by Alan Bradley
It was a brilliant insight and I couldn’t wait to get back to Buckshaw.
“Hold on,” I said, brightening suddenly. The word “poisoning” had triggered something in my mind. “You said Orlando walked by the river. Where by the river, in particular?”
Hob shrugged.
“In the churchyard. By the dock.”
“Waving his arms and talking to himself.”
“Mostly,” Hob said.
“What do you mean, mostly?”
“Just hanging around. Like he lost something. Staring at the water.”
Cold fingers caressed the back of my neck. There is an old saying or belief that a criminal always returns to the scene of his crime. Whether this is true or not I have no way of knowing, but the tired old idea was suddenly speaking to my blood. Could it be that Orlando was drawn back to the spot where his father was supposed to have ditched the silver chalice? The same spot where Fate would later, eerily, arrange for me to find his corpse? Had Orlando’s death been staged to make it seem like suicide?
I nearly lost my grip on the branch.
“Hob,” I wanted to say, “you are a treasure. A bucketful of gems. Your price is far above rubies.”
I also wanted to hug him.
But I didn’t, of course.
“Hmm,” I said in what I hoped was a disinterested voice. “Anything else?”
Hob shrugged.
“Sometimes he helps Da in the shop. He used to, I mean. Da said it didn’t work out.”
·FIFTEEN·
THERE WENT ANY IDEA I’d had of sleep. Farewell food, and farewell cool pillow, also. There wasn’t a minute to be wasted.
The way ahead was marked in my mind as clearly as a map drawn in flame.
Having thanked Hob, I made my not-so-graceful exit by parachuting down out of the tree and into the street. Thankfully, there was no one about to witness this display.
I would return at once to the Oak and Pheasant. I would quiz Dogger about his day’s investigations, then turn my attention, full force, to the late Orlando.
But back at the inn, disappointment awaited me. Dogger was nowhere in sight. And the Rolls was gone, which meant, I hoped, that he had uncovered something interesting.
I went to my room to wait for him.
I sat for a time on the edge of my bed, drumming impatiently on my knees. My stomach was giving off noises like a jungle at sunset and could no longer be ignored. There was nothing in the room to eat but fingernails.
Had Dogger been there, I’d have asked him to fetch me up a whole hog on a plate, which I’d tuck into with fangs and flying fat, like Henry VIII. I would let out a belch of gratitude, and then we’d be off, renewed: a pair of old hounds hot on the trail of a cold-blooded murderer.
—
When I opened my eyes, I was lying on my back and the room was suffused with a gray and watery light.
I thought at first that I had been deprived of color vision as punishment for some forgotten sin.
I struggled into a sitting position.
Beside me on the table was a packet wrapped in wax paper which, when I opened it, turned out to be a cold ham sandwich, with salt, pepper, and mustard, just the way I preferred it.
“Bless you, Dogger,” I said aloud, and fell upon the food.
Henry VIII, by the Grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England and also of Ireland on Earth Supreme Head, would have been proud of me.
I washed down the feast with the cup of cocoa—still slightly warm—which Dogger had left. He had been here not so long ago.
I gave my arms and legs a good waggle to shake off sleep.
In spite of the weather, it would be chilly outside in the early morning. I dug a wool jumper out of my suitcase, a garment insisted upon by Aunt Felicity:
“Only a fool would go without wool,” she had said.
It was almost a poem, and having once remembered it, I could not get the blasted thing out of my head.
“Only a fool would go without wool,” I said to myself as I shrugged into the jumper.
“Only a fool would go without wool.”
I wondered idly if Mrs. Palmer had ever written so instructive a poem, or whether she confined herself to obscure musings about wild animals, such as copper mares and brass stallions.
Hold on, I thought. Hadn’t there been a rearing Arab stallion painted on the side of Mrs. Dandyman’s pantechnicon?
My heart accelerated at the thought—although it might have been the sudden influx of ham.
I switched off the bedside lamp. No need to signal to anyone outside that I was up and about. One of the prime rules of sneakiness is to attract no undue attention.
I opened and closed my door soundlessly. The stairs were in darkness so that I had to make my way down, step by step, holding on tightly to the banister.
Clinking noises from the direction of the kitchen told me that Mrs. Palmer was already up and preparing for another busy day.
I slunk with ferret footsteps across the entranceway and eased myself out the door.
Well done, Flavia, I thought. Even a ghost could not have made a more soundless exit.
It was only when I was outside, breathing the chill morning air, that I came to my senses and realized I didn’t know where I was going.
Scull Cottage, I knew, was somewhere on the riverbank, but on which side and in which direction?
Mrs. Palmer had said that it was little more than a boathouse, and that it was leaky. How many structures of that description could there be? I could hardly barge into the kitchen now and ask for directions.
No one must know what I was up to.
I would simply have to flip a mental coin and proceed by elimination.
I glanced up quickly at the casement windows, hoping my face wouldn’t show up white in the half-light of the early morning. Feely would not be awake yet anyway, I decided. Courting is strenuous work, and if I knew my sister, she would now be snoring away like half a hundred pigs, her mouth gaping open and her hair a buzzard’s nest.
