“I was just looking to see if Miss Fawlthorne’s number is listed. I intended to ring her up and then stand guard until she can come and secure the place. What I mean is that I’ve just rung her up, and I’m waiting for her to arrive.”
The fact that it was Sunday and that Miss Fawlthorne and her entire scurvy crew and officers were away at church hardly mattered to this boozy specimen—or at least I hoped it didn’t.
Alcohol is impervious to logic, my late Uncle Tarquin had written in one of his laboratory notebooks, though whether this insight was from personal experience, a specific chemical observation, or simply a bit of stray philosophy I had never been able to decide.
“No, don’t do that!” the man snarled, wrenching the book from my hands. “I’m in charge here. If the dooorss’s open—” He fumbled as if he couldn’t think of the next word. “S’because I opened it, see?”
His vaporous breath trembled in the air, making the laundry seem more than ever like Dante’s Inferno. I found myself waiting for lava to come bubbling from his mouth.
Here you are, Flavia, locked in a soundproof stone building with an angry, inebriated stranger who’s three times your size and weight: a bruiser who, with one fist, could reduce you to a splatter of jam on the floorboards. There’s no one nearby to rescue you. You’re on your own—it’s brains against brawn.
“You must be Mr. Kelly,” I said, sticking out a hand.
The Human Mountain struggled to focus, edging his feet farther apart for better balance, his stale eyes staring.
“Miss Fawlthorne has often spoken so well of you,” I added, “that I feel as if we’ve already met.”
And then, incredibly, a great oily ham of a hand came forward and seized mine. “How do you do, miss. Edward Kelly is my name.”
A wave of something swept over me, and I had a sudden vision of this pathetic human being as a boy, standing defenseless before some schoolmaster or schoolmistress, now long dead.
“Say ‘How do you do,’ Edward.”
He shuffled his feet, then and now, and I knew for a fact that those words had never, ever, since that long-ago day, escaped from his lips.
“How do you do?” he asked again, as if I hadn’t heard, the words stilted and awkward—not at home in his slack mouth.
“Very well, thank you, Mr. Kelly,” I said, retrieving my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Was I pushing my luck? Perhaps, but his reaction told me I had chosen precisely the right words.
“Likewise,” he said, reverting to some ancient remembered formula. “Likewise indeed.”
Was he sobering a little, or was I imagining it?
“Well, then,” I said, taking charge, “I can see there’s no need for Miss Fawlthorne to be bothered. I expect she’s already on her way, so I’ll just run along and head her off at the pass. She’ll be relieved to hear everything’s under control.”
“Head off at the pass” was a phrase I had heard in the cinema films, often used by Hopalong Cassidy or Randolph Scott or Roy Rogers, which seemed somehow more appropriate here in North America than it did back home in Merrie England, where cowboy chitchat was as scarce as hens’ dentures.
I stepped to the door, Kelly tracking me with his sad eyes.
“A very great pleasure,” I added, partly for his sake and partly for my own.
My exit was as serene and duchesslike as I could manage, and it occurred to me that this leaving people standing was becoming a habit: first the Rainsmiths and now Edward Kelly. If I kept it up, the whole planet would soon be peopled with people frozen stiff on the spot by my departures.
A shout in the distance and the sound of girls laughing told me that the academy had returned from church. The aged rector had either run out of energy or ideas, or passed away in the pulpit.
I drifted toward the hockey field, wanting more than anything to be alone. It was a lovely autumn day, the sun was warm, and I still needed somewhere to think without being interrupted.
I sank down onto my knees in the soft grass, planted my hands behind me, and fell back on them, turning my face upward toward the sky like a sunflower. No one would disturb me in such a posture, which clearly indicated someone communing privately with Nature.
I knew that hunched shoulders, hanging hair, and eyes on the ground were fairly reliable signs of a girl dejected, a girl who needed to be approached and jollied into a nice talk or a nice cup of tea; whereas a back-flung head, with eyes closed and a secret smile on the upturned face, was the signal of someone who needed to be left alone with her thoughts.
It was clever of me to have worked out such a useful tactic.
“Hello,” said a voice. “May I join you?”
I kept my eyes closed and my mouth shut, hoping she would go away.
It was too late to form my thumbs and forefingers into little circles and begin loudly chanting “OM MANE PADME HUM” like a Tibetan lama, or the pilgrims in Lost Horizon.
“De Luce …”
I ignored her.
“Flavia? Are you feeling better?”
I allowed one eye to crack slightly open like an iguana.
It was Jumbo.
“Yes, thank you,” I said, and left it at that. Most people would have felt obliged to tack on some kind of explanation, but not I.
There is a mystery in silence that can never be matched by mere words. Silence is power—at least until they grab you by the neck.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure, thank you.”
I find there is always an electric thrill in such conversations: invisible fingers of excitement in the air, like lightning behind the hills.
“We were worried about you. Miss Fawlthorne asked me to see if you were all right.”
I let my eye drift slowly shut. “Yes, I’m quite all right, thank you.”
It was incredible! How long could I keep this up? Five minutes? Ten minutes?
An hour?