Flavia de Luce 3 - A Red Herring Without Mustard (27 page)

It was the White Phantom, the same nurse I had seen on my previous visit to Rook’s End, now looking ludicrous in her white uniform and huge black galoshes as she came galumphing across the grass towards us through the falling rain.

“Whatever are you thinking?” she asked again as she stepped beneath the umbrella. I’ve observed that domineering people like the White Phantom often say everything twice, as though they’re on a quota system.

“I am thinking, Nurse Hammond,” Dr. Kissing said, “of the sad decline in English manners since the late war.”

His words were met with a silent sniff as she seized the handles of his wheelchair and shoved off rapidly with it across the lawn.

As she paused to open the conservatory door, Dr. Kissing’s words came floating back to my ears—

“Tally-ho, Flavia!”

It was a call to the hunt.

I waved like mad to show him that I had understood, but it was too late. He had already been wheeled indoors and out of sight.

I THINK THERE MUST be a kind of courage that comes from not being able to make up your mind.

Whether it was this or whether it was Gladys’s willfulness I can’t be sure, but there we were, suddenly swerving off the main road and into the Gully.

I had been going here and there about the village, avoiding the unpleasant Mrs. Bull in much the same way as a housefly avoids the folded newspaper. But the Gully was a shortcut home to Buckshaw, and there was no time like the present.

Although Gladys’s black paint was now spattered with mud, she seemed as frisky as if she had just been curried with a bristled brush and wiped down to perfection. Her nickel handlebars, at least, glittered in the sun.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, old girl?” I said, and she gave a little squeak of delight.

Would Mrs. Bull be standing guard at her gate? Would I have to pretend again to be Margaret Vole, niece of that fictional—but beloved—old character actress, Gilda Dickinson?

I needn’t have worried. Mrs. Bull was nowhere in sight, although the hovering smoke from the rubbish heaps made it difficult to see much of the property.

Her redheaded boy—the one who had been perched in the branches when I rode through the Gully with Fenella—was now sitting in the ditch at the edge of the road, digging his way to China with a piece of cutlery.

I brought Gladys to a slithering stop and put both feet on the ground.

“Hello,” I said, rather stupidly. “What’s your name?”

It was not the most brilliant opening, but I wasn’t accustomed to talking to children, and hadn’t the faintest idea how to begin. It didn’t matter anyway, because the little wretch ignored me and went on with his excavating.

It was difficult to judge his age, which might have been anywhere between four and seven. His large head wobbled uneasily atop a spindly body, giving the impression that one was looking at rather a large baby or a small adult.

“Timofey,” he said in a froggy croak, just as I was about to shove off.

“Timothy?”

There was another awkward pause, during which I shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

“Timofey.”

“Is your mother at home, Timofey?” I asked.

“Dunno—yes—no,” he said, giving me a wary sideways glance, and he returned to his digging, stabbing fiercely at the soil with his bit of tableware.

“Digging for treasure, are you?” I asked, going all chummy. I leaned Gladys against a bank and climbed down into the ditch. “Here, let me help.”

I casually worked my hand into my off-side pocket and closed my fingers around a stick of horehound.

With a quick darting motion, I reached down into the hole he was digging, and pretended to extract the sweet.

“Oh, Timofey!” I cried, clapping my hands. “Look what you’ve found! Good boy! Timofey’s found a sweet!” Although it jarred, I couldn’t bring myself to call him by any name other than the one he called himself.

As I held out the horehound, he snatched it away from me with a lightning-fast movement and shoved it into his mouth.

“Preasure!” he said, gnawing nastily.

“Yes, treasure,” I cooed. “Timofey’s found buried treasure.”

With the horehound stick jutting out of the corner of his mouth like a sickroom thermometer, Timofey put down his digging implement and attacked the hole with his bare hands.

My heart gave a leap as my mind registered what now lay exposed in the dirt: the silver … the prongs … the figure of the lobster punched from the handle … the de Luce monogram …

The child was digging with one of the de Luce lobster picks! But how could that be? Dogger had already shipped the silver to Sotheby’s for auction and the only piece that had been overlooked, perhaps, was the one that had been used to put paid to Brookie Harewood. And that, unless I was sadly mistaken, had, until quite recently, been shoved up Brookie Harewood’s nostril and into his brain. How could it possibly have made its way from there into the hands of an urchin grubbing in the Gully? Or could this be a copy?

