What Remains of Heaven

The Reverend pushed to his feet, his knees creaking, his breath bunching hot in his throat as he whirled about to peer helplessly into the gloom. “Who’s there?”

His own voice echoed back at him. He swallowed hard, feeling an odd mixture of foolishness and terror. “Is anybody there?”

The urge to bolt toward the west door was strong. But the fat beeswax candles flanking the altar were atrociously dear; he never should have lit them. It had been a foolish extravagance, however spooked he might be.

Bent on extinguishing the flames quickly, he lurched up the step toward the altar, stumbling in his haste. Then he threw another frightened glance toward the nave and whispered, “Oh, my God.”

Chapter 22

SATURDAY, 11 JULY 1812

The next morning, Sebastian drove out toward Prescott Grange, intending to speak to the widow of Sir Nigel Prescott. But when he passed through Tanfield Hill, he found the village green crowded with men fanning out under the direction of the Squire, Douglas Pyle.

“What’s all this?” asked Sebastian, reining in beside him.

“That fool priest,” said the Squire. “He’s gone missing. According to Mrs. Earnshaw, he went out last night, saying he couldn’t remember if he’d locked the sacristy door. Nobody’s seen him since.”

Sebastian glanced over at the ancient church, its heavy sandstone walls looking dark and brooding beneath the cloudy sky. “Did you check the crypt?”

The Squire drew in a deep breath that lifted his broad chest, and blew it out slowly. “Aye, we did. He’s not there, thank God. Although we did find this.” He slipped something from his waistcoat and held it out.

Sebastian found himself staring at a black carved classical profile mounted on a heavy silver setting. “Sir Nigel’s ring?”

The Squire nodded. “One of the lads found it in the rubble near those old collapsed coffins. Musta got kicked back there somehow, which is why we didn’t see it before.”

Sebastian handed the ring back. “Does Earnshaw do this often? Visit the church at night, I mean?”

“His wife says sometimes. When he’s troubled.”

“He was troubled?”

“She says he seemed to be.”

“Does she know about what?”

The Squire shook his head. “He’s been acting queer ever since he found the bodies in the crypt. But then, who wouldn’t?”

“True,” said Sebastian. He studied the Squire’s pleasant, fleshy face. “How well did you know Sir Nigel Prescott?”

“Sir Nigel? Not all that well. He was a good bit older’n me.” The Squire rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I hear they’re saying the fright in blue velvet was him.”

“So it would seem.”

The Squire shook his head. “It’s unsettling to think about it, him lying there with a knife stuck in his back right beneath our feet, every Sunday, for close onto thirty years. And no one knew it.”

Sebastian watched the men moving off in all directions. “I understand he was an unpleasant man.”

“Unpleasant?” The Squire grunted. “You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone around here with something nice to say about him.”

“It’s not often you see brothers so unlike each other.”

The Squire rubbed a hand over his jaw and looked away, as if choosing his words carefully. “I’ve heard tales about old Lady Prescott—Sir Nigel’s mother—if you know what I mean? There wasn’t a strong family resemblance between Francis Prescott and the rest of his brothers and sisters.”

“Yet Prescott Grange would have passed to the Bishop, would it not, if Sir Peter hadn’t been born?”

“Aye, that it would,” said the Squire, shaking his head. “Who’d have thought, with five sons?” He shook his head again, as if to underscore the point. “Five sons. And if not for that wee posthumous babe, the youngest would have inherited it all.”

The estate Sir Peter Prescott had inherited at birth from his dead father lay just to the north of the village, on the edge of Hounslow Heath. Sebastian drove through well-tended, ripening fields of barley and wheat and oats waving gently in the July breeze. Fat brown cows grazed pastures edged by sturdy stone walls and thick hedgerows. Children played outside thatched cottages with dogs that loped, barking, behind the curricle as he bowled up the lane to the ancient manor house.

The house itself was a picturesque, rambling conglomerate, some parts half-timbered, some of red Tudor brick, others of medieval stone, all grouped around a broad paved quadrangle and centered on a great hall with an arch-braced roof that must have dated back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

Lady Prescott, mother to the current baronet and widow of Sir Nigel, was in the gardens that stretched to the east of the ancient hall. She had a basket looped over one arm and secateurs in hand as she worked snipping blooms from the wide, riotous border of peonies and roses, hollyhocks and lavender that that ran along the grassy embankment of what had once been a moat. She was a small, slim woman, her guinea gold hair fading slowly to gray, her soft blue eyes sad beneath the wide brim of her hat as she turned at Sebastian’s approach. Now somewhere in her fifties, she wore a plain black gown made high at the neck, as befitted a woman in deepest mourning for both her husband and her husband’s brother.

“I’m sorry my son isn’t here to receive you,” she said, extending her hand to Sebastian. “But he should return presently. I believe he’s conferring with workmen making repairs on some of the cottages.” She passed the flower basket and secateurs to the footman who’d escorted Sebastian and said to the man with a smile, “Ask Mrs. Norwood to put these in water for me, will you, Frederick?”

“Actually, I saw Sir Peter yesterday,” said Sebastian as the footman withdrew with a bow. “I was hoping I might be able to speak with you.”

She nodded. “Sir Henry told me the Archbishop had asked for your assistance in this dreadful business. I’m willing to help in any way I can.”

They turned to walk together along the border. The day was warm despite the clouds, the pinks and scarlets of the rambling roses bright in the flat light. She said, “You’d think that after thirty years, I wouldn’t find the discovery of Sir Nigel’s body such a shock. But somehow, thinking someone is dead and knowing it for certain are two entirely different things.”

Sebastian studied her fine-boned face, the gentle fan of lines that bracketed her eyes. She was still a remarkably attractive woman; in her prime, she must have been stunning. He said, “What did you think had happened to Sir Nigel when he disappeared?”

“At first? When his horse was discovered wandering the heath, I thought he must have suffered some sort of accident. That he’d be found under a bush, injured.”

“And when he wasn’t found?”

“In all honesty? I assumed someone had killed him.”

“Any idea who?”

She glanced over at him, the faintest hint of an odd smile touching the edges of her lips. “Tell me something, Lord Devlin: You’ve obviously spoken to people who knew my husband. Have you found anyone who knew him well