by Alan Bradley
I didn't move a muscle: not even my eyes. In my peripheral vision I had an impression of the man silhouetted against the open door: white hair and a fearsome mustache. He was so close I could have reached out and touched him.
There was a pause that seemed an eternity.
"Bloody rats again," he said to himself at last, and the door slammed shut, leaving me in darkness. There was the jingle of a ring of keys and then the bolt shot home.
I was locked in.
I suppose I should have let out a shout, but I didn't. I was nowhere near my wits' end. In fact, I was rather beginning to enjoy myself.
I knew that I could try picking the lock again, and creep back down the stairs, but quite possibly I'd creep straight into the porter's clutches.
Since I couldn't stay where I was forever, the only other option was up. Sticking my arms out like a sleepwalker, I slid my feet slowly one in front of the other, until my fingers touched the closest of the ladders I had seen illuminated by his torch—and up I went.
There's no real trick to climbing a ladder in the dark. In many ways, it's preferable to seeing the abyss that's always there below you. But as I climbed, my eyes became more and more accustomed to the darkness—or near-darkness. Tiny chinks in the stone and timbers were letting in pinpricks of light here and there, and I soon found I was able to make out the general outline of the ladder, black on black in the tower's gray light.
The rungs ended suddenly, and I found myself on a small wooden platform, like a sailor in the rigging. To my left, another ladder led up into the gloom.
I gave it a good shaking, and although it creaked fearsomely, it seemed solid enough. I took a deep breath, stepped onto the bottom rung, and up I went.
A minute later I had reached the top, and a smaller, shakier platform. Still another ladder, this one more narrow and spindly than the others, trembled alarmingly as I set foot upon it and began my slow, creeping ascent. Half way up I began counting the rungs:
"Ten (approximately). eleven. twelve. thirteen—"
My head smashed against something and for a moment I could see nothing but spinning stars. I hung on to the rungs for dear life, my head aching like a burst melon and the matchstick ladder vibrating in my hands like a plucked bowstring. I felt as if someone had scalped me.
As I reached up with one hand and felt above my broken head, my fingers closed around a wooden handle. I pushed up on it with all my remaining strength, and the trapdoor lifted.
In a flash I had scrambled out onto the roof of the tower, blinking like an owl in the sudden sunshine. From a square platform in its center, slate tiles sloped gently outwards to each of the four points of the compass.
The view was nothing short of magnificent. Across the Quad, beyond the slates of the chapel, vistas of different greens folded away into the hazy distance.
Still squinting, I stepped a little closer to the parapet, and I almost lost my life.
There was a sudden yawning hole at my feet, and I had to windmill my arms to keep from falling into it. As I teetered on the edge, I had a sickening glimpse of the cobbles far below shining blackly in the sun.
The gap was perhaps eighteen inches wide, with a half-inch raised lip around it, bridged every ten feet or so by a narrow finger of stone that joined the jutting parapet to the roof. This opening had evidently been designed to provide emergency drainage in case of unusually heavy rainfall.
I jumped carefully across the opening and looked over the waist-high battlements. Far below, the grass of the Quad spread off in three directions.
Tucked in tightly as it was against the wall of Anson House, the cobbled walk was not visible below the jutting battlements. How odd, I thought. If Mr. Twining had leapt out from these battlements, he could only have landed in the grass.
Unless, of course, in the thirty years that had gone by since the day of his death, the Quad had undergone substantial landscaping changes. Another dizzying look down through the opening behind me made it obvious that they had not: the cobbles below and the linden trees that lined them were positively ancient. Mr. Twining had fallen through this hole. Without a doubt.
There was a sudden noise behind me and I spun round. In the center of the roof a corpse hung, dangling from a gibbet. I had to fight to keep from crying out.
Like the bound body of a highwayman I had seen in the pages of the Newgate Calendar, the thing was twisting and turning in the sudden breeze. Then, without warning, its belly seemed to explode, and its guts flew up into the air in a twisted and sickening rope of scarlet, white, and blue.
