I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

by Alan Bradley

  He had almost said “our privacy.” I was sure of it.

  “I’ll pass the word,” McNulty said. “Should be no sweat. Our lot’s pretty clannish, as well.”

  We made our way through to the east wing and into the portrait gallery. I was half expecting to find it as it had been in my dream: an icy, flooded wasteland. But the room remained as it had been since time immemorial: a long dim train shed of glowering ancestors who, with just a few exceptions (Countess Daisy, for instance, who was said to have greeted visitors to Buckshaw by turning handsprings on the roof in a Chinese silk smock) seemed to have subsided, one and all, into a collective and perpetual sulk that did not exactly gladden one’s heart.

  “Use of the portrait gallery has been negotiated—” Dogger was saying.

  “But none of yer ’obnail boots on the floor, mind!” a voice cut in. It was Mrs. Mullet.

  Hands on hips, she gave McNulty her proprietary glare, then in a softer voice said:

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Dogger, but the Colonel’s off now to London for ’is stamp meet. ’E wishes to see you about the tinned beef, an’ that, before ’e goes.”

  “Tinned beef” was a code word meaning that Father needed to borrow money for train and taxi fare. I had discovered this by listening at the door of Father’s study. It was a fact I wished I didn’t know.

  “Of course,” Dogger said. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  And he vanished in the way he does.

  “You’ll have to lay down some tarpaulings on that floor,” Mrs. Mullet told McNulty. “ ‘Par-key,’ they calls it: cherry wood, mahogany, walnut, birch—six different kinds of oak is in it. Can’t ’ave workmen tramplin’ all over the likes of that, can I?”

  “Believe you me, Mrs.…”

  “Mullet,” said Mrs. Mullet. “With an ‘M.’ ”

  “Mrs. Mullet. My name’s McNulty—also with an ‘M,’ by the way. Patrick McNulty. I can assure you that our crew at Ilium Films are hired for their fussy natures. In fact, I can confide in you—knowing it will go no further—that we’ve just come from shooting a scene inside a certain royal residence without one word of complaint from You-Know-Who.”

  Mrs. M’s eyes widened.

  “You mean—”

  “Exactly,” McNulty said, putting a forefinger to his lips. “You’re a very shrewd woman, Mrs. Mullet. I can see that.”

  She gave a flimsy smile, like the Mona Lisa, and I knew that her loyalty was bought. Whatever else he was, Patrick McNulty was as slick as nose oil.

  Now Dogger was back, his face bland and capable, giving away nothing. I followed as he led the way upstairs and into the west wing.

  “The room at the south end of the corridor is Miss Harriet’s boudoir. It is strictly private, and is not to be entered upon any account.”

  He said this as if Harriet had just stepped out for a couple of hours to pay a social call in the county, or to ride with the Halstead-Thicket Hounds. He did not tell McNulty that my mother had been dead for ten years, and that her rooms had been preserved by Father as a shrine where no one, or so he thought, could hear him weeping.

  “Understood,” McNulty said. “Over and out. I’ll pass it along.”

  “The two bedrooms on the left belong to Miss Ophelia and Miss Daphne, who will share a room for the duration. Choose the one you wish to use as a setting and they’ll settle for the other.”

  “Sporting of them,” McNulty said. “Val Lampman will be seeing to that. He’s our director.”

  “All other bedrooms, sitting rooms, and dressing rooms, including those along the north front, may be assigned as you see fit,” Dogger went on, not batting an eye at the mention of England’s most celebrated cinema director.

  Even I knew who Val Lampman was.

  “I’d best be getting back to my crew,” McNulty said, with a glance at his wristwatch. “We’ll organize the lorries, then see to the unloading.”

  “As you wish,” Dogger told him, and it seemed to me there was a touch of sadness in his voice.

  We descended the stairs, McNulty openly running his fingers over the carved banister ends, craning his neck to gawk at the carved paneling.

  “S’truth,” he muttered under his breath.

  “You’ll never guess who’s directing this film!” I said, bursting into the drawing room.

