Flavia de Luce 3 - A Red Herring Without Mustard (30 page)

There was no doubt that, at least for now, I had power over this poor injured creature, even if it was only the power to withhold a cigarette.

“Please, Fenella!” I pleaded.

If this was power, I wanted no part of it. It felt dreadful.

Without taking her eyes from mine, she moved her head slowly from side to side.

“No,” she whispered at last, replying to my question.

No? It was not the answer I was expecting. If Fenella didn’t think I had attacked her, then Porcelain had lied!

“Who was it, then?” I demanded in a voice so rough that it surprised even me. Had that savage snarl issued from my throat?

“Who was it? Tell me who did this to you!”

For some inexplicable reason, I wanted to seize her and shake the answer out of her. This was a kind of anger I had never known before.

Fenella was terrified. I could see it in her fuddled eyes.

“The Red Bull,” she said, accenting each of the two words. “It was … the Red Bull.”

The Red Bull? That made no sense at all.

“What’s going on here?”

The voice came from the doorway. I spun round and found myself face-to-face with a nursing sister. It wasn’t just the white uniform and stockings that made her seem so intimating: The blue cape with its red lining and piping had turned her into a human Union Jack.

“Flavia?”

The familiar voice took me by surprise.

It was Flossie Foster, the sister of Feely’s friend Sheila!

“Flossie? Is it really you?”

I’d forgotten that Flossie had gone in for nursing. It was one of those trifles that had been mentioned at the dinner table by Feely, somewhere between the salad and the sausage rolls, and put out of mind before the plates were cleared away.

“Of course it’s me, you goose. What on earth are you doing here?”

“I … ah … came to visit a friend,” I said, making a sweeping gesture towards Fenella.

“But visiting hours aren’t until this afternoon. If Matron catches you, she’ll have your toes on toast.”

“Listen, Flossie,” I said. “I need a favor. I need a cigarette, and I need it quickly.”

“Ha!” said Flossie, “I should have known! Feely’s little sister is a tobacco fiend!”

“It’s not like that at all,” I said. “Please, Flossie—I’ll promise you anything.”

Flossie reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of Du Mauriers and a monogrammed cloisonné lighter.

“Now light it,” I told her.

Surprisingly, she did as she was told, although a little furtively.

“We only smoke in the nursing sisters’ tea room,” she said, handing me the cigarette. “And only when Matron’s not around.”

“It’s not for me,” I said, pointing to Fenella. “Give it to her.”

Flossie stared at me. “You must be mad,” she said.

“Go ahead, give it to her … or I’ll tell Matron what you had in the hip flask at the vicar’s garden party.”

I was only teasing, but before I could shoot her a grin, Flossie had inserted the cigarette between Fenella’s dry lips.

“You’re a beast,” she said. “An absolutely horrid little beast!”

I could tell she wanted to slap me, as I gave her a triumphant smirk.

But instead, we both of us broke off to look at Fenella. Her eyes were closed, and smoke was rising from her mouth in a series of puffs, like smoke signals from an Apache campfire. They might well have been spelling out the word “b-l-i-s-s.”

It was at that very moment that Matron barged into the room.

In her elaborate cocked hat and starched white bib, she looked like Napoleon—only much larger.

She sized up the situation at a glance.

“Nurse Foster, I’ll see you in my office.”

“No, wait,” I heard myself saying. “I can explain.”

“Then do so.”

“The nurse just stepped in to tell us that smoking is forbidden. It’s nothing to do with her.”

“Indeed!”

“I heard you coming,” I said, “and stuck my cigarette into that poor woman’s mouth. It was stupid of me. I’m sorry.”

I snatched what was left of the cigarette from Fenella’s lips and shoved it between my own. I took a deep drag and then exhaled, holding the thing between my second and third fingers in the Continental manner, as I had seen Charles Boyer do in the cinema, and all the while fighting down the urge to choke.

“Then how do you explain this?” Matron asked, picking up Flossie’s lighter from Fenella’s blanket, and holding it out accusingly towards me.

“It’s mine,” I said. “The F is for Flavia. Flavia de Luce. That’s me.”

I thought I detected a nearly imperceptible squint—or was it more of a wince?

