The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 (129 page)

“Don’t you ever get tired of that book?” I asked.

“Certainly not!” she snapped. “It’s so like my own dismal life that I can’t tell the difference between reading and not reading.”

“Then why bother?” I asked.

“Bug off,” she said. “Go haunt someone else.”

I decided to try a different approach.

“You’ve got black bags under your eyes,” I said. “Were you reading late last night, or does your conscience keep you awake over the despicable way you treat your little sister?”

“Despicable” was a word I’d been dying to use in a sentence ever since I’d heard Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife, fling it at Miss Cool, the village postmistress, in reference to the Royal Mail.

“Sucks to you,” Daffy said. “Who could sleep with all that caterwauling going on?”

“I didn’t hear any caterwauling.”

“That’s because your so-called super-sensitive hearing has blown a fuse. You’re probably beginning to display the hereditary de Luce deafness. It skips from youngest daughter to youngest daughter and generally sets in before the age of twelve.”

“Piffle!” I said. “There was no caterwauling. It was all in your head.”

Daffy’s left earlobe began twitching as it does when she’s upset. I could see that I had hit a nerve.

“It’s not in my head!” she shouted, throwing down her book and jumping to her feet. “It’s that damned Wyvern woman. She runs old films all night—over and over until you could scream. If I have to listen to that voice of hers saying ‘I shall never forget Hawkhover Castle’ one more time as that cheesy music swells up, I’m going to vomit swamp water.”

“I thought you liked her—those magazines …”

Curses! I’d almost given myself away. I wasn’t supposed to know about what was in Daffy’s bottom drawer.

But I needn’t have worried. She was too agitated to spot my slipup.

“I like her on paper, but not in person. She stares at me as if I’m some kind of freak.”

“Perhaps you are,” I offered helpfully.

“Get stuffed,” she said. “Since you’re such great pals with Lady Phyllis, you can tell her next time you see her to keep the noise down. Tell her Buckshaw’s not some slimy cinema in Slough, or wherever it is she comes from.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, turning on my heel and walking out of the room. For some odd reason I was beginning to feel sorry for Phyllis Wyvern.

In the foyer, Dogger was atop a tall orchard ladder, hanging a branch of holly from one of the archways.

“Mind the ilicin,” I called up to him. “Don’t lick your fingers.”

It was a joke, of course. There was once thought to be enough of the glycoside in a couple of handfuls of the red berries to be fatal, but handling the leaves was actually as safe as houses.

Dogger raised an elbow and looked down at me through the crook of his arm.

“Thank you, Miss Flavia,” he said. “I shall be most careful.”

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning. That’s what I was doing when the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” I said.

A gust of snow blew into my face as I opened the door. I wiped my eyes, and only partly in disbelief, for there in the forecourt stood the Cottesmore bus, tendrils of steam rising ominously from its radiator cap. Its driver, Ernie, stood before me, digging at his dentures with a brass toothpick.

“Step down! Step down! Mind your feet!” he called back over his shoulder to the column of people who were climbing down from the bus’s open door.

“Your actors,” he said, “have arrived.”

They came trooping past him and into the foyer like tourists flocking into the National Gallery at opening time—there must have been about thirty in all: coats, scarves, galoshes, hand luggage, and gaily wrapped parcels. They were going to be here, I remembered, for Christmas.

One last straggler was having difficulty with the steps. Ernie made a move to help her, but she brushed away his offered arm.

“I can
manage
,” she said brusquely.

That voice!

“Nialla!” I shouted. And indeed it was.

Nialla Gilfoyle had been the assistant to Rupert Porson, the traveling puppeteer who had come to a rather grisly end in St. Tancred’s parish hall. I hadn’t seen her since the summer, when she had gone off from Bishop’s Lacey in something of a huff.

But all of that seemed to have been forgotten. Here she was on the front steps of Buckshaw in a green coat and a joyful hat trimmed with red berries.

“Come on, then, give me a hug,” she said, opening her arms wide.

“You smell like Christmas,” I said, noticing for the first time the large protuberance that stood between us.

“Eight months!” she said, taking a step back and throwing open her winter coat. “Have a gander.”

“A gander at Mother Goose?” I asked, and she laughed appreciatively. Nialla had played the part of Mother Goose in the late Rupert’s puppet show, and I hoped my little joke would not stir up unhappy memories.

