Speaking From Among the Bones

by Alan Bradley

  Then suddenly I whipped round.

  A white face shrank back from an upstairs window.

  I hauled at the bellpull again, this time ringing ever more insistently. But as before, the house remained in silence.

  I tried the door but it was locked.

  So that I could not be seen from inside, I flattened myself against the wall and made my way slowly, one step at a time, all the way round the house to the kitchen door where, as Mrs. Mullet had once assured me, “There’s always a key under the mat.”

  She was wrong. The key was not under the mat, but it was hidden under a broken flowerpot not two feet away from the doorsill.

  I was never more happy that Dogger had taught me so much about the art of locks.

  This was no ordinary household skeleton key, but one of the patent Yale variety. Whoever had this lock installed had meant to keep people out.

  Odd, though, that they should leave the key so handily under a broken flowerpot.

  I slid the key’s jagged teeth quietly into the lock, turned it, and slipped into the house.

  The kitchen was a dim box, lighted coldly by a single window high on the wall. The gray slate floor made the room seem like a prison cell. The unlit stove offered no warmth or comfort.

  I shivered at the general clamminess of the place and pulled my cardigan tight round my shoulders.

  A broad door, designed, I supposed, for the wheeling-in of ancient feasts—boar’s heads and so forth—led into a short corridor and then, on the left, to a breakfast room in which two places were partially set with knives, forks, spoons, and eggcups. Someone was ready for tomorrow, I thought.

  I moved silently through into the dim foyer: cracked tiles, dark portraits of sour old men in judge’s wigs, and the faint smell of kippers. A tall clock ticked unnervingly, as if counting the seconds to an execution. Perhaps my own.

  What would I do if I were caught? Pretend that I had seen smoke at an upper window? But if that were the case, why hadn’t I called out to alert the house’s occupants? Or, for that matter, shouted to them from outside?

  How had I managed to find the key?

  Perhaps I needed to use the telephone. Perhaps, while cycling, my blood pressure had fallen suddenly, leaving me dizzy and confused. Perhaps I was in urgent need of a doctor.

  A bell went off!—and then another, echoing horribly in the empty foyer. Now my heart really was pounding. Had I set off a hidden alarm? A family of judges were likely to be well up on the subject of burglars.

  But no, it was only the stupid clock, bonging away in the corner to keep itself company in the oddly empty house.

  I looked into one or two of the rooms and found them much the same: high ceilings, bare floors, a stick or two of furniture, and the tall uncurtained windows I had noticed from outside.

  It was evident from the very feel of the downstairs rooms that no one was at home, and within a few minutes I was walking round as freely as if I owned the place.

  Billiards room, ballroom, drawing room, library—all of them as cold as ashes. A small dark study was stacked to the ceiling with legal papers and folders, the lower, heavier ones of vellum and the lighter upper layers of yellowed paper.

  Strata of people’s lives, I thought, heaped up in piles awaiting judgment. Or already judged. How many of these million documents, I wondered, have the name de Luce inked upon their dusty pages.

  I sneezed and a floorboard creaked.

  Was someone here?

  No—not, at least, in this room. It was just a pile of papers settling in the corner.

  I made my way back to the foyer. The house was, I thought with a shudder, as silent as a tomb.

  “Hello?” I shouted, my voice echoing as if I were in a cave.

  I knew, somehow, that nobody would answer, and they didn’t.

  And yet someone was here—I was sure of it. That white face shrinking away from the upstairs window had hardly been in my imagination.

  A chambermaid, perhaps, too frightened at being caught alone in the place to show herself. Or could it have been the ghost of that earlier chambermaid who had been devourted by Anthea Ridley-Smith’s crocodile? Or the transparent spirit of Lionel Ridley-Smith, who had been made of glass?

  Whoever or whatever it was awaited me upstairs.

  Did I think of bolting?

  Well, yes, I did.

