I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

by Alan Bradley

  • ELEVEN •

  WITH THE FOYER LIGHTS switched back on, I had my first chance to have a glance round at the entire audience.

  There in the back row, with a happy look on his face, sat Dieter. Beside him, chewing on a mint, was Dr. Darby, and behind him, Mrs. Mullet with her husband, Alf.

  Each of them seemed caught up in a trance, blinking round in silly wonder, as if they were surprised to find themselves still in their same old bodies.

  Theater, I suppose, is a form of mass mesmerism, and if that’s the case, Shakespeare, despite his chemical shortcomings, was surely one of the greatest hypnotists who ever lived.

  I had seen a spell woven before my eyes, broken by a slap, then woven again as easily as a granny darns a sock. It was marvelous—a blooming wonder, actually—when you came to think about it.

  The actors now had gone to remove their makeup, and the ciné crew vanished to the upper reaches of the house to do whatever they do after a performance. They had not stayed to mingle with the audience, but that, perhaps, was part of the spell.

  A gust of cold rushed suddenly into the foyer. Someone had opened the front door for a breath of fresh air, given a gasp, cries had gone up, and now everyone, including me, was crowding for a look outside.

  A sharp wind had arisen during the performance and piled a waist-deep snowdrift at the door.

  It was easy enough to see that tractor or no tractor, sleigh or no sleigh, no one was going to get home to Bishop’s Lacey tonight.

  Still, Dieter was brave enough to give it a try. Bundling up in his heavy coat and scaling the white mountain that had appeared so suddenly, he was soon lost in the darkness.

  “Better ring up Tom McGully to bring his snowplow,” someone said.

  “No use doing that,” came a voice from the far corner, “as I’m already here.”

  A nervous laugh went up, as Tom came forward and peered out the door with the rest of us.

  “It’s a mort o’ snow,” he said, somehow making it official. “A mighty mort o’ snow.”

  The hands of several ladies flew to their throats. The men exchanged quick glances, their faces expressionless.

  Ten minutes later, Dieter was back, caked with the stuff, shaking his head.

  “Tractor doesn’t start,” he announced. “Battery’s dead.”

  The vicar, as usual, had taken charge.

  “Ring up Bert Archer at the garage,” he had told Cynthia. “Tell him to bring his wrecker. If you can’t get through to Bert, leave a message with Nettie Runciman at the exchange.”

  Cynthia nodded grimly and plodded off towards the telephone.

  “Mrs. Mullet … I saw her here somewhere … Mrs. Mullet, do you think it would be possible to lay on some tea, and perhaps some cocoa for the little ones?”

  Mrs. Mullet made for the kitchen, happy to be one of the first enlisted. As she vanished into the passageway, Cynthia reappeared.

  “The line is dead,” she announced in a monotone.

  “Well, then,” the vicar said, “as it seems we’re here for the duration, we shall just have to make do, shan’t we?”

  It was decided with surprisingly little fuss that preference would be given to those with children, who would be allowed, wherever room permitted, to bunk in among the ciné crew who had already been assigned digs on the first floor.

  Somewhere during the process, Father had put in a brief appearance, and with a couple of pointed fingers and a few words to the vicar, had mobilized the operation as if it were a precision military exercise. He had then re-vanished into his study.

  Those who could not be accommodated upstairs would bunk down in the foyer. Pillows and blankets that had not been used since Harriet was alive would be brought out of their storage presses and handed out to the makeshift refugees.

  “It shall be just like old times,” the vicar told them, rubbing his hands together vigorously. “Not unlike the bomb shelters during the war. We shall make a great success of it; a grand adventure. After all, it isn’t as if we haven’t done it before.”

  There was more than a trace of Winston Churchill in his voice.

  The vicar organized a few games for the children: puss in the corner, blindman’s buff, hide-and-go-seek, with prizes donated by Dr. Darby—mints, of course—to the winners.

  The grown-ups gossiped and laughed quietly on the sidelines.