“Mother Goose no more,” she said. “Just plain old Nialla Gilfoyle (Miss). Jobbing actress, comedy, tragedy, pantomime. Apply Withers Agency, London. Telegraph WITHAG.”

“But the puppet show—”

“Sold up,” she said, “lock, stock, and barrel to a lovely chap from Bournemouth. Fetched me enough to rent a flat, where Junior here can have a roof over his or her head as the case may be, come January, when he or she finally decides to make his or her grand entrance.”

“And you’re starring in this?” I asked, waving my hand to take in the theatrical hubbub in the foyer.

“Hardly starring. I’ve undertaken the less-than-demanding role of Anthea Flighting, pregnant daughter—in a nice way, of course—of Boaz Hazlewood—that’s Desmond Duncan.”

“I thought he was a bachelor. Doesn’t he court Phyllis Wyvern?”

“He is, and he does—but he has a past.”

“Ah,” I said. “I see.” Although I didn’t.

“Let me look at you,” she said, grasping my shoulders and retracting her head. “You’ve grown … and you’ve got a little color in your cheeks.”

“It’s the cold,” I said.

“Speaking of which,” she said with a laugh, “let’s go inside before the acorn on my belly button freezes and falls off.”

“Miss Nialla,” Dogger said as I closed the door behind us. “It’s a pleasure to have you back at Buckshaw.”

“Thank you, Dogger,” she said, taking his hand. “I’ve never forgotten your kindness.”

“The little one will be along soon,” he said. “In January?”

“Spot on, Dogger. You’ve got a good eye. January twenty-fifth, according to my panel doctor. He said it wouldn’t hurt me to sign on for this lark as long as I gave up the ciggies, got plenty of sleep, ate well, and kept my feet up whenever I’m not actually in front of the camera.”

She gave me a wink.

“Very good advice,” Dogger said. “Very good advice, indeed. I hope you were comfortable on the bus?”

“Well, it is a bit of a jolter, but it was the only transportation Ilium Films could lay on to get us from the station in Doddingsley. Thank God the thing’s such a hulking old bulldog. It managed to hang on to the roads in spite of the snow.”

By now, Marion Trodd had shepherded the others away to the upper levels, leaving the foyer empty except for the three of us.

“I’ll show you to your room,” Dogger said, and Nialla gave me a happy twiddle of the fingers like Laurel and Hardy as he led her away.

They had barely disappeared up the staircase when the doorbell rang again.

Suffering cyanide! Was I to spend the rest of my life as a doorkeeper?

Another gust of frozen flakes and cold air.

“Dieter!”

“Hello, Flavia. I have brought some chairs from the vicar.”

Dieter Schrantz, tall, blond, and handsome, as they say on the wireless, stood on the doorstep, smiling at me with his perfect teeth. Dieter’s sudden appearance was a bit disconcerting: It was somewhat like having the god Thor deliver the furniture in person.

As a devotee of English literature, especially the Brontë sisters, Dieter had elected to stay in England after his release as a prisoner of war, hoping someday to teach
Wuthering Heights
and
Jane Eyre
to English students. He also had hopes, I think, of marrying my sister Feely.

Behind him, in the forecourt, the Cottesmore bus had now been replaced by a gray Ferguson tractor which stood
putt-putt
ing quietly in the snow, behind it a flat trailer piled high with folding chairs which were covered almost entirely with a tarpaulin.

“I’ll hold the door for you,” I offered. “Are you coming to the play tonight?”

“Of course!” Dieter grinned. “Your William Shakespeare is almost as great a writer as Emily Brontë.”

“Get away with you,” I said. “You’re pulling my leg.”

It was a phrase Mrs. Mullet used. I never thought I’d find myself borrowing it.

Load after load, five or six at a time, Dieter lugged the chairs into the house until at last they were set up in rows in the foyer, all of them facing the improvised stage.

“Come into the kitchen and have some of Mrs. Mullet’s famous cocoa,” I said. “She floats little islands of whipped cream in it, with rosemary sprigs slit for trees.”

“Thank you, but no. I’d better get back. Gordon doesn’t like it if I—”

“I’ll tell Feely you’re here.”

A broad grin spread across Dieter’s face.

“Very well, then,” he said. “But just one whipped-cream island—and no more.”

