“Right, then,” he said. “All present and accounted for. Jeannette and Clifford, as you were. You may stand down. We’ll be taking the principals this evening, after all. First read-through tomorrow morning at seven-thirty, costumes at nine-fifteen. Miss Trodd will hand out the sheets in two hours’ time.”
“Now’s your chance,” Daffy whispered, nudging Feely. “Go ask him!”
In the foyer, the actors and crew were beginning to drift away, leaving Val Lampman alone at the bottom of the stairs jotting something in a notebook.
“No! I’ve changed my mind,” Feely said.
“Silly camel!” Daffy told her. “Do you want me to ask him? I will, you know.
“She’s going to be one of the extras,” Daffy whispered. “She’s got her heart set on it.”
“No!” Feely said. “Shush!”
“Oh, Mr. Lampman,” Daffy said, in quite a loud voice, “my sister—”
Val Lampman looked up into the shadows.
Feely punched Daffy on the upper arm. “Stop it!” she hissed.
I got up from the floor, gave my face a rub with the palm of my hand, adjusted my clothing, and walked down the stairs in a way that would have made Father proud.
“Mr. Lampman?” I said at the landing. “I’m Flavia de Luce, of the Buckshaw de Luces. My sister Ophelia is seventeen. She was hoping you’d be able to give her a small walk-on part.” I pointed. “That’s her up there peeking through the banister.”
Val Lampman shaded his eyes and looked up into the dim woodwork.
“Please show yourself, Miss de Luce,” he said.
Upstairs, Feely got to her knees, then to her feet, dusted herself off, and peered foolishly down over the railings.
There was an awkward silence. Val Lampman lifted his fedora and scratched his thin flaxen hair.
“You’ll do,” he said at last. “See Miss Trodd in the morning.”
The telephone rang in its cubicle beneath the stairs, and, although I couldn’t see him, I heard Dogger’s measured footsteps coming through from the kitchen to answer it. After a muffled conversation, he came out into view and spotted me on the stairs.
“That was the vicar,” he said. “Miss Felicity rang him to say that Colonel de Luce will be staying the night in London.”
It must be snowing like stink! I thought, rather uncharitably.
“Odd that Aunt Felicity didn’t telephone here,” I said.
“She’s been trying for more than an hour, but the line was engaged. She rang up the vicar instead. As it happens, he’s driving over to Doddingsley in the morning to pick up some extra holly for the church decorations. He’s kindly offered to meet Colonel de Luce and Miss Felicity at the railway station there and bring them to Buckshaw.”
“The holly and the ivy,” I caroled loudly, not caring that I was a little off-key.
“When they are both full grown,
Of all the poisons that are in the wood,
The holly wears the crown.”
Probably, I thought, because it contained theobromine, the bitter alkaloid that is also to be found in coffee, tea, and cocoa, and was first synthesized by the immortal German chemist Hermann Emil Fischer from human waste. The theobromine in the berries and leaves of the holly was just one of the cyanogenic glycosides, which, when chewed, release hydrogen cyanide. In what quantities, I had yet to determine, but just the thought of such a delicious experiment made the hairs on my forearms stand up in pleasure!
“You’re thinking of the ilicin,” Dogger said.
“Yes, I’m thinking of the ilicin. It’s an alkaloid in the holly leaves, and it causes diarrhea.”
“So I believe I have read somewhere,” Dogger said.
I could use the same batch of holly I’d dragged home to make the birdlime!
“You’d better watch out …” I sang, as I skipped upstairs with more than just the capture of Father Christmas in mind.
Wet, heavy flakes were falling straight down towards the earth, no two alike as they plummeted past the lighted window of my laboratory—yet all of them members of the same family.
In the case of snowflakes, the family’s name is H2O, known to the uninitiated as water.
Like all matter, water can exist in three states: At normal temperatures it’s a liquid. Heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes a gas; cooled below 32 degrees, it crystallizes and becomes ice.
Of the three, ice was my favorite state: Water, when frozen, was classified as a mineral—a mineral whose crystalline form, in an iceberg, for instance, was capable of mimicking a diamond as big as the Queen Elizabeth.
But add a bit of heat and poof!—you’re a liquid again, able to run easily, with only the assistance of gravity, into the most secret of places. Just thinking of some of the subterranean spots in which water has been makes my stomach tickle!
Then, raise the temperature enough, and Ali-kazam! you’re a gas—and suddenly you can fly.
If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is!
Hyponitric acid, for instance, is absolutely fascinating: At –4 degrees Fahrenheit, it takes the form of colorless prismatic crystals; warm it up to just 7 degrees and it becomes a clear liquid. At 30 degrees the liquid turns yellow and then orange, until at 82 degrees, it boils and becomes a brownish-red vapor: all within a range of no more than 86 degrees!
Stupendous, when you stop to think about it.
But getting back to my old friend water, the thing of it is this: No matter how hot or how cold, no matter its state, its form, its qualities, or its color, each molecule of water still consists of no more than a single oxygen atom bonded to two sister atoms of hydrogen. It takes all three of them to make a blinding blizzard—or a thunderstorm, for that matter … or a puffy white cloud in a summer sky.
O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
Later, in bed, I turned out the light and listened for a while to the distant sounds of people moving about, making last-minute preparations for the morning. Somewhere in the west wing they would still be adjusting their spotlights; somewhere Phyllis Wyvern would be boning up on her script.
But at last, after what seemed like a very long time, the day’s work was done and, with a last few reluctant creaks and groans, Buckshaw slept in the silence of the falling snow.