Up with the rocket, and down with the.........

I had no idea what the Admiralty put in that coffee; it was as if someone had tried to hide a lot of illegal South American drugs in a barrel of Black Stuff that was too ropy to grave ships with. But as I took in my responsibilities, I felt that a thousand rowdy Greek gods were coursing through my veins, telling me to DO SOMETHING. ANYTHING. JUST SOMETHING. I had a near-overwhelming urge to proclaim to the heavens, “For Lo! I am mistress of all that I survey!”

Then my eyes alit on a small flint-and-stone construction opposite the shop, and recalled something Mr Whybrow had said. With his coffee riding me, I stumbled rather than walked outside for a closer look at the chapel – nobody was about, anyway - and for the first time noticed that it stood at the corner of a small park. How idyllic! So much healthy greenery, a fountain; even the chapel looked as though it had settled in situ eight hundred of years ago, and fallen asleep. Not a bit like the dark, forbidding workhouse chapel that threatened, condemned and generally put the fear of God into you.

Safe in the knowledge that Mr Whybrow couldn’t see me from his lofty habitat, I went for a closer look; gingerly, as though I might wake something up. It appeared to be a working chapel, scrupulously clean; a small harmonium nestled in a corner, the pews sat cheerily awaiting their devotional bottoms, while the altar cross spread its arms in welcome.

There was just one tomb. A great plinth-type affair, lurking by the doorway to bash the elbows of the unwary as they entered. I knew immediately whose it would be.

Uncle Arthur’s tomb was no cheap affair, with its lid of polished granite. If Mr Whybrow had paid for this, he certainly had a generous side which, maybe, he preferred to keep from the world. The legend intrigued me. “Organist – Artist – TOILETBUILDER?” The final eulogy offered no further clues. “Rez In Peace.”

I was wondering whether Mr Whybrow would appreciate any inquiries; his tenor had suggested that Uncle Arthur had a story of his own to tell, but at the same time, that it might not be wise to ask. Then my heart stopped along with every other nerve in my body, save the visceral ones that squeeze like hands on a rubber glove full of porridge. With no intervening interval (does that sound repetitive? It’s difficult to think straight when I hark back to that moment)  I was staring into the eyes of a dark, lean man in his middle age, his features hollowed by the stresses which I knew only too well. The same face that was engraven into the tomb lid. And he was staring straight back, his eyes blazing above a gaping mouth that was trying to form words which, for some reason, it couldn’t expel.  It was this mystery that held me transfixed; whatever he was trying to say was lost behind his desperate urgency to say it.

Only then did I register what I’d been seeing since he appeared. As if I needed any further confirmation that this was Uncle Arthur, I noticed that he was semi-transparent, as though tinted onto glass. At the back of my mind, unknown voices were screaming – “Run! You’re looking into the face of a dead man!”  But that part of me which would have run, was paralysed. Besides, some other unseen voice was insisting that he would not harm me, even had he the power to do so.

Then he vanished and with him, the terror that had held me immobile. That particular terror, anyway; I began to tremble as one who had walked in from a frozen rainstorm, and had to clutch at a pew back for support. Gradually, the chapel’s cheery ambience filtered through. The danger was past; there had even been no danger.

I had no idea how long I’d been away. Suddenly more afraid of finding an angry jeweller waiting for me, I scurried back to the shop, almost tripping over the railway line.

I found no jeweller waiting for me, but my developing sixth sense directed me to the Lamson tube, where a message was awaiting me. “More coffee, please.” He’d even put his mug in the message tube.  Oh, Lord. How long had he been waiting?

Remembering his directions, I sawed off a section of his Admiralty pick-me-up, rammed in a glowing iron from the stove, and waited impatiently while it sizzled, bubbled, and melted into liquid. When it appeared drinkable – by Mr Whybrow, at least, I took the effervescing swamp out to the Lamson, pressed the electric buzzer to warn him that something was on its way, and watched the mug vanish.

In that same instant, the open message container still sitting by the mechanism sneered at me, telling me of my mistake.

In THAT same instant, a remote yell racketed from my end of the Lamson. Oh, my GOD –

He must have had spare message containers up there. Two seconds later, one appeared in the Lamson, smeared with black murk. Its contents left me in no doubt as to my prospects. A single crumpled sheet covered in black fingermarks.

“Come here.”