by Alan Bradley
“Your father had been sentenced to death by the Japanese. His crime? Refusing to name those men under his command who had been involved in planning an escape. I’m not going to tell you what they did to him, Flavia: It would not be decent.”
She paused to let me realize what she had just said. “In spite of the primitive conditions, and using not much more than the utensils from a mess kit, Dogger somehow managed to keep your father from bleeding to death.”
My throat was instantly hard and dry. I could not swallow.
“For his troubles, Dogger was sent to work on the Death Railway.”
The Death Railway! The brutal road that had been hacked by prisoners of war for more than two hundred miles through forbidding hills and jungles from Thailand to Burma. I had looked with horror at the ghastly images in the old news magazines: the skeletal laborers, the haunted faces, the crude graves by the wayside. A hundred thousand dead. There was more—much more—some of it too sickening to read.
“For Dogger,” Aunt Felicity went on, “that was only the beginning. He was sent to work on what came to be known as Hellfire Pass, a notorious section of the line upon which he and his fellow prisoners were forced to dig through sheer rock using little more than primitive tools and their own bare hands.”
“How awful,” I said, aware even as I spoke of how trivial my words must sound.
“Cholera broke out, as it often does under such appalling conditions. Dysentery followed by starvation, followed by—
“In spite of his own shocking physical condition, Dogger attempted to deal with the casualties.”
She broke off suddenly. “I think it best at this point, Flavia, to bring down a curtain upon the scene. There are things too terrible to be described by mere words.”
My brain understood what she was saying, even if I did not.
“Your father and Dogger did not meet again until the end of the War, when they were thrown together by chance at a hospital operated by the British Red Cross.
“They didn’t recognize each other until a chaplain introduced them. The padre said later of their reunion that even God cried—”
“Please, Aunt Felicity,” I said. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“You’re a wise child,” she said. “I don’t want to tell you any more.”
We stood there for a few more minutes saying nothing. Then, without a word, Aunt Felicity turned and left the room, leaving me alone with Harriet.
SEVENTEEN
I LISTENED AT THE door to the low hum of voices outside.
Taking a deep breath and turning the knob, I stepped solemnly into the hall.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “Friends … neighbors—”
I was trying desperately to think how Father would phrase it. “I know that you’ve been waiting patiently for a very long time, and I can’t tell you how much the family appreciates it. But I’m afraid that we’re going to have to close the house for the rest of this evening. There are, as you can imagine, many details which must be seen to before my mother’s funeral, and I—”
An appeal to their imaginations seemed like an inspired touch, but still, there was a murmur of disappointment.
“It’s all right, ducks,” said the woman with the duck eyes, and I nearly burst into hysterical laughter at my private joke.
“We all know what you’ve been through”—she pronounced it “froo”—“We all know what you’ve been froo, so you don’t have to tell us twice when to clear out.”
“You’re very kind,” I said. “I’m glad you understand. We shall resume in the morning at a quarter past nine.”
By that time, Daffy would be ending her shift, and I, for better or for worse, would have finished most of what I had come to do.
If, as I hoped, history had been made in the night, tomorrow’s early mourners would arrive to find the tomb empty, so to speak.
It promised to be a most interesting day.
The woman with the duck eyes had actually begun to walk away, but now she turned and called back to me, almost desperately: “Miss Harriet babysat me and my sister once. Our mam was taken sudden with the appendix, and Miss Harriet, God bless her, made us brown sugar sangriches.”
I gave her a sad smile: sad because I hated her—no, not hated—envied her for this sudden stabbing memory of Harriet, who had never made brown sugar sandwiches—or any other kind, for that matter—for me, at least that I could remember.
My announcement was relayed from person to person back along the line; people began to turn reluctantly away, and in a few minutes, the hall was empty.
As the last few stragglers made their way down the west staircase, I slipped quietly through the baize door, which opened into the northwest corner of the house, and by a roundabout trek, made my way to the east wing. Again, except for Lena and Undine, there was little danger of a personal encounter.
Within minutes I was on my way back from the laboratory, ticking off once more in my mind a list of the tools I had carefully laid out for myself: tin-snips, torch, gloves, screwdriver, and coal scuttle, to say nothing of the ATP and the thiamine, which, wrapped in handkerchiefs, were stuffed safely into my pocket to keep from breaking or rattling. In the coal scuttle was a brass alarm clock I had brought from my bedroom: a last-minute addition which might have doomed the entire operation had it been forgotten.
Back in Harriet’s boudoir, I leaned thankfully against the door and heaved a sigh of relief. I hadn’t been spotted.
The lock gave a satisfying click as I turned the key, which I then removed and dropped into my pocket.
This is it, I thought, glancing at the clock. Time to show them what you’re made of, Flavia.
It was 7:22.
Time to remove the black pall with which Harriet’s coffin had been draped.
But before beginning my actual work, I replaced and relit each one of the now guttering candles at the head and foot of the catafalque.
I would be needing all the light and all the heat they could generate.