  But then I thought of how Marmaduke Parr had bullied the vicar, and of how disappointed the entire village of Bishop’s Lacey would be—most of all myself—not to have the bones of our very own saint visibly present among us at the feast of his quincentennial.

  When they finally saw the light, I might even become something of a village heroine, with banquets, etc. held in my honor, with after-dinner speeches by Father, the vicar, the bishop, and, yes, perhaps even by Magistrate Ridley-Smith himself, thanking me for my dogged persistence, and so forth.

  I believe Daffy referred to such an extravagant outpouring of praise as an encomium, and I realized that I had not been given an encomium for a very long while.

  If ever.

  I started up the stairs—one slow step at a time, listening for the slightest sound of life.

  Whether it’s a whole house or just a single drawer, there’s a deep and primitive pleasure that comes from snooping through someone else’s belongings. Although part of me was scared silly, the greater part was having the time of my life. I wanted to whistle, but I didn’t dare.

  At the top of the stairs, like the passageway of an ocean liner, a long hall led off to the right into some remote distance, its floor covered with pockmarked linoleum. Bedrooms, I guessed, each with a dismal four-poster, a table with ewer and basin, and an enamel chamber pot.

  A quick peek into several of these on each side of the hall proved that I was correct.

  Back at the head of the staircase, a solid wooden door with a small porthole seemed to promise another long hall running in the opposite direction. The servants’ quarters, perhaps. I cupped my hands and peered through the glass but could see only darkness.

  I wiggled the knob and to my surprise, the door swung open.

  Behind it hung a heavy pair of green velvet drapes which, by their musty smell, had last been cleaned when Henry VIII was a bachelor.

  I pulled them reluctantly aside, dusting my hands, and found myself face-to-face with another door. This one, too, had a circular porthole which, unlike the other, was made of frosted glass.

  I wiggled the knob but this second door was locked.

  Locked doors seemed to be everywhere, I thought. First, the wooden door in the churchyard tunnel, and now these.

  Was it a coincidence?

  Ordinarily, I should have skipped down the stairs to the kitchen, pocketed a cheap fork and a bottle brush, and made quick work of the thing.

  But again the lock was a Yale.

  There was no way of getting into this wing of the house other than by scaling an outside wall. Unless there was another entrance from the back stairs.

  In momentary frustration, I stretched my hand wide and flattened my fingers against the cold glass.

  There was a flicker—a mere shifting of light—and then the black shadow of a hand materialized, spread itself against the other side of the pane, matching my hand, finger for finger—except that these fingers were webbed!

  Save for the quarter-inch thickness of the glass, this whatever-it-was and I were almost touching.

  I gasped.

  But before I could move, the bolt clicked. The knob turned with maddening slowness and the door swung open, inch by inch.

  He was small, and dressed in a Norfolk jacket with baggy plus fours, a yellow checkered vest, and a high white celluloid collar—someone’s cast-off clothing which must have been found in a trunk.

  The corners of his eyes and—as I had already noted—his fingers were webbed. He had a round face which rose above a tiny chin and a large tongue which his mouth couldn’t quite contain. His ears, small and round, were set low on his h
ead, and his skin looked as if it had been rubbed all over with candle wax.

  Was he a man or was he a boy? It was difficult to tell. His face was young and unlined, but his neatly combed hair was completely white. Like Dogger’s, I realized with a shock.

  I hadn’t moved. I stood frozen, my arm outstretched, fingers spread as if I were stopping a runaway horse, my hand still in the same postion it had been against the glass.

  For an uncomfortably long time we stood staring at one another.

  And then he spoke.

  “Hello, Harriet,” he said.

  •ELEVEN•

  A cold shiver shook me. A goose had waddled over my grave.

  Not knowing that she was dead, this poor man was obviously under the impression that I was Harriet. Would I be able to act out the lie, or should I simply tell him the truth?

  He stepped back and beckoned me in through the open door.

