Flavia de Luce 3 - A Red Herring Without Mustard (31 page)

Porcelain was simply infuriating. Nothing that she did made any sense.

Finding the base reminded me that the ball itself, hidden safely away in plain sight among my laboratory glassware, was still awaiting careful study.

My intention had been to examine it for fingerprints, even though most traces had likely been washed away by immersion in the river. I remembered how Philip Odell, the wireless detective, had once pointed out to Inspector Hanley that the glandular secretions of the palms and fingers consisted primarily of water and water-soluble solids.

“So you see, Inspector,” he had said, “Garvin’s fatal mistake was in running his fingers through his hair. The barber had scented it with brilliantine containing bay oil, which, of course, is soluble in alcohol, but not in water. Even after a night at the bottom of the millstream, the fingerprints on the handle of the knife were still plain enough to put his villainous neck in a noose.”

Philip Odell aside, I had my own ideas about underwater fingerprints. There was, for instance, a quite readily available household substance that would fix and harden any traces of residual grime that might be left by a killer’s hands. Given time, I would do the laboratory work, write it up, and present it to Inspector Hewitt on a silver platter. He would, of course, take my paper home at once and show it to his wife, Antigone.

But there had been no time. The compulsory cinema night and choir practice at St. Tancred’s, followed by my visit to Fenella in hospital, had robbed me of the opportunity to carry out the necessary research.

I would hurry home and begin at once.

I had no more than one foot out of the thicket when I heard the sound of an approaching motor. I ducked back into hiding, remembering to turn my face away as the thing swept past. By the time I judged it safe to come out again, the machine had vanished in the direction of Buckshaw.

I did not actually spot the Inspector’s blue Vauxhall until I had already set foot between the griffins of the Mulford Gates. It was parked off to one side beneath the chestnuts, and he was leaning patiently against it, waiting.

Too late now to turn and bolt. I’d have to make the best of it.

“Oh, Inspector,” I said, “I was just about to ring you up and tell you what I’ve found!”

I was aware that I was gushing, but I didn’t seem to be able to help myself. I held the wooden base out to him at arm’s length.

“This was in a thicket by the side of the lane. I think it’s part of Fenella’s crystal ball.”

He pulled a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and took the wooden O from my hands.

“You shouldn’t have touched it,” he said. “You ought to have left it where it was.”

“I realize that,” I told him. “But it was too late. I touched it before I saw it—without meaning to. It was hidden under some weeds. I’d just stepped into the bushes for a moment …”

The look on his face told me that I was skating on thin ice: I had already used the “sudden call of nature” excuse, and it wouldn’t bear repeating.

“You saw me, of course, didn’t you? That’s why you stopped and waited for me here.”

The Inspector ignored this neat bit of deduction.

“Get in, please,” he said, holding open the back door of the Vauxhall. “It’s time for a talk.”

Sergeant Graves turned round and shot me a quick, quizzical glance from the driver’s seat, but he did not smile. Only then did I realize how much trouble I was in.

We drove to the front door of Buckshaw in silence.

It was my second full confession in as many days.

We were sitting in the drawing room—all of us, that is, except Father, who was standing at the window, staring out, as if his life depended on it, across the ornamental lake.

He had insisted that we all of us be present, and had summoned Feely and Daffy, both of whom had annoyingly come at once, and were now seated primly side by side on a flowered divan like a couple of toads come to tea.

“It is regrettable,” Inspector Hewitt was saying, “that our investigation has been so badly compromised. Crime scenes disturbed … evidence tampered with … crucial information withheld … I hardly know where to begin.”

He was talking about me, of course.

“I have tried to impress upon Flavia the seriousness of these matters, but with little success. Therefore, I’m afraid I’m going to insist, Colonel de Luce, that until such time as our work is complete, you keep her confined to Buckshaw.”

I couldn’t believe my ears! Confined to Buckshaw? Why not have me transported to Australia and be done with it?

Well, so much for choir duty and future cinema nights. So much for Father’s decree that we needed to get out more as a family.

