by Alan Bradley
“Sorry for the weight,” I said, as Dogger hoisted my suitcase onto the bed. I knew perfectly well that mine was nothing compared with the oxcart of books dear Daffy had dragged along. I trusted that, in Dogger’s mind, I would seem thoughtful by comparison.
“ ‘A good book,’ ” he said, squaring up the heavy volume reverently on the bedside table, “ ‘is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.’
“Or so, at least, says Mr. Milton in his Areopagitica,” he added.
I nodded wisely in agreement, even though I wasn’t quite sure who Mr. Milton was, what he meant by the remark, or what his Areopagitica might happen to be.
Still, any quotation with the word embalmed in it can never be a bore.
“Dogger,” I said, “what do you think—”
But Dogger stuck up a warning hand, palm toward me: the universal symbol for “Hush!”—or perhaps “Shut up!”
I shut up.
Incredibly, I had not heard the footsteps on the stairs outside. Fortunately, Dogger had.
“I shall find a tackle shop, Miss Flavia,” he said, keeping his hand in the air, “and some suitable rods. If we are to be detained for a day or two in order to assist Constable Otter, I am quite confident there can be no harm in a bit of fishing.”
On the last word, he gave me a broad wink, and I had to clap a hand over my mouth to keep from giggling.
“Oh, must we?” I said, falling into the role as Jean Simmons might have done. “I detest fishing.”
“I daresay,” Dogger replied with a poker-straight face, “that you will feel quite differently when you catch something.”
I hugged myself with delight. This was living! The shadows of the past six months—at least most of them—vanished at the prospect of…
Well, I wasn’t quite sure what, but reeling in a murderer would certainly keep our minds occupied.
“I suppose you’re right,” I said, trying to inject unwillingness into my voice, but even as I spoke, Dogger was moving slowly and silently toward the door. When he reached it, he seized the knob and gave it an easy, fluid twist.
“Oh, Mrs. Palmer!” he said. “You startled me. I didn’t realize you were here.”
You old fox, I thought. You clever old fox!
“Oh, Mr. Dogger,” the landlord’s wife said. “I was just about to say the same. We’ve gone and startled one another, haven’t we? I was just coming up to see if anything was required.”
Another old fox, I thought. Or, rather, Another old vixen.
I was keenly aware that I was watching two Old Masters at work.
“Nothing, thank you,” Dogger said, pretending to brush a fleck of dust from the suitcase.
“And you, dearie?” Mrs. Palmer asked, fixing me with the most awful, leering counterfeit grin. “Anything to make you comfy?”
I had once made a solemn pledge to flay alive and use their skin for a horse blanket the next person who dared to call me “dearie.”
Her awful word hung in the stale bedroom air. And then:
“Just a bit of quiet, thank you,” I heard my mouth saying. “I have the most awful headache.”
It was the first time in my life I had ever used this Neanderthal excuse but I knew, even as I said it, why at least two thousand generations of females have employed those very words—or, at least, their equivalent—in whatever language they may have spoken.
As an argument, the phrase was unassailable: a conversational stone wall. Who, for instance, could ever prove you hadn’t one?
As a sword shrouded in velvet—a gentle weapon—it was probably unequaled.
Six simple words, of which all but two were of a single syllable, and yet which fairly oozed accusation: “I have the most awful headache.”
I knew that it was unfair: a cheat, a deceit, and—well, why not put it plainly?—a lie.
At the same time, I rejoiced in knowing that it had wandered in from some distant room in my brain.
“I shall be all right,” I said. “It’s just…just…the…shock of…”
I let my voice trail off into nothingness.
Flavia! You fibber!
“There, there, dearie,” Mrs. Palmer said. “I understand. I’ve been taken that way myself on many an occasion.”
There was that word again.
I had somehow to restrain myself.
