Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd

by Alan Bradley

  I listened, appalled, as my words slipped out as slick and soft and insincere as black velvet at a funeral.

  What was happening to me? What alien creature had seized control of my mouth? Had I been possessed by one of those slimes you see in the cinema that lurks in your lungs as it feeds on your brain?

  “Thank you, Flavia,” Hilary said. “You’re exceedingly kind. I understand from Cynthia that you, too, have lost a parent. Your condolences mean a great deal to me.”

  I was thunderstruck.

  Moses on horseback! I thought. Was that how things worked? Had I spent all these years barking up the wrong tree?

  I lowered my eyes demurely.

  “It’s not easy to be deprived of a parent, is it? I first lost my father when I was eight years old. And now I’ve lost him again.”

  Those had been almost precisely my own thoughts when Harriet’s body had been returned to Buckshaw—could it have been only last spring? So much had happened since that crushing day that it seemed an eternity away.

  I did something that surprised me: I got to my feet, walked round the table, threw my arms around Hilary Inchbald, and hugged him.

  And he hugged me back. Fiercely.

  Neither of us seemed to want to be the first to let go, so that our grip on each other went on for quite some time.

  Cynthia, her hand to her mouth, was unashamedly in tears.

  None of us spoke, but when the long moment had passed, Hilary and I let go of each other and I returned to my chair and sat primly down, as we English do, as if some miracle hadn’t happened.

  Cynthia busied herself with the teapot.

  “I was sent away to prep school when I was eight, you see. Far too young, but my father, being who he was, was able to pull certain strings. In order to justify my presence among the older boys, it was put about constantly that I was exceptionally intelligent—or at least clever.”

  Hilary spoke softly and slowly and, in spite of my acute hearing, I had to strain at times to hear him.

  “At first I thought my father had sent me away because I had done something wrong: something too horrible to be put into words. No one ever took the trouble to set me straight, and so I was utterly miserable for the first few years.

  “But in time, I came to equate brains with imprisonment. It was my own intelligence that had caused me to be put away. I didn’t pretend to understand the reasons why, but there I was in Cheadle House, so it must be true. I had done nothing wrong, and there could be no other explanation.

  “If brains were the cause of my incarceration, then the solution was evident: I would become an ignoramus. It was that simple. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.

  “Then, perhaps, when they realized what a mistake they had made, I would be set free.

  “I can still remember the exact moment this enlightenment came upon me. I was listening to Hanson, the Latin master, droning on about the future perfect tense of the verb spero, ‘I hope.’

  “ ‘Speravero, my fine young gentlemen,’ he was saying. ‘I shall have hoped, if indeed you are still alive in the future, and perchance there’s any of that precious substance left.’

  “I chose that moment to spill my ink. And before the end of the class, I had translated bello, ‘war,’ as ‘tummy’ and pudere as something that comes forth from a cow.

  “Old Hanson was livid, but my father was incandescent. I had shamed him. I had belittled him. I had brought great dishonor upon him. And he wasted no time in telling me so.

  “When the holidays came round, I was packed up and sent to a house that was no longer home. My father showed me a ‘talking stick’ he had been sent from Borneo by someone in his club. It was a wonderful thing, made from bamboo, I believe—about the length of a common ruler and covered with carvings. It was held, generally, by the headman of the tribe who made it, and only the person holding the stick was allowed to speak. The penalty for speaking without the stick was severe: banishment, my father claimed—although I didn’t believe him—or even death.

  “Whenever my father wished to address me, which was seldom, and usually to take me to task for some perceived misdeed, he would bring out the talking stick from the locked drawer of his desk where he kept it, and give me a tongue-lashing.

  “Once, because I wished to defend myself, I held out my hand for the stick and my father reacted by slashing me across the palm with it, drawing blood. I did not ask again. Nor did I speak.

  “I could not imagine what I had done to deserve such treatment. Where was the father who had sung silly songs to me with his trousers rolled up at the seaside? Where was the father who had carried me on his shoulders to see the stone dinosaurs at the Crystal Palace? What could possibly have gone wrong?

