For the groom to kiss the bride at a wedding is an old custom that’s now considered undignified. But as our mouths touch, I don’t care what anyone thinks. Ignoring the murmurs and giggles and my new mother-in-law’s horrified gasp, I melt into my husband. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.
Screams, shrill with terror, cut through my dazed bliss.
Barrett and I spring apart. His face wears the same alarmed expression that I feel on my own and see on everyone else’s. We all turn toward a door near the front of the church. There stands the charwoman in apron and headkerchief, fluttering her hands.
“Murder!” she screams. “Help!”
A hubbub of consternation ripples through the pews. Barrett and I look at each other, dumbfounded. Murder is a staple of our work, but how terrible if indeed it’s happened during our wedding.
The vicar says, “Surely you’re mistaken, Mrs. Johnson. Why don’t you have a cup of tea in the kitchen, and I’ll speak with you when I’m finished here.” The Reverend Douglas Thornton is in his sixties, tall and wiry of physique. With his stern countenance and old-fashioned side-whiskers, he looks the typical rigid, sanctimonious clergyman. But Barrett has told me that the Reverend Thornton is a kind man and longtime family friend. He was certainly kind to me at our prenuptial meeting. He tried to put me at ease, and he didn’t criticize my manner of living, about which Mrs. Barrett must have told him plenty.
“No! I ain’t mistaken; I know what I seen. There’s been a murder, in the crypt!”
Sir Gerald Mariner rises from his seat in the pews that contain my guests. He’s the owner of the Daily World—my employer. Tall and stout in his expensive suit, he addresses a group of men on the opposite side of the aisle. “It sounds like a matter for the police. What are you waiting for?”
The men—Barrett’s friends from the police force—rush toward the door. Barrett gives me a rueful look. “I’m sorry.” He’s the ranking officer present, and if there’s been a crime, it’s his responsibility to handle it.
“It’s all right,” I say. “Go.”
He joins the rush. So do Sir Gerald and two of the tough, silent men who work for him as servants, bodyguards, and only he knows what else. Any other bride might break down in tears to have her wedding interrupted by a murder, but not me. I follow the horde. Working for the newspaper has conditioned me to hasten to crime scenes at any hour of the day or night. Although I have today off, the familiar surge of dread and excitement propels me. Hugh and Mick are already lugging the camera equipment after the crowd, which has grown to include all the male guests.
A hand on my arm restrains me. I turn to see my mother-in-law, who’s asked me to call her Mildred but whom I still think of as Mrs. Barrett.
“Sarah, come and sit down.” She gestures toward the pews, in which other women are huddled. “What a terrible thing to happen at your wedding. I hope it’s not a bad omen.” The gleam in her eye belies her words. She must have been hoping until the last minute that the marriage wouldn’t happen, and now she probably likes to think it may be of short duration.
I’d rather view a murder scene than listen to her snipe at me as she usually does. Pulling free of her, I say, “I’m sorry; I have to go.”
Mrs. Barrett folds her arms, sniffs, and says, “Well!”
From the door through which the horde has vanished, Sally beckons me. “Hurry, Sarah!” A ladies’ features reporter for the Daily World, she’s eager to cover a murder story if there is one. She would prefer it to writing articles about fashion and cookery.
We trail the stampede down a passage I’ve never seen. I’ve been in this church only once before, when Barrett and I met with the vicar to arrange the wedding and receive the mandatory prenuptial advice. A wedding usually takes place in the bride’s parish, but I haven’t belonged to a church or attended a service since 1866, the year my father disappeared, hence my wedding here in Bethnal Green at the Barrett family’s church. A narrow flight of stairs leads us to the crypt. I fling back my veil, the better to see. People fill a long cavern, its walls and low arched ceiling made of brick. A few lights burn in glass globes mounted on pipes near the stairs. The smell of gas fumes mingles with the foul cesspool odor that permeates cellars throughout the city. The cavern’s distant end is lost in darkness. This end is narrowed by crates, furniture, coal bins, stacked wooden planks, and odds and ends placed against the walls. Arched doorways lead to chambers that are all dark except for the third on the left, from which dim light emanates. People press close to it for a look inside.
Sally pulls a notebook and pencil out of her handbag and asks the charwoman, “What happened?”
Breathless, Mrs. Johnson says, “I came down to fetch some coal, and I saw the light, and when I looked in, there he were!”
Amid exclamations of shock and horror, Barrett’s voice issues from within the room: “This is a crime scene. Stand back.”
So it is indeed murder. My heart simultaneously sinks and beats faster. Sally and I jostle through the crowd, past the police constables, into a chamber that measures some twenty feet square. Hugh, Mick, Barrett, the vicar, and Sir Gerald are staring at the man sprawled in the center of the floor. The large crimson blotch across the man’s white shirt draws my attention, like the bull’s-eye on a target, eclipsing all else about him. Sally gasps. Hugh retches and flees the chamber; he has a weak stomach. My heart lurches, my muscles flinch, but I’ve seen so many corpses—some in far worse condition—that I can look and not faint or be sick.
“He was stabbed.” Barrett points to a slit on the upper left side of the man’s shirt.
Sir Gerald seems unfazed by the spectacle of death, which he must have seen in all forms during a youth spent on merchant ships that sailed all over the world. “The weapon’s missing. The killer must have pulled it out and taken it away.”
Mick sets down my camera. “This’s like bringin’ coals to Newcastle.”
Now I see four other large cameras on tripods positioned around the room’s perimeter, between carved stone sarcophagi. The church is old enough that the dead are still interred in the crypt. Atop the sarcophagi, open suitcases contain boxes of negative plates and flash powder, spare lenses, and other supplies. The dead man was a photographer. A dizzy feeling unbalances me, and the air shimmers like gauze on a windy, moonlit night. It’s as if I’m having a vision of my own future demise.
Barrett speaks to the crowd: “Everyone except the police officers, please go back upstairs.” Amid mutters of reluctance, I hear the mass exodus from the crypt.
“Sarah, what’s that in his hand?” Barrett asks.
It’s a black rubber bulb connected to a narrow red rubber hose that snakes across the floor and rises up to one of the cameras. The end of the hose is fastened to a plunger on a metal tube at the base of the lens.
“It’s a self-timer device,” I say, glad to focus on the surroundings rather than the body. “You pull the plunger to draw air into the tube. When you squeeze the bulb, it opens a valve in the tube, and the air releases and triggers the shutter.”
Comprehension lights Barrett’s eyes. “So you don’t have to stay right by the camera to take a picture. Clever.”