Having decided I would begin in the churchyard and work my way downstream, I was partway across the gravel sweep when I heard the sudden and unmistakable sound of car tires.
Someone was coming and there was nowhere to hide. In the open road I would be a sitting duck.
I did the only thing that I could think of: I froze.
It is a well-known law of nature that a moving object attracts more attention than one which is motionless. Every rabbit and every squirrel—in fact, every living creature subject to being eaten by predators—is born with the ability to freeze instantly when danger is detected.
I was standing there awkwardly in mid-stride, trying not to blink—not even to breathe. If my strategy worked, whoever it was would drive by without noticing me.
The crunching sound came closer and closer. It was eerie. Even in the silence of the morning I could hear no motor.
Crrrunch!
And then it stopped.
There was a soft thump, as of a sturdy door coming open, followed by the sound of boots on gravel.
I turned my head slowly, like an owl, hoping the whites of my eyes would not give me away.
Dogger was standing beside the Rolls, holding the door open for me. The car’s sidelights glowed with a soft, warm welcome.
“Good morning, Miss Flavia,” he said. “I trust you slept well?”
“Very well, thank you, Dogger,” I answered. “I knew you’d be waiting for me.”
It was a bluff. Dogger knew it and I knew it, but in spite of that, it somehow served as a bond between us.
To those of us who truly love one another, the occasional flaming fib serves only to strengthen the ties.
“Scull Cottage, please,” I said, climbing into the front seat of the car’s deliciously toasty interior.
“Indeed,” Dogger said as he let in the clutch and we floated away in near-silence from the inn.
“You will ha
ve already had a good look round,” I remarked, as we drove along the deserted high street—in the opposite direction, actually, of the way I had intended to go.
“I’m afraid not,” Dogger said. “I did make something of a reconnaissance, but I’m afraid I was spotted by a neighbor.”
“Spotted?” I asked. That could mean anything from a quick glance to the ringing up of Constable Otter.
“Recognized,” Dogger elaborated, looking straight ahead. “A person from the past.”
Aha! I thought. Dogger had already admitted to having been here before. “In another life,” as he had put it.
“A woman?” I asked, staking everything on a wild surmise.
“I’m sorry, Dogger,” I threw in at once. “I have no right to ask that. It just slipped out. Forget I said it.”
Dogger turned and smiled.
“As it happens, you’re right. A dear friend, merely, but one, I’m afraid, I have—”
“Never mind,” I interrupted, still embarrassed for my breach of manners. “Let’s talk about something else. Orlando Whitbread, for instance. Shall I tell you what I’ve found out about him?”
Dogger shook his head.
“Not until later, Miss Flavia, if you don’t mind. After we’ve had a look round. I’ve found it useful to come at things with an untainted mind.”
Even though I agreed with his principle—indeed, Inspector Hewitt had once told me much the same thing—it did not occur to me until later that Dogger had already visited Scull Cottage. This would be his second look.
Dogger turned off the road and onto a narrow track—no more than a cow path, really, that ran along the edge of a field, at the far side of which it began to slope downward toward the river.
Ahead was a grove of willows, which, in the first light of day, clustered together in the slight fog with a vaguely literary look. Beyond these, a hawthorn hedge blocked the view of the water.
Dogger brought the Rolls to a stop and engaged the parking brake.
“This is as far as we can drive,” he said.
As we climbed out of the car, I had a good look at our surroundings: at the bottom of the sloping field, glimpses of the river through the trees and bushes; above us, the greater expanse of the field. No houses were visible. In fact, no structures of any kind. In the pale light of the early morning, the entire landscape seemed composed of water, earth, and sky.
What a remote place, I thought, for skulduggery.
How odd it seemed to find such a wilderness on the very doorstep of a busy market town.
“This way,” Dogger said, leading me along a barely visible path which appeared to lead directly into the heart of the hawthorns.
What seemed at first to be an impenetrable tangle opened quickly up into a pleasant track among the trees that ran down to the water’s edge, and to a quaint but sadly neglected structure.
“Scull Cottage,” Dogger said, almost to himself.
The place had the look of an abandoned pagoda. Its sagging roof, curving down in a swayback shape, was decorated, at the end of each joist, with a carved dragon’s head. Once painted Chinese red, these formerly fearsome creatures were now sadly weathered and peeling, their wooden faces looking half hopeful, as if they were awaiting rescue.
We walked slowly round the structure, taking it all in: the mossy shingles, the drooping window frames, and the general air of brackishness.
The cottage itself might have been some relic of a drained Atlantis: a greenish, almost shapeless mound, a loaf of forgotten bread caught in the act of moldering back into the earth.
As in the presence of all fungi, there was a feeling of slight but detectable uneasiness about the place.
At the water’s edge, beneath the trees, a dock of decomposing planks was crumbling quietly into the river. Beyond it, a stile marked the end of an overgrown lane: a former towpath, I guessed.
Old boards groaned as I stepped onto the porch.
“Careful,” Dogger warned.
I nodded to indicate that I was heeding his words. The hush of the place was uncanny.
