The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 (127 page)

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

“Let’s have a dekko.”

“No. It’s none of your business.”

“Come on, Feely! I arranged it. If you get paid, I want half.”

Daffy inserted a finger in
Bleak House
to mark her place.

“ ‘In BG, OOF, a maid places a letter on the table,’ ” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“That’s all?” I asked.

“That’s it.”

“But what does it mean?”

“It means that in the background, out of focus, a maid places a letter on the table. Just as it says.”

Feely was pretending to be preoccupied, but I could tell by the rising color of her throat that she was listening. My sister Ophelia is like one of those exotic frogs whose skin changes color involuntarily as a warning. In the frog, it’s trying to make you think that it’s poisonous. It’s much the same in Feely.

“
Caramba!
” I said. “You’ll be famous, Feely!”

“Don’t say
‘Caramba,’
” she snapped. “You know Father doesn’t like it.”

“He’ll be home this morning,” I reminded her. “With Aunt Felicity.”

At that, a general glumness fell over the table and we finished our breakfasts in stony silence.

The down train from London was due at Doddingsley at five past ten. If Clarence Mundy had been picking them up in his taxicab, Father and Aunt Felicity would be at Buckshaw within half an hour. But today, allowing for the snow and the practiced funereal pace at which the vicar usually drove, it seemed likely to be well past eleven before they arrived.

It was, in fact, not until a quarter past one that the vicar’s Morris pulled up exhausted at the front door, piled like a refugee’s cart with various peculiarly shaped objects projecting from the windows and lashed to the roof. As soon as they climbed out of the car, I could tell that Father and Aunt Felicity had been quarreling.

“For heaven’s sake, Haviland,” she was saying, “anyone who can’t tell a chaffinch from a brambling ought not to be allowed to look out the window of a railway carriage.”

“I’m quite sure it
was
a brambling, Lissy. It had the distinctive—”

“Nonsense. Bring my bag, Denwyn. The one with the large brass padlock.”

The vicar seemed a bit surprised to be ordered about in such an offhanded manner, but he pulled the carpetbag from the backseat of the car and handed it to Dogger.

“Clever of you to think of winter tires and chains,” Aunt Felicity said. “Most ecclesiastics are dead washouts when it comes to motorcars.”

I wanted to tell her about the bishop, but I kept quiet.

Aunt Felicity bore down on the front door in her usual bulldog manner. Beneath her full-length motoring coat, I knew, she would be wearing her complete Victorian explorer’s regalia: two-piece Norfolk jacket and skirt, with extra pockets sewn in for scissors, pens, pins, knife, and fork (she traveled with her own: “You never know who’s eaten what with strange cutlery,” she was fond of telling us); several lengths of string, assorted elastics, a gadget for cutting the ends off cigars, and a small glass traveling container of Gentleman’s Relish: “You can’t find it since the war.”

“You see?” she said, stepping into the foyer and taking in the jungle of motion picture equipment at a glance. “It’s just as I told you. The ciné moguls have their hearts set on laying waste to every noble home in England. They’re Communists to the last man Jack. Who do they make their pictures for? ‘The People.’ As if the people are the only ones who need entertaining. Pfagh! It’s enough to make the heavenly hosts bring up their manna.”

I was glad she hadn’t said God, as that would have been blasphemous.

“Mornin’, Lissy!” someone called out. “Tryin’ to go straight, are you?” It was Ted, the same electrician Desmond Duncan had spoken to. He was occupied on a scaffold with an enormous light.

Aunt Felicity stifled an enormous sneeze, rummaging in her purse for a handkerchief.

“Aunt Felicity,” I asked incredulously, “do you know that man?”

“Ran into him somewhere during the war. Some people never forget a name or a face, you know. Quite remarkable. In the blackout, I daresay.”

Father pretended he hadn’t heard, and made straight for his study.

“If it was in the blackout,” I asked, “how could he see your face?”

“Impertinent children ought to be given six coats of shellac and set up in public places as a warning to others.” Aunt Felicity sniffed. “Dogger, you may take my luggage up to my room.”

But he had already done so.

“I hope they haven’t put me in the same wing of the house as those Communists,” she muttered.

But they had.

