EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE

BLOOD DRIPPED FROM THE NECK of the severed head and fell in a drizzle of red raindrops, clotting into a ruby pool upon the black and white tiles. The face wore a grimace of surprise, as if the man had died in the middle of a scream. His teeth, each clearly divided from its neighbour by a black line, were bared in a horrible, silent scream.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing.

The woman who proudly held the gaping head at arm’s length by its curly blue-black hair, was wearing a scarlet dress—almost, but not quite, the colour of the dead man’s blood.

To one side, a servant with downcast eyes held the platter upon which she had carried the head into the room. Seated on a wooden throne, a matron in a saffron dress leaned forward in square-jawed pleasure, her hands clenched into fists on the arms of her chair as she took a good look at the grisly trophy. Her name was Herodias, and she was the wife of the king.

The younger woman, the one clutching the head, was—at least, according to the historian Flavius Josephus—named Salome. She was the step-daughter of the king, whose name was Herod, and Herodias was her mother.

The detached head, of course, belonged to John the Baptist.

I remembered hearing the whole sordid story not more than a month ago when Father read aloud the Second Lesson from the back of the great carved wooden eagle which served as the lectern at St Tancred’s.

On that winter morning I had gazed up, transfixed, just as I was gazing now, at the stained-glass window in which this fascinating scene was depicted.

Later, during his sermon, the vicar had explained that in Old Testament times, our blood was thought to contain our lives.

Of course!

Blood!

Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

‘Feely,’ I said, tugging at her sleeve, ‘I have to go home.’

My sister ignored me. She peered closely at the music book as, in the dusky shadows of the fading light, her fingers flew like white birds over the keys of the organ.

Mendelssohn’s Wie gross ist des Allmächt'gen Güte.

‘How great are the works of the Almighty,’ she told me it meant.

Easter was now less than a week away and Feely was trying to whip the piece into shape for her official debut as organist of St Tancred’s. The flighty Mr Collicutt, who had held the post only since last summer, had vanished suddenly from our village without explanation and Feely had been asked to step into his shoes.

St Tancred’s went through organists like a python goes through white mice. Years ago, there had been Mr Taggart, then Mr Denning, and now Mr Collicutt, all within just a few years time.

‘Feely,’ I said, ‘It’s important. There’s something I have to do.’

Feely jabbed one of the ivory coupling buttons with her thumb and the organ gave out a roar. I loved this part of the piece: the point where it leaps in an instant from sounding like a quiet sea at sunset to the snarl of a jungle animal.

When it comes to organ music, loud is good—at least to my way of thinking.

I tucked my knees up under my chin and huddled back into the corner of the choir stall. It was obvious that Feely was going to slog her way through to the end come hell or high water, and I would simply have to wait it out.

I looked round at my surroundings but there wasn’t much to see. In the feeble glow of the single bulb above the music rack, Feely and I might as well have been castaways on a tiny raft of light in a sea of darkness.

By twisting my neck and tilting my head back like a hanged man, I could just make out the head of St Tancred which was carved in English oak at the end of a hammer-beam in the roof of the nave. In the weird evening light, he had the look of a man with his nose pressed flat against a window, peering in from the cold to a cosy room with a cheery fire burning on the hearth.

I gave him a respectful bob of my head, even though I knew he couldn’t see me since his bones were mouldering away in the crypt below. But better safe than sorry.

Above my head, on the far side of the chancel, John the Baptist and his murderers had now faded out almost completely. Twilight came quickly in these cloudy days of March and, viewed from inside the church, the windows of St Tancred’s could change from a rich tapestry of glorious colours to a muddy blackness in less time than it would take you to rattle off one of the longer psalms.

To tell the truth, I’d have rather been at home in my chemical laboratory than sitting here in the near-darkness of a draughty old church, but Father had insisted.

Even though, at barely eighteen, Feely was six years older than me, Father refused to let her go alone to the church for her near-nightly rehearsals and choir practices.

‘A lot of strangers likely to be about these days,’ he said, referring to the team of archaeologists who would soon be arriving in Bishop’s Lacey to dig up the bones of our patron saint.

How I was to defend Feely against the attacks of these savage scholars, Father had not bothered to mention, but I knew that there was more to it than that.

In the recent past there had been a number of murders in Bishop’s Lacey: fascinating murders in which I had rendered my assistance to Inspector Hewitt of the Hinley Constabulary.

In my mind, I ticked off the victims on my fingers: Horace Bonepenny, Rupert Porson, Brookie Harewood, Phyllis Wyvern …

One more corpse and I’d have a full hand.

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