The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 (141 page)

“She was more than brave,” she said. “She was British.”

I let the silence linger until it was hanging by a thread. And then I said what I had come to say.

“You must have heard everything that happened. Being in the next room.”

Aunt Felicity looked suddenly drawn, and old, and helpless.

“I should have,” she said. “God knows I should have.”

“You mean you didn’t?”

“I’m an old woman, Flavia. I suffer from the vicissitudes of age. I had a tot of rum at bedtime, and slept with the pillow screwed into my good ear. That poor dear blasted soul ran ciné films all night. I knew why, of course, but even sympathy has its limits.”

Does it? I wondered, or was Aunt Felicity simply deflecting further discussion?

“So you heard nothing,” I said at last.

“I didn’t say I’d heard nothing. I said I hadn’t heard everything.”

I walked across the room and stood beside her at the window. It had grown dark outside, and the snow was still falling as heavily as if the world were coming to a bitter end.

“I got up to use the WC. She was arguing with someone. The noise of the film, you see …”

“Was it a man, or a woman?”

“One couldn’t be sure. Although they were keeping down the volume, it was evident that angry words were being exchanged. Even with an ear to the wall—oh, all right, don’t look so shocked, I’ll admit to clapping an ear to the wall—I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I gave it up and went back to bed, determined to have a word with her in the morning.”

“You hadn’t spoken to her before that?”

“No,” Aunt Felicity said. “There had been no opportunity. One had come across her unexpectedly in the corridor, but as I’ve told you, we were both of us too well trained in the art of seeming total strangers.”

My mind was leapfrogging back and forth over the things that Aunt Felicity had told me. If, for instance, what she said was true, Phyllis Wyvern could not possibly have been arguing with someone when Auntie F got up to use the baffins, because she was already dead. I had heard the toilet flush and I’d been in the death chamber moments later. Before that, someone had had enough time to strangle Phyllis Wyvern, dress her in different clothing (for whatever bizarre reason), and make their escape through one of three doors: the one to the corridor, the one that connected to Flo and Maeve’s bedroom, or—and here I shot a nervous glance over my shoulder—the one that opened into the very room in which I was now standing. Aunt Felicity’s bedroom—the very same Aunt Felicity who had just told me that she was capable of coming for me in the dark with a butcher knife. If what she said was true—if only half of what she hinted at were the ramblings of a woman who had grown suddenly old at the end of the war—she was capable of anything. Who knew what havoc old loyalties and older jealousies could play with two women who had once been friends?

Or was it enemies?

I needed time to think—time to get away—to collect my thoughts.

“Thank you, Aunt Felicity,” I said. “You must be very tired.”

I could always come back to her later to fill in the blanks.

“You’re such a thoughtful child,” she said.

I gave her a modest smile.

The cupboard under the stairs was little more than a right-angled triangle equipped with a dangling lightbulb. Here, stowed safely away from the eyes of the ciné crew and their cameras, were the magazines that had been cleared away from the library and the drawing room. Back numbers of
Country Life
pressed down like geological strata upon old issues of
The Illustrated London News
. Heaped high with issues of
Behind the Screen
and
Cinema Weekly
, back numbers of
Cinema World
were piled in crooked stacks that must have dated back to the days of silent film.

I stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and, taking down the first handful of ciné magazines, began my search.

I flipped through page after page of
Ciné Tit-Bits
and
Silver Cinema
, smiling, at first, at the antics of the so-called “movie stars,” most of whom I had never heard of.

Parties, galas, premieres, benefit performances: smiling faces, toothy grins, top hats and sequined dresses, arms around shoulders in exotic motorcars—what vast amounts of time these people had spent having themselves photographed!

It wasn’t difficult to find Phyllis Wyvern. She was everywhere, spanning the years without apparently aging a day. Here she was, for instance, sitting, legs crossed, in a canvas chair with her name painted on the back, studying a script, with a cardigan thrown over her shoulders and a look of intense concentration on her face. Here she was, dancing with a young airman in a dark nightclub that seemed to be located in a church crypt. And here she was again, on the set of
Anna of the Steppes
, standing with another actress, their faces turned skyward, in front of one of the behemoth tractors as their makeup is retouched by a man in a mustache and a beret.

