What Remains of Heaven

Chapter 4

The village of Tanfield Hill lay about half a mile to the south of the main post road between London and the West Country, just beyond the notorious, highwayman-infested stretch of open land known as Hounslow Heath. Here, the scrub and gorse of the heath began to give way to open, rolling woodland of oak and silver birch. The village itself was a picturesque collection of thatched cottages and whitewashed stone shops strung out along a cobbled high street and a few flanking lanes.

Driving himself in his curricle, Sebastian rattled over a narrow stone bridge spanning the quiet millstream and into the village at around half past ten that morning. The sun was up strong now, bathing the old stone walls in a warm, bucolic glow and filling the air with the sweet scent of roses and honeysuckle tumbling over garden fences and scrambling up neat lattices. From here he could see the low, solid nave and single spire of the ancient Norman church of St. Margaret’s crowning a gentle hill covered with daisy-strewn grass and a scattering of aged, moss-covered tombstones.

He turned his chestnuts up the slope, toward the gravel sweep before the church, where Sir Henry Lovejoy stood talking to a workman dressed in a rough smock. A diminutive, middle-aged man with a baldhead and a serious demeanor, Sir Henry was the newest of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates. At the sight of Sebastian, he dismissed the workman with a nod and started across the gravel toward the curricle.

“Find someplace to water and rest them,” Sebastian told his tiger, handing the young groom the chestnuts’ reins. “We’ll be here awhile.”

“I’ll take care of ’em, gov’nor,” said Tom, scrambling from his perch at the rear of the carriage. “Ne’er you fear.”

“Oh, and Tom—ask around a bit while you’re at it. I’d like to hear what the locals are saying about all this.”

“Aye, gov’nor.”

“Lord Devlin,” called Sir Henry, coming up to him. “So the Archbishop convinced you to take an interest in the investigation after all, did he? I feared he might not succeed. This isn’t exactly your normal type of murder.”

Sebastian hopped down from the curricle’s high seat. “I didn’t know I had a normal type of murder.” Once, this earnest little magistrate had sought Sebastian’s own arrest. But over the past year and a half the sternly religious magistrate and the urbane, irreverent Viscount had built an odd friendship, founded on mutual respect and a strong, abiding sense of trust. Sebastian said, “Bow Street didn’t object to the suggestion that I become involved?”

One corner of the magistrate’s thin lips twitched with the faintest suggestion of a smile. “I wouldn’t exactly describe Sir James’s reaction as pleased. But when the Archbishop of Canterbury personally intervenes in an investigation, not even the Chief Magistrate would dare complain.”

“And you?”

“Me?” Turning, Lovejoy led the way to the northern side of the ancient parish church, where scattered piles of building rubble lay deserted beneath the strengthening sun. “When it comes to murder in the upper reaches of society and government, I know our limits. A delicate business, this. And puzzling. Most puzzling.”

Sebastian’s head tipped back, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the worn, age-darkened stone walls of the church. The nave of St. Margaret’s had the narrow, round-topped windows and heavy masonry typical of the early Norman period. Only the tower was noticeably lighter and more delicate, its spire probably added in early Tudor times.

He let his gaze fall to the rubble at their feet. Through the remnants of a broken wall he could see the upper reaches of a set of worn stone steps that disappeared down into a well of black. “How long ago was the crypt bricked up?” he asked, peering into the darkness. His voice echoed back at him from below.

“As near as anyone can remember, it was around the time of the revolt in America.” The magistrate had an unnaturally high-pitched voice that had a tendency to squeak when he became excited or nervous. He was squeaking now.

“So, thirty or forty years ago.”

“Something like that, yes.” A lantern rested on a large, flat-topped stone near the broken wall. Stooping, Lovejoy flipped open the door and began to kindle his tinderbox. “According to the workmen, an old charnel house stood here. They were in the process of demolishing it when they stumbled upon the entrance to the crypt. It’s been closed off for so long that people had forgotten the stairs were here. I gather it was a bit of a shock when the workmen broke through the wall. And even more of a shock when a couple of the lads decided to go exploring and tripped over the body of a man, dressed in the velvets and lace of the last century and with a knife sticking out his back. According to the workmen, the Reverend took one look at the body and left almost immediately for London.”

Sebastian stared off down the hill, to where the millstream curled lazily around a stand of willows. “It seems a curious thing to have done. Why go to the Bishop? Why not the local magistrate?”

