I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Past the top of the stairs, the corridor was in darkness, and I had to feel my way along by sense of touch. The baize door to the north front swung open without a sound.

This was the part of the house that had been assigned as billets, the dusty sheets that usually covered the furniture having been removed, and the multitude of bedrooms made ready for the visiting film crew.

I had no idea which bedroom had ultimately been allocated to Phyllis Wyvern, but common sense told me that it would have been the largest: the Blue Bedroom—the one usually occupied by Aunt Felicity on her ceremonial visits.

A crack of light at the bottom of the door told me that I was right.

Inside, something mechanical was running: a whirring, a whine, hardly louder than a whisper.

Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!

What on earth could it be?

I tapped lightly on the door with one of my fingernails.

There was no reply.

Inside the room, the noise went on.

Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!

Perhaps she hadn’t heard me.

I knocked again, this time with my knuckles.

“Miss Wyvern,” I whispered at the door. “Are you awake? It’s me, Flavia.”

Still no response.

I knelt down and tried to peer through the keyhole, but something was blocking my view. Almost certainly the key.

As I got to my feet, I stumbled in the darkness and fell against the door, which, in awful silence, swung inward.

On the far side of the room stood the great canopied bed, made up and turned down, but unoccupied.

To the left, on a tubular stand in the shadows, a ciné projector ground on and on, its steady white beam illuminating the surface of a tripod screen on the far side of the room.

Although the film had run completely through the machine, its loose end, like a black bullwhip, was still flapping round and round: Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!

Phyllis Wyvern was slumped in a wing-back chair, her sightless eyes staring intently at the glare of the blank screen.

Around her throat, like a necklace of death, was a length of ciné film, tied tightly, but neatly, in an elaborate black bow.

She was dead, of course.

• TWELVE •

IN MY ELEVEN YEARS of life I’ve seen a number of corpses. Each of them was interesting in a different way, and this one was no exception.

Because the others had been men, Phyllis Wyvern was the first dead female I had ever seen and as such, she was, I thought, deserving of particular attention.

I noticed at once the way the illuminated ciné screen was reflected in her eyeballs, giving the illusion for a moment that she was still alive, her eyes sparkling. But even though the eyes had not yet begun to cloud over—she’s not been dead for long, I thought—something had already begun to soften her features, as if her face were being sanded down for repainting.

The skin was already on its way to taking on the color of putty, and there was a very faint but distinct leaden tinge to the inside of her lips, which were open slightly, revealing the tips of her perfect teeth. A few drops of foamy saliva were trapped in each corner of her mouth.

She was no longer wearing her Juliet costume, but was dressed rather in an elaborately stitched Eastern European peasant blouse with a shawl and a voluminous skirt.

“Miss Wyvern,” I whispered, even though I knew it was pointless.

Still, there’s always that feeling that a dead person is playing a practical joke, and is going to leap up at any moment and shout “Boo!” and frighten you out of your wits, and my nerves, although strong, are not quite ready for that.

From what I had read and heard, I knew that in cases of sudden death, the authorities, either police or medical, were to be summoned at once. Cynthia Richardson had reported that the telephone was out of order, so the police, at least for the time being, were out of the picture, and Dr. Darby was in a deep sleep downstairs; I had seen him during my passage across the foyer.

There was no question that Phyllis Wyvern was past medical help, so my decision was an easy one: I would call Dogger.

Closing the bedroom door quietly behind me, I retraced my steps through the house—on tiptoe across the foyer once again—to Dogger’s little room at the top of the kitchen stairs.

I gave three quick taps at the door, and then a pause … two more taps … another pause … and then two slow ones.

I had scarcely finished when the door swung open on silent hinges, and Dogger stood there in his dressing gown.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Quite all right,” Dogger said after a barely perceptible pause. “Thank you for asking.”

“Something horrid has happened to Phyllis Wyvern,” I told him. “In the Blue Bedroom.”

“I see.” Dogger nodded and vanished for a moment into the shadows of his room, and when he returned, he was wearing a pair of spectacles. I must have gaped a little, since I had never known him to use them before.

The two of us, Dogger and I, made our way silently back upstairs by the quickest route, the foyer, which involved yet another trek among the sleeping bodies. If the moment hadn’t been so serious, I’d have laughed at Dogger’s long legs picking their way like a wading heron between Bunny Spirling’s distended stomach and the outflung arm of Miss Aurelia Puddock.

Back in the Blue Bedroom, I closed the door behind us. Since my fingerprints were on the handle anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference.

The projector was still making its unnerving flap-flapping noise as Dogger walked slowly round Phyllis Wyvern’s body, squatting to look into each of her ears and each of her eyes. It was obvious that he was saving the bow of ciné film around her neck for last.

“What do you think?” I asked finally, in a whisper.

“Strangulation,” he said. “Look here.”

He produced a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and used it to pull down one of her lower eyelids, revealing a number of red spots on the inner surface.

“Petechiae,” he said. “Tardieu’s spots. Asphyxia through rapid strangulation. Definitely.”

Now he turned his attention to the black bow of film that ringed the throat, and a frown crossed his face.

“What is it, Dogger?”

“One would expect more bruising,” he said. “It does not occur invariably, but in this case one would definitely expect more bruising.”

I leaned in for a closer look and saw that Dogger was right. There was remarkably little discoloration. The film itself was black against Phyllis Wyvern’s pale neck, the image on many of its frames clearly visible: a close-up shot of the actress herself in ruffled peasant blouse against a dramatic mackerel sky.

The realization hit me like a hammer.

“Dogger,” I whispered. “This blouse, shawl, and skirt—it’s the same costume she’s wearing in the film!”

Dogger, who was looking reflectively at the body, his hand to his chin, nodded.

For a few moments, there was a strange quiet between us. Until now, it had been as if we were friends, but suddenly, at this particular moment, it felt as if we had become colleagues—perhaps even partners.

Possibly I was emboldened by the night, although it might have been a sense of something more. A strange feeling of timelessness hung in the room.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you,” I asked suddenly.

“Yes, Miss Flavia,” Dogger said. “Many times.”

I had always felt that Dogger was no stranger to dead bodies. He had, after all, survived more than two years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, after which he had been put to work for more than a year on the notorious Death Railway in Burma, any single day of which would have given him more than a nodding acquaintance with death.

Aside from Mrs. Mullet’s whispered tales in the kitchen, I knew little about Dogger’s military service—or, for that matter, my father’s.

Once, as I watched Dogger trim the rose bushes on the Visto, I had tried to question him.

“You and Father were in the army together, weren’t you?” I asked, in so casual and offhanded a manner that I hated myself for having bungled it before I even began.

“Yes, miss,” Dogger had said. “But there are things which must not be spoken of.”

“Even to me?” I wanted to ask.

I wanted him to say “Especially to you,” or something like that: something I could mull over deliciously in the midnight hours, but he did not. He simply reached among the thorns and, with a couple of precision snips, deadheaded the last of the dying roses.

Dogger was like that—his loyalty to Father could sometimes be infuriating.

“I think,” he was saying, “you’d best slip down and awaken Dr. Darby … if you wouldn’t mind, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, and letting myself out, made for the stairs.

To my surprise, Dr. Darby was not where I had last seen him: The spot where he had rested was empty, and he was nowhere in sight.

As I wondered what to do, the doctor appeared from beneath the stairs.

“Telephone’s bust,” he said, as if to himself. “Wanted to call Queenie and let her know I’m still respirating.”

Queenie was Dr. Darby’s wife, whose terrible arthritis had confined her to a wheelchair.

“Yes, Mrs. Richardson tried to use it last night. Don’t you remember?”

“Of course I do,” he said snappishly. “It’s just that I’d forgotten.”

“Dogger has asked if you’d mind coming upstairs,” I said, taking care not to give out any details in case one of the sleepers might be listening to us with their eyes closed. “He’d like your advice.”

“Lead on, then,” Dr. Darby said, with surprisingly little reluctance.

“ ‘… amid the encircling gloom,’ ” he added, extracting his first mint of the day from his waistcoat pocket.

I led the way upstairs to the Blue Bedroom, where Dogger was still crouched beside the corpse.

“Ah, Arthur,” Dr. Darby said. “Again I find you on the scene.”

Dogger looked from one of us to the other with something like a smile, and then he was gone.

“We’d better be having the police,” Dr. Darby said, after making the same examination of Phyllis Wyvern’s eyes that Dogger had already done.

He felt one of the limp wrists and applied his thumb to the angle of the jaw.

“Is life extinct, Doctor?” I asked. I had heard the phrase on a wireless program about Philip Odell, the private eye, and thought it sounded much more professional than “Is she dead?”

I knew that she was, of course, but I liked to have my own observations confirmed by a professional.

“Yes,” Dr. Darby said, “she’s dead. You’d better roust out that German chap—Dieter, is it? He looks as if he’d be good with skis.”

Fifteen minutes later I was in the coach house with Dieter, helping him strap the skis to his boots.

“Did these belong to your mother?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose so.”

“They are very good skis,” he said. “Madshus. In Norway, they were made. Someone has looked after them.”

It must have been Father, I thought. He came here sometimes to sit in Harriet’s old Rolls-Royce, as if it were a glass chapel in a fairy tale.

“Well, then,” Dieter said at last. “Off we go.”

I followed him as far as the Visto, climbing in my rubber boots from drift to drift. As we passed the wall of the kitchen garden, I caught a glimpse of a face at the driver’s window of one of the lorries. It was Latshaw.