  After a while, the more boisterous activities dwindled to guessing games.

  As the evening wore on, the false jollity subsided. Yawns appeared, stifled at first but eventually becoming open and damn the niceties.

  Children began to doze off, and their parents soon followed. It wasn’t long before most of the displaced villagers of Bishop’s Lacey were in the grips of sleep.

  Later, as I lay snuggled beneath my eiderdown, alone in the vast, barnlike coldness of the east wing, I could hear, for a while, the muted buzz of conversation, like the hum of a distant hive.

  After a time, this, too, died down, and my ears detected only an occasional cough.

  It had been a long, long day, but in spite of it, I couldn’t sleep. In my mind, I saw the bundled bodies scattered helter-skelter in the foyer: sleeping mounds beneath their blankets like so many tussocks in a country churchyard.

  I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, but it was no use. Surely everyone was asleep by now, and nobody would be disturbed if I crept to the top of the stairs and took a peek. With the very real threat of Father losing his battle with the taxman, I was now consciously saving up images for a time when I was an old lady—a time when I would rummage through my recollections of Buckshaw as one might turn the pages of a dusty photograph album.

  “Ah, yes,” I would quaver in my old woman’s voice, “I mind the time we were snowed in on Christmas Eve. The winter night that Bishop’s Lacey came to Buckshaw.”

  I climbed out of bed and into my refrigerated clothing.

  Down the corridor I crept, stopping now and then to listen.

  Nothing.

  I stood at the top of the stairs, looking down upon the makeshift shelter.

  Perhaps because it was so close to Christmas, there was something oddly touching about those huddled forms, as if I were an aviator, or an angel, or God, even, looking down from above upon all of these helpless, sleeping humans.

  From somewhere far away, in the west wing, came the sound of distant music, and of unreal recorded voices.

  So profound was the silence in the house that I was even able to make out the words:

  “I shall never forget Hawkhover Castle.”

  Phyllis Wyvern was watching herself on film again.

  The music swelled, and then died.

  Downstairs, someone rolled over and began to snore. From where I stood, I could see Dieter, bundled against the railing on the landing. Smart enough to choose a higher sleeping place, I thought, where the air is slightly warmer, and the flooring not so cold as the tiles of the foyer.

  In the hall below, Mrs. Mullet breathed heavily, her arm draped as casually over Alf as the babes in the wood.

  Slowly, I descended the staircase, taking special care to tiptoe past the sleeping Dieter.

  Over there, against the wall, was Cynthia Richardson, in sleep as relaxed as an archangel on a Christmas card; her face like Flora in the Botticelli painting. I wished I’d had a camera so that I could preserve that unexpected glimpse of her forever.

  At her side the vicar slept, his brow deeply furrowed.

  “Hannah, please! No!” he whispered, and for a moment, I thought that he had awakened.

  Who was Hannah, I wondered, and why was she tormenting him in his sleep?

  Upstairs, a door closed softly.

  Phyllis Wyvern, I thought. She’s finished for the night with her viewing.

  A marvelous idea floated into my mind.

  Why not see if she wanted to talk? Perhaps, like me, she was sleepless.

  Or what if she was lonely? We could have a nice chat about grisly murders. Be
ing so famous probably meant that all her friends were in it for the money—or the glory: for being able to say they were chummy with Phyllis Wyvern.

  She’d have no one to talk to about the things that really counted.

  Besides, it would probably be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a world-famous movie star all to myself—even if only for a few minutes.

  But wait! What if she was tired? What if she still hadn’t got over that fierce outburst when she’d slapped Gil Crawford’s face? Would she do the same to me? I could almost feel the sting of her hand on my cheek.

  Still, if I told Feely I’d spent an hour or so idly chitchatting with Phyllis Wyvern, she’d be sick jealous!

  That settled it.

  From the bottom of the stairs, I set out on tiptoe across the foyer, picking a precarious and winding path between the sleeping bodies.

