by Alan Bradley
“Of course, I went to great pains to put it about that I was. A few words babbled from the Book of Revelation can be remarkably convincing. Well … not so much great pains when you come right down to it. In any village, a single telephone call is as good as a leader in the Times.”
“But—”
“It was a performance, dear girl. A performance! And a magnificent one, if I do say so myself. I was especially pleased that even you were taken in by it.
“‘Forgive me, O Lord.’ You were quite taken in, weren’t you? Admit it. And I must say that crossing myself with the drippings, as it were, was a touch of sheer genius—although I must tell you that I thought for a few moments you had seen through me.”
My mind was racing in circles. I felt like the last to cross the line in a sack race. This horrid old woman had beaten me at my own game.
“Taken in by it?” I managed. “Of course I wasn’t taken in by it. That’s why I’m here.”
It was a feeble recovery, but the best I could do under the circumstances.
Miss Tanty’s heaving billows had by now worked themselves up into a full-fledged tropical storm.
“Dear me!” she said, removing her spectacles and mopping at her streaming eyes with the corner of a mauve sheet. “Dear me!
“Why,” she asked, waving a hand at the bookcase, “should we leave all the glory of detection to Miss What’s-her-name?” and I noticed for the first time that her library consisted of nothing but hundreds of green-covered paperback mysteries, like the ones Daffy kept hidden away from prying eyes at the back of her knickers drawer.
“I’ve always fancied myself a more than intelligent woman,” Miss Tanty went on. “Not brilliant, but not half bad. I’m always the first to work out who put the poisoned plums into the Christmas pudding; who left the backwards footprints in the paddock—that sort of thing.
“Much like you,” she added with a withering and focused glare.
My heart sank.
I had a rival.
“There we were, the three of us, detecting away like billy-ho and no one the wiser.”
The three of us? What was the woman talking about?
“I was first out of the gate, I believe,” Miss Tanty said. “I was on my knees and had a sample of ‘the red stuff,’ as I believe Jack the Ripper called it, on my finger, on my collar and—you’ll have to admit it was a masterstroke, Flavia—in the sign of the cross on my forehead.”
Blast the woman!
“The man Sowerby almost beat me to it with his handkerchief. His tasting the stuff was a nice touch, although a trifle showy. And then, of course, there was you, dipping your white ribbon, hoping desperately that no one would notice.”
Blast the woman again!
“Like three great sleuths, we were, thrown together unexpectedly over a pool of blood at the scene of a crime. What a tableau it was! What an immortal moment. What a snapshot for a book’s dustjacket. I wished I’d brought my Kodak!”
Now here was a fine kettle of fish. I suppose I should have been happy to find a kindred soul in Bishop’s Lacey, but I was not.
Far from it.
How could I hope to get to the bottom of Mr. Collicutt’s unfortunate demise with someone like Miss Tanty muddying the waters?
To say nothing of the police.
“We could form a type of club,” she went on with increasing enthusiasm. “Call ourselves ‘The Big Three.’ Or a corporation: ‘TSD,’ we shall name it: Tanty, Sowerby & de Luce. With an ampersand, of course.”
That did it!
I was not going to spend the rest of my hard-earned life playing third fiddle to a couple of amateurs.
Or were they?
Miss Tanty had raised an interesting point.
I had completely overlooked Adam Sowerby.
I closed my eyes and tried to visualize his business card. What had it said?
Adam Tradescant Sowerby, MA., FRHortS, etc.
Flora-archaeologist
Seeds of Antiquity—Cuttings—Inquiries
Tower Bridge, London E.1TN Royal 1066
Inquiries!
I had missed that. Drat and double drat!
The man was a private detective.
Which put a whole new light on things. How much, for instance, did he already know about the death of Mr. Collicutt? And how was I going to worm it out of him?
Miss Tanty, too, if she had been snooping round the village in search of clues, might well be an even richer source of information than I had imagined.
I would need to remain on best of terms with her.
At least for now.
“I’ve already heard, of course,” I said, “of how you solved the case of the missing knitting needles.”
Mrs. Mullet had told us the story as she served the fish. “Mind the bones,” she had said. And then she had told us about the village mystery solved.
“It’s true,” Miss Tanty was saying, preening a little. “Poor Mrs. Lucas. She was so distrait. Couldn’t for the life of her. Where had she left her knitting needles? They had completely vanished, you see. In a flash.
“’Have you looked in your hair?’ I asked her. “She’s always worn her hair bunched up in a great knot like those dreadful dancers in Toulouse Lautrec. La Goulue, and so forth … The Queen of Montmartre.
“Mrs. Lucas gave me ever so odd a look and reached up and, lo and behold! She had shoved them without thinking into her coiffure when the postman came to the gate. ‘You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, you are,’ she told me.”
I gave Miss Tanty a professional courteous smile.
“About Mr. Collicutt—” I began.
But there was no need to prime this pump. One touch of the handle and the whole story came gushing out.
“It was on a Tuesday,” she said. “The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, to be precise. It’s always so lovely to be precise, isn’t it, dear? One finds it so helpful when one is involved in the art of pervigilation.”