  “Val Lampman,” Daffy said in a bored voice, without looking up from her book. “Phyllis Wyvern doesn’t work with anyone else nowadays. Not since—”

  “Since what?”

  “You’re too young to understand.”

  “No, I’m not. What about Boccaccio?” Daffy had recently been reading aloud to us at tea, selected tales from Boccaccio’s Decameron.

  “That’s fiction,” she said. “Val Lampman is real life.”

  “Says who?” I countered.

  “Says Cinema World. It was all over the front page.”

  “What was?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Flavia,” Daffy said, throwing down her book, “you grow more like a parrot every day: ‘Since what? Says who? What was?’ ”

  She mimicked my voice cruelly.

  “We ought to teach you to say ‘Who’s a pretty bird, then?’ or ‘Polly wants a biscuit.’ We’ve already ordered you a cage: lovely gold bars, a perch, and a water dish to splash about in—not that you’ll ever use it.”

  “Sucks to you!”

  “I deflect it back unto you,” Daffy said, holding out an invisible shield at arm’s length.

  “And back to you again,” I said, duplicating her gesture.

  “Ha! Yours is a brass shield. Brass doesn’t bounce sucks. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Does!”

  “Doesn’t!”

  It was at this point that Feely intervened in what had been, until then, a perfectly civilized discussion.

  “Speaking of parrots,” she said, “Harriet had a lovely parrot before you were born—a beautiful bird, an African Grey, called Sinbad. I remember him perfectly well. He could conjugate the Latin verb ‘amare’ and sing parts of ‘The Lorelei.’ ”

  “You’re making this up,” I told her.

  “Remember Sinbad, Daffy?” Feely said, laughing.

  “ ‘The boy stood on the burning deck,’ ” Daffy said. “Poor old Sinby used to scramble up onto his perch as he squawked the words. Hilarious.”

  “Then where is he now?” I demanded. “He should be still alive. Parrots can live more than a hundred years.”

  “He flew away,” Daffy said, with a little hitch in her voice. “Harriet had spread a blanket on the terrace, taken you out for some fresh air. Somehow you managed to work loose the catch on the door of the cage, and Sinbad flew away. Don’t you remember?”

  “I didn’t!”

  Feely was looking at me with eyes which were no longer those of a sister.

  “Oh, but you did. She often said afterwards that she wished it had been you who had flown away, and Sinbad who had stayed.”

  I could feel the pressure rising in my chest, as if I were a steam boiler.

  I said a forbidden word and walked stiffly from the room, vowing revenge.

  There were times when a touch of the old strychnine was just the ticket.

  I would go upstairs straight away to my chemical kitchen and prepare a delicacy that would have my hateful sisters begging for mercy. Yes, that was it! I would spice their egg salad sandwiches with a couple of grains of nux vomica. It would keep them out of decent company for a week.

  I was halfway up the stairs when the doorbell rang.

  “Dash it all!” I said. There was nothing I hated more than being interrupted when I was about to do something gratifying with chemicals.

  I trudged down from the landing and flung open the door angrily.

  There, looking down his nose at me, stood a chauffeur in livery: light chocolate coat with corded trim, flared breeches tucked into tall tan leather boots, a peaked cap, and a pair of limp brown leather gloves held a little too casually in h
is perfectly manicured hands.

  I didn’t like his attitude, and, come to think of it, he probably didn’t like mine.

  “De Luce?” he asked.

  I stood motionless, waiting for decency.

  “Miss de Luce?”

  “Yes,” I said grudgingly, peering round his body as if there might be others like him hiding in the bushes.

  The pantechnicon and vans had gone from the forecourt. A maze of snowy tracks told me that they had been moved round to the back of the house. In their place, idling silently in little gusts of snow, was a black Daimler limousine, polished, like a funeral coach, to an unearthly shine.

  “Come in and close the door,” I said. “Father’s not awfully keen on snowdrifts in the foyer.”

  “Miss Wyvern has arrived,” he announced, drawing himself to attention.