I waved, but he did not return my greeting.

When the snow was too deep to follow, I stopped and watched until Dieter was no more than a tiny black speck in the snowy wastes.

Only when I could no longer see him did I go back into the coach house.

I needed to think.

I climbed up into the backseat of Harriet’s old Rolls-Royce and wrapped myself in a motoring rug. Words like “warm” and “snug” swam into my mind.

When I awoke, the clock of the Phantom II was indicating a silent five forty-five A.M.

“What on earth—” Mrs. Mullet said, obviously surprised to see me coming in through the kitchen door. “You’ll freeze to death!”

I shrugged in my cardigan.

“I don’t care,” I said, hoping for a little sympathy and perhaps an advance on the Christmas pudding, which was one of the few dishes that she cooked to my satisfaction.

Mrs. Mullet ignored me. She was bustling busily about the kitchen, boiling a huge dented kettle for tea and slicing loaves of freshly baked bread for toast. It was obvious that Phyllis Wyvern’s murder had not yet been announced to the household.

“Good job I laid in so much for Christmas, isn’t it, Alf? Got an army to feed, I ’ave. Lyin’ in this mornin’ like so many lords and ladies, the lot of ’em—’ard floors or no. That’s the way of it with snow—couple of inches and they goes all ’elpless, like.”

Alf was sitting in the corner spreading jam on an Eccles cake.

“ ’Elpless,” he said. “As you say.

“What’s Father Christmas bringin’ you this year?” he asked me suddenly. “A nice dolly, then, p’raps, with different outfits, an’ that?”

A nice dolly indeed! What did he take me for?

“Actually, I was hoping for a Riggs generator and a set of graduated Erlenmeyer flasks,” I said. “One can never have too much scientific glassware.”

“Arrr,” he said, whatever that meant.

Alf’s mention of Father Christmas, though, had reminded me that it was now Sunday—that tonight would be Christmas Eve.

Before I slept another night I would be scaling Buckshaw’s roof and chimneys to set in motion my chemical experiment.

“You’d better watch out …” I sang as I strolled out of the kitchen.

Beyond the kitchen door, the place was a madhouse. The foyer, in particular, was like the lobby of a West End theater at the interval—scores of people pretending to have a jolly old chin-wag and everyone talking at the same time.

The noise level, for someone with my sensitive hearing, was nearly intolerable. I needed to get away. The police would probably not be here for hours. There was still plenty of time to put the finishing touches to my plans for Christmas Eve.

I had first thought of the fireworks long before Father had signed his agreement with Ilium Films. My original plan had been to set them off on the roof of Buckshaw, a display of fire and lights that could clearly be seen a mile away in Bishop’s Lacey: my Christmas gift to the village, so to speak—a gift that would be talked about long after Saint Nicholas had flown home to the frozen north.

I would send up showers of fire that would shame the northern lights: elaborate parasols of hot and cold fire of every color known to man. Chemistry would see to that!

That plan had expanded slowly over the months to include a scheme to capture the bearded old elf himself, to put to rest for once and for all the cruel taunts of my stupid sisters.

Now, as I prepared the chemical ingredients, I was suddenly subdued. It had only just occurred to me that it might be disrespectful to set off such a terrific celebration with a corpse in the house. Even though, in all likelihood, the remains of Phyllis Wyvern would be removed by the time Father Christmas came to call, I wouldn’t want to be accused of being insensitive.

“Eureka!” I said, as I set out in neat rows the flowerpots I had borrowed from the greenhouse. “I have it!”

I would manufacture a giant Rocket of Honor in Phyllis Wyvern’s memory! Yes, that was it—a dazzling and earsplitting finale to end the show.

I had found the formula devised by the wonderfully named Mr. Bigot, in an old book in Uncle Tar’s library. All that was required was to add the right amount of antimony and a handful of cast-iron filings to the basic recipe.

Twenty minutes with a file and a convenient hot-water radiator had produced the first of these ingredients—the other was in a bottle at my fingertips.

Wads of waxed paper and a hollow cardboard tube made an admirable casing, and before you could say “Ka-Boom!” the rocket was ready.

With the dessert prepared, it was now time for the main course. This was the dangerous part, and I needed to pay close attention to my every move.

Because of the risk of explosion, the potassium chlorate had to be mixed with exceedingly great care in a bowl that would not produce sparks.

Fortunately I remembered the aluminum salad set Aunt Felicity had given Feely for her last birthday.

“Dear girl,” she had said, “you are now eighteen. In a few years—four or five, if you’re lucky—your teeth shall begin to fall out and you shall find yourself eyeing the girdles at Harrods. The early girls get the most vigorous grooms, and don’t you forget it. Don’t stare at the ceiling with that vacuous look on your face, Ophelia. These aluminum bowls are manufactured from salvaged aircraft. They’re lightweight, practical, and pleasing to the eye. How better to begin your trousseau?”

I had found the bowls hidden at the back of a high shelf in the pantry and seized them in the name of science.

To produce the blue explosions, I mixed six parts of potassium nitrate, two of sulfur, and one part of trisulfide of antimony.

This was the formula used for the glaring rescue rockets at sea, and I reckoned these ones would be visible from Malden Fenwick—perhaps even from Hinley and beyond.

To one or two of the portions, I added a dollop of oak charcoal to give the explosions the appearance of rain; to others a bit of lampblack to produce spurs of fire.

It was important to keep in mind the fact that winter fireworks required a different formula than those designed for summer. The basic idea was this: less sulfur and lots more gunpowder.

I had concocted the gunpowder myself from niter, sulfur, charcoal, and a happy heart. When working with explosives, I’ve found that attitude is everything.

It was something I had learned at the time of that awful business with the unfortunate Miss Gurdy, our former governess—but stop! That catastrophe was no longer spoken of at Buckshaw. It was in the past and, mercifully, had almost been forgotten. At least I hoped it had been forgotten, since it was one of my few failures in experimenting with dualin—a substance containing sawdust, saltpeter, and nitroglycerin, and notorious for its instability.

I sighed and, banishing poor, scorched Miss Gurdy from my mind, turned it to more pleasant thoughts.

Before packing the ingredients into earthenware flowerpots I’d borrowed from the greenhouse, I had added to some of them a certain amount of arsenious oxide (AS₄O₆), sometimes known as white arsenic. Although it was pleasant to think that a deadly poison should produce the whitest of aerial explosions, that wasn’t my reason for choosing it.

What appealed to me, what really warmed my heart, was the thought of suspending over our ancestral home, even if only for a few seconds, an umbrella of deadly poisonous fire that would fall—then suddenly vanish as if by magic, leaving Buckshaw safe from harm.

I didn’t care if it made sense or not. It was the idea of the thing, and I was happy that I’d thought of it.

Each of the flowerpots now needed to be sealed, like preserves, with a lid of onionskin paper to protect the chemicals against moisture. Later tonight, just before bedtime, I would lug them, one at a time, up the narrow staircase that led from my laboratory to the roof.

And then I’d begin my work among the chimney pots.

I was halfway down the stairs, hoping I didn’t smell too much of gunpowder, when the doorbell rang. Dogger appeared, as he always does, as if from nowhere, and as I reached the last step, he opened the door.

There stood Inspector Hewitt of the Hinley Constabulary.

I hadn’t seen the Inspector for quite some time and our last meeting had been one I’d rather not dwell upon.

We stood staring at each other across the foyer like two wolves that have come from different directions upon a clearing full of sheep.

I was hoping Inspector Hewitt would let bygones be bygones—that he would stride across the foyer, give me a chummy handshake, and tell me that it was nice to see me again. I had, after all, helped him out of a number of jams in the past without so much as a pat on the back or a “kiss my arsenic.”

Well, that’s not quite true: His wife, Antigone, had asked me to tea in October, but the less said of that the better.

Which is why I was now standing there in the foyer, pretending to check something that had become lodged between my teeth by examining my reflection in one of the polished newel posts at the end of the banister. Just as I decided to relent and give the Inspector a curt nod, he turned and, without a backward glance, walked away towards Dr. Darby, who had made an appearance suddenly on the west landing.

Blue curses! If I’d been thinking straight, I’d have welcomed the Inspector myself—shown him upstairs to the scene of the crime.

But it was too late. I had shut myself out of the Chamber of Death (that’s what they called it on the wireless mystery programs) and it was now too late to eat crow.

Or was it?

“Oh, Mrs. Mullet,” I said, barging into the kitchen as if I’d only just heard the news. “The most dreadful thing has happened. Miss Wyvern has met with a frightful accident, and Inspector Hewitt is here. I thought that, what with the awful weather and so forth, he’d be grateful for a cup of your famous tea.”

Flattery can never be overcooked.

“If you mean she’s dead,” said Mrs. Mullet, “I already knewed it. Word like that gets round like beeswax. Shockin’, I’m sure, but there’s no ’oldin’ it back, is there, Alf?”

Alf shook his head.

“I knewed it as soon as I seen Dr. Darby’s face. ’E goes all-over sobersides whenever death’s about. I mind the time Mrs. Tarbell was took in the bath. ’E’s always been like that an’ ’e always will be. Might just as well ’ave a sign plastered on ’is fore’ead sayin’ ‘She’s Dead,’ mightn’t ’e, Alf.”

“A signboard,” Alf said. “On ’is fore’ead.”

