more I chewed it over, the less it seemed to mean.
Under the circumstances, the last thing I was in the mood for was a wedding. But that was where I was going to go.
The Brompton Oratory, immortalized in song by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, which was another set of associations I could have done without. But I had to admit, speaking as an atheist, that it was a hell of a place of worship—all vertical vistas and baroque flounces. If you got married here, you wouldn’t need a wedding cake.
Three white limousines were parked out in front of the building, the lead one decked out with white ribbons. Two ushers in immaculate morning suits standing in the portico stared aghast at my trench coat and my general air of walking in out of a storm. They were a matched pair in one respect only—they both had exactly Cheryl’s complexion. But one was a barge pole stood on its end, while the other was both an inch shorter than me and six inches broader—muscle, from the look of it, not fat. It was this handy-looking gentleman who rolled into my path, like one of those kids’ trucks that Tonka used to make out of stainless steel, that you could drop off a cliff without even scratching the paintwork. I warned him off with an admonitory raised finger. “I’m on the bride’s side,” I told him. “Let’s not do anything to spoil the mood.”
“
I made a show of going through my pockets, hoping that some other late arrival would roll up and distract their attention. No such luck.
“It’s here somewhere,” I offered. “Can I go in now and show it to you later?”
“What’s the name of the bride?” Barge Pole demanded by way of a compromise.
Bugger. “I’ve always called her by a nickname,” I hedged.
“What nickname?” Tonka Toy getting in on the act now.
I tried to think of a nickname. His fist closed hard on a handful of my shirt, and his face creased in a stern frown. Inspiration struck just in time to stop me going arse over tip down the steps.
“Oh, I remember now,” I said, smacking my brow to punish my brain for its erratic performance. “Cheryl’s got my invitation. Cheryl Telemaque. My fiancée.”
“Fiancée?” The barge pole sounded appalled, and the burly guy looked stricken enough to make me wonder if he was carrying a torch for Cheryl himself. Either way, that seemed to do the trick. I slipped between them and was in through the door before they could react. Neither of them followed me.
Inside, I found Herbert Gribble’s great masterwork of devotional plagiarism filled to bursting with rows of people wearing suits and dresses that were probably mortgaged rather than bought outright, all sitting docilely and waiting for the bride to show. The groom was up at the altar, looking as cool and collected as a man tied to train tracks and hearing the distant whistle.
Cheryl was in the fifth row back, dressed to match the architecture in a beige dress with enough lacy froth to make “baroque” seem an appropriate word for her, too. Her cream leather shoes with nickel silvered roses on them fitted in with the Italianate charm of the place. Farther away I could see Alice Gascoigne and Jeffrey Peele, side by side, and Jon Tiler looking like a partially trained orangutan in a suit that had been made to measure. For a chimp.
I sat down next to Cheryl. She glanced up, away, back, her eyes widening in horror—a double take worthy of Norman Wisdom.
“Felix!” she whispered hoarsely. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
She wasn’t amused, and I didn’t blame her. “I don’t mind you coming, but you look like something the cat dragged in. Are you mad?” She waved agitated hands at my shirtfront. “Look, you’ve not even ironed your shirt. You’re all crumpled up like you’ve been rolling on the ground.”
“That was the ushers outside,” I said as a meager gesture toward self-defense. “They were going to rough me over. Where the hell did you dig them up from?”
“They’re my cousin Andrew and my cousin Stephen,” she snapped. “And they’re really, really, nice so don’t you say another bloody word.”
Time to find a less loaded subject, perhaps. “I thought you grew up rough in Kilburn,” I said, looking around at all the silk and silver.
“Yeah, I did,” she said, flashing me a grim look. “And I can still do rough if the need arises.”
“I don’t doubt it. But where does your mum get the chops to swing a gig like this?”
People were turning to look at us. Cheryl blushed a richer, darker brown that clashed with the dress and made me want to take it off her. “It’s not my mum,” she muttered fiercely. “It’s my Aunt Felicia. She’s a member of the order.”
“The order?”
“The Catholic Oratorians. They own this place, yeah? Now, what are you bloody well doing here? Stop changing the subject.”
“I want an invite.”
“You’ve just invited your sodding self, haven’t you?”
“Not to this. To the reception. It’s at the Bonnington, isn’t it? Can you get me in through the door?”
She just stared at me for a moment, nonplussed. “Are you gonna cause trouble at my mum’s wedding?” she demanded.
Time to duck again. “It’s about Sylvie,” I said.
Cheryl was still suspicious; she had good Castor-radar already, despite having known me for less than a week. “What about her?”
“I know who she was. I know what was done to her. She was raped and murdered, and her body was dumped in a skip. I owe it to her not to let go of this.”
That gave Cheryl pause. Quite a long pause, as it turned out. Before she spoke again, she blinked three times, staring at me with wounded, tearful eyes.
“Murdered?”
“Gouged in the face with something sharp and jagged. Choked with her own—”
“Don’t!”
“I’m not going to cause a ruckus, Cheryl. I promise you. I won’t be any bother. But I have to try this.”
More heads were turning in our direction. Our hissed conversation was now causing as much of a stir as my scruffy casuals and giving the lie to my promise to be discreet.
“Try what?” Cheryl asked weakly, like someone who knows they’re in a fight that they’re going to lose.
“The laying on of hands.”
First she didn’t get it. Then she did, and she was appalled.
“What, you think it was someone at the archive who did it?”
“No. I’m a hundred percent certain it was.”
“And what, you’re gonna go around feeling people up to see if any of them’s a murderer? Not at my mum’s effing wedding reception, you’re not!”
“Everyone shakes hands at a wedding. Nobody will even notice.”
The organist broke into “Here Comes the Bride,” and all heads turned.
Cheryl’s mum looked very much like Cheryl, only taller and more statuesque. Her dark face under the white veil was austerely beautiful, and she walked like an empress. It was something of a revelation—if heredity counted for anything, Cheryl was going to grow old very gracefully indeed.
The bride proceeded up the aisle in stately fashion, and various elderly women on both sides of the aisle made good use of their handkerchiefs. Alice Gascoigne kept hers firmly in its holster; she’d seen me by now, and she was staring at me with an expression like the one Banquo’s ghost must have used on Macbeth.
“You said she was sad,” I reminded Cheryl. “Now you know why. Do you want the bastard who did that to her to get away with it?”
She didn’t answer.
Cheryl’s mum was making her vows now. They sounded as though she’d run them up herself, because they went from “With my body I thee worship” into some pretty explicit subclauses.
Cheryl looked away. “Okay,” she said, sounding miserable and flat. She opened her purse, which was made of cream-colored leather and just about big enough to hold a handkerchief and a tampon. By some alchemy she took