Dare Lucem.
The coffin screws were the easy part. Since they were new and had not been moldering and rusting away in some damp old churchyard, they would be almost ridiculously simple to remove. In such a short time that it surprised even me, I had them loosened.
Now came the moment of truth.
“Saint Tancred, help me,” I whispered. “Harriet, forgive me.”
And with that, I lifted the lid.
It was as I had expected: Beneath the wooden lid was an inner coffin of zinc. Zinc for lightness, and although it was a somewhat harder metal than lead, still as easy as butter to cut through with the tin-snips.
Beneath the zinc, though, would be the face of my mother. What would she look like?
I began to prepare myself mentally. I forced myself to think like a scientist.
If her body was corrupt, I would go no further. There would be no point in it.
But if, on the other hand, she had been preserved miraculously in the ice of the glacier, I would begin immediately my efforts to restore her to life.
I worried a small hole in the zinc with the tip of the screwdriver and inserted one of the blades of the metal-cutting scissors.
Snip!
It was more difficult than I had thought.
Snip!
Already my thumb and forefinger were starting to feel bruised.
A slight gush of wind—or was it my imagination?—escaped from the coffin. I wrinkled my nose at the peculiar odor of soil, ice—and something else.
Had there been the faintest whiff of Harriet’s scent, Miratrix?
Perhaps I was only willing it to be so.
Snip!
My fingers were already in pain, but I kept on cutting.
After what seemed an eternity, I had made a three-sided incision of no more than a foot each side. If my calculations were correct, I was working directly over Harriet’s face and chest.
Careful, I thought. Mustn’t damage her.
&
nbsp; It was at that precise instant that I realized I had forgotten the blowtorch. If I needed to reseal the inner coffin, I would have to solder shut the cuts I had made in the zinc.
In order to do that, I would need not only the torch and a good supply of lead/tin solder, but also a sufficient quantity of flux. The first two were easy enough: Uncle Tar had kept the laboratory stocked well enough with tools to keep from ever having to bring in overly inquisitive tradesmen to repair his plumbing. The flux, though, was another matter. I had planned to concoct it myself by “killing” a solution of hydrochloric acid and water with bits of zinc dropped into it.
If I needed to do that now, it would require another trip to the lab and further delay.
Snip!
And then there was this: Although I had no fear of corpses, this one was obviously different. Would the act of coming face-to-face with my frozen mother result in some completely unforeseen shock to my system?
There was only one way to find out.
I inserted the screwdriver into the top edge of the cut and pried back the zinc with my fingers.
A wave of weakness washed over me. I nearly fainted.
There, just inches from my invading eyes, cradled in tendrils of curling gases, was the face of my mother, the long-lost Harriet.
Except for a slight darkening of the end of her nose, she looked exactly as she had in all the photos I had ever seen.
Fortunately, her eyes were closed.
She had a tiny smile on her lips—that was the first thing I noticed—and her skin was as pale as that of any fairy-tale ice princess.
It was like coming face-to-face with an image of my older self in a frosty mirror.
I was shaken with a shiver.
“Mother,” I whispered. “It’s me—Flavia.”
She did not respond, of course, but it had been necessary to speak to her nonetheless.
Something slipped and fell down beside her neck: a bit of solidified carbon dioxide. I had been right. They had packed her in card ice for the long trip home.
Vapors were rising from the coffin, swirling briefly in the light of the flickering candles before cascading in slow drifts to the floor to form an ankle-deep mist.
I touched her face with my forefinger. She was cold.
How easy it is to say that, and yet so difficult to do.
I became aware that my emotions were writhing inside me like snakes in a pit.
Some part of me of which I was not in control made me bend over and kiss her lips.
They were hard and as dry as parchment.
“Get on with it, Flavia,” I was telling myself. “You haven’t a lot of time.”
I needed to know at the outset if there was any warmth—any heartbeat. There wouldn’t be, of course, but I had to be sure. Every experiment must start with some basic given.
Harriet was still dressed in the climbing gear in which she had been found, with an outer coat of tan-colored gabardine that was already beginning to thaw, or at least to soften a bit from the heat of the candles.
I unfastened a stiff button on her breast and worked a hand inside, feeling for her heart.
As always, I had that brief irrational fear that I’ve had before with corpses: the feeling that the dead person is going to leap up suddenly, shout “Boo!,” and seize one’s hand in a deadly grip of ice.
Nothing of the sort happened, of course.
What did happen was that, among what felt like layered wool and silk and cotton, my fingers came into contact with something more substantial than fabric.
I moved my hand as gently as possible. Whatever was tucked inside Harriet’s clothing felt somewhat damp from the card ice, and brittle.
I seized it with the scissors of my first and second fingers and slowly worked it out and into the light: a large oilcloth wallet. It was as rigid as frozen fish skin.
I opened it with great care, but even so, several large flakes peeled off and fell away onto Harriet’s breast.
Inside was a single sheet of grayish musty paper, water-stained and folded into four.
