Speaking From Among the Bones

by Alan Bradley

  But I did not hear them: My ears were too stopped up with the roaring of my own blood.

  Inspector Hewitt had actually winked at me!

  But wait—

  Now he was rubbing at his eye, pulling down his lower eyelid, examining something—a bit of grit, perhaps—on his fingertip.

  Curses!

  It was nothing more than a bit of crypt dust, or perhaps a particle of some ancient citizen of Bishop’s Lacey—even one of my own ancestors.

  I gave him a look of professional concern and handed him my handkerchief.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I have my own.

  “Now then,” he went on, as if nothing had happened, “describe to me,from the beginning, what took place—from the time that you arrived at the church this morning.”

  And so I did: I told him about the van in the churchyard, the vicar and Marmaduke Parr in the porch, Mr. Haskins in the tower, George Battle and Norman and Tommy and the other workman in the crypt. I told him about the levering out of the stone, and of my peering behind it. The only detail I withheld was the wooden chest over which I had found Mr. Haskins hovering.

  After all, I had to leave something for the poor man to discover for himself.

  “Thank you,” the Inspector said when I had finished. “If there’s anything else, I shall send someone to Buckshaw.”

  Even just a few months ago, I should have spat and stalked off at such an abrupt dismissal. But things had changed. I’d come to know, even if only a little, the Inspector’s wife, Antigone, and their personal little tragedies.

  “Right, then,” I said. “Cheerio!”

  I thought that I had pitched it just right.

  Gladys was waiting in the weeds, and she gave a small squeak of delight as I grabbed her handlebars and pointed her toward the road.

  It was still barely breakfast time as we splashed our way home, me whistling “Land of Hope and Glory,” and Gladys happily clanking out the beat with her rattling chain.

  •FIVE•

  It wasn’t until I was nearly home—not, in fact, until I was sweeping past the great stone griffins that guarded the Mulford Gates—that I realized I had overlooked two very important things. The first was that business of the bat, and how it had managed to get into the church. The second was this: If the tomb in the crypt was occupied by the remains of Mr. Collicutt, where on earth, then, were the bones of Saint Tancred?

  As Buckshaw loomed up at the end of the long avenue of chestnut trees, I realized with a shock that I was thoroughly soaked. The morning mist had slowly and almost imperceptibly, as the English mist loves to do, transformed itself into a downright drizzle. I’d left my mackintosh in the church tower and now my cardigan, my blouse, my skirt, and my socks were stuck to my body like saturated bath sponges.

  Gladys, too, was caked with mud and other bits of road debris.

  “We need a bath, old girl,” I told her, as we crunched across the sweep of gravel at the front door.

  Father, Daffy, and Feely, I knew, would still be at breakfast. Wheeling Gladys through the foyer was out of the question because of the mud, and the kitchen entrance, at least at this time of day, was under the very nose of Mrs. Mullet.

  I put a finger to my lips and, rolling Gladys silently round the corner and along the east side of the house, propped her directly below one of my bedroom windows.

  “Wait here. I’ll scout out the territory,” I whispered.

  I whipped back round to the front and crept silently into the foyer.

  I needn’t have worried. The usual breakfast-time hush hung over the dining room. Father would be poring over the latest philatelic journal, and Daffy would by now have her nose in The Monk, which Carl Pendracka had given her for Christmas. I couldn’t help thinking he must have some ulterior motive.

  Was he trying to gain her support for the begging of Feely’s hand? Or could it be that Daffy was his second choice? At thirteen, Daffy was far too young for courtship, but Americans have far more patience than we British who, after six years of war, want the earth and want it now, at least according to Clarence Mundy, who operated the only taxicab in Bishop’s Lacey. Clarence had confided this bit of information as he drove Mrs. Mullet and me over to Hinley to replace a copper cooker which I had ruined with a chemical experiment involving the preservation of frog skins.

  “War brides!” he’d said. “That’s all the Americans think about nowadays is making off with a war bride. If they keep on the way they’re going, why, there won’t be nothing left for the home-born working lad.”