They’d given her the room next to Phyllis Wyvern’s.

Aunt Felicity had no sooner stumped off to her quarters than Phyllis Wyvern herself strolled casually into the foyer, script in hand, mouthing words as if she were memorizing some particularly difficult lines.

“My dear vicar.” She smiled as she spotted him lurking just inside the door. “How lovely to see you again.”

“The pleasure belongs to Bishop’s Lacey,” the vicar said. “It is not often that our sequestered little village is honored with a visitation of someone of … ah … such stellar magnitude. I believe the first Queen Elizabeth, in 1578, was the last such. There’s a brass plaque in the church, you know …”

It was easy to see that he’d said precisely the right thing. Phyllis Wyvern fairly purred as she replied.

“I’ve been giving some thought to your proposal …” she said, leaving a long pause, as if to suggest the vicar had asked her hand in marriage.

He went a little pink and smiled like a happy saint.

“… and decided that sooner is better than later. Poor Val is facing a couple of unforeseen difficulties: an injured wrangler, a missing camera, and now, I’m told, a frozen generator. We’re not likely to expose any film for a couple of days yet. I know it’s terribly short notice, but do you think you could arrange something for tomorrow?”

A shadow crossed the vicar’s face.

“Dear me,” he said, “I shouldn’t wish to seem ungrateful, but there
are
certain difficulties of a … ah … practical nature.”

“Such as?” she asked charmingly.

“Well, to be perfectly frank, the WC in the parish hall has gone for a burton. Which means, of course, that any public function is simply not on. Poor Dick Plews, our plumber, has been laid up with influenza for days now, and not likely to be up and about for quite some time. The poor dear man’s eighty-two, you know, and though he’s usually as chipper as a sparrow, this bitter cold …”

“Perhaps one of our technical people could—”

“Most kind of you, I’m sure, but I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it. Our furnace, too, has been baring its fangs. The Monster in the Basement, we call it. It’s a Deacon and Bromwell, made in 1851, and shown at the Great Exhibition—a great steel octopus of a thing with the temperament of a scorpion. Dick has been having an affair of the heart with the brute since he was no more than a lad at his father’s knee. He coddles it outrageously, but in recent years he’s been reduced to casting replacement parts by hand, and, well, you see …”

I hadn’t noticed him yet, but Father had come from his study and was standing quietly beside a pile of packing cases.

“Perhaps a solution is more closely at hand,” he said, coming forward. “Miss Wyvern, welcome to Buckshaw. I’m Haviland de Luce.”

“Colonel de Luce! What a pleasure to meet you at last! I’ve heard so much about you. I’m greatly indebted to you for so graciously opening your lovely home to us.”

Lovely home? Was she being facetious? I couldn’t tell.

“Not at all,” Father was saying. “We are all of us debtors in one way or another.”

There was an uneasy silence.

“I, for instance,” he went on, “am in the debt of my friend the vicar for fetching my sister and me from the train at Doddingsley. A most hazardous mission over treacherous roads, brought to a happy conclusion by his remarkable driving skills.”

The vicar muttered something about winter tires augmented with snow chains and then subsided to allow Father his time in the spotlight with Phyllis Wyvern.

They were still holding hands and Father was saying:

“Perhaps I may be allowed to offer the use of Buckshaw for your performance? It is, after all, only for an evening, and I’m sure it wouldn’t infringe upon our agreement if the foyer were cleared and set up with chairs for a few hours.”

“Splendid!” the vicar chimed in. “There’s room enough here for every soul in Bishop’s Lacey, man, woman, and child, with room left over for elbows. Come to think of it, it’s even more spacious than the parish hall. How odd that I didn’t think of it before! It’s too late for posters and handbills, but I’ll ask Cynthia to produce some tickets on the hectograph. But first things first. She’ll need to get the ladies of the Calling Circle organized to ring round the village and sign everyone up.”

“And I’ll have a word with our director,” Phyllis Wyvern said, letting go of Father’s hand at last. “I’m sure it will be all right. Val can’t say no to me in certain spheres, and I’ll see to it that this is one of them.”

She smiled charmingly but I noticed that both Father and the vicar looked away.

“Good morning, Flavia,” she said at last, but her acknowledgment of my presence came too late for my liking.

