Free The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

a little matter of
    business. A stroll, perhaps, towards the chapel, and a further meeting arranged – at some
    mutually convenient place and time in town – in order to conclude matters. Then I would
    secure my advantage, complete and final.

    Thus I imagined as I continued to stroll slowly up and down the path, as if in
    sober contemplation of my surroundings. I took out my watch. A few moments later the
    church clock tolled three.

    I turned back towards the gates to see a hearse pulled by four horses –
    ostrich-plumed and richly caparisoned – enter the grounds, followed by two mourning
    coaches and a number of smaller carriages swathed in rich black velvet. I counted four
    mutes in their gowns, and a little group of perhaps half a dozen pages. A moderately
    expensive affair, I reflected, in spite of Mr Trendle’s plain theology.

    A little knot of villagers, not of the family party, followed the procession a little
    way behind. I scanned this group closely, moving nearer, and as quickly as I dared, to try
    and make out my man.

    The cortège entered through one of the arches of the Chapel; the coffin was
    removed by the bearers and taken inside; the mourners descended and followed the
    doleful burden.

    I waited a little distance off. His mother – there – for sure; a slight figure holding
    for support against the arm of a tall younger gentleman, perhaps his brother. I did not
    detect a wife or children, for which I was grateful. But the sight of his poor mother
    unnerved me momentarily, as I saw again in memory the rictus smile her son had given
    me as I had withdrawn the knife from his neck.

    As the members of the family party took their places in the Chapel, I surveyed the
    accompanying group of neighbours and others for a second time. Jukes must be amongst
    them, but his distinctive squat figure was not apparent to me. Then the thought strikes me
    that he might send an agent; though it seems unlikely, I sweep my eye once more over the
    onlookers, and move closer, until I am a part of the little crowd.

    ‘Were you acquainted with Mr Trendle, sir?’

    The plaintive enquirer was a little person of some rotundity, who gazed up at me
    through pale grey-green eyes from behind a pair of gold spectacles.

    ‘Slightly, ma’am,’ I replied.

    My companion shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘Such a wonderful man –
    wonderful. So good and generous, so adoring of his mamma. You know Mrs Trendle, I
    dare say?’

    ‘Slightly.’

    ‘But perhaps not her late husband?’

    ‘No, indeed.’

    I did not wish to keep up the conversation, but she came back again.

    ‘You are of the Chapel, perhaps?’

    I replied that I had known the deceased only through business.

    ‘Ah, business. I do not understand business. But Mr Trendle did. Such a clever
    man! What the dear people in Africa will do without him I cannot think.’

    She continued her lament for some time, animadverting in particular, with a
    curious kind of wistful relish, against the wickedness and certain damnation of the person
    who had thus deprived the Africans of their great champion.

    Eventually, unencouraged by any response from me, she smiled faintly and
    waddled away, her fluttering mourning clothes making her seem like a great aggregated
    ball of soot escaped from the prison of fog that still lay in a dark looming bar across the
    murmuring city at our back, pressing down on the poor souls beneath like the weight of
    sin itself.

    No sign. Nothing. I moved about the crowd, anxious to be part of it but wary of
    any individual contact. When would he come? Would he come?

    In due course, the Chapel bell tolled out and the coffin, followed by the mourners
    and their attendants, was carried back out to the awaiting hearse. Slowly, the procession
    wound its way to the place that had been prepared.

    The ceremony of interment was duly performed by an elderly white-haired
    clergyman, and the usual displays of grief and abandonment were displayed. I