There was more silence.

After a while Sergeant Colon cleared his throat, a general signal to indicate that some sort of appropriate moment was now over. There was a general relaxation of muscles.

“Y'know, we ought to come up here one day with a billhook and clear this lot up a bit,” said the sergeant.

“You always say that, sarge, every year,” said Nobby as they walked away. “And we never do.”

“If I had a dollar for every copper's funeral I've attended up here,” said Colon, “I'd have…nineteen dollars and fifty pence.”

“Fifty pence?” said Nobby.

“That was when Corporal Hildebiddle woke up just in time and banged on the lid,” said Colon. “Before your time, o'course. Everyone said it was an amazin' recovery.”

“Mr Sergeant?”

The three men turned. Coming towards them in a high-speed sidle was the black-clad, skinny figure of Legitimate First, the cemetery's resident gravedigger.

Colon sighed. “Yes, Leggie?” he said.

“Good morrow, sweet—” the gravedigger began, but Sergeant Colon waved a finger at him.

“Stop that right now,” he said. “You know you've been warned before. None of that ‘comic gravedigger’ stuff. It's not funny and it's not clever. Just say what you've got to say. No silly bits.”

Leggie looked crestfallen. “Well, good sirs—”

“Leggie, I've known you for years,” said Colon wearily. “Just try, will you?”

“The deacon wants them graves dug up, Fred,” said Leggie in a sulky voice. “It's been more'n thirty years. Long past time they was in the crypts—”

“No,” said Fred Colon.

“But I've got a nice shelf for 'em down there, Fred,” Leggie pleaded. “Right up near the front. We need the space, Fred! It's standing room only in here, and that's the truth! Even the worms have to go in single file! Right up near the front, Fred, where I can chat to 'em when I'm having my tea. How about that?”

The watchmen and Dibbler shared a glance. Most people in the city had been into Leggie's crypts, if only for a dare. And it had come as a shock to most of them to realize that solemn burial was not for eternity but only for a handful of years so that, in Leggie's words, “my little wriggly helpers” could do their work. After that, the last last resting place was the crypts, and an entry in the huge ledgers.