The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 (142 page)

“… things,” I added weakly.

I had already opened the door and put one foot in the corridor when he seized my arm.

“Wait,” he said.

From the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Dogger entering his room.

“It’s all right, Dogger,” I called out. “I was just showing Mr. Lampman to the WC.”

Lampman let go his grip and I stepped back.

He stood fixedly staring, the bandages on his chest rising and falling with every breath.

I closed the door in his face.

Dogger had already vanished. Good old Dogger. His sense of decorum kept him from intruding in all but the most extreme emergencies. Well, this hadn’t been an emergency.

Or had it? I’d talk to Dogger later, when I’d had time to think things through. It was still too soon.

Had I unmasked Phyllis Wyvern’s killer? Well, perhaps—but also perhaps not.

It seemed quite unlikely that someone as placid-seeming as Val Lampman should strangle his own mother, change her clothing, and apply stage makeup in order to have her looking her best when her body was discovered.

And those injuries on his arms and chest? Mightn’t he simply have got into a tussle with Latshaw, his surly crew chief?

There was no doubt about it. I needed to talk to Dogger.

Yes, that was it—we’d sit down together later over a steaming kettle and a pair of teacups, and I’d run fleet-footed through my observations and deductions, and Dogger would marvel at my accomplishments.

But until then, I had other things to do.

It was with a cheery heart that I lugged my pot of birdlime up the narrow stairs. Good thing I’d thought to bring a clothes brush from the pantry to clear away the snow from the chimney pots, and a stiffish wallpaper brush from the little framing room in the picture gallery, to slather the stuff on with.

If the door had been a chore to open earlier, it was now a beast. I put my shoulder against it and shoved, and shoved, and shoved again until at last the creaking snow yielded grudgingly, enough to allow me to squeeze out onto the roof.

The wind struck me at once and I cringed against the cold.

I trudged my way slowly across the snowy wastes to the west wing of the house, knee deep in drifts. Father Christmas would come down the drawing room chimney, as he always had. There was no point in wasting precious body heat and birdlime in painting the others.

With the snow swept away from the collars of the three stacks, it was possible—although not by any means simple—to pull myself up, slipping and sliding, onto each of the towering brick turrets in turn, although I have to admit that I gave no more than a lick and a promise to the smaller pots that connected to the fireplaces in the upper bedrooms. Father Christmas wouldn’t dare come down Father’s chimney, and as for Harriet’s—well, there was no longer any need, was there? Except for leaving myself a couple of narrow glue-free paths in which to maneuver without becoming stuck myself, the application of the stuff was quite straightforward.

When I was finished, I found myself frozen there for a moment on the roof, thinking, motionless in the bitter wind, a lightning-struck weather vane that points forever in the wrong direction.

And then, just as quickly, my spirits were restored. Wasn’t I, after all, within hours of being able to write “Conclusion” to my grand experiment?

As I fought my way back across the snowy wastes, I whistled a few bars of “The Holly and the Ivy” in sly reference to the sticky mess I had just applied to the chimneys of Buckshaw. I even broke into song:

“The rising of the suh-hun and the running of the deer …”

It was time to turn my attention to the Rocket of Honor.

“What are you
doing
?” Feely demanded, as I descended the last few steps into my laboratory.

Her fists were clenched and her eyes, as they always are when she’s angry, were several shades lighter than their normal blue.

“Who let you in?” I asked. “You’re not allowed in this room without written permission from me.”

“Oh, take your written permission and stick it up the flue.”

Feely could be remarkably coarse when she felt like it.

Still, “stick” and “flue” were uncannily descriptive of what I’d just done on the roof.
I’d better be careful
, I thought. Perhaps Feely, like Val Lampman, had found a way of peering into my mind.

“Father sent me to fetch you,” she said. “He wants everyone gathered in the foyer at once. He has something to say, and so does Val Lampman.”

She turned and strode off towards the door.

“Feely …” I said.

She stopped and, without looking at me, turned halfway round.