“I told Alf, I did, didn’t I, Alf? ‘Alf,’ I said. ‘Somethin’s not right,’ I said. ‘There’s such a face on Dr. Darby which I seen in the corridor just now an’ if I didn’t know better I should say as there’s a corpse in the ’ouse.’ That’s what I said, didn’t I, Alf.”

“ ’Er exact words,” said Alf.

I didn’t bother knocking at the door of the Blue Bedroom. I simply strolled in as if I’d been born at Scotland Yard.

I gave the knob a twist and pushed the door open with my behind, maneuvering the tray through the doorway in the way that Mrs. Mullet always did.

For a moment I thought I had annoyed the Inspector.

He turned slowly from Phyllis Wyvern’s staring body, sparing me no more than a rapid glance.

“Thank you,” he said. “You may put it on the table.”

Meekly, I obeyed—dog that I am—hoping desperately he wouldn’t order me to leave. In my mind, I made myself invisible.

“Thank you,” the Inspector said again. “It’s very kind of you. Please tell Mrs. Mullet we’re most grateful.”

“Bug off,” was what he meant.

Dr. Darby said nothing, but noisily extracted a mint from the bottomless bag in his waistcoat pocket.

I kept as still as a snake in winter.

“Thank you, Flavia,” the Inspector said, without turning round.

Well, at least he hadn’t forgotten my name.

There was a silence that grew more uncomfortable by the second. I decided to fill it before anyone else had a chance.

“I expect you’ve already noticed,” I blurted, “that her makeup was applied after she was dead.”

• THIRTEEN •

TO MY SURPRISE, THE Inspector chuckled.

“Another of your chemical deductions?” he asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “I simply observed that there was makeup on the upper surface of her lower lip. Since she has a slight overbite, she’d have licked it away in seconds if she’d been alive.”

Dr. Darby bent in for a closer look at Phyllis Wyvern’s lips.

“By George!” he said. “She’s right.”

Of course I was right. The endless hours I had spent being fitted and refitted with braces in Dr. Reekie’s chamber of tortures in Farringdon Street had made me a leading authority on jaw alignment. In fact, there had been times when I’d thought of myself as the Human Nutcracker. To me, Phyllis Wyvern’s mandibular displacement had been as easy to spot as a horse in a birdbath.

“And when did you make that observation?” the Inspector asked.

I had to give him credit. For an older man, he had a remarkably nimble mind.

“It was I who discovered the body,” I told him. “I went for Dogger at once.”

“Why would you do that?” he asked, instantly spotting the flaw in my account. “When Dr. Darby was no farther away than the foyer?”

“Dr. Darby came with Dieter in the sleigh,” I said. “I saw him arrive, and I knew he hadn’t brought his medical bag. He was also very tired. I noticed him dozing during the performance.”

“And?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“And … I was frightened. I knew that Dogger was likely the only one awake in the entire house—he sometimes doesn’t sleep well, you know—and I just wanted someone to—I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

It was a lie, but a jolly good one. Actually, I’d been thinking as clearly as a mountain stream.

I made my lower lip tremble just a trifle.

“It was easy to see that Miss Wyvern was quite dead,” I added. “It wasn’t a question of saving her life.”

“And yet you had your wits about you sufficiently to spot the makeup where no makeup ought to be.”

“Yes,” I said. “I notice things like that. I can’t help it.

“Please don’t strike me,” I wanted to add, but I knew I was already slicing the bacon a trifle on the thin side.

“I see,” the Inspector said. “It’s most kind of you to point it out.”

I gave him my most winning smile and made a graceful exit.

I made directly for the drawing room, bursting at the seams to tell Feely and Daffy the news. I found them with their heads bent over a stack of back issues of Behind the Screen.

“Don’t tell us,” Daffy said, raising a hand as I opened my mouth. “We already know. Phyllis Wyvern’s been murdered in the Blue Bedroom and the police are on the scene.”

“How—?” I began.

“Perhaps, since you’re their main suspect, we shouldn’t even be talking to you,” Feely said.

“Me?” I was flabbergasted. “Where did you ever get such a stupid idea?”

“I saw you,” Feely said. “That woman and her infernal ciné projector kept Daffy and me awake again for hours. I finally decided to give her a piece of my mind, and was halfway along the corridor when guess who I spotted sneaking out of the Blue Bedroom?”

Why did I suddenly feel so guilty?

“I wasn’t sneaking,” I said. “I was going for help.”

“There are perhaps a small handful of people in the world who would believe you, but I am not among them,” Feely said.

“Tell it to the Marines,” Daffy added.

“As it happens,” I said haughtily, “I am assisting the police with their inquiries.”

“Horse hockey!” Daffy said. “Feely and I were talking to Detective Sergeant Graves and he wondered why he hadn’t seen you around.”

At the very mention of the sergeant’s name, Feely drifted towards the looking glass and touched her hair as she turned her head from side to side. Although not first on her list of suitors, the sergeant was not to be counted out—at least I hoped not.

“Sergeant Graves? Is he here? I haven’t seen him.”

“That’s because he doesn’t want to be seen,” Daffy said. “You’ll see him, right enough, when he claps the darbies on you.”

Darbies? Daffy had obviously been paying more attention to Philip Odell than she let on.

“What about Sergeant Woolmer?” I asked. “Is he here, too?”

“Of course he is,” Feely said. “Dieter helped them shovel through the drifts.”

“Dieter? Is he back?”

“He’s thinking of going in for a police inspector,” Daffy said. “They told him they couldn’t have got through to Buckshaw without him.”

“What about Ned?” I asked, seized with a sudden thought. “What about Carl?”

Feely had more swains than Ulysses’s wife, Penelope, had suitors—I like “swains” better than “suitors” because it sounds like “swine”—all of whom, through some strange quirk of fate, had now turned up at Buckshaw at the same time.

Ned … Dieter … Carl … Detective Sergeant Graves. Every one of them, God only knows why, was smitten silly with my stupid sister.

How long would it be before they began slugging it out?

“Ned and Carl have volunteered to help clear the forecourt. The vicar’s organized a snow-shoveling party.”

“But why?” I asked.

It didn’t make sense. If all the roads were closed, what use was it clearing a way to the front door?

“Because,” said Aunt Felicity’s voice behind me, “it is a well-known fact that more than two men shut up together in an enclosed space for more than an hour constitute a hazard to society. If unpleasantness is to be avoided, they must be made to go outdoors and work off their animal spirits.”

I smiled at the thought of Bunny Spirling and the vicar taking up snow shovels to work off their animal spirits, but I kept my mouth shut. I also wondered if Aunt Felicity had heard about Phyllis Wyvern.

“Besides,” she added, “the hearse will be required to remove the remains. They can hardly drag her off by dogsled.”

Which answered my question. It also raised another.

The stairs from the laboratory were narrow and steep. No one had been up here for years, I thought, but me.

At the top, a door opened onto the roof—or, at least was supposed to open onto the roof. I struggled with the bolt until it suddenly shot free, pinching my fingers. But now the door itself was stuck shut, probably piled high on the other side with a drift of snow. I put my shoulder against it and pushed.

With the peculiar grunting sound that snow makes when it doesn’t want to be budged, the door opened grudgingly about an inch.

I was being resisted by millions of tiny crystals, I knew, but the strength of their chemical bonds was enormous. If all of us could be like snow, I thought, how happy we should be.

Another shove—another slow inch. And then another.

After what seemed like a very long struggle, I was able to squeeze myself between the door and its frame and step out onto the roof.

I was instantly up to my knees in snow.

Shivering, I clutched my cardigan up about my chin and waded to the battlements, the back of my mind ringing with all of Mrs. Mullet’s dire warnings about pneumonia and keeping one’s chest warm.

“She wasn’t outside more’n a minute,” she had told me, wide-eyed, speaking of Mrs. Milne, the butcher’s wife. “Just long enough to ’ang the baby’s nappies on the line—that’s all it took. By four o’clock she ’ad a cough, by seven ’er ’ead was as ’ot as the Arab desert, and by the time the sun come up she was in a box and stiff as a board. Pneumonia, it was. There’s nothin’ else as’ll snatch you off like pneumonia. Makes you drown in your own juices.”

From up here on the roof, I could look out to the east, the rolling countryside one vast unbroken blanket of snow, dazzling in its whiteness. Had there been footprints, I could have easily spotted them at once, but there were none.

In spite of the freezing wetness that was puddling in my shoes, I forced myself to clomp my way to the north front, where I stood shivering, peering down into the forecourt.

Dieter’s tractor stood, like Eeyore, covered with snow—a gray form huddled beneath a white blanket. Beside it was the blue Vauxhall, which I recognized at once as Inspector Hewitt’s.

In the forecourt, the vicar’s crew, in coats, gloves, and galoshes, were digging bravely away at the drifts, their every breath visible on the frigid air. They had managed to clear a parking area somewhat smaller than a tennis court, and even that, with the persistence of the wind, had begun to fill in again with blown fingers of the granular drifts.

There was also a narrow passage in the middle of the drive, packed tightly on either side with layers of snow. Here and there the prints of chains were still clearly visible, and in the middle of the path, tire tracks that led directly to the parked Vauxhall. It was easy enough to deduce that the police had commandeered a wrecker with a snowplow fastened to the front, to clear their way from the village.

Apart from the shadowy blue ribbon that was the plowed path winding away to the north, all of the approaches to Buckshaw were one vast expanse of untrodden white.

