Read Satan in St Mary for Free Online Page A

roofs and houses to the south and the brown soil and snow-covered fields to the north beyond Newgate and the old city wall. Corbett looked round the tower. Someone could have lurked there and made their way down into the church itself but the trapdoor, as well as the door to the tower, looked as if they had not been used for years and any intruder who used them would have roused Duket, the ward watch and half of Cheapside.
    Corbett shook his head and made his way down to where the priest was waiting for him, a sardonic grin on his sallow features.
    "Did you find anything, Master Clerk?" Corbett ignored the sarcasm in his voice and stared round the porch. In one corner, bell ropes dangled down from a small aperture in the ceiling; beneath them, coiled in rough heaps, were other pieces of rope. Some of them new, some old and frayed.
    "This was where Duket took the rope from?"
    The priest nodded. "Yes, " he replied, "he must have come down here to collect the rope and then gone back to the sanctuary. "
    "In the dark?" Corbett asked.
    "What do you mean?" was the surly reply.
    "I mean, " Corbett said slowly, "that Duket sat here in the sanctuary in the dark and then quietly made his way down into the gloom to collect a piece of rope to kill himself?"
    "He had a candle, " the priest answered quickly.
    "If he did, " Corbett commented, waving his hand round the porch, "then he did not use it. There is no trace of fresh wax on the floor!" He looked at Bellet, pleased to see the sardonic grin disappear from his face. "An agitated man, " Corbett continued, "carrying a candle, stumbling around in the dark. His hand would shake. " Corbett scuffed the floor with the toe of his boot. "There would be more wax here than dirt!"
    Corbett turned and walked into the nave of the church, a large paved area which stretched down to the rood screen, a wooden trellised partition with a huge door in the centre which led into the sanctuary and the stairs to the high altar. There was a row of stout squat pillars down either side of the nave. Each of the transepts looked black and empty except for the stacked wooden benches and the faded frescoes on the dirty whitewashed walls. High above each transept was a row of small oval-shaped windows. Corbett stared up at them, they were all firmly shuttered both inside and out except for one where the shutters hung loose, though still too small for any man to get through unnoticed by either Duket or the ward watch.
    Corbett pulled his cloak around him and walked further down the nave, noting even how his leather-soled boots echoed like drumbeats round the church. He could hear the priest slithering behind him like some rat creeping along a pipe. Corbett walked into the sanctuary. The Blessed Chair, thick heavy and wooden, sat like a throne at the bottom of the white stone altar. There was nothing to see, though Corbett realized that he had never been in such a stark, lonely sanctuary. The high altar rose above him, lonely and impassive, its marble ledge unadorned by flowers or linen cloths. Behind it was a reredos, a blank screen with a faded fresco and above it a lonely red sanctuary lamp gleamed and winked in the gloom. There were benches at either side. Corbett turned and looked up, there was a trefoil window meshed with wire and horn above the high altar, which provided most of the light, flanked by a row of shuttered windows as in the rest of the church.
    He walked over to the right of the sanctuary and looked up at the iron bar jutting out beside the large, wooden shuttered window. "Is that the bar?"
    The priest, standing behind him, one hand on the arm of the Blessed Chair, nodded. "Yes, " he replied slowly. "The chair had been moved by Duket. He must have used it to fasten the rope round the bar. "
    Corbett turned, looked directly at Bellet and shook his head. "I would not be too sure about that, " he replied and, not waiting for a reply, walked back down the nave of the church.
    Corbett left the church and