For Whom the Bell Tolls

The bell in our village church strikes the most ghastly tone when there is a death in the village, it happens at the moment of death and the tolling is slow and dry, it is instantly recognisable.
The dead are dealt with quickly here, the laying out is done in the house and the embalming fluid pervades the street. The chairs arrive and line the front room in centrifugal fashion. That is the order of things here.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel by Ernest Hemingway about the Spanish Civil War