Jane was put into a hack with the luncheon hamper and the rugs and shawls and told to meet us at the church, and we drove into town, the horses clattering along narrow brick-paved streets lined with old, half-timbered buildings that leaned out over the street. A Tudor inn with a painted sign hanging above the door, narrow brick shops selling ribbons and bicycles, narrower houses with mullioned windows and tall chimneys. The old Coventry. This would all be destroyed by fire along with the cathedral that November night in 1940, but it was hard to imagine it, clopping along the damp, placid streets.
The driver pulled the horses to a stop at the corner of St. Mary’s Street, the street Provost Howard and his little band had paraded down, carrying the candlesticks and crosses and the regimental flag they’d rescued from the burning cathedral.
“Cahnt gawna fur thuhsahth dawblottuff,” the driver said in an impenetrable dialect.
“He says he can’t take the carriage any farther,” Baine translated. “Apparently the route to the cathedral is blocked.”
I leaned forward. “Tell him to go back along this street to Little Park Street. That will take us to the west doors of the church.”
Baine told him. The driver shook his head and said something unrecognizable, but turned the horses around and started back up Earl Street.
“O, I can feel the spirits already,” Mrs. Mering said, clutching her bosom. “Something is about to happen. I know it.”
We turned up Little Park Street toward the cathedral. I could see the tower at the end of the street, and it was no wonder we hadn’t been able to see the third spire from the railway station. It was encased in wooden scaffolding from a third of the way up all the way to the top, and, except that it had gray cloth tarps draped across it instead of blue plastic, it looked the way it had looked last week when I’d seen it from Merton’s pedestrian gate. Lady Schrapnell was more authentic than she knew.
The piles of red sandstone blocks and heaps of sand in the churchyard looked the same, too, and I worried that the entire approach to the church might be blocked, but it wasn’t. The driver was able to pull the carriage up directly in front of the west doors. On them was a large, hand-lettered sign.
“Iffley’s churchwarden’s been here,” I said, and then saw what it said:
“The heart is its own fate.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Closed!” Tossie said.
“Closed?” I said and looked over at Verity. The color had drained from her face.
“Closed,” Mrs. Mering said. “It’s just as Madame Iritosky said. ‘Beware,’ and the letter ‘C.’ She was trying to warn us.”
As if to prove her point, it began to drizzle.
“It can’t be closed,” Verity murmured, looking disbelievingly at the sign.
“How can it be closed?”
“Baine,” Mrs. Mering said. “What time is the next train?”
Don’t let Baine know, I thought. If he didn’t know the schedule, we had at least a quarter of an hour while he trotted back to the station to check and back, a quarter of an hour in which to think of something.
But this was Baine we were talking about, clearly the forerunner of Jeeves, and Jeeves had always known everything.
“2:08, madam,” he said. “It goes to Reading. Or there’s an express at 2:46 to Goring.”
“We shall take the 2:08,” Mrs. Mering said. “Goring is so common.”
“But what about Lady Godiva?” Verity said desperately. “She must have had a reason for wanting you to come to Coventry.”
“I am not at all convinced it was her spirit, particularly under the circumstances,” Mrs. Mering said. “I believe Madame Iritosky was right about there being mischievous spirits at work. Baine, tell the driver to take us to the station.”
“Wait!” I shouted, and jumped out of the carriage and squarely into a puddle. “I will be right back,” I said. “Stay there,” and took off along the tower wall.
“Where on earth is he going?” I heard Mrs. Mering say. “Baine, go and tell Mr. Henry to come back here immediately.”
I sprinted round the corner of the church, holding my coat collar together against the wet.
I remembered from the rubble and the reconstruction that there was a door on the south side of the cathedral and another on the north, and if necessary I’d bang on the vestry door till someone answered.
But it wasn’t necessary. The south door was open, and a workman was standing in it, under the porch just out of the rain, arguing with a young man in a clerical collar.
“You promised the clerestory would be completed by the twenty-second and here it is the fifteenth and you’ve not even begun the varnishing of the new pews,” the curate, who was pale and rather pop-eyed, though that might have been from the workman, was saying.
The workman looked as though he had heard all this before and would hear it again. “We carn’t start the varnishin, guv, till they’re done in the clerestory ‘cuz o’ the dust.”
“Well, then, complete the work in the clerestory.”
He shook his head. “Carn’t. Bill as wuz puttin’ the steel girders in the beams is ‘ome sick.”
“Well, when will he be back? The work must be completed by next Saturday. That’s the date of our church bazaar.”
The workman gave him the identical shrug I had seen an electrician give Lady Schrapnell three weeks ago, and it occurred to me it was a pity she wasn’t here. She’d have cuffed him smartly on the ear, and the work would have been done by Friday. Or Thursday.
“Cud be tomorra, cud be next month. Don’t see wot you need new pews for anyways. I liked the aud box pews.”
“You are not a member of the clergy,” the curate said, getting more pop-eyed, “or an expert on modern church architecture. Next month is not good enough. The renovations must be completed by the twenty-second.”
The workman spit on the damp porch and sauntered back into the church.
“Pardon me,” I said, running up to the curate before he could disappear, too. “I wondered if we might tour the church.”
“Oh, no!” the curate said, looking wildly round like a housewife surprised by unexpected guests. “We’re in the midst of major renovations to the clerestory and the bell tower. The church is officially closed until the thirty-first of July, at which time the vicar would be delighted to conduct you on a tour.”
“That’s too late,” I said. “And it’s the renovations we’ve come to see. The church at Muchings End is badly in need of them. The altar’s positively mediaeval.”
“Oh, but,” he said reluctantly, “the thing is, we’re trying to prepare for the church bazaar, and—”
“Church bazaar!” I said. “What a wonderful coincidence! Mrs. Mering has just put on a bazaar at Muchings End.”
“Mrs. Mering?” the curate said, looking back at the door as if he’d like to escape through it. “Oh, but the church is in no fit condition for ladies. You wouldn’t be able to see the choir or the altar. There’s sawdust everywhere, and workmen’s tools.”
“The ladies won’t mind,” I said, putting myself firmly between him and the door. “Sawdust is exactly what they’ve come to see.”
Baine came running up with an umbrella, which he handed to me. I handed it back. “Go and bring the carriage round,” I said to him. “Tell Mrs. Mering we can tour the church.”