With my back to the wind, the south battlement was only slightly warmer than the north. Below me, beside the kitchen garden, the snow-draped vans and lorries of Ilium Films stood huddled like a small circus in winter. Narrow trails had been trodden out between them, and I watched as a man in uniformed livery came out of the kitchen door and picked his way precariously towards one of the smaller vans. It was Anthony, Phyllis Wyvern’s chauffeur. I had forgotten all about him.

I leaned as far over the battlement as I possibly could, peering along the side of the house. Yes, there was the radiator of the black Daimler, just poking out into view. It seemed to be tucked up beside a buried flower bed. As I leaned forward another inch to see if anyone was sitting in it, I dislodged a clump of snow, which plummeted down and fell with a whump onto the Daimler’s roof.

“Bugger!” I said under my breath.

Anthony stopped suddenly, turned, looked up, and saw me. There followed one of those peculiar moments when strangers lock eyes with each other, too far apart to speak, but too close to pretend it hadn’t happened. I was wondering what would be appropriate to call out to him—condolences or Christmas wishes?—when he turned away and teetered off towards the trailer.

Those leather riding boots must be treacherous in snow, I thought.

As I made my way back towards the door, I looked up at the towering chimney pots and lightning rods of Buckshaw, which rose up from their sturdy bases, rank upon rank, like organ pipes of brick and iron and pottery, the chimneys of the kitchen and the north and west wings sending up wind-torn tatters of smoke into the leaden sky.

I thought with a delicious shiver—half pleasure and half fear—that before the night was out I would be scaling those ragged pinnacles for a rendezvous with Saint Nicholas—an experiment whose outcome might well determine the future course of my life.

Would chemistry put paid to Christmas? Or would I, tomorrow morning, find a fat, infuriated elf caught fast and cursing among the chimney pots?

I must admit that part of me was hoping for the legend.

There were times when I felt as if I were standing astride a cold ocean—one foot in the New World and one foot in the Old. As they drifted relentlessly apart, I was in danger of being torn up the middle.

The hordes in the foyer were beginning to show their fatigue. They’d been here for the better part of twenty-four hours, and it was apparent that patience was wearing thin.

Everywhere I looked there were dark circles under tired eyes and the crowded quarters had become filled with an air of staleness.

I had noticed on other occasions that overcrowding, even in a spacious place, makes one feel like a different person. Perhaps, I thought, whenever we began to breathe the breath of others, when the spinning atoms of their bodies began to mingle with our own, we took on something of their personality, like crystals in a snowflake. Perhaps we became something more, yet something lesser than ourselves.

I would jot down this interesting observation in my notebook at the first opportunity.

Those people who had slept flat on the tiled floor were still rubbing their bones, staring balefully at the lucky souls who had staked out corners in which they could prop themselves up with their backs to the wall. Maximilian Brock had erected a wall of books around his little patch of tiled turf, and I couldn’t help wondering where he had found them. He must have raided the library during the hours of darkness.

Could the good villagers of Bishop’s Lacey, caged up here at Buckshaw, have so quickly become as territorial as jungle cats? If they were confined much longer, they’d soon be staking out allotments and planting vegetable gardens.

Perhaps there was something after all in what Aunt Felicity had said. Every last one of them, men and women alike, looked as if they could do with a brisk walk in the fresh air, and I was suddenly glad that I had ventured out onto the roofs, even if only for a few minutes.

But by doing so, had I breached an official order?

Although I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, Inspector Hewitt must have given orders that no one was to leave the house. It was standard procedure in cases where murder was suspected, and Phyllis Wyvern’s death was neither natural nor suicide—she’d been done to death with a vengeance.

But what about Anthony, the chauffeur? Hadn’t he been wandering around freely outdoors? I’d seen him from the roof. And what about the diggers in the forecourt? Wasn’t the vicar, by raising a crew, flying in the face of the law? Somehow, it seemed unlikely. He must have requested permission. Perhaps the Inspector himself had asked for the forecourt to be cleared.

As I was thinking about them, the front door opened and the shovelers came stamping and blowing into the foyer. It was several minutes before I realized that someone was missing.

“Dieter,” I asked, “where’s the vicar?”

“Gone,” he said with a frown. “He and Frau Richardson have set out on foot for the village.”

Frau Richardson? Cynthia? The village?

I could scarcely believe my ears. I looked quickly round the foyer and saw that Cynthia Richardson was nowhere in sight.

“They insisted,” Dieter said. “The Christmas Eve service begins in just a few hours.”

“But half the congregation is here!” I said. “It makes no sense.”

“But the rest are in Bishop’s Lacey,” Dieter said, throwing up his hands, “and one does not preach sense to a Church of England clergyman.”

“The Inspector is going to do his nut,” I said.

“Am I indeed?” said a voice behind me.

Needless to say it was Inspector Hewitt. Beside him was Detective Sergeant Graves.

“And what is it that will cause me to do, as you say, my nut?”

My mind made a quick jaunt round the possibilities and saw that there was no way out.

“The vicar,” I said. “He and his wife have set out for St. Tancred’s. It’s Christmas Eve.”

This was no more than the truth, and since it was hardly a state secret, I could not be blamed for blabbing.

“How long ago?” the Inspector asked.

“Not long, I think. Not more than five minutes, perhaps. Dieter can tell you.”

“They must be brought back at once,” the Inspector said. “Sergeant Graves?”

“Sir?”

“See if you can overtake them. They’ve got a bit of a head start, but you’re younger and fitter, I trust.”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Graves said, his sudden dimples making him look like a bashful schoolboy.

“Tell them that while we’ll do everything in our power to expedite the process, my orders must not be circumvented.”

How cleverly put, I thought: compassion with a stinger in its tail.

“And now, Miss de Luce,” he said, “if you don’t mind, I think we’ll begin with you.”

“Youngest witness first?” I asked pleasantly.

“Not necessarily,” Inspector Hewitt said.

• FOURTEEN •

TO MY SURPRISE, THE Inspector suggested that the interview be conducted in my chemical laboratory.

“Where we shall be undisturbed,” he had said.

It wasn’t his first visit to my sanctum sanctorum: He had been here at the time of the Horace Bonepenny affair, and had called the laboratory “extraordinary.”

This time, with no more than a rapid glance at Yorick, the fully articulated skeleton that had been given to Uncle Tar by the naturalist Frank Buckland, the Inspector had sat himself down on a tall stool, put one foot on a rung, and pulled out his notebook.

“What time did you discover Miss Wyvern’s body?” he asked, getting down to brass tacks without any pleasant preliminaries.

“I can’t be sure,” I said. “Midnight, perhaps, or a quarter past.”

He sat with his Biro poised above the page.

“This is important,” he said. “Crucial, in fact.”

“How long does the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet run?” I asked.

He seemed a little taken aback.

“Capulet’s orchard? I don’t really know. Not more than ten minutes, I should say.”

“It took longer than that,” I told him. “They were late getting started, and then—”

“Yes?”

“Well, there was that business with Gil Crawford.”

I supposed that someone would have informed him about it by now, but I could tell by the way he gripped his Biro that they had not.

“Tell it to me in your own words,” he said, and I did: the failure of the spotlight to pick out Phyllis Wyvern at her first appearance … her coming down from the makeshift balcony … her walk up the aisle to the scaffolding … her climb up into the darkness … the stinging swat across Gil Crawford’s face.

It all came pouring out, and I was surprised by the outrage I had been bottling up. By the time I finished I was on the verge of tears.

“Most upsetting,” the Inspector said. “What was your reaction—at the time?”

My answer shocked me.

“I wanted to kill her,” I said.

We sat there in silence for what seemed like an eternity, but was, in fact, probably no longer than ten seconds.

“Are you going to put that in your notebook?” I asked at last.

“No,” he said, in another, softer voice. “It was more of a personal question.”

This was too good an opportunity to miss. Here, at last, was a chance to ease the ache that had been in my conscience since that dreadful day in October.

“I’m sorry!” I blurted. “I didn’t mean to … Antigone … your wife.”

He closed his notebook.

“Flavia …” he said.

“It was horrid of me,” I told him. “I didn’t think before I spoke. Antigone—Mrs. Hewitt, I mean, must have been so disappointed with me.”

I could hear my own voice ringing in my ears.

“Why don’t you and Inspector Hewitt have any children? Surely you can afford it on an Inspector’s salary?”

It had been meant lightly—almost a joke.

My spirits had been elevated by her presence, her beauty, and perhaps by the chemistry of too much sugar from too many pieces of cake. I had been a glutton.

I’d sat there glaring at her gleefully like some London toff who has just made a capital joke and is waiting for everyone else in the room to get it.

“Surely you can afford it on an Inspector’s salary?”

I’d almost said it again.

“We’ve lost three,” Antigone Hewitt had said with infinite heartbreak in her voice, taking her husband’s hand.

“I should like to go home now,” I’d announced abruptly, as if the power to utter every other word in the English language had been denied me.

The Inspector had driven me back to Buckshaw in a silence of my own choosing, and I had leapt out of his car without so much as a word of thanks.

“Not so much disappointed as sad,” he said, bringing me back to the present. “We haven’t been as successful as some in getting to grips with it.”

“She must hate me.”

“No. Hate is for haters.”

I saw what he meant, although I couldn’t have explained it.

“Like whoever it was that killed Phyllis Wyvern,” I suggested.

“Exactly,” he said, and after a pause, “Now, where were we?”

