and thought about asking for a higher fee. But all along the route, the visitors enjoyed the music and the spectacle, following along and joining the end of the procession.

Otis Joy waited at the lychgate of St. Bartholomew's to receive the coffin, dressed simply in black cassock. Behind him, the church was full except for the places reserved for the principal mourners and the Gumbo Jazz Band. "I am the resurrection and the life…" he began, when the coffin was finally withdrawn from the hearse and borne towards him. Hundreds came to a halt, in the churchyard and a long way back along the street.

Inside the church, the coffin, with just Rachel's wreath resting on it, was lowered onto trestles. Rachel took her place in the front pew. She was the only family mourner, but she had Gary's jazz friends sitting beside her. They had helped choose the hymns, gospel numbers movingly sung by a choir that specialised in spirituals. That line of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"- coming for to carry me home-had a poignancy she had never been aware of before. She pressed a Kleenex to the corner of her eye.

And Otis was equal to the occasion when the time came, finding noble things to say about a man who had not had a noble thought in his life. " 'Behold, I show you a mystery,' " he began with a text from St. Paul. " 'We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.' "

He spread his hands, his voice subdued. "Never in its long history has our church echoed to such singing. Gary's devoted wife Rachel and his friends decided this was what he would have liked, and how right they were. He loved his jazz. It's a strong consolation in a time of great sadness that he managed to visit New Orleans shortly before his final heart attack. Gary was not specially religious by temperament, but he found spirituality in music, and he would rejoice that the music he loved has provided this marvellous send-off today. He was taken from us at only forty-two, gathered, very suddenly, on the evening of our harvest supper. He could have told you of great jazzmen who died young, like Bix Beiderbecke and Charlie Parker. I'm often asked for a reason why good men and women are sometimes taken from us prematurely. We have to accept it. In those words I spoke from the Prayer Book, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away." Our thoughts now must be with Rachel. May she come through the grief of the present days and find peace. For Gary, there is peace already. Like Mr. Valiant-for-Truth in The Pilgrim's Progress, 'So he passed over, and the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.' And today in our village they sounded for Gary on this side as well."

After the service, the Gumbo Jazz Band serenaded the coffin with the "Beale Street Blues," a number traditionally played in slow-drag tempo. Then the hearse was driven to Haycombe for the burial. Rachel had resisted all suggestions of using a plot in the village churchyard.

Inside the cemetery gates, the undertaker (who had been rather upstaged by King Gumbo) had his moment of attention, walking in front of the cortege wearing his top hat. Rachel and the jazz friends went to the graveside with Otis, who spoke the words of committal. Quietly, they took leave of Gary.

On their return to Foxford they were greeted with the enlivening blare of "When the Saints Go Marching In" played lustily by King Gumbo and his lads. This was up-tempo time. The mutes were off, the top hats were back on and the music swelled. All the bands joined in, giving full vent to their playing, bobbing, stomping and swinging to the end of the street and back again, ending at the pub.

King Gumbo sank two glasses of beer in a short time and said, "Man, oh man, that was some boogaloo."

In Rachel's cottage, over cheese and wine, the real Foxford people, friends and neighbours, had come, as if to reclaim the occasion for the village. Long after the camera crews and jazz bands had gone, this was the community that would help the young widow adjust to her changed life. More humdrum than big drum, as Bill Armistead put it. The talk was subdued compared to the bedlam in the pub, but all agreed it had been a day to remember. "And wasn't the rector wonderful, the things he said?" Peggy Winner enthused. "I was so proud of him. He had me in floods of tears, and between ourselves I was never very fond of Gary."

"That's a gift from God, being able to fit your words to the occasion like that," said Geoff Elliott. "Not that I recall what was said, but I found it moving at the time. Beautiful words, yes."

"And not the same words he used at poor Stanley's funeral. Not the same at all."

"Different man," Elliott pointed out.

"Yes, but two funerals coming so soon, one after the other, it would be easy to repeat yourself."

"No, no, Peg. He thinks it through. Next time someone goes, it will be different again. You'll see."

"I hope no one else is going," she said. "Two in just over a month is more than we can afford to lose."

"And that's not counting the bishop."

"The bishop wasn't a Foxford man."

"No, but he was our bishop. It's a connection. Rector remembered him in church, if you were there."

"I was-and he said just the right thing in the circumstances."

"In the circumstances, yes." Geoff Elliott's eyes widened slightly at the memory of the bend-over bishop, so slightly that no one else noticed.

Two of the confirmation class were drinking orange squash and talking with approval about the service. "Considering Gary wasn't a church-goer, it was wonderful," Ann Porter remarked to Burton Sands. "I said a prayer for him, hoping he gets to heaven."

"If he wasn't a believer, he won't," said Burton flatly. "You know what the Te Deum tells us. 'Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.' "

"We don't know what he believed," Ann pointed out.

"Just because he didn't come to church every Sunday, it doesn't mean he was a heathen."

"It's unlikely."

