Read Online Dark Entry by M. J. Trow - Free Book Online

name, to treat him like a human being. His was not a trade that brought him many friends; in a crowded churchyard, he was often digging among the bones of the not long dead, and this grave had been no different. In the unconsecrated ground on the wrong side of the churchyard wall, reserved for suicides and babies who died unbaptised or perhaps even before they breathed, space was short and the graves unmarked. Only the unevenness of the ground bore silent testimony to their number, the Granta dead. The gravedigger was glad of the dark. That way, the mourners wouldn’t see the little flecks of bone in the mound of earth off to one side. He’d found a skull once, whole and grinning; even he had needed his extra drink that night. He touched his cap to Marlowe and melted away. By morning, the grave would be level again and after a few weeks of summer growing, the weeds would have masked the place where Ralph Whitingside lay, one among many.
    Steane looked around at the knot of mourners, each face lit dimly from below by their lanterns. No one had come from King’s apart from him, no friends, no Fellows, no Provost. Pitching his voice low now that the gravedigger had gone, he said, ‘Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I am only sorry that this service has to take place in these circumstances.’
    Marlowe spoke for them all. ‘Thank you for offering to conduct it for us, Dr Steane. It’s not every churchman . . .’
    Steane held up a hand. ‘Think nothing of it, Dominus Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Ralph Whitingside was a devout member of the choir of King’s College and I think I owe him this much.’
    ‘Or any man who is not a suicide,’ said Henry Bromerick bitterly. ‘This should be happening in the light of day, with a proper ceremony.’ He stifled a sob.
    ‘This should not be happening at all,’ Marlowe corrected him. ‘But as it is, shall we continue, Dr Steane?’ He glanced over his shoulder into the dark under the trees. ‘Some of us need to get to our beds. It will get chilly soon, towards dawn.’
    Steane nodded and bowed his head, waiting a while as the others adopted their chosen attitude of prayer. By an unspoken common consent, they had all put out their lanterns and so Steane’s voice spoke from total darkness. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.’ The familiar words rolled out and brought some comfort to the friends gathered around the grave. ‘The Lord be with you.’
    ‘And with thy spirit.’ The words echoed off the wall and trees, giving the impression of other mourners grouped behind in the dark. Tom Colwell pressed closer to the others; he was at the back of the group and felt chill mortality laying a hand on his shoulder.
    ‘Let us pray.’ Steane didn’t need to see the prayer book to say the words. He had been saying them now for thirty years and more and sometimes hardly heard himself speaking them. The circumstances of this burial were not something he was familiar with – churchmen were seldom at the burial of a suicide – but he had offered to do this, and he would do it properly, or not at all. But even so, part of his mind was jumping on ahead. There would be no reading, that much was clear. But he didn’t feel it was a funeral service without a psalm. He needn’t have worried. As he concluded the opening prayer for the dead man, two sweet voices lifted up to his left.
    ‘Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice.’ Marlowe and Colwell intoned the words of the one hundred and thirtieth psalm, known as De Profundis .
    Old habits die hard and Parker and Bromerick took up the decani response. ‘Oh let thine ears consider well; the voice of my complaint.’
    Steane felt a tremor pass through him. These voices, raised to God in this bleak place where no organ