by Alan Bradley
I led her to the little parlor I had seen at the front of the house and helped her recline on a horsehair settee. I covered her with an afghan, and left her clutching at it with white fingers.
“I’ll see myself out,” I said.
ELEVEN
LIKE AN ACTOR IN the pantomime muddling his way out from behind the curtains, I pushed aside the hanging willow branches and stepped out from the green gloom and into the blinding glare of the sun’s spotlight.
Time was running out. Inspector Hewitt and his men were probably minutes away and my work was hardly begun.
Since Brookie’s van was directly in front of me, I’d begin there. I glanced quickly up and down the street. There was no one in sight.
One of the van’s windows was rolled all the way down: obviously just as Brookie had left it. Here was a bit of luck!
Father was always going on about the importance of carrying a handkerchief at all times, and for once he was right. Opening the door would leave my fingerprints on the nickel-plated handle. A clean bit of linen was just the ticket.
But the handle wouldn’t budge, although it did give off an alarming groan that hinted of extensive rust beneath. One thing that I didn’t need was to have a van door fall off and go clattering into the street.
I stepped up onto the running board (another metallic groan) and used my elbows to lever myself into position. With my stomach on the bottom of the window frame, I was able to hinge the top half of my body into the van, leaving my legs and feet sticking straight out in the air for balance.
With the handkerchief wrapped round my hand, I pressed on the glove compartment’s release button, and when it popped open, reached inside and pulled out a small packet. It was, as I thought it might be, the registration papers for the van.
I almost let out a cheer! Now I would find out Brookie’s real address, which I somehow doubted would be Willow Villa.
Edward Sampson, the document said. Rye Road, East Finching.
I knew well enough where East Finching was: It lay about five miles by road to the north of Bishop’s Lacey.
But who was Edward Sampson? Other than being the owner of the van from which my bottom was probably projecting like a lobster’s claw from a trap—I hadn’t the faintest idea.
I shoved the papers back into the glove compartment and pushed home the panel.
Now for the coach house.
“Come along, Gladys,” I said, taking her from where she had been waiting. No sense having my presence detected by leaving her parked in plain view.
Because of the peculiar shape of Miss Mountjoy’s property, the coach house was located at the end of a hedge-lined L-shaped lane that ran along one side and across the back. I tucked Gladys out of sight behind a box hedge and proceeded on foot.
As I approached the building, I could see that the term “coach house” was no more than a courtesy title. In fact, it was almost a joke.
The building was square, with bricks on the bottom floor and boards on the top. The windows were coated with the kind of opaque film that tells of neglect and cobwebs; the kind of windows that watch you.
The door had once been painted, but had blistered away to reveal gray, weathered wood that matched the un-painted boards of the upper story.
I wrapped my hand in the handkerchief and tried the latch. The door was locked.
The first-floor windows were too high to gain entry, and the tangle of ivy on a broken trellis too fragile to climb. A rickety ladder leaned wearily against the wall, too dangerous to be pressed into service. I decided to try round the back.
I had to be careful. Only a sagging wooden fence and a narrow walkway separated the rear of the coach house from Miss Mountjoy’s overhanging willow tree: I’d have to crouch and run, like a commando on the beach.
At the end of the fence, on the left side of the walkway, was a wire compound attached to the coach house, from which issued, as I approached, an excited clucking. Inside the compound, there was a cage no more than two feet high—rather less, in fact—and in it was the biggest rooster I had ever seen: so large that he had to strut about his cage with stooped shoulders.
As soon as he saw me the bird made for the wires that separated us, fluttering up towards my face with a frightening rustle of wings. My first instinct was to take to my heels—but then I saw the pleading look in his marmalade eye.
He was hungry!
I took a handful of feed from a box that was nailed to the framework of the cage and tossed it through the mesh. The rooster fell upon the stuff like a wolf upon Russian travelers, his comb, as red as paper poppies, bobbing busily up and down as if it were driven by steam.
