Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd

by Alan Bradley

  As I knew from his notebooks, my late great-uncle Tar had, as a student, gently corrected Darwin on several points relating to the evolutionary process.

  “Based, I presume, upon close observation of his own nearest relatives,” Daffy had said when I’d told her this.

  I returned the telephone receiver to its cradle, and waited for Miss Runciman, at the exchange, to work whatever wizardry was necessary with her plugs and jacks before another call could be made. She would be all agog when I requested another connection.

  “Two calls from Buckshaw, and all within two minutes! Whatever is the world coming to? Tsk! Tsk!” Etc., etc., etc.

  It was commonly known that Miss Runciman listened in on virtually every call made or received in Bishop’s Lacey.

  “Flora Runciman’s got more muck in ’er ’ead than Norah’s Ark,” Mrs. Mullet had once told me, nodding knowingly.

  Which meant that she knew where all the bodies were buried.

  “Hello…Miss Runciman?” I said. “It’s Flavia de Luce calling from Buckshaw. I’m terribly sorry to bother you again, Miss Runciman, but with Father in hospital, I’m afraid that everything is at sixes and sevens.”

  “Ah, yes, Flavia. I was sorry to hear about your father. How may I be of assistance?”

  I’d bet a pound to a penny she had known about Father’s illness even before Dr. Darby did.

  “I’m trying rather urgently to get in touch with an old family friend,” I said. “I’m afraid we don’t have the proper directory here, but his name is James Marlowe, and he lives at Wick St. Lawrence, which I believe is near Weston-super-Mare, in Somerset. I hope you can help.”

  I stifled a sob.

  “Poor lamb,” Miss Runciman said. “Hold on a jiffy and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Goodness knows what kind of story was forming in her mind.

  I hated to drag in Father’s illness in aid of a fib, but I was sure he wouldn’t mind. I knew that in his lifetime, my father had been forced to use his cunning every single day, simply to stay alive. The hurts and horrors that he and Dogger had been forced to undergo during the war were never spoken of, but were written clearly in their eyes.

  A series of electrical cracklings, clicks, and buzzes told me that Miss Runciman was holding serious secret talks with her counterparts in cities, towns, and villages across the kingdom. I could picture their voices speeding through the night on vast spiderwebs of copper wires, linking here to there and back again, connecting all their little worlds at the press of a button.

  “Hello, Flavia? Are you there?”

  “Yes, Miss Runciman. I’m still here.”

  “I’ve managed to locate your Mr. Marlowe at Wick St. Lawrence. I have him on the line. Shall I put him through? There will be the usual charge, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. We’d count the cost later.

  There was an ominous crackle of static and then Miss Runciman said, “I have your party on the line. Go ahead, please.”

  What do you say to a total stranger? Especially when you are being overheard by a nosy telephone operator who believes it to be a matter of life and death, and is hovering over your conversation like the spirit of God upon the Waters?

  “Hello? Mr. Marlowe?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was a mister or not. He was certainly no longer the boy who found the remains of Oliver Inchbald.

  “Hello? Yes…who am I speaking with?” The voice was boyish, but not completely.

  “This is Flavia de Luce. I’m afraid my father has been taken ill and is unable to accept your kind invitation, but he’s still quite interested in seeing some of the photographs of birds you took several years ago at Steep Holm. I’ve been told you made some remarkable snapshots of the seagulls.”

  I crossed my fingers, praying that birds bored Miss Runciman to distraction—and my prayer was answered—just like that! A sharp click on the line signaled her departure for greener pastures of gossip.

  “What did you say your name was?” James Marlowe’s voice was suddenly guarded.

  “De Luce. Flavia de Luce.”

  “I’m afraid someone is pulling your leg, Miss de Luce. I took no particularly interesting photographs of the gulls.”

  “What about the crows, then?” I asked. “Corvus c. corone. You mentioned them specifically to the reporter from the London Evening Standard.”

