Ritual Murder (33 page)

The Close was unchanged. More tourists than usual, that was all, milling about between the generals, seeking a better viewpoint from which to photograph the spire where the wicked verger had held that poor little boy hostage.

The warm weather seemed to have brought spring and summer simultaneously. There were flowers everywhere. As if the earthen beds could not contain them, they flamed along the tops of the old walls, or discovered rootholds in crannies where a flint had fallen away, or whence tits or house-martins had nibbled the mortar.

What was it the doctor, Haim HaLevi, had said, so long ago, dying upside down on a cross? “Water my plants.”

On the top of the cathedral spire, at the point where parallel lines met as in infinity, the golden weather-cock swung gently against the sky.

Jurnet hesitated: then moved briskly towards the West Door and so into the nave, the great stone ship anchored in the Angleby water meadows where time flowed past, an unending sea. He waited impatiently for a Women's Institute outing to pass through the small door in the north-west corner so that he could read once more what was carved there in the shadows.

At last they were gone and he could look his fill, unimpeded, at the words incised with such simple eloquence into the ancient stone.

Miriam my wyf,
Joy of my lyf—

Someone behind him was repeating the epitaph aloud. Jurnet wheeled round, and there she was, smiling.

First published in 1982 by Constable

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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ISBN 978-1-4472-2507-2 EPUB
ISBN 978-1-4472-2506-5 POD

Copyright © S T Haymon, 1982

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