Speaking From Among the Bones

by Alan Bradley

  I needn’t have worried. As I hove alongside, Antigone got to her feet, reached out a slender gloved hand, took my arm, and pulled me to her.

  She whispered in my ear.

  And when she had finished, I’m afraid I fairly beamed. I even shoved a fist into her seated husband’s surprised face and insisted on giving him a hearty shake.

  No wonder he adored the woman!

  Outside, everyone was gathering in knots in the churchyard to gossip and pretend they were exchanging Easter greetings. Even though the real old chin-wagging wouldn’t take place until the later service, the villagers of Bishop’s Lacey put on rather a good show for such an ungodly hour—except for Father, who came out the door, gave the vicar a token handshake, and walked slowly off toward home, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

  I decided definitely in that instant to tackle him. As soon as I got back to Buckshaw I would march straight in and demand to be told what was going on—What was the situation with Buckshaw?

  I would demand to hear the the gist of his mysterious telephone call and why it had thrown him into such a tizzy.

  I had not seen the estate agent since the day he’d pounded in the For Sale sign at the Mulford Gates. Perhaps Dogger would know.

  Yes, that was it—I would consult with Dogger before bearding Father in his den.

  I was idling beside a gravestone waiting for the Hewitts to emerge when Adam came strolling toward me.

  “How’s the narcissine holding up?” he asked. “Any pain?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going to share my inner workings with Adam Sowerby, MA., FRHortS, etc., even if we were partners, so to speak, bound together by my most solemn pledge.

  Not that that meant anything.

  “Wizard stuff,” I said in as offhand a manner as I could manage. “A neat trick. Wherever did you learn it?”

  “As I told you,” he began, “in my wanderings up the Limpopo—”

  And then he stopped.

  “Actually,” he said, “Mad Meg taught me. As a boy, I stayed with an auntie at Malplaquet Farm. One day on my summer rambles I ran across Meg at the old gibbet in Gibbet Wood. She was digging for moss from dead men’s skulls.”

  Even though it hurt, my eyes widened.

  “All nonsense, of course. And yet …”

  “And yet?” I asked.

  “When it comes right down to it, she was my first instructor in botany.”

  “I think she’s a witch,” I told him. “A Christian witch, but still a witch. Rather like the woman in the story Daffy read to us who could believe in the banshee and also in the Holy Ghost.”

  Adam laughed. “She’s what they used to call a ‘simpler.’ Someone who gathers herbs in the wild and sells them to the chemists.”

  “Meg?”

  “Yes, Meg. Sells them to the doctors, too, but don’t let on I told you.”

  I must have looked skeptical.

  “Where do you suppose the chemists and apothecaries got all their knowledge about plants? Most of those old boys have never set foot in the countryside.”

  “From the simplers?” I guessed.

  “Right. From the simplers, the old women who gather the plants of the woods and hedgerows. Centuries of secrets handed down in whispers. And where do you think the physicians learn the same secrets?”

  “From the chemists and apothecaries.”

  “Bull’s-eye!” Adam said, “It’s a pleasure having you as a partner, Flavia de Luce. I predict that we have great things ahead of us.

  “Speaking of which,” he added, “here comes one of them now.

  “Ah, Inspector Hewitt,” he said. “I knew it would be only a matter of time.”

  The Inspector wasn’t quite scowling, but he was not the same man I had seen just minutes ago in the pews. Somewhere between church and churchyard he had put on a new face, and an official one at that.

  Antigone had been held back at the church door, the vicar clutching her hand and whispering into her ear. Both were blushing.

  “Well?” the Inspector said, looking from one of us to the other. He was not tapping his foot, but he might as well have been.

  “It was a plot,” I said. “Magistrate Ridley-Smith is the ringleader. He’s been using local workmen. Mr. Battle, the stonemason, is one—and his helpers, Tommy and Norman. I don’t know their surnames. His man, Benson, is another. They’ve been tunneling into Saint Tancred’s crypt for ages—perhaps years.

