by Alan Bradley
Which was more or less not true.
“I understand she led an exciting life,” I went on. “I should like to communicate with people who may have known her. I thought this would be as good a place as any to begin.”
“And her family have given you permission to do this?”
“Her niece, Carla Sherrinford-Cameron. Yes. She practically begged me.”
Frank Borley stuck his little finger into his ear and wiggled it about a bit, as if fine-tuning it for truth.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I remember Louisa mentioning once that she was taking a niece to the London Zoo and, yes, as I recall the niece’s name was Carla. Yes, that sounds about right.”
I gave him a smarmy look, as if to imply, Very well then, let’s get on with it.
“Are you an author, then?” he asked.
This was an unexpected question.
“I’m considering it,” I said, “—but only as an avocation.”
I knew this might sound a bit starchy, but when you’re caught short, starchy is sometimes the best you can come up with.
“Biographies to be your specialty?”
“I’m very fond of biographies,” I said. “Especially those about the lives of the great chemists, such as Priestly and Lavoisier. I have a copy at home of Lord Brougham’s Lives of Men of Letters and Science, of course, even though it’s quite outdated in terms of recent scientific discoveries.”
“And you’re planning to drag it, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth century—is that it?”
I hadn’t thought of this before but I saw at once the possibilities.
Lives of the Great Chemists, by Flavia de Luce.
Cavendish, Scheele, Priestly, Boyle, Hales, Hooke: The list went on and on. I would have a chapter devoted to each.
“And how does our Miss Congreve fit into all of this?”
It seemed the kind of question a publisher would ask; I had to think quickly.
“She died wearing an Aqua-Lung,” I replied, improvising as I went. “A device which owes its existence to the experiments of Black and Lavoisier into the nature, chemical composition, and elasticity of air.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “Quite a novel idea, I must say. But hardly conducive to a bestselling, tell-all, no-holds-barred biography. Not the sort of thing we might see serialized in the tabloid newspapers.”
“Except for her friendship with Oliver Inchbald,” I said. “I understand they were very close.”
Was it my imagination, or did Frank Borley go white?
“Good lord!” he said, gripping the edge of the table. “Is this blackmail?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m merely making private inquiries.”
“Do you realize what would happen if this got out? Oliver Inchbald’s books still sell by the lorry load. The man’s an Institution. We mustn’t do anything to sully his reputation. Think about it! We’d be letting down generations of readers.”
He had now got up and was pacing the floor—what little there was of it left clear among the books.
“I should never do that, Mr. Borley,” I said. “I was brought up on Crispian Crumpet myself.”
“Were you indeed? And so was I! Hold on—there’s something I’d like you to see. If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes—”
And with that he was gone.
I didn’t waste a second. Digging into my pocket, I pulled out a sheet of ship’s letterhead upon which was a hurriedly scribbled series of numbers: hurriedly scribbled but exquisitely formed, each and every one of them.
I picked up Borley’s telephone and dialed the digits, keeping the handset close to my mouth.
It rang twice at the other end before being picked up, but no one said anything.
“It’s me,” I said to the silence. “I’m in London.”
“Flavia! Is it you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have to ring off right away.”
“I understand,” Mrs. Bannerman’s voice said. “Where are you?”
Mrs. Bannerman had been my chemistry teacher at Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, in Canada, and had accompanied me on my recent voyage home. She had bid me farewell half an hour before docking, but only after pressing her London telephone number into my hand.
Having been once convicted of murder and then released after a sensational trial, she was determined to let her return to England pass unnoticed.
“I shall become the Invisible Woman,” she had told me. “We shall communicate using codes and ciphers and gadgets hitherto known only to Secret Government Laboratories.”
She had been joking, but I knew what she meant.
“Bedford Square,” I said.
“Right. I can almost see you. There’s an A.B.C. shop in New Oxford Street. Five minutes’ walk south of where you are. You can’t miss it. See you there in, shall we say, half an hour?”
“Perfect,” I whispered, and set the receiver quietly down into its cradle just as Frank Borley came back into the room.
“I thought you might like to see this,” he said, untying the worn ribbons of a flesh-colored folder. “It’s the original manuscript of Hobbyhorse House.”
He placed it reverently on the table.
To be honest, it wasn’t much to look at: a pile of dried-out musty papers—those soft, pulpy tinted sheets that look as if the cat has vomited on them. The first few pages were written in black ink in a slapdash scrawl, as if the white heat of composition had overcome penmanship.
There, before my very eyes, were those famous first words, written in Oliver Inchbald’s own hand:
“I’m blowing my trumpet,” says Crispian Crumpet
“I’m blowing my trumpet,” says he.
“I shall trumpet the town till the walls tumble down
“And everyone knows that it’s me.”
The later pages were typed, and were neater than the first, except for a few surprising penciled spelling corrections. In the title poem, “Hobbyhorse,” for instance, the word “equestrian” had been spelled without the u, but crossed out and corrected in blue pencil.
“One of our greatest treasures,” Frank Borley said. “Priceless, probably. The books have sold millions. Never been out of print.”
