Agnes Sharp opened the village quack’s door and poked her nose outside. A cold wind blew in her face, tugged at her scarf and instantly seeped into her limbs. Ugh, yuck!

For a moment she toyed with the idea of calling a taxi. Then she cast another glance back to the waiting room, where a crowd of people seemed to be damn happy to finally see the back of her. At least as happy as she was to be able to give her back to those petty-minded fuddy-duddies. There had been some unpleasant scenes and even a bit of a tussle over a dog-eared magazine, and when the receptionist noticed Agnes looking, her brow furrowed with concern.

Back to the waiting room? No way!

Onwards!

Agnes fished her walking stick out of the umbrella stand and stepped pluckily onto the pavement. At least the air out there was fresh, not as stale as in the surgery, and a bit of exercise had never hurt anyone.

Except her hip maybe.

Leaning heavily on her walking stick, off she strode.

Clack-clack-clack.

Like a strange three-legged animal.

It only occurred to Agnes two houses down the road how dark it was already.

Not even five o’clock and dark already. Pitch-black, in fact.

It was enough to give her the heebie-jeebies …

Her village had only ventured into the modern day ten or twenty years ago and installed a couple of streetlamps, islands of light in the night. There weren’t many of them. Agnes spotted the bus stop at the other end of the road, in a pool of light. Full of promise.

That’s where she was heading.

But first she had to struggle past the church, which, shrouded by the graveyard, lay in thick, soupy darkness.

Agnes clutched her walking stick. Her biggest fear was not noticing some kind of obstacle in the darkness, having a fall, not being able to get back on her feet and then being found and rescued by the waiting room clowns, let alone by the snooty receptionist who had taken the magazine from her before.

The scandal. The shame. The snide remarks.

It didn’t bear thinking about!

So, she proceeded even more slowly and used her stick to feel in front of her for trip hazards in the dark. Nothing. To top it all, the church bells suddenly started up, all at once, as if they were poking fun at her. Agnes winced. Up until very recently, she wouldn’t really have noticed the ringing, a muffled background noise like so many others, but now, with the hearing aid, each chime of the bell went through her like a little shock. Pretty stressful things, these hearing aids!

Agnes limped stubbornly on.

But once she had almost made it to the beam of light at the bus stop, something made her stop. It took a while for her to realise what it was exactly.

The bells.

Or to be precise, the bell.

All the other church bells had fallen silent, but one was still chiming, getting quicker and quicker, and quicker again. In her long life, Agnes had spent a lot of time near these bells, but she’d never heard them ringing like that. So erratic, panicked almost. Something wasn’t right.

She looked back at the church, which still lay in deep darkness, then over at the bus stop, where a bus could appear at any moment.

Curiosity finally got the better of her.

While the bell began a hectic finale, Agnes turned around with a sigh and groped her way back towards the church using her tried-and-tested three-legged technique.

By the time she had reached the graveyard and was following the dully shimmering strip of gravel path, the bell had long since stilled.

She got to the church door, felt for the knob with her free hand, turned and pushed. The door opened with a bloodcurdling creak, a scream almost.

Inside it felt even colder than outside, if that was possible. She looked around. A light was flickering on the altar, but she wasn’t interested in that. Another light caught her attention, a narrow strip peeking out from beneath the door to the belfry.

In there, then.

Before Agnes set off again, she took a moment to listen.

Outside, the wind was howling at the top of its lungs. It had been a long time since she had last really heard the wind.

But in here, nothing.

Or almost nothing.

Thanks to the hearing aid, she could hear something like a gentle dragging, like something soft against stone or wood. Agnes wasn’t sure. She didn’t quite trust the new hearing aid as far as she could throw it, and she obviously didn’t trust her own ears in the slightest.

There was only one way to clear it up, Agnes dragged herself towards the chink of light. She tried the door, discovered it was open, and she was suddenly bathed in yellow light. Awaiting her was a medium-sized room with an unimaginatively carpeted floor and a row of narrow benches and stools along the walls. One of the stools had tipped over. A sign on the wall pointed out the importance of washing your hands, exactly like one she’d seen before at the doctor’s.

The unusual thing was the ropes.

The space at the foot of the bell tower was dominated by six thick ropes, which disappeared into the ceiling and presumably led up to the bells, tonnes and tonnes of singing bronze, centuries old.

Five of the thick ropes were each neatly knotted in loose loops at the end and were swinging gently back and forth.

The verger was hanging from the sixth.

He wasn’t completely dead yet. His fingertips were still twitching. But the strange angle of his head and neck told Agnes that he was beyond help.

Broken neck.

Nothing could be done.

The body was hanging in an unusual, half-kneeling position, his head in a loop at the end of the rope. Not just hanged then, the rope wasn’t hanging high enough for that. The verger would only have had to stretch out his legs to free himself from the rope. Curious.

Agnes stepped closer and carefully prodded the body with her stick. The verger swung gently back and forth, an expression of infinite surprise in his fixed eyes.

‘You probably imagined your Friday evening a bit differently, didn’t you?’ she murmured. ‘Me too!’

Agnes had always had a somewhat relaxed relationship with the dead – after all, they didn’t make any stupid comments, they were discreet and polite, albeit not always hygienic. Panting, she sat down on one of the stools – to think, but also because her hip really was fed up now.

She knew that bell ringing wasn’t an altogether risk-free endeavour. Once the huge bronze bells up there were in motion, nothing and nobody could stop them. She had heard of cases where a distracted bell-ringer got his foot caught in one of the loops and was then yanked several feet up in the air by the corresponding bell, only to land back on the ground again with broken bones and back injuries.

If a neck were to get caught in the loop instead of a foot …

Agnes looked at the dead verger, whose fingertips had now stopped twitching, and noticed that one of his legs was also sticking out at an unhealthy angle.

Aha! That’s what must have happened! But how did you manage to get your head caught in a loop, especially after the ringing, when all of the other ropes were already neatly rolled up? An accident was out of the question, unless the verger was crawling through the room on all fours, drunk as a lord.

She sniffed but couldn’t smell any alcohol.

Suicide?

She hadn’t known the verger personally, but from afar he had made a rather reserved impression. Not the sort to dramatically break his neck with several tonnes of bronze. Aside from that, the man looked far too surprised for that to be the case.

Still murder then.

Murder in Duck End.

Again!

Agnes sighed and clambered to her feet. The murderer must have set the bell in motion and then quickly put the loop around his neck. The verger had been dragged upwards, and the bell had broken his neck instantly. That explained the surprised look on his face.

Then the bell had jingled itself out, getting quicker and quicker, while the murderer – that’s a point, where had he got to?

Agnes wasn’t the fastest on her feet. It was quite possible that the killer had slipped outside before she arrived. Maybe he was outside crouching behind one of the pitch-black headstones, waiting for her to leave. Or he was hiding in the church.

Or …

Agnes suddenly felt overwhelmed by the situation. For years, she had fought against getting a hearing aid, and now that she had one in her ear, everything seemed loud to her.

Even the silence.

And then there was the body … It was too much aggravation for one day. She was an old woman with a bit of plastic in her ear. Who was interested in what she thought, anyway? What was...