Nothing more happened to the Dean that night, but he did not sleep. At breakfast the following morning his wife noted how pale and drawn he looked, but she offered no solicitude. That would have been to break the barrier that had arisen between them, and she could not do that. She felt safer behind it. The Dean would have been glad of some comfort, but he, like her, had passed the point of being able to ask for it.
That afternoon in the cathedral Dean Coombe was present when Palmer and his men began to ease away the memorial slab to Jeremiah Staveley. All had been prepared for the possibility of human remains being found in a recess behind the stone, but no one had anticipated the smell. As the slab, supported by ropes, came slowly away to be laid on a specially constructed wooden cradle, an overpowering odour pervaded not only the north transept but the whole cathedral. The organist stopped playing and several of the workmen took their hands off the stone slab to put handkerchiefs up to their noses. For a moment the memorial stone swung free on its ropes and threatened to crash into the wall and break into fragments, but just in time Palmer called his men to order and the object was laid to rest in its cradle on the scaffolding.
For almost half a minute after this had happened, nothing could be heard in that great cathedral but the sound of coughing and retching. One of the apprentice boys was violently ill into the font. Those who recalled the incident to me describe the odour as being one of mould, more vegetable than animal, “like,” as one told me, “a heap of decaying cucumbers in a damp cellar.” Others offered different similes, but all agreed that the scent stayed with them, on their clothes and in their nostrils for several days. Another told me that from that day forward he could never so much as look at a ripe cheese without feeling ill.
It was a while therefore before those present could bear to look at what the removal of the slab had revealed. When they did they found themselves looking at a figure that strikingly resembled the painted alabaster effigy which had been removed the previous day.
It was the body of a man in a black clerical gown with his arms crossed over his chest. The skin was still present, but dark yellow, leathery and stretched tightly over the bones. The eyes had fallen into the skull, the nose was somewhat flattened, but otherwise the face was in a remarkable state of preservation. As with the alabaster effigy, the mouth gaped slightly to reveal a set of jagged and discoloured teeth. The hair and beard were an intense and almost lustrous black. Even the nails were still present on the digits of the skeletal hands and feet. A seal ring on the third finger of the left hand was of bright, untarnished gold incised with an unusually elaborate geometrical figure.
In silence the company wondered at this strange vision, and it occurred to several of them that it was astonishing that the corpse still remained upright. Then, as they looked the body began to collapse and disintegrate before their eyes. The first thing to go was the lower jaw, which fell off the face and shattered into a thousand dusty fragments on the cathedral floor. Then, almost like a living thing, the corpse buckled at the knees, lurched slightly forward and plunged to the ground from its recess. A dreary sound, half way between a rattle and a sigh, accompanied this final dissolution.
It was a shocking moment, but the Dean was the first to recover from it. He commanded that the remains should be gathered up and placed in the long deal box which had been provided for the purpose.
While this was being done the Dean suddenly uttered a sharp: “No you don’t, young man!” and sprang upon one of the apprentices who had been putting Canon Staveley’s bones into the box. Dean Coombe thrust his hand into one of the boy’s pockets and brought out a bright, golden object. It was Staveley’s seal ring.
When I interviewed that boy ten years later, he was by then a most respectable young man, and the owner of a thriving building business in Morchester. He told me honestly that he had intended to steal the ring and sell it to buy medicine for his sick mother. Nevertheless, he said, he came to be very glad that he had been caught out in the theft. He also told me that Dean Coombe had not returned the ring to the deal box but had placed it in his waistcoat pocket, muttering something about “the cathedral museum”. I can testify that there is no sixteenth century seal ring among the antiquities on display in the Morchester Cathedral Museum.
When he left the cathedral later that day Dean Coombe seemed in more than usually good spirits. So we will leave him for a moment and return to the young apprentice whom I have mentioned. His name was Unsworth and he told me that Palmer, the head mason, a strict but fair man, had spoken to him sharply about the attempted theft, but knowing his situation with a sick mother and no father, said he would not dismiss him. Nevertheless, as a punishment, he made the boy stay on in the cathedral to sweep and tidy up after the other workmen had gone. Never, Unsworth told me, had he performed a task with greater reluctance.