It was like that weird poem of the German hero-adventurers so admired by Daffy in which “all seemed quiet in the iland”; in which “no bird sang in the bushes”; in which “no tree rustled in the breeze”; and in which “no beast brushed athwart the thicket.”
Even the thought of the words made me shiver.
I cupped my hands against one of the grimy windows.
It was useless. With the dishwater light of the early morning behind me and darkness within the cottage, I could see nothing of its interior.
“Were you here yesterday, Dogger?” I asked. It was just a sudden feeling I had, and I wondered why I was whispering.
Dogger nodded his head. He did not elaborate and I did not ask. It seemed somehow wrong, in this strange place, to make a sound.
I pressed my nose to the glass again, hoping for miraculous vision to be suddenly bestowed upon me.
Something touched my elbow and I nearly leapt—like Saint Bartholomew—out of my skin.
I whipped round, wide-eyed, to find Dogger offering the torch. I had not noticed him bringing it from the Rolls.
With a curt, professional nod, as if leaping out of my skin were part of my plan and no more than an everyday occurrence, I took it from his hand, switched it on, and held the light against the windowpane.
A woman’s face was staring back at me from the darkness.
“Bugger!” I said—regretting it at once.
Get a grip, Flavia, I thought. Dogger was here. What possible harm could come from a moldering old house on the riverbank?
The house of a dead man, some part of my mind insisted. The house of a murdered man.
“Look here, Dogger,” I said, pretending to sound no more than mildly interested, even though it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from taking to my heels.
Dogger stepped carefully up beside me on the porch and applied his eye to the window.
“Interesting,” he said. “I should imagine 1910, or thereabouts.”
I placed my eye next to his, our faces next to one another against the glass.
In the yellow light of the torch, I could see that we were looking at a large theatrical poster pasted to a wall. On it, in garish colors, a woman in a Victorian girdle, and not much else except for a few ostrich feathers, swung upon a trapeze, her painted lips open in simpering laughter.
“A bird in a gilded cage,” Dogger said softly at my ear. “Back then, women were often portrayed as captives, their cages being life upon the stage.”
“Did they ever escape?” I asked, instantly aware that we had slipped into a topic in which I was out of my depth.
But I would persist. Perhaps I would learn something.
“Some did,” Dogger said. “This one—if I’m not mistaken—”
He took the torch from my hand and directed its beam to the bottom of the poster.
Lady Babylon, it said, in garish yellow lettering of a theatrical nature, A Musical Play Written and Composed by Leonard Bostwich. Sung and Performed by Miss Poppy Mandrill.
“Gosh!” I said.
“Quite,” Dogger agreed.
“Is that actually her?” I asked. “She was a stunner when she was young.”
Dogger did not reply.
I could now see in the gloom of the interior that there were many more posters and photographs of a similar nature covering the walls. In fact, the place looked more like a picture gallery than a home.
Had Orlando actually collected these relics himself and constructed a shrine of sorts to his mentor?
I was pressing my face flat against the window to permit a better view of the far corners when a voice said:
“Arthur?”
I spun round, startled by the sound.
In the dawn, a woman was standing at the stile, a hoe in her hand.
I’ll admit I must have gaped.
She was dressed in rubber boots and a pair of muddy trousers tied at the
waist with binder twine. A khaki shirt, open at the neck, was obviously a military castoff, as was the broad-brimmed, sweat-stained hat, which would have been more appropriate in the jungles of the Far East than in this remote British backwater.
“Arthur?” she said again, and it was only then I realized she was talking to Dogger.
Dogger lowered the torch and began to turn round, but I noted the slight hesitation, as if he needed to gather his wits before answering to his Christian name. His jaw muscles were ever so slightly tightening.
“Claire?” he asked, turning fully to meet her gaze at last.
Dogger was always a man of few words, and never more than now.
The woman had put down her hoe and was climbing over the stile. A moment later she stood facing us, a definite blush creeping up her tanned neck from the depths of the khaki shirt toward her glorious red hair.
“I thought it was you,” she said, gulping to keep her voice calm.
As a female myself, I knew instinctively that she was fighting back an almost irresistible urge to hug him. The joy in her eyes stood out like diamonds.
“I saw you here yesterday,” she said. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I must have been mistaken. I called out to you from my garden, but you mustn’t have heard me.”
She spoke with an accent which I couldn’t immediately identify: the vowels tightly wound, like Cockney, but even more so.
“No, I heard you, Claire,” Dogger said. “You must forgive me. I was unprepared—”
“Nonsense!” Claire exclaimed. “You mustn’t explain. I understand perfectly.”
And I could tell from the calmness creeping back into Dogger’s face that he believed her.
“It has been a long time,” he said. “A very long time, indeed. How have you been?”
I couldn’t help noticing his deliberate choice of words: “How have you been,” rather than “How are you?”
How she was now was evident to everyone for a quarter of a mile: Even in the early light, her smile was a hundred suns.
“Getting by,” she said. “Same as always. And you?”
“I manage,” Dogger said, and I knew in my heart that he was telling this woman the brutal truth.