TWENTY
THE BEDROOMS AT BUCKSHAW, as I have said before, were like vast, damp zeppelin barns, especially those in the east wing where the loosened, water-stained wallpaper bulged from the walls in the form of wind-filled sails. Some of the rooms possessed papered ceilings that drooped overhead in musty, sagging bags like lowering thunderclouds, except that they were green.
No one ever came here, and even I had only once or twice peeked into the moldering bedchamber at the northeast corner of the house, which, for some long forgotten reason, had always been known as “Angels.”
There was nothing angelic about it: “Mushrooms” would have been a far more appropriate name. I knew for a fact that parts of the room glowed in the dark due to the bioluminescence of the various fungi that were happily eating away at the rotting wooden paneling which lay beneath.
The lighted candle I had brought from the laboratory guttered and spat in the drafty corridor.
The rusty doorknob gave a fiendish squeak, which was closely followed by a wooden groan as the door swung slowly inwards.
The pong of the place struck my nose like a blow from a boxing glove. I would have to work quickly.
I reached for a Louis-the-something chair, but it crumbled at the touch of my hand, as did a Victorian chaise longue, which, when I accidentally kicked it, collapsed in a shower of dust and woodworms. I knew that I had no choice but to return to my laboratory for something sturdy enough to stand on.
Esmeralda shifted impatiently from foot to foot as I threw into a petri dish a handful of feed, which she fell upon with the ferocity of a famished Tyrannosaurus rex, one of her early ancestors.
“Manners,” I reminded her, as I seized a tall laboratory stool and left her to her breakfast.
Back in the room called Angels, I placed the stool near the fireplace, directly in front of an angled and jutting section of the wall that had something to do with the chimney, which lay hidden beneath. The spot was more damp than I should have liked, but it was the only part of the upper wallpaper that was within my reach. The oilcloth wallet, though, would be more than protection enough for the short time I planned on leaving it there.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t tempted to read Harriet’s will, but I also knew instinctively that it would be wrong: an unforgivable invasion of Harriet’s and Father’s privacy that could never, ever be explained away. And besides, there wasn’t time.
When I had slid it into an ancient rip in the wallpaper, it was no more than just another bulge in a room full of bulges: safe from the Home Office, safe from the police, safe even from my own family.
As I climbed down from the stool, I noticed the marks its legs had left in the dust on the floor—to say nothing of my own footprints.
Even Inspector Hewitt’s men, Detective Sergeants Graves and Woolmer, would have been able to tell at a glance that someone in Flavia-sized shoes had stood on a four-legged stool in that very spot, and could probably even have made a fair guess as to how far up the wall I had been able to reach.
I hadn’t the time to find and scatter fresh dust to cover my tracks, which left only one option: I would make even more of them.
So round the room I went, stamping four-legged impressions with the stool’s legs everywhere, and making sure to leave as many footprints as I could manage.
When I had finished, Angels looked like a ballroom in which the Dance of the Chimney Sweeps had been held.
I was proud of myself.
I had made it halfway back along the hall, stool in hand, when a voice said, “What are you doing, Flavia?”
It was Undine. She was standing in a little nook where breakfast tea trays had once been prepared, and I hadn’t seen her until she’d already spotted me.
“How long have you been there?” I demanded. “Does your mother know you’re prowling round in the middle of the night?”
“It isn’t the middle of the night,” she corrected me. “It’s morning, and Ibu has already been up for hours. Besides, that’s two questions, and Ibu always says:
“Riddle me no more than once
“Unless you wish to be the dunce.”
I could cheerfully have strangled Ibu—and her daughter—with the nearest pair of nutcrackers, but I controlled myself.
“Ibu says today is your mother’s funeral and that we mustn’t mention it because it might cause you deep distress.”
“Ibu’s very considerate”—I smiled—“and you may tell her I said so.”
I had hopeful visions of Undine parroting my words to Lena and receiving a sound thrashing for her troubles.
“What are you doing with the stool?” Undine asked.
“Watering plants,” I replied, almost without thinking about it. I had become a deft liar when required—and sometimes not.
“Ha!” Undine said, planting her hands on her hips. But she left it at that.
“Run along now,” I told her, surprised at the great pleasure I took in doing so. “I’ve got work to do.”
Which was no more than the truth. I had gone to the library to ferret out the meaning of the stranger’s message, only to be distracted by Daffy’s news about the unexpected arrival of Adam Sowerby.
“He and Father are old friends,” Daffy had reminded me. It was true, but why was Adam suddenly here? And why now? Had he come as a friend of the family to pay his respects to Harriet, or was he here in his role of inquiry agent?
These were things I needed to know.
But first—a return to the library.
As I had hoped it might be, the library was now in darkness. Daffy must have gone to bed soon after I left her, because Paradise Lost was still lying open, facedown, in the same position I had last seen it—which was a sure indication of my sister’s state of mind.
If I had left a book lying open on its face like that, she’d have flung it into my face, along with a fiery lecture on what she always referred to as “respect for the printed word.”
I knew well enough what a gamekeeper was, since there had once been one at Buckshaw, although that was long before my time, of course. Much more recently, Daffy had read to us selected passages from Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was interesting if you were keen on country houses but far too full of gush and mush if you were not.
I switched on a small table lamp and went directly to the Oxford English Dictionary, “The Holy of Holies,” as Daffy called it: twelve volumes plus supplement. The Ns were in the seventh volume. I lifted it down, opened it in my lap, and ran my finger down the page:
Nictation … Niddering … Niddicock—
Aha! So that was where Daffy had dredged up the word.
“Flavia, you dim-witted niddicock,” she was fond of saying.
Daffy is the only person I know who mines the Oxford English Dictionary for insults in the same way others dig for diamonds.
Ah, here it was:
Nide (n?id), sb. [ad. F. nid or L. nid-us: the older F. ni is represented by Nye. Cf. Nid.] A brood or nest of pheasants.
My blood was instantly ice water.
Pheasants! A nest of pheasants!
“Pheasant sandwiches!” Harriet’s words on the ciné film.
“And have you, also, acquired a taste for pheasant sandwiches, young lady?” Mr. Churchill’s words at Buckshaw Halt.
But what did they mean?
My brain was crawling with words, with images, and with half-formed ideas.
I knew suddenly that I needed to get away from this house of perpetual gloom, get away to somewhere I could think new thoughts—my own thoughts, rather than the worn-out thoughts of others.
I would pack a breakfast-lunch.
Where would I go? I didn’t know.
The dovecote at Culverhouse Farm, perhaps. The dusty tower, silent save for the cooing of the doves, was a tempting hideout. Even a couple of hours away would give me time to think without having to worry about bargers.
I’d be back in plenty of time to get dressed for the funeral.