I looked suitably impressed.
“And I thought you might like to see this,” he said, placing a book in front of me. “It’s a first edition.”
It was the same book I had seen in Mr. Sambridge’s bedroom. I opened it and turned to the back flap of the dust jacket.
“Is this him?” I asked, pointing to the author’s photo.
Again that mental itch that you can’t quite scratch.
“Yes, that’s Oliver Inchbald.”
“He looks like a nice enough man,” I said. “Was he, actually?”
My question caught Borley off guard.
“Well, let’s say that he knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it.”
“But was he beloved?” I asked.
You sometimes have to be persistent.
“Well, no,” Borley said. “Respected…yes. Beloved…no.”
“What about his son?” I asked. “What did Crispian Crumpet think of him?”
It had just occurred to me that Crispian Crumpet was probably still receiving royalty checks for his father’s books.
“Hilary?” Borley said, sticking his finger in his ear again. “It’s hard to say. Hilary has never been allowed the luxury of being an ordinary person.”
I could well imagine he had not. I knew from my own experience that growing up famous was no bed of roses.
“Hilary Inchbald?” I asked. “Is that his name?”
Borley nodded. “He keeps pretty much out of the public eye,” he said. “Actually, he’s painfully—perhaps even pathologically—shy.”
“I suppose he can afford to be,” I said. “He mustn’t have to go out to work.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Borley said. “He devotes his life to a charity he’s set up in Gloucestershire for homeless
cats.”
“I’d love to meet him,” I said, and I meant it.
“I’m afraid I can’t be of much help,” Borley said. “Confidentiality, and so forth.”
I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
“There is this, though,” he said. “If it’s of any help. I found it caught at the back of one of Louisa’s desk drawers when we were cleaning out.”
He rummaged through a cardboard file and removed a creased newspaper clipping.
CRISPIAN CRUMPET TOASTS CATS! the headline read.
“I’m afraid it’s not in the best of taste,” Borley said, “but then, what is, nowadays?”
The photograph showed a slender man with prematurely white hair and alarmingly thick spectacles holding a glass of wine and a fat and contented tortoiseshell cat. He was so bent over—his shoulders so stooped—that he looked like a comic umbrella.
Crispian Crumpet Trumpets Cats Home, said the caption, and the article went on to say nothing much other than that Hilary Inchbald (“the former Crispian Crumpet”) had declined to answer any questions not relating directly to his charity.
I had seen this man’s face before. Was it because of his resemblance to his famous father? Perhaps it was, but somehow the rather timid-looking man in the clipping didn’t look at all, as his father had, like someone who knew what he wanted and how to get it. Rather, he had the look of someone who had been ill for a very long time.
“Did Louisa Congreve know Mr. Inchbald? Hilary Inchbald, I mean.”
“Oh, indeed she did. Louisa was, until her death, our in-house liaison with the Inchbald estate. As I have mentioned, Hilary is an extremely reticent man.”
“And who is your in-house liaison now?” I asked boldly. Frank Borley didn’t seem to mind.
“Well, I am.” He laughed. “But as I’ve said—or to be honest, as Sir John Falstaff said—‘the better part of valor is discretion,’ although we now put it the other way round, don’t we?”
I’ve always loved being with people who make you feel as if you know what they’re talking about. Although it’s a gift, I’ve been trying to cultivate it in myself.
“Right!” I said, tapping my mouth. “Stiff upper lip, and all that.”
Frank Borley tapped his, too, and for a fleeting moment we were best of friends.
“It was Miss Congreve who identified Mr. Inchbald’s body, wasn’t it?”
The moment of friendship passed. Borley looked at me for a long time before replying.
“Yes,” he said at last. “It was no secret at the time. It was in all the newspapers. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”
“Well, I’d better be going,” I said, getting to my feet. “Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”
I was disappointed, of course, not to have found what I came to find: how a set of Oliver Inchbald’s first editions—one of them bearing the name of Carla Sherrinford-Cameron—came to be found in the bedroom of a dead wood-carver.
The clock was ticking. There were only moments left. This was my last chance.
Then inspiration struck, as it often does when there’s nothing else left.
“Did Oliver Inchbald have any interests other than writing?” I asked.
“Odd that you should ask that,” Borley said. “I was reminded of that just a few minutes ago in the other room.”
And without explaining what that was, he was gone again, but back in a jiff with a small wooden object, which he placed in my hands.
I thought at first it was a carved monkey, but upon rotating the thing and viewing it from all sides, I could see that it was a little gargoyle with a bare bottom, its fingers pulling down the corners of its mouth, its tongue protruding in what was probably meant to portray an obscene sound.
“Grotesque, isn’t it? He made them for special friends.”
There is a feeling that sometimes comes upon you, which I think of as ice-water heart. It’s like a pang, but wetter. Sometimes it’s no more than a trickle and yet other times a gush, but it usually comes with panic, fear, or sudden remembrance.
This time it was remembrance. There had been a similar gargoyle on the bedside table in the room where Mr. Sambridge had died.
