Satan in St Mary

tried to remember what he knew about the church but the memory escaped him. The place was deserted except for a few gawking onlookers who promptly disappeared as the black-gowned figure of Bellet strode across to meet Corbett. "Ah, Master Clerk, " the priest proffered a bony hand which Corbett clasped, aware that the priest's white gaunt features and sombre dress only enhanced the sinister fear he had experienced on the previous night.
    "I have come to view the church, " Corbett announced more abruptly than he had intended. "Now, in the light of day. "
    "All will be revealed!" the priest quietly retorted and
    Corbett thought Bellet was more confident than he had sounded the night before but he only nodded his assent and allowed Bellet to escort him up to the main door in the church.
    Inside, the entrance was dark and smelt of must and damp. Corbett stopped and looked around, his attention was caught by a narrow iron-studded door on his left. He ignored all else and moved across to open it. "It's locked, " Bellet smugly commented. "It has been for months. It leads up to the belfry and the tower roof but, if you want… " His voice trailed off as if he was bored.
    "Yes, " Corbett replied testily, "I want. Open it!"
    The priest, his lips pursed in a half-smile, fumbled with a heavy bunch of keys which swung from his belt and eventually he unlocked the door. It creaked open, protesting loudly on its rusty hinges. Corbett brushed past the priest and began to climb the wet, mildewed spiral staircase. The belfry was at the top, its great bronze bells now hanging silent. Corbett gave them a cursory glance and, pulling back the heavy iron bolts, began to push and heave at the thick wooden trapdoor above him until it began to creak and lift upwards.
    The wind whipped Corbett's face as he emerged from the trapdoor and stood on the tower roof. He approached the short crenellated wall and stared down to where Cheapside lay dizzily small beneath him. The city stretched out on either side, a row of roofs and houses to the south and the brown soil and snow-covered fields to the north beyond Newgate and the old city wall. Corbett looked round the tower. Someone could have lurked there and made their way down into the church itself but the trapdoor, as well as the door to the tower, looked as if they had not been used for years and any intruder who used them would have roused Duket, the ward watch and half of Cheapside.
    Corbett shook his head and made his way down to where the priest was waiting for him, a sardonic grin on his sallow features.
    "Did you find anything, Master Clerk?" Corbett ignored the sarcasm in his voice and stared round the porch. In one corner, bell ropes dangled down from a small aperture in the ceiling; beneath them, coiled in rough heaps, were other pieces of rope. Some of them new, some old and frayed.
    "This was where Duket took the rope from?"
    The priest nodded. "Yes, " he replied, "he must have come down here to collect the rope and then gone back to the sanctuary. "
    "In the dark?" Corbett asked.
    "What do you mean?" was the surly reply.
    "I mean, " Corbett said slowly, "that Duket sat here in the sanctuary in the dark and then quietly made his way down into the gloom to collect a piece of rope to kill himself?"
    "He had a candle, " the priest answered quickly.
    "If he did, " Corbett commented, waving his hand round the porch, "then he did not use it. There is no trace of fresh wax on the floor!" He looked at Bellet, pleased to see the sardonic grin disappear from his face. "An agitated man, " Corbett continued, "carrying a candle, stumbling around in the dark. His hand would shake. " Corbett scuffed the floor with the toe of his boot. "There would be more wax here than dirt!"
    Corbett turned and walked into the nave of the church, a large paved area which stretched down to the rood screen, a wooden trellised partition with a huge door in the centre which led into the sanctuary and the stairs to the high altar. There was a row of stout squat pillars down either side of the nave. Each of the transepts looked black and empty except for the stacked wooden benches and the faded frescoes on the dirty whitewashed walls. High above each transept was a row of small oval-shaped windows. Corbett stared up at them, they were all firmly shuttered both inside and out except for one where the shutters hung loose, though still too small for any man to get through unnoticed by either Duket or the ward watch.
    Corbett