• TWENTY-FOUR •
I KNEW, DON’T ASK me how, even as I steered Gladys between the stone griffins of the Mulford Gates, that something else had gone wrong at Buckshaw.
It’s hard to explain, but it was as if the house were vanishing between heartbeats—as if it were being partially erased, and then restored, by the unseen artist who was drawing it.
I had never in my life experienced anything like this.
The avenue of chestnuts seemed never-ending. The harder I pedaled, the slower seemed my approach.
But at last I reached the front door and opened it.
“Hullo?” I called out, as if I were a traveler coming unexpectedly upon a witch’s cottage in the woods—as if I hadn’t lived here all my life. “Hullo? Anyone here?”
There was, of course, no answer.
They would be in the drawing room. They were always in the drawing room.
I raced into the west wing, my feet thudding along the carpets.
But the drawing room was empty.
I was standing puzzled in the doorway when something bumped behind me.
The sound must have come from Father’s study, one of the two rooms at Buckshaw that were off-limits. The other was Harriet’s boudoir which, as I have said, Father had preserved as a memorial in which every scent bottle, every last nail file and powder puff was kept in precisely the same position as she had left it on that last day.
The boudoir was not to be entered under any circumstances, and Father’s study was to be entered only upon command.
I knocked and opened the door.
Dogger looked up, surprised. Hadn’t he heard me running in the hall?
“Miss Flavia,” he said, putting down a stamp album he had been about to place in a packing box.
The truth was, I had still not got over the shyness I had created by calling Dogger a pet name to his face, and at that moment, I thought that I might never, ever get over it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Where is everybody?”
“I believe Miss Ophelia has gone to her room with a headache. Miss Daphne is sorting books in the library.”
I didn’t need to ask why. My heart sank.
“And Father?”
“The Colonel has gone, likewise, to his room.”
“Dogger,” I blurted. “What’s wrong? I knew something was not right as soon as I came through the Mulford Gates. What is it?”
Dogger nodded. “You sense it, too, miss.” Neither of us could find words and then Dogger said, “Colonel de Luce has received a telephone call.”
“Yes? From who?”
I was too edgy to say “From whom?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” Dogger said. “The calling party would not identify himself. He insisted on speaking directly, and only, to Colonel de Luce.”
“It’s the house, isn’t it?” I demanded. “Buckshaw has been sold.”
My bones were boiling. My soul was freezing. I was going to vomit.
“I don’t know,” Dogger said. “The Colonel did not confide in me. I will admit that I thought as much myself.”
If I were anyone other than Flavia de Luce, I would have marched up to Father’s room and demanded an explanation. After all, it was my life, too, wasn’t it?
But I could feel myself growing older by the minute.
Admit it, Flavia, I thought. You simply don’t have what it takes to beard the lion in his den.
Which, for some odd reason, reminded me of Magistrate Ridley-Smith and his peculiar lionlike face.
“Dogger,” I asked, switching tracks like an emergency on the railway, “what would you say if I asked you about wasted thumb muscles, a drooping hand, and dragging feet?”
“I should say you’ve been at Bogmore Hall again,” Dogger answered, keeping a straight and proper face.
“And if I told you I hadn’t?”
“Then I should ask you for more details, miss.”
“And I should tell you that I had met someone who had all of those symptoms, as well as wide, round staring eyes, no eyebrows or eyelashes, a crumbled nose, a blotchy, brownish complexion, and the most awful frown.”
“And I should say, ‘Well done, Miss Flavia. A nicely observed description of facies leonine—the so-called “lion face.” ’ Would it be out of place for me to ask if this person had spent time in India?”
“Spot on, Dogger!” I crowed. “Spot … on! A classic case of lead poisoning, I believe.”
“No, miss,” Dogger said. “A classic case of Hansen’s disease.”
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“I daresay not,” said Dogger. “It is known more commonly as leprosy.”