"Well, I wouldn't count him out," said Ann. "As a matter of fact, he may have been on the point of joining the church. I saw him walk through the rectory gates on the day he died."

"What, like a ghost?" said Burton.

"No, silly. Before he died. This was about five in the afternoon. He must have been calling on the rector, and it wouldn't surprise me if he'd seen the light."

"You're guessing."

"Maybe he had some kind of message from God that he hadn't got long to go."

"Maybe," Burton echoed, but with a heavy note of scepticism.

"We can't really ask Otis, but I'd give anything to know."

Across the room, Cynthia Haydenhall was being helpful, topping up people's glasses. "She'll manage, I'm sure," she confided to Mary Todd from the shop. "She'll go through a period of grief of course, but she's a survivor. She'll bounce back." She checked where Rachel was, making sure she was too far away to hear. "And they weren't as close as some couples are, if you understand me."

"I'd noticed that."

"She'll miss him, of course, but…"

"She's just a young thing," said Mary Todd. "She won't be alone for long, if I'm any judge."

"Do you think so?"

"If she looks after herself, keeps her hair nice."

"She's in the Frome Troupers. They're a lively lot. Not many men, though."

"It's always the problem in amateur dramatics."

"She was all set to star in There Goes the Bride on Friday. 1 suppose they'll have to find a replacement now."

"Shame. She must have been looking forward to it, learning the part and all."

"Well, you can't act in a farce the same week you bury your husband."

The rector put his head around the door, and Cynthia shimmied through the crush to offer him a drink. He'd taken off his cassock and was wearing a dark suit. He said, rather curtly, she thought, that he wished to speak to Rachel first.

"1 think she's handing out sausage rolls. She's bearing it very well."

"Good."

"Everyone agrees you excelled yourself in church, Otis. You gave a wonderful address."

"Doing my job, Mrs. Haydenhall. Where exactly is she? I don't see her."

"In the kitchen, I expect."

He went in search of her.

The party in the Foxford Arms continued past closing time and the last coach left Norman Gregor's field after midnight. Rachel heard it pass the cottage, music still being played and audible between the gear shifts. It would be a long time before she chose to listen to jazz again.

Alone now, she had nothing to do. The guests had insisted on washing and wiping every last teaspoon. Everything was put away. They had emptied the ashtrays and vacuumed the carpets. The place looked better than it had in weeks. The possibility hadn't occurred to them that she would have liked something to keep her busy.

Her brain was too active for sleep. It fairly fizzed with words said in the past twelve hours, things meant to cheer or console, most of them hopelessly wide of the mark. The only true comment- and it sounded tasteless, however it was put-was that Gary would have been happy with his own funeral. "You could almost say he was a lucky man," someone said. "It softens the blow, doesn't it?" Another remarked, "You did him proud, Rachel. You'll always be able to say you sent him off in style."

She put on the kettle for a cup of tea, and went round checking that the doors were locked and bolted. She wasn't afraid to be alone. Just wanted the chance to come to terms with her changed life and get over the feeling of numbness that had gripped her since the moment of Gary's death.

She had to keep telling herself she was free.

Gary was gone, six feet under. Out of her life.

In the eyes of the village, she was not far short of a saint. Bravely she'd suppressed her own grief to arrange this spectacular funeral. She'd held back the tears all day.

She was no saint, and she didn't feel very brave.

In a curious way, she felt as if she was outside her own body, looking at herself, trying to understand how she could have done what she had. The decision to do away with Gary had been made quickly, impulsively. There was none of that malice aforethought. Not much, anyway.

He had made the fatal mistake of asking for a strong curry and she'd had this sudden prospect of release like the clouds parting. An end to a gruesome marriage and a new life with Otis, the man she loved.

With astonishing clarity she'd seen how much she despised her husband and wanted to be rid of him. He was unattractive, oafish, selfish, messy, abusive, shabby, conceited, undersexed and old, old, old. His return from New Orleans had brought it home to her, literally. She couldn't bear to be close to him any longer. She knew the man she wanted, and she'd seen the unattached women of the village closing in on him. She knew how urgent it was to set herself free.

She also knew her plants and their properties. She had monkshood in the garden, a thriving clump that grew waist high and produced pretty purple flowers in May and June, and she knew of its reputation. In the medical centre where she worked she'd checked the book they kept for emergencies: The Dangerous Plants of Britain.

Aconkum napellus, the source of aconitine, also known as monkshood, wolfsbane, leopard's bane, women's bane, blue rocket and devil's helmet, is without doubt the most poisonous plant in Britain. Every part of it, the flower, the leaves, the stems, the roots, is potentially deadly. As little as one-fiftieth of a grain has been known to cause death, and one-tenth is certain to prove fatal.

Significantly, though, only one case of murder by aconitine was listed, and that was from over a century before, a Dr. Lam-son who had foolishly given himself away by buying the stuff from a chemist. Surely if the plant was so deadly and so common in gardens, it must have been used on other occasions. If so, it had not been detected in a hundred years.

