by Alan Bradley
Hullo! I thought. What’s this? A secret compartment!
Disappointingly, there wasn’t much in it—a set of keys and a small but official-looking booklet consisting of two gray pages with the same information repeated on each of them.
COUNTY OF LONDON
License to drive a Motor Car or Motor Cycle
Phyllida Lampman
“Tenebrae”
3 Collier’s Walk, S.E.
It had been issued on the thirteenth day of May, 1929.
Phyllida? Lampman?
Could this be Phyllis Wyvern’s real name? It seemed beyond belief that she would keep a stranger’s driving license in her purse.
But assuming that Phyllida was Phyllis or the other way around, what was I to make of the rest of it? Was she Val Lampman’s wife? Sister? Sister-in-law? Cousin?
“Cousin” and “wife” were distinctly possible. In fact, she could be both. Harriet, for instance, had been a de Luce before she married Father, and because of it had been spared having to give up her maiden name.
If Phyllis Wyvern hadn’t lied to me about her age—and why would she?—she must have been … let me see … 1929 had been twenty-one years ago … thirty-eight years old when this driving license was issued.
How old was Val Lampman? It was hard to tell. He was one of those gnomish creatures with tight shiny skin and pale hair who, with a silk scarf at his neck to hide the wrinkles, could pass for ageless.
What was it Daffy had said? That not since something or another—which I was too young to understand—had Phyllis Wyvern worked with any other director.
What could that something be? It was becoming plainer by the minute that, by fair means or foul, I needed to pry open my sister’s clammy shell.
I was having a second look at Phyllis Wyvern’s fingernails when the doorknob turned!
I almost had an accident!
Fortunately the door was locked.
I crammed the driving license back into the purse and pulled the zipper shut. I picked up the sheet from the floor and, trying not to make a rustling noise, hurriedly re-draped the body.
That done, I fumbled my way behind the curtain, which gave off another cloud of choking dust.
I grabbed the bridge of my nose and squeezed just in time to reduce a major sneeze to a tiny, but rather rude, exclamation point of sound.
“Pee-phwup.”
Bless me!
I had to be careful about the paint-swollen door. I couldn’t close it as tightly behind me as I wished, but had to settle instead for a couple of careful, but almost silent, tugs. The curtains in each room would not only muffle the sound, but perhaps even keep all but the most determined observer from noticing the door’s very existence.
Happily, the mess of paint chips I had dislodged was on my side of the door and I couldn’t help congratulating myself on leaving the Blue Bedroom without a trace.
Taking Flo’s—or Maeve’s—hairbrush from the dresser (after replacing their dessert spoon carefully in its bowl of fruit) and forming a makeshift dustpan of the Cinema Weekly that was lying on the bed, I swept up the paint chips and tipped them carefully into the pocket of my cardigan.
I’d dispose of them later. No point in leaving confusing evidence to distract the police.
I opened the door a crack and peeked out. No one in sight as far as I could see.
As I stepped into the corridor, a familiar voice behind me said, “Hold on.”
I had nearly stepped on Inspector Hewitt’s toes.
“Oh, hello, Inspector,” I said. “I was just looking for, uh, Flo.”
I could tell at once that he didn’t believe me.
“Were you, indeed?” he asked. “Why?”
Damn the man! His questions were always so to the point.
“That’s not quite true,” I confessed. “Actually, I was snooping in her room.”
No need to drag in my fib about the summons from Val Lampman.
“Why?” the Inspector persisted.
Sometimes there’s nothing for it but to tell the truth.
“Well,” I said, scrambling madly for words, “actually it’s a hobby of mine. I sometimes snoop on Daffy and Feely quite frightfully.”
He stared at me with what somebody once called “that awful eye.”
“I thought the bedrooms of cinema people were bound to be more interesting …”
“Including Miss Wyvern’s?”
I made my eyes go wide with innocence.
“I heard you sneeze, Flavia,” he said.
Bugger!
“Empty your pockets, please,” the Inspector said, and I had no choice but to obey.
Remembering Father’s tales of his exploits as a boy conjurer, I tried to “palm,” as I believe it is called, by folding it under my thumb and pressing it into my handkerchief, the crumpled ball of paper I had found in Phyllis Wyvern’s boot.
“Thank you,” the Inspector said, holding out his hand, and I was, as the vicar says while playing cribbage, skunked.
I gave him the paper.
“Other pocket, please.”
“It’s nothing but rubbish,” I told him. “Just a lot of—”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he interrupted. “Turn it out.”
I locked eyes with him as I turned the pocket inside out and a small Vesuvius of paint chips erupted and fluttered in horrid silence to the floor.
“Why do you do it, Flavia?” the Inspector asked in a suddenly different voice, his eyes on the mess I had made of the carpet. I don’t think I had ever seen him look so pained.
“Do what?”
I couldn’t help myself.
“Lie,” he said. “Why do you fabricate these outlandish stories?”
I had often thought about this myself, and although I had a ready answer, I did not feel obliged to give it to him.