Leprosy! That dread disease we had been warned against in Sunday school—that dread disease which Father Damien had contracted among the lepers of Molokai: the whitened, crusted, peeling skin, the blue ulcers, the rotted noses, the toes and fingers snapping off, and the face falling at the end into a sad and incurable wreckage. The lepers of Molokai to whom the pennies from our Sunday school collection boxes were regularly sent.
Leprosy! The secret fear of every girl and boy in the British Empire.
Surely Dogger must be wrong.
“I thought people died from that,” I said.
“They do. Sometimes. But in certain cases it becomes dormant—goes into a state of suspended animation—for years.”
“How many years?”
“Ten, twenty, forty, fifty. It varies. There is no hard-and-fast rule.”
“Is it contagious?” I asked, wanting suddenly and desperately to wash my hands.
“Not as much as you might think,” Dogger said. “Hardly at all, in fact. Most persons have a natural immunity to the organism which causes it—mycobacterium leprae.”
I had been aching for ages to ask Dogger about his vast storehouse of medical knowledge, an urge I had so far managed to keep in check. It was none of my business. Even the slightest inquiry into his shocked and troubled past would be an unforgivable invasion of trust.
“I have myself known of a case in which the bullae of the prodromal stage—”
His words stopped abruptly.
“Yes?” I prompted.
Dogger’s eyes seemed to have packed their bags and fled to some far-off place. A different century, perhaps, a different land, or a different planet. After a long time he said: “It is as if—”
It was as if I wasn’t there. Dogger’s voice was suddenly the rustle of leaves or the sighing of the wind in a vanished willow.
I held my breath.
“There is a pool,” he said slowly, his words strung out like beads on a long cord. “It is in the jungle … sometimes, the water is clear and may be drunk … other times, it is murky. An arm dipped into it disappears.”
Dogger reached out to touch something which I could not see, his hand trembling.
“Is it gone … or is it still there, invisible? One fishes in the depths, helpless, hoping to find—something—anything.”
“It’s all right, Dogger,” I said, as I always did, touching his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not important.”
“Oh, but it does—and it is, Miss Flavia,” he said, startling me with his intense presence. “And perhaps never more than now.”
“Yes,” I said automatically. “Perhaps never more than now.”
I wasn’t sure that I knew what we were talking about, but I knew that we had to keep on, no matter what.
Without really changing the subject, I continued as casually as if nothing had happened. “Without giving away any confidences,” I said, “I can tell you that the person I am speaking of is Magistrate Ridley-Smith.” Dogger, after all, had he been with me in the crypt, might have seen him with his own eyes.
“I have heard him mentioned, nothing more,” Dogger said.
“The other, the one I asked you about earlier, is his son Jocelyn.”
“Yes, I remember. Lead poisoning.”
“Exactly,” I said. “You deduced that I had been at Bogmore Hall.”
“I have heard the son spoken of,” Dogger said. “Servants talk. One hears things at the market.”
“But not the father?” I prompted.
“No. Not the father. Not, at least, a physical description.”
“Poor Jocelyn!” I said. “If your diagnosis is correct, his mother was lead-poisoned and his father a leper.”
Dogger nodded sadly. “Such things happen,” he said, “even though we try to pretend they do not.”
“Will they live?” I asked.
I had worked my way slowly up to the most important question of all.
“The son, perhaps,” Dogger replied. “The father, no.”
“Odd, isn’t it?” I said. “The leprosy, now that it has come to life again, will kill him.”
“Leprosy in itself is rarely fatal,” Dogger said. “Its victims are more likely to die from kidney or liver failure. And now if you’ll excuse me, miss—”
“Of course, Dogger,” I said. “I’m sorry for interrupting. I know you have things to do.”
It had been a near thing. Dogger had come within a hairsbreadth of sliding into one of his episodes. I knew that he wanted nothing more than to get to his room and fall quietly to pieces.
The worst was over, at least for now, and he needed to be given the gift of being alone.