  I could hear him breathing at the other end of the line, and knew instinctively that he was about to ring off. I needed to keep him talking at all costs.

  “Listen…Mr. Marlowe. I’m going to be perfectly honest. I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I’m calling on behalf of Edgar Wallace. He’s working on a new thriller based upon the Oliver Inchbald murder. But please don’t breathe a word. It’s strictly hush-hush.”

  “Murder, you say?” James Marlowe asked.

  “Shhh!” I told him. “It hasn’t yet been made public.”

  “Edgar Wallace, you say?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But please don’t repeat his name. We mustn’t risk being overheard. You may refer to him as Horatio. That’s his middle name. Only his closest associates are privy to that fact.”

  I sent up a little prayer of gratitude that Daffy had shared that tidbit of Wallace information while reading The Four Just Men. I was also grateful she had taught me that particular use of the word privy, which before that I had always thought meant something else.

  I have to admit that dragging one of the most famous of all crime novelists into the discussion was a stroke of sheer genius. There wasn’t a Boy Scout alive who hadn’t huddled under his blankets in the wee small hours, reading wide-eyed, by the light of a shaded torch, the ingenious and bloody mystery thrillers of Richard Horatio Edgar Freeman, known to the world as Edgar Wallace, who was as much a household name as Sunlight Soap and Oxo.

  “Horatio wants to keep this project under wraps,” I improvised. “I’m sure you’ll understand. Publishing is a cutthroat business. But if he succeeds in scooping the market, you’ll be famous. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I had him. I knew it by the change in the quality of his voice as it came filtering along the line. It was suddenly older—more self-confident. More…famous: the voice of someone who, in his own head, was already speaking to the newsreel cameras.

  “I understand, Miss de Luce. Tell Mr….uh…Horatio that he can count on me.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “May I express his appreciation?”

  “Of course. Tell him I’m happy to be of service.”

  “Now about the photographs,” I went on. “I’m sure you know which ones he’s interested in?”

  “I believe I do,” he said. “The ones of the Wellingtons, and so forth?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Especially the so forth. I think he’d be happy to pay extra for those.”

  “I shall drop the photos in the post first thing tomorrow,” Marlowe said. “Where shall I send them?”

  I gave him my address at Buckshaw.

  “For safety’s sake,” I told him. “Horatio’s mail is not secure. It’s often intercepted by certain powers—the you-know-who. Horatio is a man of many secrets.”

  “I understand,” James Marlowe said. “Tell him he can count on me.”

  “You’ve already said so,” I told him. “But thank you again. He will be very much in your debt.”

  Although somehow I doubted it. Edgar Wallace had been dead for donkey’s years; he had died before either of us was born. I was counting on the fact that Scout Marlowe hadn’t yet heard the news.

  I rang off suddenly and without another word. It would add a touch of mystery and urgency to my call.

  I couldn’t resist rubbing my hands with delight. I was proud of myself.

  Now for Miss Louisa G. Congreve, of 47 Cranwell Gardens, Kensington.

  Or what was left of her.

  “Miss Runciman? It’s Flavia de Luce again. I just wanted to thank you for locating Mr. Marlowe. It was most kind of you. I’ll be sure to tell Fathe
r. Yes, he’ll be absolutely delighted. Now then, I was wondering if you could connect me with London…Western 1778…?”

  It was entirely possible, I knew, that the number had been reassigned, upon Louisa Congreve’s death, to someone else. It was a chance I had to take.

  I listened as the telephone rang in distant Kensington. Between rings, the lines crackled with electric excitement, as if they were as eager as I was to find out who would pick it up at the other end.

  “I’m afraid there’s no answer,” Miss Runciman said. “Shall I try again later?”

  “No, please let it ring,” I told her. “I’m sure there’s someone there.”

  I wasn’t sure at all, but I had learned long ago that if you don’t take command, someone else will.

