I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

by Alan Bradley

In the wilderness build me a nest …”

  I edged the door open and slipped inside.

  “Is that you, Bun? Fetch me my robe, will you? It’s on the back of the door. Oh, and while you’re at it, a nice drinksie-winksie would be just what the doctor ordered.”

  I stood perfectly still and waited.

  “Bun?”

  There was a faint, yet detectable note of fear in her voice.

  “It’s me, Miss Wyvern … Flavia.”

  “For God’s sake, girl, don’t lurk like that. Are you trying to frighten me to death? Come in here where I can see you.”

  I showed myself around the half-open door.

  Phyllis Wyvern was up to her shoulders in steaming water. Her hair was piled on top of her head like a haystack in the rain. I couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t look at all like the woman I’d seen on the cinema screen. For one thing, she was wearing no makeup. For another, she had wrinkles.

  I felt, to be perfectly honest, as if I’d just walked in on a witch in mid-transformation.

  “Put the lid down,” she said, pointing to the toilet. “Have a seat and keep me company.”

  I obeyed at once.

  I hadn’t the heart—the guts, actually—to tell her that Harriet’s boudoir was off-limits. But then, of course, she had no way of knowing that. Dogger had explained the ground rules to Patrick McNulty before she’d arrived. McNulty was now on his way to the hospital in Hinley, and probably hadn’t had time to pass along the message.

  Part of me watched the rest of me being in awe of the most famous movie star in the world … the galaxy … the universe!

  “What are you staring at?” Phyllis Wyvern asked suddenly. “My puckers?”

  For once, I couldn’t think of a diplomatic answer.

  I nodded.

  “How old do you think I am?” she asked, picking up a long cigarette holder from the edge of the tub. The smoke had been invisible in the steam.

  I thought carefully before answering. Too low a number would indicate flattery; too high could result in disaster. The odds were against me. Unless I hit it dead-on, I couldn’t win.

  “Thirty-seven,” I said.

  She blew out a jet of smoke like a dragon.

  “Bless you, Flavia de Luce,” she said. “You’re bang on! Thirty-seven-year-old stuffing in a fifty-nine-year-old sausage casing. But I’ve still got some spice in me.”

  She laughed a throaty laugh, and I could see why the world was in love with her.

  She plunged a pudding-sized bath sponge into the water, then squeezed it over her head. The water streamed down her face and dribbled off her chin.

  “Look! I’m Niagara Falls!” she said, making a silly face.

  I couldn’t help myself: I laughed aloud.

  And then she stood up.

  At that very instant, as if in a scene from one of those two-act comedies the St. Tancred’s Amateur Dramatic Society put on at the parish hall, a loud voice in the outer room said, “What in blue blazes do you think you’re doing?”

  It was Feely.

  She came storming—there’s no other way to express it—storming into the room.

  “You know as well as I do, you, you filthy little swine, that no one is allowed—”

  Naked, except for a few soap bubbles, Phyllis Wyvern stood staring at Feely through the swirling steam.

  Time, for an instant, was frozen.

  I was seized by the mad thought that I’d been suddenly thrust into Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus, but I quickly rejected it: Even though Feely’s expression was rather like the “I’ll-huff-and-I’ll-puff” look on the face of the wind god, Zephyrus, Phyllis Wyvern was no Venus—not by a long chalk.

  Feely’s face was turning the color of water in which beets have been boiled.

  “I … I …

  “I beg your pardon,” she said, and I could have cheered! Even in the rush of that bizarre moment, I couldn’t help thinking that it was the first time in Feely’s life she had ever uttered those words.

  Like a courtier withdrawing from the Royal Presence, she backed slowly out of the room.

  “Hand me my towel,” commanded the bare-naked queen, and stepped out of the bath.

  “Oh, here you are,” Bun Keats said behind me. “The door was open, so I—”

  She caught sight of me and shut her mouth abruptly.

  “Well, well, well,” said Phyllis Wyvern. “The delinquent Bun condescends at last to grace us with her presence.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Wyvern. I’ve been seeing to the unpacking.”