“Well,” I wanted to say, “there are those of us who create because all around us, things visible and invisible are crumbling. We are like the stonemasons of Babylon, forever working, as it says in Jeremiah, to shore up the city walls.”
I didn’t say that, of course. What I did say was:
“I don’t know.”
“How can I impress upon you—” he began, at the same time uncrinkling the paper and giving it a single glance. “Where did you get this?”
“In Phyllis Wyvern’s shoe,” I said, remembering not to call attention that it was, in fact, a boot. “The right foot. You must have overlooked it.”
I could see his dilemma: He could hardly tell his men—or his superiors—that he had found it himself.
“There’s a connecting door, you see,” I said helpfully. “I knew you’d already taken your photos and so forth, so I just slipped in for a quick look round.”
“Did you touch anything else?”
“No,” I said, standing there in plain view with my soiled handkerchief crumpled in my hand.
Please, God, and Saint Genesius, patron saint of actors and those who have been tortured, don’t let him tell me to hand it over.
And it worked! All praises to you both!
I would send up a burnt offering later in my lab—a little pyramid of ammonium dichromate, perhaps—a shower of joyful sparks …
“Are you quite sure?” the Inspector was asking.
“Well,” I said, lowering my voice and glancing along the corridor in both directions to see that we were not being overheard, “I did have a quick peek into her purse. You spotted the Phyllida Lampman driving license, of course?”
I thought the Inspector was going to have an egg.
“That will be all,” he said abruptly, and walked away.
• SEVENTEEN •
“I REQUIRE YOUR PERSONAL advice,” I said to Daffy. This was a tactic that never failed to work.
As always, she was curled up in the library like a prawn, still deep in her Dickens.
“Supposing you wanted to look someone up,” I asked. “Where would you begin?”
“Somerset Ho
use,” she said.
My sister was being facetious. I knew, as well as everyone else in the kingdom, that Somerset House, in London, was where the records of all births, deaths, and marriages were kept, along with deeds, wills, and other public documents. Father had once pointed it out to us rather glumly from a taxicab.
“Besides that, I mean.”
“I should hire a detective,” Daffy said sourly. “Now please go away. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Please, Daff. It’s important.”
She continued to ignore me.
“I’ll give you half of whatever’s in my Post Office savings account.”
I had no intention of doing so, but it was worth a try. Money, to Daffy, meant books, and even though Buckshaw contained more books than the Bishop’s Lacey Free Library, to my sister, it was not enough.
“Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver,” she had once said. “Take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles.”
I could tell by the twitch at the corner of her lips that she was interested in my offer.
“All right—two thirds,” I said. One can always up the ante safely on bad intentions.
“If they were someone,” she said, without looking up from her book, “Burke’s Peerage.”
“And what if they weren’t someone? What if they were merely famous?”
“Who’s Who,” she said, her finger pointing to the bookcases. “That will be three pounds, ten and six, if you please. As soon as the roads are cleared, I’ll personally walk you to the Post Office to see that you don’t welsh on your promise.”
“Thanks, Daff,” I said. “You’re a corker.”
But it was too late. She had already begun her descent into the deeps of Dickens.
I ambled casually over to the bookcases. Who’s Who had rung a bell. Although I had never opened one of them, the shelf of fat red volumes, their dates stretching well back into another century, were part of Buckshaw’s library landscape.
But even as I approached, my heart began to sink. A wide gap at the right of the second shelf showed that a number of volumes were missing.
“Where have the 1930s and ’40s gone?” I asked.
Daffy’s silence provided the answer.
“Come on, Daff. It’s important.”
“How important?” she said without looking up.
“All of it,” I said.
“All of what?”
“My Post Office savings account.”
“All of it?”
“All of it. One hundred percent.” (See note above re bad intentions.)
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
I crossed my heart elaborately and prayed with all my might that I would live as long as old Tom Parr, whose grave we had once seen in Westminster Abbey, and who had lived to a ripe one hundred and fifty-two.
Daffy pointed, languidly.
“Under the chesterfield,” she said.
I dropped to my knees and reached beneath the flowered flounce.
Aha! When my hand reappeared it was gripping the 1946 edition of Who’s Who.
I bore the book off to a corner and opened it on my knees.
The L’s didn’t begin until after nearly six hundred pages, halfway through the book: La Brash, Ladbroke, Lamarsh, Lambton … yes, here it was—Lampman, Lorenzo Angenieux, b. 1866, m. Phyllida Grome, 1909, one d. Phyllida Veronica, b. 1910, one s. Waldemar Anton, b. 1911.
I quickly worked out the system of abbreviations: b. was “born,” m. stood for “married”—s. and d. must mean “son” and “daughter.”
There was much more. It rambled on and on about Lorenzo Lampman’s education (Bishop Laud), his military service (Royal Welch Fusiliers), his clubs (Boodles, Carrington’s, Garrick, White’s, Xenophobe), and his awards (D.S.C., M.M.). He had published a memoir, With Bow and Rifle to the Kalahari, and had died in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, just a year after the birth of his son, Waldemar Anton.
