The Devil You Know

Inside, I found Herbert Gribble’s great masterwork of devotional plagiarism filled to bursting with rows of people wearing suits and dresses that were probably mortgaged rather than bought outright, all sitting docilely and waiting for the bride to show. The groom was up at the altar, looking as cool and collected as a man tied to train tracks and hearing the distant whistle.

Cheryl was in the fifth row back, dressed to match the architecture in a beige dress with enough lacy froth to make “baroque” seem an appropriate word for her, too. Her cream leather shoes with nickel silvered roses on them fitted in with the Italianate charm of the place. Farther away I could see Alice Gascoigne and Jeffrey Peele, side by side, and Jon Tiler looking like a partially trained orangutan in a suit that had been made to measure. For a chimp.

I sat down next to Cheryl. She glanced up, away, back, her eyes widening in horror—a double take worthy of Norman Wisdom.

“Felix!” she whispered hoarsely. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

She wasn’t amused, and I didn’t blame her. “I don’t mind you coming, but you look like something the cat dragged in. Are you mad?” She waved agitated hands at my shirtfront. “Look, you’ve not even ironed your shirt. You’re all crumpled up like you’ve been rolling on the ground.”

“That was the ushers outside,” I said as a meager gesture toward self-defense. “They were going to rough me over. Where the hell did you dig them up from?”

“They’re my cousin Andrew and my cousin Stephen,” she snapped. “And they’re really, really, nice so don’t you say another bloody word.”

Time to find a less loaded subject, perhaps. “I thought you grew up rough in Kilburn,” I said, looking around at all the silk and silver.

“Yeah, I did,” she said, flashing me a grim look. “And I can still do rough if the need arises.”

“I don’t doubt it. But where does your mum get the chops to swing a gig like this?”

People were turning to look at us. Cheryl blushed a richer, darker brown that clashed with the dress and made me want to take it off her. “It’s not my mum,” she muttered fiercely. “It’s my Aunt Felicia. She’s a member of the order.”

“The order?”

“The Catholic Oratorians. They own this place, yeah? Now, what are you bloody well doing here? Stop changing the subject.”

“I want an invite.”

“You’ve just invited your sodding self, haven’t you?”

“Not to this. To the reception. It’s at the Bonnington, isn’t it? Can you get me in through the door?”

She just stared at me for a moment, nonplussed. “Are you gonna cause trouble at my mum’s wedding?” she demanded.

Time to duck again. “It’s about Sylvie,” I said.

Cheryl was still suspicious; she had good Castor-radar already, despite having known me for less than a week. “What about her?”

“I know who she was. I know what was done to her. She was raped and murdered, and her body was dumped in a skip. I owe it to her not to let go of this.”

That gave Cheryl pause. Quite a long pause, as it turned out. Before she spoke again, she blinked three times, staring at me with wounded, tearful eyes.

“Murdered?”

“Gouged in the face with something sharp and jagged. Choked with her own—”

“Don’t!”

“I’m not going to cause a ruckus, Cheryl. I promise you. I won’t be any bother. But I have to try this.”

More heads were turning in our direction. Our hissed conversation was now causing as much of a stir as my scruffy casuals and giving the lie to my promise to be discreet.

“Try what?” Cheryl asked weakly, like someone who knows they’re in a fight that they’re going to lose.

“The laying on of hands.”

First she didn’t get it. Then she did, and she was appalled.

“What, you think it was someone at the archive who did it?”

“No. I’m a hundred percent certain it was.”

“And what, you’re gonna go around feeling people up to see if any of them’s a murderer? Not at my mum’s effing wedding reception, you’re not!”

“Everyone shakes hands at a wedding. Nobody will even notice.”

The organist broke into “Here Comes the Bride,” and all heads turned.

Cheryl’s mum looked very much like Cheryl, only taller and more statuesque. Her dark face under the white veil was austerely beautiful, and she walked like an empress. It was something of a revelation—if heredity counted for anything, Cheryl was going to grow old very gracefully indeed.

The bride proceeded up the aisle in stately fashion, and various elderly women on both sides of the aisle made good use of their handkerchiefs. Alice Gascoigne kept hers firmly in its holster; she’d seen me by now, and she was staring at me with an expression like the one Banquo’s ghost must have used on Macbeth.

“You said she was sad,” I reminded Cheryl. “Now you know why. Do you want the bastard who did that to her to get away with it?”

She didn’t answer.

Cheryl’s mum was making her vows now. They sounded as though she’d run them up herself, because they went from “With my body I thee worship” into some pretty explicit subclauses.