by Norman A. Rubin
When the sound of the church bells struck the peal of mourning all good folk stood still on the estate of the Redlaw family. Household servants posed in solemn attention and workers on the land doffed their hats in respect during the resonance of the pealing bells.
Sir Henry Redlaw was dead. The good man in the solemnity of the hour was in the final act as the Son of Adam before he had left the stage. But one last gesture before the curtain was drawn was quite unexpected...
The body of the elder knight of the queen's realm rested in an ornamented oaken coffin embellished with brass handles and covered with a tinted sheet of glass along the half cover of etched wood. The coffin was reverently placed in the private chapel of the family where it rested on a cloth-covered bier in front of the altar. The arrangements and ceremonies for the funeral to honor this noble personage were dignified and all the surviving members of his family approved of its arrangement.
The face of Sir Henry Redlaw shown under the glass was not disagreeable to look with the stern features set with a faint smile. The undertaker had worked the magic of his trade and Sir Henry was presented as a man who died a painless death even though he fell to the scythe in the misery of a terminal illness.
At the chime to hour of one in the afternoon the friends and representatives of the royal house filed in the gloom of the chapel where they had come to pay their last tribute to this royal patron who had no further need of friends and their respect. The surviving members of his family filed by his casket, barely looking at his features, and wept tears of remorse according to custom above the glass.
As by custom the mourners quietly seated themselves in the correct order of seating. Then the minister solemnly came in followed by the widow in customary black weeds, whose subdued lamentations filled the chambers. She approached the coffin and after leaning her sight towards the glass for a moment she was led to her seat by her eldest daughter.
When quiet reigned throughout the chapel, the cleric began his eulogy of the dead in a doleful voice, mingled with repressed sobbing by the immediate members of the family. The gloomy day progressed in the misery of the hour and the patter of light rain could be heard on the chapel's windows. It seemed that nature itself wept at the funeral of Sir Henry Redlaw.
When the minister had finished with his rather long-winded grim eulogy, he called to the mourners to rise to sing a hymn of praise from their hymnal. The service ended with a prayer for Sir Henry Redlaw and the pallbearers took their places at the bier.
The bright rays of the sun peered through the dark clouds as if commanded to bring light to the ceremonies. The edges of dark gloom was lifted throughout confines of the chapel for a moment or two as one last tribute to the good man...
Then the widow in the last act of passion ran to coffin and her moist eyes sought the face of the deceased beneath glass. Suddenly she threw up her arms and with scream to her lips, fainted and fell to the floor.
The mourners sprang forward to the front of the bier to assist the stricken widow. Then, if by shock, they stared in horror upon the face of Sir Henry Redlaw, deceased.
They all turned away, two women fainted and a member of the royal household quickly left the chapel sick to his stomach. One disturbed mourner, trying to escape the terrible sight, stumbled against the coffin so heavily that it was shoved from the stand. The coffin fell to the floor with a crash, the glass covering shattered to bits with the impact.
From the opening crawled a black tomcat, which quickly leapt on all four paws to the floor. The tom rushed through the frenzy crowd scattering hysterical mourners aside. As a few of the mourners watched its movements, the feline stopped for a moment in its flight and briskly wiped its crimson mouth with a forepaw. The cat turned once with a reddish grin and then within a flash it leaped through a small opening to a window...
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