Had Oliver Inchbald been a special friend of Mr. Sambridge’s? Or a relative? Had the author carved this dark little gargoyle as a gift for him? It would certainly explain the set of Crispian Crumpet first editions I had seen in the dead man’s house.
“And were you a special friend, Mr. Borley?”
He looked at me as if I had suddenly sprouted three heads—and then he laughed.
“Good lord, no!” he said. “I’m a mere custodian. A Johnny-come-lately. Oliver Inchbald was mostly before my time.”
“And this?” I asked, indicating the ugly little gargoyle.
“He carved it for Miss Congreve,” he said. “It was overlooked somehow when her family came to take away her personal belongings.”
“After she died,” I said.
“Yes, that’s right. After she died.”
“Was there anything else of interest?” I asked. “I’ll need to know as much as I can before I begin writing.”
He gave me the kind of skeptical look I expect to see from Saint Peter on Judgment Day.
“As a matter of fact there is. The chair you’ve been sitting in. He made that, too.”
I looked more closely at the chair, which I had mistaken for a late Queen Anne by Chippendale. I had not noticed the carved vines.
“More gargoyles,” I said. I could now see that there were several of the little monsters’ faces embedded in the lattice of Gothic tracery that formed its back.
“Any particular reason he may have given this to Miss Congreve?” I asked.
“Well,” Frank Borley said. “Other than that, as I have said, they were the greatest of friends…”
He left the thought hanging like a corpse from the gallows.
“Greatest of friends” was a phrase with which I was already familiar.
I had once, after being exposed to Madame Bovary, asked Dogger what the author, Flaubert, meant when he said that the lady had given herself up to Rodolphe, the gentleman in the yellow gloves and green velvet coat.
“He meant,” Dogger had told me, “that they became the greatest of friends. The very greatest of friends.”
So there it was. Further proof, if any were needed, that Carla was right: Her auntie Loo—Louisa Congreve—and Oliver Inchbald had known each other.
“You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Borley,” I said. “I’ll be sure to acknowledge your assistance in my book.”
“No need to do that,” he said, shaking his head. “In fact, it’s much more gratifying to remain anonymous; to be one of those unsung heroes who helped keep history straight. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”
I stuck out my hand and he shook it.
“I quite like you, Flavia de Luce. I hope you’ll let us have first chance to publish your manuscript.”
Was he twitting me? It was hard to tell. He seemed earnest enough, judging by the expression on his face.
I turned to go.
“Flavia—” he said, and I stopped.
He seemed to be fighting his conscience, as if to keep back the words that were trying to get out.
“It’s customary, you know, to put in a teaspoon of tea for each person to be served, and then to add one for the pot.”
I couldn’t count the number of times I had heard Mrs. Mullet repeat this ancient formula: “One for you, and one for me, and one for the pot.”
Without this invocation, tea just wouldn’t taste the same.
“Yes?” I said, fearful of breaking whatever spell had gripped him.
“Louisa was a witch,” he said. “Don’t say that I told you, as I shall deny it vigorously.”
I couldn’t hide my astonishment.
“Let’s just consider it one for the pot.”
· EIGHT ·
AS I MADE MY way towards New Oxford Street, my mind was in a
blaze. Why had Frank Borley decided to tell me, at the very last moment, that Louisa Congreve was a witch? It had seemed almost compulsive, as if he had blurted it out against his will while under a spell.
Could it be that Carla’s aunt Loo, the late witch, had him under her control from beyond the grave? Or, in telling me, was Frank Borley simply settling some ancient score?
There’s an old saying, “Murder will out”: a phrase which Daffy has often hurled at me as she glares balefully over her book whenever I have interrupted her reading. And it seems to be true. How many murderers have been undone by a blurt?
Murder will out—in the same way that one’s sister’s toothpaste squirts out of a tube when it’s trodden underfoot—as if it has a mind of its own.
Murder, I thought, is also like steam—although less useful.
It was steam that had transported me to London on this snowy winter morning, and steam that would haul me home again at the end of the day. And it was a hidden head of steam, I realized, that had made Frank Borley blurt out that Louisa Congreve was a witch.
All I needed to do was to find out what fired his boiler.
Oxford Street was swarming with scores of Christmas shoppers jostling, their faces filled with a kind of happy gloom. The falling snow and the half-light of the low-hanging, leaden sky made the street seem as if it were located in some far-off mythical underground kingdom, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see Dante, or even old Odysseus himself, trudging along the pavement with a gift-wrapped rocking horse on his shoulder.
I had no difficulty whatever in finding the A.B.C. tearoom, and I took pleasure, as I paused in front of it, in recalling the fact that the Aerated Bread Company—which is what the large A.B.C. painted on the window stood for—had been founded not by a chemist, but the next best thing, a medical man: a Dr. Dauglish, who had invented and patented a new method of causing dough to rise, not with yeast but by an injection of carbon dioxide: good old CO2.
I shivered with happiness at the thought.
But the very thought of bread made me realize that I was feeling distinctly peckish. It would be hours yet before I could return to Buckshaw to feed.