The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (21 page)

“It isn’t the middle of the night,” she corrected me. “It’s morning, and Ibu has already been up for hours. Besides, that’s two questions, and Ibu always says:

“Riddle me no more than once

“Unless
you
wish to be the dunce.”

I could cheerfully have strangled Ibu—and her daughter—with the nearest pair of nutcrackers, but I controlled myself.

“Ibu says today is your mother’s funeral and that we mustn’t mention it because it might cause you deep distress.”

“Ibu’s very considerate”—I smiled—“and you may tell her I said so.”

I had hopeful visions of Undine parroting my words to Lena and receiving a sound thrashing for her troubles.

“What are you doing with the stool?” Undine asked.

“Watering plants,” I replied, almost without thinking about it. I had become a deft liar when required—and sometimes not.

“Ha!” Undine said, planting her hands on her hips. But she left it at that.

“Run along now,” I told her, surprised at the great pleasure I took in doing so. “I’ve got work to do.”

Which was no more than the truth. I had gone to the library to ferret out the meaning of the stranger’s message, only to be distracted by Daffy’s news about the unexpected arrival of Adam Sowerby.

“He and Father are old friends,” Daffy had reminded me.
It was true, but why was Adam suddenly here? And why now? Had he come as a friend of the family to pay his respects to Harriet, or was he here in his role of inquiry agent?

These were things I needed to know.

But first—a return to the library.

As I had hoped it might be, the library was now in darkness. Daffy must have gone to bed soon after I left her, because
Paradise Lost
was still lying open, facedown, in the same position I had last seen it—which was a sure indication of my sister’s state of mind.

If
I
had left a book lying open on its face like that, she’d have flung it into my face, along with a fiery lecture on what she always referred to as “respect for the printed word.”

I knew well enough what a gamekeeper was, since there had once been one at Buckshaw, although that was long before my time, of course. Much more recently, Daffy had read to us selected passages from
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, which was interesting if you were keen on country houses but far too full of gush and mush if you were not.

I switched on a small table lamp and went directly to the
Oxford English Dictionary
, “The Holy of Holies,” as Daffy called it: twelve volumes plus supplement. The Ns were in the seventh volume. I lifted it down, opened it in my lap, and ran my finger down the page:

Nictation … Niddering … Niddicock—

Aha! So
that
was where Daffy had dredged up the word.

“Flavia, you dim-witted niddicock,” she was fond of saying.

Daffy is the only person I know who mines the
Oxford English Dictionary
for insults in the same way others dig for diamonds.

Ah, here it was:

My blood was instantly ice water.

Pheasants! A nest of pheasants!

“Pheasant sandwiches!” Harriet’s words on the ciné film.

“And have you, also, acquired a taste for pheasant sandwiches, young lady?”
Mr. Churchill’s words at Buckshaw Halt.

But what did they mean?

My brain was crawling with words, with images, and with half-formed ideas.

I knew suddenly that I needed to get away from this house of perpetual gloom, get away to somewhere I could think new thoughts—my own thoughts, rather than the worn-out thoughts of others.

I would pack a breakfast-lunch.

Where would I go? I didn’t know.

The dovecote at Culverhouse Farm, perhaps. The dusty tower, silent save for the cooing of the doves, was a tempting hideout. Even a couple of hours away would give me time to think without having to worry about bargers.

I’d be back in plenty of time to get dressed for the funeral.

TWENTY-ONE

M
RS
. M
ULLET JERKED AWAKE
as I opened the kitchen door. I could tell by her eyes that she had been crying.

“Mrs. M. What are
you
doing here?”

Her head was still half raised from where it had been cradled in her arms on the kitchen table. She looked as if she didn’t know where she was.

“No, don’t get up,” I told her. “I’ll put the kettle on and make you a nice cup of tea.”

Less than five seconds in the room and I was already taking charge of a woman in distress. How very, very odd.

I patted her shoulder like mad, and surprisingly, she let me.

“You’ve been here all night, haven’t you?”

Mrs. M nodded and pressed her lips tightly together until they were white.

“It’s too much for you,” I told her. “You’ve been working
too hard. Daffy told me Adam Sowerby arrived last night. I’ll knock him up and have him run you home.”

“ ’E’s gone already, love. Hours ago.”

Adam gone already? It didn’t make sense. Why, he’d only just arrived.

I dawdled over the sink, taking my time with the kettle, waiting for the water to run cold to allow Mrs. Mullet time to wipe her eyes and poke in the ends of her hair.

“You’ve been overdoing it, Mrs. M,” I said. “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you go up to my room and have a nap? No one will disturb you there.”

“Workin’ too ’ard?” Her voice was suddenly battleship steel. “That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Flavia. I ’aven’t been workin’ ’ard
enough. That’s
the trouble.”

I put the kettle on the stove and waited for her to subside, but she didn’t.

“There’s work to be done and it’s my place to do it.”

“But—”

“Don’t but me, miss. ’Tisn’t every day Miss ’Arriet comes ’ome, an’ ’tisn’t every day I gets to welcome ’er. No one shall take that away from me—

“Not even you, Miss Flavia.”

I went to her and put my arms around her from behind, resting my cheek on top of her head.