As he feasted, I noticed a hatch on the far side of the cage that opened into the coach house. It was no more than rooster-sized, but it would do.
Throwing a couple more handfuls of feed to distract the bird, I turned to the wire fence. It was only about seven feet high, but too far to leap up and grasp the upper frame. I tried to swarm up the mesh, but my shoes could find no grip.
Undefeated, I sat down and removed my shoes and socks.
When I come to write my autobiography, I must remember to record the fact that a chicken-wire fence can be scaled by a girl in bare feet, but only by one who is willing to suffer the tortures of the damned to satisfy her curiosity.
As I climbed, my toes stuck through the hexagons of the wire mesh, each strand like the blades of a cheese cutter. By the time I reached the top, my feet felt as if they belonged to Scott of the Antarctic.
As I dropped to the ground on the inside of the enclosure the rooster made a lunge for me. Since I hadn’t thought to bring a pocketful of feed to appease the famished bird, I was at his mercy.
He threw himself at my bare knees and I made a dive for the hatchway.
It was a tight fit, and I could only squirm my way painfully through the opening as the enraged bird pecked furiously at my legs—but moments later I was inside the coach house: still inside a wired partition, but inside.
And so was the rooster, who had followed me in, and was now flinging himself upon me like an avenging fury.
Seized by a sudden inspiration, I squatted, caught the bird’s eye, then with a loud hissing, rose up suddenly to my full height, weaving my head and flicking my tongue in and out like a king cobra.
It worked! In his feeble rooster brain, some age-old instinct whispered a sudden, wordless tale of terror that involved a chicken and a snake, and taking to his heels, he shot out through the hatch like a feathered cannonball.
I poked my fingers through the mesh and rotated the strip of wood that served as a latch, then stepped into the corridor.
I suppose my mind had been filled with images of dusty box stalls, of shriveled harness hanging from wooden pegs, of currycombs and benches, and perhaps a long-abandoned phaeton carriage lurking in some dim corner. Perhaps I was thinking of our own coach house at Buckshaw.
But whatever the case, I was totally unprepared for what I saw.
Beneath the low, beamed ceiling of what had once been a stable, couches upholstered in green and pink silk were jammed together like buses in Piccadilly Circus. Cameo jars and vases—some of them surely Wedgwood—stood here and there on tables whose old wood managed to glow even in the dim light. Carved cabinets and elaborately inlaid tables receded into the shadows, while nearby horse stalls overflowed with Royal Albert ewers and Oriental screens.
The place was a warehouse—and, I thought, no ordinary one at that!
Against one wall, almost hidden by a massive sideboard, was an exquisitely carved Georgian chimneypiece, in front of which, half-unrolled, was a rich and elaborate carpet. Something very much like it had been pointed out to me on more than one occasion by Feely’s friend and toady, Sheila Foster, who managed to drag their carpet into even the most casual conversation: “The Archbishop of Canterbury was down for the weekend, you know. As he was pinching my cheek, he dropped a crumb of his Dundee cake on our dear old Aubusson.”
I
had just stepped forward to have a closer look at the thing when something caught my eye: a gleam in a dark corner by the chimneypiece. I sucked in my breath, for there in Miss Mountjoy’s coach house stood Sally Fox and Shoppo—Harriet’s brass fire irons!
What on earth—? I thought. How can this be?
I had seen the firedogs just hours before in the drawing room at Buckshaw. Brookie Harewood couldn’t possibly have crept back into the house and stolen them because Brookie was dead. But who else could have brought them here?
Could it have been Colin Prout? Colin was, after all, Brookie’s puppet, and I had found him hanging about the neighborhood just minutes ago.
Did Colin live here with Brookie? Miss Mountjoy had referred to Brookie as her tenant, which surely meant that he lived here. I hadn’t seen any sign of a kitchen or sleeping quarters, but perhaps they lay somewhere beyond the vast expanse of furniture or upstairs on the first floor.