Get on with it! I wanted to shout. But I had to be on my best behavior. I gave Miss Tanty a weak smile.
“The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, as I have reason to recall, since we were going to be singing the Chaillot setting of the Benedicte the next morning at Matins. We had been working it up for some time, but as your sister Ophelia will tell you, it’s a fiendishly difficult piece. It sounds easy, I know, as all great music does, but it is, in fact, a trap and a snare for the unwary.
“Because I had not had sufficient time to master the score—odd, isn’t it, how printed music is called a score, as if it were a game of cricket, which I suppose, in a way, it is: runs, and so forth—I knew that I should have to rely upon my sight-reading ability, which is generally considered by those who have witnessed it, to be quite remarkable.
“The only difficulty—the fly in the ointment, if you will—was the fact that my eyes had been playing up. There were times—especially times of great emotion—when the notes on the page were little more than a wretched blur. I knew that either my lenses or my medication needed to be adjusted posthaste, and hence, my appointment with the good Mr. Gideon, in Hinley.
“Usually, whenever I found it necessary to make ‘the Pilgrimage,’ as I like to call it, Mildred Battle was kind enough to run me over in her Austin. A regular saint, she is: a most appropriate conductor to one on a Pilgrimage, don’t you think?”
I smiled dutifully.
“But on the morning itself, her niece, Florence, rang me up before breakfast. ‘Auntie Mildred’s sick,’ she said. ‘It must have been something she ate.’ ‘Oh, dear,’ I told her, ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I shall have to telephone for Clarence Mundy’s taxicab, although I shudder to think of the cost of keeping him waiting all day in Hinley.’
“I suppose I ought to have been more sensitive to Mildred’s predicament, but there it is. I suppose I was thinking of the keen disappointment of the parishioners, and yes, the vicar, too, should I be unable to lend my voice to the Benedicte. You do see my dilemma, don’t you?
”
I said that I did.
“‘But don’t worry,’ Florence said, almost before the words were out of my mouth. ‘Mr. Collicutt’s offered to drive you, and Auntie Mildred’s kindly agreed to let him take her car. He’ll pick you up at twenty-five minutes to nine.’”
I had forgotten that Mr. Collicutt lodged with Mr. and Mrs. Battle. Thank goodness Miss Tanty had reminded me. That made two more people—three, counting Florence, the niece—to be questioned.
“Which couldn’t have been more perfect,” Miss Tanty went on. “My appointment with Mr. Gideon was set for nine-thirty, and although it’s only a ten- or fifteen-minute drive to Hinley, I always like to be well ahead of the clock. Sometimes, if one is early, and there should happen to be a cancellation, they’ll take one before one’s time and one will be home all that much earlier and save three shillings in the bargain.
“’I shall be waiting at the gate,’ I told Florence. And so I was.
“When Mr. Collicutt hadn’t arrived by nine o’clock, I tried to ring Florence back, but the line was engaged. Miss Goulard at the telephone exchange said that, as there were no voices on the line, someone had likely left the receiver off its cradle. I was beside myself, I can tell you. But when I tried again at quarter past, the call went through with no trouble at all. Florence picked up at once and told me that Mr. Collicutt had left the house at eight-thirty sharp.
“I was furious, I can tell you. I could have killed the man—”
I must have looked shocked. Miss Tanty flustered.
“A figure of speech, of course. I’d no more kill dear Mr. Collicutt—or anyone else, of course—than sprout wings and fly. Surely you know that.”
“Of course,” I said, suddenly wary of the woman.
Dear Mr. Collicutt? Could this be the same Miss Tanty who had told me not to waste my crocuses?
There was something strange at work here, and it wasn’t love.
“He was a very competent musician,” she went on, “but like all competent musicians, he tended to overwork himself. If he wasn’t teaching his private pupils, or working with the choir, or off adjudicating one music festival or another, he was in the throes of composition. Mildred says she and George used to hear him pacing back and forth in his room overhead no matter the time of night. They’d have had words with him if it weren’t for the fact that they needed the money. Lodgers are not as easy to find as they were during the war, but one that creeps out to go walking in the dark of the moon is surely a sore trial to a stonemason who works long, hard hours and has to be up before the crack of dawn.”
“The dark of the moon?” I asked. “Why would he do that?”
“Restlessness, I suppose. Working out harmonies and counterpoint in his head. I know that he sometimes went to the church. At times, when the wind was in the west, I would catch snatches of organ music at odd hours. I more than once thought of taking the dear man a Thermos flask of hot tea but I hated to intrude. Music can be such a harsh mistress, you know.”
She fixed me with a gigantic eye.
Was she trying to extract information?
Mistresses were a topic Daffy had sometimes spoken of, but they did not hold the same interest for me as they did her. Unless there was murder involved, or poison, such as in the case of Madame de Brinvilliers and the Chevalier de Sainte-Croix, I didn’t give a fig what people got up to in their spare time.
“I sometimes walk in the darkness myself,” Miss Tanty was saying. “Even though the night air is said by some to be deleterious to the voice. One simply walks with one’s mouth closed, breathing calmly through one’s nose.”
I shuddered at the very thought of Miss Tanty drifting about the village in the darkness with her mouth closed, breathing calmly through her nose.