I didn’t say a word because I didn’t need to.

Outside, seen from the kitchen garden, one of the larger planets—Jupiter, I think—was well up above the pink ribbon of the eastern horizon.

It was the dark of the moon, and overhead, the stars sparkled in the inky blue-black vault of the heavens.

I was wiping the dew from Gladys’s cold seat when something rustled near the greenhouse.

“Dogger?” I called quietly.

There was no reply.

“Adam?

“All right,” I said. “I know you’re there. Come out before I call the police.”

Someone stepped out of the shadows.

It was Tristram Tallis.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was trying not to wake the household.”

“You didn’t frighten me,” I told him. “I thought you were a prowler. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”

This was a bit of a stretch, even for me, and I think he knew it. Although Buckshaw did have a firearms museum—or “muniment room,” as Father called it—most of the weapons in its glass cases had likely not been fired since the Roundheads and the Cavaliers had squeezed their triggers in the days of “Jolly Ollie” Cromwell.

“Good job you didn’t,” Tallis said. “I should have been hurt if you’d potted me.”

Was the man twitting me?

I decided to let it pass and find out what he was up to.

“You’re up early.” I tried to put a pinch of accusation in my voice.

“I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d come down and check on
Typhon
. Sorry,
Blithe Spirit
, I mean. Oil and so forth.”

It seemed an unlikely excuse for a moment until I remembered that I felt the same way about Gladys.

“Since it might be our last day together, I thought I’d get an early start.”

Our last day together? Was he referring to me? Or to
Blithe Spirit?

“Yes, that’s right,” he said, seeing the look of puzzlement on my face. “I’m selling up. Cashing in my chips. As the old song says, I’m off to Tipperary in the morning. I’ve been offered a post shuffling papers in South America.”

“That’s not exactly Tipperary,” I said. I didn’t know where Tipperary was, actually, except that it sounded as if it might be somewhere in Ireland.

“No, not exactly.” He grinned. “I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think I should wire them and tell them I’ve changed my mind?”

Now I knew he was teasing me.

“No,” I said. “You should go. But leave
Blithe Spirit
here at Buckshaw, so that when I’m old enough, I can learn to fly her.”

“I would if I could. But the old girl—See? You’ve got me calling her an old girl!—needs hangaring. Plus the gentle hand of a good mechanic.”

“Dogger could look after her,” I said.

Dogger, after all, could do anything.

He shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid I’ve sold her,” he said.

I felt my heart sink within me.

Blithe Spirit
sold? I don’t know why, but it didn’t seem right. She had, after all, been sold before.

“Look here,” Tristram Tallis said. “How would it be if I took you for a flip?”

At first I didn’t understand him—didn’t know what he was suggesting.

“A flip?”

“A flight.”

Could this be true? Could it actually be happening to me? I had once asked Father what Buckshaw looked like from the air. “Ask your aunt Felicity,” he’d said. “She’s flown.”

I never had, of course. Now the opportunity was staring me straight in the face.

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Tallis, but I couldn’t possibly accept without permission.”

I knew already what Father’s reply would be, even if I was willing to intrude upon him, which I wasn’t.

What a disappointment, though: having to refuse my only chance to take to the air in Harriet’s
Blithe Spirit
.

My spirits were already sinking when a second figure stepped from the shadows.

It was Dogger.

He handed me a red woolly jumper I had mislaid a week ago in the greenhouse.

“Put this on, Miss Flavia,” he said, without so much as a smile. “The air can be remarkably cold in the mornings.”

Then I, with a silly grin splitting my face from side to side in the damp dawn, was sprinting across the Visto towards
Blithe Spirit
.

Tristram Tallis strapped me into the front seat and left me sitting there alone as he made a tour of inspection round
the aircraft, touching here, wiggling there, peering at one thing and another.

I took the opportunity to have a quick look round the cockpit in which I was sitting. I think I had been expecting something quite wonderful in a machine which was capable of flying up among the gods, but this one seemed horribly underequipped for such a journey: a simple stick that jutted up out of the floor and a couple of dials and gauges on a wooden panel.

And that was all. Surely this thing was too frail to fly.

I was beginning to think I had made a mistake. Perhaps I should beg off. But it was too late.

After a couple of halfhearted swings at the propeller, Tristram returned to the cockpit, threw a switch, and gave it another try. There was an alarming mechanical clanking from the engine, a burst of smoke, and with a roar the propeller disappeared in a blur.

The wings teetered alarmingly as he clambered aboard.

“All set?” he shouted as he fastened himself in the back seat, and I, clutching the edges of the cockpit, managed a grim nod.

The roar became a tornado and we began to move, slowly at first, but with ever-increasing speed until we were rattling along cross-country like the Hinley Hunt in full cry.

Faster and faster still we went until I thought
Blithe Spirit
was about to tear herself to pieces.

And then a sudden smoothness.

We were flying!

Rather than us rising up into the air as I had expected
we would, the earth fell away beneath us like a carpet being jerked out from under one’s feet by some unseen practical joker.

I had no more than a fleeting impression of the roofs of Buckshaw before the ornamental lake was floating quickly past below us.