  “All I knew was that I was no longer just living in my father’s shadow; I was my father’s shadow. We could never be one. I was all that he was not, and he was all that I was not—rather like the anti-matter which the physicists are now beginning to speculate about.

  “In time, of course, I came to understand that my only sin had been that of growing up.”

  Hilary’s long fingers were spread out on the tabletop, white from pressing so tightly.

  “His father beat him badly,” Cynthia said softly, touching his shoulder, and Hilary glanced up at her gratefully, as if she had spared him the pain of saying this himself.

  Oliver Inchbald had beaten Crispian Crumpet? That golden-haired little boy of the storybooks?

  My mind almost gagged at the idea as my brain cells drew back in horror.

  Until that very moment, I had never really understood the meaning of the word obscene, but if anything was obscene, it was this.

  —

  “He used to make me box with him,” Hilary said. “He would bloody my nose, then rush out of the room and leave me to clean myself up.

  “The moment I was old enough I changed my name, joined the Royal Air Force, and trained as a wireless operator air gunner. When my father found me out, he pulled strings, as he had always done, and I spent what remained of the war somewhere in Scotland, sending out coded top-secret wireless demands from the officers for tea from Harrods and hampers from Fortnum & Mason.

  “I attempted at every turn to get myself posted to aircrew, where I would be in real bodily danger, but as always, my father contrived to have my every wish denied. He took away—no, stole from me—the single chance I ever had to commit suicide with great honor and dignity. And for that, I wanted to kill him.”

  “Oh, surely not!” Cynthia gasped. “You’ve never told me that before.”

  “It’s true, nonetheless,” Hilary said softly.

  “You mustn’t say that,” Cynthia protested. “You simply mustn’t.”

  “You mean in light of him lying dead in—in whatever hell he’s in?”

  As interesting as it was, the conversation was veering from criminal acts into theology, a subject about which I knew little and cared less.

  “Did someone kill him—your father, I mean?” I asked, perhaps a little bluntly.

  “I don’t know,” Hilary replied. “I certainly hope so.”

  “Hilary, dear,” Cynthia said. “Take me for a little walk. I’ve been feeling iffish all day. A turn in the fresh air might do me good.”

  Hilary Inchbald, whatever else he was, was also a gentleman. He got to his feet, pulled back Cynthia’s chair for her, and went to fetch her coat.

  While he was out of the room I caught Cynthia’s eye, and saw nothing in it but my own reflection.

  I followed the two of them out of the vicarage and watched as they walked across the churchyard towards the west.

  Only when they were at a slight distance, and only when I saw him in an outdoor setting, did I remember where I had seen Hilary before he had unfolded himself from the sideboard at Lillian Trench’s cottage.

  I turned east towards the High Street and the Thirteen Drakes.

  —

  Howard Carter was holding up the front of the pub,
his shoulders and the sole of a shoe pressed against the doorframe. Howard was something of a local character who did odd jobs around the village and kept the Thirteen Drakes afloat by spending his earnings. Since he possessed the same name as the discoverer of King Tut-ankh-Amon’s tomb, Howard came in for more than his share of teasing, such as “Does your mummy know you’re out, Howard?” and other village witticisms.

  Howard didn’t seem to mind: Fame is fame wherever you may find it.

  “Could you ask Mr. Stoker to step outside, please? I’d like to have a word with him.”

  Tully, I knew, would not be as lenient as Rosie when it came to enforcement of the Licensing Act.

  Howard examined his fingernails. This was the sort of moment he lived for: a position of authority, even for a matter of seconds.

  “Depends,” he said. “What’s it about?”

  I glanced at an imaginary wristwatch. “It’s about one o’clock,” I said.

  “Haw!” Howard said. “You’re a rare one, aren’t you, Flavia de Luce?”