“Good morning, Miss Wyvern,” I said, and walked off coolly towards the drawing room with a kiss-my-nelly look on my face. I’d show her a thing or two about acting!

My eyes must have bugged out of their sockets. Dressed in the green silks she had worn when she played the part of Becky Sharp in the Dramatic Society’s production of
Vanity Fair
, Feely was standing in front of a small round table, putting down a letter, picking it up, and putting it down again.

She would do this most delicately, then with a jerk of hesitation—and then with a sudden thrust, as if she couldn’t stand the sight of the thing. She was rehearsing her appearance—or at least the appearance of one of her hands—in
Cry of the Raven
.

“I was chatting with Phyllis,” I said casually, stretching the facts a little. “She and Desmond Duncan are doing a scene from
Romeo and Juliet
on Saturday night, here in the foyer. For charity.”

“No one will come,” Daffy said sourly. “In the first place, it’s too close to Christmas. In the second, it’s too short notice. In the third, in case they haven’t thought of it, no one’s going anywhere in this weather without snow-shoes and a Saint Bernard.”

“Bet you’re wrong,” I said. “I’ll bet you sixpence the whole village turns out.”

“Done!” Daffy said, spitting on her palm and shaking my hand.

It was the first physical contact I’d had with my sister since the day, months before, that she and Feely had trussed me up and dragged me into the cellars for a candlelight inquisition.

I shrugged and walked to the door. A quick glance before leaving showed me that the hand of Becky Sharp was still mechanically picking up and putting down the letter like a clockwork wraith.

Although there was something pathetic about her actions, I couldn’t, for the life of me, think what it was.

Halfway along the corridor, I became aware of angry voices in the foyer. Naturally, I stopped to listen. I am both blessed and cursed with Harriet’s acute sense of hearing: an almost supernatural sensitivity to sound for which I have sometimes given thanks and sometimes despaired, never knowing until later which it was to be.

I recognized at once that the voices were those of Val Lampman and Phyllis Wyvern.

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you’ve promised,” he was saying. “You’ll simply have to tell them that it’s off.”

“And look like a bloody fool? Think about it, Val. What’s it going to cost?—a couple of hours at a time of day when we’re not working anyway. I’m doing it on my own time, and so is Desmond.”

“That isn’t the point. We’re already behind schedule and things are only going to get worse. Patrick … Bun … and we’ve only been here a day. I simply don’t have the resources to keep shoving shipping crates around so that you can do your Faerie Queene impression.”

“You heartless brute,” she said. Her voice was cold as ice.

Val Lampman laughed.

“
The Glass Heart
. Page ninety-three, if I’m not mistaken. You never forget a line, do you, old girl?”

Incredibly, she laughed.

“Come on, Val, be a sport. Show them you’ve got more in your heart than meat.”

“Sorry, old love,” he said. “No can do this time.”

There was a silence, and I wished I could see their faces, but I couldn’t move without giving away my presence.

“Supposing,” Phyllis Wyvern said in little more than a whisper, “that I told Desmond about that interesting adventure of yours in Buckinghamshire?”

“You wouldn’t dare!” he hissed. “Come off it, Phyllis—you wouldn’t
dare
!”

“Would I not?”

I could tell that she’d got on her high horse again.

“Damn you,” he said. “Damn you and damn you and damn you!”

There was another silence—even longer this time, and then Val Lampman suddenly said:

“All right, then. You shall have your little show. It won’t make much difference to my plans.”

“Thank you, Val. I knew you’d come round to my way of thinking. You always do. Now shall we go upstairs and join the others? They’ll be getting impatient.”

I heard the sound of their footsteps going up the stairs. I’d give it a few more seconds, I thought, just to be certain they were gone.

But before I could move, someone stepped out from the shadows into the middle of the corridor.

Bun Keats!

She had not seen me. Her back was turned, and she was peeking round the corner into the foyer. It was evident that she’d been eavesdropping on the conversation I’d just happened to overhear.

If she turned round, she’d be almost face-to-face with me.

I held my breath.

After what seemed like an eternity, she walked slowly through into the foyer and vanished from sight.

Again I waited until I heard her footsteps fade away.