The Confession - Charles Todd [47]
He stared into the shadowy interior, trying to read the names on the marble squares that marked each interment. But it was too dark, and all he could decipher were the inscriptions on a pair of plaques nearest the grille.
The first was a memorial to Captain Malcolm Arthur George Russell, his dates, and the final inscription, DIED OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN THE RELIEF OF MAFEKING.
Below it was the memorial to his wife: IN LOVING MEMORY OF EMILY ELIZABETH MARGARET TALBOT RUSSELL, and the dates of her birth and her disappearance.
This was the plaque that Morrison had spoken of, the one villagers had objected to because of the possibility that Mrs. Russell was a suicide.
He walked on, beyond the lilacs that encircled the mausoleum, as if setting it off in death from the village just as the circumstances of their material worth had set the occupants apart in life.
Another ten steps, and he stumbled over what he thought at first was a low stone wall marking the edge of the churchyard and nearly invisible in the thick grass that hadn’t been mown here.
But it wasn’t that sort of wall. Pushing aside the grass and brambles, he followed it some distance before he reached the end and realized that it turned. Here the stones had been pulled apart and tossed about, one or two with carvings that must have come from around a doorway, others cut and dressed. Many of them were blackened, as if they had been enveloped in flames.
I’ve found the missing church, Rutledge thought, the much older one that had stood here next to its churchyard. And it would make sense too that the Russell mausoleum, rather than being at the outer fringe of holy ground—as it now appeared to be—had actually stood nearest the church. In its shadow, where the Russells could take their rightful place at the last trump.
He paced the breadth and then the length of the foundation. It had been small, like many early village churches, and over the years after what must have been a disastrous fire, stones must have found their way into byres and walls, for stone was scarce out here, and brick had been the main building material.
Morrison, the rector, had talked about drainage issues, and the church here was far enough from the river in flood stage to survive. Here too a crypt could be dug, and the dead could lie in the earth, not raised tombs.
There was no way to judge how long ago the church had burned—or even when it had been built. Had its fate been decided in the upheaval and dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, or had the long arm of Cromwell reached even Furnham, with his strong Puritan revulsion for anything that smacked of High Church?
Hamish said, “Naught so dramatic. Verra’ likely it came down in a storm, and yon village couldna’ afford to rebuild it.” Rutledge smiled to himself. Depend on Hamish to see the practical, not the fanciful. The staunch Covenanter whose pragmatism had often made sense of the nonsense of war and military decisions.
Walking back to the motorcar, he said aloud, “Furnham hasn’t struck me as a godly place.”
Hamish retorted, “More than likely they fear the devil.”
He continued along this ill-kept track and saw that a mile before it reached the London road, a small cottage stood alone in a clearing, the marsh grass beaten back and a pair of trees as tall as the low roof sheltering it.
Rutledge would never have guessed that this was St. Edward’s Rectory—it looked far more like a farm laborer’s cottage—if he hadn’t noticed the rector, his sleeves rolled to his elbow, working in his garden.
Morrison looked up just then, seemed surprised to see Rutledge in front of his house, then quickly turned to look back the way the Londoner had come.
It was an odd reaction.