With a loud crack! the entrails unfurled themselves, and suddenly, high above my head, at the top of the pole, the Union Jack was flapping in the wind.
As I recovered from my fright, I saw that the flag was rigged so that it could be raised and lowered from below, perhaps from the porter's lodge, by an ingenious series of cables and pulleys that terminated in the weatherproof canvas casing. It was this I had mistaken for corpse and gibbet.
I grinned stupidly at my foolishness and edged cautiously closer to the mechanism for a better look. But aside from the mechanical ingenuity of the device, there was little else of interest about it.
I had just turned and was moving back towards the open gap when I tripped and fell flat on my face, my head sticking out over the edge of the abyss.
I might have broken every bone in my body but I was afraid to move. A million miles below, or so it seemed, a pair of ant-like figures emerged from Anson House and set out across the Quad.
My first thought was that I was still alive. But then as my terror subsided, anger rushed in to take its place: anger at my own stupidity and clumsiness, anger at whatever invisible witch was blighting my life with an endless chain of locked doors, barked shins, and skinned elbows.
I got slowly to my feet and dusted myself off. Not only was my dress filthy, but I had also managed somehow to rip the sole half off my left shoe. The cause of the damage was not hard to spot: I had tripped on the sharp edge of a jutting tile which, torn from its place, now lay loose on the roof looking like one of the tablets upon which Moses had been given the Ten Commandments.
I'd better replace the slate, I thought. Otherwise the inhabitants of Anson House will find rainwater showering down on their heads and it will be no one's fault but mine.
The tile was heavier than it looked, and I had to drop to my knees as I tried to shove it back into place. Per haps the thing had rotated, or maybe the adjoining tiles had sagged. Whatever the reason, it simply would not slide back into the dark socket from which my foot had yanked it.
I could easily slip my hand into the opening to see if there was any obstruction—but then I remembered the spiders and scorpions that are known to inhabit such grottoes.
I closed my eyes and shoved my fingers in. At the back of the cavity they encountered something—something soft.
I jerked back my hand and bent over to peer inside. There was nothing in the hole but darkness.
Carefully, I stuck my fingers in again and, with my thumb and forefinger, plucked at whatever was in there at the back of the hole.
In the end, it came out almost effortlessly, unfolding as it emerged, like the flag that fluttered above my head. It was a length of rusty black cloth—Russell cord, I think the stuff is called—sour with mold: a schoolmaster's gown. And rolled up tightly inside it, crushed beyond repair, was a black, square-topped mortarboard cap.
And in that instant I knew, as sure as a shilling, that these things had played a part in Mr. Twining's death. I didn't know what it was, but I would jolly well find out.
I ought to have left the things there, I know. I ought to have gone to the nearest telephone and rung up Inspector Hewitt. Instead, the first thought that popped into my mind was this: How was I going to get away from Greyminster without being noticed?
And, as it so often does when you're in a jam, the answer came at once.
I shoved my arms into the sleeves of the moldy gown, straightened the b
ent crown of the mortarboard and jammed it on my head, and like a large black bat, flapped my way slowly and precariously back down the cascades of trembling ladders to the locked door.
The pick I had fashioned from my braces had worked before, and now I needed it to work again. As I fidgeted the wire in the keyhole, I offered up a silent prayer to the god who governs such things.
After a great deal of scraping, a bent wire, and a couple of minor curses, my prayer was finally heard, and the bolt slid back with a sullen croak.
Before you could say “Scat!” I was down the stairs, listening at the bottom door, peering out through a crack at the long hall. The place was in empty silence.
I eased the door open, stepped quietly out into the corridor, and made my way swiftly down the gallery of lost boys, past the empty porter's lodge, and out into the sunshine.
There were schoolboys everywhere—or so it seemed—talking, lounging, strolling, laughing. Glorying in the outdoors with the end of term at hand.
