NINETEEN
DINNER WAS A GRIM affair.
The worst of it was that Father had come to the table without The London Philatelist. Instead of reading, he insisted upon solicitously passing me the peas and asking, “Did you have a nice day today, Flavia?”
It almost broke my heart.
Although Father had spoken several times of his financial troubles, they had never seemed threatening: no more than a distant shadow, really, like war—or death. You knew it was there but you didn’t spend all day fretting about it.
But now, with the Mumpeters nailed up inside a crate, ready to be taken to the train for London and pawed over by strangers at the auction rooms, the reality of Father’s predicament had hit home with the force of a typhoon.
And Father—the dear man—was trying to shield us from the reality by making bright table chatter.
I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, but I dared not give in to them. It was fortunate that Daffy, who sat across from me, did not even once look up from her book.
To my left, at the far end of the table, Feely sat staring down into her lap, her face pale, her colorless lips pressed together into a tight, thin line. The dark circles under her eyes were like bruises, and her hair was lank and lifeless.
The only word to describe her was “blighted.”
My chemical wizardry had worked!
The proof of it was the fact that Feely was wearing her spectacles, which told me, without a doubt, that she had spent the day staring in horror at the spirit message that had materialized upon her looking glass.
In spite of her occasional cruelty—or perhaps because of it—Feely was a pious sort, whose time was devoted to making bargains with this saint or that about the clarity of her complexion, or the way in which a random beam of sunlight would strike her golden hair as she knelt at the altar for communion.
Where I generally believed in chemistry and the happy dance of the atom, Feely believed in the supernatural, and it was that belief I had taken advantage of.
But what had I done? I hadn’t counted on such utter devastation.
Part of my brain was telling me to leap up and run to her—to throw my arms around her neck and tell her that it was only French chalk—and not God—that had caused her misery. And then we would laugh together as we used to in the olden days.
But I couldn’t: If I did, I should have to confess to my prank in front of Father, and I wanted to spare him any further grief.
Besides, Feely would more than likely stab me to death with whatever came to hand, snow white tablecloth or not.
Which made me think of Brookie Harewood. How odd! There hadn’t been a word at the dinner table about murder. Or was it now murders, plural?
It was then, I think, that I noticed the cutlery. Instead of our usual silver utensils, I realized that each of our places had been set with the yellow-handled knives and forks that were kept in the kitchen for the use of the servants.
I could contain it no longer. I scraped my chair back from the table, mumbled something about being excused, and fled. By the time I reached the foyer, my tears were splashing about me like rain on the black-and-white checkerboard of the tiles.
I threw myself onto the bed and buried my face in the pillow.
How could revenge hurt so keenly? It didn’t make any sense. It simply didn’t. Revenge was supposed to be sweet—and so was victory!
As I lay there, flattened by misery, I heard the unmistakeable sound of Father’s leather-soled shoes outside in the hall.
I could hardly believe my ears. Father in the east wing? This was the first time since I had moved into it that he had set foot in this part of the house.
Father came slowly into the room, shuffling a little, and I heard him pause. A moment later I felt the bed sink a little as he sat down beside me.
I kept my face pressed tightly into the pillow.
After what seemed like a very long time, I felt his hand gently touching my head—but only for a moment.
He did not stroke my hair, nor did he speak, and I was glad he didn’t. His silence spared both of us the embarrassment of not knowing what to say.
And then he was gone, as quietly as he had come.
And I slept.
In the morning, the world seemed a different place.
I whistled in my bath. I even remembered to scrub my elbows.
It had come to me in the night, as if in a dream, that I must apologize to Feely. It was as simple as that.
In the first place, it would disarm her. In the second place, it would impress Father, if Feely had told him what I had done. And finally, it would make me feel all warm and self-righteous about doing the decent thing.
Besides, if I played my cards right, I could also pump Feely for information about Vanetta Harewood. I would not, of course, tell her about the lost portrait of Harriet.
It was the perfect solution.
There’s nothing as beautiful as the sound of a piano in the next room. A little distance gives the instrument a heart—at least to my sensitive hearing, it does.
