SEVENTEEN
I LISTENED AT THE door to the low hum of voices outside.
Taking a deep breath and turning the knob, I stepped solemnly into the hall.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “Friends … neighbors—”
I was trying desperately to think how Father would phrase it. “I know that you’ve been waiting patiently for a very long time, and I can’t tell you how much the family appreciates it. But I’m afraid that we’re going to have to close the house for the rest of this evening. There are, as you can imagine, many details which must be seen to before my mother’s funeral, and I—”
An appeal to their imaginations seemed like an inspired touch, but still, there was a murmur of disappointment.
“It’s all right, ducks,” said the woman with the duck eyes, and I nearly burst into hysterical laughter at my private joke.
“We all know what you’ve been through”—she pronounced it “froo”—“We all know what you’ve been froo, so you don’t have to tell us twice when to clear out.”
“You’re very kind,” I said. “I’m glad you understand. We shall resume in the morning at a quarter past nine.”
By that time, Daffy would be ending her shift, and I, for better or for worse, would have finished most of what I had come to do.
If, as I hoped, history had been made in the night, tomorrow’s early mourners would arrive to find the tomb empty, so to speak.
It promised to be a most interesting day.
The woman with the duck eyes had actually begun to walk away, but now she turned and called back to me, almost desperately: “Miss Harriet babysat me and my sister once. Our mam was taken sudden with the appendix, and Miss Harriet, God bless her, made us brown sugar sangriches.”
I gave her a sad smile: sad because I hated her—no, not hated—envied her for this sudden stabbing memory of Harriet, who had never made brown sugar sandwiches—or any other kind, for that matter—for me, at least that I could remember.
My announcement was relayed from person to person back along the line; people began to turn reluctantly away, and in a few minutes, the hall was empty.
As the last few stragglers made their way down the west staircase, I slipped quietly through the baize door, which opened into the northwest corner of the house, and by a roundabout trek, made my way to the east wing. Again, except for Lena and Undine, there was little danger of a personal encounter.
Within minutes I was on my way back from the laboratory, ticking off once more in my mind a list of the tools I had carefully laid out for myself: tin-snips, torch, gloves, screwdriver, and coal scuttle, to say nothing of the ATP and the thiamine, which, wrapped in handkerchiefs, were stuffed safely into my pocket to keep from breaking or rattling. In the coal scuttle was a brass alarm clock I had brought from my bedroom: a last-minute addition which might have doomed the entire operation had it been forgotten.
Back in Harriet’s boudoir, I leaned thankfully against the door and heaved a sigh of relief. I hadn’t been spotted.
The lock gave a satisfying click as I turned the key, which I then removed and dropped into my pocket.
This is it, I thought, glancing at the clock. Time to show them what you’re made of, Flavia.
It was 7:22.
Time to remove the black pall with which Harriet’s coffin had been draped.
But before beginning my actual work, I replaced and relit each one of the now guttering candles at the head and foot of the catafalque.
I would be needing all the light and all the heat they could generate.
Dare Lucem.
The coffin screws were the easy part. Since they were new and had not been moldering and rusting away in some damp old churchyard, they would be almost ridiculously simple to remove. In such a short time that it surprised even me, I had them loosened.
Now came the moment of truth.
“Saint Tancred, help me,” I whispered. “Harriet, forgive me.”
And with that, I lifted the lid.
It was as I had expected: Beneath the wooden lid was an inner coffin of zinc. Zinc for lightness, and although it was a somewhat harder metal than lead, still as easy as butter to cut through with the tin-snips.
Beneath the zinc, though, would be the face of my mother. What would she look like?
I began to prepare myself mentally. I forced myself to think like a scientist.
If her body was corrupt, I would go no further. There would be no point in it.
But if, on the other hand, she had been preserved miraculously in the ice of the glacier, I would begin immediately my efforts to restore her to life.
I worried a small hole in the zinc with the tip of the screwdriver and inserted one of the blades of the metal-cutting scissors.
Snip!
It was more difficult than I had thought.
Snip!