Could it be?

For a moment I thought that the woman beside Phyllis Wyvern was Marion Trodd. A much younger Marion Trodd, to be sure, but still …

In spite of my excitement I was having difficulty in keeping my eyes focused on the page. The air in the cupboard was becoming stuffy; the bare bulb giving off a surprising amount of heat. That and the fact that I was bone tired was making my head swim.

How long had I been huddled in this cupboard? An hour? Perhaps two? It seemed like days.

I rubbed my eyes with my fists, forcing myself to pay attention to the tiny type in which the caption was printed.

Perhaps there was something after all in Father’s insistence on having all of us outfitted with spectacles. I wore mine only when trying for sympathy, or when I needed to protect my eyes during a hazardous chemical experiment. I thought momentarily of running upstairs to get them, but decided against it.

I shook my head and read the caption again:

Phyllis Wyvern and Norma Durance freshen up between takes. Eyes front for the birdie, girls!

What a disappointment. I must have been mistaken. I had thought for a moment that I was on to something, but the name Norma Durance meant nothing to me.

Unless …

Hadn’t I seen that face a few issues back? Because the woman wasn’t photographed with Phyllis Wyvern I had paid her no attention.

I went back a couple of issues.

Yes! Here it was in
Silver Cinema
. The actress is in a barnyard, throwing a handful of grain from her gathered-up skirt to a mob of frenzied chickens.

“
Pretty Norma Durance ably undertakes the part of Dorita in
The Little Red Hen.
We hear she’s not working for chicken feed!
”

I held the magazine up to the light for a closer look. As I carefully studied the woman’s features, the top edge of the cover pressed for a moment against the lightbulb. In an instant the tinder-dry paper had browned, then blackened—and before I could blink, burst into flame.

It’s wonderful how the mind works in such situations. I remember distinctly that my first thought was “Here’s Flavia, her hands full of fire in a cupboard jam-packed with combustibles.”

It was the kind of thing of which front-page stories in the
Times
are made.

Smoldering ashes are all that remain of historic country house. Buckshaw in ruins
.

And there would be a grisly photo, of course.

I threw down the burning magazine and stamped on it again and again with my feet.

But because of the waterproofing solution that Dogger applied so conscientiously to our footwear—a witches’ brew containing both linseed and castor oils, as well as copal varnish—my shoes burst immediately into flames.

I tore off my cardigan and dropped it onto my feet, stamping and bundling with my hands until the fire was out.

By now, my heart was pounding like a racing engine, and I found myself gasping for air.

Fortunately I had not burned myself. The fire had been quickly extinguished with little trace remaining other than a few black ashes and some lingering smoke.

I checked quickly to be sure that no sparks had lodged among the stacks of paper, then let myself out into the passageway, coughing as I went.

I was pulling on my singed sweater and scraping the toes of my smoking shoes on the floorboards when the kitchen door opened and Dogger appeared.

He looked at me closely without saying a word.

“Unforeseen chemical reaction,” I said.

An air of weariness had fallen upon the foyer. No one paid the slightest attention to me as I passed through. Everywhere, the people of Bishop’s Lacey sat staring blankly off into space, immersed in their own thoughts. In a corner, a card table with two chairs had been set up as an interrogation center, and Sergeant Graves was murmuring away with Miss Cool, the village postmistress and confectioner.

“Dazed” was the word for the rest of them. The earlier air of sharing in a jolly good adventure had worn off, pretense had vanished, and everyone had sagged, exhausted at last, into their real faces.

Buckshaw had been made over into a bomb shelter.

In the farthest corner from the police, the chauffeur, Anthony, sucked on a cigarette that he held concealed in a half-closed hand. He looked up and caught my eye, just as he had done when I’d dislodged the little avalanche of snow.

What was he thinking?

