Flavia de Luce 3 - A Red Herring Without Mustard (6 page)

His moleskin coat and his scarlet scarf flared out as he came to his feet and spun quickly round.

“Crikey, gal! You might have given me a heart attack!”

It was Brookie Harewood.

THE MAN HAD BEEN drinking. I noticed that at once. Even from where I stood I could detect the smell of alcohol—that and the powerful fishy odor that accompanies a person who wears a creel with as much pride as another might wear a kilt and sporran.

I closed the door quietly behind me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, putting on my sternest face.

Actually, what I was thinking was that Buckshaw, in the small hours of the morning, was becoming a virtual Paddington Station. It wasn’t more than a couple of months since I had found Horace Bonepenny in a heated nocturnal argument with Father. Well, Bonepenny was now in his grave, and yet here was another intruder to take his place.

Brookie raised his cap and tugged at his forelock—the ancient signal of submission to one’s better. If he were a dog, it would be much the same thing as prostrating himself and rolling over to expose his belly.

“Answer me, please,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

He fiddled a bit with the wicker creel on his hip before he replied.

“You caught me fair and square, miss,” he said, shooting me a disarming smile. I noticed, much to my annoyance, that he had perfect teeth.

“But I didn’t mean no harm. I’ll admit I was on the estate hoping to do a bit of business rabbitwise. Nothing like a nice pot of rabbit stew for a weak chest, is there?”

He knocked his rib cage with a clenched fist and forced a cough that, since I had done it so often myself, didn’t fool me for an instant. Neither did his fake gamekeeper dialect. If, as Mrs. Mullet claimed, Brookie’s mother was a society artist, he had probably been schooled at Eton, or some such place. The grubbing voice was meant to gain him sympathy. That, too, was an old trick. I had used it myself, and because of that, I found myself resenting it.

“The Colonel’s no shooter,” he went on, “and all the world knows that for a fact. So where’s the harm in ridding the place of a pest that does no more than eat your garden and dig holes in your shrubbery? Where’s the harm in that, eh?”

I noticed that he was repeating himself—almost certainly a sign that he was lying. I didn’t know the answer to his question, so I remained silent, my arms crossed.

“But then I saw a light inside the house,” he went on. “ ‘Hullo!’ I said to myself, ‘What’s this, then, Brookie? Who could be up at this ungodly hour?’ I said. ‘Could someone be sick?’ I know the Colonel doesn’t use a motorcar, you see, and then I thought, ‘What if someone’s needed to run into the village to fetch the doctor?’”

There was truth in what he said. Harriet’s ancient Rolls-Royce—a Phantom II—was kept in the coach house as a sort of private chapel, a place that both Father and I went—though never at the same time, of course—whenever we wanted to escape what Father called “the vicissitudes of daily life.”

What he meant, of course, was Daffy and Feely—and sometimes me.

Although Father missed Harriet dreadfully, he never spoke of her. His grief was so deep that Harriet’s name had been put at the top of the Buckshaw Blacklist: things that were never to be spoken of if you valued your life.

I confess that Brookie’s words caught me off guard. Before I could frame a reply he went on: “But then I thought, ‘No, there’s more to it than that. If someone was sick at Buckshaw there’d be more lights on than one. There’d be lights in the kitchen—someone heating water, someone dashing about …’ ”

“We might have used the telephone,” I protested, instinctively resisting Brookie’s attempt to spin a web.

But he had a point. Father loathed the telephone, and allowed it to be used only in the most extreme emergencies. At two-thirty in the morning, it would be quicker to cycle—or even run!—into Bishop’s Lacey than to arouse Miss Runciman at the telephone exchange and ask her to ring up the sleeping Dr. Darby.

By the time that tedious game of Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button had been completed, we might all of us be dead.

As if he were the squire and I the intruder, Brookie, his rubber-booted feet spread wide and his hands clasped behind him, had now taken up a stance in front of the fireplace, midway between the two brass foxes that had belonged to Harriet’s grandfather. He didn’t lean an elbow on the mantel, but he might as well have.

Before I could say another word, he gave a quick, nervous glance to the right and to the left and dropped his voice to a husky whisper: “ ‘But wait, Brookie, old man,’ I thought. ‘Hold on, Brookie, old chum. Mightn’t this be the famous Gray Lady of Buckshaw that you’re seeing?’ After all, miss, everyone knows that there’s sometimes lights seen hereabouts that have no easy explanation.”

