Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd
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Reviewers love Alan Bradley’s New York Times bestselling Flavia de Luce series!
As CHIMNEY SWEEPERS COME to DUST
#1 Pick for Library Reads
#1 MacLean’s bestseller
#3 New York Times bestseller
#6 Indie bestseller
#7 Publishers Weekly bestseller
“Exceptional…[The] intriguing setup only gets better, and Bradley makes Miss Bodycote’s a suitably Gothic setting for Flavia’s sleuthing. [Flavia’s] morbid narrative voice continues to charm.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, perhaps contemporary crime fiction’s most original character—to say she is Pippi Longstocking with a Ph.D. in chemistry (speciality: poisons) barely begins to describe her—is finally coming home.”
—MacLean’s
“[As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust] maintains the high standards Bradley set from the start….Another treat for readers of all ages.”
—Booklist
“Even after all these years, Flavia de Luce is still the world’s greatest adolescent British chemist/busybody/sleuth.”
—Seattle Times
The DEAD in THEIR VAULTED ARCHES
#1 Library Journal pick
#6 New York Times bestseller
#3 Indie bestseller
#3 NPR bestseller
#10 Publishers Weekly bestseller
“It’s hard to resist either the genre’s preeminent preteen sleuth or the hushed revelations about her family.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Bradley’s latest Flavia de Luce novel reaches a new level of perfection….These are astounding, magical books not to be missed.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick)
“Young chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce [uses] her knowledge of poisons, and her indefatigable spirit, to solve a dastardly crime in the English countryside while learning new clues about her mother’s disappearance.”
—National Public Radio
“Bradley’s award-winning Flavia de Luce series…has enchanted readers with the outrageous sleuthing career of its precocious leading lady….This latest adventure contains all the winning elements of the previous books while skillfully establishing a new and intriguing story line to explore in future novels….Fans will be more than pleased.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
SPEAKING FROM AMONG the BONES
“The precocious and irrepressible Flavia continues to delight. Portraying an eleven-year-old as a plausible sleuth and expert in poisons is no mean feat, but Bradley makes it look easy.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Bradley’s Flavia cozies, set in the English countryside, have been a hit from the start, and this fifth in the series continues to charm and entertain.”
—Booklist
“An excellent reminder that crime fiction can sparkle with wit, crackle with spirit and verge on the surreal…Flavia, once more, entertains and delights as she exposes the inner workings of her investigative mind to the reader.”
—National Post (Canada)
I AM HALF-SICK of SHADOWS
“Every Flavia de Luce novel is a reason to celebrate, but Christmas with Flavia is a holiday wish come true for her fans.”
—USA Today (four stars)
“This is a classic country house mystery in the tradition of Agatha Christie, and Poirot himself would approve of Flavia’s skills in snooping and deduction. Flavia is everything a reader wants in a detective—she’s smart, logical, intrepid and curious….This is a refreshingly engaging read.”
—RT Book Reviews
“This is a delightful read through and through. We find in Flavia an incorrigible and wholly lovable detective; from her chemical experiments in her sanctum sanctorum to her outrage at the idiocy of the adult world, she is unequaled. Charming as a stand-alone novel and a guaranteed smash with series followers.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Bradley masterfully weaves a ghoulish Yuletide tale….The story breathes characters full of charisma, color and nuance….Bradley gives a thrilling ride.”
—The Globe and Mail
A RED HERRING Without MUSTARD
“Bradley’s third book about tween sleuth Flavia de Luce will make readers forget Nancy Drew.”
—People
“[Flavia] remains irresistibly appealing as a little girl lost.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Outstanding…In this marvelous blend of whimsy and mystery, Flavia manages to operate successfully in the adult world of crimes and passions while dodging the childhood pitfalls set by her sisters.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Oh, to be eleven again and pal around with irresistible wunderkind Flavia de Luce….A splendid romp through 1950s England led by the world’s smartest and most incorrigible preteen.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Think preteen Nancy Drew, only savvier and a lot richer, and you have Flavia de Luce….Don’t be fooled by Flavia’s age or the 1950s setting: A Red Herring isn’t a dainty tea-and-crumpets sort of mystery. It’s shot through with real grit.”