Lovejoy frowned over his task. “From what I understand, Reverend Earnshaw is of a somewhat, shall we say, excitable disposition.”

Sebastian raised one eyebrow in surprise. “You haven’t actually spoken to him?”

The magistrate was still struggling with his tinderbox. “Not yet, unfortunately. The discovery of the Bishop’s body on top of the other horrors of the crypt seems to have been too much for the man. He managed to stagger over to the Manor and tell his tale to Douglas Pyle—that’s the local magistrate, by the way: a typical village squire, far more interested in horses and hounds than in solving murders. Anyway, as soon as the Reverend told Pyle where to find the bodies, he simply went home and dosed himself with laudanum. Liberally.” The magistrate’s flame went out, and he had to try again. “He’s still insensible.”

Sebastian resisted the urge to take the tinderbox from Lovejoy’s hands and light it for him. The magistrate was uncharacteristically shaken. “You say Earnshaw found the Bishop?”

“That’s right.”

“But if the Reverend himself went to London to get Prescott, then what was the Bishop doing down in the crypt alone?”

Lovejoy grunted with satisfaction as the lantern’s wick finally caught. “According to what we’ve been able to ascertain, Reverend Earnshaw returned immediately to Tanfield Hill in his own gig, while the Bishop followed later in his coach.”

“So where was the Bishop’s coachman while the Bishop was getting his head bashed in?”

“He remained on his box, as per the Bishop’s instructions. The man says he neither saw nor heard anything out of the ordinary.” Lovejoy tucked away his tinderbox and flipped the lantern’s small door closed. “Although if you ask me, he probably dozed off, and awakened only when the Reverend set up a shout. Seems the Reverend spotted the Bishop’s light in the crypt and ventured down there again, alone, only to discover the Bishop lying nearly atop the earlier victim’s body.”

“Body? But surely if the other man had been dead for decades, he’d be reduced to a skeleton by now?”

A shadow of revulsion crossed the magistrate’s pinched features. “Unfortunately, no. I understand it has something to do with the composition of the soil and perhaps the lime in the mortar. If there’s no intrusion of water, the corpses in a crypt can essentially mummify, rather than decay.”

Sebastian became aware of the putrefying stench of death wafting up from below. “I remember seeing something similar in Italy. In Palermo.”

“Then you’ll know what to expect,” said the magistrate, turning toward the entrance to the crypt. Tightening his grip on the lantern’s short handle, he stooped through the thin, broken remnant of the brick wall and started down the stairs. After a moment’s hesitation, Sebastian followed.

Worn and cracked by time, the steps descended through a narrow stone stair vault, the light from the lantern playing over an arched roof plastered with limestone. The air was cold and dank, with an unpleasant, almost greasy quality that seemed to wrap itself around them as they reached the base of the steps.

They found themselves in an ancient central aisle, its low vaulted ceiling supported by thick spiral columns topped with crude pillow capitals. Dating back to Anglo-Saxon times, the crypt was larger than Sebastian had expected, with rows of bays opening to either side. Yet the bays seemed oddly dark. As his eyes quickly grew accustomed to the gloom, Sebastian realized the bays were dark because they were full of coffins. Hundreds and hundreds of wooden coffins, some left bare, some painted, but most upholstered in moldering woolen cloth or draped in tattered velvet. Stacked row upon row, floor to ceiling, and curtained with massive sheets of cobwebs, they reached as far as he could see in all directions.

“Good God,” he whispered.

“The Bishop was found near the back end,” said Lovejoy, his voice quavering as they walked between the towering walls of coffins. In the older sections of the crypt, the coffins at the bottom had begun to warp and split, their contents spilling out as the weight of the burials above slowly crushed the ancient wood below. Sebastian could see some bare bones, stained an odd brown. But most of the visble bodies were horribly whole, their skin shriveled and discolored but intact, their winding sheets and shrouds glowing white from the murky depths of the vaults.

“Here,” said Lovejoy, his hand trembling as he paused to hold the lantern aloft. “Bishop Prescott was found here, just beside this last column. I’ve already sent the bodies to be autop sied, but everything else is exactly as it was.”

Sebastian stared down at the long, rusty red stain of blood that had soaked into the uneven limestone paving blocks. “Where did you send them?”

“To Gibson.”