In my mind, I pulled from my pocket a needle and a reel of fishing line. I imagined popping the end of the tough black fiber into my mouth to moisten it, then squinting as I pushed it through the eye of the needle, which I shoved in through my lower lip, out through my upper lip, pulled it tight, followed with another loop—and another—and another. When I was finished, my mouth looked like one of those stitched-up shrunken heads that are brought back by explorers from the Amazonian jungle.
I was proud of my handiwork. Against all odds, I had managed to keep my mouth shut.
Mrs. Palmer was giving me what I believe is called a quizzical look.
Shoo! I told her with my mind. Buzz off! Go away! Vanish! Vamoose! Get lost! Take a powder!
And, by the jawbone of Jupiter, it worked!
Mrs. Palmer blinked.
“I’d best be getting back, then, if there’s nothing I can do,” she said, dusting her hands as if to signal she was finished with me.
“Thank you, Mrs. Palmer,” Dogger said, and I thought I heard a muffled “humph” as she clumped noisily down the stairs.
“Back to the poisons,” I said when she was gone and the door was firmly shut.
“Back to the poisons,” Dogger echoed.
I have to admit that I was reluctant to tell him what I’d done, but after only a couple of false starts, I found myself explaining in detail how I had used my handkerchief to swab a sample of liquid from the corpse’s lips.
I needn’t have worried.
“Excellent,” Dogger said. “You were thinking of the diatoms, no doubt?”
“No,” I admitted. “I was thinking of potassium cyanide, prussic acid, and paraldehyde.”
Dogger nodded.
“Quite right,” he said. “The three P’s. Very proper. We shall test for those also.”
“Tell me about the diatoms,” I said.
When the speaker was Dogger, I was more than willing to be instructed.
“The diatoms,” Dogger explained—and I could see that he was enjoying this—“are a vast species of microscopic algae belonging to the class Bacillariophyceae, which are notable for secreting a hard outer skeleton of siliceous matter—”
“Hold on,” I said. “Are you telling me they secrete a shell of sand?”
“Well, virtually—in its hydrated form, of course. Their cell walls are of the same material.”
“Like tiny army tanks!”
“Precisely.”
“The point being?” I could hardly contain myself.
“The point being that, in cases of drowning, the presence or absence of diatoms in the lungs may well indicate whether or not the victim was breathing when he or she went into the water.”
I wrinkled my brow.
“I don’t quite follow you,” I said.
Dogger reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a small black notebook. After flipping through a great many pages upon which were written a great many notes in his tiny, meticulous hand—O! How I wish I could have read it all!—he came at last to a blank page.
Unscrewing the cap of his fountain pen, he began to draw a series of small triangles, ellipses, and circles, then filled them in with elaborate but regular patterns of cells and chambers: some like snowflakes—or miniature honeycombs—or snooker balls in their triangular racks—or the hugely magnified fly’s eyes in one of those endless instructional films we were made to watch in St. Tancred’s parish hall.
“Diatoms are abundant in both fresh and salt water,” Dogger said. “If we analyze the residue on your handkerchief—”
And suddenly the light went on!
“We can tell if he was breathing. We can tell if he was murdered!”
“Perhaps,” Dogger said. “Putting aside the bruise on the neck for a moment, there were no marks of restraint on the visible parts of his body. It is remarkably difficult to hold an unwilling victim under water. Ropes are usually required.”
“Or handcuffs,” I added.
“Or handcuffs,” Dogger agreed. “Although it’s the extremities of the limbs that flail about, so that abrasions generally tend to be found on the wrists and ankles.”
“That makes sense,” I said, and it did. How did Dogger know all these things?
“All that remains,” said Dogger, “is a proper chemical analysis.”
“We’d better get on with it,” I said, “before the evidence evaporates.”
“Possibly, with reference to the cyanide, the prussic acid, and the paraldehyde, but as for the diatoms, there is no urgency whatever. The frustules for which we are searching consist virtually of glass, which will last for millions of years. I suggest we have time for tea.”