  “Come and I’ll show you,” I said, waving toward the back of the churchyard. “They tunneled in through the old Cottlestone tomb.”

  “No need,” the Inspector said. “We’ve already seen it.”

  At the word “we” he glanced away and I saw Detective Sergeants Woolmer and Graves walking toward us through the churchyard.

  “Good work, Inspector!” Adam said. “I’ve been making a few inquiries on my own and—”

  “So I’ve been told,” the Inspector interrupted rather coldly. “We’d appreciate it if you’d leave the detecting to us.”

  Adam smiled as if he’d just been given the largest compliment in the world.

  “Actually, I can tell you that the magistrate and his associates have been detained. There is no further need for your … assistance.”

  “Splendid!” Adam said. “Then I can assume that you’ve also recovered the Heart of Lucifer?”

  There are blank looks and there are blank looks, but Inspector Hewitt’s took the biscuit.

  He looked from Sergeant Woolmer to Sergeant Graves as if for assistance, but they were equally baffled.

  “Suppose you tell me about it,” he said at last, still in command.

  “Delighted to,” Adam replied, and he began at the beginning.

  He told of the person named Jeremy Pole, and of his discovery, at the Public Record Office, of the scribblings of Ralph, the Cellarer at Glastonbury Abbey, and his discovery of the words adamas and “oculi mei conspexi”—“I have seen it with my own eyes.”

  I couldn’t have given a better description myself.

  As Adam spoke, Antigone Hewitt and the vicar stepped from the porch and came strolling across the grass toward us. He was still holding her hand, chatting away in an animated manner, their faces both luminous.

  Close behind them came Feely and Daffy trailed by Sheila Foster, with Feely stopping every few feet to receive compliments, curtseys, and kissings-of-her-hand from her admiring subjects.

  But soon enough they were all of them surrounding us in a ring, listening intently as Adam finished his tale. It reminded me of a village Maypole dance with the villagers, dressed in their Easter finery, swarming in from every point of the compass for an impromptu gathering on the green.

  “And so the Heart of Lucifer was buried with the saint at Bishop’s Lacey,” Adam concluded, “where it has lain hidden these five hundred years. Until recently.”

  He looked round at the gaping faces like a born storyteller.

  “And where is it now?” Inspector Hewitt asked. “This stone of Saint Tancred?—this Heart of Lucifer?”

  I couldn’t resist for a moment longer.

  “Here!” I shouted. “In my tummy!” I patted said part of myself proudly. “I swallowed it!”

  The crowd fell into an uneasy silence, looked at one another in astonishment, and then broke into an excited babble as at Babylon. I knew, even as I spoke, that until the Heart of Lucifer made its eventual reappearance, Bishop’s Lacey would be following my every movement with keen interest.

  “I found it in the Gemshorn pipe where Mr. Collicutt had hidden it,” I explained. “Magistrate Ridley-Smith and his gang were going to—”

  “That’s quite enough for now, Flavia,” Inspector Hewitt said. “This is neither the time nor the place.”

  “Quite right, Inspector,” I agreed, neatly deflecting his condescending manner. “Especially in view of the fact that there’s just been an attempted murder a stone’s throw from here in Cater Street. You’ll be wanting to get to that, I e
xpect. Constable Linnet’s been left alone with a cold-blooded killer.”

  It was a saucy thing to say, I know, but I was staking everything on my assumption that PC Linnet had been unable to get through by telephone to the Inspector before he left for church. Even if police headquarters in Hinley had radioed, the Inspector and his two detective sergeants would not, except for a few minutes, have been in their car to receive the message.

  “Attempted murder?” The inspector asked.

  “Cater Street,” I said casually. “Miss Tanty’s house. The intended victim was me.”

  “No rush, though,” I added. “As I said, Constable Linnet is already on the scene.”

  I have to give the Inspector full marks, though, for neatly handling a wobbly situation.

  “Antigone,” he said, turning to his wife, “would you mind running Miss de Luce and her sisters home to Buckshaw in your own car? I’ll pop in later for tea and questioning.”

  Tea and questioning!