  While I was still in the midst of the encampment and halfway to the west staircase, a water closet flushed.

  I froze.

  It was an unpleasant fact of life at Buckshaw that the rickety maze of pipes that passed for plumbing had seen far, far better days. They were, in fact, past their prime when Queen Victoria was on the throne, if one may be permitted to say such a thing.

  A flush here or a water faucet activated there transmitted vast shudders and groans to the farthest corners of the house like some bizarre hydraulic signaling system from another age.

  To put it plainly, no one at Buckshaw had any secrets—not, at least, in the plumbing department.

  I stopped breathing until the shudder of pipes subsided in a far distant clatter. Ned, who was propped up against a wall with his feet splayed out like a cast-off doll, gave a groan, and Mary, whose head was on his knees, turned over in her sleep.

  I counted to a hundred, just to be sure, and again began picking my way between the sleeping bodies.

  Up the west staircase I went, one step at a time, counting them as I climbed: ten to the landing, another ten to the top corridor.

  I knew that the thirteenth tread from the bottom groaned alarmingly, and I took a giant step to climb over it in silence, hauling myself up by gripping the banister.

  Past the top of the stairs, the corridor was in darkness, and I had to feel my way along by sense of touch. The baize door to the north front swung open without a sound.

  This was the part of the house that had been assigned as billets, the dusty sheets that usually covered the furniture having been removed, and the multitude of bedrooms made ready for the visiting film crew.

  I had no idea which bedroom had ultimately been allocated to Phyllis Wyvern, but common sense told me that it would have been the largest: the Blue Bedroom—the one usually occupied by Aunt Felicity on her ceremonial visits.

  A crack of light at the bottom of the door told me that I was right.

  Inside, something mechanical was running: a whirring, a whine, hardly louder than a whisper.

  Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!

  What on earth could it be?

  I tapped lightly on the door with one of my fingernails.

  There was no reply.

  Inside the room, the noise went on.

  Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!

  Perhaps she hadn’t heard me.

  I knocked again, this time with my knuckles.

  “Miss Wyvern,” I whispered at the door. “Are you awake? It’s me, Flavia.”

  Still no response.

  I knelt down and tried to peer through the keyhole, but something was blocking my view. Almost certainly the key.

  As I got to my feet, I stumbled in the darkness and fell against the door, which, in awful silence, swung inward.

  On the far side of the room stood the great canopied bed, made up and turned down, but unoccupied.

  To the left, on a tubular stand in the shadows, a ciné projector ground on and on, its steady white beam illuminating the surface of a tripod screen on the far side of the room.

  Although the film had run completely through the machine, its loose end, like a black bullwhip, was still flapping round and round: Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!

  Phyllis Wyvern was slumped in a wing-back chair, her sightless eyes staring intently at the glare of the blank screen.

  Around her throat, like a necklace of death, was a length of ciné film, tied tightly, but neatly, in an elaborate black bow.

  She was dead, of course.

  • TWELVE •

  IN MY ELEVEN YEARS of life I’ve seen a number of corpses. Each of them was interesting in a different way, and this one was no exception.

  Because the others had been men, Phyllis Wyvern was the first dead female I had ever seen and as such, she was, I thought, deserving of particular attention.

  I noticed at once the way the illuminated ciné screen was reflected in her eyeballs, giving the illusion for a moment that she was still alive, her eyes sparkling. But even though the eyes had not yet begun to cloud over—she’s not been dead for long, I thought—something had already begun to soften her features, as if her face were being sanded down for repainting.

  The skin was already on its way to taking on the color of putty, and there was a very faint but distinct leaden tinge to the inside of her lips, which were open slightly, revealing the tips of her perfect teeth. A few drops of foamy saliva were trapped in each corner of her mouth.

  She was no longer wearing her Juliet costume, but was dressed rather in an elaborately stitched Eastern European peasant blouse with a shawl and a voluminous skirt.

