The Vacant Casualty by Patty O'Furniture

Author:Patty O'Furniture [O’Furniture, Patty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752265476
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter Eleven

‘THE OLD ARCHIVES?’ asked Archie Smallcreak, standing in his own doorway wearing carpet slippers, and as friendly as ever. ‘I’d forgotten they were ever put in there. But she’s quite right. Let me fetch the key.’ As he bustled away up the stairs, Bradley turned a suspicious eye to Sam.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine,’ whispered Sam, his eyes wide. ‘Quite fine.’

‘That hangover’s really caught up with you, hasn’t it?’

‘Tell the truth,’ said Sam, struggling to get the words out, ‘the hair of the dog would probably do me a bit of good, yes.’ This was, however, a distant prospect as before them stretched a potentially lengthy, chilly and pointless search for information based on a half-formed hunch. And just as the phrase ‘half-formed hunch’ popped into his mind, Sam was disturbed once more by the sight of Mrs Trench pushing a squeaking mop lugubriously around the vicar’s porch. She stopped and raised her head very slowly to take them in, regarded them for a few seconds, then lowered it again and moved on.

‘It’s like meeting glances with a berthing whale,’ muttered Sam.

‘She’s certainly no oil painting, I’ll give you that,’ said Bradley.

‘There we are,’ said Archie, reappearing not with one or two keys, but what appeared to be the medieval gaoler’s stock-in-trade: a gargantuan cast-iron ring, from which hung perhaps three dozen rust-toothed keys. ‘Better follow me closely, it gets a bit dark round the back here . . .’

As the Reverend stepped into the beautifully-kept garden, Bradley followed him, whistling, but Sam had a sudden and very morbid presentiment. It was as though someone had walked over his grave, he thought to himself. Either that, or the idea of climbing down into a thousand-year-old sepulchre accompanied by PC Plod’s less intelligent cousin from the country, while on drugs, gave him the willies.

As they walked, Smallcreak explained the great building’s history. The abbey, it seemed, was relatively famous – although Sam wondered whether most abbeys probably were, he didn’t think there were that many of them around. This one had been the subject of a high-profile charity drive to save it from collapsing in the late 1980s, when several million had been raised to have the foundations replaced. When this work was being carried out, however, the windows had been found to be in too poor a shape for it to be reopened, and a further and more protracted effort was mounted to raise the necessary funds to have the stained glass touched up and largely replaced. Then, before it had opened again, squatters had moved in, and only vacated the place five years later when they were offered much more comfortable council housing in nearby Fraxbridge. Then the roof had needed to be repaired, which meant that all in all, a congregation hadn’t seen the inside since shortly after Sam’s second birthday. It was a tall and magnificent edifice, even seen here from the back, and rose over them menacingly as they descended through the shadows to the crypt door.

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