Sebastian nodded with satisfaction. An Army doctor who’d lost the lower part of one leg to a French cannonball, Paul Gibson now kept a small surgery near Tower Hill. No one in London knew more about death and the human body than Paul Gibson. “I’ll go see him as soon as I get back to London.”

“Fortunately, the local magistrate had enough sense not to disturb anything,” said Lovejoy. “I gather he took one look, posted guards at the entrance to the stairs, and sent for Bow Street.”

Sebastian hunkered down to study the stained stones. There must have been a lot of blood. But then, there would have been, if the Bishop had been hit on the head. In Sebastian’s experience, head wounds bled prodigiously.

Looking up, he studied the worn stone base of the nearby column. “Any chance he might simply have fainted and bashed in his own skull?”

Lovejoy shook his head. “We found an iron bar—possibly one of the tools left by the workmen—lying beside the body and covered in gore. I’ve sent it to Gibson along with the body, so he can make comparisons. But I’ve no doubt he’ll agree it was the murder weapon.”

Sebastian’s gaze shifted to where the nearby paving stones showed a large, man-sized area of brown discoloration. “The other body was there?”

Lovejoy made an odd, strangled sound. “That’s right. He must have been lying here in the shadows when the crypt was bricked up. They probably didn’t even see him. The only reason Earnshaw spotted the Bishop was because Prescott had brought a lantern with him. It was still sitting on the floor beside him, lit.”

Sebastian glanced over at the piles of cobweb-draped coffins stuffed into the nearest bay. The wood of one of the caskets had split, giving a grisly view of its desiccated contents, the corpse’s head thrown back, its mouth wide-open as if in an endless, soundless scream. But the weight of the burials above kept the cadaver pinned down. Sebastian had thought at first, seeing the way some of the coffins had shifted and smashed, that the velvet-dressed body might simply have fallen out of one of the collapsed vaults and rolled here. Now he realized that was unlikely. Apart from which, who would bury a murder victim with the knife still in his back?

Sebastian pushed to his feet. “Any idea who the other man might have been?”

“None whatsoever. I’ll be surprised if we ever know.”

Sebastian studied the surrounding bays, each with its own towering, moldering cargo of splintered caskets and spilling contents. His eyes had completely adjusted to the gloom by now. There were times when he wished he were as blind in the dark as other men. “Could there be another way in here?”

Lovejoy nodded toward the far end of the crypt. “There’s a second flight of steps that once led up to the apse and was originally closed off with just an iron gate. Both entrances were walled off at the same time. No one’s been down here for decades.” The magistrate shivered, and by mutual consent the two men turned toward the stairwell.

“Sir James thinks the Bishop must have surprised a thief,” said Lovejoy. “Someone who’d heard the crypt was open and seized the opportunity to sneak down here and look for jewelry or other valuables to steal from the dead.”

“I suppose that’s one explanation.”

Something in his tone caused Lovejoy to pause at the base of the steps and turn to stare back at him. “Surely you don’t think there’s some connection between the two murders? How could there be? With decades between them?”

Sebastian had no explanation, of course, although he found it difficult to believe that two men could be murdered in almost exactly the same spot without there being some connection between them—even if their murders did take place decades apart. “It does seem unlikely,” he agreed.

Lovejoy started up the steps, the crypt plunging into darkness again as the lantern light quivered over the old whitewashed stones of the stair vault. “Alternatively, someone could have been following the Bishop, intending to do him harm. He seized the opportunity offered by the Bishop’s descent alone into the crypt, and killed him.”

“You’re aware that Prescott was a serious contender to be named the next Archbishop of Canterbury?” said Sebastian, following him.

Reaching the top of the stairs, the magistrate scrambled through the broken wall. “The Archbishop did mention it, yes. Although I received the impression that he was inclined to agree with Sir James’s assessment—that the Bishop simply fell victim to a chance-met thief.”

Sebastian followed him out of the rank chill of the stairwell into the clean, wholesome warmth of the sunny June day. “I suspect the Archbishop was being diplomatic.”

Lovejoy snuffed out his lantern. “What makes you say that?”

Sebastian stared off down the hill toward the rambling, slate-roofed vicarage, where a middle-aged matron in a starched white cap and a high-necked black bombazine gown was standing on the back stoop, watching them. “Because if the Archbishop genuinely believes the Bishop of London was killed by a simple thief, then why did he come to me?”