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curly golden choirboy hair.
    This was most definitely not the body of Saint Tancred.
    I turned off the torch, withdrew my head, and turned slowly to the vicar.
    “I believe we’ve found Mr. Collicutt,” I said.

• FOUR •
    I T WAS THE HAIR , of course, that gave it away. How many Sundays had I watched Feely galloping down the aisle for first dibs on the pew from which she would have the best view of Mr. Collicutt’s golden locks?
    Perched on the organ bench in his white surplice, his head illuminated by the light of a morning sunbeam streaming in through stained glass, he had often seemed like a Botticelli cherub brought to life.
    And he knew it.
    I remembered the way he would toss his head and quickly run all ten fingers through his glowing curls before making them pounce on the keys for the anthem’s opening chord. Feely once told me that Mr. Collicutt reminded her of Franz Liszt. It was not so long ago, she said, that there used to be found, in the keepsake boxes of ancient ladies who were freshly dead, the remnants of reekingcigar butts that had been smoked in another century by Liszt. I had meant to have a poke through Feely’s belongings to see if she were hoarding the cork tips of Mr. Collicutt’s Craven A’s, but it had slipped my mind.
    All of this went whizzing through my brain as I waited for the men to enlarge the opening and confirm my discovery.
    Not that I wasn’t shocked, of course.
    Had Mr. Collicutt died because I’d counted corpses on my fingers? Had he been made a victim by some dark and unsuspected magic?
    Stop it at once, Flavia!
I scolded myself.
The man was obviously dead for ages before you tempted Fate to hand you another cadaver
.
    Still, the man was dead. There was no getting round that.
    While part of me wanted to break down and cry at the death of Feely’s golden-haired Prince Charming, another part—a part I couldn’t quite explain—was awakening eagerly from a deep sleep.
    I was torn between revulsion and pleasure—like tasting vinegar and sugar at the same time.
    But pleasure, in such cases, always wins. Hands down.
    A hidden part of me was coming back to life.
    Meanwhile, the workmen had brought a number of sturdy planks to lever the heavy stone forward, as well as to serve as a makeshift ramp, down which it could be manhandled to the floor.
    “Easy, now—easy,” Mr. Haskins was telling them. “Don’t want to squash ’im, do we?”
    Mr. Haskins was completely at home with corpses.
    At last, after much grating and a couple of curses, the stone was removed, and the chamber’s contents became clearly visible.
    The gas mask strapped to the corpse’s face glinted horridly, as only wet rubber can, in the shuddering light.
    “Oh dear,” the vicar said. “Oh dear. I’d best ring up Constable Linnet.”
    “No great rush, I’d say,” said Mr. Haskins, “judgin’ by the smell of him.”
    Harsh words, but true. I knew in great detail from my own chemical researches the process by which the human body, after death, digests itself, and Mr. Collicutt was well along the way.
    Tommy and Norman had already produced handkerchiefs and clapped them to their noses.
    “But before I do so,” the vicar said, “I would ask each of you to join with me in a short prayer for this most—this most—ah,
unfortunate
individual.”
    We bowed our heads.
    “O Lord, receive the soul of this, thy faithful servant, who has come to great misfortune alone and in a strange place.”
    A strange place indeed! Although I didn’t say so …
    “And perhaps, also, in fear,” the vicar added, after taking a few moments as if fishing for the proper words. “Grant him, we beseech thee, eternal peace and the life everlasting. Amen.”
    “Amen,” I said quietly.
    I almost crossed myself, but I fought down the urge.Although our family patronized St. Tancred’s because the vicar was one of Father’s dearest friends, we de Luces, as Daffy liked to say, had been Catholics for so long that we