—Entertainment Weekly
The WEED That STRINGS the HANGMAN’S BAG
“Flavia is incisive, cutting and hilarious…one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature.”
—USA Today
“Bradley takes everything you expect and subverts it, delivering a smart, irreverent, unsappy mystery.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“The real delight here is her droll voice and the eccentric cast….Utterly beguiling.”
—People (four stars)
“Endlessly entertaining…The author deftly evokes the period, but Flavia’s sparkling narration is the mystery’s chief delight. Comic and irreverent, this entry is sure to build further momentum for the series.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The SWEETNESS at the BOTTOM of the PIE
THE MOST AWARD-WINNING BOOK OF ANY YEAR!
WINNER:
Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel
Barry Award for Best First Novel
Agatha Award for Best First Novel
Dilys Award
Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel
Spotted Owl Award for Best Novel
CWA Debut Dagger Award
“Impressive as a sleuth and enchanting as a mad scientist…Flavia is most endearing as a little girl who has learned how to amuse herself in a big lonely house.”
—MARILYN STASIO, The New York Times Book Review
“Sophisticated, series-launching…It’s a rare pleasure to follow Flavia as she investigates her limited but boundless-feeling world.”
—Entertainment Weekly (A–)
“A delightful new sleuth. A combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes…fearless, cheeky, wildly precocious.”
—The Boston Globe
DELACORTE PRESS
NEW YORK
Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Alan Bradley
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
DELACORTE PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Published in the United Kingdom by Orion,
an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Bradley, C. Alan, author.
Title: Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d : a Flavia de Luce novel / Alan Bradley.
Description: New York : Delacorte Press, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016006913 (print) | LCCN 2016011731 (ebook) | ISBN 9780345539960 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780345539984 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: De Luce, Flavia (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Girls—England—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Thrillers. | FICTION / Historical. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9199.4.B7324 T48 2016 (print) | LCC PR9199.4.B7324 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
ebook ISBN 9780345539984
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2016006913
randomhousebooks.com
Text design by Diane Hobbing, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Joe Montgomery
v4.1
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Alan Bradley
About the Author
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
Thrice, and once the hedge-pig whin’d.
Harpier cries:—’Tis time, ’tis time.
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights hast thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ th’ charmed pot.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.
—William Shakespeare, Macbeth (IV.i)
· ONE ·
THE WINTER RAIN SLASHES at my face like icy razor blades, but I don’t care. I dig my chin deep into the collar of my mackintosh, put my head down, and push on against the buffeting of the furious wind.
I am cycling madly towards the village of Bishop’s Lacey, fleeing hordes of Hell’s hobgoblins.
The past twenty-four hours have been a nightmare. All I can think about is getting away from Buckshaw.
Gladys’s wheels groan horribly beneath us. The biting cold has penetrated her steel bones and seized the tendons of her brake cables. She judders wickedly on the slick tarmac, threatening to skid off the road entirely and pitch me into the icy ditch.
I want to scream into the wind, but I don’t. One of us, at least, must keep her wits about her.
I try to put my thoughts in order.
In spite of having been banished to Canada and then re-banished back home from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy—in what may or may not have been double disgrace—I have to admit that I had been looking forward to being reunited with my family: Father; my two elder sisters, Feely and Daffy; our cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Mullet; and most of all, Dogger, Father’s general factotum and all-round right-hand man.
As every traveler does on an Atlantic crossing, I had daydreamed about my return to England. Father, Feely, and Daffy would be at the docks to greet me, of course, and perhaps even Aunt Felicity would put in an appearance. WELCOME HOME FLAVIA banners would be waved, a few discreet balloons, and all that sort of thing. Discreet of course, because, like myself, none of us de Luces wear our hearts on our sleeves.
But when the ship berthed finally at Southampton, there had been only Dogger standing motionless in the rain beneath a dark umbrella.
With the strangeness that comes of separation, I had offered him my hand, rather than giving him the crushing bear hug that was in my heart. I regretted this at once, but it was too late: The moment had passed and the opportunity was wasted.
