The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 (137 page)

“Fetch him yourself,” I said, taking Nialla’s hand. “And on your way back, tell Mrs. Mullet to boil buckets of hot water.”

Marion bared her teeth for an instant, as if she were going to bite me, then spun round and strode out of the room.

“Really, Flavia,” Nialla said through clenched teeth, “you’re incorrigible.”

I shrugged. “Thank you,” I said.

The fetching of water at a birth was, I had learned from the cinema and countless plays on the wireless, a ritual that might as well have been the Eleventh Commandment, though why
boiling
water was invariably specified was beyond me. It seemed hardly likely to be used to baste the mother without risk of serious burns, and it was simply beyond belief that a newborn would be immersed in a liquid having a temperature of 212 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale—unless, of course, that was the reason for newly delivered babies having that lobsterish color I’d seen in the cinema.

It seemed unthinkable, though. Thoroughly barbaric.

One thing was clear: There was much that I needed to learn about the events surrounding the birth of a baby. One needed to be able to tease out the scientific facts from the mumbo jumbo. I would make a note to look more closely into this as soon as Christmas was out of the way.

“How are you?” I asked Nialla, but it came out sounding rather phony, as if we were two old ladies meeting at a parish tea.

“I’m
quate
well, theng-kyew,” she replied through gritted teeth in a put-on toffish voice. “And you?”

“Spiffing,” I said. “Simply spiffing.”

I squeezed her hand and she smiled.

“Hmmm,” Dr. Darby said behind me, and as I spun round he had already stripped off his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves.

“Close the door on your way out,” he said.

I admire a man who can take command when a woman really needs him.

Marion Trodd was standing in the corridor looking daggers at me.

“Sorry if I seemed rude,” I said. “Nialla is an old friend, and—”

“Oh, well, then. Think nothing of it,” she snapped. “You’re forgiven, I’m sure. After all, I’m quite accustomed to being trampled underfoot.”

She spun round and walked off.

Hag!
I thought.

“Don’t mind Marion,” someone said, stepping into my view as if from the shadows. “She’s a little overwrought.”

It was Bun Keats.

“Overwrought? Over-rotten is more like it,” I wanted to say, but I kept the witticism to myself.

“I’m sorry about Miss Wyvern,” I said. “It must be terrible for you.”

Although I had not planned it, I was aware, even as I spoke, that this was precisely the right thing to say.

“You have no idea,” Bun said, and I knew she was speaking the truth. I
did
have no idea, but I intended to find out.

“Would you like some tea?” I was asking her when the bedroom door opened and Dr. Darby’s head appeared.

“Tell Dogger to come at once,” he said. “Tell him ‘transverse dorsolateral.’ Tell him ‘shoulder presentation.’ ”

“Right-o,” I said, and walked away—a model of unflustered efficiency.

“Run!” Dr. Darby roared behind me, and I took to my heels.

“Transverse dorsolateral,” I repeated in a whisper as I raced along the corridor. “Transverse dorsolateral. Shoulder presentation.”

But where to find Dogger? He could be in his room … or in the kitchen. He might even be in the greenhouse … or the coach house.

I needn’t have worried. As I came flapping like a demented bat down the west staircase, there was Dogger in the foyer helping Cynthia and the vicar to remove their coats. They looked like survivors of a failed Antarctic expedition, as did Sergeant Graves, who stood behind them.

“Blizzard now,” the vicar was croaking through ice-rimed lips. “We should have frozen to death if the sergeant hadn’t come upon us.”

Cynthia stood quaking in an apparent daze.

Rude or not, I whispered into Dogger’s ear:

“Dr. Darby needs you in the Tennyson bedroom. Transverse dorsolateral. Shoulder presentation.”

I had planned on dashing up the stairs ahead of him to lead the way, but Dogger beat me to it. He took the steps as if he had suddenly been granted wings, and I was left to tumble along behind in his wake as best I could.

Dogger paused at the door just long enough to say, “Thank you, Miss Flavia. These particular cases can sometimes come on quite quickly. When I need you I’ll call.”

