by Alan Bradley
“All’s well that ends well,” Shakespeare had said and, as usual, the wily old bard was right. It might not have done at all to let Poppy know how much I already knew about the characters in the case.
When I woke up, the shadows of late afternoon had subtly rearranged my room.
I got up, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. Daffy had become remarkably fussy about personal hygiene in the past several months, and I didn’t want to give her an excuse to carp.
·TWENTY-THREE·
I TAPPED LIGHTLY AT Daffy’s bedroom door with my fingernails. One long followed by two short: a Morse code letter D for Dickens, the password we had agreed upon during one of our rare truces.
After a moment, I heard the key turn in the lock.
“Well?” she demanded, peering out at me with one eye through the crack of the opening door.
“How are you getting on with the poems?” I whispered, keeping my voice down in case Mrs. Palmer was within earshot.
Daffy eased the door open wider—just enough to let me squeeze in—then closed it behind me.
“Listen, Nugs,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder, and my heart leapt up. She had not called me Nugs for years—not since we were children.
“Listen, Nugs, these are deep waters and dangerous. You’d be a fool to become involved.”
I was too stupefied to speak. Daffy led me over to her bed, patting the quilt to indicate that I should sit.
Mrs. Palmer’s book, The Mussel Bed, lay open facedown on the counterpane—which ought to have told me something in itself, since Daffy had raged more than once that anyone who left a book in that position ought to be flayed, hanged, drawn and quartered, and dragged by four black horses to the four corners of the globe, their tattered remains roasted and the ashes cursed and scattered to the winds.
Daffy snatched up the book and read.
“This one, for instance, about the copper mare and the brass stallion. Remember?
“The copper mare and
The brass stallion graze
In Flecker’s Field.
He paws the turf,
While she the wind tastes.
And when he trots to her
She turns tail.”
“Of course I do,” I said. “It’s about Leander, the ancient Greek chap who drowned trying to reach his lover, Hero, who was a nun.”
“It’s about horseplay,” Daffy said. “And not the kind you’re thinking. James Elroy Flecker died in bed, remember?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and I didn’t. Daffy’s mind and mine do not function in the same way.
“Do you remember Madame Bovary?” she asked. “Remember Rodolphe? The gentleman in the yellow gloves and the green velvet coat?”
“Holy moly!” I said. “You don’t mean—?”
“Indeed I do!” Daffy said with a leer.
“Mrs. Palmer?” I asked. “I don’t believe it!”
I still wasn’t exactly sure what Daffy was referring to, but I didn’t need the details.
“With whom?” I asked, managing to keep my head grammatically.
“With her Leander. The one who drowned.”
“Hold on!” I protested. “She wrote this poem and published it ages before Orlando died.”
“Which can mean only,” Daffy said, “that she either foresaw his death or was herself the instrument of his demise.
“Ah!” she said. “Is there true love beyond the grave? Does the drowned hero await in some violet-scented afterlife? ’Fraid not, Flavia. Marvell said it best:
“The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
“Nope, you can count on it, little sister. The woman’s either a psychic or a killer.”
“Top drawer, Daff!” I shouted. “You ought to be in the detecting business yourself!”
I was amazed to recognize that there was no resentment whatsoever attached to my words. My sister deserved all the praise and encouragement I could give her.
“Go on,” I urged. “Is there more?”
“Tons more. Steaming cartloads of it.”
That did it. I vowed there and then to take up the study of poetry at the earliest possible convenience.
“I’m all ears,” I said, putting my forefingers behind my ears and pushing them forward until I looked like Dumbo.
“Well, this, for instance,” Daffy said, turning to a new page and striking a dramatic stance.
Her voice was different, I noticed, when she read poetry.
“ ’Tis not the hawk that frightens but the shadow of the lark—”
“She is more afraid of the songbird than the raptor,” I interrupted. “I wonder why?”
“The Linnaean classification of the skylark is Alauda arvensis, meaning ‘field lark.’ Arvensa is the Latin word for ‘field,’ recalling both Flecker and the field in which the copper mare and the brass stallion graze. And our trusty landlord Palmer’s Christian name is Arven. It’s on the hanging signboard out front.”
Of course it was! Hadn’t I seen it with my own two eyes?
That did it. I resolved to take up the study of Latin as soon as we were back home. I was already drooling at the thought of those mountain torrents of leather-bound texts in Buckshaw’s overflowing library. What juicy secrets lay hidden in forgotten names!
“Sorry,” I said. “Go on.”
Daffy gave me an amused raised eyebrow and began the poem again:
“ ’Tis not the hawk that frightens but the shadow of the lark.
Most melancholy bird of all espies us in the dark.”
“An owl!” I said. “Owls can see in the dark! Someone has spied on them in Flecker’s Field!”
“Partially correct,” Daffy said. “Someone has spotted them. But it’s not an owl.”
She closed the book, sniffing at its sandwiched pages as if gratefully savoring the knowledge they had given up.