  “It’s the bomb,” Mrs. Mullet had replied. “That’s what my Alf says. Everybody’s afraid of ’em since they’ve got the bomb.”

  “Arrr,” Clarence had grumbled before falling into silence.

  I tiptoed up the staircase to the east wing, where my laboratory and bedroom were located. All of the bedrooms at Buckshaw were vast, windblown wastelands which were more suited to the mooring of airships than to the dreaming of sweet dreams, and mine was more remote and desolate than most.

  This part of the house had been largely abandoned: its unheated immensity, its sprung floors, its blank, blind windows, its billowing wallpaper, its smell of mildew, and its eternal drafts made it the perfect place to be left alone. I dwelt there by choice in privacy and peace.

  I stripped the sheets from my bed, and with the addition of a couple of old afghans, quickly fashioned a makeshift rope with a large loop in one end.

  Throwing open the sash, I lowered the loop until I was able to lasso Gladys’s handlebars.

  “Easy, now … easy!” I whispered as I hauled her slowly up the outside wall and dragged her in at the window.

  In less time than you could say “cyanide,” Gladys was leaning against the end of my bed, filthy of fender and still a little giddy from her ascent, but happy to be home and indoors.

  I wound up the gramophone, dug out from the pile under my bed a recording of “Whistle While You Work,” and dropped the needle into the scratchy grooves.

  With a bucket of water fetched from the laboratory, I partially filled the tin hip bath and swabbed Gladys down with a loofah. I used my toothbrush to get into the tight places.

  Although she was quite ticklish, Gladys tried to pretend that she wasn’t. It is not a weakness that one likes to advertise. I still shuddered at the memory of being tickled by Feely and Daffy until I was foaming at the mouth.

  “Steady on,” I said. “It’s only hog bristles.”

  I polished her briskly with my flannel nightgown until she fairly gleamed.

  “La la lah la la la la,” I sang along, even managing to whistle a bit of harmony.

  I was the eighth dwarf.

  Sneaky.

  With the dirty work done, I breathed on Gladys’s plated parts, gave them an extra polish, and stepped back to admire my handiwork.

  “You’ll do,” I said.

  I rinsed the sheets in a bucket of clean water, wrung them out, and strung them up to dry in a series of long loops from the picture frame of Joseph Priestley to the chandelier.

  After a quick sponge bath in the sink, I put on clean clothing, brushed my hair and my teeth, and went down for breakfast.

  “Morning, all,” I said in a sleepy voice, rubbing my eyes.

  I needn’t have bothered. Feely was gazing into her teacup, admiring her own reflection. She insisted on drinking it plain, “no cream, thank you,” the better to see herself in the shimmering liquid surface. At the moment, she was blowing on it gently to see what she’d look like with wavy hair.

  Daffy peered at the pages of her book, which was propped open on a toast rack, wiping her jammy fingers on her skirt before turning the next page.

  I lifted the lid on a serving dish and examined its rather grisly contents: a few scraps of burnt bacon, a couple of kippers, a small scrap heap of curdled omelette, and what appeared to be a bundle of boiled bindweed.

  I reached for the last piece of cold toast.

  “Put some parsnip mar
malade on it,” Mrs. Mullet said as she hurried into the room. “Alf’s sister grows ’em in ’er allotment garden. There’s nothin’ as’ll put ’air on your chest like parsnips, Alf says.”

  “I don’t want hair on my chest,” I said. “Besides, Daffy has more than enough for all of us.”

  Daffy made a rude sign with her fingers.

  “So when’s the wedding?” I asked in a cheerful voice.

  Feely’s head came up like a sow’s at the sound of the swill bucket.

  Her wail began somewhere low down in her throat and rose, then fell, like an air raid siren in distress.

  “Faaa-aaa-aaa-ther!”

  It faded finally and ended in tears. It fascinated me the way in which my sister was able to transform herself from Health Queen to hag in less than the twinkling of an eye.

  Father closed his journal, removed his spectacles, put them back on again, and fixed me with that crippling de Luce stare of coldest blue.