  It’s at moments like this that you find out what you’re made of: moments when everything you’ve ever been taught is fighting against your heart. On the one hand, I wanted to run—down the stairs, out of this house, home to Buckshaw, up to my room, lock the door, and dive under the blankets. On the other I wanted to throw my arms about this round little person, let him put his head on my shoulder, and hug him until the sun burned out.

  I stepped inside and he shut the door abruptly behind me, as if he had captured a rare butterfly.

  “Come,” he said. “Sit.”

  I followed him into the room.

  “You have been gone a long time,” he said as I perched on an offered armchair.

  “Yes,” I said, deciding in that instant to follow my instincts. “I’ve been away.”

  “I beg your pardon?” He cocked his head toward me.

  “I’ve been away,” I repeated louder this time.

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  His voice was quite deep: too deep for a boy, I decided.

  “Yes,” I said. “Quite well. And you?”

  “I suffer,” he said. “But otherwise I am quite well also.

  “Tea!” he added suddenly.

  He went to a sideboard where an enamel teapot stood on a small hot plate. He switched it on and stood wiping his fingers nervously on his trouser legs as it heated.

  I took the opportunity to look round the room: bed, dresser with black Bible, clothespress. On the wall above the bed were a couple of photographs. The first, in a black frame, was of a man in robes, standing with the knuckles of one hand pressed white against a tabletop, an open book in the other, staring with contempt at the camera. Magistrate Ridley-Smith—I was sure of it.

  The second photograph, smaller than the other, was in an oval frame of what looked like bamboo. In it, a pale-faced woman in a frilly white dress looked up with haunted eyes from her needlework, as if someone had just broken some tragic piece of news. She was seated on a verandah from which glimpses of exotic trees were visible, but out of focus in the background.

  There was something familiar about her.

  I maneuvered myself as casually as I could for a closer look.

  The little man turned off the switch, lifted the kettle, and poured some of the tar-black liquid for each of us.

  “Your favorite cup,” he said, handing me a china teacup and saucer decorated with large blue pansies. The cup was badly chipped along the rim, black cracks running out from each nick like a map of the Amazon and all its tributaries.

  “Thank you,” I said, turning away from the photograph. I would need to be better acquainted before summoning up enough boldness to ask about her. “It’s been ages since I had a good cup of tea.”

  Which, except for my breakfast with Dogger, was true.

  I forced myself to raise it to my mouth and smile pleasantly as the acrid sludge ate away at my taste buds. This brew had been steeping for months.

  After a very long pause he asked, “How is Buckshaw?”

  “Much the same as ever,” I said.

  Which was also true.

  He was staring at me eagerly over the rim of his cup.

  “It’s lovely in the spring,” I said. “It’s always lovely in the spring.”

  He nodded sadly, as if he didn’t quite know what spring was.

  “Is the magistrate at home today?” I asked. I did not want to risk guessing whether this curious man with whom I was sipping tea was the son or the brother of Mr. Ridley-Smith. I had never seen him at St. Tancred’s, whose parishioners I knew on sight from the oldest gaffer to Mrs. Lang’s latest baby.

  “Father?” he said. “Mr. Ridley-Smith? Mr. Ridley-Smith is never at home.”

  “I was hoping to see him about a church matter,” I said.

  He nodded wisely. “About the saint?”

  I almost dribbled my tea. “Yes,” I said. “Actually it is. How did you know?”

  “Mr. Ridley-Smith talks to Benson in the air.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “In the air,” he repeated, waving a hand. “Mr. Ridley-Smith talks to Benson.”

  “I see,” I said, although I didn’t see at all.

  “The saint must not not be wakened!” he said in a suddenly loud, gruff voice, and I realized he was mimicking his father.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  He did not reply, but stared up at the ceiling.

  “Shhh!” he said.

  My ears had already picked up a change in the sound of the room, as if it had suddenly become larger. There was a humming—a hiss …

  “Ottorino Respighi,” a flat, hollow voice announced, seeming to come from nowhere. “The Pines and Fountains of Rome.”