Apparently Dr. Thomas Stevenson, a leading Victorian toxicologist, was giving evidence in a murder case when he was asked if he knew of any poison that was undetectable. He answered, "There is only one that I can recall and that is-" "Stop!" cried the judge. "The public must never hear of it." That poison, Stevenson later disclosed in a lecture to medical students, was aconitine, the extract of aconite.

Rachel's decision to do away with Gary had been quickened by opportunity. He'd asked for a curry worthy of the name. So he got it.

The blue rocket.

She'd used the tubers of a rootstock of monkshood from the garden, chopping them like any root vegetable and adding them to the curry before she put it in to warm. The only difference from horse-radish root was that it slowly turned red when cut, rather than staying white. At first he wouldn't have been troubled by the tingling and burning sensation in the mouth characteristic of aconite. What else does one expect from a good, strong curry?

He'd gone through some of the symptoms before she got home from the harvest supper, yet it had still been a terrible test of her nerve watching him in dire pain losing his faculties while she tried to judge the exact moment to call Dr. Perkins. Gary had to be alive when the doctor came, yet beyond medical help. She'd timed it right, thank God. The last symptoms of aconite poisoning, after hours of pains and nausea, are loss of speech, impairment of vision and convulsions-readily diagnosed as a heart attack. In fact, the cause of death is cardiac failure resulting from paralysis of the centres in the brain. Dr. Perkins didn't know anything about aconite poisoning, but he could recognise a heart attack, and he was dealing with one by the time he was called to Gary. Poisoning didn't cross the old doctor's mind. Why should it have? You don't expect a poisoner to call the doctor to her victim.

But of course it had been necessary to have a physician attend him, make the diagnosis and, crucially, sign the certificate.

She had jamazed herself by her self-control. Now it was all over she couldn't believe she had done it, murdered her own husband and watched him die. Was this really the woman who prayed in church each Sunday and went round the village collecting for Christian Aid? She dreaded her own symptoms now: the numbness wearing off and the full horror flooding in. There was going to be a reaction soon. Her personal hell.

She forced herself to concentrate on practicalities.

How will I live with what I have done?

A term of mourning-or what appeared as mourning-would follow. Respect was more accurate. Not respect for Gary, but for the conventions of village life. A widow didn't have to drape herself in black these days, but some show of solemnity was wanted, whatever her private feelings.

What a change in her life. No more fun with the Frome Troupers. All those weeks of learning her part and rehearsing There Goes the Bride had gone out of the window.

The months to come had to be endured. Low key. Smiles but no laughs. The one consolation would be the visits from Otis. The beauty of it was that he would come openly, in his capacity as priest, doing his duty, comforting the bereaved.

She craved his comfort.

And in time, maybe as soon as the spring of next year, she and Otis could begin to be seen together at village events. She didn't want to wait much longer just to satisfy decorum. This was her life ticking away. Why waste so much of it for fear of a few mean-minded gossips who would say she'd hardly seen one husband off before she was taking up with the rector? They'd say the same if she waited till the autumn, or the year after. Some people were like that. Their disapproval had to be faced.

She warmed the teapot and put in some dried camomile. Camomile tea is a great calmer. She'd harvested it from the garden a long time ago. Gary had never cared for it. He'd often told her he didn't trust her country remedies. She smiled at the memory.

While the camomile was infusing she switched her thoughts to Otis.

He had come looking for her as soon as he reached the cottage after the burial and she could recall their short conversation with total accuracy.

"Can't stay long, I'm afraid. Just want to say how bravely you coped today."

"Everyone is helping me."

"Yes, but none of us had any idea what a huge event it would turn out to be."

"Don't I know it."

"You're almost certain to feel a reaction later, and I'm going to help you through it. Count on me, Rachel. Call me any time. I'll come and see you anyway, but you may want to pick up the phone. Day or night, don't hesitate."

"Thanks."

His eyes locked with hers and she was certain they conveyed much more.

Here she was then, at almost one a.m., extremely tempted to call him, yet resisting. She didn't trust herself in this state. She might blurt out everything. She was going to have to button her lip. Of all things, she didn't want Otis finding out that she had committed murder.

So she drank the camomile tea and tried listening to the radio for a bit, thinking she'd get a sense of what else had happened in the world while she had been so preoccupied, bring some balance back into her thoughts. Much earlier, some of the television programmes would have reported the funeral, the perfect off-beat item to finish the newscast. "And finally, a funeral with a difference. When the Wiltshire village of Foxford took leave of jazz enthusiast Gary Jansen earlier today, it did so in New Orleans style, and hundreds came to see it."

She'd missed all that, and she wasn't sorry. The radio was more serious in tone-a dramatic fall in share prices, more evidence of global warming, a plane missing somewhere and a drugs find in a yacht off the south coast. The world moved on, and she was just an insignificant part of it, calmer now and ready-she hoped-for sleep.