“Gil Crawford,” I reminded him. “And then she went on with the play as if nothing had happened.”

“That would have been about seven twenty-five?”

“Yes.”

The Inspector scratched his ear.

“Seems odd, doesn’t it, to gather a village in such inclement weather for a ten-minute performance.”

“Phyllis Wyvern was only the drawing card,” I said. “I think the vicar may have been planning more. It was in aid of the Roof Fund, you see. He was probably planning to ask the Puddock sisters to perform, and then end the show with one of his own recitations, such as ‘Albert and the Lion.’ He might have let her go on first because it would have been disrespectful to make her wait for amateurs. That’s just my guess, though. You’ll have to ask the vicar when he returns.”

“I shall,” the Inspector said. “You may well be right.”

He pushed back his cuff with a forefinger and glanced at his wristwatch.

“Just a few questions more,” he said, “and then I should like you to help me with an experiment.”

Oh, joy! To be recognized at last as an equal—or something like it. Father Christmas himself could have devised no better gift. (I remembered with a twinge of pleasure that that old gentleman and I had business to attend to in the hours ahead. Perhaps I could thank him personally.)

“I think I can manage, Inspector,” I replied, “although I do have rather a lot to do.”

Stop it, Flavia! I thought. Stop it at once, before I bite off your tongue from the inside and spit it out on the carpet!

“Right, then,” he said. “Why did you go to the Blue Bedroom?”

“I wanted to talk to Miss Wyvern.”

“About what?”

“About anything.”

“Why choose that particular time? Wasn’t it rather late?”

“I heard the soundtrack of her film come to an end. I knew she must still be awake.”

Even as I spoke, I felt the cold horror of my words. Why hadn’t I realized it before? Phyllis Wyvern might already have been dead.

“But perhaps,” I added, “perhaps—”

The Inspector’s eyes were locked with mine, willing me to say more.

“A reel of sixteen-millimeter film runs for forty-five minutes,” I said. “Two reels for a feature.”

This was a fact I was sure of. I had sat through enough clunkers at the parish hall cinema series to know to the second the likely duration of my torture. Besides, I had once checked with Mr. Mitchell.

“The film ended just before I reached the Blue Bedroom,” I went on. “I heard the line ‘I shall never forget Hawkhover Castle’ just before I started downstairs from my bedroom. By the time I found Miss Wyvern’s body, the end of the film was slapping round the reel. But—”

“Yes?” The Inspector’s eyes were as keen as a ferret’s.

“But what if she was already dead when the film began? What if it was her killer who started the projector?”

In my mind, the pieces fell rapidly into place. An earlier time of death would explain why Phyllis Wyvern’s body was already showing discoloration when I found her. I did not tell the Inspector this. He needed to work at least some of it out on his own.

“An excellent surmise,” the Inspector said. “Besides the slapping of the film end, did you hear anything else?”

“Yes. A door closed as I was crossing the foyer. And a toilet flushed.”

“Before or after the sound of the door?”

“After. The door closed when I was partway down the stairs. The toilet flushed when I was halfway across the foyer.”

“As soon as that?”

“Yes.”

“How odd,” Inspector Hewitt said.

It wasn’t until later that I realized what he meant.

“Of the people sleeping in the foyer, whom do you distinctly remember seeing?”

“The vicar,” I said. “He cried out in his sleep.”

“Cried out? What?”

Why did I feel as if I were betraying a confidence? Why did I feel like such a tattletale?

“He said, ‘Hannah, please! No!’ Very quietly.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

The Inspector wrote something in his notebook.

“Go on,” he said. “Who else was sleeping in the foyer?”

“Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife …”

I began ticking them off on my fingers.

“Mrs. Mullet … and Alf, her husband … Dr. Darby … Ned Cropper … Mary Stoker … Bunny Spirling … Max—I mean Maximilian Brock, our neighbor. Max had built a little wall of books around himself.”

“Anyone else?”

“Those are the ones I noticed. Oh, and Dieter, of course. He was bedded down on the landing. I had to tiptoe past him.”

“Did you see or hear anyone or anything else on your way up to the Blue Bedroom?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Thank you,” the Inspector said, closing his notebook. “You’ve been of great assistance.”

Had he forgiven me, I wondered, or was he simply being polite?

“Now, then,” he said. “As I said, I’d like your assistance in a little experiment, but I won’t have time until later.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Do you have a copy of Romeo and Juliet in your library? I should be surprised if you didn’t.”

“There’s a copy of his collected works that Daffy picks up when she wants to look studious. Will that do?”

This was true, but I hadn’t the faintest where to find it. I didn’t fancy sifting through a billion books on Christmas Eve. I had, as they say, bigger fish to catch.

“I’m sure it will. See if you can dig it out, there’s a good girl.”

If anyone but Inspector Hewitt had made that remark, I’d have gone for their throat, but here I was, like a spaniel waiting for its master to throw the slipper.

“Righty ho!” I almost shouted at his back as he went out the door.

Feely was holding court in the drawing room, and it pains me to admit that she had never looked more beautiful. I could tell by her lightning glances at the looking glass that she was of the same opinion. Her face was as radiant as if she’d had a lightbulb installed in her skull, and she batted her eyelashes prettily at Carl, Dieter, and Ned, who stood gathered round her in an adoring circle, as if she were the Virgin Mary and they the Three Wise Men, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

Actually, not a bad comparison, I thought, since two of them that I knew of, Ned and Carl, had come bearing gifts. Carl’s, of course, had been consigned to the flames by Father, but that seemed not to have affected the giver, who stood slouched smiling against the chimneypiece, his hands in his pockets, gnashing happily away at his gum with a clockwork jaw.

Ned’s prehistoric chocolates were nowhere in sight, having more than likely been laid to rest with their predecessors in Feely’s lingerie drawer.

Detective Sergeant Graves, who had obviously just finished questioning Feely’s other happy slaves, sat in a corner copying notes, but I could tell by the furtive way he kept glancing up from his work that he was keeping an eye on his romantic rivals.

Only Dieter, I thought, had been sensible enough to skip the frankincense and myrrh.

At least that’s what I was thinking when he reached into his pocket and pulled put a tiny hard-shell box.

He handed it to Feely without a word.

Cheeses! I thought. He’s going to propose!

Feely, of course, made the most of it. She examined the box from all six sides, as if each of its faces had a secret inscribed upon it in golden ink by angels.

“Why, Dieter!” she breathed. “How lovely!”

It’s just a box, you stupid porpoise! Get on with it!

Feely opened the box with agonizing slowness.

“Oh!” she said. “A ring!”

Ned and Carl exchanged openmouthed looks.

“A friendship ring,” she added, although whether in disappointment, I could not tell.

She plucked it out between thumb and forefinger, holding it up to the light. It was wide and gold, and was cut out with figures in what I believe is called filigree work—a crown on top of a heart was as much as I could see of it before she twisted away.

“What does it mean?” she asked, lifting her eyes to Dieter’s.

“It means,” Dieter told her, “whatever you want it to mean.”

Flustered, Feely flushed and shoved the box into her pocket.

“You shouldn’t have,” she managed, before turning and walking to our old Broadwood piano, which stood in front of the window.

She smoothed her skirt and sat down at the keyboard.

I recognized the melody before the first three notes had floated from the piano. It was “Für Elise,” by Beethoven—Larry B, as I liked to call him, just to get Feely’s goat.

Elise, I knew, was the name of Dieter’s mother, who lived in far-off Berlin. He had sometimes spoken of her in a special voice, a voice of expectant delight, as if she were in the next room, waiting to leap out and surprise him.

This piano piece, I knew at once, was a private message to Dieter: one that would not be intercepted by other ears than mine and perhaps Daffy’s.

It was not an appropriate time to let out a war whoop, or to do a series of cartwheels across the drawing room, so I contented myself with giving Dieter’s hand a shake.

“Merry Weihnachten,” I said.

“Merry Weihnachten,” he replied, with a grin as broad as the English Channel.

As Feely played, I noticed that Carl’s jaw was milling in time to the music and Ned was tapping one of his heels energetically on the carpet.

It was as happy a little domestic scene as I’ve ever known at Buckshaw, and I drank it in eagerly with my eyes, my ears, and even my nose.

The logs crackled and smoked in the fireplace as “Für Elise” cast its inevitable spell.

Merry Christmas, Flavia, I thought, storing up a memory of the moment for future comfort. You deserve it.

Daffy was alone in the library, jackknifed sideways into a chair.

“How’s everything at Bleak House?” I asked.

She looked up from the novel as if I were an inept cat burglar who had just fallen in through the window.

“Dieter gave Feely a ring,” I said.

“And did she answer it?”

“Come on, Daffy. You know what I mean. A ring you wear on your finger.”

“All the more pickled pig’s trotters for you and me. And now, if you wouldn’t mind—”

“Too bad about Phyllis Wyvern, wasn’t it?”

“Flavia—”

“I think I could really grow to love Shakespeare,” I said, baiting my hook. “Do you know which part of Romeo and Juliet I liked best? The part where Romeo talks about Juliet’s eyes swapping places with two of the brightest stars in all the heavens.”

“Fairest,” Daffy said.

“Fairest,” I agreed. “Anyway, the way Shakespeare described it, I could just see it in my mind—those two stars shining out of Juliet’s face, and Juliet’s eyes hanging up in the sky …”

I put my forefinger and little finger on my lower eyelids and pulled them down into bloody bags, at the same time pushing up the end of my snout with the fingers of my other hand.