“Here,” I said. “Let me help you. I’m bigger. I can dig faster. Find more sweets.”

I made digging motions with my hands, scooping like a badger.

But Timofey snatched up the lobster pick, and was holding it away from me.

“Mime!” he said around the horehound. “Mime! Timofey foumd it!”

“Good boy!” I said. “Let’s have a look.”

“No!”

“All right,” I said. “I don’t want to see it anyway.”

If there’s anyone on earth who knows the ways of a child’s mind, I thought, it’s me—Flavia de Luce—for I had not so long ago been one myself.

As I spoke, I reached into my pocket and extracted another stick of horehound—this one, my last. I gazed at it fondly, held it up to the sunlight to admire its golden glow, smacked my lips—

“Give over!” the child said. “I wants it!”

“Tell you what,” I told him. “I’ll trade you for that nasty digger. You don’t want that old thing. It’s dirty.”

I pulled a horrid face and went through the motions of retching, sound effects and all.

He grinned, and inserted the prongs of the lobster pick into one of his nostrils.

“No, Timofey!” I said in the most commanding voice I could summon. “It’s sharp—you’ll hurt yourself. Give it here.

“At once!” I added sternly, putting on the voice of authority, as Father does when he wants to be instantly obeyed. I held out my hand and Timofey meekly laid the silver lobster pick across my lifeline—the very part of my hand that the Gypsy—Fenella—was it only three days ago?—had held in her own and told me that in it she saw darkness.

“Good boy,” I said, my head swimming as my fingers closed upon the murder weapon. “Where did you get it?”

I handed him the horehound stick and he grabbed it greedily. I shoved my hand into my empty pocket, as if I were digging into a bottomless bag of sweets.

I locked my eyes with his, noticing, for the first time, the strange transparency of his irises. I would not look away, I thought—not until—

“Danny’s mocket,” he said suddenly, his words oozing out around the sticky horehound.

Danny’s mocket? Danny’s pocket, of course! I was proud of myself.

But who was Danny? It couldn’t be the baby—the baby wasn’t old enough to have pockets. Did Mrs. Bull have an older son?

My mind was buzzing with possibilities as I shoved the lobster fork into my pocket. It was a mistake.

“Mam!” the child shrieked, “Mam! Mam! Mam! Mam! Mam!” each cry louder and higher in pitch.

I scrambled out of the ditch and made for Gladys.

“Mam! Mam! Mam! Mam! Mam!”

The little rotter had been set off like a blasted alarm.

“You!” came a voice from out of the smoke, and suddenly Mrs. Bull was coming towards me, lumbering through the smoldering heaps like something out of a nightmare.

“You!” she shouted, her raw arms already extended, ready to seize me. Once she laid hands on me, I knew, I was done for. The woman was big enough to tear me apart like a bundle of rotten rags.

I grabbed at Gladys and pushed off, my feet slipping wildly from the pedals as I threw myself forward, trying to put on speed.

Oddly enough, I was thinking quite clearly. Should I try to divert her by shouting “Fire!” and pointing at her house? Since the place was surrounded by smoldering rubbish heaps, it seemed both a good and a bad idea.

But it was no time for tactics—Mrs. Bull was bearing down upon me with alarming speed.

“Mam! Mam! Mam! Mam! Mam!” Timofey went on maddeningly from the ditch.

The woman’s huge hands snatched at me as our paths intersected. I needed to get past her to be safe. If she managed to seize even so much as one of my sleeves, I was sunk.

“Yaroo!” The cry came out of me quite unexpectedly, but I recognized it at once. It was the battle cry of a savage—a fierce, fearless bellowing that rose up out of my ancestral lungs as if it had been lying in wait for centuries.

“Yaroo!” I let another fly just for pleasure. It felt good.

Mrs. Bull didn’t stop—but she faltered—missed a step—and I shot past.

I looked back over my shoulder and saw the woman standing in the road, her fists shaking, her red face contorted with fury as she screamed: “Tom, get yourself out here … and bring the ax!”

