by Alan Bradley
“Gil Crawford,” I reminded him. “And then she went on with the play as if nothing had happened.”
“That would have been about seven twenty-five?”
“Yes.”
The Inspector scratched his ear.
“Seems odd, doesn’t it, to gather a village in such inclement weather for a ten-minute performance.”
“Phyllis Wyvern was only the drawing card,” I said. “I think the vicar may have been planning more. It was in aid of the Roof Fund, you see. He was probably planning to ask the Puddock sisters to perform, and then end the show with one of his own recitations, such as ‘Albert and the Lion.’ He might have let her go on first because it would have been disrespectful to make her wait for amateurs. That’s just my guess, though. You’ll have to ask the vicar when he returns.”
“I shall,” the Inspector said. “You may well be right.”
He pushed back his cuff with a forefinger and glanced at his wristwatch.
“Just a few questions more,” he said, “and then I should like you to help me with an experiment.”
Oh, joy! To be recognized at last as an equal—or something like it. Father Christmas himself could have devised no better gift. (I remembered with a twinge of pleasure that that old gentleman and I had business to attend to in the hours ahead. Perhaps I could thank him personally.)
“I think I can manage, Inspector,” I replied, “although I do have rather a lot to do.”
Stop it, Flavia! I thought. Stop it at once, before I bite off your tongue from the inside and spit it out on the carpet!
“Right, then,” he said. “Why did you go to the Blue Bedroom?”
“I wanted to talk to Miss Wyvern.”
“About what?”
“About anything.”
“Why choose that particular time? Wasn’t it rather late?”
“I heard the soundtrack of her film come to an end. I knew she must still be awake.”
Even as I spoke, I felt the cold horror of my words. Why hadn’t I realized it before? Phyllis Wyvern might already have been dead.
“But perhaps,” I added, “perhaps—”
The Inspector’s eyes were locked with mine, willing me to say more.
“A reel of sixteen-millimeter film runs for forty-five minutes,” I said. “Two reels for a feature.”
This was a fact I was sure of. I had sat through enough clunkers at the parish hall cinema series to know to the second the likely duration of my torture. Besides, I had once checked with Mr. Mitchell.
“The film ended just before I reached the Blue Bedroom,” I went on. “I heard the line ‘I shall never forget Hawkhover Castle’ just before I started downstairs from my bedroom. By the time I found Miss Wyvern’s body, the end of the film was slapping round the reel. But—”
“Yes?” The Inspector’s eyes were as keen as a ferret’s.
“But what if she was already dead when the film began? What if it was her killer who started the projector?”
In my mind, the pieces fell rapidly into place. An earlier time of death would explain why Phyllis Wyvern’s body was already showing discoloration when I found her. I did not tell the Inspector this. He needed to work at least some of it out on his own.
“An excellent surmise,” the Inspector said. “Besides the slapping of the film end, did you hear anything else?”
“Yes. A door closed as I was crossing the foyer. And a toilet flushed.”
“Before or after the sound of the door?”
“After. The door closed when I was partway down the stairs. The toilet flushed when I was halfway across the foyer.”
“As soon as that?”
“Yes.”
“How odd,” Inspector Hewitt said.
It wasn’t until later that I realized what he meant.
“Of the people sleeping in the foyer, whom do you distinctly remember seeing?”
“The vicar,” I said. “He cried out in his sleep.”
“Cried out? What?”
Why did I feel as if I were betraying a confidence? Why did I feel like such a tattletale?
“He said, ‘Hannah, please! No!’ Very quietly.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
The Inspector wrote something in his notebook.
“Go on,” he said. “Who else was sleeping in the foyer?”
“Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife …”
I began ticking them off on my fingers.
“Mrs. Mullet … and Alf, her husband … Dr. Darby … Ned Cropper … Mary Stoker … Bunny Spirling … Max—I mean Maximilian Brock, our neighbor. Max had built a little wall of books around himself.”
“Anyone else?”