Already my thumb and forefinger were starting to feel bruised.
A slight gush of wind—or was it my imagination?—escaped from the coffin. I wrinkled my nose at the peculiar odor of soil, ice—and something else.
Had there been the faintest whiff of Harriet’s scent, Miratrix?
Perhaps I was only willing it to be so.
Snip!
My fingers were already in pain, but I kept on cutting.
After what seemed an eternity, I had made a three-sided incision of no more than a foot each side. If my calculations were correct, I was working directly over Harriet’s face and chest.
Careful, I thought. Mustn’t damage her.
It was at that precise instant that I realized I had forgotten the blowtorch. If I needed to reseal the inner coffin, I would have to solder shut the cuts I had made in the zinc.
In order to do that, I would need not only the torch and a good supply of lead/tin solder, but also a sufficient quantity of flux. The first two were easy enough: Uncle Tar had kept the laboratory stocked well enough with tools to keep from ever having to bring in overly inquisitive tradesmen to repair his plumbing. The flux, though, was another matter. I had planned to concoct it myself by “killing” a solution of hydrochloric acid and water with bits of zinc dropped into it.
If I needed to do that now, it would require another trip to the lab and further delay.
Snip!
And then there was this: Although I had no fear of corpses, this one was obviously different. Would the act of coming face-to-face with my frozen mother result in some completely unforeseen shock to my system?
There was only one way to find out.
I inserted the screwdriver into the top edge of the cut and pried back the zinc with my fingers.
A wave of weakness washed over me. I nearly fainted.
There, just inches from my invading eyes, cradled in tendrils of curling gases, was the face of my mother, the long-lost Harriet.
Except for a slight darkening of the end of her nose, she looked exactly as she had in all the photos I had ever seen.
Fortunately, her eyes were closed.
She had a tiny smile on her lips—that was the first thing I noticed—and her skin was as pale as that of any fairy-tale ice princess.
It was like coming face-to-face with an image of my older self in a frosty mirror.
I was shaken with a shiver.
“Mother,” I whispered. “It’s me—Flavia.”
She did not respond, of course, but it had been necessary to speak to her nonetheless.
Something slipped and fell down beside her neck: a bit of solidified carbon dioxide. I had been right. They had packed her in card ice for the long trip home.
Vapors were rising from the coffin, swirling briefly in the light of the flickering candles before cascading in slow drifts to the floor to form an ankle-deep mist.
I touched her face with my forefinger. She was cold.
How easy it is to say that, and yet so difficult to do.
I became aware that my emotions were writhing inside me like snakes in a pit.
Some part of me of which I was not in control made me bend over and kiss her lips.
They were hard and as dry as parchment.
“Get on with it, Flavia,” I was telling myself. “You haven’t a lot of time.”
I needed to know at the outset if there was any warmth—any heartbeat. There wouldn’t be, of course, but I had to be sure. Every experiment must start with some basic given.
Harriet was still dressed in the climbing gear in which she had been found, with an outer coat of tan-colored gabardine that was already beginning to thaw, or at least to soften a bit from the heat of the candles.
I unfastened a stiff button on her breast and worked a hand inside, feeling for her heart.
As always, I had that brief irrational fear that I’ve had before with corpses: the feeling that the dead person is going to leap up suddenly, shout “Boo!,” and seize one’s hand in a deadly grip of ice.
Nothing of the sort happened, of course.
What did happen was that, among what felt like layered wool and silk and cotton, my fingers came into contact with something more substantial than fabric.
I moved my hand as gently as possible. Whatever was tucked inside Harriet’s clothing felt somewhat damp from the card ice, and brittle.
I seized it with the scissors of my first and second fingers and slowly worked it out and into the light: a large oilcloth wallet. It was as rigid as frozen fish skin.
I opened it with great care, but even so, several large flakes peeled off and fell away onto Harriet’s breast.
Inside was a single sheet of grayish musty paper, water-stained and folded into four.
My hands trembled as I flattened it out and read the penciled words:
This is the last will and testament of Harriet de Luce.
I hereby give, devise, and bequeath to my—