  “Parties are often engaged in other pursuits,” Miss Runciman said briskly, half to herself and half to me. It sounded like a line from the Telephonist’s Training Manual.

  I could think of only one response.

  “Exactly,” I said. “I was just thinking that myself.”

  After what must have been at least fifty rings, the telephone was picked up and a voice said, “Well, what is it now?”

  A woman’s voice. A woman who was not at all happy about being disturbed while doing whatever she had been doing.

  “Miss Congreve?” I asked, dropping my voice into the lowest register I could manage without making my uvula come unstuck.

  There came one of those silences so awkward as to make you blush.

  “Miss Congreve is dead,” the voice said at last. “Who is calling?”

  I had to think more quickly than I’ve ever had to think before. The cogs of my mind sprang into action like a grandfather clock about to strike. If Western 1778 had, in fact, been reassigned to a complete stranger, they would have no way of knowing that it had previously belonged to Louisa Congreve, or that she was dead. Nor also would they have any interest in knowing who was calling.

  Something was as fishy here as the stalls at Billingsgate market.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said. “I had something of very great importance to communicate to her.”

  The silence on the other end pinkened. I could feel it.

  I was banking everything on something Dogger had once told me.

  “Greed,” he had said, “drives everything from the stock exchange to the Engagements column in The Times. It’s a sad fact, Miss Flavia, but true. Nobody is immune.”

  “Well, perhaps I can help…,” the voice said, trailing off but wheedling just a little.

  “Are you a relative of Miss Congreve’s?” I asked, my mind changing in an instant from grandfather clock to bear trap.

  “A distant one, but yes…a relative, to be sure. I was one of the beneficiaries to her will.”

  I was pitting my wits against a mastermind. Within seconds she had ingeniously constructed a conduit between an anonymous telephone call and her purse.

  “May I ask your name?” I said. “I’m sorry, but it’s required.”

  “Greene,” she said. “Greene with an e. Letitia.”

  I spotted the lie at once. As a fibber myself, I could easily recognize the unnecessary detail, tacked on to add authenticity. Greene with an e, my aunt Fanny!

  I could have done better with my tongue tied to my tootsies!

  And Letitia! What kind of fool did she think she was dealing with? As if the added e weren’t a dead giveaway, the exotic Christian name was a ploy as old as the Chilterns. As I have said, I have more than once myself appended a parasitic “Sabina” to my name for one reason or another—usually as a subtle warning shot to someone who has infringed upon my dignity.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Greene,” I said. “I’ve made a note of that. I shall—”

  “Miss Greene,” she interrupted. Even aliases have their unwritten set of rules.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Miss Greene. Could you tell me, please, Miss Greene, if the late Miss Congreve held a ticket on last June’s Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake?”

  It was a shot in the dark, but a bull’s-eye.

  I don’t know what made me think of Thornfield Chase and the dead man’s bedroom, but I blurted it out anyway. Anything to keep the so-called Letitia Greene from ringing off.

  If the silence had been pink before, it now became red-hot. The heat of it almost singed my ear.

  “Miss Greene?”

  “Sorry. I was woolgathering.”

  Woolgathering? What flesh and blood human could possibly let their mind wander off the instant a sweepstakes ticket is mentioned?

  To give her credit, the woman recovered in half a tick. “Yes, I believe she did. Buy a ticket, I mean.”

  But it was too late. My trap was sprung!

  How could someone, dead for years, have possibly held a recent sweepstakes ticket? There was, of course, an out, but I was not going to suggest it. It was not my place in life to throw a lifeline to a liar.

  “The ticket was mine,” the woman said. “I bought it in Louisa’s name because…well…”

  Because lottery tickets are illegal, I thought.

  “Because single ladies like to maintain their privacy,” she went on. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course,” I said, in that smarmy voice which single ladies use in talking to one another. “Of course I do.”

  “Could you please read me the number on your ticket?” I asked.

