THIRTY
SEND ME AWAY? IT was unthinkable!
I can’t even begin to describe what was ripping through my mind.
It was beyond shock.
I knew in that instant how a cow must feel when it steps into an abattoir and is poleaxed between the eyes by someone it thought was going to feed it.
Simply because I had tampered with my mother’s coffin?
I stared at Father in disbelief. This couldn’t possibly be happening. It was a dream—a nightmare.
“Mind you,” he added, “I should have been greatly surprised if you hadn’t.”
Surprised if I hadn’t?
What was the man saying?
What mad Alice in Wonderland world had I been plummeted into? Who was this stranger dressed in my father’s clothing, and why was he talking such nonsense?
Had I died, perhaps, without realizing it, and been propelled into a Hell in which I was to be punished for evermore by this incomprehensible scarecrow who had taken on my Father’s form?
Surprised if I hadn’t?
“It was so very like you, Flavia. I must tell you I was expecting you to do something of the sort.”
“Me, sir?” Eyes wide open—mouth hanging agape.
Father shook his head.
“I have told you several times how like your mother you are, and never more than now—at this very instant.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry? Whatever for?”
That old sadness came welling up, and my eyes were suddenly full of tears.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s just it,” Father said gently. “One often doesn’t.”
“No,” I agreed.
As ludicrous as it sounds, Father and I had fallen into conversation. It was something I had experienced only a few times in my life, and it tended to leave me feeling as giddy as if I were walking a rope rigged between two trees in the orchard.
“I wanted to bring her back to life,” I said. “I wanted to give her to you as a gift—so that you wouldn’t be sad.”
In spite of not wanting to, I had blurted it out.
Father removed his spectacles and cleaned them elaborately on his handkerchief.
“There is no need for that,” he said at last, softly. “Your mother has been given back to me—in you.”
Now the two of us were near to blubbering, restrained only by the slender thread of fact that we were both de Luces. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I knew my place.
Love at Arm’s Length: That should have been our family’s motto, rather than the forced witticism of Dare Lucem.
“And now,” Father was saying, “we must go on.”
He spoke the words with such determination that they might have been coming from the mouth of Winston Churchill himself. I could imagine his bulldog voice issuing from the wireless speaker in the drawing room: “We must go on.”
My brain supplied the sounds of cheering hordes in Trafalgar Square. I could almost see the flags waving.
“I have neglected your education,” Father said. “You’ve dabbled in chemistry, of course, but chemistry is not enough.”
Dabbled? Were my ears deceiving me?
Chemistry not enough? Chemistry was everything!
Energy! The universe. And me: Flavia Sabina de Luce.
Chemistry was the only thing with any real existence. Everything else was just bubbles on the broth.
Father had quenched our fledgling conversation with cold water before it ever had a chance to properly take fire.
Dabbled, indeed!
But he was not finished.
“Perhaps because they were older, your sisters have had an unfair advantage. The time has now come to set you straight.”
Numbness was setting in. I could feel it in my face.
“I have discussed matters with your aunt Felicity and we are in complete agreement.”
“Yes, sir?”
I was the prisoner at the bar, gripping the rail with white knuckles, waiting for the judge to drape his head with the black handkerchief and pronounce a sentence of death upon me.
“And may God have mercy on your soul.”
“Your mother’s old school in Canada, Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, has agreed to enroll you in the autumn term.”
There was a sickening silence, and then my stomach did what it does when the uniformed lift attendant in the Army and Navy Store gives you a furtive grin and shoves the lever full over to “Down.”
“But Father—the expense!”
All right, I’ll admit it: I was floundering—inventing excuses.
“Because your mother has left Buckshaw to you, I believe I am correct in saying that the expense should no longer be at issue. There will be many details to be sorted out, of course, but once put properly in order—”
What?
“Your aunt Felicity and I will, of course, act as trustees until such time as—”
I beg your pardon? Buckshaw mine? What kind of cruel joke is this?
I stuck my forefingers into my ears. I didn’t want to hear it.
Father gently removed them and his hand was surprisingly warm. It was, I think, the first time he had ever voluntarily touched me, and I wanted to jam them back in so that he could pull them out again.
“Buckshaw?” I managed. “Mine? Do Feely and Daffy know?”
It was probably an uncharitable thought, but it was the first thing that came to mind and I had said it before I could stop myself.
“No,” Father said. “And I suggest that you not tell them—at least for the time being.”
“But why?”
In my heart of hearts, I was already swanking around my kingdom like Henry VIII.
“I banish thee, proud sister, and thee, oh bookish one,
To some far isle to rue e’ermore thy sauciness
T’ward sister piteous—”