Read Online The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers - Free Book Online Page A

about. I saw a most horrible man go past only the other day, and not so long ago someone broke open the alms-box. That wouldn’t have mattered so much, because there was very little in it, but they did a lot of wanton damage in the sanctuary—out of disappointment, I suppose, and one can’t really allow that, can one?”
    Wimsey said, No, one couldn’t, and Yes, he would like to look round the church a little longer and would remember about the key. He spent the first few minutes after the good lady had left him in putting a suitable donation into the alms-box and in examining the font, whose carvings were certainly curious and, to his mind, suggestive of a symbolism neither altogether Christian nor altogether innocent. He noted a heavy old cope-chest beneath the tower, which, on being opened, proved to contain nothing more venerable than a quantity of worn bell-ropes, and passed on into the north aisle, noticing that the corbels supporting the principals of the angel-roof were very appropriately sculptured with cherubs’ heads. He brooded for a little time over the tomb of Abbot Thomas, with its robed and mitred effigy. A stern old boy, he thought, this fourteenth-century cleric, with his strong, harsh face, a ruler rather than a shepherd of his people. Carved panels decorated the sides of the tomb, and showed various scenes in the life of the abbey; one of them depicted the casting of a bell, no doubt of “Batty Thomas,” and it was evident that the Abbot had taken particular pride in his bell, for it appeared again, supporting his feet, in place of the usual cushion. Its decorations and mottoes were realistically rendered: on the shoulder: + NOLI + ESSE + INCREDVLVS + SED + Fidelis +; on the sound-bow: + Abbat Thomas sett mee heare + and bad mee rings both lovd and cleer + 1380 +; and on the waist: O SANCTE THOMA, which inscription, being embellished with an abbot’s mitre, left the spectator in a pleasing uncertainty whether the sanctity was to be attributed to the Apostle or the ecclesiastic. It was as well that Abbot Thomas had died long before the spoliation of his house by King Henry. Thomas would have made a fight for it, and his church might have suffered in the process. His successor, douce man, had meekly acquiesced in the usurpation, leaving his abbey to moulder to decay, and his church to be purified peaceably by the reformers. So, at least, the Rector informed Wimsey over the shepherd’s pie at lunch.
    It was only very reluctantly that the Venables consented to let their guest go; but Mr. Brownlow and Mr. Wilderspin between them had made such good progress on the car that it was ready for use by two o’clock, and Wimsey was anxious to press on to Walbeach before dusk set in. He started off, therefore, speeded by many handshakes and much earnest solicitation to come again soon and help to ring another peal. The Rector, at parting, thrust into his hands a copy of Venables on the In and Out of Course, while Mrs. Venables insisted on his drinking an amazingly powerful hot whisky-and-water, to keep the cold out. As the car turned right along the Thirty-foot Bank, Wimsey noticed that the wind had changed. It was hauling round to the south, and, though the snow still lay white and even over the Fen, there was a softness in the air.
    “Thaw’s coming, Bunter.”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    “Ever seen this part of the country when the floods are out?”
    “No, my lord.”
    “It looks pretty desolate; especially round about the Welney and Mepal Washes, when they let the waters out between the Old and New Bedford Rivers, and across the fen between Over and Earith Bridge. Acres of water, with just a bank running across it here and there or a broken line of willows. Hereabouts I think it’s rather more effectively drained. Ah! look—over to the right—that must be Van Leyden’s Sluice that turns the tide up the Thirty-foot Drain—Denver Sluice again on a smaller scale. Let’s look at the map. Yes, that’s