  “But—” I managed, “they weren’t supposed to be here until noon …”

  Phyllis Wyvern! My mind was spinning. With Father away, surely I couldn’t be expected to …

  I’d seen her on the silver screen, of course, not just at the Gaumont, but also at the little backstreet cinema in Hinley. And once, also, when the vicar had hired Mr. Mitchell, who operated Bishop’s Lacey’s photo studio, to run The Rector’s Wife in St. Tancred’s parish hall, hoping, I suppose, that the story would arouse a feeling of sympathy in our parish bosoms for his rat-faced—and rat-hearted—wife, Cynthia.

  Of course, it had no such effect. Despite the fact that the film was so old and scratched and full of splices that it sometimes made the picture leap about on the screen like a jumping jack, Phyllis Wyvern had been magnificent in the role of the brave and noble Mrs. Willington. At the end, when the lights came up, even the projectionist was in tears, although he’d seen the thing a hundred times before.

  Nobody gave Cynthia Richardson a second look, though, and I had seen her afterwards, in the darkness, slinking home alone through the graveyard.

  But how does one talk, face-to-face, with a goddess? What does one say?

  “I’ll ring for Dogger,” I said.

  “I’ll see to it, Miss Flavia,” said Dogger, already at my elbow.

  I don’t know how he does it, but Dogger always appears at precisely the right instant, like one of those figures that pops out of the door on a Swiss clock.

  And suddenly he was walking towards the Daimler, the chauffeur slipping and sliding in front of him, trying to be the first to take hold of the car’s door handle.

  Dogger won.

  “Miss Wyvern,” he said, his voice coming clearly to my ears on the cold air. “On behalf of Colonel de Luce, may I welcome you to Buckshaw? It’s a pleasure to have you with us. The Colonel has asked me to express his regrets that he is not here to greet you.”

  Phyllis Wyvern took Dogger’s extended hand and stepped out of the car.

  “Watch your step, miss. The footing is treacherous this morning.”

  I could see her every breath distinctly on the cold air as she took Dogger’s arm and floated towards the front door. Floated! There was no other word for it. In spite of the slick walkway, Phyllis Wyvern floated towards me as if she were a ghost.

  “We weren’t expecting you until noon,” Dogger was saying. “I regret that the walkways have not yet been fully shoveled and ashes put down.”

  “Think nothing of it, Mr.—”

  “Dogger,” Dogger said.

  “Mr. Dogger, I’m just a girl from Golders Green. I’ve managed in snow before and, I expect I shall manage again.

  “Oops!” She giggled, pretending to slip and smiling up at him as she clung to his arm.

  I couldn’t believe how tiny she was, her head barely level with his chest.

  She wore a tight-fitting black suit with a white blouse with a black and yellow Liberty scarf, and, despite the grayness of the day, her complexion was like cream in a summer kitchen.

  “Hullo!” she said, stopping in front of me. “I’ve seen this face before. You’re Flavia de Luce, if I’m not mistaken. I was hoping you’d be here.”

  I stopped breathing and I didn’t care.

  “Your photo was in the Daily Mirror, you know. That dreadful business about Stonepenny, or Bonepenny, or whatever he was called.”

  “Bonepenny,” I said. “Horace Bonepenny.”

  I had given my assistance to the police in that case when they were completely stymied.

  “That’s it,” she said, sticking out a hand and seizing mine as if we were sisters. “Bonepenny. I keep up paid subscriptions to the Police Gazette and True Crime, and I never miss so much as a single issue of the News of the World. I simply adore reading about all the great murderers: the Brides in the Bath … the Islington Mumbler … Major Armstrong … Dr. Crippen … the stuff of great drama. Makes you think, doesn’t it? What, after all, would life be without puzzling death?”

  Exactly! I thought.

  “And now I think we should go inside and not keep poor Mr. Dogger standing out here in the cold.”

  I glanced quickly at Dogger, but his face was as reflective as a millpond.

  As she brushed past me, I couldn’t help thinking: I’m breathing the same air as Phyllis Wyvern!

  My nostrils were suddenly filled with her scent: the odor of jasmine.