“But I don’t want tea,” I protested. “I want to roll up my sleeves and get to work.”
It took me a moment to see what Dogger was smiling at. In my light summer dress, I had no sleeves worth speaking of to roll up.
“And so do I, Miss Flavia,” he said, “but first we shall have to assemble certain…ah, philosophical instruments.”
Because “philosophical instruments” was the phrase used by Dr. Watson to describe certain of Sherlock Holmes’s chemical apparatuses, I knew what Dogger meant.
“Of course,” I said. “We must assemble our philosophical instruments.”
Not yet having the faintest idea what these might be.
“Well, we can boil our own water, anyway,” I said, pointing to the electric hot plate and tired-looking tin kettle that sat on a table in front of the window.
“An excellent start,” Dogger said, rubbing his hands together. “I shall be back in a jiff.”
Back in a jiff? What was the world coming to? That Dogger should use such slang was unthinkable. But before I could remark upon it he was gone.
I went to the window and peered down through the curtain. A few seconds later, Dogger appeared in the inn yard, walked casually to the parked Rolls, removed a couple of items from the boot, and retraced his steps.
“You’re very cheerful, Dogger,” I twitted him as he came back into the room. “Did you win something on the dogs or the horses?”
“I am not a betting man, Miss Flavia—except upon the great game of Life and Death. In my own turns at the table, I have been most fortunate to date.”
I ought to have known better.
“I’m sorry, Dogger,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Nor did I,” said Dogger. “It is time, I think, to make our first move.”
And with that he placed two objects on the bed. The first was a man’s black leather travel case; the other I recognized as the first-aid kit from the boot of the Rolls.
From his pocket he produced the powerful torch normally kept in the car’s glove box.
“Now then,” he said, “one thing more…”
He opened the door and, after looking both ways, stepped into the hall and vanished to the left, which direction, I knew, led only to the WC. Otherwise, it was a blind corridor.
There was a silence, and then came the gush of a flushing toilet.
There are times when it isn’t polite to listen, but the proximity of the water closet to my bedroom at the Oak and Pheasant made such niceties difficult to observe.
A moment later Dogger was back.
“Always flush when you are up to no good,” he said with a solemn face. “It puts them off the scent.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Was Dogger making a joke? He was talking to me almost as if I were an equal.
From behind his back he produced a yellow metal tin.
“There is no good landlord—or landlady, for that matter—from Land’s End to John o’ Groats who doesn’t lay in a good supply of drain cleaner.”
He held out the tin for my inspection.
“Drain Bane,” I read aloud. “Is that really the name of it?”
“Unhappily, yes,” Dogger said. “But fortunately for us, it is nothing more than sodium hydroxide putting on airs.”
Sodium hydroxide! I clapped my hands together. Caustic soda to the masses, but good old NaOH to those of us who are lucky enough to be chemists.
As if I were home again in my lab at Buckshaw, a great calm came over me.
“Where do we begin?” I asked, suddenly breathless at the prospect.
“I suggest we prepare the diatoms,” Dogger replied.
I dug into my pocket and extracted the handkerchief, taking great care to keep it balled up to protect the evidence.
I handed it over to Dogger, realizing, even as I did so, that this frail bit of linen might well become the noose round the neck of some person or persons as yet unknown.
It was an eerie feeling—but a pleasant one. It would be nice to believe that Justice plays no favorites.
To my surprise, Dogger set the handkerchief aside. Well, not exactly aside, but he pushed it gently into a glass drinking tumbler which he took from the black travel case.
“First things first,” he said. “First things, in this case, being distilled water.”
He half-filled the kettle with water from the small sink in the corner, and placed it on the hot plate. Setting aside the lid, he replaced it with the glass chimney from the candle holder, capping this with a second tumbler from the travel case.
“Almost a perfect fit,” he said, switching on the hot plate. “It will do.”
“You’ve done this before,” I observed.
“No,” Dogger said. “I’m afraid I am improvising.”
