by Alan Bradley
“Has Aunt Felicity had her talk with you yet?” Her voice suddenly as cold and stiff as whipped egg whites.
“Talk? What talk?”
Feely turned back to the keyboard and her hands crashed down in the most harsh, the most grinding, the most tortured series of chords imaginable.
I clapped my hands to my ears and fled the room.
I raced along the hall and across the echoing foyer—hang the gaping mourners!—up the staircase and into the east wing.
I flung open the door of my laboratory, dashed inside, slammed the door behind me, and pressed my back against it.
A tall man turned round, and in his raised hand was the test tube which he had been examining.
It was Sir Peregrine Darwin.
TWENTY-FIVE
“I BELIEVE THIS IS cyanide,” he said, and not at all pleasantly.
I nodded. I could hardly deny it—particularly to a man whose specialty it was to professionally identify cyanide.
“The laboratory belonged to my great-uncle, Tarquin de Luce. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
I was taking a risk, I knew, but it was at the moment the best I could come up with. Perhaps Sir Peregrine, I thought, had been at Oxford with Uncle Tarquin—but no, he wasn’t old enough. But surely he must have heard of my uncle’s work—perhaps he’d even idolized him as a boy.
Blood among chemists runs thick—at least I hoped it did.
But it was no use. Sir Peregrine didn’t rise to the bait. He replaced the cyanide in its rack with a careful precision that I had to admire.
This man knew what he was doing.
“Your mother’s inner coffin was cut open with a pair of ten-inch tinman’s snips,” he said accusingly.
I tried to look incredulous.
“Yes, you left the tools of your trade behind. We’ve sent them up to London for analysis and have just received back the report that your fingerprints—and your fingerprints alone—are all over them. Explain.”
Well! Had my fingerprints on file, did they? I must admit I was flattered. The Hinley Constabulary must have handed them over from one of my earlier investigations.
Still, I had to give the man credit. He certainly didn’t believe in letting the grass grow under his feet. If he had the ability to whisk a piece of evidence up to London, and have it analyzed and brought back to Bishop’s Lacey within hours, the man was clearly no slouch. Inspector Hewitt would be chartreuse with envy. I could hardly wait to tell him.
“Well?”
He was waiting, and the look on his face could only be described as grim. “In case you are not aware of it, Miss de Luce, interference with the burial of a dead body is not—”
“I didn’t interfere with her,” I interrupted, the blood rushing to my face. “I didn’t touch her!”
“Then what, pray, may I ask, were you doing?”
“She was my mother,” I said. “I’d never seen her face. I wanted to—before she was buried.”
I tried to stare him down but my lower lip was trembling.
Sir Peregrine did not look away.
Slowly he began to walk towards me, seeming to grow taller with every step until he was hovering over me like a bird of prey.
I found myself shrinking away from him—cringing.
“Peregrine!” The voice cut through the air like a thrown knife.
I spun round. “Aunt Felicity!”
“Felicity!” said Sir Peregrine.
“What are you doing to that child?”
I could have cheered—even if she had committed the unforgivable sin.
“Well, Peregrine? Explain yourself.”
“I was merely doing that which I am required to do by His Majesty’s Government.”
“Poppycock. You were trying to intimidate the girl. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Felicity—”
Sir Peregrine was gaping as if he had been set upon by the Furies, those avenging goddesses of the underworld with their black robes, bloodshot eyes, and snaky hair, whose happy job it is to punish evildoers.
“Come along, Flavia,” Aunt Felicity said, almost dislocating my arm as she seized me by the elbow and marched me out of the room. “It’s time we had a talk.”
We were halfway down the staircase before she let go of me.
“Quickly,” she said, hustling me through the kitchen, holding open the door, and urging me through.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” she said.
I hate people who say that.
Halfway across the Visto, I was still trying to catch up. For an elderly lady, I realized, Aunt Felicity was remarkably fit.
Blithe Spirit was still parked as I had last seen her, but Tristram Tallis was nowhere in sight. Nor, for that matter, was Adam Sowerby.
“Get in,” Aunt Felicity ordered, pointing.
I clambered up onto the wing and dropped into the front cockpit. Aunt Felicity, without further ado, went round the nose of the craft and gave the propeller a couple of remarkably powerful pulls.
“Switch on!” she shouted.
I looked at the instrument panel and could see only one switch. It was marked “Magneto” and I twisted it to the right.
“Switch on!” I called back.
I had seen this done in the cinema but had never actually had the opportunity to do it myself.
Aunt Felicity gave the prop another sharp spin, and as it had done this morning, it vanished with a roar.
Whatever Tristram had done with the faulty sparking plug must have cured the problem. The engine was running with a silky, self-satisfied rumble, popping a bit with joy as if it could hardly wait to get off the ground and into the air.
Now Aunt Felicity was lowering herself into the rear cockpit and the stick and pedals in front of me began to wigwag of their own accord.
The throttle shot forward in its metal quadrant, and we began to move.
The Visto became a blur. Buckshaw rotated slowly in the near distance as if it were on a turntable and we were standing still.