Father mumbled something and shifted his gaze from the ornamental lake to the distant hills.

“That said,” the Inspector went on, “we come to the real reason for our being here.”

Real reason? My heart sank as if it already knew something that I did not.

The Inspector brought out his notebook. “A statement has been taken from a Miss Ursula Vipond, who says that she witnessed the removal from the river of what she described as …” He opened the notebook and flipped through a couple of pages. “… a glass sphere …”

My eyes widened.

“… by a child whose name she has reason to believe is Flavia de Luce.”

Confound the woman! I knew at once that this busybody could be none other than that troll, Ursula, who haunted Vanetta Harewood’s cottage in Malden Fenwick. I’d listed the odious creature in my notebook, but hadn’t known her surname.

She’d been standing hidden among the bushes at the Palings, watching as I pulled Fenella’s crystal ball from the river.

“Well?”

I could tell by his tone that the Inspector was becoming impatient.

“I was going to give it to you straightaway,” I said.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“In my laboratory. I’ll go get it and—”

“No! Stay as you are. Sergeant Graves will see to it.”

Surprised, the sergeant broke off gazing at Feely and leapt to his feet.

“Just a moment, Sergeant,” she said. “I’ll show you the way.”

The traitor! The minx! Even with her little sister under attack, Ophelia could think of nothing but courtship.

“Wait,” I said. “The laboratory is locked. I’ll have to go fetch the key.”

Before anyone could think to stop me, I had swept past Feely and the sergeant, out the door, and was halfway down the hall.

The truth was that the key was in my pocket, but without turning me upside down and shaking me, they had no way of knowing that.

Up the stairs I dashed, taking them two at a time, as if all the demons of Hades were at my heels. Into the east wing I fled, and down the long corridor.

I fumbled at the lock of the laboratory, but something inside the mechanism seemed to be mucked up, as if—

I gave a fierce shove and the door flew open, propelling me almost into the arms of … Porcelain!

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING here?” I hissed, my heart still pounding like a trip-hammer. “I thought you were in London.”

“I might have been,” Porcelain said, “but something made me come back to apologize.”

“You did that once before,” I said, “and you botched it. I can live without another of your so-called apologies.”

“I know,” she said, “and I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you the truth about Fenella. She wasn’t conscious when I went to the hospital. And she didn’t tell me you’d attacked her. I made all of it up because I wanted to hurt you.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

Suddenly she was in tears, sobbing as if her heart would break. Without thinking, I went to her, put my arms around her, and pulled her head against my shoulder.

“It’s all right,” I said, even though it wasn’t.

But something inside me had undergone a sudden shift, as if my interior furniture had been rearranged unexpectedly, and I knew, with a strange new calmness, that we would sort things out later.

“Wait here until I come back,” I said. “Father’s expecting me downstairs, and I mustn’t keep him waiting.”

Which was true, as far as it went.

As I walked back into the drawing room, Sergeant Graves was still standing quite close to Feely, a look of disappointment on his face.

“I put it in this,” I explained, handing Inspector Hewitt a square cardboard box, “so that there would be the least number of points in contact with the glass surface.”

I did not explain that, because it was precisely the right size, I had pinched the box from Feely’s bedroom, nor did I mention that I had flushed a pound of Yardley’s lavender bath salts down the toilet for want of a better place to put it on short notice.

The Inspector lifted the top flap gingerly and glanced inside.

“You’ll find a ring of faint smudges on the glass,” I said. “Most likely whatever’s left of the fingerprints—”

“Thank you, Flavia,” he said in a flat voice, handing the box to Sergeant Graves.

“… and perhaps a few of mine,” I added.

“Take this straightaway to Sergeant Woolmer, in Hinley,” the Inspector said, ignoring my small joke. “Come back for me later.”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Graves said. “Hinley it is.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “There’s more.”

I carefully pulled one of Feely’s embroidered handkerchiefs from my pocket.

