The Organist’s Left Glove
The bells of St. Ambrose had not yet rung for the eight o’clock service when Nora Tulloch noticed the glove.
It sat on the low stone wall beside the lychgate, a single grey wool glove, palm-up, fingers slightly curled, as though waiting to be collected. The morning was cold enough that Nora’s breath fogged as she paused to look at it. Dew had settled into the knit. It had been there all night.
She tucked it into her coat pocket and went inside.
The harvest festival decorations filled St. Ambrose with the smell of bruised apple and straw. Sheaves of barley were propped against the font. Pumpkins, waxy and orange, lined the window ledges. Nora had arranged the asters herself the previous afternoon, pale purple against the grey stone, and she was pleased to see they had held their shape.
What was not in its place was Gerald Bryce.
Gerald had played the organ at St. Ambrose for eleven years. He was a quiet, meticulous man who wore the same brown cardigan from September through to March and who tuned the organ’s middle register every Thursday without being asked. The organ bench was empty. The order of service was propped against the music stand, exactly as he would have left it. But Gerald was not there, and the service was in forty minutes.
Reverend Ashworth found Nora standing at the organ bench. He was a tall man who stooped slightly in doorways from long habit.
“He hasn’t telephoned,” the vicar said. “I tried his cottage. Nothing.”
“Did you walk past The Stag last night?”
“I did not make a habit of it, no.”
“Someone should check,” Nora said. She was already moving.
The Stag occupied a low timber-framed building at the bend in the lane. Dennis Foyle, the landlord, was wiping down the bar with a cloth that smelled strongly of vinegar when Nora pushed open the door at half past eight in the morning. He looked up without surprise. Nora had the kind of face that made people expect purposeful arrivals.
“Gerald Bryce,” she said.
Dennis set down the cloth. “He was in last night. Stayed until close. Which wasn’t like him, I’ll say that.”
“Was he alone?”
“Came in alone. But Philip Ware was here most of the evening.”
Nora was still. Philip Ware was Gerald’s nephew, recently arrived in the village to help, so it was said, with Gerald’s garden. He had been in the village three weeks. He had the look of a man doing calculations.
“They argued?” she asked.
Dennis picked up the cloth again. “I wouldn’t say argued. More like Philip was doing the talking and Gerald was doing the listening. Gerald left his gloves on the bar. I called after him but he’d already gone.”
One glove. Nora’s hand went to her coat pocket.
She walked from The Stag to Gerald’s cottage, which stood at the far end of Wicken Street behind a hedge of overgrown box. She knocked. Waited. The box smelled damp and bitter in the morning cold.
The door opened on Philip Ware.
He was perhaps thirty-five, clean-shaved, wearing a pressed shirt that seemed wrong for the hour and the setting. He held a mug of coffee and regarded Nora with the careful pleasantness of someone who has prepared for a conversation.
“Miss Tulloch, isn’t it? Gerald’s mentioned you. He’s not feeling well, I’m afraid. He won’t be able to play today.”
“That’s unfortunate.” She did not move from the step. “It’s a cold morning. I found his glove at the lychgate. I imagine he’d want it back.”
She drew the glove from her pocket and held it out.
Philip reached for it without thinking. His right hand was bare. His left hand, she now saw, was already gloved, in grey wool, the match to the one she held. He had been wearing it inside the house.
A bruise will do that. Make a man reach for a glove before he answers the door.
Nora did not look at his hand again. She kept her eyes on his face. “Might I speak with Gerald directly? I only want to know his preference for a substitute organist. Mrs. Fallow has offered, though her sight-reading is unreliable.”
A pause. The coffee mug turned slightly in his grip.
“Gerald,” Philip called, not taking his eyes from Nora. “Someone here about the organ.”
Gerald Bryce appeared behind his nephew in the narrow hallway. He was pale, and there was a stiffness in the way he held his jaw that had nothing to do with illness. But he was there. He was standing.
“Nora,” he said.
“Gerald.” Her voice was entirely ordinary. “You left your glove. And Reverend Ashworth is hoping you’ll reconsider. The Harvest Festival needs its organist.”
Something in Gerald’s posture shifted. He looked at his nephew. Then he looked at the open door, the grey morning, the lane beyond.
“I think,” Gerald said slowly, “that I am feeling a good deal better.”
He reached past Philip and took the glove from Nora’s hand.
She walked back to St. Ambrose at a measured pace. By the time the bells rang for the ten o’clock service, Gerald Bryce was on his bench, hands moving through the opening bars of the processional, the organ filling the old stone church from floor to vault.
In the third pew, Nora folded her order of service along its crease and listened, and said nothing at all.
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