by Alan Bradley
“Ladies and gentlemen!” someone called out, clapping their hands for attention. “Ladies and gentlemen!”
The buzz of conversation stopped as abruptly as if it had been cut off with scissors.
A pale young man with sandy hair had made his way to the bottom of the staircase, climbed up a couple of steps, and turned to face the others.
“Mr. Lampman will address you now.”
A few discreet lights were brought up to compensate for Buckshaw’s antiquated electrical system.
From somewhere in the shadows behind them, a tiny middle-aged man made his appearance and, like a boy on a country road, strolled slowly and casually across the foyer as if he had all the time in the world. He was dressed, from the top down, in a rather battered olive-green fedora hat, a black roll-neck sweater, and black slacks.
In a different costume, Val Lampman might have passed for a leprechaun.
He turned and faced the others. I noticed that he didn’t ascend even one of the stairs.
“It’s nice to see so many of the old familiar faces—and a few new ones as well,” he said. “Among the latter is Tom Christie, our assistant director—”
He stopped to put his hand on the shoulder of a curly-haired man who had now come over to join him.
“—who will be seeing that everyone is zipped up and that none of you walk into walls.”
A small but polite laugh went up.
“As most of you know by now, we’re embarking under a bit of a handicap. Pat McNulty has suffered an unfortunate injury, and although I’m assured that he’s going to be all right, we’re just going to have to get on without his benevolent mother hen tactics, at least for the time being.
“Ben Latshaw will be in charge of technical crew until further notice, and I know you’ll extend him every courtesy.”
Heads swiveled, but I couldn’t see who they were looking at.
“I’d hoped to have a read-through of the first scene with Miss Wyvern and Mr. Duncan, but as he’s not arrived yet, we’ll substitute scene forty-two with the maid and the postman. Where are the maid and the postman? Ah! Jeannette and Clifford—good show. See Miss Trodd, and we’ll meet upstairs as soon as we’re finished here.”
Jeannette and Clifford made their way across the foyer towards the horn-rimmed Marion, who waved a clipboard in the air to guide them through the throng.
Marion Trodd—so that was her name.
“Val, darling! Sorry I’m late.”
The voice rang out like a crystal trumpet, bouncing from the polished paneling of the foyer.
Everyone turned to watch Phyllis Wyvern begin her descent from the landing of the west staircase. And what a descent it was: She had changed into a Mexican dancer’s costume: white frilled blouse and a skirt like the canopy of a seaside roundabout.
The only thing missing was a banana in her hair.
There was a smattering of light applause and a single wolf whistle at which she pretended to blush, fanning her cheeks with her hand.
She must be freezing in those short sleeves, I thought. Perhaps working under hot lights had made her immune to the English winter.
She paused once, to give a helpless little shrug and point her chin to the upper reaches of the house.
“Poor, dear Bun,” she said, in a suddenly solemn voice—a voice meant to carry. “I tried to get some soup into her, but she couldn’t keep it down. I’ve given her something to help her sleep.”
Arriving at the bottom of the stairs, she floated across the foyer, seized Val Lampman’s forearms, as if to keep him from touching her, and pecked at his cheek.
Even from where I sat, I could see that she missed him by a mile. She looked a little peeved, I thought, that he had stolen her thunder.
As they held each other at arm’s length, the front door opened and Desmond Duncan made his entry.
“Sorry, all,” he said in that voice of his that was known round the world. “Last matinee at the pantos. Command performance. Simply couldn’t bear to tear myself away from the poor dears.”
He was bundled up in some kind of heavy fur coat—buffalo or yak, I thought. On his head was a wide-brimmed floppy hat of the sort worn by artists on the Continent.
“Ted!” he said, patting one of the electricians on the back. “How’s the missus? Still collecting matchbooks? I’ve got one she might like to have—straight from the Savoy.
“Only two matches missing,” he added with a broad pantomime wink.