If there had not been a verger or somebody about — Unsworth heard footsteps occasionally and some fragments of dry, muttered conversation — the boy might have fled the scene and braved the consequences. As it was, he did his work conscientiously in spite of the smell which was still all-pervasive.
One of his last tasks was to nail down the lid of the deal box which held the remains of Canon Staveley. Before the body was hidden forever from public gaze Unsworth felt a compulsion to take a last look at the corpse. Much of it had turned to dust but parts of the skull and the long thin limbs were intact with shreds of parchment skin still clinging to the bone. Curiously, the black gown in which Staveley was clothed had suffered even more than the body from exposure to the air. It was now in rags and tatters, no longer recognisable as a cassock.
Unsworth covered the deal box with the lid and banged in the nails with a hammer to secure it. With each blow of the hammer Unsworth fancied he heard a cry, distant, perhaps coming from a dog or a cat outside the cathedral. He finished his work with reckless speed.
As he left the cathedral, Unsworth told me, some sort of choir practice was in progress. He remembers the groan of the organ and a piercingly high treble voice singing in a style that was unfamiliar to him. Nevertheless he remembered the words because he knew that they came from the end of the 137th Psalm:
“Happy shall he be that taketh thy children and dasheth them against the stones.”
As he stepped outside the cathedral Unsworth saw that the sun was low in the horizon sinking through a yellow sky dappled with purple cloudlets. He breathed the untainted evening air with relief. There were not many people about in the close and the noise of the day was hushed. The rooks had settled into their nests in the elms. It was a still evening with very little wind, perhaps even a trifle oppressive.
Unsworth had come out of the west door of the cathedral, the only one open at that time of day, but his home lay to the east of it. His quickest route home took him around the northern side of the cathedral with the setting sun behind him. Unsworth remembers feeling a vague sense of apprehension as he set off.
Along the northern side of the close were a few private dwellings and a long low stretch of almshouses occupied by the poor pensioners of the diocese. Unsworth could see a few of their windows dimly glowing. In front of these almshouses were little gardens bordered by a low stone wall with gates in them for each dwelling. Most of these gates were wooden and painted white which showed up against the grey stone houses and the deepening violet of the northern sky. As he rounded the north transept of the cathedral Unsworth had to pass quite near to these gates and it was then that he saw a human figure silhouetted against one of them.
He took the figure to be that of a man because he could see the legs which were unnaturally long and thin, almost stick-like in appearance. The arms were similarly emaciated and the head narrow and oblong. He could not see any clothes on the creature except for a few black rags, which fluttered faintly in the mild evening breeze.
He did not care to look too closely, but he took it to be some drunken vagrant, not simply because of the rags but because of the way it moved. It was swaying uneasily from side to side and waving its arms about. Unsworth told me that he was reminded of some long-legged insect, perhaps a spider, that has become stuck in a pool of jam and is making frantic efforts to escape from its entrapment. The thinness of those writhing legs and arms appalled him.
Unsworth started to run, but was brought up short by the sound of a cry. It was perfectly expressive, but so high above a human pitch that it resembled a dog whistle. It pierced his brain and stopped him from moving. The noise spoke to him of desolation and rage, like that of a child that has been left to scream in its cot, except that the cry was even more shrill and had no innocence to it. It was the shrieking fury of an old, old man. Unsworth found that his legs could not move. Looking behind him he saw that the stick creature had begun to stagger stiffly towards him, still uncertain on its feet, but with growing confidence.
A succession of little screams accompanied these staggering steps which seemed to indicate that movement was causing it pain, but that it was determined to stir. With its long attenuated legs it began to make strides towards him. It was coming on, but still Unsworth told me, he could not stir, “like in those dreams, sir,” he said, “when you want to fly but cannot.”
Suddenly the great bell of the cathedral boomed out the hour of seven and Unsworth was released from his paralysis. He ran and ran until he reached the gatehouse at the eastern end of the close where he stopped for