  “Where did you happen upon that bit of information, Flavia?” he asked in an Antarctic voice.

  “She’s been listening at keyholes!” Feely said. “She’s always listening at keyholes.”

  “Or at hot-air registers,” Daffy added, The Monk forgotten for a moment.

  “Well?” Father asked, his voice an icicle.

  “I just assumed,” I said, thinking more quickly than I’ve ever thought before, “now that she’s eighteen—”

  Father had always said that no daughter of his would ever marry until she was at least eighteen, and even then …

  Feely’s eighteenth birthday had been not long before, in January.

  How could I forget it?

  To celebrate the happy occasion, I had planned a small display of indoor fireworks: just a few bangers, really, and a couple of gaily colored carpet rockets. I had mailed written invitations to everyone in the household and watched, hugging myself in secret delight, as each person took their hand-printed summons from the mail salver in the foyer, opened it, and then set them aside without a word.

  I had followed up with a series of handmade posters placed strategically throughout the house.

  On the day itself, I set up a row of five wooden chairs: one for Father, one for Feely, one for Daffy, and a pair together at one end for Mrs. Mullet and Dogger.

  I had prepared my chemicals. The appointed time had come and gone.

  “They’re not coming, Dogger,” I’d said after twenty minutes.

  “Shall I fetch them, Miss Flavia?” Dogger had asked. He was sitting calmly in one of the chairs with a charged seltzer bottle in his hands in case of small fires.

  “No!” I said, far too loudly.

  “Perhaps they’ve forgotten,” Dogger suggested.

  “No, they haven’t. They don’t care.”

  “You may put on the show for me,” Dogger had said after a while. “I’ve always fancied a nice display of drawing room pyrotechnics.”

  “No!” I’d shouted. “It’s canceled.”

  How bitterly, in time, I was to regret my words.

  “Well?” Father asked again, bringing me back to the present.

  “Well, now that she’s eighteen,” I went on, “it’s only natural that … that her thoughts should turn to thoughts of—

  “—of Holy Matrimony!” I finished triumphantly.

  From behind her book, Daffy let off a wet snicker.

  “No one was to know,” Feely groaned, tearing at her hair dramatically. “Especially you! Damn and blast! Now it will be all over the village.”

  “Ophelia …” Father said, not really putting much into it.

  “Well, it’s true! We wanted to announce it ourselves at Easter. Other than clapping your ears to keyholes, the only way you could could have heard was from the vicar. That was it! The vicar told you! I saw you sneaking in through the foyer an hour ago, and don’t tell me you didn’t. You were at the church and you weaseled it out of the vicar, didn’t you? I should have known. I should have known!”

  “Ophelia …”

  Once my sister got wound up, you might as well take a chair. I certainly didn’t want the blame to fall on Reverend Richardson. His life was hard enough, what with Cynthia and so forth.

  “You little beast!” Feely said. “You filthy little beast!”

  Father got up from the table and left the room. Daffy, who loved a good argument but hated squabbling, followed.

  I was alone with Feely.

  I sat for a moment enjoying her red face and her bugging blue eyes. She didn’t often allow herself go to pieces like that.

  Although I wanted to get back at her, I didn’t want to be the one to break the news to her about the unfortunate Mr. Collicutt.

  Well, actually, I did—but I didn’t want to be blamed for shattering her world.

  “You’re quite right,” I heard myself saying. “I was at church this morning. I went early to say a few private prayers, and just happened to be there when Mr. Collicutt’s body was discovered.”

  Teach you to accuse me of listening at keyholes, I thought.

  The blood drained out of Feely’s face. I knew instantly that my sister was not the murderer. You cannot fake pallor.

  “Mr. Collicutt? Body?”

  She leaped to her feet and sent the teapot crashing to the floor.

  “’Fraid so,” I said. “In the crypt. Wearing a gas mask. Most peculiar.”

  With a truly terrifying wail, Feely fled the room.

  I followed her upstairs.

