by Alan Bradley
“Yes?” I said, too quickly and too eagerly.
There were times when Dogger’s memory, having been primed, worked beautifully for a short time, like the vicar’s battered old Oxford which ran well only in the rain.
I crossed my fingers and my ankles and waited, biting my tongue.
Dogger removed his hat and stared into it as if the memory were hidden in its lining. He frowned, wiped his brow on his forearm, and went on hesitantly. “I believe there were several cases reported in The Lancet in the last century in which a patient was recorded as exuding a fishy smell.”
“Perhaps he was a fisherman,” I suggested. Dogger shook his head.
“In neither case was the patient a fisherman, and neither had been known to be in contact with fish. Even after bathing, the piscine odor returned, often following a meal.”
“Of fish?”
Dogger ignored me. “There was, of course, the tale in the Bhagavad Ghita of the princess who exuded a fishy odor …”
“Yes?” I said, settling back as if to hear a fairy tale. Somewhere in the distance, a harvesting machine clattered away softly at its work, and the sun shone down. What a perfect day it was, I thought. “But wait!” I said. “What if his body were producing trimethylamine?”
This was such an exciting thought that I sprang out of the wheelbarrow.
“It would not be unheard of,” Dogger said, thoughtfully. “Shakespeare might have been thinking of just such a complaint:
“ ‘What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish: a very ancient and fish-like smell.’ ”
A chill ran up my spine. Dogger had slipped into the loud and confident voice of an actor who has delivered these lines many and many a time before.
“The Tempest,” he said quietly. “Act two, scene two, if I’m not mistaken. Trinculo, you’ll recall, is speaking of Caliban.”
“Where do you dig up these things?” I asked in admiration.
“On the wireless,” Dogger said. “We listened to it some weeks ago.”
It was true. At Buckshaw, Thursday evenings were devoted to compulsory wireless listening, and we had recently been made to sit through an adaption of The Tempest without fidgeting.
Other than the marvelous sound effects of the storm, I didn’t remember much about the play, but obviously Dogger did.
“Is there a name for this fishy condition?” I asked.
“Not to the best of my knowledge,” he said. “It is exceedingly rare. I believe …”
“Go on,” I said, eagerly.
But when I looked up at Dogger, the light in his eyes had gone out. He sat staring at his hat, which he held clutched in his trembling hands as if he had never seen it before.
“I believe I’ll go to my room now,” he said, getting slowly to his feet.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I think I will, too. A nice nap before dinner will do both of us good.”
But I’m not sure that Dogger heard me. He was already shambling off towards the kitchen door.
When he was gone, I turned my attention to the wooden tea chest he had been nailing shut. In one corner was pasted a paper label, upon which was written in ink:
THIS SIDE UP - Contents - Silver Cutlery - de Luce - Buckshaw
Cutlery? Had Dogger packed the Mumpeters in this crate? Mother and Father Mumpeter? Little Grindlestick and her silver sisters?
Is that why he’d been polishing them?
Why on earth would he do such a thing? The Mumpeters were my childhood playthings, and the very thought of anyone—
But hadn’t Brookie Harewood been murdered with one of the pieces from this set? What if the police—?
I walked round to the far side of the crate: the side that Dogger had turned away from me as I approached.
As I read the words that were stenciled in awful black letters on the boards, something vile and sour rose up in my throat.
Sotheby’s, New Bond Street, London, W.C., it said.
Father was sending away the family silver to be auctioned.
NINETEEN
DINNER WAS A GRIM affair.
The worst of it was that Father had come to the table without The London Philatelist. Instead of reading, he insisted upon solicitously passing me the peas and asking, “Did you have a nice day today, Flavia?”
It almost broke my heart.
Although Father had spoken several times of his financial troubles, they had never seemed threatening: no more than a distant shadow, really, like war—or death. You knew it was there but you didn’t spend all day fretting about it.
But now, with the Mumpeters nailed up inside a crate, ready to be taken to the train for London and pawed over by strangers at the auction rooms, the reality of Father’s predicament had hit home with the force of a typhoon.
And Father—the dear man—was trying to shield us from the reality by making bright table chatter.
I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, but I dared not give in to them. It was fortunate that Daffy, who sat across from me, did not even once look up from her book.
To my left, at the far end of the table, Feely sat staring down into her lap, her face pale, her colorless lips pressed together into a tight, thin line. The dark circles under her eyes were like bruises, and her hair was lank and lifeless.
The only word to describe her was “blighted.”
My chemical wizardry had worked!
The proof of it was the fact that Feely was wearing her spectacles, which told me, without a doubt, that she had spent the day staring in horror at the spirit message that had materialized upon her looking glass.
In spite of her occasional cruelty—or perhaps because of it—Feely was a pious sort, whose time was devoted to making bargains with this saint or that about the clarity of her complexion, or the way in which a random beam of sunlight would strike her golden hair as she knelt at the altar for communion.
Where I generally believed in chemistry and the happy dance of the atom, Feely believed in the supernatural, and it was that belief I had taken advantage of.