I dropped myself into a chair outside the bedroom and whiled away the time by chewing my nails. After what seemed like a string of eternities, but was probably no more than a few minutes, I heard Nialla cry out three times sharply, followed by something that sounded like a startled bleat.

What were they doing in there? Why wasn’t I allowed to watch?

Daffy had once told me how a baby was born, but her story was so ridiculous as to be beyond belief. I’d made a mental note to ask Dogger, but had somehow never got round to it. This could be my golden opportunity.

Time dragged on and I was drawing concentric circles with the toes of my shoes when the door opened and Dogger crooked a finger at me.

“Just a peek,” he said. “Miss Nialla is quite tired.”

I stepped cautiously into the room, looking this way and that, as if something was going to leap out and bite me, and there was Nialla propped up with pillows in the bed holding something in her arms that seemed at first to be a large water rat.

I edged closer and as I watched, its mouth opened and it gave out a squeak like a rubber toy.

It’s hard to describe how I felt at that moment. A mixture, I suppose, of profound happiness and quite crushing sadness. The happiness, I understood; the sadness, I did not.

It had something to do with the fact that suddenly, I was no longer the last baby who had cried at Buckshaw, and I felt as if one of my most secret possessions had been stolen from me.

“How was it?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“Oh, kid,” she said, “you have no idea.”

How odd. Weren’t those the words Bun Keats had used when I’d extended my sympathy on Phyllis Wyvern’s death?

“It’s a beautiful baby,” I said untruthfully. “It looks just like you.”

Nialla looked down at the bundle in her arms and began to sob.

“Ohhh,” she said.

Then Dogger’s hand was on my shoulder and I was being steered gently but firmly towards the door.

I walked slowly back to the chair in the corridor and sat down. My mind was overflowing.

Over there, behind a closed door, was Nialla, with her newborn baby. And there, just along the corridor, behind her own closed door, was the newly dead—relatively speaking—Phyllis Wyvern.

Was there any meaning in this or was it just another stupid fact? Did living bodies come into being from dead bodies or was that just another old wives’ tale?

Daffy had told me about the girl in India who claimed to be the reincarnation of an old woman who had died in the next village, but was it true? Dr. Gandhi had certainly thought so.

Was there even the remotest possibility, then, that the soggy creature in Nialla’s arms contained the soul of Phyllis Wyvern?

I shuddered at the thought.

Still, I’d have to admit that, of the two, to my mind, the dead Phyllis Wyvern was more interesting.

To be perfectly honest,
far
more interesting.

There had been a time, not long after Nialla’s last visit to Buckshaw, that I had begun to worry about my fascination with the dead.

After a number of sleepless nights and a patchwork of dreams involving crypts and walking corpses, I had decided to talk it over with Dogger, who had listened in silence as he always does, nodding only occasionally as he polished Father’s boots.

“Is it wrong,” I finished up, “to find enjoyment in the dead?”

Dogger had dredged with the corner of his cloth into the tin of blacking.

“I believe a man named Aristotle once said that we delight to contemplate things such as dead bodies, which in themselves would give us pain, because in them, we experience a pleasure of learning which outweighs the pain.”

“Did he really?” I asked, hugging myself. This Aristotle, whoever he may be, was a man after my own heart, and I made a mental note to look him up sometime.

“As best I recall,” Dogger said, and a shadow had passed across his face.

I was thinking about this when, along the corridor, the door of the Blue Bedroom opened and the mountainous Detective Sergeant Woolmer began lifting his bulky photo kit out of Phyllis Wyvern’s late bedroom.

He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

“Got the dabs, and so forth?” I asked pleasantly. “Scene-of-the-crime photos?”

The sergeant stared at me for a few moments, and then a smile spread across his usually stony face.

“Well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t Miss de Luce. Hot on the trail, are you?”

“You know me, Sergeant,” I said, with what I hoped was a mysterious grin. I began sauntering towards him, hoping for at least a glance over his shoulder at the deceased Miss Wyvern.

He quickly closed the door, gave the key a twist, and dropped it into his pocket.