“Boo-oing! Must have scared the you-know-what out of the shepherds in the fields.”

“There were no shepherds in the fields.”

“Then why did Romeo say ‘Oh that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that sheep’?”

“He said ‘cheek.’ ”

“He said ‘sheep.’ I was sitting right there, Daffy. I heard him.”

Daffy sprang out of the chair and marched to one of the bookcases. She took down a heavy volume and leafed through it, the pages flying under her fingers as if blown by the wind.

“Here,” she said, after a few moments. “Look, what does this say?”

I twisted my head sideways and stared at the page for as long as I dared.

“ ‘That I might touch that cheeke,’ ” I said, grudgingly. “Still, I think Desmond Duncan said ‘sheep.’ ”

Daffy slammed the book shut with a snort, re-folded herself into her chair, and within seconds had wrapped herself in the past as easily as if it were an old blanket.

With the stealth of a library mouse, I picked up dear old Bill Shakespeare from the table, tucked him under my arm, and sidled casually out of the room.

Mission accomplished.

• FIFTEEN •

THE SCREAM CAME OUT of nowhere, echoing from the foyer’s wooden panels in an avalanche of sound.

“My God!” Bunny Spirling exclaimed. “What in blue blazes was that?”

Everyone was looking round in all directions and the Misses Puddock clutched one another like the Babes in the Wood.

I was on the stairs and up them like a skyrocket. Whatever had happened, I wasn’t going to be locked out as a late arrival.

I skidded round the corner and made for the north corridor. As I flew past, one of the doors was opened and a second shriek split the air. I shoved past one of the wardrobe women and into the room.

Nialla was half on, half off a Regency couch, her face as white as paste.

“The baby—” she groaned.

Marion Trodd, looking rather like a stunned owl in her horn-rims, came out of a seeming trance at the end of the couch and took a step towards me.

“Fetch the doctor,” she snapped.

“Fetch him yourself,” I said, taking Nialla’s hand. “And on your way back, tell Mrs. Mullet to boil buckets of hot water.”

Marion bared her teeth for an instant, as if she were going to bite me, then spun round and strode out of the room.

“Really, Flavia,” Nialla said through clenched teeth, “you’re incorrigible.”

I shrugged. “Thank you,” I said.

The fetching of water at a birth was, I had learned from the cinema and countless plays on the wireless, a ritual that might as well have been the Eleventh Commandment, though why boiling water was invariably specified was beyond me. It seemed hardly likely to be used to baste the mother without risk of serious burns, and it was simply beyond belief that a newborn would be immersed in a liquid having a temperature of 212 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale—unless, of course, that was the reason for newly delivered babies having that lobsterish color I’d seen in the cinema.

It seemed unthinkable, though. Thoroughly barbaric.

One thing was clear: There was much that I needed to learn about the events surrounding the birth of a baby. One needed to be able to tease out the scientific facts from the mumbo jumbo. I would make a note to look more closely into this as soon as Christmas was out of the way.

“How are you?” I asked Nialla, but it came out sounding rather phony, as if we were two old ladies meeting at a parish tea.

“I’m quate well, theng-kyew,” she replied through gritted teeth in a put-on toffish voice. “And you?”

“Spiffing,” I said. “Simply spiffing.”

I squeezed her hand and she smiled.

“Hmmm,” Dr. Darby said behind me, and as I spun round he had already stripped off his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves.

“Close the door on your way out,” he said.

I admire a man who can take command when a woman really needs him.

Marion Trodd was standing in the corridor looking daggers at me.

“Sorry if I seemed rude,” I said. “Nialla is an old friend, and—”

“Oh, well, then. Think nothing of it,” she snapped. “You’re forgiven, I’m sure. After all, I’m quite accustomed to being trampled underfoot.”

She spun round and walked off.

Hag! I thought.

“Don’t mind Marion,” someone said, stepping into my view as if from the shadows. “She’s a little overwrought.”

It was Bun Keats.

“Overwrought? Over-rotten is more like it,” I wanted to say, but I kept the witticism to myself.

“I’m sorry about Miss Wyvern,” I said. “It must be terrible for you.”

Although I had not planned it, I was aware, even as I spoke, that this was precisely the right thing to say.

“You have no idea,” Bun said, and I knew she was speaking the truth. I did have no idea, but I intended to find out.

“Would you like some tea?” I was asking her when the bedroom door opened and Dr. Darby’s head appeared.

“Tell Dogger to come at once,” he said. “Tell him ‘transverse dorsolateral.’ Tell him ‘shoulder presentation.’ ”

“Right-o,” I said, and walked away—a model of unflustered efficiency.

“Run!” Dr. Darby roared behind me, and I took to my heels.

“Transverse dorsolateral,” I repeated in a whisper as I raced along the corridor. “Transverse dorsolateral. Shoulder presentation.”

But where to find Dogger? He could be in his room … or in the kitchen. He might even be in the greenhouse … or the coach house.

I needn’t have worried. As I came flapping like a demented bat down the west staircase, there was Dogger in the foyer helping Cynthia and the vicar to remove their coats. They looked like survivors of a failed Antarctic expedition, as did Sergeant Graves, who stood behind them.

“Blizzard now,” the vicar was croaking through ice-rimed lips. “We should have frozen to death if the sergeant hadn’t come upon us.”

Cynthia stood quaking in an apparent daze.

Rude or not, I whispered into Dogger’s ear:

“Dr. Darby needs you in the Tennyson bedroom. Transverse dorsolateral. Shoulder presentation.”

I had planned on dashing up the stairs ahead of him to lead the way, but Dogger beat me to it. He took the steps as if he had suddenly been granted wings, and I was left to tumble along behind in his wake as best I could.

Dogger paused at the door just long enough to say, “Thank you, Miss Flavia. These particular cases can sometimes come on quite quickly. When I need you I’ll call.”

I dropped myself into a chair outside the bedroom and whiled away the time by chewing my nails. After what seemed like a string of eternities, but was probably no more than a few minutes, I heard Nialla cry out three times sharply, followed by something that sounded like a startled bleat.

What were they doing in there? Why wasn’t I allowed to watch?

Daffy had once told me how a baby was born, but her story was so ridiculous as to be beyond belief. I’d made a mental note to ask Dogger, but had somehow never got round to it. This could be my golden opportunity.

Time dragged on and I was drawing concentric circles with the toes of my shoes when the door opened and Dogger crooked a finger at me.

“Just a peek,” he said. “Miss Nialla is quite tired.”

I stepped cautiously into the room, looking this way and that, as if something was going to leap out and bite me, and there was Nialla propped up with pillows in the bed holding something in her arms that seemed at first to be a large water rat.

I edged closer and as I watched, its mouth opened and it gave out a squeak like a rubber toy.

It’s hard to describe how I felt at that moment. A mixture, I suppose, of profound happiness and quite crushing sadness. The happiness, I understood; the sadness, I did not.

It had something to do with the fact that suddenly, I was no longer the last baby who had cried at Buckshaw, and I felt as if one of my most secret possessions had been stolen from me.

“How was it?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“Oh, kid,” she said, “you have no idea.”

How odd. Weren’t those the words Bun Keats had used when I’d extended my sympathy on Phyllis Wyvern’s death?

“It’s a beautiful baby,” I said untruthfully. “It looks just like you.”

Nialla looked down at the bundle in her arms and began to sob.

“Ohhh,” she said.

Then Dogger’s hand was on my shoulder and I was being steered gently but firmly towards the door.

I walked slowly back to the chair in the corridor and sat down. My mind was overflowing.

Over there, behind a closed door, was Nialla, with her newborn baby. And there, just along the corridor, behind her own closed door, was the newly dead—relatively speaking—Phyllis Wyvern.

Was there any meaning in this or was it just another stupid fact? Did living bodies come into being from dead bodies or was that just another old wives’ tale?

Daffy had told me about the girl in India who claimed to be the reincarnation of an old woman who had died in the next village, but was it true? Dr. Gandhi had certainly thought so.

Was there even the remotest possibility, then, that the soggy creature in Nialla’s arms contained the soul of Phyllis Wyvern?

I shuddered at the thought.

Still, I’d have to admit that, of the two, to my mind, the dead Phyllis Wyvern was more interesting.

To be perfectly honest, far more interesting.

There had been a time, not long after Nialla’s last visit to Buckshaw, that I had begun to worry about my fascination with the dead.

After a number of sleepless nights and a patchwork of dreams involving crypts and walking corpses, I had decided to talk it over with Dogger, who had listened in silence as he always does, nodding only occasionally as he polished Father’s boots.

“Is it wrong,” I finished up, “to find enjoyment in the dead?”

Dogger had dredged with the corner of his cloth into the tin of blacking.

“I believe a man named Aristotle once said that we delight to contemplate things such as dead bodies, which in themselves would give us pain, because in them, we experience a pleasure of learning which outweighs the pain.”

“Did he really?” I asked, hugging myself. This Aristotle, whoever he may be, was a man after my own heart, and I made a mental note to look him up sometime.

“As best I recall,” Dogger said, and a shadow had passed across his face.

I was thinking about this when, along the corridor, the door of the Blue Bedroom opened and the mountainous Detective Sergeant Woolmer began lifting his bulky photo kit out of Phyllis Wyvern’s late bedroom.