But what had I done? I hadn’t counted on such utter devastation.
Part of my brain was telling me to leap up and run to her—to throw my arms around her neck and tell her that it was only French chalk—and not God—that had caused her misery. And then we would laugh together as we used to in the olden days.
But I couldn’t: If I did, I should have to confess to my prank in front of Father, and I wanted to spare him any further grief.
Besides, Feely would more than likely stab me to death with whatever came to hand, snow white tablecloth or not.
Which made me think of Brookie Harewood. How odd! There hadn’t been a word at the dinner table about murder. Or was it now murders, plural?
It was then, I think, that I noticed the cutlery. Instead of our usual silver utensils, I realized that each of our places had been set with the yellow-handled knives and forks that were kept in the kitchen for the use of the servants.
I could contain it no longer. I scraped my chair back from the table, mumbled something about being excused, and fled. By the time I reached the foyer, my tears were splashing about me like rain on the black-and-white checkerboard of the tiles.
I threw myself onto the bed and buried my face in the pillow.
How could revenge hurt so keenly? It didn’t make any sense. It simply didn’t. Revenge was supposed to be sweet—and so was victory!
As I lay there, flattened by misery, I heard the unmistakeable sound of Father’s leather-soled shoes outside in the hall.
I could hardly believe my ears. Father in the east wing? This was the first time since I had moved into it that he had set foot in this part of the house.
Father came slowly into the room, shuffling a little, and I heard him pause. A moment later I felt the bed sink a little as he sat down beside me.
I kept my face pressed tightly into the pillow.
After what seemed like a very long time,
I felt his hand gently touching my head—but only for a moment.
He did not stroke my hair, nor did he speak, and I was glad he didn’t. His silence spared both of us the embarrassment of not knowing what to say.
And then he was gone, as quietly as he had come.
And I slept.
In the morning, the world seemed a different place.
I whistled in my bath. I even remembered to scrub my elbows.
It had come to me in the night, as if in a dream, that I must apologize to Feely. It was as simple as that.
In the first place, it would disarm her. In the second place, it would impress Father, if Feely had told him what I had done. And finally, it would make me feel all warm and self-righteous about doing the decent thing.
Besides, if I played my cards right, I could also pump Feely for information about Vanetta Harewood. I would not, of course, tell her about the lost portrait of Harriet.
It was the perfect solution.
There’s nothing as beautiful as the sound of a piano in the next room. A little distance gives the instrument a heart—at least to my sensitive hearing, it does.
As I stood outside the drawing-room door, Feely was practicing something by Rameau: Les Sauvages, I think it was called. It sometimes made me think of a moonlight glade—the Palings, perhaps—with a tribe of devils dancing in a circle like maniacs: So much more pleasing, I thought, than that sleepy old thing on the same topic by Beethoven.
I straightened my back and squared my shoulders. Feely was always telling me to square my shoulders, and I thought she’d be happy to see that I’d remembered.
The instant I opened the door, the music stopped and Feely looked up from the keyboard. She was learning to play without her spectacles, and she was not wearing them now.
I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she looked.
Her eyes, which I had expected to be like a pair of open coal holes, shone with a cold blue brilliance in the morning light. It was like being glared at by Father.
“Yes?” she said.
“I—I’ve come to say I’m sorry,” I told her.
“Then do so.”
“I just did, Feely!”
“No, you didn’t. You made a statement of fact. You stated that you had come to say you’re sorry. You may begin.”
This was going to be more humiliating than I thought.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “for writing on your mirror.”
“Yes?”
I swallowed and went on. “It was a mean and thoughtless trick.”
“It was indeed, you odious little worm.”
She got up from the piano bench and came towards me—menacingly, I thought. I shrank back a little.
“Of course I knew at once that it was you. Deuteronomy? The boils of Egypt? The emerods? The scurvy and the itch? It had Flavia de Luce written all over it. You might just as well have signed the thing—like a painting.”
“That’s not true, Feely. You were devastated. I saw the circles under your eyes at dinner!”
Feely threw her head back and laughed.
“Makeup!” she crowed. “French chalk! Two can play at that game, you stupid moke. A bit of French chalk and a pinch of ashes from the grate. It took me all afternoon to get it just the right shade. You should have seen your face! Daffy said she almost had an accident trying not to laugh!”
My face began to burn.
“Didn’t you, Daff?”
There was the sound of a wet snicker behind me, and I spun round to find Daffy coming through the doorway—blocking my route of escape.
“ ‘It was a mean and thoughtless trick,’ ” she said, imitating me in a grating, falsetto, parrot voice.
She had been eavesdropping on my apology from outside in the hallway!
But now, rather than flying at her in fury, as I might have done even yesterday, I gathered up every last scrap of inner strength and attacked her with a new and untried tool: clear, cold calm.
“Who is Hilda Muir?” I asked, and Daffy stopped moving instantly, as if she had been frozen in a snapshot.
The appeal to a superior knowledge. And it worked!
By coming to one of my sisters in humility and keeping my temper with the other, I had gained in just a few minutes not one, but two new weapons.
