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in front of the entrance to the tower. Dexter pulled aside the felt curtain that masked the tower entrance and peered inside. The bell ropes were visible at ground level, with their striped salleys, and on the wall were the peal boards. Propped against the wall, dusty and neglected, were the seventeenth-century Ten Commandment boards. Dexter smiled. Soon, he told himself, they would be returned to their former prominence. This church could obviously do with a good dose of the Ten Commandments.
    Beneath the window, on the south side of the tower, hung a very large dark painting; Dexter could just about make out a hunting scene, with a quivering saint in the foreground, being converted or something. Disgusting! Even worse was the plaster statue beneath it, Our Lady of Walsingham in full colour, with little lights burning around her, and literature about the Shrine. Dexter swept the leaflets from the table and stuffed them in his pocket. And on the side wall, also with a candle burning, was a painting of King Charles the Blessed Martyr. Dexter stalked up the south aisle and peered into the south porch. It had been converted into a chantry chapel, its outside door covered by a curtain on which hung a crucifix. Dexter stepped inside and glared at the stone seat which was being used as an altar of remembrance, the six candles, the book with the names of the dead, the flowers, the prominent notice for the Walsingham Guild of All Souls. ‘It’s a bit small,’ he said aloud, ‘but I think it would do nicely for a Sunday School. Or perhaps a book stall – for the Protestant Truth Society!’
    He headed towards the chapel at the end of the south aisle, and in his concentration nearly tripped over the chair against the wall just outside. He stopped and looked furiously at the purple velvet curtain, and the little kneeler in front of the chair; he picked up the plastic-covered card on the chair’s seat and scrutinised the offensive words: ‘A Form of Confession’. His eye picked out the words, ‘to Blessed Mary, ever-virgin, and to all the Saints’, and after an unsuccessful attempt to tear the card in two, it joined the leaflets in his pocket.
    Dexter paused outside the chapel. Its wooden screen looked medieval, or at any rate quite old, with evidence of years of woodworm, but behind the screen hung a tomato-ketchup-red velvet curtain, thus giving the impression of a closed-off room. That must have cost a bit of money! he thought. The small sign fixed to one side of the entrance read, ‘This is where Christ’s sacramental presence is to be found. Please enter reverently’, and just inside the door an oak plaque requested, ‘Pray for the soul of Albert Carter, whose generous gift re-furnished this chapel.’
    Certainly a great deal of money had been spent on the chapel in recent years. It was fitted with gold carpet, and there were a dozen or so new oak chairs with red vinyl seats. A new altar had been constructed, on a plinth: it was oak, and very modern, without a frontal. Instead it had just a fair linen cloth, albeit festooned with drippy crocheted lace, and on it was a single squat candle and a spider plant. But there were plenty of candles elsewhere in the chapel: in front of the wall safe that held the reserved sacrament, and in the wrought-iron stands in front of the pictures on the south wall. There was another Virgin, and some other saint as well. And in a very high niche, up above the modern, insipidly coloured stained-glass window, was yet another statue of Our Lady. It would take a tall ladder to get that one down, thought Bob Dexter.
    Only the chancel remained for his inspection. Dexter left the chapel and passed through the chancel gates, past the choir’s benches and up to the High Altar. It was an old-fashioned English altar, hung behind with royal blue velvet curtains and surmounted by a huge central crucifix and numerous – he didn’t bother to