  I loved the man! Absolutely adored him.

  “Thank you, Inspector,” I said. “How terribly kind of you.”

  I’m afraid I pronounced it “teddibly.”

  “What delicious simnel cake,” Antigone Hewitt was saying. “You really must give me your recipe, Mrs. Mullet.”

  I had tried to warn her off with various signs such as crossed eyes, tongue lolling out, and half an upper lip drawn up like a mad dog as the plate was passed round, but it was no use.

  “I always makes it for Easter,” Mrs. Mullet said, “but nobody’s ’ungry this year. ’Ave an ’ot cross bun else I’ll ’ave to toss ’em out.”

  This was said with a dark look at Feely, Daffy, and me, but it didn’t do the slightest bit of good. We sat on our hands as if we had been born that way.

  “Thank you, I shall,” Antigone said, and she buttered a bun in the way I imagine Moira Shearer should have done if Moira Shearer buttered hot cross buns.

  “Mmmm, delicious,” she lied through her perfect white teeth.

  “You played beautifully this morning,” she said, turning to Feely.

  Feely blushed prettily.

  “Thanks to Flavia,” she said. “The organ has been sounding sickly recently because of that stone detuning one of the stops.”

  Thanks to Flavia? I could hardly believe my ears!

  Praise from Feely was as scarce as water on the sun and yet this was the second time in days she had thrown me a compliment.

  I hardly knew what to do with it.

  And to refer to the Heart of Lucifer as “that stone”!

  I had not yet broken the news of Saint Tancred being a de Luce. It was a thunderbolt I was keeping for Father.

  Even if it were a piece of news which meant the saving of Buckshaw, it was crucial that it be broken only when the moment was precisely right. It wasn’t that long ago that Father had refused to sell a rare Shakespeare folio which might have secured our family’s future. He needed to be tackled tactfully.

  “May I be excused?” I asked. “I need to feed my hen.”

  Daffy snorted, as if I were surreptitiously headed for the WC.

  “Perhaps you could bang out some Beethoven for Mrs. Hewitt,” I suggested to Feely. “I shall be back in a few minutes.”

  Without waiting for permission, I made for the foyer, and for the cubicle beneath the stairs in which the forbidden instrument was caged. A quick glance into the Hinley telephone directory gave me the information I needed.

  “Hinley 80,” I told Miss Goulard at the exchange. It was the perfect number for an eye doctor—a pair of spectacles on edge followed by a monocle.

  “Mr. Gideon’s surgery,” said a gravelish female voice. “Sondra speaking.”

  It sounded as if she were suppressing a titter.

  “Good morning, Sondra,” I began, diving in with both feet. “I’m calling for Miss Tanty in Bishop’s Lacey. She seems to have mislaid the card for her next appointment. I wonder if you could check your diary?”

  “The office is closed. It’s Easter Sunday, you know.”

  Of course it was! How could I have forgotten that.

  “Call back next week,” she said, and let off a convulsive round of smoker’s cough.

  “I’m afraid we can’t,” I improvised. “We shall be in … Wales.”

  I didn’t care whether this made sense or not. The great thing was to keep her on the line.

  “Sorry—call back Monday.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “What are you doing there if the office is closed?”

  “I’m just the char, luv. Eyes are nothing to do with me. Not my department.”

  “Then why did you pick up the telephone?”

  Another ominous cough, and then a strangulated chuckle.

  “Truth be told, luv, I thought it was Nigel, my fie-yancey. Nigel always rings me up to see how my sweater’s fitting. Always been a card, has Nigel. Call back next week.”

  “Listen, Sondra,” I said. “Just between you and me this is a matter of life and death. Miss Tanty is likely to be charged with attempted murder if she hasn’t been already. She needs to prove that she was at Mr. Gideon’s surgery on Shrove Tuesday—the sixth of February.”

  Even over the telephone I could hear Sondra’s eyes widen.

  “Murder, you say?”

  “Murder! Or worse—” I said in a horrible whisper, cupping the speaking part of the instrument in my hands and pressing my lips almost into the thing.