“I’m afraid I must be the bearer of rather bad news, Miss Flavia,” Dogger had said. “Colonel de Luce has been taken ill. He is in hospital with pneumonia.”
“Father? In hospital? In Hinley?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“We must go to him at once,” I said. “What time will we be there?”
We still had a long journey ahead of us, Dogger explained. The five-twenty boat train from Southampton would take us up to London and to Waterloo Station, where, just after seven in the evening, we would have to change to a taxicab for a dash across the city to another train at another station.
We would not reach Doddingsley until late in the evening, and would not arrive at Bishop’s Lacey, Hinley, and the hospital until even later. By then, visiting hours would be long over.
“Surely Dr. Darby—” I said.
But Dogger gave his head a sad shake, and it was not until that moment that I realized how grave Father’s situation must be.
Dogger was not the kind of person who would tell you that everything would be all right when he knew perfectly well that it would not. His silence said everything.
Although there had been so much to say, we had spoken little in the train. Each of us had stared out blank-faced through the rain-streaked glass at a rushing landscape that seemed in the gathering twilight to be the color of old bruises.
From time to time I glanced at Dogger, but found that I could no longer decipher his face.
Dogger had suffered horribly with Father in a Japanese prison camp during the war, and still, from time to time, experienced flashbacks of such terrifying intensity that they left him little more than a weak, whimpering child.
Once, I had asked him how he and Father had survived.
“One tries to keep a stiff upper lip, mentally,” he had said.
I had worried about Dogger almost constantly during my absence, but in writing—although missing me—he had seemed to be otherwise well enough. Dogger’s had been the only letter I’d received from home during my incarceration in Canada, which tells you pretty much all you need to know about the warmth of the de Luce family.
Oh, of course, there had been that sarcastic footnote by my newly discovered cousin, Undine, who had been dumped by Fate and her mother’s horrible death on the doorstep at Buckshaw. Undine’s place in the family remained to be seen, but I didn’t hold out much hope for her. Because she was still a child—whereas I was twelve, and much more knowledgeable about the ways of the world—I wasn’t particularly looking forward to renewing our brief acquaintance. But if I found, when I got home, that she’d been pawing my belongings while I was away in Canada, there would be mayhem at the manor house.
It had been well past dark when the train crawled at last into Doddingsley station, where Clarence Mundy’s taxicab stood waiting in the rain to take us to Buckshaw. The cold air was damp and penetrating. A yellow fog hung round the dim lights on the platform, giving them a ghastly, ghostly glow, and making me feel as if my eyes were brimming.
“Nice to see you again, miss,” Clarence whispered, tugging at the peak of his cap as I got into the car, although he otherwise remained silent, as if I were an
actress—in costume and makeup—about to make my entrance at stage left, and he the stage manager, bound to respect my role by keeping a respectable professional distance.
We rode to Bishop’s Lacey and Buckshaw in silence, Dogger staring fixedly ahead and me gazing desperately out through the glass as if trying to penetrate the darkness.
Hardly the homecoming I had expected.
Mrs. Mullet met us at the door and folded me into her arms and bosom.
“I’ve made you up some sangridges,” she said in a curiously rough voice. “Beef and lettuce—your favorites. Left ’em on the dresser by your bed. You’ll be tired, I ’spect.”
“Thank you, Mrs. M,” I heard myself saying. “It’s very thoughtful of you.”
Could this be Flavia de Luce speaking? Surely not!
In my present state of mind, slices of dead cow garnished with sprigs of the local vegetation were a particular horror and abomination, but something made me hold my tongue.
“They’ve all gone up to bed,” Mrs. Mullet added, meaning Feely, Daffy, and presumably Undine. “It’s been an uncommon ’ard day.”
I nodded, reminded suddenly of my late-night arrival at Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy. Dark entrances, I thought, seemed to have become a regular part of my life.
Wasn’t it odd that my own flesh and blood had not waited up for me, or was I expecting too much? I had only been gone since September, but surely, one of them…
I stifled the thought.
Surely there was someone to welcome me home. Even a stuck-out tongue from Undine would have been welcome. But no—it was far past her bedtime. Undine would be off in the world of whatever vile dreams fueled her waking life.
And then I thought of Esmeralda: Esmeralda!