Chapter 19: Thirty-Five

Thea's POV

The church was dark, and the only light in it was a green one over the west doors.

The editor's technician had spliced the dead camera back to life at five that afternoon.

Now it sent every picture it saw to a screen in a Fleet Street office, and Clement and I had come in through the vestry door to stand under it.

"Bait goes where the fish can see it," Clement said, low. "Stay in the aisle."

"I'm not afraid."

"I am. Stay in the aisle."

I walked to the middle of the nave and stood on the red carpet in my coat.

The pews were empty.

Up in the dark of the organ loft, something moved.

"Thea, darling," Daphne said.

She stood at the gallery rail in her pale coat with her hair down, and she looked down at me with her head on one side.

"I knew you'd come. You never can leave a thing alone."

"Come down, Daphne."

"I can't. I'm busy."

Two men stepped out from behind her.

They were the same two who had come into the launderette, and one of them limped.

One held a coil of rope, and the other a folded sheet of paper.

"It's your handwriting," Daphne said. "I did it on the train in March.

"It says you can't go through with it.

"It says you're sorry, and you love them all, and the coma changed you."

She smiled, and it was the warm smile I had known since I was eleven.

"You were so unwell, you see.

"Everyone will understand."

"You wrote my suicide note."

"I wrote it beautifully."