  “ ‘I’m sorry, Miss Wyvern. I’ve been seeing to the unpacking.’ God help us.”

  She mimicked her assistant’s voice in the same cruel and cutting way that Daffy had mimicked mine, but in this case, though, the imitation was brilliant. Professional.

  I realized at once that a great actress can never be greater than when she’s starring in her own life.

  Tears sprang to Bun Keats’s eyes, but she bent over and began picking up soggy towels.

  “I don’t think these rooms are part of the agreement, Miss Wyvern,” she said. “I’d already laid out your bath in the north wing.”

  “Mop up this mess,” Phyllis Wyvern said, ignoring her. “Use the towels. There’s nothing worse than a wet floor. Someone could slip and break their neck.”

  I took the opportunity to make myself scarce.

  Outside, the weather had worsened. I watched from the drawing room window as the snow, driven by a merciless north wind, blurred the outlines of the vans and lorries. By late afternoon, the wind had lessened a little and the stuff was now coming straight down in the gathering dark.

  I turned from the window to Daffy, who was sunk deep into an armchair, her legs dangling over the arms. She was reading Bleak House again.

  “I love books where it’s always raining,” she had once told me. “So much like real life.” I wasn’t sure if this was one of her clever insults, so I did not reply.

  “It’s snowing like stink outside,” I said.

  “It always snows outside. Never inside,” she said without looking up from her book. “And don’t say ‘stink.’ It’s common.”

  “Do you think Father will make it home from London?”

  Daffy shrugged. “If he does, he does. If he doesn’t, he can bunk over the night at Aunt Felicity’s. She doesn’t usually charge him more than a couple of quid for bed and breakfast.”

  She reversed herself in the chair, making it clear that the conversation was at an end.

  “I met Phyllis Wyvern this morning,” I said.

  Daffy did not reply, but I saw that her eyes had stopped moving across the page. At least I had her attention.

  “I talked to her while she was bathing,” I confided. I did not mention that this had taken place in Harriet’s boudoir. Whatever I was, I wasn’t a rat.

  There was no response.

  “Aren’t you interested, Daffy?”

  “There’s time enough to meet these thespians later. They always put on a dog and pony show before the actual filming begins. A grace and favor thing. They call it ‘yakking up the yokels.’ Someone will take us round and show us all the ciné gear and tell us what a bloody marvel it is. Then they’ll introduce us to the actors, beginning with the boy who plays the hero as a child and falls through the ice, and ending with Phyllis Wyvern herself.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  Daffy preened a little.

  “I try to keep myself well informed,” she said. “Besides, they shot a couple of exteriors at Foster’s last year, and Flossie dished the dirt.”

  “I wouldn’t expect there was much dirt if they were only shooting exteriors,” I said.

  “You’d be surprised,” Daffy said darkly, and went on with her reading.

  At four-thirty, the doorbell rang. I had been sitting on the stairs watching the electricians as they snaked miles of black cable from the foyer to far-flung corners of the house.

&nbs
p; Father had ordered us to keep to our quarters and not to interfere with the work at hand, and I was doing my best to obey. Since the eastern staircase led up to my bedroom and laboratory, it could be considered, technically at least, as part of my quarters, and I certainly had no intention of interfering with the ciné crew.

  Several rows of chairs had been set up in the foyer as if a meeting were planned, and I threaded my way through them to see who was at the door.

  With all the noise and bustle of the workmen, Dogger mustn’t have heard the bell.

  I opened the door and there, to my surprise, amid the whirling snow, stood the vicar, Denwyn Richardson.

  “Ah, Flavia,” he said, brushing the flakes from his heavy black coat and stamping his galoshes like a cart horse’s feet, “how lovely to see you. May I come in?”

  “Of course,” I said, and as I stepped back from the door, a certain foreboding came over me. “It’s not bad news about Father, is it?”

  Even as one of Father’s oldest and dearest friends, he seldom paid a visit to Buckshaw, and I knew that an unexpected vicar at the door could sometimes be an ominous sign. Perhaps there had been an accident in London. Perhaps the train had run off the tracks and overturned in a snowy field. If so, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be the first to hear it.

