It was true. I must have fallen asleep the instant my head touched the pillow.
Now, hours later, I was suddenly awake. The hands of my alarm clock, which I had carefully dabbed with my own formulation of phosphorescent paint, told me that it was several minutes past two in the morning.
I lay in bed watching the dark shadows of the trees as they twitched restlessly on the ceiling. Ever since a territorial dispute between two of my distant ancestors had ended in a bitter stalemate—and a black line painted in the middle of the foyer—this wing of the house had remained unheated. Time and the weather had taken their toll, causing the wallpaper of nearly every room—mine was mustard yellow with scarlet worms—to peel away in great sheets which hung in forlorn flaps, while the paper from the ceilings hung down in great loose swags whose contents were probably best not thought about.
Sometimes, especially in winter, I liked to pretend that I lived beneath an iceberg in an Arctic sea; that the coldness was no more than a dream, and that when I awoke, there would be a roaring fire in the rusty fireplace and hot steam rising from the tin hip-bath that stood in the corner behind the door.
There never was, of course, but I couldn’t really complain. I slept here by choice, not by necessity. Here in the east wing—the so-called “Tar” wing—of Buckshaw, I could work away to my heart’s content until all hours in my chemical laboratory. Since they faced south and east, my windows could be ablaze with light and no one outside would see them—no one, that is, except perhaps the foxes and badgers that inhabited the island and the ruined folly in the middle of the ornamental lake, or perhaps the occasional poacher whose footprints and discarded shell casings I sometimes found in my rambles through the Palings.
The Palings! I had almost forgotten.
My abduction at the kitchen door by Feely and Daffy, my subsequent imprisonment in the cellars, my shaming at the hands of Father, and finally my fatigue: All of those had conspired to make me put the Gypsy clean out of my mind.
I leapt from my bed, somewhat surprised to find myself still fully clothed. I must have been tired!
Shoes in hand, I crept down the great curving staircase to the foyer, where I stopped to listen in the middle of that vast expanse of black-and-white tiling. To an observer in one of the galleries above, I must have looked like a pawn in some grand and Gothic game of chess.
A pawn? Pfah, Flavia! Admit it: surely something more than a pawn!
The house was in utter silence. Father and Feely, I knew, would be dreaming their respective dreams: Father of perforated bits of paper and Feely of living in a castle built entirely of mirrors in which she could see herself reflected again and again from every possible aspect.
Upstairs, at the far end of the west wing, Daffy would still be awake, though, goggling by candlelight, as she loved to do, at the Gustave Doré engravings in Gargantua and Pantagruel. I had found the fat calf-bound volume hidden under her mattress while rifling her room in search of a packet of chewing gum that an American serviceman had given to Feely, who had come across him sitting on a stile one morning as she was walking into the village to post a letter. His name was Carl, and he was from St. Louis, in America. He told her she was the spitting image of Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. Feely, of course, had come home preening and hidden the gum, as she always does with such tributes, in her lingerie drawer, from which Daffy had pinched it. And I in my turn from her.
For weeks afterwards it was “Carl-this” and “Carl-that” with Feely prattling endlessly on about the muddy Mississippi, its length, its twists and bends, and how to spell it properly without making a fool of oneself. We were given the distinct impression that she had personally conceived and executed the formation of that great river, with God standing helplessly on the sidelines, little more than a plumber’s assistant.
I smiled at the thought.
It was at that precise instant that I heard it: a metallic click.
For a couple of heartbeats, I stood perfectly still, trying to decide from which direction it had come.
The drawing room, I thought, and immediately began tiptoeing in that direction. In my bare feet, I was able to move in perfect silence, keeping an ear out for the slightest sound. Although there are times when I have cursed the painfully acute sense of hearing I’ve inherited from Harriet, this was not one of them.
As I moved at a snail’s pace along the corridor, a crack of light suddenly appeared beneath the drawing-room door. Who could be in there at this time of night? I wondered. Whoever it was, it certainly wasn’t a de Luce.
Should I call for help, or tackle the intruder myself?
I seized the knob, turned it ever so slowly, and opened the door: a foolhardy action, I suppose, but after all, I was in my own home. No sense in letting Daffy or Feely take all the credit for catching a burglar.
Accustomed to the darkness, my eyes were somewhat dazzled by the light of an ancient paraffin lamp that was kept for use during electrical interruptions, and so at first I didn’t see anyone there. In fact, it took a moment for me to realize that someone—a stranger in rubber boots—was crouched by the fireplace, his hand on one of the brass firedogs that had been cast into the shape of foxes.
The whites of his eyes flashed as he looked up into the mirror and saw me standing behind him in the open doorway.
His moleskin coat and his scarlet scarf flared out as he came to his feet and spun quickly round.
“Crikey, gal! You might have given me a heart attack!”
It was Brookie Harewood.