by Alan Bradley
I didn’t waste a single instant. I ducked down and flicked the igniter again.
Click! … Click! … Click! … Click! …
Infuriating! I should have coated the fuses with candle wax, but one can’t think of everything. Obviously, they had become damp.
The clutching gloves were coming uncomfortably closer. It was only a matter of time before they managed to seize my ankle and drag me down onto the roof.
With that disturbing thought in mind, I shimmied a little higher up the clay chimney pot, again working my way, as I climbed, fully round to the east side of the structure.
On the roof, my attacker followed me around, perhaps half expecting me to slip and fall. High above its horribly helmeted head, my every breath visible on the cold air, I clung like a limpet to the upper section of the chimney.
A moment passed—and then another.
I became aware of a growing warmness. Had the wind let up, or had summer suddenly come? Perhaps I was running a fever.
I thought of the thousand warnings of Mrs. Mullet.
“Sudden chills fills the ’ills,” she never tired of telling me. “The ’ills meanin’ them little ’ills in the churchyard, of course. Dress up warm, dear, if you want to get your ’undred years birthday letter from the king.”
I clutched my cardigan closed beneath my chin.
Below me, the figure had turned abruptly and was walking off towards the battlements of the west wing. It seemed like a peculiar thing to do, but almost instantly I saw the reason.
At a point on the roof directly above the drawing room, the aerial for our wireless was stretched between a pair of slender vertical bamboo poles.
Seizing the closest pole with its gauntlets, my attacker put a boot against the socketed base and gave a sharp tug. Perhaps more than anything because of the cold, the bamboo snapped off as easily as if it had been a matchstick. It was now attached only to the copper wire. A quick twist of the wrist and that, too, had broken away, leaving my assailant holding a bamboo pole with two wickedly jagged ends. From one of these dangled a white china insulator that had somehow remained attached by a twist of wire.
Again I found myself staring straight down into the upturned face of my assailant. If only I could reach out and rip the goggles from that face—but I couldn’t.
Those mad eyes stared up me through the green goggles in cold dead hatred, and a shiver shook my frame—a kind of shiver I had never known before.
Those eyes, I realized, with a sudden sickening jolt, were not ringed by their usual horn-rimmed glasses. My attacker was not Val Lampman.
“Marion Trodd is killing me!” I heard my own voice screaming, and the realization must have surprised her as much as it surprised me.
It might have been less frightening if she’d said something, but she didn’t. She stood there in the silence of the drifting snow, still glaring up at me with that look of quite impersonal hatred.
And then, as if taking a bow at the end of a play, she lifted the goggles, and slowly removed the flier’s helmet.
“It was you,” I gasped. “You and Val Lampman.”
She made a little hiss of contempt, rather like a snake. Without a word, she extended the pole and, placing it in the middle of my chest, gave a vicious shove.
I let out a cry of pain, but somehow managed to twist my body in the direction of the thrust. At the same time I dragged myself a little higher.
But I might as well have saved the effort. The end of the stick with its dangling insulator was now hovering directly in front of my face. I simply couldn’t allow her to poke me in the eyes, or to catch the corner of my mouth with the wire, like a hooked fish.
Almost without thinking I seized the end of the pole and slammed it hard against the chimney. At the shock, Marion let go of the handle, and the pole fell away silently into the snow.
Now, suddenly infuriated, as if wanting to tear me apart personally with her bare hands, she launched herself directly at me, this time managing to get a firm grip on the bricks of the ledge. She had already pulled herself halfway up when she seemed to lurch, then suddenly stall in midair like a partridge hit on the wing.
A muffled curse came to my ears.
The birdlime! The birdlime! Oh, joy—the birdlime!
I had given the downwind ledge of the drawing room chimney pot an extra slathering of the stuff on the theory that Father Christmas would choose the sheltered side to climb out of his sleigh.
Marion Trodd was tugging away fiercely, trying to rip her hands free of the stuck gloves, but the more she struggled, the more she became entangled with her riding boots and long coat.
