Giotto's Hand

Margaret Dunstan-Beaumont’s tombstone was on the west wall of the north transept, spoiled only by having a huge pile of old parish magazines stacked beneath and around it. He looked through them at random standard contents: raffles and recipes, fêtes and fundraising and harvest festivals. Every year the same: the first cuckoo, the weather, and Miss Beaumont’s gracious speech opening the fête. The very stuff of the rustic myth. Wonderful as long as you don’t live near it.

Then back to the tombstones, especially the flashier eighteenth-century efforts, all Latin poetry and swooning maidens which got the prime space in the crossing and the choir. Much more ostentatious than the more modest tombstones in the graveyard outside. Joan Barton got a simple stone slab with carving, these people were inside in the dry church, with swags and ornaments and cherubs and paeans of praise for their goodness. Joan Barton, however, got fresh wild flowers; these were just objects of mild interest for the occasional passing tourist. Take your pick.

Jonathan Argyll, tourist, was tucked into the transept thinking about death and pictures, when he had a prickling feeling under his skin. Into his mind popped, quite unbidden and quite unconnected to anything else, the memory that Godfrey Kneller had come to England in the 1670s. And Margaret Dunstan-Beaumont had been married before 1646, must have been, so she could be given a natty little Leonardo sketch by Arundel. He was just about to pin down why this was important when his attention was distracted again. From the small door on the other side, the room where the vicar kept his vestments, and stacked spare prayer books and empty vases, came a murmur of voices. One he thought he recognized.

Argyll was not a nosy person, so he thought, although he would frequently admit to being inquisitive. And it was in the spirit of enquiry, rather than one of nosiness, that he found himself approaching the door softly, just to confirm who it was. He honestly believed that he had not the slightest intention of listening in, an activity he firmly thought was most impolite.

However, it is inevitable that, in order to ascertain the ownership of voices, you have to hear at least a little of what they are saying. Only a pedant would try to make a distinction between listening to the sound of voices, and listening to the words those sounds embody. Whether motivated by nosiness or curious enquiry, therefore, Argyll ended up listening to a conversation between Mary Verney and George Barton.

Overcoming his instincts for discretion, Argyll concentrated on the words they were saying.

“So what do you think you should do?” came the clear, melodious and kindly voice of Mary Verney.

“I dunno. Nothing, I guess.”

“It’s very serious, as you know. If the police find out, you’ll go to jail. For a long time. Is there anything you want from me?”

“Oh, no. I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Verney. As long as you say nothing, then everything will be fine, I reckon. So stupid, the whole thing. If I hadn’t had the fight with him, I wouldn’t have drunk too much, and if I hadn’t drunk too much, I wouldn’t have gone back there and…”

“Yes, I understand. But you did, and here you are, talking to me about it. But let me get this clear. You can live with it? You don’t want just to go to the police and get it over with?”

“Nah. If that idiot Gordon were going to take the blame, then yes, I’d have to. Of course I would. I wouldn’t let him go to jail, no matter what the cost. You know that. But Gordon’s been let out.”

“Well. I don’t know what to say.”

“He had it coming,” George said with a sudden intensity. “He deserved it. You know something, Mrs. Verney? The world’s a better place without him. Do as you’re done by, that’s what I say. So he’s no reason to complain. He was a nasty man and justice has been done, as far as I’m concerned. That’s all there is to be said about it. I’m not going to lose one jot of sleep over him.”

Fascinating though it was, Argyll did not stay to hear any more. He felt a sneeze coming on and, rather than being caught red-handed, or rather red-eared, by the vestry door, he scuttled off behind a tomb and let rip there. It was the flower arrangements that did it, he decided later. Very pretty and showing proper community spirit, but the pollen really went up his nose. Any further conversation was, anyway, cut short fairly abruptly when his monumental sneeze erupted and echoed around the church. By the time Mary Verney emerged, he was to be found standing far away, oblivious to the world and staring enraptured at a mid-eighteenth-century tablet extolling the virtues of Sir Henry Beaumont, man of commerce and of charity, greatly missed by all who knew him.

“Oh, hello,” he said lightly and, to his mind with an utterly false tone of surprise in his voice. “I thought I was alone in here. Where did you spring from?”