Speaking From Among The Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

for cadavers.
    Dear old Dogger! How he sets my mind at ease.
    Now I could hear voices. I was directly underneath the apse.
    “Easy!” someone was saying in the gloom ahead of me. “Easy now, Tommy lad.”
    A dark shadow leapt across the wall as if someone had switched on a torch.
    “Steady on! Steady on! Where’s Haskins with that bloody rope? Pardon my French, Vicar.”
    The vicar was silhouetted in an open archway, his back to me. I craned my neck to peer round him.
    On the far wall of the small chamber, a large, rectangular stone had been pried from the wall and pivoted outward. One end of it was now being supported on a wooden sawhorse, while the other still rested on the lip of the stone below. Behind the stone were visible a couple of inches of cold darkness.
    Four workmen—all of them strangers, except for George Battle—stood at the ready.
    As I moved in for a closer look, I bumped against the vicar’s elbow.
    “Good heavens, Flavia!” the vicar exclaimed with a start, his eyes huge in the strange light. “I almost leaped out of my skin, dear girl. I didn’t know you were there. You oughtn’t to be down here. Far too dangerous. If your father hears of it, he’ll have my head on a platter.”
    Saint John the Baptist flashed into my mind.
    “Sorry, Vicar,” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that, since Saint Tancred is my namesake, I wanted to be the first to see his blessed old bones.”
    The vicar stared at me blankly.
    “Flavia Tancreda de Luce,” I reminded him, injecting a dollop of fake reverence into my voice, folding my hands modestly across my chest, and casting my eyes downward, a trick I had picked up by watching Feely at her devotions.
    The vicar was silent for a long moment—and then he chuckled. “You’re having a game with me,” he said. “I remember distinctly officiating at your baptism. Flavia Sabina de Luce was the name we bestowed upon you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen, and Flavia Sabina de Luce you shall remain—until such time, of course, as you choose to change it by entering into a state of Holy Matrimony, like your sister Ophelia.”
    My jaw fell open like a bread box.
    “Feely?”
    “Oh, dear,” the vicar said. “I’m afraid I’ve let the cat out of the bag.”
    Feely? My sister, Feely? Entering into a state of Holy Matrimony?
    I could scarcely believe it!
    Who was it to be? Ned Cropper, the potboy from the Thirteen Drakes, whose idea of courtship was to leave offerings of moldy sweets at our kitchen doorstep? Carl Pendracka, the American serviceman who wanted to show Feely the sights of St. Louis, Missouri? (“Carl’s going to take me to watch Stan Musial knock one out of the park.”) Or was it to be Dieter Schrantz, the former German prisoner of war who had elected to stay behind in England as a farm laborer until such time as he could qualify to teach
Pride and Prejudice
to English schoolboys? And then, of course, there was Detective Sergeant Graves, the young policeman who always became tongue-tied and furiously red in the presence of my dopey sister.
    But before I could question the vicar further, Mr. Haskins, rope in hand, his torch producing weird, swayingshadows, came pushing into the already crowded space.
    “Make way! Make way!” he muttered, and the workmen fell back, pressing themselves tightly against the walls.
    Rather than moving out of the chamber, I used the opportunity to squirm my way farther into it, so that by the time Mr. Haskins had fixed the rope round the outer end of the stone, I had wedged myself into the farthest corner. From here, I would have a front-row seat for whatever was going to happen.
    I glanced across at the vicar, who seemed to have forgotten my presence. His face was strained in the light of the small, swaying bulbs.
    What was it that Marmaduke, the man in the dark suit, had said?
“You must stop it. You must put a stop to it at once.”
    It was obvious