Free The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton by Elizabeth Speller, Georgina Capel Page A

cloth covering it, revealing a faded green damask one underneath. Below that the altar stone was battered but there were remains of carving on the corners. He let the cloth drop and as he did so wondered who had put the simple vase of flowers on it, given that the church was rarely used now. He pushed a faded carpet aside with his foot, then checked his watch. When he had seen the church before, he had noticed the setting sun had not shone directly through the west window. Now he got out his compass. As he did so, he heard a noise behind him and went to open the door. Patrick stood in the porch, putting out his cigarette before entering. Once inside, he stood still and looked around.
    ‘It’s a pity we lost our rector. There was something about this place when I was a boy: Mama, Papa, the village, every Sunday, week in, week out, with Morning Prayers by rote and the schoolmistress on the organ, a beat behind in the hymns. Yet my father believed only in himself and my mother remained a secret Roman Catholic all her life, with her missal hidden in her dressing table. I once found her rosary on the floor under the bell here. It was very old—I’d never seen it before: ebony, I think it must have been. She was horrified when I asked her if it was hers. Poor old Mama. Always so frightened of Father, when really he was just a bit of a bully, but something in her meekness, or perhaps his resentment of her money, used to spur him on to goad her. And he was a bit of a one for pinching servant girls’ bottoms. He would probably have thought the rosary was a necklace. He wasn’t terribly up on theology, apart from insisting that Catholicism was somehow treasonably foreign, like most other loyal English gentlemen at the time.’
    He looked around him.
    ‘Are they going to restore the organ?’
    It stood almost out of sight to one side of the nave, a small instrument, probably dating back to the restoration of the church. Pipes filled the arch around it. The dark lid was scratched and dusty. Patrick opened it and made a face, then sat at the organ stool, turned on an electric switch and pulled out a couple of stops. As he did so the church door opened again and a woman’s figure was silhouetted in the doorway. As she walked forward Laurence could see it was Eleanor. She came and stood next to him. Patrick played a chord; the sound was thin but not unpleasant. He followed this with a few bars of what Laurence thought was Bach but the organ seemed too small for the piece and some keys were sticking. Patrick, an unlit cigarette now clamped in his mouth, turned to look at Eleanor and then, with his eyes half shut, launched into some dance music. She laughed. Laurence could see that he’d be a good performer, given a piano. His face was animated and he tossed his floppy fringe out of his eyes. Then, almost as soon as he had got going, he stopped with a burst of ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank in Monte Carlo’. Eleanor clapped. ‘Bravo,’ she said. ‘Encore.’
    ‘No. Laurence wants to give the church a once-over and I promised I would be as silent as an Easton revenant.’
    Laurence’s heart sank at the thought that he would now have an audience of two, but in fact Eleanor moved away and sat facing the altar, while Patrick leafed through a hymnal. When Laurence walked to the base of the bell tower, Patrick turned to watch him, but Eleanor, apparently deep in thought, did not. A single rope was fastened to the wall and the solitary bell hung not far above him. At the west window he opened his compass again. He tapped it twice and it was as he thought. The orientation was not east-west as churches usually were, but north-east-south-west. The floor at this end was stone-flagged, with the marks of earlier dividing walls.
    Patrick, who had moved closer, asked him, ‘What were those, do you think?’
    ‘Probably a tiny chapel, a Lady Chapel, I imagine. Removed at the Reformation, probably.’
    Patrick said, ‘I like to think of Mama