He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

“Got the dabs, and so forth?” I asked pleasantly. “Scene-of-the-crime photos?”

The sergeant stared at me for a few moments, and then a smile spread across his usually stony face.

“Well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t Miss de Luce. Hot on the trail, are you?”

“You know me, Sergeant,” I said, with what I hoped was a mysterious grin. I began sauntering towards him, hoping for at least a glance over his shoulder at the deceased Miss Wyvern.

He quickly closed the door, gave the key a twist, and dropped it into his pocket.

“Uh-uh-uh,” he said, cutting me off in mid-thought. “And don’t you even go thinking about Mrs. Mullet’s key chain, miss. I know as well as you do that old houses like this have spare keys by the bagful. If you lay so much as a fingerprint on this door, I’ll have you up on charges.”

Coming from a fingerprint expert, this was a serious threat.

“What did you use for your camera settings?” I asked, trying to distract him. “A hundred-and-twenty-fifth of a second at f eleven?”

The sergeant scratched his head—almost in pleasure, I thought.

“It’s no good, miss,” he said. “We’ve already been warned about you.”

And with that, he walked away.

Warned about me? What the deuce did he mean by that?

I could think of only one thing: Inspector Hewitt, the traitor, had lectured his men against me on their way to Buckshaw. He had specifically cautioned them against my ingenuity, which must have grated upon them in the past like a fingernail on slate.

Did he think he could outwit me?

We shall see, my dear Inspector Hewitt, I thought. We shall see.

I had become aware, as I chatted with Sergeant Woolmer, of quiet conversation in the adjacent room—two women talking, by the sound of it.

I knocked firmly at the door and waited.

The voices fell silent, and a moment later the door opened no more than a crack.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said to the single slightly bloodshot eye that appeared, “but Mr. Lampman wants to see you.”

The door swung inwards and I saw the rest of the woman’s face. She was one of the bit players in the film.

“Wants to see me?” she asked in a surprisingly brassy voice. “Wants to see me, or wants to see both of us?

“Mr. Lampman wants to see us, Flo,” she called over her shoulder, without waiting for an answer.

Flo wiped her mouth and put down a bowl from which she had been eating.

“Both of you,” I said, trying to put a touch of grimness into my voice. “I think he’s outside in one of the lorries,” I added, “so you’d better bundle up.”

I waited patiently, leaning on the door frame until they hustled off towards the staircase, still shrugging themselves into their heavy winter coats.

I felt more than a little sorry for them. Goodness knows what fantasies were running through their heads. Each of them, most likely, was praying that she had been chosen to replace Phyllis Wyvern in the leading role.

I’d better get to work. They’d be back soon enough—and angry at my deception.

I stepped into their room and turned the key, which, like most keys at Buckshaw, was left in the room side of the lock.

Across the room, on the inside wall between the window and the dresser, was a hanging curtain—a leftover from the days when guest bedrooms were decorated like Turkish harems. It pictured a hunting party with elephants, and a tiger, unseen among the jungle trees, preparing to spring.

I jerked the tapestry aside, sneezing at the cloud of gray dust that flew up into the room, revealing a small, wood-paneled door. I inserted the key and, to my immense satisfaction, felt the bolt slide back with a welcome click.

I took hold of the knob and gave it a good twist. Again there were promising sounds but the door was stuck fast.

I muttered something that was half a prayer and half a curse. Even a fraction of a second’s inspection would have shown me that it was painted shut.

Given five minutes in my laboratory, I could have produced a solvent that would strip a battleship while you were saying “Rumpelstiltskin,” but there wasn’t the time.

A quick look round the room revealed a lady’s handbag tossed carelessly on the bed, and I fell upon it like the tiger upon the Maharajahs.

Handkerchief … scent bottle … aspirins … cigarettes (bad girl!), and a small purse which, guessing by its weight and feel, contained no more than six shillings, sixpence.

Ah! Here it was—just what I was looking for. A nail file. Sheffield steel. Perfect!

My prayer had evidently been heard and my curse forgotten.

Inserting the blade of the file between the frame and the door, and working my way round it like a Girl Guide opening rather a large tin of campfire beans, I soon had a satisfactory pile of paint chips on the floor at my feet.

Now for it. One more twist of the knob and a kick at the bottom panel, and the door jerked open with a groan.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the Chamber of Death.

• SIXTEEN •

THIS BEDROOM, TOO, HAD a dusty drapery covering the unused door, and I was forced to fight my way out from behind it before proceeding.

Phyllis Wyvern’s body was still slumped in the chair as I had first found it, but was now covered with a sheet, as if it were a statue whose sculptor had wandered off to lunch.

The police would have finished their inspection by now, and were probably awaiting the arrival of a suitable vehicle in which to carry off the body.

No great harm, then, in having a dekko of my own.

I lifted the sheet slowly, taking care not to disturb her hair, still laced with Juliet’s posies, which seemed to me the only vanity she had left.

Even in death, though, there was something exotic about Phyllis Wyvern, although after twenty-four hours, the body had begun its inevitable chemical dissolution, and had now taken on a gray and waxy appearance.

The awful pallor of her flesh—aside from her made-up face—gave her the appearance of a star from the days of the silent cinema, and for a moment I had the same awful feeling I’d had before: that she was playing the game of Statues, as I used to do with Feely and Daffy before they began to hate me—that in a moment she’d sneeze, or suck in a giant, gasping breath.

But no such thing happened, of course. Phyllis Wyvern was as dead as a door knocker.

I began my examination from the ground up. I lifted the hem of her heavy woolen skirt and saw at once that her ankles were swollen, ballooning out, as it were, above a pair of heavy black work boots.

Work boots? They couldn’t possibly be hers!

Using my handkerchief to guard against fingerprints, I slipped one of the boots off her foot … slowly and carefully, taking special note of the way the thick white stocking was bunched in a knot beneath her instep.

As I had suspected, the boot had been shoved onto her foot after she was dead.

With great care I rolled down the knee-length stocking and removed it. Her foot was puffy, dark, and bruised with the settling blood. Her painted toenails were ghastly.

I replaced the stocking, which slid on easily over her cold flesh.

Getting the boot back on, though, was not as easy as taking it off; the stiffened toes simply refused to slide all the way back into the boot. Could this be rigor mortis?

I pulled it off again and stuck my fingers into the opening. There was something pushed down into the toe—paper, by the feel of it.

Would someone as wealthy and famous as Phyllis Wyvern buy footwear so oversized that she had to stuff paper into the toes to make it fit?

It seemed unlikely. I fished out the wad with my finger and uncrumpled it.

It was a piece of stationery printed at the top with the name: Cora Hotel, Upper Woburn Place, London, WC1.

Scrawled across the page in red ink were the words:

Blast her handwriting (if it was hers). Was it “Must I tell T?”?

The paper was torn from the edge diagonally across the initial—the final letter could have been anything.

D for Desmond? D for Duncan? V for Val? Or was it a B for Bun?

No time to speculate, or even to crow over finding something the police had missed. I shoved the paper into the pocket of my cardigan for later analysis.

I struggled again to replace the boot, but because of the swelling in the legs, it was like trying to squeeze an elephant’s foot into a ballet slipper.

Remembering Flo, or Maeve, or whatever her name was, I dashed back into the adjacent room.

Yes! Just as I thought—the actress had left half a bowl of fruit pieces uneaten on the night table. I helped myself to the dessert spoon and returned to Miss Wyvern.

Using the bowl of the spoon as a shoehorn, I managed to lever the boot back onto her dead foot.

Better check the other one, something told me, and I quickly pried it off. Could there possibly be more of the message in the other toe?

No such luck. To my disappointment the second boot was empty, and I quickly levered it back onto her foot.

So much for the lower extremities.

Next step was to give her a jolly good sniffing. I had learned by experience that poison could underlie all seeming causes of death, and I was taking no chances.

I sniffed her lips (the upper one, I noticed, painted larger than it actually was with scarlet lipstick, perhaps to mask the faint mustache that was visible only at extremely close range), followed by her ears, her nose, her cleavage, her hands, and as much as I could manage of her armpits without actually shifting the body.

Nothing. Except for being dead, Phyllis Wyvern smelled exactly like someone who had, just hours ago, stepped out of a bath of scented salts.

She must have come straight from her performance to her room, removed her Juliet costume (it was still laid out flat on the bed), taken a bath, and then … what?

I used my handkerchief again to collect from the nape of her neck a small sample of the stage makeup I had noted earlier. Smeared onto the white linen, the greasepaint had the appearance of finely ground red brick.

I gave special attention to her fingernails, which had been coated with a shiny scarlet polish to match the lipstick. The cuticles formed stark half-moons of grayish white where the color had not been applied. Feely did her nails in that way, too, and I had a sudden but momentary attack of gooseflesh.

Steady on, old girl, I thought. It’s only death.

Phyllis Wyvern certainly hadn’t been wearing these gaudily lacquered nails on stage. Quite the contrary—except for the slap, her interpretation of Juliet had been notable for its village-pump simplicity. The real-life Juliet, after all, had been no more than twelve or thirteen years old, or so Daffy liked to claim.

“If it weren’t for you lot,” she had once said mysteriously, “I could have Dirk Bogarde scaling my balcony even as we speak.”

Phyllis Wyvern, by contrast, was fifty-nine. She had told me so herself. How she managed to shed forty-five years under the lights was nothing short of a miracle.

Perhaps it was her size. She was really not that much bigger than me.