  It had probably been concocted in some perfumery, I thought, from phenol and acetic acid. Phenol, or “benzanol,” I recalled, had been discovered in the mid-seventeenth century by a German chemist named Johann Rudolf Glauber, although it was not actually isolated until nearly two hundred years later by one of his countrymen, Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, who extracted it from coal tar and christened it “carbolic acid.” I had synthesized the extremely poisonous stuff myself by a process which involved the incomplete oxidation of benzene, and I remembered with pleasure that it was the most powerful embalming agent known to mankind: the stuff that is used whenever a body is required to last, and last, and last.

  It was also to be found in certain of the Scotch whiskies.

  Phyllis Wyvern had swept past me into the foyer and was now spinning round in a delighted circle.

  “What a gloomy old place!” she said, clapping her hands together. “It’s perfect! Absolutely perfect!”

  By now, the chauffeur had brought the luggage and was piling it inside the door.

  “Just leave it there, Anthony,” she said. “Someone will see to it.”

  “Yes, Miss Wyvern,” he replied, making a great show of coming to attention. He almost clicked his heels.

  There was something vaguely familiar about him, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, think what.

  He stood there for a long moment, perfectly still, as if he were expecting a tip—or was he waiting to be asked in for a drink and a cigar?

  “You may go,” she announced rather abruptly and the spell was broken. In an instant he was no more than a member of the chorus in The Chocolate Soldier.

  “Yes, Miss Wyvern,” he said, and as he turned away from her towards the door, I saw on his face a look of—what was it?—contempt?

  • THREE •

  “THIS ONE IS SUNNIER, miss,” Dogger was saying. “If you don’t mind, we shall put you in here until your assigned bedroom has been made ready.”

  We had been looking at bedrooms, and had arrived at last at Feely’s.

  Since we didn’t get much sun at this time of year, I guessed that Dogger could only be thinking of former days.

  “It will do admirably,” Phyllis Wyvern said, drifting to the window. “View of a little lake—check … a romantic ruin—check … glimpses of the wardrobe van. What more could a leading lady ask?”

  “May I unpack?” Dogger asked.

  “No, thank you. Bun will take care of it. She’ll be along directly.”

  “It’s no trouble, I assure you,” Dogger said.

  “Most kind of you, Dogger, but no—I must insist. Bun is very possessive. She’d swear like blue lightning if she thought anyone else had laid hands on my belongings.”

  �
��I understand,” Dogger said. “Will there be anything else? May I ask Mrs. Mullet to bring you a pot of tea?”

  “Dogger, you are a treasure beyond rubies. I’d love nothing better. I’m going to slip into something more comfy and immerse myself in Val’s abominable script. It’s as much as your life is worth if one isn’t word perfect by the time the lights are set up.”

  “Thank you, miss,” Dogger said, and was gone.

  “Funny old stick,” she said. “He’s been with you forever, of course?”

  “Father and Dogger were in the army together,” I said, bristling slightly.

  “Ah, yes, companions-in-arms. Quite common nowadays, I understand. Tit for tat. You save my life now and I’ll save yours later. Perhaps you saw me in The Trench in the Drawing Room? Much the same plot.”

  I shook my head.

  At that instant the door flew open and Feely came rushing in.

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing?” she shouted. “I told you before what would happen if I caught you in my room again.”

  She had not noticed Phyllis Wyvern standing at the window.

  She made a grab for me.

  “No!”

  Feely spun round to see who had spoken. Her raised hand fell to her side, where it hung limply.

  For a moment they stood there staring at each other, Feely as if she had been confronted by some ghastly specter, Phyllis Wyvern as she looked when she’d clung defiantly to the rain-lashed spire of the cathedral in the final moments of The Glass Heart.

  Then Feely’s lower lip began to quiver, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

  She turned and fled.

  “So,” said Phyllis Wyvern after a long silence, “you have an older sister, too.”

  “That was Feely,” I said. “She—”

  “No need to explain. Older sisters are much alike the world over: half a cup of love and half one of contempt.”

  I couldn’t have put it better myself!

  “My sister’s the same,” she said. “Six years older?”

  I nodded.

  “Mine, too. I see we have a great deal more in common than a taste for horrific murder, Flavia de Luce.”