Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [59]
The pews were filling up. Quinton Pascoe passed up the aisle, finding himself a seat as far as possible from John Dalgetty and his wife. Nowhere among the forest of black hats of every shape and decoration could Charlotte see any that looked as if they might belong to Celeste or Angeline Worlingham.
The organ changed pitch abruptly and the service began. Clitheridge was intensely nervous; his voice cracked into falsetto and back again. Twice he lost his place in what must surely be long-familiar passages and rumbled to regain himself, only making his mistake the more obvious. Charlotte ached for him, and heard Aunt Vespasia beside her sigh with exasperation. Somerset Carlisle buried his face in his hands, but whether he was thinking of Clemency, or the vicar, she did not know.
Charlotte found her own attention wandering. It was probably the safest thing to do; Clitheridge was unbearable, and the young curate was so full of genuine distress she found it too harrowing to look at him. Instead her eyes roamed upward over and across traceries of stone, plaques of long-dead worthies, and eventually, with a jolt of returning memory, to the Worlingham window with its almost completed picture of the late bishop in the thin disguise of Jeremiah, surrounded by other patriarchs and topped by an angel. She recognized the bishop quite easily. The face was indistinct—the medium enforced it—but the thick curls of white hair, so like an aureole in the glass with the light shining through, was exactly like the portrait in the family hallway and it was unmistakable. It was a remarkably handsome memorial and must have cost a sizable sum. No wonder Josiah Hatch was proud of it.
At last the formal part of the service was over and with immense relief the final amen was said, and the congregation rose to follow the coffin out into the graveyard, where they all stood huddled in a bitter west wind while the body was interred.
Charlotte shivered and moved a little closer to Aunt Vespasia, and behind her half a step, to shield her from the gusts, which if the sky had been less clear, would surely have carried snow. She stared across the open grave with Clitheridge standing at the edge, his cassock whipping around his ankles and his face strained with embarrassment and apprehension. A couple of yards away Alfred Lutterworth was planted squarely, ignoring the cold, his face somber in reflection, his thoughts unreadable. Next to him, but several feet away, Stephen Shaw was folded in a mixture of private anger and grief, the emotion so deep in his face only the crudest of strangers would have intruded. Amos Lindsay stood silently at his elbow.
Josiah Hatch was taking control of the pallbearers. He was a sidesman and used to some responsibility. His expression was grim, but he did his duty meticulously and not a word or a movement was omitted or performed without ceremony. It was done to an exactness that honored the dead and preserved the importance above all of the litany and tradition of the church.
Clitheridge was obviously relieved to allow someone else to take over, however pedantic. Only the curate seemed less than pleased. His bony features and wide mouth reflected some impatience that appeared to increase his grief.
Charlotte had been quite correct, there were about fifty people present, most of them men, and quite definitely neither Angeline nor Celeste Worlingham were among them; nor was Flora Lutterworth.
“Why are the Worlinghams not here?” she