I had wondered, idly, while preparing the stuff, if my glue would be weakened by the cold, but it was obvious that it had not. If anything, it had become stronger and stickier, and it was becoming more evident by the minute that only by undressing completely could Marion hope to escape.
I seized the moment and bent to the fuse again:
Click! Click! Click!
Curses and counter-curses! The blasted thing refused to ignite.
In the ghastly silence that followed, as Marion Trodd tried in vain to free herself, her movements becoming ever more restricted, the sound of singing came floating to my ears:
“The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.”
I don’t know why, but the words bit at my bones.
“Dogger!” I shouted, my voice hoarse and broken in the cold air. “Dogger! Help me!”
But I knew in my heart that with everyone singing about Bethlehem, they couldn’t possibly have heard me. Besides, it was too far from the roof to the foyer—too many of Buckshaw’s bricks and timbers lay between us.
The wind had torn the words from my mouth and whipped them uselessly out and away, across the frozen countryside.
And it was then that I realized there was nothing keeping me from escape. All I had to do was leap clear of Marion Trodd, and run for the stairs.
It was almost certain that she had left the door open. Otherwise, how could she have returned to the house after finishing me off?
She bared her teeth and grimaced as I jumped, but she could not free herself enough to make a grab at me as I sailed over her shoulder. My knees buckled as I landed in a snowdrift.
I wished I had thought of a noble, defiant taunt to hurl into her snarling face, but I did not. Fear and the bitter cold had left me little more than a crouching, shivering bundle.
And then, in an instant, I was on my feet again, running across the roof as if all the hounds of hell were at my heels.
I was in luck. As I had supposed it would be, the door to the stairs stood open. Yellow light poured out onto the snow in a warm and welcoming rectangle.
Six feet to safety, I told myself.
But suddenly a black silhouette filled the doorway, blocking the light—and my escape.
I recognized it at once as Val Lampman.
I slid to a stop and tried to reverse myself, my feet slipping and sliding as if I were on skates.
I fled back across the roof, not daring to look behind me as I reached the drawing room chimney and pulled myself back up onto the first ledge. If Val Lampman was overtaking me, I didn’t want to know about it.
Perhaps I could lure him into the same trap as Marion Trodd. He didn’t yet know about the glue, and I wasn’t about to warn him.
As I scrambled higher up the chimney stack, I could see that he was walking unhurriedly across the roof. Methodically—yes, that was more the word.
It seemed likely that he had sent Marion Trodd to deal with me. She had followed me, slipping onto the roof during one of my up-and-down trips. But when she had not returned, he had come to do the dirty work himself.
He barely glanced at Marion, who was still entangled in the glue, writhing in its grip as ineffectively as a gnat stuck to flypaper.
“Val!” she shrieked. “Get me out of this!”
They were the first words she had spoken sin
ce she came onto the roof.
He turned his head—paused—and took an uncertain step towards her.
It was then I realized that the man was driven by Marion Trodd’s need for vengeance. It was at her command that he had been made to strangle his own mother.
If this was love, I wanted nothing to do with it.
At the base of the chimney, not seeming to know which of us to attend to first, he suddenly tripped—stumbled—and fell onto his elbows in the snow!
I almost cheered!
As he got shakily to his feet, I saw that he had tripped over the bamboo pole, which had been lying unseen in a drift.
“Prod her, Val!” Marion screamed hoarsely as he picked the thing up. She had already gone from thinking of her own rescue to demanding my head on a platter.
“Prod her! Knock her down. Do it now, Val! Do it!”
He looked at me—looked at her—his head swiveling, unable to make up his mind.
Then slowly, as if in a hypnotic trance, he picked up the pole and moved to a point directly below where I was clinging tightly to the chimney.
Taking his time about it, he worked the sharp end of the bamboo slowly into the collar of my cardigan, giving it an extra twist to be sure that it was secured.