Young Waldemar could only be Val Lampman, which meant that that imp, despite his leprechaun looks, was no more than thirty-nine.
He and Phyllis Wyvern were brother and sister—and she was forty, not fifty-nine!
I’d thought there was something fishy about her age.
I turned quickly to the back of the book—to the W’s—even though Daffy had warned me that Who’s Who wasn’t keen on actors.
No Wyverns listed here except for a Sir Peregrine, the last of his line, who had died in a duel with his hatter in 1772.
I glanced rapidly through some of the other volumes, but they were much the same. In the world of the upper crust, time, it seemed, moved more slowly. When you got right down to it, Who’s Who was not much more than a catalog of the same dry old sticks harrumphing their way, year after year, towards the grave.
“Daff,” I said, taken by a sudden idea. “How did you know I was going to ask about Who’s Who?”
There was a silence that grew longer by the moment.
“Pax vobiscum,” she said suddenly and unexpectedly.
Pax vobiscum? It was the ancient signal of truce among the de Luce sisters—a formula that was usually spoken by me. All I had to do was to give the correct response, “Et cum spiritu tuo,” and for five minutes precisely by the nearest clock, we would be bound by blood to let bygones be bygones. No exceptions; no ands, ifs, or buts; no crossing of fib-fingers behind one’s back. It was a solemn contract.
“Et cum spiritu tuo,” I said.
Daffy closed Bleak House and pulled herself out of her chair. She walked to the fireplace and stood staring down into the warm ashes, her fingertips lightly resting on the mantelpiece.
“I’ve been thinking …” she said, and I was bound by the rules of the truce not to shoot back, “Did it hurt?”
“I’ve been thinking,” she went on, “that since it’s Christmas, it would be nice, just for once, to …”
“Yes, Daff?”
There was something about her posture—something about the way she held herself. For the duration of a lightning flash, and no more, she was Father and then, just as quickly, she was Daffy again. Or had she, for a millionth of a second in between, been the Harriet I had glimpsed in so many old photographs?
It was uncanny. No, more than that—it was unnerving.
As Daffy and I stood there not looking at each other, and before she could speak, there was a light tap at the door. Like an arrow shot from a bow, Daffy flew in an instant back into her overstuffed chair so that when the door slowly opened a moment later, she was already carefully arranged, apparently immersed again in Bleak House.
“May we come in?” Inspector Hewitt asked, his face appearing round the door.
“Of course,” I said, rather pointlessly, since he was already in the room, followed closely by Desmond Duncan.
“Mr. Duncan has kindly agreed to help us establish a fairly precise running time for the balcony scene. Now, then, Flavia, I believe you told me there’s a copy of Shakespeare’s collected works here in the library?”
“There was, but she took it,” Daphne said sourly, without looking up from Dickens.
There was a momentary sinking feeling in my abdomen, partly because Daffy, in spite of my best efforts, had spotted me pinching the book, and partly because I had no recollection of what I had done with the blasted thing. What with all the uproar over Nialla and her baby, I must have put it down somewhere without thinking.
“I’ll go fetch it,” I said, giving myself a mental kick in the backside. Being out of the room for even a few minutes meant that I would miss an important part of Inspector Hewitt’s investigation, of which every moment, from my viewpoint, was precious.
Flavia, you chump! I thought.
“Never mind,” Daffy said, bailing out of her chair and making for the bookcases. “We’ve probably accumulated more than our fair share of Shakespeare over the years. There’s bound to be another copy.”
She ran her forefinger over the spi
nes of the books in the familiar way that book lovers everywhere do.
“Yes, here we are. A single-volume edition of Romeo and Juliet. Rather tatty, but it will have to do.”
She held it out to the Inspector but he shook his head.
“Hand it to Mr. Desmond, please,” he told her.
Ha! I thought. Fingerprints! He’s collecting Daffy’s and Desmond Duncan’s all in one go. How very cunning of you, Inspector!
Desmond Duncan took the book from Daffy and riffled through it, looking for the correct page.
“Rather distinctive print,” he said, “and an old-fashioned typeface.”
He fished a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles from an inner pocket and, with a theatrical flourish, settled them onto his famous nose.
“Not that I am unaccustomed to handling such texts,” he went on, turning back to the front of the book. “It’s just that one doesn’t expect to find them in such an out-of-the-way place. Indeed, if I didn’t know better—”
Famous cinema star or not, I angled round behind him for a better look as he studied the title page.
This is what I read:
An
EXCELLENT
conceited Tragedie
OF Romeo and Iuliet (it said)
As it hath been often (with great applaufe)
plaid publiquely, by the
Right Honourable the L. Hunfdon
his seruants
LONDON,
Printed by Iohn Danter.
1597
At the top of the page, in red ink horizontally and black ink vertically, was inscribed the monogram:
H
H d L
L
I held my breath as I recognized it at once: Father’s and Harriet’s initials intertwined—and in their own handwriting!
Time seemed to stand still.
I glanced at the clock on the mantel and saw that the five-minute truce had expired. In spite of it, I put my arm round Daffy’s shoulders and gave her a sharp, quick hug.