  “Selab Dusticafeenio,” I said, pleasantly, which is a complicated tactic—a spell, actually—which I sometimes use with those who take liberties. They never know quite what to make of it. And it worked. Howard looked at me as if I had suddenly sprouted an extra head and yellow spotted fur.

  He launched himself into motion and vanished inside the pub. Moments later, Tully ambled out, wiping his hands on his apron. He acknowledged me with a hint of a nod.

  “Good morning—or, rather, good afternoon, Mr. Stoker. I wonder if you can help me? I’m trying to get in touch with a Professor Karl Heinz Heidecker. He’s a famous chemist—Nobel Prize, if I’m not mistaken—and I’ve been given to understand that he may be spending a holiday in the neighborhood. I thought if he’s not actually staying at the Thirteen Drakes, he might have come into the pub in the past several days.”

  This was unlikely, since I had invented Professor Heidecker on the spot.

  Tully eyed me with suspicion, as he always did.

  “I don’t know Professor Heidecker by sight,” I said, “but I happened to see a distinguished-looking gentleman helping you repair a broken window, and—”

  “That wasn’t your professor,” Tully interrupted.

  People are always so eager to point out to you that you’re wrong that they can’t wait for you to complete your sentence.

  “It was Mr. Hilary and he’s no chemist. I can’t imagine him getting his hands dirty,” Tully said, staring at my hands which, as usual, were stained and discolored by the handful of experiments I had managed to do since coming home.

  Mr. Hilary! Hilary Inchbald was staying at the Thirteen Drakes under an assumed name!

  Or was it simply that Tully was on a first-name basis with him?

  “Mr. Hilary?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard.

  “Mr. Percival Hilary,” Tully said. “Of London, England.”

  That clinched it! Who could forget Percival the Penguin who, in Hobbyhorse House, escaped from the London Zoo, got lost, and—having made his way on foot past Madame Tussaud’s wax museum and Sherlock Holmes’s headquarters at 221b Baker Street, and having stopped to dance the Penguin Pavane on the pavement in front of each of those locations—was finally located in Hyde Park, paddling with the children in the Serpentine?

  “Mr. Hilary” was obviously Hilary Inchbald. There could be no doubt of that.

  But if he was staying at the Thirteen Drakes, then why on earth had I found him huddled in a cupboard in Lillian Trench’s cottage, which, I couldn’t help noting, was directly across the road from Thornfield Chase, where his father, Oliver Inchbald, had been living under the name Roger Sambridge?

  It was enough to puzzle the sharpest saint.

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Stoker,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you. Oh, by the way, please say hello to Mary for me. I haven’t seen her since I’ve come home.”

  Mary was Tully’s daughter, who had been of great assistance to me at the time of the Horace Bonepenny affair.

  Tully’s face grew dark with blood. For a moment, I thought he was going to turn away and slam the door in my face.

  “Thought you might have heard,” he said. “Everyone else in the kingdom has. She’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “You heard me. And Cropper with her.”

  There are times when I’ve been taken by surprise, but seldom as I was at this moment.

  “Gone? Mary and Ned? When? Why?”

  I was gasping for words.

  “Couple of days ago. Same morning your Sambridge turned up dead. The lad had words with Mr. Hilary in the Saloon Bar and a window was broke. Police were called. In the morning the lad was gone, and her with him.”

  It was as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak his daughter’s name.

  “Was anyone hurt?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  “Yaass,” Tully said, reverting to some long banished county accent of his childhood. “I was.”

  With a tragic look up and down the High Street in either direction, he turned and walked wearily back inside.

  A moment later, Howard Carter appeared from the shadows of the public bar.

  “You shouldn’t ought to have asked him that,” he said. “You’ve gone and broke his heart.”

  · SIXTEEN ·

  THE REMAINS OF A roasted chicken lay near the head of the table, looking like the wreckage of the Hindenburg.

  I had missed dinner.