“Those are the ones I noticed. Oh, and Dieter, of course. He was bedded down on the landing. I had to tiptoe past him.”
“Did you see or hear anyone or anything else on your way up to the Blue Bedroom?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Thank you,” the Inspector said, closing his notebook. “You’ve been of great assistance.”
Had he forgiven me, I wondered, or was he simply being polite?
“Now, then,” he said. “As I said, I’d like your assistance in a little experiment, but I won’t have time until later.”
I nodded in understanding.
“Do you have a copy of Romeo and Juliet in your library? I should be surprised if you didn’t.”
“There’s a copy of his collected works that Daffy picks up when she wants to look studious. Will that do?”
This was true, but I hadn’t the faintest where to find it. I didn’t fancy sifting through a billion books on Christmas Eve. I had, as they say, bigger fish to catch.
“I’m sure it will. See if you can dig it out, there’s a good girl.”
If anyone but Inspector Hewitt had made that remark, I’d have gone for their throat, but here I was, like a spaniel waiting for its master to throw the slipper.
“Righty ho!” I almost shouted at his back as he went out the door.
Feely was holding court in the drawing room, and it pains me to admit that she had never looked more beautiful. I could tell by her lightning glances at the looking glass that she was of the same opinion. Her face was as radiant as if she’d had a lightbulb installed in her skull, and she batted her eyelashes prettily at Carl, Dieter, and Ned, who stood gathered round her in an adoring circle, as if she were the Virgin Mary and they the Three Wise Men, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.
Actually, not a bad comparison, I thought, since two of them that I knew of, Ned and Carl, had come bearing gifts. Carl’s, of course, had been consigned to the flames by Father, but that seemed not to have affected the giver, who stood slouched smiling against the chimneypiece, his hands in his pockets, gnashing happily away at his gum with a clockwork jaw.
Ned’s prehistoric chocolates were nowhere in sight, having more than likely been laid to rest with their predecessors in Feely’s lingerie drawer.
Detective Sergeant Graves, who had obviously just finished questioning Feely’s other happy slaves, sat in a corner copying notes, but I could tell by the furtive way he kept glancing up from his work that he was keeping an eye on his romantic rivals.
Only Dieter, I thought, had been sensible enough to skip the frankincense and myrrh.
At least that’s what I was thinking when he reached into his pocket and pulled put a tiny hard-shell box.
He handed it to Feely without a word.
Cheeses! I thought. He’s going to propose!
Feely, of course, made the most of it. She examined the box from all six sides, as if each of its faces had a secret inscribed upon it in golden ink by angels.
“Why, Dieter!” she breathed. “How lovely!”
It’s just a box, you stupid porpoise! Get on with it!
Feely opened the box with agonizing slowness.
“Oh!” she said. “A ring!”
Ned and Carl exchanged openmouthed looks.
“A frie
ndship ring,” she added, although whether in disappointment, I could not tell.
She plucked it out between thumb and forefinger, holding it up to the light. It was wide and gold, and was cut out with figures in what I believe is called filigree work—a crown on top of a heart was as much as I could see of it before she twisted away.
“What does it mean?” she asked, lifting her eyes to Dieter’s.
“It means,” Dieter told her, “whatever you want it to mean.”
Flustered, Feely flushed and shoved the box into her pocket.
“You shouldn’t have,” she managed, before turning and walking to our old Broadwood piano, which stood in front of the window.
She smoothed her skirt and sat down at the keyboard.
I recognized the melody before the first three notes had floated from the piano. It was “Für Elise,” by Beethoven—Larry B, as I liked to call him, just to get Feely’s goat.
Elise, I knew, was the name of Dieter’s mother, who lived in far-off Berlin. He had sometimes spoken of her in a special voice, a voice of expectant delight, as if she were in the next room, waiting to leap out and surprise him.
This piano piece, I knew at once, was a private message to Dieter: one that would not be intercepted by other ears than mine and perhaps Daffy’s.