I had seen Desmond Duncan in a film whose name I have forgotten: the one about the little girl who hires a failed barrister to force her estranged parents to reconcile. I had also seen pictures of him in some of the fan magazines Daffy kept hidden at the bottom of her undies drawer.
He had a sharp, beaked nose, and a projecting chin, which gave him the profile of a thunderbolt: a profile that was probably instantly recognizable from Greenland to New Guinea.
A sudden gasp from above and behind me caused me to crane my neck and look up. I should have known! Daffy and Feely were peering through the balusters. They must be flat on their bellies on the floor.
Feely made shooing motions with her hands, indicating that I wasn’t to give away their presence by staring at them.
I bounded up the stairs and lay down on the floor between them. Daffy tried to pinch me, but I rolled away.
“Do that again and I’ll scream your name and your brassiere size,” I hissed, and she shot me a villainous look. Daffy had only recently begun to develop and was still shy about trumpeting the details.
“Look at them!” Feely whispered. “Phyllis Wyvern and Desmond Duncan—actually together here—at Buckshaw!”
I peered down through the railings just in time to see them touch fingertips—like God and Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, except that their respective clothing gave them the appearance, from above, of something more like a large bison coming face-to-face with a small pinwheel whirligig.
Desmond Duncan was now removing the bulky coat, which was taken instantly away by a little man who had been trailing him.
“Val!” he said loudly, looking round to take in the whole of the foyer. “You’ve done it again!”
By way of reply, Val Lampman smiled a tight smile and glanced almost too casually at his watch.
“Right, then,” he said. “All present and accounted for. Jeannette and Clifford, as you were. You may stand down. We’ll be taking the principals this evening, after all. First read-through tomorrow morning at seven-thirty, costumes at nine-fifteen. Miss Trodd will hand out the sheets in two hours’ time.”
“Now’s your chance,” Daffy whispered, nudging Feely. “Go ask him!”
In the foyer, the actors and crew were beginning to drift away, leaving Val Lampman alone at the bottom of the stairs jotting something in a notebook.
“No! I’ve changed my mind,” Feely said.
“Silly camel!” Daffy told her. “Do you want me to ask him? I will, you know.
“She’s going to be one of the extras,” Daffy whispered. “She’s got her heart set on it.”
“No!” Feely said. “Shush!”
“Oh, Mr. Lampman,” Daffy said, in quite a loud voice, “my sister—”
Val Lampman looked up into the shadows.
Feely punched Daffy on the upper arm. “Stop it!” she hissed.
I got up from the floor, gave my face a rub with the palm of my hand, adjusted my clothing, and walked down the stairs in a way that would have made Father proud.
“Mr. Lampman?” I said at the landing. “I’m Flavia de Luce, of the Buckshaw de Luces. My sister Ophelia is seventeen. She was hoping you’d be able to give her a small walk-on part.” I pointed. “That’s her up there peeking through the banister.”
Val Lampman shaded his eyes and looked up into the dim woodwork.
“Please show yourself, Miss de Luce,” he said.
Upstairs, Feely got to her knees, then to her feet, dusted herself off, and peered foolishly down over the r
ailings.
There was an awkward silence. Val Lampman lifted his fedora and scratched his thin flaxen hair.
“You’ll do,” he said at last. “See Miss Trodd in the morning.”
The telephone rang in its cubicle beneath the stairs, and, although I couldn’t see him, I heard Dogger’s measured footsteps coming through from the kitchen to answer it. After a muffled conversation, he came out into view and spotted me on the stairs.
“That was the vicar,” he said. “Miss Felicity rang him to say that Colonel de Luce will be staying the night in London.”
It must be snowing like stink! I thought, rather uncharitably.
“Odd that Aunt Felicity didn’t telephone here,” I said.
“She’s been trying for more than an hour, but the line was engaged. She rang up the vicar instead. As it happens, he’s driving over to Doddingsley in the morning to pick up some extra holly for the church decorations. He’s kindly offered to meet Colonel de Luce and Miss Felicity at the railway station there and bring them to Buckshaw.”