My instinct was to hunch over in my cap and cape and skulk crabwise away across the Quad. Would I be noticed? Of course I would; to these wolfish boys I would stand out like the wounded reindeer at the back of the herd.
No! I would throw my shoulders back and, like a boy late for the hurdles, lope off, head held high, in the direction of the lane. I could only hope that no one would notice that underneath the gown I was wearing a dress.
And nobody did; no one gave me so much as a second glance.
The farther I got from the Quad, the safer I felt, but I knew that, alone in the open, I would be far more conspicuous.
Just a few feet ahead, an ancient oak squatted comfortably on the lawn as if it had been resting there since the days of Robin Hood. As I reached out to touch it (home free!), an arm shot out from behind the trunk and grabbed my wrist.
"Ow! Let go! You're hurting me!" I yelped automatically, and my arm was released at once, even as I was still spinning round to face my assailant.
It was Detective Sergeant Graves, and he seemed every bit as surprised as I was.
"Well, well," he said with a slow grin. "Well, well, well, well, well."
I was going to make a cutting remark, but thought better of it. I knew the sergeant liked me, and I might need all the help I could get.
"The Inspector'd like the pleasure of your company," he said, pointing to a group of people who stood talking in the lane where I had left Gladys.
Sergeant Graves said no more, but as we approached, he pushed me gently in front of him towards Inspector Hewitt like a friendly terrier presenting its master with a dead rat. The torn sole of my shoe was flapping like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, but although the Inspector glanced at it, he was considerate enough to keep his thoughts to himself.
Sergeant Woolmer stood towering above the blue Vauxhall, his face as large and craggy as the Matterhorn. In his shadow were a sinewy, darkly tanned man in overalls and a wizened little gentleman with a white mustache who, when he saw me, jabbed at the air excitedly with his finger.
"That's him!" he said. "That's the one!"
"Is it, indeed?" Inspector Hewitt asked, as he lifted the cap from my head and took the gown from my shoulders with the gentle deference of a valet.
The little man's pale blue eyes bulged visibly in their sockets.
"Why, it's only a girl!" he said.
I could have slapped his face.
"Ay, that's her," said the suntanned one.
"Mr. Ruggles here has reason to believe that you were up in the tower," the Inspector said, with a nod at the white mustache.
"What if I was?" I said. "I was just having a look round."
"That tower's off limits," Mr. Ruggles said loudly. "Off limits! And so it says on the sign. Can't you read?"
I gave him a graceful shrug.
"I'd have come up the ladders after you if I knew you were just a girl." And he added, in an aside to Inspector Hewitt, "Not what they used to be, my old knees.
"I knew you were up there," he went on. "I made out like I didn't so's I could ring up the police. And don't pretend you didn't pick the lock. That lock's my business, and I know it was locked as sure as I'm standing here in Fludd's Lane.
"Imagine! A girl! Tsk, tsk," he remarked, with a disbelieving shake of his head.
"Picked the lock, did you?" the Inspector asked. Even though he acted like he wasn't, I could see that he was taken aback. "Wherever did you learn a trick like that?"
I couldn't tell him, of course. Dogger was to be protected at all costs.
"Long ago and far away," I said.
The Inspector fixed me with a steely gaze. “There might be those who are satisfied with that kind of answer, Flavia, but I am not among them.”
Here comes that old “King George is not a frivolous man” speech again, I thought, but Inspector Hewitt had decided to wait for my answer, no matter how long it was in coming.
"There isn't much to do at Buckshaw," I said. "Some times I do things just to keep from getting bored."
He held out the black gown and cap. “And that's why you're wearing this costume? To keep from getting bored?”
"It's not a costume," I said. "If you must know, I found them under a loose tile on the tower roof. They have something to do with Mr. Twining's death. I'm sure of it."
If Mr. Ruggles's eyes had bulged before, they now almost popped out of his head.
"Mr. Twining?" he said. "Mr. Twining as jumped off the tower?"