Gray Lady of Buckshaw? I’d never heard of such an apparition. How laughably superstitious these villagers were! Did the man take me for a fool?

“Or is the family specter not mentioned in polite company?”

Family specter? I had the sudden feeling that someone had tossed a bucket of ice water over my heart.

Could the Gray Lady of Buckshaw be the ghost of my mother, Harriet?

Brookie laughed. “Silly thought, wasn’t it?” he went on. “No spooks for me, thank you very much! More likely a housebreaker with his eye on the Colonel’s silver. Lot of that going on nowadays, since the war.”

“I think you’d better go now,” I said, my voice trembling. “Father’s a light sleeper. If he wakes up and finds you here, there’s no telling what he’ll do. He sleeps with his service revolver on the night table.”

“Well, I’ll be on my way, then,” Brookie said casually. “Glad to know the family’s come to no harm. We worry about you lot, you know, all of us down in the village. No telling what can happen when you’re way out here, cut off, as it were …”

“Thank you,” I said. “We’re very grateful, I’m sure. And now, if you don’t mind—”

I unlocked one of the French doors and opened it wide.

“Good night, miss,” he said, and with a grin he vanished into the darkness.

I counted slowly to ten—and then I followed him.

Brookie was nowhere in sight. The shadows had swallowed him whole. I stood listening for a few moments on the terrace, but the night was eerily silent.

Overhead, the stars twinkled like a million little lanterns, and I recognized the constellation called the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, named for the family of girls in Greek mythology who were so saddened by their father’s fate—he was the famous Atlas who was doomed to carry the heavens on his shoulders—that they committed suicide.

I thought of the rain-swept afternoon I had spent in the greenhouse with Dogger, helping him cut the eyes from a small mountain of potatoes, and listening to a tale that had been handed down by word of mouth for thousands of years.

“What a stupid thing to do!” I said. “Why would they kill themselves?”

“The Greeks are a dramatic race,” Dogger had answered. “They invented the drama.”

“How do you know all these things?”

“They swim in my head,” he said, “like dolphins.” And then he had lapsed into his customary silence.

Somewhere across the lawn an owl hooted, bringing me back with a start to the present. I realized that I was still holding my shoes in my hand. What a fool I must have looked to Brookie Harewood!

Behind me, except for the paraffin lamp that still burned in the drawing room, Buckshaw was all in darkness. It was too early for breakfast and too late to go back to bed.

I stepped back into the house, put on my shoes, and turned down the wick. By now, the Gypsy woman would be rested and be over her fright. With any luck, I could manage an invitation to a Gypsy breakfast over an open campfire. And with a bit more luck, I might even find out who Hilda Muir was, and why we were all dead.

I paused at the edge of the Palings, waiting for my eyes to become accustomed to the deeper gloom among the trees.

A wooded glade in darkness is an eerie place, I thought; a place where almost anything could happen.

Pixies … Hilda Muir … the Gray Lady of Buckshaw …

I gave myself a mental shake. “Stop it, Flavia!” a voice inside me said, and I took its advice.

The caravan was still there: I could see several stars and a patch of the Milky Way reflected in one of its curtained windows. The sound of munching somewhere in the darkness told me that Gry was grazing not far away.

I approached the caravan slowly.

“Hel-lo,” I sang, keeping the tone light, in view of the Gypsy’s earlier frame of mind. “It’s me, Flavia. Knock-knock. Anyone at home?”

There was no reply. I waited a moment, then made my way round to the back of the caravan. When I touched its wooden side to steady myself, my hand came away wet with the cold dew.

“Anyone here? It’s me, Flavia.” I gave a light rap with my knuckles.

There was a faint glow in the rear window: the sort of glow that might be given off by a lamp turned down for the night.

Suddenly something wet and horrid and slobbering touched the side of my face. I leapt back, my arms windmilling.

“Cheeses!” I yelped.

There was a rustling noise and a hot breath on the back of my neck, followed by the sweet smell of wet grass.

Then Gry was nuzzling at my ear.

“Creekers, Gry!” I said, spinning round. “Creekers!”