  The words were spoken without expression, as if the person who spoke them were tired of breathing. He also mispronounced “Respighi.”

  There was a click! and then the crackling of a needle in the grooves of a spinning phonograph record.

  The tinny music began. I located its source at last as a grilled opening high on the wall.

  “Why—” I began, but he stopped me instantly with a raised hand.

  “Listen!” he said, putting a webbed finger to his lips.

  Perhaps there was another announcement to come, I thought. It was obvious that someone else was in the house. The dull voice had not been that of a BBC commentator, and it certainly hadn’t the sound of a magistrate or a chancellor.

  What if he caught me here?

  The Pines and Fountains of Rome spun on, providing a dramatic soundtrack to my teeming thoughts.

  Who was it that kept this unfortunate man locked away in an upper room? And why? Why did they force music upon him from a hidden loudspeaker? Who was Benson? Why must the saint not be wakened?

  “Was that Benson speaking?” I asked, but again my words were met with the finger to the lips and an urgent “Shh!”

  Why not help this man escape? I thought. I would simply lead him out through the two doors, down the stairs, through the foyer, and outside. I would balance him on Gladys’s seat, let him hang onto my waist, coast downhill to Nether-Wolsey, then pump us, standing up, all the way to Bishop’s Lacey. I would take him to to the vicarage and—

  “Wait a minute,” a voice said inside my head. “The door to this room was locked. He let you in!”

  Which of us then, was the captive?

  If the second door was able to be opened with an inside bolt, what was its purpose? To keep someone out?

  Was the outer door also able to be opened from the inside? Had there been a bolt? I hadn’t noticed. It certainly hadn’t been locked. Perhaps Benson, or whoever the disembodied voice belonged to, had accidentally left it open.

  Two doors, two locks: one open and one not.

  It was like a puzzle in The Girl’s Own Annual.

  I was thinking this when the music came to an end.

  “Music teaches. Music soothes the savage beast,” my host (or was he my captor?) said, and again I thought I detected the mimicking of a harsher voice.

  Before I could ask him another quest
ion, the disembodied voice spoke again, riding above the hum and buzz of the loudspeaker:

  “Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky,” it said. “Swan Lake overture.”

  There was a muted crash, as if someone had dropped a piece of china in another room.

  “As you were,” the voice ordered, and there was an uneasy silence.

  “Franz Schubert,” it said at last in a swamp-flat tone. “Death and the Maiden.”

  Again the needle was dropped into the record’s grooves and the sounds of a string quartet came straining out through the sievelike covering of the speaker.

  Death and the Maiden? I thought. Could it be a warning?

  What kind of madhouse had I stumbled into?

  My host was now sitting perfectly still, absorbed totally in the music, his eyes closed, his hands folded in his lap, his lips pronouncing silent words.

  His hardness of hearing made it unlikely that he would detect faint noises which, thanks to Franz Schubert, would also be masked by the music. As long as I didn’t cast a shadow across his face, I should be quite safe. I got slowly to my feet and moved with glacial slowness across the room, going round to his right and behind him to avoid passing in front of the window.

  When I reached the dresser, I opened the cover of the heavy black Bible.

  Hallelujah!

  As I had hoped, the branches of the Ridley-Smith family tree coiled like jungle vines across the page. At the very bottom, under “Births,” was this entry:

  Vivian Joyous Ridley-Smith—1 January, 1904.

  Vivian. So that was his name. He was forty-seven years old.

  I was closing the Bible when my fingers scraped against a sharp corner. Something was projecting slightly beyond the edges of the next two pages.

  An envelope. I slipped it out.

  On its front was written in a flowing—and obviously feminine—hand: Dearest Jocelyn.

  It must have been from an earlier time: something removed from the family papers. But who was Jocelyn, the recipient?

  There was no postage stamp, so obviously no date on the envelope. It must have been delivered by hand.