“Of the Buckshaw de Luces?”

“Yes,” I said. “It was a gift from Father. He believes that the occasional cigarette fortifies one’s lungs against vapors from the drains.”

The Matron didn’t exactly gape, but she did stare at me as if I had suddenly sprouted a beak and tail feathers.

Then suddenly, and without warning, she pressed the lighter into my hands and wiped her fingers on her skirt.

There was the sound of professional shoe leather in the corridor, and Dr. Darby walked calmly into the room.

“Ah, Flavia,” he said. “How nice to see you. This, Matron, is the young lady whose prompt action saved the life of Mrs. Faa.”

I stuck out a hand so quickly that the old dragon was forced to take it.

“Pleased to meet you, Matron,” I said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“BUT HOW IS SHE?” I asked. “Fenella, I mean—really?”

“She’ll do,” said Dr. Darby.

We were motoring home to Bishop’s Lacey, the doctor’s Morris humming happily along between the hedgerows like a sewing machine on holiday.

“Fractured skull,” he went on when I said nothing. “Depressed occipital condylar fracture, as we quacks call it. Has quite a ring to it, doesn’t it? Thanks to you, we were able to get her into the operating room in time to elevate the broken bit without too much trouble. I think she’ll likely make a full recovery, but we shall have to wait and see. Are you all right?”

He hadn’t missed the fact that I was sucking in great deep breaths of the morning air, in an attempt to clear my system of cigarette smoke and the horrid odors of the hospital. The formalin of the morgue hadn’t been too bad—quite enjoyable, in fact—but the reek of cabbage soup from the kitchen had been enough to gag a hyena.

“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, with what I’m afraid was rather a wan smile.

“Your father will be very proud of you—” he went on.

“Oh, please don’t tell him! Promise you won’t!”

The doctor shot me a quizzical glance.

“It’s just that he already has so much to worry about—”

As I have said, Father’s financial distress was no secret in Bishop’s Lacey, particularly to his friends, of whom Dr. Darby was one. (The vicar was the other.)

“I understand,” the doctor said. “Then he shall not hear it from me.

“Still,” he added with a chuckle, “the news is bound to get about, you know.”

I could think of nothing but to change the subject.

“I’m rather puzzled about something,” I said. “The police took Fenella’s granddaughter, Porcelain, to see her in the hospital. She claims Fenella told her it was me who bashed her on the head.”

“And did you?” the doctor asked slyly.

“Later,” I said, ignoring his teasing, “the vicar told me that he, too, had paid a visit, but that Fenella had not yet regained consciousness. Which of them was telling the truth?”

“The vicar is a dear man,” Dr. Darby said. “A very dear man. He brings me flowers from his garden now and then to brighten up my surgery. But if cornered, I would have to admit that sometimes, on the wards, we are forced to tell him fibs. Little lies in little white jackets. For the good of the patient, of course. I’m sure you understand.”

If there was one thing in the world that I understood above all others, it was withholding selected snippets of the truth. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I was an Exalted Grand Master of the craft.

I nodded my head modestly. “He is very devoted to his work,” I said.

“As it happens, I was present when both the granddaughter and the vicar came to the hospital. Although the vicar didn’t get as far as her room, Mrs. Faa was fully conscious at the time of his visit.”

“And Porcelain?”

“At the time of Porcelain’s visit, she was not. The victims of skull fracture, you see, can slip in and out of consciousness as easily as you and I move from one room to another—an interesting phenomenon when you come right down to it.”

But I was hardly listening. Porcelain had lied to me.

The witch!

There’s nothing that a liar hates more than finding that another liar has lied to them.

“But why would she blame it on me?”

The words must have slipped out. I’d had no intention of thinking aloud.

“Ah,” said Dr. Darby. “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Meaning that people can behave strangely in times of great stress. She’s a complicated young woman, your friend Porcelain.”

“She’s no friend of mine!” I said rather abruptly.

“You took her in and fed her,” Dr. Darby said with an amused look. “Or perhaps I misunderstood.”

“I felt sorry for her.”

“Ah. No more than sorry?”

“I wanted to like her.”