My hands trembled as I flattened it out and read the penciled words:
This is the last will and testament of Harriet de Luce.
I hereby give, devise, and bequeath to my—
Bang!
I nearly leaped out of my hide.
A thunderous knock at the door was followed by another and another and yet another: Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
My immediate thought was that the noise would waken Father, whose bedroom was next door to Harriet’s boudoir. Or had Dogger, perhaps, given Father something to make him sleep?
“Who is it?” I called, my voice shaky in the sudden silence.
“It’s Lena,” came the hissed reply, muffled by the heavy paneling. “Unlock this door and let me in.”
I was too shocked to reply. Here I was standing over an open coffin, nearly nose-to-nose with my mother’s body, her last will and testament shaking in my hand—
It was like a fevered nightmare.
“Flavia!”
“Yes?” It was all I could think of.
“Open this door at once.”
Sometimes a very great shock has the effect of slowing down time, and this is exactly what happened. Almost as if disembodied, I watched myself shove the will into the wallet, drop it into the coal scuttle, close the zinc flap of the inner coffin, grab and replace the wooden lid from where I had leaned it against the wall, drape it with the black pall, shove the coal scuttle under and behind one of the heavy velvet hangings, turn the key, and open the door, all in slow motion.
“What are you doing?” Lena demanded. “Why did you have this door locked?”
As if I hadn’t heard, I sank to my knees on the carved prie-dieu that had been provided for those who might wish to offer their prayers for the repose of Harriet’s soul. I hoped that it would look as if I had been there all along.
“What are you doing?” she repeated.
“Praying for my mother,” I said, after a long-enough pause.
I crossed myself and got to my feet. “What is it, Lena?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”
One way of getting an immediate upper hand in a pinch is, as I have mentioned, to make use of an adult’s name.
“You frightened me,” I added.
Another way is to squeeze in an accusation—even a veiled one—before the other person has a chance to say a word.
“I thought I smelled smoke,” she said. “It seemed to be coming from here.”
“It’s the candles,” I said immediately. “They’re awfully hot—and there are so many of them. With these heavy hangings—” I waved my hand vaguely. “And with all the windows shut—”
“I suppose,” she said, sounding somewhat skeptical, but having a good look round the room nevertheless.
From where we stood near the door, everything appeared to be in order, every detail as it had been before I began.
It was at that instant that my supersensitive hearing registered a new sound in the room.
Drip.
Drip.
It was agonizingly slow, but as evident to my ears as a series of cannon shots.
Surely Lena must be able to hear it.
“So everything is all right, then?” she asked.
I gave her a sad nod.
“Very well,” she said, but she made no move to leave. Rather, she looked slowly round the room as if satisfying herself that no stranger’s ears were listening, although there might have been armies of eavesdroppers lurking behind the vast black velvet hangings.
“You will recall that I told you I was going to confide in you, Flavia. That I was going to seek your assistance. We were interrupted when that dreadful man terrified us with his aeroplane.”
“Tristram Tallis,” I said.
“Yes.”
Drip!
Drip!
I knew at once where the sound was coming from. The card ice was melting and drops of water were falling to the oaken
floor of Harriet’s boudoir.
“I told you, did I not, that Undine requires a very particular kind of handling.”
“Yes,” I said.
“A very special kind of handling.”
The candles closest to her face guttered in the peculiar hissing of her voice. A reflection danced on the floor: the merest flash of light under the catafalque.
It was water! Harriet’s coffin was leaking!
I needed to get Lena out of here as quickly as possible.
“Undine likes you,” she said. “She thinks you’re keen. That was her own word: keen. You’re very good with her.”
I smiled indulgently.
“We need to talk. Not here, but somewhere where we can speak frankly without fear of interruption. Do you know the Jack O’Lantern?”
I did indeed. It was a skull-like outcropping of rock to the east of Buckshaw that overlooked the Palings, that somewhat sinister grove at a bend in the river Efon, which marked the eastern boundary of our estate. Gladys and I had ridden there on many occasions, most recently to consult with Father’s old headmaster, Dr. Isaac Kissing, who was a resident of Rook’s End, a nearby private institution.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s at the end of Pooker’s Lane,” she said. “Do you know where that is?”
I nodded.
“Excellent. We shall go there tomorrow afternoon at half-three. We shall have a lovely picnic.”
“After the funeral?” I asked.
“After the funeral. I shall have Mrs. Mullet put up a hamper and we shall make a day of it.”
“All right,” I said, anxious to get rid of the woman. At that point, I think I would have agreed to anything.
I flung open the door to speed her departure.
“Dogger!” I said. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know you were there.”
We had almost collided in the doorway.
“It’s all right, Miss Flavia,” he said. “No harm done. Mrs. Mullet wanted me to tell you that she’s bringing up some cold meats. She has somehow formed the opinion that you haven’t eaten today.”
Lovely. Just what I needed: a nice bit of brawn to tide me over my long night’s work!