“Well?”

“Daff and I made a Christmas truce. I thought perhaps—”

“Truces expire after five minutes, come hell or high water, as you jolly well know. There’s no such thing as a Christmas truce. Don’t try to suck me into any of your sordid little schemes.”

I could feel my eyes swelling as if they were about to burst.

“Why do you hate me?” I asked suddenly. “Is it because I’m more like Harriet than you are?”

If the room had been cold before, it was now a glacial ice cave.

“Hate you, Flavia?” she said, her voice trembling. “Do you really believe I hate you? Oh, how I wish I did! It would make things so much easier.”

And with that she was gone.

“I’m sorry we’ve all of us been trapped, as it were,” Father was saying, “even though we’ve been trapped together.”

What the dickens did he mean? Was he apologizing for the weather?

“Despite their … ah … polar expedition, the vicar and Mrs. Richardson have done yeoman work in keeping the little ones entertained.”

Good lord! Was Father making a joke? It was unheard of!

Had the stress of the season and the arrival of the moviemakers finally cracked his brain? Had he forgotten that Phyllis Wyvern was lying—no, not lying, but
sitting
—dead upstairs?

His words were greeted with a polite rustle of laughter from the people of Bishop’s Lacey, who sat rumpled but attentive in their chairs. Clustered in one corner, the ciné crew whispered together uneasily, their faces like masks.

“I am assured,” Father was saying, with a glance at Mrs. Mullet, who stood beaming at the entrance of the kitchen passageway, “that we shall be able to muster up sufficient jam and fresh-baked bread to last until we are released from our … captivity.”

At the word “captivity” Dogger sprang to mind. Where was he?

I swiveled round and spotted him at once. He was standing well off to one side, his dark suit making him nearly invisible against the stained wood paneling. His eyes were black pits.

I squirmed in my chair, hunched and unhunched my shoulders as if to relieve stiffness, and standing up, stretched extravagantly. I sauntered casually over to the wall and leaned against it.

“Dogger,” I whispered excitedly, “they dressed her for dying.”

Dogger’s head turned slowly towards me, his eyes sweeping round the vast room, illuminating as they came until, as they reached mine, they were as the beam of a lighthouse fixed on a rock in the sea.

“I believe you’re right, Miss Flavia,” he said.

With Dogger, there was no need to prattle on. The look that went between us was beyond words. We were riding the same train of thought and—aside from the unfortunate death of Phyllis Wyvern, of course—all was well with the world.

Dogger had obviously noticed, as I had, that—

But there was no time to think. I had missed Father’s concluding remarks. Val Lampman had now taken the spotlight, a tragic figure who was hanging on to a lighting fixture, with the most awful white knuckles, as if to keep from crumbling to the floor.

“… this terrible event,” he was saying in an unsteady voice. “It would be unthinkable to go on without Miss Wyvern, and I have therefore, reluctantly, made the decision to shut down production at once and return to London as soon as we are able.”

A collective sigh went up from the corner in which the ciné crew was gathered, and I saw Marion Trodd lean forward and whisper something to Bun Keats.

“Because we are unable to communicate with the studio,” Val Lampman went on, putting two fingers to his temple as if receiving a message from the planet Mars, “I’m sure you will appreciate that this decision must needs be mine alone. I’ll see that specific instructions are handed out in the morning. In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, I suggest that we spend whatever is left of this rather sad Christmas Eve remembering Miss Wyvern, and what she has meant to each and every one of us.”

It was not Phyllis Wyvern I thought of, though, but Feely. With filming shut down, her chance of stardom was over.

Ages from now—sometime in the misty future—historians sifting through the vaults of Ilium Films would come across a spool of film with images of a letter being placed carefully, again and again, upon a tabletop. What would they make of it? I wondered.

It was pleasant, in a complicated way, to think that those out-of-focus hands, with their long perfect fingers, would be those of my sister. Feely would be all that remained of
The Cry of the Raven
, the film that died before it was born.