  “Good lord, no!” the vicar said. “Your father’s gone up to London today, hasn’t he? Stamp meeting, or some such thing?”

  Another thing about vicars was that they knew everyone’s business.

  “Will you come in?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

  As he stepped inside, the vicar must have seen me looking past him in astonishment at his tired old Morris Oxford, which sat in the forecourt looking remarkably spruce for its age, a layer of snow on the roof and bonnet giving it the appearance of an overly iced wedding cake.

  “Winter tires plus snow chains,” he said in a confidential tone. “The secret of any truly successful ministry. The bishop tipped me off, but don’t tell anyone. He picked it up from the American soldiers.”

  I grinned and slammed the door.

  “Good lord!” he said, staring at the maze of cables and the forest of lighting fixtures. “I didn’t expect it to be anything like this.”

  “You knew about it? The filming, I mean?”

  “Oh, of course. Your father mentioned it quite some time ago … asked me to keep mum, though, and so, of course, I have. But now that the vast convoy has rolled through Bishop’s Lacey, and the caravanserai set up within the very grounds of Buckshaw, it can be a secret no longer, can it?

  “I must admit to you, Flavia, that ever since I heard Phyllis Wyvern was to be here, in the flesh, so to speak, at Buckshaw, I’ve been making plans of my own. It’s not often that we’re gifted with so august … so luminous … a visitor and, well, after all, one must grind with whatever grist one is given—not that Phyllis Wyvern may be said to be grist in any sense of the word, dear me, no, but—”

  “I met her this morning,” I volunteered.

  “Did you indeed! Cynthia will be quite jealous to hear of it. Well, perhaps not jealous, but possibly just a tiny bit envious.”

  “Is Mrs. Richardson one of Phyllis Wyvern’s fans?”

  “No, I don’t believe so. Cynthia is, however, the cousin of Stella Ferrars, who, of course, wrote the novel Cry of the Raven, upon which the film is to be based. Third cousin, to be sure, but a cousin nonetheless.”

  “Cynthia?” I could scarcely believe my ears.

  “Yes, hard to believe, isn’t it? I can scarcely credit it myself. Stella was always the black sheep of the family, you know, until she married a laird, settled down in the heathered Highlands, and began cranking out an endless procession of potboilers, of which The Cry of the Raven is merely the latest. Cynthia had been hoping to pop by and give Miss Wyvern a few pointers on how the role of the heroine should be played.”

  I almost went “Phhfft!” but I didn’t.

  “And that’s why you’re here? To see Miss Wyvern?”

  “Well, yes,” the vicar said, “but not on that particular topic. Christmas, as you’ve no doubt heard me say on more than one occasion, is always one of the greatest opportunities not only to receive but also to give, and I have been hoping that Miss Wyvern would see her way clear to re-create for us just a few scenes from her greatest triumphs—all in a good cause, of course. The Roofing Fund, for instance—dear me—”

  “Would you like me to introduce you to her?” I asked.

  I thought the dear man was going to break down completely. He bit his lip and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his glasses. When he realized he had forgotten to bring them with him, he blew his nose instead.

  “If you please,” he said.

  “I hope we won’t be intruding,” he added as we made our way up the stairs. “I hate to be a beggar but sometimes there’s really no choice.”

  He meant Cynthia.

  “Our last little venture was something of a bust, wasn’t it? So there’s all that much more to make up this time.”

  Now he was referring, of course, to Rupert Porson, the late puppeteer, whose performance in the parish hall just a few months ago had been brought to an abrupt end by tragedy and a woman scorned.

  Bun Keats was sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs, her head in her hands.

  “Oh dear,” she said as I introduced her to the vicar. “I’m terribly sorry, I’m afraid I have the most awful migraine.”

  Her face was as white as the crusted snow.

  “How dreadful for you,” the vicar said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I can sympathize wholeheartedly. My wife suffers horribly from the same malady.”

  Cynthia? I thought. Migraines? That would certainly explain a lot.

  “She sometimes finds,” he went on, “that a warm compress helps. I’m sure the good Mrs. Mullet would be happy to prepare one.”