“Aha! Why?”

The answer, of course, was that I was hoping to make a friend, but I could hardly admit that.

“We always want to love the recipients of our charity,” the doctor said, negotiating a sharp bend in the road with a surprising demonstration of steering skill, “but it is not necessary. Indeed, it is sometimes not possible.”

Suddenly I found myself wanting to confide in this gentle man—to tell him everything. But I could not.

The best thing for it when you feel tears coming on for no reason at all is to change the subject.

“Have you ever heard of the Red Bull?”

“The Red Bull?” he asked, swerving to avoid a terrier that had dashed out barking into the road. “Which Red Bull did you have in mind?”

“Is there more than one?”

“There are many. The Red Bull at St. Elfrieda’s is the first that comes to mind.”

A smile crept over his face, as if he was recalling a cozy evening of darts and a couple of pleasant pints of half-and-half.

“And?”

“Well, let me see … there was the Red Bull on a Green Field, from Kim, which was the god of nine hundred devils … the Red Bull of the Borgias, which was a flag, and was on a field of gold, not green … the notorious Red Bull playhouse that burned in the Great Fire of London in 1666 … there was the mythical Red Bull of England that met the Black Bull of Scotland in a fight to the death … and, of course, in the days when priests practiced medicine, they used to hand out the hair of a red bull as a cure for epilepsy. Have I missed any?”

Not one of these seemed likely to be the Red Bull that had attacked Fenella.

“Why do you ask?” he said, seeing my obvious puzzlement.

“Oh, no reason,” I said. “It was just something I heard somewhere … the wireless, perhaps.”

I could see that he didn’t believe me, but he was gentleman enough not to press.

“Here’s St. Tancred’s,” I said. “You can let me off at the churchyard.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Darby, applying the Morris’s brakes. “Time for a spot of prayer?”

“Something like that,” I said.

Actually, I needed to think.

Thinking and prayer are much the same thing anyway, when you stop to think about it—if that makes any sense. Prayer goes up and thought comes down—or so it seems. As far as I can tell, that’s the only difference.

I thought about this as I walked across the fields to Buckshaw. Thinking about Brookie Harewood—and who killed him, and why—was really just another way of praying for his soul, wasn’t it?

If this was true, I had just established a direct link between Christian charity and criminal investigation. I could hardly wait to tell the vicar!

A quarter mile ahead, and off to one side, was the narrow lane and the hedgerow where Porcelain had hidden in the bushes.

Almost without realizing it, I found my feet taking me in that direction.

If her claim about Fenella had been a lie, she couldn’t really have been afraid of me, as she had pretended. There must, then, have been some other reason for her ducking into the hedgerow—one that I had not thought about at the time.

If that was the case, she had successfully tricked me.

I climbed over the stile and into the lane. It had been just about here that she’d slipped into the shrubbery. I stood for a moment in silence, listening.

“Porcelain?” I said, the hair at the back of my neck rising.

Whatever had made me think that she was still here?

“Porcelain?”

There was no answer.

I took a deep breath, realizing it could easily be my last. With Porcelain, you could always so quickly find yourself with a knife at your throat.

Another deep breath—this one for insurance purposes—and then I stepped into the hedgerow.

I could see at once that there was nobody hidden here. A slightly flattened area and a couple of trampled weeds indicated clearly where Porcelain had squatted the other day.

I crouched beneath the branches and wiggled myself into the same position that she must have assumed, putting myself in her shoes, looking out at the world as if from her eyes. As I did so, my hand touched something solid … something hard.

It was shoved inside a little tent of weeds. I wrapped my fingers round the object and pulled it into view.

It was black and circular, perhaps a little over three inches in diameter, and was made of some dark, exotic wood—ebony, perhaps. Carved into its circumference were the signs of the zodiac. I ran my forefinger slowly across the carved image of a pair of fish lying head to tail: Pisces.

The last time I had seen this wooden ring was at the fête. It had been on the table in Fenella’s tent, supporting her crystal ball.

There was little doubt that Porcelain had pinched the ball’s base from the caravan, and was making off with it when I had surprised her in the lane.

But why? Was it a souvenir? Did it have some sentimental attachment?