Short Fiction M. R. James (good book recommendations TXT) 📖

was men put on to watch in different parts of the Close; but they all used to get together in one corner, the nearest they could to the High Street, and nothing came of it.

“Well, the next thing was this. Me and another of the boys⁠—he’s in business in the city now as a grocer, like his father before him⁠—we’d gone up in the Close after morning service was over, and we heard old Palmer the mason bellowing to some of his men. So we went up nearer, because we knew he was a rusty old chap and there might be some fun going. It appears Palmer’d told this man to stop up the chink in that old tomb. Well, there was this man keeping on saying he’d done it the best he could, and there was Palmer carrying on like all possessed about it. ‘Call that making a job of it?’ he says. ‘If you had your rights you’d get the sack for this. What do you suppose I pay you your wages for? What do you suppose I’m going to say to the Dean and Chapter when they come round, as come they may do any time, and see where you’ve been bungling about covering the ’ole place with mess and plaster and Lord knows what?’ ‘Well, master, I done the best I could,’ says the man; ‘I don’t know no more than what you do ’ow it come to fall out this way. I tamped it right in the ’ole,’ he says, ‘and now it’s fell out,’ he says, ‘I never see.’

“ ‘Fell out?’ says old Palmer, ‘why it’s nowhere near the place. Blowed out, you mean,’ and he picked up a bit of plaster, and so did I, that was laying up against the screen, three or four feet off, and not dry yet; and old Palmer he looked at it curious-like, and then he turned round on me and he says, ‘Now then, you boys, have you been up to some of your games here?’ ‘No,’ I says, ‘I haven’t, Mr. Palmer; there’s none of us been about here till just this minute,’ and while I was talking the other boy, Evans, he got looking in through the chink, and I heard him draw in his breath, and he came away sharp and up to us, and says he, ‘I believe there’s something in there. I saw something shiny.’ ‘What! I daresay,’ says old Palmer; ‘Well, I ain’t got time to stop about there. You, William, you go off and get some more stuff and make a job of it this time; if not, there’ll be trouble in my yard,’ he says.

“So the man he went off, and Palmer too, and us boys stopped behind, and I says to Evans, ‘Did you really see anything in there?’ ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I did indeed.’ So then I says, ‘Let’s shove something in and stir it up.’ And we tried several of the bits of wood that was laying about, but they were all too big. Then Evans he had a sheet of music he’d brought with him, an anthem or a service, I forget which it was now, and he rolled it up small and shoved it in the chink; two or three times he did it, and nothing happened. ‘Give it me, boy,’ I said, and I had a try. No, nothing happened. Then, I don’t know why I thought of it, I’m sure, but I stooped down just opposite the chink and put my two fingers in my mouth and whistled⁠—you know the way⁠—and at that I seemed to think I heard something stirring, and I says to Evans, ‘Come away,’ I says; ‘I don’t like this.’ ‘Oh, rot,’ he says, ‘give me that roll,’ and he took it and shoved it in. And I don’t think ever I see anyone go so pale as he did. ‘I say, Worby,’ he says, ‘it’s caught, or else someone’s got hold of it.’ ‘Pull it out or leave it,’ I says. ‘Come and let’s get off.’ So he gave a good pull, and it came away. Leastways most of it did, but the end was gone. Torn off it was, and Evans looked at it for a second and then he gave a sort of a croak and let it drop, and we both made off out of there as quick as ever we could. When we got outside Evans says to me, ‘Did you see the end of that paper?’ ‘No,’ I says, ‘only it was torn.’ ‘Yes, it was,’ he says, ‘but it was wet too, and black!’ Well, partly because of the fright we had, and partly because that music was wanted in a day or two, and we knew there’d be a set-out about it with the organist, we didn’t say nothing to anyone else, and I suppose the workmen they swept up the bit that was left along with the rest of the rubbish. But Evans, if you were to ask him this very day about it, he’d stick to it he saw that paper wet and black at the end where it was torn.”

After that the boys gave the choir a wide berth, so that Worby was not sure what was the result of the mason’s renewed mending of the tomb. Only he made out from fragments of conversation dropped by the workmen passing through the choir that some difficulty had been met with, and that the governor⁠—Mr. Palmer to wit⁠—had tried his own hand at the job. A little later, he happened to see Mr. Palmer himself knocking at the door of the Deanery and being admitted by the butler. A day or so after that, he gathered from a remark his father let fall at breakfast that something a little out of the common was to be done in the Cathedral after morning service on the morrow. “And I’d just as soon it was today,” his father added, “I don’t see the