As I stood outside the drawing-room door, Feely was practicing something by Rameau: Les Sauvages, I think it was called. It sometimes made me think of a moonlight glade—the Palings, perhaps—with a tribe of devils dancing in a circle like maniacs: So much more pleasing, I thought, than that sleepy old thing on the same topic by Beethoven.
I straightened my back and squared my shoulders. Feely was always telling me to square my shoulders, and I thought she’d be happy to see that I’d remembered.
The instant I opened the door, the music stopped and Feely looked up from the keyboard. She was learning to play without her spectacles, and she was not wearing them now.
I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she looked.
Her eyes, which I had expected to be like a pair of open coal holes, shone with a cold blue brilliance in the morning light. It was like being glared at by Father.
“Yes?” she said.
“I—I’ve come to say I’m sorry,” I told her.
“Then do so.”
“I just did, Feely!”
“No, you didn’t. You made a statement of fact. You stated that you had come to say you’re sorry. You may begin.”
This was going to be more humiliating than I thought.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “for writing on your mirror.”
“Yes?”
I swallowed and went on. “It was a mean and thoughtless trick.”
“It was indeed, you odious little worm.”
She got up from the piano bench and came towards me—menacingly, I thought. I shrank back a little.
“Of course I knew at once that it was you. Deuteronomy? The boils of Egypt? The emerods? The scurvy and the itch? It had Flavia de Luce written all over it. You might just as well have signed the thing—like a painting.”
“That’s not true, Feely. You were devastated. I saw the circles under your eyes at dinner!”
Feely threw her head back and laughed.
“Makeup!” she crowed. “French chalk! Two can play at that game, you stupid moke. A bit of French chalk and a pinch of ashes from the grate. It took me all afternoon to get it just the right shade. You should have seen your face! Daffy said she almost had an accident trying not to laugh!”
My face began to burn.
“Didn’t you, Daff?”
There was the sound of a wet snicker behind me, and I spun round to find Daffy coming through the doorway—blocking my route of escape.
“ ‘It was a mean and thoughtless trick,’ ” she said, imitating me in a grating, falsetto, parrot voice.
She had been eavesdropping on my apology from outside in the hallway!
But now, rather than flying at her in fury, as I might have done even yesterday, I gathered up every last scrap of inner strength and attacked her with a new and untried tool: clear, cold calm.
“Who is Hilda Muir?” I asked, and Daffy stopped moving instantly, as if she had been frozen in a snapshot.
The appeal to a superior knowledge. And it worked!
By coming to one of my sisters in humility and keeping my temper with the other, I had gained in just a few minutes not one, but two new weapons.
“What?”
“Hilda Muir. She’s something to do with the Palings.”
“Hilda Muir,” Fenella had said, when we’d first spotted Mrs. Bull in the Gully. “Hilda Muir.” She’d said it again when I brought the elder branches to the caravan. “Now we are all dead!”
“Who is Hilda Muir?” I asked again in my new and maddeningly calm voice.
“Hilda Muir? The Palings? You must mean the Hildemoer. She’s not a person, you idiot. She’s the spirit of the elder branches. She comes to punish people who cut her branches without first asking permission. You didn’t cut any elder branches, did you?” (This with another wet snicker.)
Daffy must have seen the effect her words had on me. “I truly hope you didn’t. They sometimes plant them on a grave to indicate whether the dead person is happy in the next world. If the elder grows, all’s well. If not—”
The next world? I thought. Hadn’t Porcelain watched the police pull a baby’s body from the very spot—or very near it—that I had cut the elder for firewood?
“The Hildemoer’s a pixy,” Daffy went on. “Don’t you remember what we told you about the pixies? For heaven’s sake, Flavia—it was only a couple of days ago. The pixies are the Old Ones—those horrid creatures who stole Harriet’s precious baby and left you in its place.”
My mind was an inferno. I could feel the anger rushing back like the Red Sea after the passage of the Israelites.
“I hope you didn’t cut elder from someone’s grave,” she went on. “Because if you did—”
“Thank you, Daffy,” I said. “You’ve been most informative.”
Without another word, I brushed past her and stalked out of the drawing room.
With the mocking laughter of my darling sisters still ringing in my ears, I fled down the echoing hall.