No wonder people claimed to have seen ghosts!
Those mysterious lights the ARP members and the fire-watchers had seen floating in the churchyard during the war were probably, in reality, no more than the glinting of the moon off Miss Tanty’s gigantic lenses.
Or were they something far more sinister?
“I’d better be getting along,” I said. “I’ll see myself out. I’m relieved to hear that you’re all right, Miss Tanty.”
This shameless toadying was like playing the game even after the last seats in the pavilion had emptied. But my seeming generosity of spirit would leave the door open for later questioning, should it be necesssary.
“Think about what I said,” Miss Tanty called out when I was already at the door. “The three of us with our heads together would be a force to be reckoned with.”
I gave her a noncommittal smile and started down the stairs, past the musical portrait gallery. I paused for a moment to have a second squint at the vinegarish gentleman presenting Miss Tanty with the music trophy. I had seen his face somewhere before, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where.
Just for fun I jumped down the last three steps and landed on my feet with a bang in the foyer.
“Geronimo!” I shouted. It was a battle cry made famous by the American paratroopers, or so Carl Pendracka had told me.
To my right, in the drawing room, a man standing at Miss Tanty’s desk straightened with a jerk and spun round in surprise. He had been rifling through her papers.
It was Adam Sowerby.
He stared for no more than a split second before a broad grin began spreading across his face.
“By Jove!” he said. “Caught in the act. You gave me a jolly good start.”
“You’re a private detective,” I said.
“Well,” he replied, “I shall have to admit that there are certain aspects of my career which do not involve gilliflowers.”
“You’re a private detective,” I repeated. I was not going to be circumlocuted, or whatever the word was. I would have to ask Daffy.
“Yes. Since you put it that way, yes.”
“I thought as much,” I said. “It’s printed on your card: inquiries.”
“Very astute of you.”
“Please don’t condescend to me, Mr. Sowerby, I’m not a child. Well, actually—strictly speaking, and in the eyes of the law—I suppose I am a child, but still, I resent being treated like one.”
“I shall throw myself prostrate before you and weep hot tears into the carpet,” he said with a grin, waving his arms like a madman.
I marched toward the door.
“Flavia—wait.”
I stopped.
“Sorry. It’s hard to quit being an ass in an instant. Rather like running a motorcar off the road and into a hayfield: It takes a few yards to come to a halt.”
“Perhaps we should step outside,” I said, “before Miss Tanty comes downstairs and finds you burglarizing her belongings.”
“Good lord!” he said. “You mean to say she’s at home?”
“Upstairs,” I said, pointing with my chin.
“Then it’s exeunt omnes for us,” he whispered, putting a long forefinger to his lips and taking high, exaggerated steps toward the door like a black-masked housebreaker in the pantomime.
“You really are silly,” I told him. “I wish you’d stop.”
•SIXTEEN•
We were standing on the riverbank at the end of Cater Street, well away from Miss Tanty’s ears. We had walked there in total silence.
Now, the only sound was that of the running river, and the muted muttering of a few ducks that paddled round in circles on the current.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Old habits die hard.”
“Is that part of your cover?” I asked. “Being an ass?”
I had heard the term “cover” used in one of the Philip Odell mysteries on the BBC wireless. “The Case of the Curious Queen,” if I remembered correctly. It meant pretending to be someone else. Someone that one wasn’t.
I had only occasionally had the opportunity to try the technique myself, since nearly everybody in Bishop’s Lacey was as well acquainted with Flavia de Luce as they were their own mothers. I
t was only when I was a safe distance from home that I was able to take on another character.
“I suppose it is,” Adam said, giving his nose a twist with his fingers. “There. I have switched it off. I am quite myself again.”
His grin was gone and I took him at his word.
“Miss Tanty thinks we should join forces,” I told him. “Form some sort of detection club.”
“Share information?” Adam asked.
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s what she was getting at.”
“I wasn’t aware of her detective aspirations,” he said. “Perhaps I should have been. Which means, of course, that that ghastly performance in the church yesterday was all a sham. As was her well-advertised breakdown this morning. Very clever of you to have spotted it.”
“I didn’t spot it,” I said. “She confessed before I was halfway in the door.”
“But why? It makes no sense. Why go to all that trouble and then blow the gaff with no provocation whatsoever?”
Now he was talking to me as if I were a grown-up and I have to say I loved it.
“There can be only one reason,” I told him, returning the favor. “She needs to make an ally of me.”
Adam’s eyes went hooded for a moment, and then he said, “I think you may be right. Are you prepared to play along?”
Up until that moment, my usual response would have been to nod, but I did not.
“Yes,” I told him.
“Good,” he said. “And so shall I.”
He stuck out a hand and I shook it to avoid making a scene.
“Now that we’re partners, so to speak, there’s something you ought to know, but before letting you in on it, I must have your most solemn pledge that you won’t breathe a word.”
“I so pledge,” I said. I had heard the expression somewhere and thought that it suited the occasion admirably. We were not partners, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“I also want you to promise me that you will not go prowling about the church—at least not alone. If you feel that you need to go there for any reason, let me know and I shall come with you.”