climbed back into the seat. With dispatch, he was gone, the steady clip-clop of the horses’ hooves dwindling to nothing.
“Bram!”
I turned just in time to watch Matilda slip over the top of the wall and drop to the other side with a thud. “My God, are you all right?”
I went to the wall and peered through a small crack. Matilda stood on the other side, brushing dirt from her dress. “I’m fine,” she said in a hushed tone. “Toss me the shovel.”
I lobbed the shovel over the wall a little to the right of her, then, first checking up and down the road, I jumped straight up and grabbed the iron spikes at the top of the wall. I pulled myself up, careful not to catch my clothes on the ironwork, and launched over the top. With a quick push off the wall, I jumped to the ground, landing on my feet.
“I half expected you to jump straight over the wall,” Matilda snickered.
“Perhaps next time.” I took in the graveyard, its rolling hills of somber grass and mysterious mist. “Where is it?”
She pointed southward. “The traditional graveyard ends at that walkway; the suicide graves are on the other side of the old church wall.” My sister started off in the direction of the ruins.
“Careful!”
I retrieved the shovel and raced after her. The air felt very still—not even the slightest breeze worked through the willow trees—the branches slept soundly, each one casting a thick dark shadow upon the ground. The only light came from the moon as the gas lamps were extinguished when the cemetery closed to the public at eight in the evening. Wood mice scurried about, angry at the intrusion, their eyes on us and following at a safe distance.
“Is there a guard?”
Matilda thought about this for a moment. “I imagine there is.”
My eyes drifted to the church at our left, now inky and silent. If anyone was inside, I detected no sign. I could see the gate from here, too, but no movement beyond it. “He is probably walking the grounds.”
When Thornley first enrolled in medical school, he told me many of the students retrieved corpses from the graveyard for the purpose of dissection. I found this appalling, but he said they were left with little choice. The schools and hospitals supplied only a few bodies and those went to students hailing from wealthy families with the means to make such a purchase. While our family seemed well-off compared to most, there wasn’t enough money in the coffer to secure a body. Although Thornley never outright admitted to participating in such a gruesome endeavor, he didn’t deny taking part, either. I imagined him strolling through a graveyard much like this one with shovel in hand, hoping to retrieve a fresh specimen in the name of science. Perhaps with this same shovel.
“Grave robbers tend to come out when there is little or no moon, and there’s too much light evident tonight. It would be too easy to get apprehended. This is the kind of night security finds rest. The guard is probably passed out behind one of the graves with a bottle of rum in one hand and questionable reading material in the other,” Matilda said.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Or he could be right behind us, loaded and ready to deliver a round of buckshot in your tail end.”
“What makes you think he would shoot me?”
“Because,” Matilda replied, “a righteous man would never shoot a lady. Clearly, you would be his first choice.”
“Clearly,” I agreed, “providing he is a righteous man.”
We approached the ruins of the original church with caution. The stone structure stood at the back of the traditional cemetery and still had four walls despite years of neglect; the roof, most likely thatch, had long since rotted away. The western wall stood tall—by far the most impressive, extending high into the sky, once having housed the bell tower. The north and south walls each housed four large windows, which were rounded at the apex and flat at the sill, along with a smaller window towards the front of the church. The back, east-facing wall rose tall and pointed,