The Testimony of the Hanged Man (Lizzie Martin 5) by Granger Ann Page B

busy chomping in his nosebag, to prove it. I ain’t the law, like your husband. I’m just a cabbie. I’ll come back here to collect you and her – ’ Wally nodded towards Bessie – ‘about half past one, how’s that?’
    We watched the cab roll away.
    ‘Well, now, missis,’ said Bessie as we turned back towards the church. ‘What do we do now?’
    ‘We visit the church,’ I said, ‘as anyone new in Putney might do. That will occasion no gossip. Then, we look for a likely burial.’
    The tide was out and the river low. A group of bare-legged urchins scavenged on the mudflats below the church. The exposed riverbed glistened grey or brown and, here and there, patched with a fetid green, and was strewn with all kind of debris. The swollen body of a drowned dog had been left by the retreating water as if the river gave it back to the land. Gulls wheeled overhead and the familiar odour of human refuse assailed our nostrils as we walked up the path to the doorway. Even with Mr Bazalgette’s new sewer system now in place, Father Thames was still more than full of all kinds of filth.
    We hurried to the church and stopped to survey the graveyard with some dismay. At first sight it was a jumble of tightly packed, sunken graves and mossy headstones and tombs, none of which looked recent. There were no new flowers or urns. The church noticeboard told us the building itself was in use, but its burial ground appeared to have been abandoned.
    ‘It don’t look like they buried the old fellow here,’ said Bessie glumly, gesturing at the scene, ‘whatever that porter told you.’
    ‘They must have buried him somewhere,’ I insisted, quelling my own doubts. ‘We’ll just have to search. Let’s see if there is anyone in the church who can help us.’
    We were about to enter the building when an elderly man appeared suddenly from within. We almost collided and he began to apologise profusely.
    ‘I do beg your pardon, ladies! I was hurrying home to my luncheon and didn’t expect anyone to be coming inside now. I trust you are not harmed? I am parish clerk of this church, ma’am,’ he added to me. ‘Did you want to go inside? There’s no service due, not until this evening, six o’clock, when there will be a service without any music, as it isn’t Sunday. Our organist doesn’t play except on a Sunday or at weddings and funerals.’
    ‘We only wanted to look at the building,’ I told him. ‘Is it very old?’
    Closer to hand, parts of the church did not look so ancient, though the tower appeared to have age to it.
    He was anxious to confirm my suspicions. ‘Some parts of it are indeed very old, ma’am, as is this tower above us. It was in this church, you know, that in sixteen forty-seven after Cromwell had defeated King Charles, a great debate was held to decide what should follow. But if you will go inside now you will see there was a deal of repair and alteration some thirty years ago. There was a fire then, ma’am, and much of the building destroyed.’
    ‘I couldn’t help but notice your churchyard,’ I went on, as he seemed disposed to chat. ‘I see it is very full and the graves appear very old. I suppose some of them must be of historical interest.’
    ‘It is indeed full, ma’am, and no one has been buried there in my lifetime, and I am sixty-four! They ran out of space at the end of the last century.’ Then, with an astuteness I had not expected he asked, ‘Was there a particular burial you had in mind, ma’am?’
    It was time to confess. ‘There is, but it would have taken place some sixteen years ago, in eighteen fifty-two, and, from what you tell us, it cannot be here.’
    ‘Ah,’ said the clerk, ‘then it will be in the ground given to the church for burials by a very generous and pious gentleman by the name of the Reverend Dr Pettiwand. But after a hundred years of burials since he gifted it, that is also full, alas, and we must bury our departed loved ones elsewhere. If however the