"Mr. Twining didn't jump," I said. I couldn't resist the temptation to get even with this nasty little man. "He was—"
"Thank you, Flavia," Inspector Hewitt said. "That will do. And we'll take up no more of your time, Mr. Ruggles. I know you're a busy man."
Ruggles puffed himself up like a courting pigeon, and with a nod to the Inspector and an impertinent smile at me, he set off across the lawn towards his quarters.
"Thank you for your report, Mr. Plover," the Inspector said, turning to the man in overalls, who had been standing silently by.
Mr. Plover tugged at his forelock and returned to his tractor without a word.
"Our great public schools are cities in miniature," the Inspector said, with a wave of his hand. "Mr. Plover spotted you as an intruder the instant you turned into the lane. He wasted no time in getting to the porter's lodge."
Damn the man! And damn old Ruggles too! I'd have to remember when I got home to send them a jug of pink lemonade, just to show that there were no hard feelings. It was too late in the season for anemones, so anemonin was out of the question. Deadly nightshade, on the other hand, although uncommon, could be found if you knew exactly where to look.
Inspector Hewitt handed the cap and gown to Sergeant Graves, who had already produced several sheets of tissue paper from his kit.
"Smashing," the sergeant said. "She might just have saved us a crawl across the slates."
The Inspector shot him a look that could have stopped a runaway horse.
"Sorry, sir," the sergeant said, his face suddenly aflame as he turned to his wrapping.
"Tell me, in detail, how you found these things," Inspector Hewitt said, as if nothing had happened. "Don't leave anything out—and don't add anything."
As I spoke he wrote it all down in his quick, minuscule hand. Because of sitting across from Feely as she wrote in her diary at breakfast, I had become rather good at reading upside down, but Inspector Hewitt's notes were no more than tiny ants marching across the page.
I told him everything: from the creak of the ladders to my near-fatal slip; from the loose tile and what lay behind it to my clever escape.
When I had finished, I saw him scribble a couple of characters beside my account, although what they were, I could not tell. He snapped the notebook shut.
"Thank you, Flavia," he said. "You've been a great help."
Well, at least he had the decency to admit it. I stood there expectantly, waiting for more.
"I'm afraid King George's coffers are not deep enough
to ferry you home twice in twenty-four hours," he said, "so we'll see you on your way."
"And shall I come back with tea?" I asked.
He stood there with his feet planted in the grass, and a look on his face that might have meant anything. A minute later, Gladys's Dunlop tires were humming happily along the tarmac, leaving Inspector Hewitt—“and his ilk” as Daffy would have said—farther and farther behind.
Before I had gone a quarter of a mile, the Vauxhall overtook, and then passed me. I waved like mad as it went by, but the faces that stared out at me from its windows were grim.
A hundred feet farther on, the brake lights flashed and the car pulled over onto the verge. As I came alongside, the Inspector rolled the window down.
"We're taking you home. Sergeant Graves will load your bicycle into the boot."
"Has King George changed his mind, Inspector?" I asked haughtily.
A look crossed his face that I had never seen there before. I could almost swear it was worry.
"No," he said, "King George has not changed his mind. But I have.”
nineteen
NOT TO BE TOO DRAMATIC ABOUT IT, THAT NIGHT I slept the sleep of the damned. I dreamt of turrets and craggy ledges where the windswept rain blew in from the ocean with the odor of violets. A pale woman in Elizabethan dress stood beside my bed and whispered in my ear that the bells would ring. An old salt in an oilcloth jacket sat atop a piling, mending nets with an awl, while far out at sea a tiny aeroplane winged its way towards the setting sun.
When at last I awoke, the sun was at the window and I had a perfectly wretched cold. Even before I went down to breakfast I had used up all the handkerchiefs from my drawer and put paid to a perfectly good bath towel. Need less to say, I was not in a good humor.
"Don't come near me," Feely said as I groped my way to the far end of the table, snuffling like a grampus.
"Die, witch," I managed, making a cross of my fore fingers.