As I retraced my steps to the central corridor, a car door slammed in the lane outside.
Crackers! It could well be Inspector Hewitt.
I ducked down and waddled my way towards a window, where I pressed myself flat against the back of a massive ebony armoire, round which I could peek out without being seen.
But it was not Inspector Hewitt who was coming towards the door: It was a walking bulldog. The man’s shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing arms that, except for their excessive hairiness, might have been a pair of Christmas hams. His shirt, open at the neck, revealed a forest of black, springy chest hair, and his fists clenched and unclenched as he strode purposefully towards the door.
Whoever he was, it was clear that he was unhappy. The man was powerful enough to tear me open like a packet of cigarettes. I couldn’t let him find me here.
It was unnerving to work my way back through the maze of furniture. Twice I startled at a movement close by, only to find that it was a reflection of myself in an uncovered mirror.
The man was already opening the door as I reached the caged cubicle. I slipped inside—thank goodness for bare feet and straw on the floor!—then lowered myself to hands and knees, then flat on my face, and began to crawl through the narrow hole to the outside.
The rooster was on me like a champion fighting cock. As I crawled, I tried to keep my hands up to protect my face, but the bird’s spurs were razor sharp. Before I was even halfway through, my wrists were bleeding.
Up the wire wall I swarmed, the rooster throwing himself again and again at my feet and legs. There was no time even to think of what the wire mesh was doing to my toes. At the top, I threw myself over the wooden bar and dropped heavily to the ground.
“Who’s there?” Inside the coach house, the man’s voice sounded as if he was no more than a few feet away. But unless he got down on his belly and crawled, he could not follow me—could not even see me in the outside pen.
He would have to return to his car, then come round behind the coach house in the lane.
I heard his footsteps retreating on the wooden floor.
Again I made a crouching scuttle along the crumbling fence—but wait: I’d forgotten my shoes and socks!
Back again I went to retrieve them, my breath now coming in quick painful gasps. Once more along the fence and I ducked behind the hedge where I had left Gladys.
Just in time. I froze behind the box hedge—trying not to breathe—as the human bulldog went lumbering past.
“Who’s there?” he demanded again, and I heard the rooster throw himself at the wire mesh with a wild crowing.
A few more coarse oaths and my pursuer was gone. I cannot bring myself to record his exact words, but will keep them in mind against the day I can put them to good use.
I waited for a minute or two to be sure, then dragged Gladys from behind the hedge and set off for home.
As I pedaled along I did my best to look like a respectable English girl out for a bracing bicycle ride in the fresh air.
But somehow I doubted that my charade would convince anyone: My hands and face were filthy, my wrists and ankles were bleeding, my knees were scraped to the bone, and my clothing would have to be tossed in the dustbin.
Father would not be amused.
And what if, in my absence, they had discovered Porcelain in my bedroom? What if she had awakened and wandered downstairs? Or into Father’s study!
Although I had never before cringed on a bicycle, I cringed.
“I caught her crawling in at one of the windows of the picture gallery,” Feely said. “Like a common housebreaker. Can you imagine? I’d gone there to study the Maggs painting of Ajax, and—”
Maggs was a ruffian painter who had lived in the vicinity of Bishop’s Lacey during the Regency, and Ajax a horse that had been bought on a whim by one of my ancestors, Florizel de Luce. Ajax had rewarded his new owner by going on to win enough races that Florizel was able to have himself elected to a rotten borough.
“Thank you, Ophelia,” Father said.
Feely cast down humble eyes and drifted out the door, where she would sit on the chair in the hallway to eavesdrop comfortably upon my humiliation.
“Do you know what day it is, Flavia?” Father began.
“Sunday,” I said without hesitation, although yesterday’s fête at St. Tancred’s seemed as far removed in time as the last ice age.
“Precisely,” Father said. “And what have we done on Sundays since time immemorial?”
“Gone to church,” I replied like a trained macaw.