The sharp tendril of wire was quickly entangled in the wool of my sweater. I could feel it stabbing me between the shoulder blades.
“No!” I managed. “Please!”
One fierce shove and I was falling—landing face-first in the suffocating snow, the breath knocked out of me.
By the time I rolled over, he was already dragging me towards the edge of the roof. My hands clutched uselessly at the air, but there was nothing to hang on to—no possible way of saving myself.
I tried to scramble to my feet but could not get a grip. He was using the pole to keep clear of my hands, my feet, and my teeth, dragging me along through the snow like a gaffed cod.
Now he had hauled me to the very edge of the battlements, and his plan was perfectly clear. He was going to shove me over.
His feet were sliding on the slippery roof as he tried to plant them firmly for that final bit of deadly pole work.
How unfairly things had turned out, it seemed to me. It was downright rotten when you came to think of it. No one deserved to die like this.
And yet Harriet had, hadn’t she?
What had been her last thoughts on that wintery mountain in Tibet? Did her life flash before her eyes, as it is said to do?
Did she have time to think of me?
“Stop it, Flavia!” a voice said inside my head, suddenly and quite distinctly.
“Stop it at once!”
I was so surprised that I obeyed.
But what was I supposed to do?
“Take stock,” the voice said, rather crabbily.
Yes! That was it—take stock.
It was ridiculously easy to do. I had nothing left to lose.
Somehow, in that moment, I managed to twist round enough to free my collar and grab on to the end of the pole. Unexpectedly, it gave me the support I needed to lurch clumsily up onto my feet.
Now we were at the very edge of the precipice, Val Lampman and I, like two tightrope walkers, each of us hanging on for dear life to opposite ends of the same bamboo pole.
He gave the thing a sudden jerk, trying to topple me, but as he did so, his foot slipped on the icy stone gutter. He let go his grip on the pole and his arms flailed wildly at the air as he fought to keep his footing.
But it wasn’t enough to save him.
In utter silence, he fell backwards and was swallowed by the night. The pole tumbled lazily after him, end over end.
From somewhere below came a sickening thump.
I was left teetering on the sloped edge, fighting desperately to keep my balance, but my feet were slipping slowly towards the edge of the battlement, now just inches away.
Desperately, I threw myself down onto my face, trying to dig my fingers into the icy stones.
It was no use.
As my feet shot out into empty space, I made one last frantic grab at a section of weather-worn lead gutter, trying to hook my fingertips onto its lip, but the stuff twisted, crumbled—almost disintegrating in my fingers—and I felt my body sliding … like a limp mannequin … over the precipice.
And then I was falling … endlessly … interminably … seemingly forever … down into darkness.
• TWENTY-ONE •
WHEN I OPENED MY eyes at last, I found myself staring straight up into the falling snow. A kaleidoscope of red and white flakes spun past, growing larger until they landed in horrid, slushy silence on the frozen mask that must have been my face.
Above me, the shadowy blur of the battlements lurched at a crazy angle, towering up into the low, scudding clouds.
There was a diffused flash, followed by a deep rumbling, as if mischievous clerks were rolling empty wine barrels in a warehouse.
Another flash—a flash that flared and faded with every pulsing beat of my heart—followed by an earsplitting Crack!
A silence followed—so intense that it hurt my ears. Only gradually did I become aware of the sizzle of the falling snow. And then …
Foom!
Something like a red candle lit up the night with a pallid and unearthly glow.
Foom! Foompf!
Now a green light and a blue joined with the red, as a comet the color of sunflowers climbed the sky and burst high overhead in a dazzling shower amid the falling snow.
The night had suddenly become an inferno of icy fire, its colors blazing with such fierce splendor that it brought hard, glassy tears to my eyes.
Foom! Foom! Faroom!
It seemed to go on forever. I was becoming too weary to watch.
Somewhere, someone was beckoning me—a summons I couldn’t resist.
