The Unbelievers by Alastair Sim Page B

they’d observed all the decencies of burial.”
    â€œAnd in the meantime the killer could have left the country.”
    â€œLet’s hope for our own sakes, Allerdyce, that he hasn’t.”

    Arthur walked down the aisle with Josephine, her arm slipped through his. He could feel the trembling warmth of her flesh, even through her thick silk and crepe. Her wide skirts brushed his ankles, and as he glanced sideways he could see, through the obscuring veil, her angelic complexion, the straight delicacy of her nose, and her soft, moist grey eyes. A single tear glistened on her cheek.
    This was not how it should have been. In a just world, he would have been able to lead her out of the church as his bride, dressed in radiant white and with her veil thrown back, instead of supporting her as she walked, draped heavily in unreflective black, towards her husband’s tomb.
    He’d kept the service as short as he could. Partly, he’d felt intimidated by seeing the church completely full for once, and full of the richest and most powerful men in the country. He’d thought for a moment that if a Fenian or a Communist had taken a notion to they could have lobbed a bomb into the church and obliterated three members of Her Majesty’s Government, five Dukes, four Marquesses, and an uncertain number of Earls, Barons, and captains of industry. He’d scanned their hard, handsome faces and felt their impatience with the hymn-singing and prayer-saying. He’d wondered whether there was a single true Christian amongst them.
    Also, it would have been difficult to give a long eulogy to a man with as few virtues as his brother. He’d said what he could about William being a man who cherished the land (just as well, he thought, since he owned so much of the counties of Linlithgow and Sutherland), who devoted his energies to God’s creative work of clothing and feeding the poor and keeping them warm (if they could pay for the wool, oats and coal generated by the Ducal estates), and who was a passionate admirer of beauty (and prepared to pay for it, whether it was a picture or a prostitute). After that there didn’t seem to be much to say.
    As he and Josephine progressed up the aisle the members of the congregation bowed their heads respectfully. Behind them, six servants in their new mourning suits shouldered the lead-lined mahogany coffin.
    Another servant opened the door at the rear of the church and they stepped out into the clear morning chill. He felt Josephine shiver and pull her body closer to his. For an instant, before she pulled gently away again, he felt her stays brushing his elbow and felt the subtle movement of her breast beneath them.
    They turned left from the church door, and he heard the heavy crunch-pause-crunch of the six pall-bearers’ slow march along the churchyard path between the tombstones, some clear and modern, others ancient with skulls and hourglasses as memento mori , towards the Bothwell-Scott mausoleum at the far end of the churchyard.
    The mausoleum had been built in the model of a Greek temple, like a miniature Parthenon, with pillars supporting a triangular pediment. Behind the pillars, a blank sandstone wall was broken only by a small iron door which, today, stood open.
    There was only room in the mausoleum for the closest family and essential servants. The pallbearers took the coffin in before the family were admitted. Arthur let Josephine in first, before bowing his head to get through the low door into an interior which was in three-quarter-darkness, lit feebly by a lantern which had been hung on a chain from the roof. The damp chill inside the mausoleum was, he thought, literally sepulchral. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he seemed to be looking at a filing cabinet for the dead. Ahead of him, along the back wall of the mausoleum, was a honeycomb of niches four feet wide by three feet high. Most of the niches were dark and empty, but some –