“This,” I said, “might well be a copy of the silver lobster pick that killed Brookie Harewood. Or perhaps it’s the original. It’s got the de Luce monogram on it. One of the Bull children was digging with it in the Gully. If there are any fingerprints on it besides his and mine, you’ll quite likely find that they match the ones on the crystal ball.”

I looked round the room to watch the reactions on everyone’s faces as I handed the thing over to Inspector Hewitt.

As Mrs. Mullet once said, you could have heard a pin droop.

“Good lord!” Father said, stepping forward and reaching for the thing even as the Inspector was still unwrapping it.

I had almost blurted out that the rest of the family silver was on its way to Sotheby’s, but something made me hold my tongue. What a bitter blow to Father it would have been had I let that slip out.

“Please, Colonel, don’t touch it,” the Inspector said. “I’m afraid this must now be treated as evidence.”

Father stood staring at the silver lobster pick as if he were a snake that had come unexpectedly face-to-face with a mongoose.

Daffy sat bolt upright on the divan, glaring at me with what I took to be hatred in her eyes—as if she held me responsible for all of Father’s misfortunes.

Feely’s hand was at her mouth.

All of these details were frozen on the instant, as if a photographer’s flash had gone off and preserved forever a thin and uncomfortable slice of time. The silence in the room was audible.

“Killed Brookie Harewood?” Inspector Hewitt said at last, turning to me. “This lobster pick? Please explain what you mean by that.”

“It was in his nose,” I said, “when I found his body hanging from the Poseidon fountain. Surely you saw it?”

Now it was the Inspector’s turn to stare in disbelief at the object in his hand.

“You’re quite sure?” he asked.

“Positive,” I said, a little peeved that he should doubt me.

I could see that the Inspector was choosing his words carefully before he spoke.

“We found no lobster pick at the scene of the crime—and none has turned up subsequently.”

No lobster pick at the scene of the crime? What a ludicrous statement! It was like denying the sun in the sky! The thing had been there, plain as day, stuck up Brookie’s nostril like a dart in a corkboard.

If the pick had fallen out through force of gravity, for instance, the police would have found it in the fountain. The fact that they hadn’t could mean only one thing: that someone had removed it. And that someone, most likely, was Brookie’s killer.

Between the time Porcelain and I had walked away from the fountain, and the time that the police arrived—no more than, say, twenty minutes—the killer had crept back, scaled the fountain, and removed the weapon from Brookie’s nose. But why?

The Inspector was still staring at me intently. I could see his cogs turning.

“Surely you don’t think I killed Brookie Harewood?” I gasped.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Inspector Hewitt said, “but something tells me that you know who did.”

I didn’t move a muscle, but inwardly I positively preened!

Fancy that! I thought. Recognition at last!

I could have hugged the man, but I didn’t. He’d have been mortified, and so—but only later, of course—would I.

“I have my suspicions,” I said, fighting to keep my voice from sliding into an upper register.

“Ah,” the Inspector said, “then you must share them with us sometime. Well, thank you all. It has been most illuminating.”

He summoned Sergeant Graves with his eyebrows, and went to the door.

“Oh, and Colonel,” he said, turning back. “You will keep Flavia at home?”

Father did not reply, and for that, I decided on the spot, his name would be inscribed forever in my private book of saints and martyrs.

And then, with a rustle of officialdom, the police were gone.

“Do you think he likes me?” Feely asked, making a beeline for the looking glass on the chimneypiece.

“I should say so,” Daffy replied. “He was all green eyes, like the monster cuttlefish in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

With no more than a look of perplexity, Father left the room.

Within minutes, I knew, he would be submerged in his stamp collection, alone with whatever squids and cuttlefish inhabited the depths of his mind.

At that moment I remembered Porcelain.

It didn’t come easily to me to knock at the door of my own laboratory, but knock I did. No point in startling Porcelain and ending up with my throat slit from ear to ear.

But when I stepped inside, the laboratory was empty, and I felt my anger rising. Blast her! Hadn’t I told her to stay where she was until I returned?

But when I opened my bedroom door, there she was, sitting cross-legged on my bed like a malnourished Buddha, reading my notebook.