And then the ground dropped, and for the second time in my life I was flying.
Blithe Spirit pitched and bucked as the stick in front of me shook in its socket.
Aunt Felicity was trying to get my attention.
I twisted my head round and was just able to catch a glimpse of her. She was jabbing a bony finger to indicate the flying helmet, which she must have dredged from the depths of the cockpit, and she was obviously signaling me to do the same.
I reached under the seat and, sure enough, there was an identical helmet. I strapped it on.
Now the stick was waggling again, and I turned to see Aunt Felicity waving the end of a ribbed rubber tube. She put it to her ear, then to her mouth, and then her ear again.
At first I thought she was merely trying to entertain me: that she was miming some lurid magazine cover such as Thrilling Tales in which a pilot is wrestling at 5,000 feet with a boa constrictor which some nefarious villain has concealed in the cockpit, until I was made to realize by the violent and impatient shaking of the stick, that there was a similar tube beside me in the front cockpit and that Aunt Felicity wanted me to use the thing for speaking and listening.
I nodded and held the yellow tube to the ear-socket of my helmet.
Again the stick shook like a cornstalk in a hurricane. Aunt Felicity was pointing to her ear and I saw at once what she wanted me to do. There was a socket in the side of my helmet into which the tube was meant to be inserted. I plugged it in, gave it a twist, and Aunt Felicity’s voice was suddenly in my ear.
“Can you hear me?” she asked. I gave her a thumbs-up, which seemed the right thing to do in the circumstances.
“Good,” she said. “Now listen to me. We’ve precious little time and what I have to say to you is of the utmost importance. Do you understand?”
I gave her three more thumbs for emphasis as she banked Blithe Spirit round towards the west.
Beneath our wings
, Buckshaw lay spread out in the sun, a dreamy mirage of green lands, a fairy-tale kingdom in miniature. From this altitude, you could not see the black line painted in the foyer that divided the house into two camps, nor could you detect the frost that had recently descended upon the house.
Or had it been there all along, and I had only recently learned to notice?
“Take a good look, Flavia,” Aunt Felicity’s metallic voice was saying. “You may never see the likes of it again.”
We were suspended in the air, the two of us, perhaps a mile above that special part of England which was ours. Tomorrow, after the funeral, it would probably belong to someone else.
Even if Harriet’s will untied Father’s legal entanglements, there was no money left to go on. Buckshaw had become a crushing burden that could no longer be borne.
Like Atlas, forced to put down the world from his shoulders in order to fetch apples from his daughters, the Hesperides, Father would not likely have the heart to take it up again.
In the old legends, anyone who willingly took up the Earth upon their shoulders was doomed to carry it forever: a curse, it seemed, with no way out.
“All of this belonged to your mother,” Aunt Felicity said through the speaking tube, shouting to be heard above the roar of the engine, her voice coming through the tube in machine-gun bursts. “She loved it here. Nothing was more precious to her … than her home and her family. Harriet went away only because she had no other choice. It was a matter … of life and death. Not your life and death or mine … but that of England.… Do you understand?”
I nodded and looked out at the England that was beneath our wings.
“Your father had already been taken prisoner by the Japanese … but your mother was unaware of that … when she volunteered to go on a mission … which only she could accomplish successfully. She was … devastated at having to leave her three children in the care of others.”
Aunt Felicity’s words brought back barely recalled memories of being dressed and fed by strangers—a failed succession of nannies and governesses, none of whom, I later learned, had been Mary Poppins.
“But your mother knew her duty,” Aunt Felicity went on. “She was a de Luce … and the life of England was at stake.”
Behind and below us to the southwest, Buckshaw Halt was vanishing in the slight haze that had appeared, and I remembered the words that Mr. Churchill had spoken to my father.
“She was England, damn it,” he had said.
“She was more than that, Prime Minister,” Father had replied.
Only now was I beginning to realize how much more.
Harriet had volunteered for the mission Dr. Kissing had spoken of in his so-called fairy tale: a mission to bring home to justice a traitor who had sold himself out, and England with him, to the Emperor of Japan.
“Under diplomatic immunity, she had made her way to Singapore,” Aunt Felicity continued, breaking into my thoughts, “where, unknown to her … your father was already attached to the Far East Combined Bureau. But before she could discover that … he was captured by the Japanese—on Christmas Day!—and thrown, with a handful of his staff, into Changi prison.”
Aunt Felicity’s voice came strangely to my ears, constricted to an insect buzz by the speaking tube. But her words were clear enough. Father had been imprisoned and Harriet was likely to be.
“At this crucial instant … the Japanese were still playing a double game. On the one hand, they had captured your father.… while at the same time, they were trying to demonstrate that they were … masters of the world. They even took your mother on a guided tour of the prison … at Changi … to show off to her the British officers they had in custody. She was to carry the word back to London … and the War Office would capitulate at once. Such was their thinking. Sheer madness!”
My mind was as blurred as the spinning propeller. How could this whole chapter of my family’s history have taken place without my suspecting? It seemed impossible. Perhaps Dr. Kissing had been right: Perhaps it was a fairy tale.