I came back to reality with a start.

Father was summoning Dogger with a single raised eyebrow, and I took the opportunity to escape up the stairs.

I had much to do and there was little time left.

And yet there was. When I got to my bedroom, I saw that it was not yet eleven o’clock.

I had always been told by Mrs. Mullet that Father Christmas did not come either until after midnight, or until everyone in the household was asleep—I’ve forgotten the exact formula. One way or another, it was far too early to check my traps: With half the population of Bishop’s Lacey wandering about at large in the house, the old gentleman would hardly risk coming down the drawing room chimney.

And then this thought came to mind. How could Father Christmas climb down—and back up—so many million chimneys without getting his costume dirty? Why had there never been, on Christmas morning, a filthy black trail on the carpet?

I knew perfectly well from my own experiments that the carbonic products of combustion were messy enough even in the small quantities in which they were encountered in the laboratory, but to think of a full-grown man descending a chimney encrusted with decades of soot while wearing an outfit that was little better than an oversized pipe cleaner was beyond belief. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? Why had such an obviously scientific proof never occurred to me?

Unless there was some invisible elf who followed Father Christmas around with a broom and a dustpan—or a supernatural hoover—things were looking grim indeed.

Outside, a rising wind buffeted at the house, rattling the windowpanes in their ancient frames. Inside, the temperature had fallen to that of a penguin’s feet, and I shivered in spite of myself.

I would tuck up in bed with my notebook and a pencil. Until it was time to venture out onto the roof I would turn my attention to murder.

I wrote at the top of a fresh page
Who Killed Phyllis Wyvern?
and drew a line under it.

SUSPECTS (ALPHABETICALLY):

Anthony, the chauffeur (I don’t know his surname.)—A lurking sort of person with a hangdog expression, who seems always to be watching me. PW seemed cold towards him, but perhaps this is the way of all film stars to their drivers. Is he resentful? Seemed vaguely familiar when he appeared on our doorstep. Eastern European? Or was it just his uniform? Surely not. Aunt F said PW had an irrational horror of Eastern Europeans and insisted upon always working with the same British film crew. Had Anthony, perhaps, appeared in one of her pictures? Or in a magazine photo? Look into—perhaps even ask him outright
.

Crawford, Gil—PW humiliated him in front of the entire village by slapping his face. Although gentle as a lamb nowadays, it’s important to remember that as a commando, Gil was trained to kill in silence—by strangulation with a bit of piano wire
!

Duncan, Desmond—No obvious motive other than that PW overshadows him. He’s acted with her for years on stage and in film. Rivalry? Jealousy? Something deeper? Further inquiry needed
.

Keats, Bun—PW treats her like dog dirt on the sole of a dancing slipper. Although she should be filled with resentment, she seems not to be. Are there people who thrive on abuse? Or is there fire beneath the ashes? Must ask Dogger about this
.

Lampman, Val (Waldemar)—PW’s son. (Hard to believe but Aunt Felicity claims it’s so.) PW threatened to tell DD about Val’s “interesting adventure in Buckinghamshire.” Obvious tension between them (e.g., the benefit performance of
Romeo and Juliet
). Does he stand to inherit his mother’s estate? Did she have bags and bags of money? How can I find that out? And what about his horribly scratched forearms? The wounds didn’t seem fresh. Another point to talk over with Dogger in the morning
.

Latshaw, Ben—Seems something of a troublemaker. But what would he gain by bringing the film’s production to a halt? He had been promoted due to Patrick McNulty’s injury. Could he have been hired by someone at llium Films to do in PW far from the studio? (Mere speculation on my part.)

Trodd, Marion—The horn-rimmed mystery. Hangs round in silence like the smell of a clogged drain. She bears a strong resemblance to the actress Norma Durance. But those were old photos. Should have asked Aunt Felicity about her.
N.B
.—do later
.

I scratched my head with the pencil as I reviewed my notes. I could see at once that they were far from satisfactory.