“Morning, all,” I said in a sleepy voice, rubbing my eyes.
I needn’t have bothered. Feely was gazing into her teacup, admiring her own reflection. She insisted on drinking it plain, “no cream, thank you,” the better to see herself in the shimmering liquid surface. At the moment, she was blowing on it gently to see what she’d look like with wavy hair.
Daffy peered at the pages of her book, which was propped open on a toast rack, wiping her jammy fingers on her skirt before turning the next page.
I lifted the lid on a serving dish and examined its rather grisly contents: a few scraps of burned bacon, a couple of kippers, a small scrap heap of curdled omelet, and what appeared to be a bundle of boiled bindweed.
I reached for the last piece of cold toast.
“Put some parsnip marmalade on it,” Mrs. Mullet said as she hurried into the room. “Alf’s sister grows ’em in ’er allotment garden. There’s nothin’ as’ll put ’air on your chest like parsnips, Alf says.”
“I don’t want hair on my chest,” I said. “Besides, Daffy has more than enough for all of us.”
Daffy made a rude sign with her fingers.
“So when’s the wedding?” I asked in a cheerful voice.
Feely’s head came up like a sow’s at the sound of the swill bucket.
Her wail began somewhere low down in her throat and rose, then fell, like an air-raid siren in distress.
“Faaa-aaa-aaa-ther!”
It faded finally and ended in tears. It fascinated me the way in which my sister was able to transform herself from Health Queen to hag in less than the twinkling of an eye.
Father closed his journal, removed his spectacles, put them back on again, and fixed me with that crippling de Luce stare of coldest blue.
“Where did you happen upon that bit of information, Flavia?” he asked in an Antarctic voice.
“She’s been listening at keyholes!” Feely said. “She’s always listening at keyholes.”
“Or at hot-air registers,” Daffy added, The Monk forgotten for a moment.
“Well?” Father asked, his voice an icicle.
“I just assumed,” I said, thinking more quickly than I’ve ever thought before, “now that she’s eighteen—”
Father had always said that no daughter of his would ever marry until she was at least eighteen, and even then …
Feely’s eighteenth birthday had been not long before, in January.
How could I forget it?
To celebrate the happy occasion, I had planned a small display of indoor fireworks: just a few bangers, really, and a couple of gaily colored carpet rockets. I had mailed written invitations to everyone in the household and watched, hugging myself in secret delight, as each person took their hand-printed summons from the mail salver in the foyer, opened them, and then set them aside without a word.
I had followed up with a series of handmade posters placed strategically throughout the house.
On the day itself, I set up a row of five wooden chairs: one for Father, one for Feely, one for Daffy, and a pair together at one end for Mrs. Mullet and Dogger.
I had prepared my chemicals. The appointed time had come and gone.
“They’re not coming, Dogger,” I’d said after twenty minutes.
“Shall I fetch them, Miss Flavia?” Dogger had asked. He was sitting calmly in one of the chairs with a charged seltzer bottle in his hands in case of small fires.
“No!” I said, far too loudly.
“Perhaps they’ve forgotten,” Dogger suggested.
“No, they haven’t. They don’t care.”
“You may put on the show for me,” Dogger had said after a while. “I’ve always fancied a nice display of drawing-room pyrotechnics.”
“No!” I’d shouted. “It’s canceled.”
How bitterly, in time, I was to regret my words.
“Well?” Father asked again, bringing me back to the present.
“Well, now that she’s eighteen,” I went on, “it’s only natural that … that her thoughts should turn to thoughts of—
“—of Holy Matrimony!” I finished triumphantly.
From behind her book, Daffy let off a wet snicker.
“No one was to know,” Feely groaned, tearing at her hair dramatically. “Especially you! Damn and blast! Now it will be all over the village.”
“Ophelia …” Father said, not really putting much into it.
“Well, it’s true! We wanted to announce it ourselves at Easter. Other than clapping your ears to keyholes, the only way you could have heard was from the vicar. That was it! The vicar told you! I saw you sneaking in through the foyer an hour ago, and don’t tell me you didn’t. You were at the church and you weaseled it out of the vicar, didn’t you? I should have known. I should have known!”
“Ophelia …”
Once my sister got wound up, you might as well take a chair. I certainly didn’t want the blame to fall on Reverend Richardson. His life was hard enough, what with Cynthia and so forth.
“You little beast!” Feely said. “You filthy little beast!”
Father got up from the table and left the room. Daffy, who loved a good argument but hated squabbling, followed.
I was alone with Feely.
I sat for a moment enjoying her red face and her bugging blue eyes. She didn’t often allow herself to go to pieces like that.
Although I wanted to get back at her, I didn’t want to be the one to break the news to her about the unfortunate Mr. Collicutt.
Well, actually, I did—but I didn’t want to be blamed for shattering her world.
“You’re quite right,” I heard myself saying. “I was at church this morning. I went early to say a few private prayers, and just happened to be there when Mr. Collicutt’s body was discovered.”
Teach you to accuse me of listening at keyholes, I thought.
The blood drained out of Feely’s face. I knew instantly that my sister was not the murderer. You cannot fake pallor.
“Mr. Collicutt? Body?”
She leaped to her feet and sent the teapot crashing to the floor.
“ ’Fraid so,” I said. “In the crypt. Wearing a gas mask. Most peculiar.”
With a truly terrifying wail, Feely fled the room.
I followed her upstairs.