  Undine made cuckoo eyes at me as I sat down and reached for the dessert, one of Mrs. Mullet’s specialties to which we referred privately as Lymph Pudding. God only knows what was in it, and He wasn’t telling, although today it had an aftertaste of smoked herring.

  “Ned Cropper’s run off with Mary Stoker,” I said to Feely. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “You’re mistaking me for someone who cares,” Feely said.

  “Alas!” I cried, throwing the back of my hand to my forehead. “Farewell flyblown chocolates…no more secondhand valentines.”

  I could be merciless when I wanted information.

  But Feely wasn’t taking the bait. She had already turned her attention to one of the two matching mirrors at opposite ends of the room which, reflecting each other, allowed her to see her face and the back of her head simultaneously. The temptation was too great, and she was lost at once in a series of elaborate neck contortions that put me in mind of a parrot examining its reflection in a toy mirror. Pretty Polly! I wanted to say.

  I have always found there to be a certain sadness about mirrors, since they double the space in a house which needs to be filled with love. We don’t give nearly enough credit to the people who used to drape their looking-glasses with bedsheets.

  I shuddered and shook the thought from my mind like a dog shaking off water.

  Undine was picking something nasty off the soles of her shoes and scraping it onto the edge of her plate. At least she was being quiet.

  “Daffy,” I asked, “have you ever heard of the Auditories?”

  Daffy looked up from The Catcher in the Rye, in whose margins she was making profuse notes in pencil.

  “The benches of the Roman magistrates, the stalls of the Haymarket Theatre, or that sect of the Manicheans who merely listened?”

  “The fairies,” I said. “The ones that live in carpets.”

  “Ah!” Daffy said, “those ones.” Which meant she didn’t know. Or was pretending not to.

  Did she not remember scaring me witless with The Listeners?

  Daffy was an incredibly complex person: not at all what she seemed to be.

  If I wanted to find out what she was playing at, I needed to go along with her.

  “What about de la Mare?” I asked. “Didn’t he write something about them?”

  Daffy shrugged. “He may have. I don’t remember. Have you read his Memoirs of a Midget? If not, you ought to. It’s about a certain Miss M, who studies death by examining the maggots in the body of a dead mole sh
e finds in the garden. It’s right up your alley.”

  I made a note to look up the book at once, but meanwhile, Daffy was evading my question. I needed to be more direct.

  “Do you know anything about a Miss Trench—Lillian Trench? She lives out near Stowe Pontefract.”

  “I knew you’d get around to her sooner or later,” Daffy said. “She’s a witch. Stay away from her.”

  “Do you really believe that,” I began, “or—”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Daffy snapped. “You’re in over your head. Stay away from her.”

  I was stunned. Had Daffy been secretly monitoring my doings? How could she possibly know where I had been and what I had been doing?

  Daffy was the third person to warn me off the woman: First had been Dieter, then Mrs. Mullet, and now Daffy.

  “Why?” I pouted, sounding like a petulant baby.

  “Look, Flavia, believe it or not, there are things people get up to that you don’t know about, don’t need to know about, and don’t want to know about. Take my word for it. Stick to chemistry. You’re far safer piddling around at home with arsenic and cyanide than you are galloping round stirring up village gossip. Gossip has power, and some of it’s black.”

  It was a longer speech than I’d ever heard Daffy make in my entire life. Unless she was reading aloud to us from one of her favorite books, my sister was the kind of person who is sometimes described as “monosyllabic.”

  (Why, incidentally, does a word meaning “a single syllable” require a five-syllable word to describe it? The world, as Mr. Partridge remarked in a recent talk on the wireless, is surely going to hell in a linguistic handbasket.)

  Was Daffy trying to protect me? If she was, it would be the first time in the history of the planet Earth. There had to be more to it than that.

  But before I could dig deeper, Daffy excused herself and hurriedly left the room.

  “WC!” Undine said in a stage whisper. She had been following our conversation avidly.

  I pretended not to hear, and picked listlessly at my pudding.

  The clock ticked.

  Somewhere above, a lavatory was flushed.