“Improvising is half the fun,” I said. “If it works.”
“It is, indeed,” Dogger agreed.
·EIGHT·
IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE the kettle’s steam began rising into the lamp chimney and condensing on the colder glass. Dogger let it boil for two and a half minutes before switching off the hot plate, by which time the inside of the chimney was completely filled with steam, its inner surfaces streaming water droplets like a rain-lashed window.
With a swift movement, Dogger seized the makeshift apparatus and, removing it from atop the kettle, flipped it over and placed it gently on the table. The drinking glass was now on the bottom, the inverted chimney on the top. Already the condensation was forming beads, running down the inside of the glass, dripping into the tumbler.
“That’s our distilled water,” I said, ticking it off on my fingers.
“We shall set aside a bit of it for our cyanide and paraldehyde experiments,” he said, tipping a couple of ounces into a drinking glass from the bedside table.
“Do we have enough?” I asked.
“We shan’t require a great deal,” Dogger said, decanting the remaining water carefully into the glass containing my handkerchief, and tamping it down with the end of his fountain pen until the whole wad was thoroughly wetted. “The evidence is microscopic.”
“What’s next?”
“We shall leave it to percolate for a while,” Dogger said.
Time becomes glacial when you’re impatient, and after just a few minutes I found myself sitting on my hands to keep from fidgeting.
“Shall we get on with our cyanide and paraldehyde testing?” Dogger suggested with a gentle smile, as he took down a white stoneware soap dish from a shelf above the sink.
I hugged myself with joy.
Because potassium cyanide (KCN) would have been converted by Orlando’s stomach acids to prussic acid (HCN), these tests were simple. We could, of course, have produced the required picric acid with a handful of aspirin tablets in sulfuric acid, but we quickly decided upon an easier method: A couple of grams of sodium bicarbonate and a few drops of picric acid antiseptic, both from the first-aid
kit Dogger had brought from the Rolls, would do the trick nicely.
I watched as Dogger carefully washed and dried the soap dish, tipped into it an ounce or so of the solution in which my handkerchief was soaking, then added a few drops of the antiseptic to the sample.
As I was half expecting it would, the fluid, due to the formation of potassium iso-purpurate, quickly took on a faint reddish brick color.
“Interesting,” I said, trying to contain my excitement. “Cyanide. The presence of which would, in itself, suggest accidental poisoning, suicide, or murder.”
Dogger nodded.
“And now for the paraldehyde. I’ve also taken the liberty of siphoning a small quantity of battery acid—sulfuric, of course—from the Rolls,” he said, producing a small glass bottle which I recognized at once as having formerly contained smelling salts in the car’s glove box.
“You are amazing, Dogger!” I clapped my hands together.
“Thank you, Miss Flavia,” he said. “ ‘Amazing’ is a word for wizards. I prefer to think of myself as merely practical.”
Because Dogger’s gentle rebukes were always as warm as honey, I treasured them. I vowed never to use the word again.
“Would you care to do the honors?” he asked, and I knew that I was forgiven my momentary indiscretion.
After heating the bottle gently in the steam from the kettle, I removed—with great care—the stopper of the salts bottle and decanted a few drops of the sulfuric acid into the soap dish, which contained the small sample of what I now thought of as my handkerchief water.
Just as the picric acid signaled the presence of cyanide by turning red in the first sample, so did the sulfuric acid tell us we were in the presence of paraldehyde by going yellow with a greenish tinge.
Dogger and I looked at each other: snug as two bugs in a rug.
“Cyanide,” I said again. “And paraldehyde.”
“It certainly seems so,” Dogger agreed. “And now for our friends the diatoms. If you will be so good as to prepare a solution of the sodium hydroxide—a couple of cubic centimeters ought to be sufficient.”
Taking the now-empty drinking tumbler from our makeshift distilling apparatus, I placed it in the bottom of the sink and poured into it some of the remaining hot water from the kettle.