The Ely Testament (36 page)

Mary wrote the story many years afterwards, when she was an old lady with grandchildren and wished to put the tale down in black and white. Her sister Anne had not been so fortunate. She was more affected by Loyer's fate than Mary. Indeed, she had even started a fire as a diversionary tactic to help the aristocrat escape. The flames had swiftly been extinguished – it was not the same fire that destroyed parts of Stilwell Manor, which occurred many years later – but Anne continued to feel deeply her responsibility, her guilt, in the death of the gallant royalist. Unlike her sister, she never married but eventually entered a convent in the Low Countries.

There was other material in the Ely Testament, which Tomlinson had undoubtedly discovered on an early visit to Phoenix House while he was, as he would have put it, fossicking around in its older parts, perhaps in the top floor room where Tom Ansell had searched in vain for Alexander Lye's will. But it was the story of the diamond that he seized on. The skeleton in the alcove was indeed wearing a locket on a thin silver chain, which was now blackened with age, but the locket was empty. If the locket had ever held a diamond, no one knew what had become of it since neither Tomlinson nor Arthur Arnett (or ‘Mute') could have laid hands on the thing. The assumption was that one of the village burying party had taken the precious stone more than two centuries earlier.

What About the Other Characters?

W
hat happened to some of the other characters in this story? Mr and Mrs Chase were not involved in the climactic confrontation in the churchyard of St Ethelwine's. They learned later of the death of Arthur Arnett – a person who meant nothing to Bella and was known to Cyrus only under the guise of Mute in
Funereal Matters
– and his responsibility for two murders. Bella grieved mildly for Charles Tomlinson's demise but, as she heard more about his rackety background, she began to think she'd had a lucky escape from a more intricate involvement with him.

Cyrus more or less abandoned his work on the coffin-bird. It was tainted by Tomlinson's interference, and the security-coffin itself had been the site of Eric Fort's murder. In any case he was developing a fresh device for averting the horror of premature burial, a device more in keeping with the forward-looking spirit of the century. What if, he asked himself, the man or woman trapped underground was able to communicate directly with those on the surface by means of a telegraphing mechanism, a Morse code apparatus? Such a machine would have the advantage of occupying little space in the coffin, and if placed next to the supposedly dead person it could be operated merely with one or two fingers.

A message could be sent with a real assurance that it would be answered. There could be no error in understanding the straightforward appeal produced by a repeatedly pressed buzzer. For those who had mastered Morse code a more elaborate communication, perhaps I HAVE BEEN BURIED ALIVE, would be possible. Nor would the system be expensive to operate. An entire cemetery, a whole city's worth of cemeteries, could contain coffins equipped with telegraphic machines, each of them linked to a single office where one man – one single man! – might be on duty (with another available for the night-time, of course). True, there were problems involving dynamos, generators, coils and wires but Cyrus felt certain that these could be overcome.

Cyrus continues to work on his transmitting device in the workshop in the bottom of his garden. From time to time he remembers that a man was murdered in this very place, an unfortunate individual named Eric Fort who was on his way to see Cyrus when he was waylaid by Arthur Arnett. Fort seems to have been a decent enough individual, a toiler in the funereal field like himself, though at a less elevated level. Cyrus thinks that perhaps he ought to commemorate Fort's passing in some way but he is not quite certain how to do this.

He has already invented a name for the telegraphic machine. It will be called ‘The Chase Communicator'. He believes that his father would be proud of him and he relishes the echo of ‘The Chase Coupler' in his choice of name. He feels that a public statue, enshrining his contribution to mankind's well-being (and well-dying!), is not such an absurd prospect after all. He even strikes statue-like poses every now and then in the privacy of his workshop.

Mr and Mrs Lye stayed together at Phoenix House in Upper Fen. Lydia, who was more sensible than Bella, remembered her friendship with her Tomlinson cousin with a slight shudder. The idea that he had cultivated her acquaintance partly to have a pretext to search for some non-existent treasure was unsettling. So Lydia looked more affectionately at her husband, a good man if not a very effectual one. Her attitude towards Ernest was coloured slightly by the fact that shortly after his step-brother's death, he was also plunged into mourning for his step-sister, the aged Miss Edith, who fell asleep one afternoon during teatime and never woke up again.

Ernest was therefore the beneficiary not only of Alexander's eventually discovered will but of Edith's estate too. He gained the house in Regent's Park as well as enough capital (in stocks and bonds) to afford the cost of repairs, even renovation, on Phoenix House. Possession of the Regent's Park house provided that ‘little place in town', in fact quite a big one, for which Lydia had always hoped. Ernest is happy enough to accompany Lydia on their stays in London. He doesn't do a great deal while she goes out and about, but he reads widely and contemplates writing a book about the folklore of the fens.

As for the Reverend George Eames, he too stayed on in Upper Fen. He did not rejoice at the violent deaths of his old enemies, Charles Tomlinson and Arthur Arnett, although in his more indulgent moments he believed it might be an instance of higher judgement. The way Arnett had eliminated Tomlinson, and then himself, brought to mind the words of Psalm 37, specifically that verse (the twentieth) which describes the wicked as being like the fat of sacrificial lambs since ‘they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.'

Mr Eames had other and happier matters to occupy him. Within a few months of that unfortunate business in the St Ethelwine's crypt he was surprised to find himself married. There'd been a wife on his doorstep all the time. Or rather, inside his door. It was either the widowed Mrs Walters or the young and shy housemaid Hannah. You may take your pick as to which he chose. Or which chose him. The result is that he is much more content. His sermons may not be gentle but they are less severe on human failings. In fact, he no longer toils over his sermons as he used to. He is even growing to like the backwater which is Upper Fen.

Nobody lost a great deal by the murders and the suicide. Eric Fort, the man who ran errands for Willow & Son, had no dependants or family, apart from his recently deceased wife. The ring that he put into pawn in Bartle & Co. in Cambridge is still there. Alfred Jenkins, the editor of
Funereal Matters
, was both excited and alarmed to discover that his popular columnist Mute had committed murder twice over. But all the bad publicity caused a temporary rise in the circulation of
F.M.
, and he was able to pen a couple of articles along the lines of ‘The Murderer Dwelling in Our Midst' for the more sensational papers.

Of course, the magazine
The New Moon
never appeared, and so Helen Ansell was deprived of the chance of publishing a portrait of Cambridge or Ely. She was not too troubled, however. The idea of having been commissioned, if unknowingly, by a murderer was disturbing. Besides, she had other things on her mind as Tom found out on Christmas Eve, when he made some casual, commiserating remark to her about it being a pity – in a way – that they would never see an issue of Mr Arnett's periodical
The New Moon
. Helen, who was looking blooming, said, ‘Never mind, Tom. There is another issue I'm looking forward to seeing.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘One that takes only two authors. I expect it to come out around next July. It will be a summer issue.'

‘It will? What's it called?'

‘Tom, you are very slow sometimes. I don't know exactly what “it” will be called. The authors have yet to decide. But part of his name – or hers – will be Ansell.'

Summer, 1645

A
nne paused by the edge of the fen. She looked at the diamond as it lay in her palm. As vivid as the object before her eyes was the sight of Mr Loyer fleeing from Stilwell Manor, stumbling over the wall, being surrounded in the churchyard and then cut down by the brutish Trafford. Anne shuddered. She wanted nothing to do with the precious stone that he had pressed into her hand, even if it came from King Charles. She wanted nothing more to do with worldly things. She closed her hand, raised her arm and threw the thing – a crystal which flashed red or blue or green wherever it caught the light – so that it arced through the air and landed somewhere, out of sight, gone for good.