What Remains of Heaven Read Online Free Page A

Pyle—that’s the local magistrate, by the way: a typical village squire, far more interested in horses and hounds than in solving murders. Anyway, as soon as the Reverend told Pyle where to find the bodies, he simply went home and dosed himself with laudanum. Liberally.” The magistrate’s flame went out, and he had to try again. “He’s still insensible.”
    Sebastian resisted the urge to take the tinderbox from Lovejoy’s hands and light it for him. The magistrate was uncharacteristically shaken. “You say Earnshaw found the Bishop?”
    “That’s right.”
    “But if the Reverend himself went to London to get Prescott, then what was the Bishop doing down in the crypt alone?”
    Lovejoy grunted with satisfaction as the lantern’s wick finally caught. “According to what we’ve been able to ascertain, Reverend Earnshaw returned immediately to Tanfield Hill in his own gig, while the Bishop followed later in his coach.”
    “So where was the Bishop’s coachman while the Bishop was getting his head bashed in?”
    “He remained on his box, as per the Bishop’s instructions. The man says he neither saw nor heard anything out of the ordinary.” Lovejoy tucked away his tinderbox and flipped the lantern’s small door closed. “Although if you ask me, he probably dozed off, and awakened only when the Reverend set up a shout. Seems the Reverend spotted the Bishop’s light in the crypt and ventured down there again, alone, only to discover the Bishop lying nearly atop the earlier victim’s body.”
    “ Body? But surely if the other man had been dead for decades, he’d be reduced to a skeleton by now?”
    A shadow of revulsion crossed the magistrate’s pinched features. “Unfortunately, no. I understand it has something to do with the composition of the soil and perhaps the lime in the mortar. If there’s no intrusion of water, the corpses in a crypt can essentially mummify, rather than decay.”
    Sebastian became aware of the putrefying stench of death wafting up from below. “I remember seeing something similar in Italy. In Palermo.”
    “Then you’ll know what to expect,” said the magistrate, turning toward the entrance to the crypt. Tightening his grip on the lantern’s short handle, he stooped through the thin, broken remnant of the brick wall and started down the stairs. After a moment’s hesitation, Sebastian followed.
    Worn and cracked by time, the steps descended through a narrow stone stair vault, the light from the lantern playing over an arched roof plastered with limestone. The air was cold and dank, with an unpleasant, almost greasy quality that seemed to wrap itself around them as they reached the base of the steps.
    They found themselves in an ancient central aisle, its low vaulted ceiling supported by thick spiral columns topped with crude pillow capitals. Dating back to Anglo-Saxon times, the crypt was larger than Sebastian had expected, with rows of bays opening to either side. Yet the bays seemed oddly dark. As his eyes quickly grew accustomed to the gloom, Sebastian realized the bays were dark because they were full of coffins. Hundreds and hundreds of wooden coffins, some left bare, some painted, but most upholstered in moldering woolen cloth or draped in tattered velvet. Stacked row upon row, floor to ceiling, and curtained with massive sheets of cobwebs, they reached as far as he could see in all directions.
    “Good God,” he whispered.
    “The Bishop was found near the back end,” said Lovejoy, his voice quavering as they walked between the towering walls of coffins. In the older sections of the crypt, the coffins at the bottom had begun to warp and split, their contents spilling out as the weight of the burials above slowly crushed the ancient wood below. Sebastian could see some bare bones, stained an odd brown. But most of the visble bodies were horribly whole, their skin shriveled and discolored but intact, their winding sheets and shrouds glowing white from the murky