Ellis Peters - George Felse 04 - A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs Read Online Free Page A

isn’t bad-looking. All right, Simon, go ahead, give us the story of Jan Treverra.”
    Simon lay back in his corner and talked. Not expertly, not with calculation, it was better than that; halting sometimes, relapsing into his own thoughts, hunting a word and coming up with it thoughtfully and with pleasure, as if it had a taste. Some of his writing was like that, the lamest and the most memorable. Dominic had the impression that those particular pages had been born out of his less happy moments.
    “Jan was an individualist who smuggled and wrote and hunted in these parts about the middle of the eighteenth century. You must have noticed St. Nectan’s church, I suppose? You’ll have read about it even before you came here, if you’re the kind of person whe does read a place up before he visits it?”
    “We read about it,” admitted George. “We’re the kind.”
    “Good, I like that kind. Then you know all about it, and anyhow you can see it from the top windows here. Over in the dunes, where they’ve been planting all the tamarisks to try and stop the sand marching inland. I don’t know exactly what it is about this north coast, but there are several of these areas of encroaching sand, and nearly all of ’em have churches amidships to get buried. It’s never houses, always churches.”
    “They’re surely digging out St. Nectan’s, aren’t they?” George looked across at Bunty. “You remember, they’d uncovered all the graveyard when we were over there, and that’s several days ago.”
    “
We’re
digging it out. With these two hands I’ve shovelled sand to get at what I want. The fact is, as Tim will tell you, they do get fits of conscience here every now and again, and dig the place out, but they always forget it again as soon as they’ve finished, and in a couple of months the sand’s got it again. But the point is, that’s where Jan Treverra’s buried. He had a massive tomb dug out for himself there before he was fifty, right down into the rock, and he wrote his own epitaph, ready for when he died. He even wrote one for his wife, too. In verse. Not his best verse, but not bad, at that. And soon after he was fifty he did die, of a fever, so they say. Quite a character was Jan. His life was not exemplary, but at least it had gusto, and it was never mean. He was a faithful husband and a loyal friend. The whole district idolised him, and his wife pined away within six months of his death, and joined him in his famous vault. His poems were pretty good, actually. There’s a tradition that some of them were buried with him, at his own orders, and now Miss Rachel’s developed a desire to find out if it’s true.”
    “Not unprompted,” said Phil, “by Simon. Any quest that gives him free access to the library will have our Simon’s enthusiastic support. As long as Tamsin’s in there, of course.”
    “Not that it’s getting me anywhere,” admitted Simon with a charmingly rueful smile. “She’s refused me eight times, so far. Funny, she doesn’t seem to take me seriously. Where was I? Oh, yes. On the night following Mrs. Treverra’s funeral there was a sudden violent storm. It drove all the fishing boats out to sea, and wrecked two of them. And young Squire Treverra, the new owner, was out walking by himself on the cliff path when the wind suddenly rose, and he was blown off into the sea and drowned. They never recovered his body. So there never was another burial in the old vault, because by the time the younger brother died it was past 1830, and they’d given up the struggle with the sand, and built St. Mary Magdalene’s, right at the top end of Maymouth. They didn’t intend to lose
that
one. So for all we know it may be true about the poems in the coffin. Anyhow, as Maymouth’s in the throes of its periodical fit of conscience about letting St. Nectan’s get silted up, we’re in a fair way to find out.”
    “You’re thinking of opening the tomb?” asked George with