It was not an appropriate time to let out a war whoop, or to do a series of cartwheels across the drawing room, so I contented myself with giving Dieter’s hand a shake.
“Merry Weihnachten,” I said.
“Merry Weihnachten,” he replied, with a grin as broad as the English Channel.
As Feely played, I noticed that Carl’s jaw was milling in time to the music and Ned was tapping one of his heels energetically on the carpet.
It was as happy a little domestic scene as I’ve ever known at Buckshaw, and I drank it in eagerly with my eyes, my ears, and even my nose.
The logs crackled and smoked in the fireplace as “Für Elise” cast its inevitable spell.
Merry Christmas, Flavia, I thought, storing up a memory of the moment for future comfort. You deserve it.
Daffy was alone in the library, jackknifed sideways into a chair.
“How’s everything at Bleak House?” I asked.
She looked up from the novel as if I were an inept cat burglar who had just fallen in through the window.
“Dieter gave Feely a ring,” I said.
“And did she answer it?”
“Come on, Daffy. You know what I mean. A ring you wear on your finger.”
“All the more pickled pig’s trotters for you and me. And now, if you wouldn’t mind—”
“Too bad about Phyllis Wyvern, wasn’t it?”
“Flavia—”
“I think I could really grow to love Shakespeare,” I said, baiting my hook. “Do you know which part of Romeo and Juliet I liked best? The part where Romeo talks about Juliet’s eyes swapping places with two of the brightest stars in all the heavens.”
“Fairest,” Daffy said.
“Fairest,” I agreed. “Anyway, the way Shakespeare described it, I could just see it in my mind—those two stars shining out of Juliet’s face, and Juliet’s eyes hanging up in the sky …”
I put my forefinger and little finger on my lower eyelids and pulled them down into bloody bags, at the same time pushing up the end of my snout with the fingers of my other hand.
“Boo-oing! Must have scared the you-know-what out of the shepherds in the fields.”
“There were no shepherds in the fields.”
“Then why did Romeo say ‘Oh that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that sheep’?”
“He said ‘cheek.’ ”
“He said ‘sheep.’ I was sitting right there, Daffy. I heard him.”
Daffy sprang out of the chair and marched to one of the bookcases. She took down a heavy volume and leafed through it, the pages flying under her fingers as if blown by the wind.
“Here,” she said, after a few moments. “Look, what does this say?”
I twisted my head sideways and stared at the page for as long as I dared.
“ ‘That I might touch that cheeke,’ ” I said, grudgingly. “Still, I think Desmond Duncan said ‘sheep.’ ”
Daffy slammed the book shut with a snort, re-folded herself into her chair, and within seconds had wrapped herself in the past as easily as if it were an old blanket.
With the stealth of a library mouse, I picked up dear old Bill Shakespeare from the table, tucked him under my arm, and sidled casually out of the room.
Mission accomplished.
• FIFTEEN •
THE SCREAM CAME OUT of nowhere, echoing from the foyer’s wooden panels in an avalanche of sound.
“My God!” Bunny Spirling exclaimed. “What in blue blazes was that?”
Everyone was looking round in all directions and the Misses Puddock clutched one another like the Babes in the Wood.
I was on the stairs and up them like a skyrocket. Whatever had happened, I wasn’t going to be locked out as a late arrival.
I skidded round the corner and made for the north corridor. As I flew past, one of the doors was opened and a second shriek split the air. I shoved past one of the wardrobe women and into the room.
Nialla was half on, half off a Regency couch, her face as white as paste.
“The baby—” she groaned.
Marion Trodd, looking rather like a stunned owl in her horn-rims, came out of a seeming trance at the end of the couch and took a step towards me.
“Fetch the doctor,” she snapped.
“Fetch him yourself,” I said, taking Nialla’s hand. “And on your way back, tell Mrs. Mullet to boil buckets of hot water.”
Marion bared her teeth for an instant, as if she were going to bite me, then spun round and strode out of the room.
“Really, Flavia,” Nialla said through clenched teeth, “you’re incorrigible.”