“It was there … in that dreadful compound at Changi … that your parents were thrust suddenly and unexpectedly face-to-face—your mother being shown the prisoners who had been trotted out for her inspection … your father being taunted with the sight of an English visitor. Neither of them knew the other was in Singapore … but neither batted an eye.”
Oh, how it must have torn their hearts, I thought. How killing it must have been to show not a flicker of recognition: to have to pretend that they had never been in love, had never married, and that their three children—the youngest no more than a baby, left behind in England to be brought up by strangers—had never existed.
I twisted round in the seat so that I could see Aunt Felicity. Her eyes were enormous—like an owl’s behind her goggles—as she gave a nod as if to say, “Yes! It’s true—every word of it.”
My own eyes stung with tears. I didn’t want to hear any more. I threw my hands up to cover my ears, but they could not block out Aunt Felicity’s words, which came seeping again through the rubber tube.
“Flavia, listen. There’s more—you must listen to me!”
I could not ignore the sound of crackling command that had suddenly come into her voice.
“The traitor your mother had come to deal with had apparently vanished. The political situation had become far too dangerous to remain in Singapore. She was making her way home … by way of India and Tibet. But … she was followed. Someone had betrayed her.”
My mind went numb. Black thoughts tossed in my mind like the billows of some dark sea.
Had Harriet been murdered? I had wondered that before but set it aside as incredible beyond belief. But was that now the suspicion of the Home Office? Was that why Sir Peregrine Darwin had shown up so unexpectedly on our doorstep? Was the killer still at large?
I wanted to curl up like a salted slug and die.
Aunt Felicity’s voice broke into my agony. “You’ve heard no doubt of MI5 and MI6?”
I managed a nod. Because she could see only the back of my head, she could not possibly know I was crying.
“Well, you need to know that there are MI numbers beyond 19. Indeed, there exists a section with so high a number that not even the Prime Minister is aware of it.”
Now the tube fell silent. What was she telling me?
Far below, the green world circled.
On the ground, you were like a bug in a carpet, believing every crumb to be a castle. But from up here, you had a whole new view of things. You could see far more.
More, perhaps, than you ever wanted to.
I gave a feeble wave to show Aunt Felicity that I was listening and that I had understood her words.
Seeing my hand, she went on: “We de Luces have been entrusted … for more than three hundred years … with some of the greatest secrets of the realm. Some of us have been on the side of good … while others have not.”
What was the old woman saying? Was she mad? Was I alone in the air with a person who should be locked away in Colney Hatch?
And yet—she was flying Blithe Spirit, wasn’t she?
Again I remembered asking Father what Buckshaw looked like from the air, remembered his reply: “Ask your aunt Felicity. She’s flown.”
I had assumed, I suppose, that she had flown with someone else as a passenger. But Father’s words had been literally true.
“Did you hear what I said, Flavia?”
Aunt Felicity reduced the throttle, and the sound of Blithe Spirit’s engine died away to a whisper. Now there was only the howl of the wind around us as her voice, containing a new urgency, came crackling through the rubber tube.
“We must go down now. There’s no more time. But before we begin our descent, you must understand: From this day forward, much will be expected of you. Much has already been given to you. In many ways, your training has already begun.”
Realization crept slowly into my mind.
My laboratory … the almost magical way
in which the gases and glassware had never been exhausted …
Someone had seen to it.
“You must never speak of this to anyone but me—and then only when we are out of doors and absolutely alone.”
That day last summer on the island of the ornamental lake!
“You must never be deflected by unpleasantness,” Aunt Felicity had told me. “I want you to remember that. Although it may not be apparent to others, your duty will become as clear to you as if it were a white line painted down the middle of the road. You must follow it, Flavia.”
“Even when it leads to murder?” I had asked.
“Even when it leads to murder.”
The full impact of her words came crashing upon me now like a breaking wave. My father’s sister had been guiding my life for ages—maybe forever.
It was only with the greatest effort that I managed to grip the sides of the cockpit and twist round in my seat so I was looking Aunt Felicity directly in the eye—or, at least, in the goggles.
Her face was utterly impassive as she stared directly into mine.
Borne up by no more than the rush of the wind, it was as if we were riding the hurricane.
Slowly—but with great deliberation—I raised my right hand and gave her a thumbs-up that might have made Winston Churchill proud.
And Aunt Felicity returned it.
An instant later, she poured on full power and we were diving towards the ground.
As we glided in over Bishop’s Lacey, I could tell by the shadows that it was well past noon, and cars were already being parked on the road on both sides of St. Tancred’s.
Even before our wheels touched like thistledown on the Visto, Tristram Tallis was striding in the distance towards us.
Aunt Felicity cut the ignition and we both scrambled out onto the wing. I had already torn off my helmet and waited until she had removed her own.
For one brief moment we were out of doors and we were alone.
“Pheasant sandwiches,” I blurted suddenly, risking all.
My aunt’s face was as impassive as if it were cut from cold marble. A stone sphinx, perhaps, transported by magic from Egypt.