“ ‘Most melancholy bird,’ ” she said, “is an allusion to a poem by John Milton. Surely you’ve heard of Paradise Lost?”
Heard of it? I had lived it! Paradise Lost was the story of my life!
“Vaguely,” I said.
“Excellent,” Daffy said. “The reference to a melancholy bird, however, as every schoolboy knows, is from one of his earlier poems, ‘Il Penseroso,’ which, roughly translated, means ‘The Thinking Man.’ ”
“And what is the thinking man thinking about if he’s not referring to an owl?” I asked.
“It’s a poem about his muse, and how she meets her lover.”
Daffy fell into her rich, dark reading voice:
“Oft in glimmering bow’rs and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida’s inmost grove…
“Quite frankly, Flavia, it’s about an assignation.”
Well! That put a whole new light on things. Had Mrs. Palmer’s husband realized what was going on and killed the man who was meeting his wife “in secret shades,” whatever that meant?
“And the bird?” I asked. I was not about to be thrown off the track by a lot of nauseous lovemaking.
“A nightingale,” Daffy said. “The melancholy bird of which the poet speaks was a nightingale.”
There are times when the breath is sucked out of your lungs as, in an instant, a forest fire consumes the living air.
Giddy and light-headed, I made my excuses (sudden fatigue) and fled the room.
“Wait!” she called after me. “There’s more!”
But my head was spinning. I needed to be alone. Now.
—
When all else fails, there remains a single spot on earth where one can be alone: a place where teeming thoughts can be rounded up and organized; a place where one will never be imposed upon by the inhabitants.
And, as if of their own accord, my shoes were already making their way across the road to the graveyard. All I needed to do was to keep my feet in them.
Here
I could collect my thoughts among the ancient stones.
Would I sit here with Fanny Greatorex, spinster of this parish, who departed this life on the third day of April, in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Six, or over there on that mossy bank with Thomas Button, Gent, whom “life abandoned” on November thirty-first (that’s what it said) in the fifty-ninth year of the reign of our Sovereign King George III?
Since Fanny looked a little more welcoming, and somewhat less damp, I chose her. I settled myself among the lichens on her slab.
There is something mystical about sitting on a stone. It not only provides firm support for one’s bottom, but also seems almost miraculously to stimulate the brain.
It was obvious that Orlando Whitbread was central to what I had already begun to think of as the Volesthorpe Mysteries: as tangled a knot of death as I had ever seen. The man himself was dead, as was his father, as well as the three village women who had perhaps gossiped too much about him for their own good.
The good canon had gone to the gallows for the deaths of the latter three ladies and now his son would be joining him—more or less—in the grave.
There was so little left to go on. Perhaps it was too late, anyway. Perhaps we should simply pack our picnic baskets in the Rolls, drive off into the sunset, and leave these dead to their own devices. Given enough time, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Or would it?
Would Flavia de Luce blot her heavenly copybook by overlooking a crime?
“Four crimes!” a little voice cried within me.
Would all the saints, when I arrived in Paradise, rub forefingers together at me as if starting a fire with sticks, and cry out to me “Tish! Tish! Tish!”? Would a choir of angels chant, to the tune of some grand and previously unknown melody by Bach or Handel, “Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Flavia’s going down the drain!”?
With Heaven, you never knew. It was better not to take any chances.
A twig cracked and before I could even think someone seized me from behind and covered my mouth. I had only a flashing impression of rough red hands and a hot rasping breath at my ear.
“Keep quiet,” hissed a voice.
My eyes must have been bugging out above the restraining fingers. I did the only thing I could think of. I bit them.
“Oww!” shrieked the voice as I was abruptly released. “You filthy little minx. You’ve bitten me! I’m going to lose a finger!”
I spun round to see Mrs. Palmer. She was staring at her bleeding hand, which had distinct teeth marks on the web between her thumb and forefinger.
My instinct was to make a break for it and run for my life, but her next words stopped me.
“Wait. I probably deserved it. I was simply trying to keep you from crying out and attracting attention. It’s my fault entirely. I should never have followed you in the first place. I thought we could have a quiet talk.”
She looked at her injured hand in a way which I believe is called rueful.
“Why didn’t you simply walk up to me?” I asked, handing her the handkerchief Mr. Clemm had thrust upon me. “Why didn’t you just hail me from a distance?”
“I thought you’d run away,” she replied. “I thought you’d think I was going to kill you—just as I killed Orlando.”
“Did you?” I asked. “Kill Orlando, I mean?”
“No,” she said, wrapping her damaged hand in my now-ruined handkerchief. “I most certainly did not. But you believe I did.”
“Do I?” I challenged.
The conversation was becoming like one of those absurd French dramas in which the characters stand about swapping nonsense dialogue while the audience pretend they know what’s going on.
She did not reply to my question but dug deep into the pocket of her apron with her undamaged hand and pulled out a roll of banknotes.
“Here,” she said, holding it out. “Take it. It’s all I have. I can get more later if you insist.”
I looked at her blankly.