Church! I’d forgotten all about it.
“I’d thought to let you lie in this morning to recover from that nasty business in the Palings. Next thing I know, there’s an inspector at the door and you’re wanted for fingerprinting.
“Now I’m informed that there’s a dead body on the Trafalgar Lawn and that you’re nosing about the village asking impertinent questions.”
“Miss Mountjoy?” I ventured.
Give a little, learn a lot. That was going to be my Motto of the Month. I would have to remember to jot it down in my notebook.
But wait! How could Miss Mountjoy have known about the body on the lawn? Unless—
“Miss Mountjoy,” Father confirmed. “She telephoned to ask if you’d got home safely.”
The old harpy! She must have got up from her settee and been peering out through the trailing seaweed fronds of the willow tree, spying on my encounters with the rooster and the bulldog-man.
“How very kind of her,” I said. “I must remember to send her a card.”
I’d send her a card, all right. It would be the Ace of Spades, and I’d mail it anonymously from somewhere other than Bishop’s Lacey. Philip Odell, the detective on the wireless, had once investigated such a case, and it had been a cracking good story—one of his best adventures.
“And your dress!” Father went on. “What have you done to your dress?”
My dress? Hadn’t Miss Mountjoy described to him fully what she’d seen?
Hold on!—perhaps she hadn’t after all. Perhaps Father was still unaware of what had taken place at the coach house.
God bless you, Miss Mountjoy! I thought. May you live forever in the company of those saints and martyrs who refused to tell them where the church plate was buried.
But wasn’t Father going to remark upon my cuts and abrasions?
Apparently not.
And it was at that moment, I think, it began to dawn upon me—truly dawn upon me—that there were things that were never mentioned in polite company no matter what; that blue blood was heavier than red; that manners and appearances and the stiff upper lip were all of them more important, even, than life itself.
“Flavia,” Father repeated, fighting to keep from wringing his hands, “I asked you a question. What have you done to your dress?”
I looked down at myself as if noticing the damage for the first time.
“My dress?” I said, smoothing it down and making sure he had a good view of my bloodied wrist and knees. “Oh, I’m sor
ry, Father. It’s nothing. I had a bit of a prang with my bicycle. Jolly bad luck, but still—I’ll rinse it out at once and mend it myself. It’ll be a piece of cake.”
My acute hearing detected the sound of a coarse snicker in the hallway.
But I’d like to believe that what I saw in Father’s eyes was pride.
TWELVE
PORCELAIN WAS SLEEPING THE sleep of the dead. I had worried in vain.
I stood looking down at her as she lay on my bed in much the same position as when I had left her. The dark swatches under her eyes seemed to have lightened, and her breathing was almost imperceptible.
Two seconds later there was a flurry of furious motion and I was pinned to the bed with Porcelain’s thumbs pressing into my windpipe.
“Fiend!” I thought she hissed.
I struggled to get free but I couldn’t move. Bright stars were bursting in my brain as I clawed at her hands. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I tried to pull away.
But I was no match for her. She was bigger and stronger than me, and already I could feel myself becoming languid and uncaring. How easy it would be to give in …
But no!
I stopped trying to fight her hands and instead took hold of her nose with my thumb and forefinger. With my last remaining strength I gave it a most vicious twist.
“Flavia!”
She seemed suddenly surprised to see me—as if we were old friends who had met unexpectedly in front of a lovely Vermeer in the National Gallery.
Her hands withdrew themselves from my throat, but still I couldn’t seem to breathe. I rolled off the bed and onto the floor, seized with a fit of coughing.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, looking round in puzzlement.
“What are you doing?” I croaked. “You’ve crushed my windpipe!”
“Oh, God!” she said. “How awful. I’m sorry, Flavia—really I am. I was dreaming I was in Fenella’s caravan and there was some horrid … beast! … standing over me. I think it was—”
“Yes?”
She looked away from me. “I … I’m sorry. I can’t tell you.”