“The holly and the ivy,” I caroled loudly, not caring that I was a little off-key.
“When they are both full grown,
Of all the poisons that are in the wood,
The holly wears the crown.”
Probably, I thought, because it contained theobromine, the bitter alkaloid that is also to be found in coffee, tea, and cocoa, and was first synthesized by the immortal German chemist Hermann Emil Fischer from human waste. The theobromine in the berries and leaves of the holly was just one of the cyanogenic glycosides, which, when chewed, release hydrogen cyanide. In what quantities, I had yet to determine, but just the thought of such a delicious experiment made the hairs on my forearms stand up in pleasure!
“You’re thinking of the ilicin,” Dogger said.
“Yes, I’m thinking of the ilicin. It’s an alkaloid in the holly leaves, and it causes diarrhea.”
“So I believe I have read somewhere,” Dogger said.
I could use the same batch of holly I’d dragged home to make the birdlime!
“You’d better watch out …” I sang, as I skipped upstairs with more than just the capture of Father Christmas in mind.
Wet, heavy flakes were falling straight down towards the earth, no two alike as they plummeted past the lighted window of my laboratory—yet all of them members of the same family.
In the case of snowflakes, the family’s name is H2O, known to the uninitiated as water.
Like all matter, water can exist in three states: At normal temperatures it’s a liquid. Heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes a gas; cooled below 32 degrees, it crystallizes and becomes ice.
Of the three, ice was my favorite state: Water, when frozen, was classified as a mineral—a mineral whose crystalline form, in an iceberg, for instance, was capable of mimicking a diamond as big as the Queen Elizabeth.
But add a bit of heat and poof!—you’re a liquid again, able to run easily, with only the assistance of gravity, into the most secret of places. Just thinking of some of the subterranean spots in which water has been makes my stomach tickle!
Then, raise the temperature enough, and Ali-kazam! you’re a gas—and suddenly you can fly.
If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is!
Hyponitric acid, for instance, is absolutely fascinating: At –4 degrees Fahrenheit, it takes the form of colorless prismatic crystals; warm it up to just 7 degrees and it becomes a clear liquid. At 30 degrees the liquid turns yellow and then orange, until at 82 degrees, it boils and becomes a brownish-red vapor: all within a range of no more than 86 degrees!
Stupendous, when you stop to think about it.
But getting back to my old friend water, the thing of it is this: No matter how hot or how cold, no matter its state, its form, its qualities, or its color, each molecule of water still consists of no more than a single oxygen atom bonded to two sister atoms of hydrogen. It takes all three of them to make a blinding blizzard—or a thunderstorm, for that matter … or a puffy white cloud in a summer sky.
O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
Later, in bed, I turned out the light and listened for a while to the distant sounds of people moving about, making last-minute preparations for the morning. Somewhere in the west wing they would still be adjusting their spotlights; somewhere Phyllis Wyvern would be boning up on her script.
But at last, after what seemed like a very long time, the day’s work was done and, with a last few reluctant creaks and groans, Buckshaw slept in the silence of the falling snow.
• SIX •
I AWAKENED TO THE sound of shoveling. Crikers! I must have overslept!
Leaping out from under the eiderdown, I struggled into my clothing before my flesh could freeze.
The world outside my bedroom windows was the sickly shade of an underdeveloped snapshot: a bruised black and white, under which lay an ever so slightly menacing tinge of purple, as if the sky were muttering “Just you wait!”
A few taunting flakes were still sifting down slowly like little white warning notes from the gods, shaking their tiny frozen fists as they fell past the window.
Half the film crew, it seemed, were at work clearing a maze of pathways between the vans and lorries.
I dug quickly through a pile of gramophone records (Daffy told me I had pronounced it “grampaphone” when I was younger) and, picking out the one I was looking for, dusted it on my skirt.
It was “Morning,” by Edvard Grieg, from his Peer Gynt suite: the same piece of music that Rupert Porson (deceased) had used at the parish hall last September to open his puppet performance of Jack and the Beanstalk.