  “Miss Wyvern,” I whispered, even though I knew it was pointless.

  Still, there’s always that feeling that a dead person is playing a practical joke, and is going to leap up at any moment and shout “Boo!” and frighten you out of your wits, and my nerves, although strong, are not quite ready for that.

  From what I had read and heard, I knew that in cases of sudden death, the authorities, either police or medical, were to be summoned at once. Cynthia Richardson had reported that the telephone was out of order, so the police, at least for the time being, were out of the picture, and Dr. Darby was in a deep sleep downstairs; I had seen him during my passage across the foyer.

  There was no question that Phyllis Wyvern was past medical help, so my decision was an easy one: I would call Dogger.

  Closing the bedroom door quietly behind me, I retraced my steps through the house—on tiptoe across the foyer once again—to Dogger’s little room at the top of the kitchen stairs.

  I gave three quick taps at the door, and then a pause … two more taps … another pause … and then two slow ones.

  I had scarcely finished when the door swung open on silent hinges, and Dogger stood there in his dressing gown.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Quite all right,” Dogger said after a barely perceptible pause. “Thank you for asking.”

  “Something horrid has happened to Phyllis Wyvern,” I told him. “In the Blue Bedroom.”

  “I see.” Dogger nodded and vanished for a moment into the shadows of his room, and when he returned, he was wearing a pair of spectacles. I must have gaped a little, since I had never known him to use them before.

  The two of us, Dogger and I, made our way silently back upstairs by the quickest route, the foyer, which involved yet another trek among the sleeping bodies. If the moment hadn’t been so serious, I’d have laughed at Dogger’s long legs picking their way like a wading heron between Bunny Spirling’s distended stomach and the outflung arm of Miss Aurelia Puddock.

  Back in the Blue Bedroom, I closed the door behind us. Since my fingerprints were on the handle anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference.

  The projector was still making its unnerving flap-flapping noise as Dogger walked slowly round Phyllis Wyvern’s body, squatting to look into each of her ears and each of her eyes. It was obvious that he was saving the bow of ciné film around her neck for last.

  “What do you think?” I asked finally, in a whisper.

  “
Strangulation,” he said. “Look here.”

  He produced a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and used it to pull down one of her lower eyelids, revealing a number of red spots on the inner surface.

  “Petechiae,” he said. “Tardieu’s spots. Asphyxia through rapid strangulation. Definitely.”

  Now he turned his attention to the black bow of film that ringed the throat, and a frown crossed his face.

  “What is it, Dogger?”

  “One would expect more bruising,” he said. “It does not occur invariably, but in this case one would definitely expect more bruising.”

  I leaned in for a closer look and saw that Dogger was right. There was remarkably little discoloration. The film itself was black against Phyllis Wyvern’s pale neck, the image on many of its frames clearly visible: a close-up shot of the actress herself in ruffled peasant blouse against a dramatic mackerel sky.

  The realization hit me like a hammer.

  “Dogger,” I whispered. “This blouse, shawl, and skirt—it’s the same costume she’s wearing in the film!”

  Dogger, who was looking reflectively at the body, his hand to his chin, nodded.

  For a few moments, there was a strange quiet between us. Until now, it had been as if we were friends, but suddenly, at this particular moment, it felt as if we had become colleagues—perhaps even partners.

  Possibly I was emboldened by the night, although it might have been a sense of something more. A strange feeling of timelessness hung in the room.

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you,” I asked suddenly.

  “Yes, Miss Flavia,” Dogger said. “Many times.”

  I had always felt that Dogger was no stranger to dead bodies. He had, after all, survived more than two years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, after which he had been put to work for more than a year on the notorious Death Railway in Burma, any single day of which would have given him more than a nodding acquaintance with death.

  Aside from Mrs. Mullet’s whispered tales in the kitchen, I knew little about Dogger’s military service—or, for that matter, my father’s.

  Once, as I watched Dogger trim the rose bushes on the Visto, I had tried to question him.