“Uh-uh-uh,” he said, cutting me off in mid-thought. “And don’t you even go thinking about Mrs. Mullet’s key chain, miss. I know as well as you do that old houses like this have spare keys by the bagful. If you lay so much as a fingerprint on this door, I’ll have you up on charges.”

Coming from a fingerprint expert, this was a serious threat.

“What did you use for your camera settings?” I asked, trying to distract him. “A hundred-and-twenty-fifth of a second at f eleven?”

The sergeant scratched his head—almost in pleasure, I thought.

“It’s no good, miss,” he said. “We’ve already been warned about you.”

And with that, he walked away.

Warned about me? What the deuce did he mean by that?

I could think of only one thing: Inspector Hewitt, the traitor, had lectured his men against me on their way to Buckshaw. He had specifically cautioned them against my ingenuity, which must have grated upon them in the past like a fingernail on slate.

Did he think he could outwit me?

We shall see, my dear Inspector Hewitt
, I thought.
We shall see
.

I had become aware, as I chatted with Sergeant Woolmer, of quiet conversation in the adjacent room—two women talking, by the sound of it.

I knocked firmly at the door and waited.

The voices fell silent, and a moment later the door opened no more than a crack.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said to the single slightly bloodshot eye that appeared, “but Mr. Lampman wants to see you.”

The door swung inwards and I saw the rest of the woman’s face. She was one of the bit players in the film.

“Wants to see me?” she asked in a surprisingly brassy voice. “Wants to see
me
, or wants to see both of us?

“Mr. Lampman wants to see us, Flo,” she called over her shoulder, without waiting for an answer.

Flo wiped her mouth and put down a bowl from which she had been eating.

“Both of you,” I said, trying to put a touch of grimness into my voice. “I think he’s outside in one of the lorries,” I added, “so you’d better bundle up.”

I waited patiently, leaning on the door frame until they hustled off towards the staircase, still shrugging themselves into their heavy winter coats.

I felt more than a little sorry for them. Goodness knows what fantasies were running through their heads. Each of them, most likely, was praying that she had been chosen to replace Phyllis Wyvern in the leading role.

I’d better get to work. They’d be back soon enough—and angry at my deception.

I stepped into their room and turned the key, which, like most keys at Buckshaw, was left in the room side of the lock.

Across the room, on the inside wall between the window and the dresser, was a hanging curtain—a leftover from the days when guest bedrooms were decorated like Turkish harems. It pictured a hunting party with elephants, and a tiger, unseen among the jungle trees, preparing to spring.

I jerked the tapestry aside, sneezing at the cloud of gray dust that flew up into the room, revealing a small, wood-paneled door. I inserted the key and, to my immense satisfaction, felt the bolt slide back with a welcome
click
.

I took hold of the knob and gave it a good twist. Again there were promising sounds but the door was stuck fast.

I muttered something that was half a prayer and half a curse. Even a fraction of a second’s inspection would have shown me that it was painted shut.

Given five minutes in my laboratory, I could have produced a solvent that would strip a battleship while you were saying “Rumpelstiltskin,” but there wasn’t the time.

A quick look round the room revealed a lady’s handbag tossed carelessly on the bed, and I fell upon it like the tiger upon the Maharajahs.

Handkerchief … scent bottle … aspirins … cigarettes (bad girl!), and a small purse which, guessing by its weight and feel, contained no more than six shillings, sixpence.

Ah! Here it was—just what I was looking for. A nail file. Sheffield steel. Perfect!

My prayer had evidently been heard and my curse forgotten.

Inserting the blade of the file between the frame and the door, and working my way round it like a Girl Guide opening rather a large tin of campfire beans, I soon had a satisfactory pile of paint chips on the floor at my feet.

Now for it. One more twist of the knob and a kick at the bottom panel, and the door jerked open with a groan.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the Chamber of Death.

• SIXTEEN •

This bedroom, too, had a dusty drapery covering the unused door, and I was forced to fight my way out from behind it before proceeding.

Phyllis Wyvern’s body was still slumped in the chair as I had first found it, but was now covered with a sheet, as if it were a statue whose sculptor had wandered off to lunch.

The police would have finished their inspection by now, and were probably awaiting the arrival of a suitable vehicle in which to carry off the body.