Death of a wine merchant

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The living walked past the dead on their way to the wedding on a bright Saturday in October. The path to the church of St Peter, Brympton, was flanked by the tombs of the faithful, laid out in random fashion in the dark Norfolk earth, the words and the letters on the tombs faded with the centuries. St Peter’s was very old and very simple. Shaped like a cross, it had a large choir, an organ in a gallery at the back where there were pegs for the local farmers to hang their hats, and a series of box pews on either side of the nave. The great Hall of Brympton was a couple of hundred yards away.

In the second pew from the front Hermione Colville, mother of the groom, checked the angle of her hat and took a discreet look behind her. Solid phalanxes of relatives stretched back to the rear of the church, all ready for active service. Strange discordant noises were coming from the organ. The young man, believed to hold advanced musical views, was not delivering the Bach he had promised, but horrid sounds that might, in Hermione’s view, have been composed by a gang of monkeys hanging off their trees in some damp and humid forest on the banks of the Amazon.

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