• TWELVE •
THE SUN WAS ALREADY far down in the west as I pedaled home to Buckshaw.
Father, I knew, would be furious. He demanded that all of us, with no exceptions, no excuses, be seated, properly dressed, and on time for the evening meal. Now, because of my tardiness (“tardiness” is one of those ten-shillings-sixpence words that Daffy loves to fling at me), Mrs. Mullet would have been kept late, and Father, who had been trying desperately to slash expenses by reducing her working hours, would be on the hook for additional overtime.
Even before I reached the Mulford Gates I knew that something was wrong. A knot of people had gathered in the road at the turn-in.
Had there been an accident?
I put on such a burst of speed that I was forced to jam on both hand brakes and come skidding to an undignified sideways stop to avoid hitting them.
Still astride Gladys, but with both feet on the ground, I came waddling over toward the group. I could scarcely believe my eyes.
Father, Feely, Daffy, Dogger, and Mrs. Mullet stood in a ragged semicircle. Not one of them even looked at me.
The center of their attention was a man in an undersized vest with a tight celluloid collar and watery, protruding eyes who was pounding a sign into the ground with a sledgehammer.
FOR SALE, it said, in awful black letters.
DOOM! DOOM! DOOM! the hammer went, and every blow was a stake through my heart.
Buckshaw for sale! I couldn’t believe it!
There had been threats, of course, and Father in the past had warned us that he was losing his long battle with the government department he once referred to in a lighter moment as “His Majesty’s Leeches.” But somehow we had always muddled through; something had always turned up.
Just a few months ago, for instance, a First Quarto of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet had come to light in our library, but because his own initials and Harriet’s had been entwined in ink in the front of the book—a memorial to their courtship—Father had refused to part with it.
The actor Desmond Duncan had besieged him with one outrageous offer after another, but Father had brushed them aside. The British Museum had then been enlisted to make a combined proposal that would probably have bought the whole town of Stratford-upon-Avon right down to the last swan.
But Father wouldn’t budge.
And now it had come to this.
There were times when I wanted to shake Father: wanted to pick him up by his lapels and shake him until the feathers flew out.
“You stubborn fool!” I wanted to shout into his face.
And then, as reason seeped back into my overheated brain, I would realize how much alike we were: that my father angered me the most when he was most like me.
It didn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but there it was.
And now here we were, all of us standing round in the road like yokels at the fair, watching a stranger pound a signboard into our ancestral earth.
It was only then, as I realized that my family, every last one of them, had been drawn out of doors and had walked the considerable distance along the avenue of chestnuts from the house to the Mulford Gates to watch a bailiff seize our property, that the gravity of the situation hit home.
It was the first time I could remember us ever being truly together.
And there we stood: we de Luces all grim as death, Dogger looking on, his jaw muscles tense, and Mrs. Mullet in tears.
“ ’Tisn’t right,” she muttered, shaking her head. “ ’Tisn’t right at all.”
She was the only one to speak.
After a time, Father moved slowly off toward the house, followed by Feely and Daffy, then Dogger.
The bailiff, his work finished, dusted his hands and threw his sledgehammer into the boot of a muddy Anglia that was parked at the roadside. Moments later, he was gone.
Mrs. Mullet and I stood there silently together in the darkening world.
“Your supper’s in the warming oven, dear,” she said, then turned and walked away, ever so slowly, in the direction of Bishop’s Lacey.
Later, in my bedroom, I was sitting hunched up among the pillows picking at my plate, tossing the occasional tinned pea to Esmeralda on the floor, when there came a light tapping at the door.
It was Dogger.
“I’ve brought some bread and water for your friend,” he said, putting down one of the two bowls he was carrying onto the floor.
“Her name is Esmeralda,” I said. “They were going to kill her.”
With Dogger, there was no need for long, detailed explanations. He understood things as quickly and as easily as if he absorbed them through his skin.
“A very fine example of a Buff Orpington,” he said, tossing her a bread crumb. “Are you not, Esmeralda?”
Esmeralda pounced upon the crumb and it vanished. Dogger threw her another.
“She wouldn’t eat,” I said. “I tried her with some of my corn.”
“She may be broody,” Dogger said. “Certain varieties are more inclined than others to go broody in the spring.”
“What’s broody?” I asked. I’d never heard the word.
“It means being short-tempered and with a strong inclination to sit on one’s nest,” Dogger said.
“Like Father,” I blurted. I couldn’t help myself.
Dogger threw another fat crumb to Esmeralda. “A very strong breed, the Buff Orpington,” he said. “Very British. The Queen is said to be very fond of them. She keeps a flock at Windsor Castle, I believe.”
“Perhaps we could go in for chickens at Buckshaw!” I said with sudden inspiration. “We could knock together some cages in the coach house and sell eggs at the market in Malden Fenwick. It would be jolly good fun.”
“I’m afraid it will take more than chickens,” Dogger said, with a long sigh, and then, after what seemed like an eternal pause he added, “No, I’m afraid that chickens are not enough.”
“But what’s to be done?” I asked.
“We must pray, Miss Flavia. That’s all that’s left.”
“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll pray before I go to sleep tonight that nobody sees the ‘For Sale’ sign. Then, first thing in the morning, I shall go out and chop it into kindling wood.”
“That would do no good,” Dogger said. “The notice will appear in all the papers.”
“Perhaps if we prayed to Saint Tancred …” I said, my mind bubbling with ideas. “After all, he is our patron saint. Do you think it will hurt that we’re not Anglicans?”
“No,” Dogger said. “In Tancred’s day there was no Church of England. He was as Roman Catholic as ever you could wish for.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Quite sure.”
“Then it’s settled. I shall be there when they open his tomb and pray for Buckshaw before anyone else has a chance to stick in a request.”
Which brought me, with something of a jar, back to the church’s crypt and the dead Mr. Collicutt.
Last night, I had slept through my opportunity to revisit the churchyard and to explore the tunnel which connected the church with the tomb of Cassandra Cottlestone.
Was it now too late? Had the police already discovered the secret passage? Or had they overlooked it in their rush to find the murderer?
There was only one way to find out.
“Good night, Dogger,” I said, making a counterfeit yawn. “A good sleep will help me get an early start.”
I didn’t say how early.