I touched his warm face in the darkness and found it oddly comforting: much more so than I should ever have guessed. I touched my forehead to his, and for a few moments as my heart slowed we stood there in the starlight, communicating in a way that is far older than words.

If only you could talk, I thought. If only you could talk.

“Hel-lo,” I called again, giving Gry’s muzzle one last rub and turning towards the caravan. But still, there was no reply.

The wagon teetered a bit on its springs as I stepped onto the shafts and clambered up towards the driving seat. The ornamental door handle was cold in my hand as I gave it a twist. The door swung open—it had not been locked.

“Hello?”

I stepped inside and reached for the paraffin lamp that glowed dully above the stove. As I turned up the wick, the glass shade sprang to light with a horrid sticky red brilliance.

Blood! There was blood everywhere. The stove and the curtains were splattered with the stuff. There was blood on the lampshade—blood on my hands.

Something dripped from the ceiling onto my face. I shrank back in revulsion—and perhaps a little fright.

And then I saw the Gypsy—she was lying crumpled at my feet: a black tumbled heap lying perfectly still in a pool of her own blood. I had almost stepped on her.

I knelt at her side and took her wrist between my thumb and forefinger. Could that thin stirring possibly be a pulse?

If it was, I needed help, and needed it quickly. Mucking about would do no good.

I was about to step out onto the driving seat when something stopped me in my tracks. I sniffed the air, which was sharp with the coppery, metallic smell of blood.

Blood, yes—but something more than blood. Something out of place. I sniffed again. What could it be?

Fish! The caravan reeked of blood and fish!

Had the Gypsy woman caught and cooked a fish in my absence? I thought not; there was no sign of a fire or utensils. Besides, I thought, she had been too weak and tired to do so. And there had certainly been no fishy smell about the caravan when I left it earlier.

I stepped outside, closed the door behind me, and leapt to the ground.

Running back to Buckshaw for help was out of the question. It would take far too long. By the time the proper people had been awakened and Dr. Darby summoned, the Gypsy might well be dead—if she wasn’t already.

“Gry!” I called, and the old horse came shuffling towards me. Without further thought, I leapt onto his back, flung my arms round his neck, and gave his ribs a gentle kick with my heels. Moments later we were trotting across the bridge, then turning north into the leafy narrowness of the Gully.

In spite of the darkness, Gry kept up a steady pace, as if he were familiar with this rutted lane. As we went along, I learned quickly to balance on his bony spine, ducking down as overhanging branches snatched at my clothing, and wishing I’d been foresighted enough to bring a sweater. I’d forgotten how cold the nights could be at the end of summer.

On we trotted, the Gypsy’s horse outdoing himself. Perhaps he sensed a hearty meal at the end of his journey.

Soon we would be passing the tumbledown residence of the Bulls, and I knew that we would not pass unnoticed. Even in broad daylight there were seldom travelers in the narrow lane. In the middle of the night, the unaccustomed sound of Gry’s hooves on the road would surely be heard by one of the half-wild Bull family.

Yes, there it was: just ahead of us on the right. I could smell it. Even in the dark I could see the gray curtain of smoke that hung about the place. Spotted here and there about the property, the embers of the smoldering rubbish tips glowed like red eyes in the night. In spite of the lateness of the hour, the windows of the house were blazing with light.

No good begging for help here, I thought. Mrs. Bull had made no bones about her hatred of the Gypsy.

Seizing a handful of Gry’s thick mane, I tugged at it gently. As if he had been trained from birth to this primitive means of control, the old horse slowed to a shamble. At the change of pace, one of his hooves struck a rock in the rutted road.

“Shhh!” I whispered into his ear. “Tiptoe!”

I knew that we had to keep moving. The Gypsy woman needed help desperately, and the Bulls’ was not the place to seek it.

A door banged as someone came out into the yard—on the far side of the house, by the sound of it.

Gry stopped instantly and refused to move. I wanted to whisper into his ear to keep going, that he was a good horse—a remarkable horse—yet I hardly dared breathe. But Gry stood as motionless in the lane as if he were a purebred pointer. Could it be that a Gypsy’s horse knew more about stealth than I did? Had years of traveling the unfriendly roads taught him more low cunning than even I possessed?