I sat on the river’s edge letting the water cool my feet. There was an unearthly silence in the Palings, and I shivered a little at the thought of the things that had happened within the past few days. First there had been the attack on Fenella, followed almost immediately by the death of Brookie Harewood. Then, too, Porcelain had told me, just before she’d cleared off, that the police had found the body of a baby—probably the Bulls’ baby—right here in the grove. I suppose I should have felt sorry for the mother. She may have been mad with grief, for all I knew. Perhaps I should have taken my life in my hands and expressed my condolences.

But life is never easy, is it? If only one could make time run backwards, as it does in those short subjects at the cinema where dynamited factory chimneys fall upwards and restore themselves, and shattered bits of glass fly together to form a vase …

In such a world I could, if I wished, bicycle backwards up the Gully, dismount from Gladys, and give the woman a hug. I could tell her I was sorry they’d found the body of her baby buried here in the Palings, and that if there was anything I could do to help, she had only to ask.

I sighed.

Across the river and through the trees, not far from where Fenella’s caravan was parked, I could see a mound of fresh soil. That must be the spot where the body had been found.

Other than the fact that she’d seen the baby’s foot—“Wrapped in a carpet, or something,” she had said, “a bundle of old green bones”—Porcelain hadn’t given me any more of the details. And it was too late now—Porcelain was gone.

I could hardly ask Inspector Hewitt about the discovery of the body, and until I had the opportunity to find out from Mrs. Mullet what the village was saying, I was on my own. I would wade across and have a look.

The river was not very deep here. The Hobblers, after all, had been coming to this spot for centuries to baptize their babies. The water was of just sufficient depth for a good old ducking, and I was no more than a hundred feet from the disturbed spot where the police had evidently made their gruesome find.

I hitched up the hem of my dress a couple of inches and started across.

Even a few feet out from the bank, the water grew noticeably colder on the bottom as I waded slowly towards the center, my arms widespread for balance, taking great care not to lose my footing in the ever-strengthening current.

Soon I was at the halfway point—and then I was past it. The water level had receded to just below my knees when I stepped on something hard, stumbled, missed my footing, and went flailing tail-over-teakettle into the water. Total immersion.

“Oh, rat spit!” I said. I was furious with myself. Why hadn’t I taken Gladys and walked her across the little bridge?

“Double rat spit!”

I scrambled to my feet and looked down at myself. My dress was completely soaked.

Father would be furious.

“Damn it all—dash it all, Flavia,” he would say, as he always did, and then would begin one of those silences between us that would last for several days until one of us forgot about my offense. “Being at loggerheads,” Daffy called it, and now, as I stood knee-deep in the water, I tried to imagine that I had been suddenly transported to a cold, rushing river somewhere in the Canadian north woods, with the severed heads of the loggers bobbing past me in the current like bloated, grizzled apples.

But practicality brought me back to Bishop’s Lacey. I knew that when I got home to Buckshaw, I would have to sneak into the house, make my way upstairs, and rinse out the dress in the sink of my laboratory.

In the water, the little cloud of mud stirred up by my feet was clearing quickly.

It was odd—although I could easily see the tops of my feet on the river’s bed, there were no stones in sight. And yet I had certainly tripped on something hard. I had nearly broken a toe on the stupid thing. As I had done before!

I stood there for a moment, already feeling a chill in the September air.

Something in the water shifted: a bubble … a ripple of water … of light.

Slowly I bent at the waist and reached carefully into the river’s depths.

A little deeper … a little farther to the left. Although I couldn’t see it, my fingers closed around something hard. I took a firm grip and lifted it towards the surface.

As the object came up towards me through the water it became visible. It was eerie.

Hard … transparent … invisible in the water … becoming visible as it came into the air.

A sudden sinking feeling told me that my heart already knew what the thing was before my head did, and both had already begun to pound as I realized that the object I was holding in my streaming hands was Fenella’s crystal ball—the ball with which some unknown person had bashed in her skull: the ball with which someone had tried to kill her.

The thing had been lying on the river bottom for days, its transparency making it invisible in the water even though it was in plain sight. No wonder the police had missed it!