  “I’ll be all right …” Bun Keats began, but the vicar was already halfway down the stairs.

  “Oh!” she said, with a little cry. “I should have stopped him. I don’t mean to be any trouble, but when I’m like this I can hardly think straight.”

  “The vicar won’t mind,” I told her. “He’s a jolly good sort. Always thinking of others. Actually, he came round to see if Miss Wyvern could be persuaded to put on a show to raise funds for the church.”

  Her face, if it were possible, went even whiter.

  “Oh, no!” she said. “He mustn’t ask her that. She has a bee in her bonnet about charities—dead set against them. Something from her childhood, I think. You’d best tell him that before he brings it up. Otherwise, there’s sure to be a most god-awful scene!”

  The vicar was coming back up the stairs, surprisingly, taking them two at a time.

  “Sit back, dear lady, and close your eyes,” he said in a soothing voice I hadn’t heard before.

  “Miss Keats says Miss Wyvern is indisposed,” I told him, as he applied the compress to her brow. “So perhaps we’d better not mention—”

  “Of course. Of course,” the vicar said.

  I would invent some harmless excuse later.

  A voice behind me said, “Bun? What on earth …?”

  I spun round.

  Phyllis Wyvern, dressed in an orchid-colored lounging outfit and looking as fit as all the fiddles in the London Philharmonic, was wafting along the corridor towards us.

  “She’s suffering a migraine, Miss Wyvern,” the vicar said. “I’ve just fetched a compress …”

  “Bun? Oh, my poor Bun!”

  Bun gave a little moan.

  Phyllis Wyvern snatched the compress away from the vicar and reapplied it with her own hands to Bun’s temples.

  “Oh, my poor, dearest Bun. Tell Philly where it hurts.”

  Bun rolled her eyes.

  “Marion!” Phyllis Wyvern called, snapping her fingers, and a tall, striking woman in horn-rimmed glasses, who must once have been a great beauty, appeared as if from nowhere.

 
“Take Bun to her room. Tell Dogger to summon a doctor at once.”

  As Bun Keats was led away, Phyllis Wyvern stuck out her hand.

  “I’m Phyllis Wyvern, Vicar,” she said, clasping his hand in both of hers and giving it a little caress. “Thank you for your prompt attention. This has been a trying day all round: first poor Patrick McNulty, and now my dearest Bun. It’s most distressing—we’re all such a large, happy family, you know.”

  I had a quick flash of déjà vu: Somewhere I’d seen this moment before.

  Of course I had! It could have been a scene from any one of Phyllis Wyvern’s films.

  “I am in your debt, Vicar,” she was saying. “If you hadn’t happened along, she might have taken a bad tumble on the stairs.”

  She was dramatizing the situation: That wasn’t the way it had happened at all.

  “If ever there’s anything I can do to show my gratitude, you’ve only to ask.”

  And then it all came tumbling out of the vicar’s mouth—at least most of it. Fortunately he didn’t mention Cynthia’s coaching lessons.

  “So you see, Miss Wyvern,” he finished up, “the roof has been more or less at risk since George the Fourth, and time is now of the essence. The verger tells me he’s been finding water in the font, of late, that wasn’t placed there for ecclesiastical purposes, and—”

  Phyllis Wyvern touched his arm.

  “Not another word, Vicar. I’d be happy to roll up my sleeves and pitch in. I’ll tell you what; I’ve just had the most marvelous idea. My co-star, Desmond Duncan, will be arriving this evening. You may recall that Desmond and I had some small success both in the West End and on film with our Romeo and Juliet. If Desmond’s game—and I’m sure he will be …”

  She said this with a naughty wink and a twinkle.

  “… then surely we shall be able to cobble something together to keep St. Tancred’s roof from caving in.”

  • FIVE •

  I’D BEEN SPENDING SO much time sitting halfway down the stairs that I was beginning to feel like Christopher Robin.

  That’s where I was now, looking out across the crowded foyer, where several dozen of the film crew were gathered in little knots, talking. The only one I recognized was the woman called Marion, who had led Bun Keats away in the afternoon. Since Bun was nowhere in sight, I guessed she was still resting in her room.