“Feely!” I hollered towards the drawing room. “Dieter’s here!”

No point wasting precious shoe leather. Besides, Feely had legs of her own.

• NINE •

“Well, well, well,” Mrs. Mullet said. “And ’ow’s everythin’ at Culver’ouse Farm?”

“Very quiet,” Dieter told her. “It is perhaps the time of year.”

“Yes,” she said, although each of us knew there was more to it than that. It would be a grim old Christmas at the Inglebys’ after the events of last summer.

“And Mrs. Ingleby?”

“As well as can be expected, I believe,” Dieter said.

“I promised Dieter a cup of cocoa,” I said. “I hope it won’t be too much trouble?”

“Cocoa’s my speci-
al
-ity,” Mrs. Mullett said, “as you very well knows. Cocoa is never too much trouble in any ’ouse’old what’s run as it ought to be.”

“Better make three cups,” I said. “Feely will be here in … six … five … four … three …”

My ears had already picked up the sound of her hurrying footsteps.

Hurrying? She was flat out at the gallop!

“Two … one …”

An instant later the kitchen door was edged open and Feely sidled casually into the room.

“Oh!” she said, widening her eyes in surprise. “Oh, Dieter … I didn’t know you were here.”

Hog’s britches, she didn’t! I could see through her like window glass.

But Feely’s eyes were as nothing compared with Dieter’s. He fairly gaped at her green silk getup.

“Ophelia!” he said. “For a moment I thought that you were—”

“Emily Brontë,” she said, delighted. “Yes, I knew you would.”

If she didn’t know he was here
, I thought,
how could she know he’d mistake her for his beloved Emily?
But Dieter, love-struck, didn’t notice.

I had to admire my sister Feely. She was as slick as a greased pig.

Although I know it is scientifically impossible, it seemed as if Mrs. Mullet could boil milk faster than anyone on the planet. With the Aga cooker already as hot as an alchemist’s furnace, and by stirring constantly, she was able, in the blink of an eye, to conjure up steaming cups of cocoa, each with its own tropical island and mock palm tree.

“It’s too hot in here,” Feely whispered to Dieter, as if she could keep me from overhearing. “Let’s go into the drawing room.”

As I moved to tag along, she shot me a look that said clearly, “And if you dare follow us, you’re a dead duck.”

Naturally, I waddled along behind.

Quack!
I thought.

“Did you celebrate Christmas in Germany?” I asked Dieter. “Before the war, I mean?”

“Of course,” he said. “Father Christmas was born in Germany. Didn’t you know that?”

“I did,” I said. “But I must have forgotten.”

“Weihnachten, we call it. Saint Nikolaus, the lighted Christmas tree … Saint Nikolaus brings sweets for the children on the sixth of December, and Weihnachtsmann brings gifts for everyone on Christmas Eve.”

He said this looking teasingly at Feely, who was sneaking a peek at herself in the looking glass.

“Two Father Christmases?” I asked.

“Something like that.”

I gave an inward sigh of relief. Even if I did manage to bring one of them down and keep him from his rounds, there was still a spare to carry out whatever was left of the long night’s work. At least in Germany.

Feely had drifted to the piano and settled onto the bench like a migrating butterfly. She touched the keys tentatively without pressing down, as if playing the wrong combination would make the world explode.

“I’d better be getting back,” Dieter said, draining his cup to the dregs.

“Oh, can’t you stay?” Feely said. “I’d been hoping you’d translate some of the annotations on my facsimile edition of Bach’s
The Well-Tempered Clavier.
”

“They should call it
The
Bad-Tempered
Clavier
, when you play it,” I said. “She swears like stink when she hits a clinker,” I explained to Dieter.

Feely went as red as the carpet. She didn’t dare swat me in front of company.

With her flushed face and her green outfit, she reminded me of something I’d seen in a recent color supplement. What was it, now …?

Oh, yes! That was it …

“You look like the flag of Portugal,” I said. “I’ll leave you alone so that you can wave good-bye.”

I knew that I would pay for my insolence later, but Dieter’s hearty laugh was worth it.

The house, generally so cold and silent, had suddenly become a beehive. Carpenters hammered, painters painted, and various people looked at various parts of the foyer through makeshift frames formed by touching thumbs and extending their fingers.