It wasn’t my favorite piece of morning music, but it was infinitely better than “Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing.” Besides, the disk had that lovely picture of the dog, his head tilted quizzically as he listens to his master’s voice coming out of a horn, not realizing that his master is behind him painting his picture.
I gave the gramophone a jolly good cranking and dropped the needle onto the surface of the spinning disk.
“La-la-la-LAH, la-la la-la, LAH-la-la-la,” I sang along, even putting the little hitches in the right places, until the end of the main melody.
Then, because it seemed to suit the bleakness of the day, I adjusted the control to reduce the speed, which made the music sound as if the entire orchestra had suddenly been overcome with nausea: as if someone had poisoned the players.
Oh, how I adore music!
I flopped limply round the room, sagging with the slowing music like a doll whose sawdust stuffing is pouring out, until the gramophone’s spring ran all the way down and I collapsed on the floor in a boneless heap.
“I hope you haven’t been getting underfoot,” Feely said. “Remember what Father told us.”
I let my tongue crawl slowly out of my mouth like an earthworm emerging after a rain, but it was a wasted effort. Feely didn’t take her eyes from the sheet of paper she was studying.
“Is that your part?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“Let’s have a dekko.”
“No. It’s none of your business.”
“Come on, Feely! I arranged it. If you get paid, I want half.”
Daffy inserted a finger in Bleak House to mark her place.
“ ‘In BG, OOF, a maid places a letter on the table,’ ” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“That’s all?” I asked.
“That’s it.”
“But what does it mean?”
“It means that in the background, out of focus, a maid places a letter on the table. Just as it says.”
Feely was pretending to be preoccupied, but I could tell by the rising color of her throat that she was listening. My sister Ophelia is like one of those exotic frogs whose skin changes color involuntarily as a warning. In the frog, it’s trying to make you think that it’s poisonous. It’s much the same in Feely.
“Caramba!” I said. �
��You’ll be famous, Feely!”
“Don’t say ‘Caramba,’ ” she snapped. “You know Father doesn’t like it.”
“He’ll be home this morning,” I reminded her. “With Aunt Felicity.”
At that, a general glumness fell over the table and we finished our breakfasts in stony silence.
The down train from London was due at Doddingsley at five past ten. If Clarence Mundy had been picking them up in his taxicab, Father and Aunt Felicity would be at Buckshaw within half an hour. But today, allowing for the snow and the practiced funereal pace at which the vicar usually drove, it seemed likely to be well past eleven before they arrived.
It was, in fact, not until a quarter past one that the vicar’s Morris pulled up exhausted at the front door, piled like a refugee’s cart with various peculiarly shaped objects projecting from the windows and lashed to the roof. As soon as they climbed out of the car, I could tell that Father and Aunt Felicity had been quarreling.
“For heaven’s sake, Haviland,” she was saying, “anyone who can’t tell a chaffinch from a brambling ought not to be allowed to look out the window of a railway carriage.”
“I’m quite sure it was a brambling, Lissy. It had the distinctive—”
“Nonsense. Bring my bag, Denwyn. The one with the large brass padlock.”
The vicar seemed a bit surprised to be ordered about in such an offhanded manner, but he pulled the carpetbag from the backseat of the car and handed it to Dogger.
“Clever of you to think of winter tires and chains,” Aunt Felicity said. “Most ecclesiastics are dead washouts when it comes to motorcars.”
I wanted to tell her about the bishop, but I kept quiet.
Aunt Felicity bore down on the front door in her usual bulldog manner. Beneath her full-length motoring coat, I knew, she would be wearing her complete Victorian explorer’s regalia: two-piece Norfolk jacket and skirt, with extra pockets sewn in for scissors, pens, pins, knife, and fork (she traveled with her own: “You never know who’s eaten what with strange cutlery,” she was fond of telling us); several lengths of string, assorted elastics, a gadget for cutting the ends off cigars, and a small glass traveling container of Gentleman’s Relish: “You can’t find it since the war.”