“What?”
“Hilda Muir. She’s something to do with the Palings.”
“Hilda Muir,” Fenella had said, when we’d first spotted Mrs. Bull in the Gully. “Hilda Muir.” She’d said it again when I brought the elder branches to the caravan. “Now we are all dead!”
“Who is Hilda Muir?” I asked again in my new and maddeningly calm voice.
“Hilda Muir? The Palings? You must mean the Hildemoer. She’s not a person, you idiot. She’s the spirit of the elder branches. She comes to punish people who cut her branches without first asking permission. You didn’t cut any elder branches, did you?” (This with another wet snicker.)
Daffy must have seen the effect her words had on me. “I truly hope you didn’t. They sometimes plant them on a grave to indicate whether the dead person is happy in the next world. If the elder grows, all’s well. If not—”
The next world? I thought. Hadn’t Porcelain watched the police pull a baby’s body from the very spot—or very near it—that I had cut the elder for firewood?
“The Hildemoer’s a pixy,” Daffy went on. “Don’t you remember what we told you about the pixies? For heaven’s sake, Flavia—it was only a couple of days ago. The pixies are the Old Ones—those horrid creatures who stole Harriet’s precious baby and left you in its place.”
My mind was an inferno. I could feel the anger rushing back like the Red Sea after the passage of the Israelites.
“I hope you didn’t cut elder from someone’s grave,” she went on. “Because if you did—”
“Thank you, Daffy,” I said. “You’ve been most informative.”
Without another word, I brushed past her and stalked out of the drawing room.
With the mocking laughter of my darling sisters still ringing in my ears, I fled down the echoing hall.
TWENTY
IN THE LABORATORY I locked the door and waited to see what my hands were going to do.
It was always like this. If I just relaxed and tried not to think too hard, the great god Chemistry would guide me.
After a time, although I’m not sure why, I reached for three bottles and placed them on the bench.
Using a pipette, I measured half an ounce of a clear liquid from the first of these into a calibrated test tube. From the second bottle I measured three ounces of another fluid into a small flask. I watched in fascination as I combined the two clear fluids with several ounces of distilled water, and before my eyes a reddish color appeared.
Presto chango! Aqua regia … royal water!
The ancient alchemists gave it that name because it is capable of dissolving gold, which they considered to be the king of metals.
I have to admit that manufacturing the stuff myself never fails to excite me.
Actually, aqua regia is more orange than red: the precise color of pomegranates, if I remember correctly. Yes, pomegranates—that was it.
I had once seen these exotic fruits in a shop window in the high street. Mr. Hughes, the greengrocer, had imported the things on a trial basis, but they had remained in his shop window until they blackened and caved in upon themselves like rotted puffballs.
“Bishop’s Lacey’s been’t ready for pomegranates yet,” he had told Mrs. Mullet. “We don’t deserves ’em.”
I had always marveled at the way in which three clear liquids—nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, and water—when combined could produce, as if by magic, color—and not just any color, but the color of a flaming sunset.
The swirling shades of orange in the glass seemed to illustrate perfectly the thoughts that were swarming round and round, mixing in my mind.
It was all so confoundedly complicated: the attack upon Fenella, the gruesome de
ath of Brookie Harewood, the sudden appearance and equally sudden disappearance of Porcelain, Harriet’s firedogs turning up in not one but three different locations, the strange antiques shop of the abominable Pettibones, Miss Mountjoy and the Hobblers, Vanetta Harewood’s long-lost portrait of Harriet, and underneath it all, like the rumble of a stuck organ pipe, the constant low drone of Father’s looming bankruptcy.
It was enough to make an archangel spit.
In its container, the aqua regia was growing darker by the minute, as if it, too, were waiting impatiently for answers.
And suddenly I saw the way.
Lighting a Bunsen burner, I set it beneath the flask. I would warm the acid gently before proceeding with the next step.
From a cupboard I took down a small wooden box upon the end of which Uncle Tar had penciled the word “platinum”; and slid open the lid. Inside were perhaps a dozen flat squares of the silvery-gray mineral, none larger than an adult’s fingernail. I selected a piece that weighed perhaps a quarter of an ounce.
When the aqua regia had reached the proper temperature, I picked up the bit of platinum with a pair of tweezers and held it above the mouth of the flask. Aside from the hiss of the gas, the laboratory was so quiet that I actually heard the tiny plop as I let the platinum drop into the fluid.
For a moment, nothing happened.
But now the liquid in the flask was a darkening red.
And then the platinum began to writhe.
This was the part I liked best!
As if in agony, the bit of metal crept towards the glass wall of the flask, trying to escape the acids that were consuming it.
And suddenly poof! The platinum was gone.
I could almost hear the aqua regia licking its lips. “More, please!”
It wasn’t that the platinum had not put up a noble fight, because it had. The important thing, I reminded myself, was this: Platinum cannot be dissolved by any one acid!
No, platinum could not be dissolved by nitric acid alone, and it merely laughed a jolly “ha-ha!” at hydrochloric acid. Only when the two combined could platinum be broken down.