  “I’m sorry, Feely,” I called softly, tapping at her door. “It just slipped out.”

  Her sobs were muffled by the wooden panels. How long would she be able to resist begging for the gory details? I’d have to wait it out.

  “I know you’re upset, but just think how Alberta Moon is going to take it.”

  A long, shuddering sob ended abruptly in a hiccup.

  I heard the sound of shoes on the carpet and the turning of a key. The door swung open and there stood Feely, damp and devastated.

  “Alberta Moon?” she asked, her hand trembling in front of her mouth.

  I nodded sadly. “Better let me come in,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

  Feely threw herself facedown on the bed. “Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”

  Oddly enough, she used nearly the same words as Inspector Hewitt had, and I told her, as I had told him, my gripping tale, leaving out only those essentials which I wished to keep to myself.

  “A gas mask,” she sobbed as I finished. “Why in heaven’s name would he be wearing a gas mask?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said.

  Actually, I did know—or at least I had a fairly good idea.

  In the past eight or nine months I’d spent a good many hours poring over the pages of Taylor’s Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence, whose photographically illustrated volumes I had been fortunate enough to find hidden away on a high shelf in the stacks of the Bishop’s Lacey Free Library. By a remarkable stroke of fortune, these were similar enough in size to Enid Blyton’s The Island of Adventure, The Castle of Adventure, and The Sea of Adventure that, through a clever bit of jiggering with the dust jackets, I was able to study them closely for as long as I pleased in a remote corner of the reading room.

  “My goodness, Flavia!” Miss Pickery, the head librarian had said, “You are a bookworm, aren’t you?”

  If only she knew.

  “Perhaps there was a gas leak,” Feely said, her voice muffled by the comforter. “Perhaps he was trying to escape the fumes.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, noncommitally.

  Although a carbon monoxide leak from the iron monster in the church basement was a distinct possibility, the problem was this: Since the gas was odorless, colorless, and tasteless, how could Mr. Collicutt have been aware of its presence?

  And it seemed unlikely that, after six weeks, there would be measurable traces of the stuff in whatever was left of his blood. In cases of carbon monoxide poisoni
ng, as I had good reason to know, the gas (CO) bonded to the blood’s hemoglobin, displacing the oxygen it was meant to carry to the body’s cells, and the victim died of simple suffocation. As long as he remained alive (once dragged from the gaseous atmosphere, of course) the carbon monoxide would pass off fairly quickly from the blood, its oxygen being replenished by normal breathing.

  Dead bodies were a different kettle of fish. With respiration at a standstill, carbon monoxide could remain in the body for a considerable length of time. Indeed, it was a fairly well known fact that the monoxide could still be detected in the gases given off by a cadaver that had been dead for months.

  With no easy access to the late Mr. Collicutt’s blood, or his inner organs, it would be nearly impossible to be sure. Even if there had been a pool of blood hidden beneath his body, it would long ago have been reoxygenated by exposure to the air of the crypt, however foul that may be.

  I thought of the moment I first stuck my face into that abyss—of the wave of cold, acrid decay that was swept into my nostrils.

  “Eureka!” I shouted. I couldn’t help myself.

  “What is it?” Feely asked. She couldn’t help herself either.

  “The bat in the organ!” I said excitedly. “It got into the church somehow. I’ll bet there’s a broken window! What do you think, Feely?”

  As an excuse, it was as stale as yesterday’s toast, but it was the best I could come up with on such short notice.

  It’s just as well she couldn’t read my mind. What I was thinking was this: The cold draft coming out of what ought to have been a closed crypt reminded me of what Daffy had told me about the verse on Cassandra Cottlestone’s tomb.

  I didd dye

  And now doe lye

  Att churche’s door

  For euermore

  Pray for mye bodie to sleepe

  And my soule to wayke.

  “She lies at the church’s door,” Daffy had said, “because she was a suicide. That’s why she’s not buried with the rest of the Cottlestones in the crypt. By rights, she shouldn’t have been buried in the churchyard at all, but her father was a magistrate, and was able to move heaven and earth, as it were.”