I shrugged. “Thank you,” I said.
The fetching of water at a birth was, I had learned from the cinema and countless plays on the wireless, a ritual that might as well have been the Eleventh Commandment, though why boiling water was invariably specified was beyond me. It seemed hardly likely to be used to baste the mother without risk of serious burns, and it was simply beyond belief that a newborn would be immersed in a liquid having a temperature of 212 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale—unless, of course, that was the reason for newly delivered babies having that lobsterish color I’d seen in the cinema.
It seemed unthinkable, though. Thoroughly barbaric.
One thing was clear: There was much that I needed to learn about the events surrounding the birth of a baby. One needed to be able to tease out the scientific facts from the mumbo jumbo. I would make a note to look more closely into this as soon as Christmas was out of the way.
“How are you?” I asked Nialla, but it came out sounding rather phony, as if we were two old ladies meeting at a parish tea.
“I’m quate well, theng-kyew,” she replied through gritted teeth in a put-on toffish voice. “And you?”
“Spiffing,” I said. “Simply spiffing.”
I squeezed her hand and she smiled.
“Hmmm,” Dr. Darby said behind me, and as I spun round he had already stripped off his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves.
“Close the door on your way out,” he said.
I admire a man who can take command when a woman really needs him.
Marion Trodd was standing in the corridor looking daggers at me.
“Sorry if I seemed rude,” I said. “Nialla is an old friend, and—”
“Oh, well, then. Think nothing of it,” she snapped. “You’re forgiven, I’m sure. After all, I’m quite accustomed to being trampled underfoot.”
She spun round and walked off.
Hag! I thought.
“Don’t mind Marion,” someone said, stepping into my view as if from the shadows. “She’s a little overwrought.”
It was Bun Keats.
“Overwrought? Over-rotten is more like it,” I wanted to say, but I kept the witticism to myself.
“I’m sorry about Miss Wyvern,” I said. “It must be terrible for you.”
Although I had not planned it, I was aware, even as I spoke, that this was precisely the right thing to say.
“You have no idea,” Bun said, and I knew she was speaking the truth. I did have no idea, but I intended to find out.
“Would you like some tea?” I was asking her when the bedroom door opened and Dr. Darby’s head appeared.
“Tell Dogger to come at once,” he said. “Tell him ‘transverse dorsolateral.’ Tell him ‘shoulder presentation.’ ”
“Right-o,” I said, and walked away—a model of unflustered efficiency.
“Run!” Dr. Darby roared behind me, and I took to my heels.
“Transverse dorsolateral,” I repeated in a whisper as I raced along the corridor. “Transverse dorsolateral. Shoulder presentation.”
But where to find Dogger? He could be in his room … or in the kitchen. He might even be in the greenhouse … or the coach house.
I needn’t have worried. As I came flapping like a demented bat down the west staircase, there was Dogger in the foyer helping Cynthia and the vicar to remove their coats. They looked like survivors of a failed Antarctic expedition, as did Sergeant Graves, who stood behind them.
“Blizzard now,” the vicar was croaking through ice-rimed lips. “We should have frozen to death if the sergeant hadn’t come upon us.”
Cynthia stood quaking in an apparent daze.
Rude or not, I whispered into Dogger’s ear:
“Dr. Darby needs you in the Tennyson bedroom. Transverse dorsolateral. Shoulder presentation.”
I had planned on dashing up the stairs ahead of him to lead the way, but Dogger beat me to it. He took the steps as if he had suddenly been granted wings, and I was left to tumble along behind in his wake as best I could.
Dogger paused at the door just long enough to say, “Thank you, Miss Flavia. These particular cases can sometimes come on quite quickly. When I need you I’ll call.”
I dropped myself into a chair outside the bedroom and whiled away the time by chewing my nails. After what seemed like a string of eternities, but was probably no more than a few minutes, I heard Nialla cry out three times sharply, followed by something that sounded like a startled bleat.