  “Hang on,” Sondra said, and I could hear a rustling of paper at the other end.

  “February sixth?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Yes, here it is. The Tuesday. Your Miss Tanty was down for nine-thirty, but she called to cancel it.”

  “Do you happen to know the time?”

  “Right now?” Sondra asked.

  “No! The time it was canceled.”

  “Nine o’clock. I have it right here: ‘Miss T called nine-oh-five A.M. cancellation. Rang D. Robertson to fill vacancy.’ Initials LG. That would be Laura Gideon, Mr. Gideon’s wife.”

  “Thank you, Sondra,” I said. “You’re a brick.”

  “You won’t breathe a word, will you? Nigel would be livid if I got the sack.”

  “My lips are sealed,” I vowed, but I don’t think she heard me. A new crackle of coughing fought its way through the telephone wires.

  As I was making my way back across the foyer, the doorbell rang. It was Inspector Hewitt.

  He took off his hat, which meant he intended to come in.

  “We’re in the drawing room,” I told him. “Would you care to join us?”

  As if it were a meeting of the Bell-ringers League.

  •THIRTY•

  “Right, then,” Inspector Hewitt was saying. “Let’s have it.”

  I couldn’t help thinking how much progress he had made since we had first met nine months ago, upon which occasion he had sent me to fetch the tea.

  There was hope for the man yet.

  “I expect you’ve had this figured out right from the starting gate,” he said, with a pleasant enough smile.

  His wife, Antigone, touched her hair, and I recognized that a secret signal had flown between them.

  “That is, I hope you won’t mind filling in a few of the blanks for us.”

  “Of course not,” I said in a sort of humble, jolly-girl-well-met kind of voice. “I should be more than happy to assist. Where shall I begin?”

  But don’t push your luck, his eyes were saying.

  “Let’s begin with suspicion,” he said, taking out his notebook and opening it flat on his knee.

  I saw him write down “Flavia de Luce,” and underline it.

  He had once, in an earlier investigation, added the letter “P” after my name and had refused to explain its meaning. There was no “P” this time.

  “When did you first begin to suspect that something peculiar was going on at St. Tancred’s?”

  “When the sexton—that’s Mr. Haskins—m
entioned the mysterious lights in the churchyard during the war. Why would he tell me a thing like that unless he wanted to scare me away?”

  “So you think Haskins was in on it?”

  “Yes. I can’t prove it, but a gang of men could hardly tunnel in his churchyard without his knowing about it, could they?”

  “I suppose not,” Inspector Hewitt said.

  First point to Flavia.

  “As Mr. Sowerby has told you,” I said, “they were after the Heart of Lucifer. They’ve been at it for ages—years perhaps. Magistrate Ridley-Smith was paying them off—”

  This was the point where he had stopped me before, and I paused to see if he would let me go on.

  Feely and Daffy were gaping like a pair of guppies and Antigone smiled upon me like a Madonna who had just had a foot massage.

  It gave me the boldness I needed. There are times when honesty is not just the best policy, but the only one.

  “I have to admit I had just a quick look round Mr. Collicutt’s room at Mrs. Battle’s boardinghouse.”

  “Yes, I thought you might,” the Inspector said. “Good job we’d been there before you.”

  “I found six hundred pounds hidden under Mr. Collicutt’s bed. It was in a Players tin.”

  I knew in a flash that I was in official hot water.

  Exasperation was written all over the Inspector’s face, but to his credit, he did not explode. The presence of his wife might have had something to do with it.

  “Six hundred pounds,” he said, and the words hissed out of his mouth like hot steam.

  I smiled brightly, as if I thought I deserved a pat on the head. “It was in an envelope which had once had Magistrate Ridley-Smith’s initials embossed on the flap: QRS—Quentin Ridley-Smith. Hardly likely to have been anyone else’s. Not many people have three intials which are consecutive letters of the alphabet.”

  I have to say that Inspector Hewitt was doing a remarkable job of keeping his temper in check. Only the color of his ears betrayed him.

  I decided it was time to provide a diversion.