“Who are you?” I wanted to shout. “Who are you?”
But I had no voice. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
I closed my eyes upon the starry brilliance, then opened them again almost at once as a great coppery-green comet lifted itself on a tail of glittering yellow sparks and, like some celestial dragon, climbed into the sky and exploded directly overhead with an earth-shattering boom.
Rocket of Honor, I remember thinking, mentally ticking off ingredients on my imagined fingers: antimony … iron filings … potassium chlorate.
I thought for an instant of Phyllis Wyvern, the recipient of my tribute, and how sad it was that nothing of her remained alive but a series of shadowy images on coils of black film.
I thought, too, of Harriet.
And then I slept.
They were all of them gathered round my bed, their faces looming over me as if seen through a fish-eye lens. Carl Pendracka was offering me a stick of Sweet Sixteen chewing gum, while the Misses Puddock held out identical cups of steaming tea. Inspector Hewitt stood with his arm around the shoulders of his wife, Antigone, who wept silently into a dainty piece of lace. At the foot of the bed, Father stood motionless, flanked by my white-faced sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, all three of them looking as if they had just been vomited up from hell.
Dr. Darby was speaking in a low voice to Dogger, who shook his head and looked away. In the corner, her face buried in her husband Alf’s shoulder, Mrs. Mullet trembled like an autumn leaf. Behind them, Aunt Felicity was fussing with some clinking object or another in the depths of her alligator handbag.
The vicar stepped back from my bedside and whispered something that sounded like “flowers” into the ear of his wife, Cynthia.
There were others lurking in the shadows, but I could not see them clearly. The room was hot and musty. Someone must have opened up the old fireplace and set a blaze going. The smell of soot and charcoal—and something else—was on the overheated air.
What was it? Gunpowder? Saltpeter?
Or was I back in the stifling cupboard under the stairs, inhaling the fumes of the burning paper?
I coughed painfully, and began to shiv
er.
Nasturtiums, I thought, after a very long time. Someone has brought me nasturtiums.
Daffy had once told me, in a rather condescending tone, that the name of those smelly flowers meant “nose-twister.” But while I could easily have shot back that the stink was due entirely to the fact that their volatile oil consisted largely of sulfocyanide of allyl (C4H6NS), or mustard oil, I did not.
There are times when I am humble.
We had been looking through one of Harriet’s watercolor sketchbooks that day, and had come across a grouping of the pretty flowers, their papery petals a warm rainbow of orange, yellow, red, and pink.
At the bottom of the page was lightly printed in pencil, Nasturtiums, Toronto, 1930 Harriet de Luce.
At the top, obliterating one of the petals, was a heavy black rubber stamp: Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy. And in red pencil, B–.
My heart wanted to leap out of my chest and punch someone in the nose. What barbarian of a teacher had dared to award my dear dead mother a Bath bun—a beta minus?
I drew in a deep, offended breath and choked on the knot in my throat.
“Easy, dear,” said a hollow, echoing voice. “It’s all right now.”
I opened my eyes, squinting against the fierce white light, to find Mrs. Mullet beside me. She stepped quickly to the window and lowered the blind until the sun was no longer shining directly into my eyes.
It took me a couple of moments to locate myself. I was not in my bedroom, but rather on the drawing room divan. I struggled to pull myself up.
“Lie still, dear,” she said. “Dr. Darby’s give you a nice mustard police.”
“What?”
“A plaster, like. You ’ave to keep still.”
“What time is it?” I asked, still dislocated.
“Why, it’s past Christmas, ducks,” she said. “You’ve gone and missed it.”
I wrinkled my nose at the mess of clotted mustard on my chest.
“Don’t touch it, dear. You’ve gone all chesty. Dr. Darby said to leave it on for ’alf an ’our.”
“But why? I’m not sick.”
“You’ve fell off the roof. It’s the same thing. Good job they’d shoveled them drifts into such a bloomin’ great ’eap, else you’d’ve gone straight through to China.”