I sauntered casually off towards the west wing to have a look at the grandfather clock that stood in the corridor near Father’s study. It must be getting late.

The hands of the ancient timepiece stood at ten-seventeen! Where could the day have gone?

Even twenty-four hours seemed an eternity when one was cooped up indoors and the days were the shortest of the year, but the death of Phyllis Wyvern under the roofs of Buckshaw had turned time topsy-turvy.

The roofs of Buckshaw! My bucket of birdlime!

Time was running out. If I was going to carry out my plan—my plans!—I’d better get a bustle on. Christmas was nearly upon us. Father Christmas himself would soon be here.

And so would the undertaker.

Poor Phyllis Wyvern. I was going to miss her.

• NINETEEN •

A quick jaunt to the jakes was all I needed. With that attended to, I could get on with my plans.

The closest convenience was at the top of the kitchen stairs, two doors along from Dogger’s bedroom. When I reached it, I threw open the door and—

My heart stopped.

Naked from the waist up, Val Lampman was sitting on the toilet clumsily trying to wrap one of his muscular arms with surgical lint. They were both horribly scratched and torn. He was as surprised as I was, and as he looked up at me, startled, his eyes became suddenly those of an injured hawk.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

I tried not to stare at the matching anchors tattooed on each of his forearms.

Had he been a sailor?

“What are you looking at?” he demanded in a harsh voice.

“Nothing,” I said. “May I help?”

“No,” he said, momentarily flustered. “Thank you. I was trying to help the lads shift a flat in one of the lorries, and it fell on me. My own fault, really.”

As if he expected me to believe him! Who in their right mind would be moving scenery, bare-armed and bare-chested, in the back of a freezing lorry?

“I’m sorry,” I said, taking the roll of lint from his hands and unreeling a fresh length. “You’ve cut your chest, too. Here, lean forward a bit and I’ll wrap it round.”

My helpfulness allowed me to have a good look at his wounds, which were already lightly scabbed and red along the edges. Not fresh, by any means, but not old, either. They had been inflicted, at a guess, twenty-four hours ago.

And by fingernails, if I were any judge.

Even though I had been cashiered from the Girl Guides for insubordination, I had not forgotten their many useful teachings, including the mnemonic “P-A-D”: Pressure, Antiseptic, Dressing.

“Pad! Pad! Pad!” we used to shout, rolling about on the floor of the parish hall, mauling one another horribly, trussing our victims and ourselves, like fat white mummies, in the endless rolls of bandaging.

“Did you put iodine on these?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that he hadn’t. The telltale reddish brown stains of that tincture were nowhere in evidence.

“Yes,” he lied, and I noticed for the first time, in the refuse container, the blood-encrusted dressings he had just removed.

“It was very kind of you to help moving props,” I said casually. “I don’t expect many directors would do that.”

“It’s not been easy with McNulty injured,” he said. “Still, one does what one can.”

“Mm,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic, hoping he’d tell me more.

But my mind was already racing through the corridors of Buckshaw, up the stairs, back to the Blue Bedroom, back to the body of Phyllis Wyvern, back to her fingernails—

Which had been remarkably clean. There had been no shreds of ripped flesh beneath them—no sign of blood (although her scarlet nail polish might have hidden the stains).

I became suddenly aware that Val Lampman’s eyes were fixed on mine, as intently hypnotic as those of a cat on a cornered mouse. If he’d had a tail, it would have been swishing.

He was reading my thoughts. I was quite sure of it.

I tried not to think of the fact that the police might already have scraped out whatever bits of evidence were under Phyllis Wyvern’s fingernails; tried not to think that whoever had murdered her had taken the time to re-dress her, to paint her nails, and in doing so, to remove, before any of us got there, any matter that may have been lodged beneath them.

I tried not to think—not to think—but it was no good.

His eyes were boring into mine. Surely he had seen something.

“I’d better be getting along,” I said suddenly. “I promised the vicar I’d help with the …”

Although I could feel my heart pounding as it pumped blood into my face, I couldn’t think of a single word to complete the lie.