“Just leave. Go away. Ask no more questions. Leave us in peace.”
It took me several moments to see what she was getting at.
“Are you offering me a bribe?” I asked.
She shook the money in my face, then tried to press it into my hands in what, because of her injured hand, was rather a gruesome gesture: all blood and banknotes.
I did not take them from her, but neither did I refuse. I needed to keep this conversation alive until I had what I needed.
“Who else is blackmailing you?” I asked. Because I had broken into her bedroom, it was probably not a good idea to bring up the brass stallion and the copper mare. I didn’t want her to think me a snoop.
“Ah!” she said with a wry grin. “I see you’ve been talking to your sister Daphne. Serves me right. I ought to have known better than to trust anyone who reads Trollope.”
There was a long, uneasy pause and then she reached with her good hand into her apron pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a book of matches. She made a clumsy effort to get one alight, but her fingers were shaking badly. I lit a match and held it for her in spite of my aversion to the habit.
There we were, inches apart, staring into each other’s eyes.
“Orlando,” I said, and I watched as her tears welled up instantly at the sound of his name. Surely this woman could not have—
“Orlando was a very special soul,” Mrs. Palmer said. “He did not belong upon this earth.”
“Who killed him?” I persisted, thinking of her husband.
She took a deep drag on her cigarette, sizing me up with tired eyes.
“You shouldn’t listen to gossip,” she said, exhaling a trumpet of smoke brutally. “Gossip kills.”
“Sometimes there is no other choice,” I insisted, “when you can’t get at the facts.”
I was quite pleased with myself for having thought of this.
She was already halfway through her cigarette, staring now at the horizon.
“Orlando, like many artists, was not strong-willed. He suffered from an abundance of addictions.”
Which was rather a neat way of putting it, I thought: wine, women, and song, and paraldehyde—all without actually mentioning any of them: all swept under the carpet with all the efficiency of Mrs. Mullet on a Saturday morning and Aunt Felicity arriving unexpectedly from London.
“Talent is a terrible taskmistress,” I remarked, picking this shockingly trite bit of rot out of thin air. I was ashamed of myself, but still rather proud.
“It is, indeed,” Mrs. P said, dabbing at her eyes with her bandaged hand. “His father was so very, very proud of him, and yet—”
“It must have been very difficult for Canon Whitbread,” I said. It is often best to lead with a general remark and leave the other person to release a flood of details. But in this instance, it didn’t work.
“Yes, it was,” she said, and left it at that.
I detected some awkwardness developing. I needed to be more personal.
“Mrs. Palmer—” I said.
“Greta,” she blurted. “Please call me Greta.”
She was as anxious to be chummy as I was. Chumminess invariably leads to confidences being exchanged, which, when you get right down to it, is what the art of detection is all about. Sleuths learn nothing by being aloof. It was the one thing that the great Holmes got wrong.
“Greta,” I said. “I’m curious about just one point. Perhaps you can set my mind at ease.”
Brilliant, Flavia. Make it sound as if I’m the one who is discommoded (which doesn’t mean what you probably think it does).
Before she could even think about it, I fired away.
“Where was Orlando on the morning the Three Graces died?”
I already had two answers to this question. Poppy Mandrill claimed he had been with her. Canon Whitbread’s prosecutor insisted he had gone up to London.
“Presumably at home at Scull Cottage,” Greta said. “He had just come down from London the day before.”
That’s what Claire had told me.
Greta laughed.
“You see how stories get muddled in a time of murder? He had, as I say, come down. I know because I picked him up at the station.”
“From Dollylands,” I said. “He had just been released from the private clinic.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Then this is my question,” I persisted. “Was his treatment successful? Or was he still under the influence of paraldehyde?”
“What would you know about that?” she demanded. If she’d had feathers, they’d have been ruffling.
I shrugged. I needed to find out if Orlando, at the time of the poisonings, was shot full of paraldehyde, and in the grip of the delusions and hallucinations that sometimes accompany its use.
I could feel the resistance. She did not want to reply.
“It all came out at the time of his father’s conviction,” she said bitterly. “You can read about it in Great Trials.”
“I don’t have a copy of Great Trials,” I said gently. “And besides, I’d rather hear it from you.”
“Why are you doing this, Flavia?” she asked, fumbling for another cigarette.
“Because I trust you,” I rejoined, suddenly inspired.
That did it. Greta began to talk.
“Orlando had been in and out of several institutions and private hospitals, all of them promising, but none, in the end, providing a cure. Dollylands was the end of the line. They admitted only the most badly addicted patients. He came down on the Saturday evening train, went straight home to Scull Cottage, and, as far as I know, injected himself with the stuff immediately. He came into the Oak and Pheasant an hour later and I bustled him out the back door into the garden. You could smell him from across the room. He was extremely agitated. Went on and on about his reputation ruined, his good name grabbed from him by gossips. He was receiving vile letters. Said he had no choice but to involve the police. I told him to go home and sleep it off. It was dreadful. He cried. And so did I, but not until later.”