Tristram Tallis strapped me into the front seat and left me sitting there alone as he made a tour of inspection round the aircraft, touching here, wiggling there, peering at one thing and another.
I took the opportunity to have a quick look round the cockpit in which I was sitting. I think I had been expecting something quite wonderful in a machine which was capable of flying up among the gods, but this one seemed horribly underequipped for such a journey: a simple stick that jutted up out of the floor and a couple of dials and gauges on a wooden panel.
And that was all. Surely this thing was too frail to fly.
I was beginning to think I had made a mistake. Perhaps I should beg off. But it was too late.
After a couple of halfhearted swings at the propeller, Tristram returned to the cockpit, threw a switch, and gave it another try. There was an alarming mechanical clanking from the engine, a burst of smoke, and with a roar the propeller disappeared in a blur.
The wings teetered alarmingly as he clambered aboard.
“All set?” he shouted as he fastened himself in the back seat, and I, clutching the edges of the cockpit, managed a grim nod.
The roar became a tornado and we began to move, slowly at first, but with ever-increasing speed until we were rattling along cross-country like the Hinley Hunt in full cry.
Faster and faster still we went until I thought Blithe Spirit was about to tear herself to pieces.
And then a sudden smoothness.
We were flying!
Rather than us rising up into the air as I had expected we would, the earth fell away beneath us like a carpet being jerked out from under one’s feet by some unseen practical joker.
I had no more than a fleeting impression of the roofs of Buckshaw before the ornamental lake was floating quickly past below us.
The sun was an enormous red fire balloon on the horizon as we rose up out of the shadows and into the sudden daylight.
It was breathtaking!
If Feely and Daffy had dashed to their windows at the noise of our takeoff, I would be no more to them now than a flyspeck in the distance.
Just as I always was, I couldn’t help thinking.
But beneath our wings, the marvelous toy world slid slowly by: hills, fields, woods and valleys, dales, dells, ponds and groves. Far below us, miniature sheep grazed in handkerchief pastures.
It made me want to write a hymn. Hadn’t even Johann Sebastian Bach composed something about sheep?
Away to the east, the rising sun struck a sharp glint off the river, and for a few moments, as we turned away from it, the Efon was a shimmering snake of rubies crawling off towards a distant sea.
How Harriet must have loved this, I thought: the freedom of it all—the sense of having left one’s body, but not one’s mind, behind. Unless you happened to be a bird, the body was of little use up here: You could not run or jump as you did on the ground, but only observe.
In a strange way, being an aviator was like being a departed soul: You could look down upon the Earth without actually being present, see all without being seen.
It was easy enough to see why God, having called the dry land “Earth” and the gathering together of the waters “the Seas,” saw that it was good.
I could picture the Old Fellow lifting up the horizon like the lid of a stewing pot and peeking in with one red eye to admire His Creation: to see how it was coming along.
It was good!
Tristram was waving a hand, pointing downwards. Blithe Spirit tilted precipitously to one side, and I found myself looking down the wing at an oddly familiar collection of buildings.
Bishop’s Lacey’s High Street!
There was the Thirteen Drakes, inside which all those official people from the railway station—those bullies from the Home Office, presumably billeted in every nook and cranny, even unto the broom cupboards, if Daffy was to be believed—were dreaming their dreadful dreams of power.
And down there, in Cow Lane, was the Bishop’s Lacey Free Library—and Tilda Mountjoy’s Willow Villa, even more gaudily orange than usual in the light of the early morning.
We had now flown through half of a vast clockwise circle and were turning south again. Ahead I could see the Palings, that curious bend in the river at the edge of our estate, and I wondered what the Hobblers, that peculiar cult who had once baptized their babies at that spot, might have made of our flying machine appearing suddenly in the sky.
A little to the east, the Gulley ran along the river to Goodger Hill, down which Gladys and I had so often raced and fallen breathless at the bottom.
And there was the Jack O’Lantern, the skull-like outcropping which loomed over the Palings. I had promised to meet Lena there for a picnic after the funeral.
Almost directly to the east, at the very bottom of Pooker’s Lane, was Rook’s End, and I smiled at the thought of Dr. Kissing. The old gentleman would already be up and puffing at his first cigarette of the day.
Perhaps we could give him a bit of a show: Buzz the aerodrome, as the pilots at Leathcote would have said. It would be good to let Father’s old headmaster know that someone was thinking of him. I grinned at the thought of his speculating for hours about whom it might have been.
Flavia de Luce was the last person on earth he’d ever think of!
I waved frantically with both hands to get Tristram’s attention and pointed down at Rook’s End.
He must have done this sort of thing before because the stick in front of me lunged suddenly forward and to one side, and we were hurtling down towards the earth at a terrific speed, the wings whistling and the wind howling in the wires like banshees.
“Yaroo!” I wanted to shout, but I kept it to myself. I didn’t want Tristram to think I was immature.
Just when it seemed we must become a permanent blot on the landscape, we pulled up out of the dive, and I watched as our winged shadow raced across the stony face of the Jack O’Lantern. We had cheated death.
Now we were floating lazily along just above the treetops of the park at Rook’s End. As the house came into view, I noticed several motorcars parked in the forecourt. It would have been difficult to miss them.
One was an apple green Rolls-Royce with the rear part of its roof peeled away to form a makeshift greenhouse. There couldn’t possibly be another like it in the entire world.
It was Nancy, Adam Sowerby’s old Roller.
And parked beside it was an angular mint green Land Rover.
Lena de Luce!
What the dickens was she doing here?
Why would she and Adam be meeting at Rook’s End at such an ungodly hour of the morning? What could the two of them possibly want with Dr. Kissing?—for surely it was him they had come to see.
Who else could possibly bring them to this remote and frankly uninviting home for decayed gentlefolk?
My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden silence. Tristram had throttled back Blithe Spirit’s engine and we had entered into a gentle glide. Buckshaw was dead ahead.
We’re going to crash! I was sure of it as the ground rushed up to meet us.
But we slipped through the quiet air above the Mulford Gates, skimmed the treetops of the avenue of chestnuts, and alighted on the Visto as gently as a mayfly on a rose petal.
“Well?” Tristram demanded. We had come to rest and he was already climbing out of the back cockpit. “What did you think?”
“Most instructive,” I said.