  I was now in top gear. There could be only one outcome to this conversation.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have it with me. It’s in a safe-deposit box at my bank.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said. “That’s too bad. Can you retrieve it? Time is at a premium.”

  I almost hated to do it to her: the old thumbscrew, time-is-running-out maneuver.

  Time being at a premium was an idea I had picked up by eavesdropping on a conversation between Father and an insurance agent from the Prudential.

  “Time, Colonel de Luce,” he had said, “is like the jaws of a vise. You and me and the little man in Notting Hill Gate, we are each and every one of us being squeezed out like paste between Past and Present.”

  It had not seemed to me a very apt comparison, but his point was clear: The clock was ticking, the fuse burning ever shorter. Time was running out, and the only salvation was to sign on the dotted line before the clock struck twelve.

  It was a useful technique, and this was my first opportunity to put it to the test.

  “Twenty-four hours,” I said. “It’s the best I can do. Our Mr. Merton would be furious, but what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, can it? We single ladies must stick together, mustn’t we, Letitia?”

  I gave a damp little snort of defiance.

  “I shall call again tomorrow at the same time,” I said.

  And again, like a telephonic Grim Reaper, I dropped my finger onto the cradle and cut off the call.

  · ELEVEN ·

  AS I STEPPED OUT of the telephone cupboard, I collided with a body in the darkness. Both of us let out muffled oofs.

  “Who is it?” I demanded. By the roughness of his clothing I knew that it was a man, but it wasn’t Dogger.

  “Dieter!” His voice hissed in my ear. “Shhh! Don’t give me away.”

  “Dieter!” I whispered back, hugging him with all my heart and strength. “What are you doing here? How did you get in? What’s all this about you and Feely busting up? I don’t believe it.”

  “Neither do I,” Dieter said. “For a while we are hiring the church, then suddenly we are strangers. Women are curious creatures.”

  “We only do it to annoy, because we know it teases,” I said, paraphrasing the Duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Although I was not yet a woman, I felt confident in my opinion. Based upon my close observation of the Divine Ophelia, I knew as much about womanly behavior as the most tortured of swains.

  “But why?” Dieter asked.

  I could hear the pain in his voice.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. �
�But I expect that one of these days I’ll find out.”

  “When you do,” Dieter said, “let me know.”

  “I will,” I told him. “I promise.”

  Much as I wanted to, I did not quiz him about his row with Feely. There are some things that are sacred between a man and a woman, and which must not be pried into by outsiders.

  Besides, I could read her diary whenever I wanted to. I simply hadn’t got around to it yet.

  As a former prisoner of war, Dieter did not have a wide circle of social acquaintances. He had remained in England to work as a farm laborer simply because he chose to. In a way, I suppose, men, also, are curious creatures.

  Besides my sister, Feely, Dieter had one other love: the English language. He had once risked his life to drop a wreath from his swastikaed aircraft onto the Brontë family’s home in Yorkshire.

  “How’s the teaching job coming along?” I asked as I steered him out of the narrow passageway and into the foyer. “Any news from Greyminster?”

  Father had put a word in with somebody at his old school, and it was expected that Dieter would before long be putting on cap and gown to teach Wuthering Heights to a pack of howling schoolboys.

  “There is some mix-up with the papers,” Dieter said.

  I nodded sympathetically.

  There was always trouble with papers. Father spent his entire life plodding through reams of the stuff with the Morlocks from His Majesty’s Board of Inland Revenue Department: an ongoing game of cards called “Inheritance,” in which the shuffling and the dealing never ceased, and in which the only possible winner could be the stationer who sold blank paper to the players.

  “And Culverhouse Farm?” I asked. “Hens laying well, and all that sort of thing?” I hated myself for making the kind of small talk that I normally despise, but what can you say to a man whose heart has been shattered, when you have no easy words?

  “I heard you found another corpse,” Dieter said, breaking the deadly cycle of chitchat into which we had fallen. “Congratulations!”