I’d better get on with it, I thought. The actresses could return at any moment from their wild-goose chase, and be hammering at the locked door.

But something was niggling away at the back of my brain—something that was not quite right. What could it be?

I stepped back from the body for a more general look.

In her peasant blouse and skirt, Phyllis Wyvern looked as if she had just dropped into the chair to catch her breath before setting out to a masquerade.

Was it possible she had simply had a heart attack, perhaps, or suffered a sudden fatal stroke?

Of course not! There was no blotting out the sight of that dark decorative bow of ciné film twisted fancily around her throat. And besides, Dogger had pointed out the petechiae. The woman had been strangled. That much was clear. Part of my mind must still be milling away trying to reduce the horror of what must have been a violent scene.

From her hair to her—

Her hair! That was it!

Like little colored stars twinkling in the winter sky, Juliet’s crown of flowers was still woven into her long, golden hair. They could hardly be real, I thought. If they had been, they’d have wilted by now, and yet they looked as fresh as if they had been picked just moments before I came into the room.

I reached out and pinched a particularly dewy-looking primrose.

Hard to tell by touch. I gave the thing a jerk and—good lord!—Phyllis Wyvern’s hair, posies and all, went tumbling off her head and onto the floor with the sickening whump of a shot bird falling dead from the sky.

It was a wig, of course, and without it, she was as bald as a boiled egg.

A boiled egg mottled with even more of the petechiae, or Tardieu’s spots, as Dogger had called them.

I stared, aghast. What kind of nightmare had I stumbled into?

I retrieved the wig from the carpet and replaced it on her head, but no matter how much I twisted it this way and that, it still looked ludicrous.

Perhaps it was the knowledge of what lay beneath.

Well, I couldn’t spend all day fiddling with her coiffure. I finally had to give it up and turn my attention to the dresser, which I found to be littered with a various assortment of bottles and tins: theatrical cold creams, glycerine and rose water, rank upon rank of skin cleansers and assorted toiletries by Harriet Hubbard Ayer. Although the dresser top was a veritable apothecary’s shop, a few things were obviously missing: one was red theatrical makeup; the others included scarlet lipstick and nail polish.

I had a quick rummage through her purse, but aside from a handful of paper tissues, a wallet containing six hundred and twenty-five pounds, and a handful of loose change, there was little of real interest: a tortoiseshell comb, a pocket mirror, and a tin of breath mints (of which I helped myself to one and pocketed a couple of extras for quick energy, should I need it later).

I was about to close the clasp when I spotted the zipper, barely visible against the lining, a careful camouflage by the purse’s maker.

Hullo! I thought. What’s this? A secret compartment!

Disappointingly, there wasn’t much in it—a set of keys and a small but official-looking booklet consisting of two gray pages with the same information repeated on each of them.

COUNTY OF LONDON

License to drive a Motor Car or Motor Cycle

Phyllida Lampman

“Tenebrae”

3 Collier’s Walk, S.E.

It had been issued on the thirteenth day of May, 1929.

Phyllida? Lampman?

Could this be Phyllis Wyvern’s real name? It seemed beyond belief that she would keep a stranger’s driving license in her purse.

But assuming that Phyllida was Phyllis or the other way around, what was I to make of the rest of it? Was she Val Lampman’s wife? Sister? Sister-in-law? Cousin?

“Cousin” and “wife” were distinctly possible. In fact, she could be both. Harriet, for instance, had been a de Luce before she married Father, and because of it had been spared having to give up her maiden name.

If Phyllis Wyvern hadn’t lied to me about her age—and why would she?—she must have been … let me see … 1929 had been twenty-one years ago … thirty-eight years old when this driving license was issued.

How old was Val Lampman? It was hard to tell. He was one of those gnomish creatures with tight shiny skin and pale hair who, with a silk scarf at his neck to hide the wrinkles, could pass for ageless.

What was it Daffy had said? That not since something or another—which I was too young to understand—had Phyllis Wyvern worked with any other director.

What could that something be? It was becoming plainer by the minute that, by fair means or foul, I needed to pry open my sister’s clammy shell.

I was having a second look at Phyllis Wyvern’s fingernails when the doorknob turned!

I almost had an accident!

Fortunately the door was locked.

I crammed the driving license back into the purse and pulled the zipper shut. I picked up the sheet from the floor and, trying not to make a rustling noise, hurriedly re-draped the body.

That done, I fumbled my way behind the curtain, which gave off another cloud of choking dust.

I grabbed the bridge of my nose and squeezed just in time to reduce a major sneeze to a tiny, but rather rude, exclamation point of sound.

“Pee-phwup.”

Bless me!

I had to be careful about the paint-swollen door. I couldn’t close it as tightly behind me as I wished, but had to settle instead for a couple of careful, but almost silent, tugs. The curtains in each room would not only muffle the sound, but perhaps even keep all but the most determined observer from noticing the door’s very existence.

Happily, the mess of paint chips I had dislodged was on my side of the door and I couldn’t help congratulating myself on leaving the Blue Bedroom without a trace.

Taking Flo’s—or Maeve’s—hairbrush from the dresser (after replacing their dessert spoon carefully in its bowl of fruit) and forming a makeshift dustpan of the Cinema Weekly that was lying on the bed, I swept up the paint chips and tipped them carefully into the pocket of my cardigan.

I’d dispose of them later. No point in leaving confusing evidence to distract the police.

I opened the door a crack and peeked out. No one in sight as far as I could see.

As I stepped into the corridor, a familiar voice behind me said, “Hold on.”

I had nearly stepped on Inspector Hewitt’s toes.

“Oh, hello, Inspector,” I said. “I was just looking for, uh, Flo.”

I could tell at once that he didn’t believe me.

“Were you, indeed?” he asked. “Why?”

Damn the man! His questions were always so to the point.

“That’s not quite true,” I confessed. “Actually, I was snooping in her room.”

No need to drag in my fib about the summons from Val Lampman.

“Why?” the Inspector persisted.

Sometimes there’s nothing for it but to tell the truth.

“Well,” I said, scrambling madly for words, “actually it’s a hobby of mine. I sometimes snoop on Daffy and Feely quite frightfully.”

He stared at me with what somebody once called “that awful eye.”

“I thought the bedrooms of cinema people were bound to be more interesting …”

“Including Miss Wyvern’s?”

I made my eyes go wide with innocence.

“I heard you sneeze, Flavia,” he said.

Bugger!

“Empty your pockets, please,” the Inspector said, and I had no choice but to obey.

Remembering Father’s tales of his exploits as a boy conjurer, I tried to “palm,” as I believe it is called, by folding it under my thumb and pressing it into my handkerchief, the crumpled ball of paper I had found in Phyllis Wyvern’s boot.

“Thank you,” the Inspector said, holding out his hand, and I was, as the vicar says while playing cribbage, skunked.

I gave him the paper.

“Other pocket, please.”

“It’s nothing but rubbish,” I told him. “Just a lot of—”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he interrupted. “Turn it out.”

I locked eyes with him as I turned the pocket inside out and a small Vesuvius of paint chips erupted and fluttered in horrid silence to the floor.

“Why do you do it, Flavia?” the Inspector asked in a suddenly different voice, his eyes on the mess I had made of the carpet. I don’t think I had ever seen him look so pained.

“Do what?”

I couldn’t help myself.

“Lie,” he said. “Why do you fabricate these outlandish stories?”

I had often thought about this myself, and although I had a ready answer, I did not feel obliged to give it to him.

“Well,” I wanted to say, “there are those of us who create because all around us, things visible and invisible are crumbling. We are like the stonemasons of Babylon, forever working, as it says in Jeremiah, to shore up the city walls.”

I didn’t say that, of course. What I did say was:

“I don’t know.”

“How can I impress upon you—” he began, at the same time uncrinkling the paper and giving it a single glance. “Where did you get this?”

“In Phyllis Wyvern’s shoe,” I said, remembering not to call attention that it was, in fact, a boot. “The right foot. You must have overlooked it.”

I could see his dilemma: He could hardly tell his men—or his superiors—that he had found it himself.

“There’s a connecting door, you see,” I said helpfully. “I knew you’d already taken your photos and so forth, so I just slipped in for a quick look round.”

“Did you touch anything else?”

“No,” I said, standing there in plain view with my soiled handkerchief crumpled in my hand.

Please, God, and Saint Genesius, patron saint of actors and those who have been tortured, don’t let him tell me to hand it over.

And it worked! All praises to you both!

I would send up a burnt offering later in my lab—a little pyramid of ammonium dichromate, perhaps—a shower of joyful sparks …

“Are you quite sure?” the Inspector was asking.

“Well,” I said, lowering my voice and glancing along the corridor in both directions to see that we were not being overheard, “I did have a quick peek into her purse. You spotted the Phyllida Lampman driving license, of course?”

I thought the Inspector was going to have an egg.

“That will be all,” he said abruptly, and walked away.

• SEVENTEEN •

“I REQUIRE YOUR PERSONAL advice,” I said to Daffy. This was a tactic that never failed to work.

As always, she was curled up in the library like a prawn, still deep in her Dickens.

“Supposing you wanted to look someone up,” I asked. “Where would you begin?”

“Somerset House,” she said.

My sister was being facetious. I knew, as well as everyone else in the kingdom, that Somerset House, in London, was where the records of all births, deaths, and marriages were kept, along with deeds, wills, and other public documents. Father had once pointed it out to us rather glumly from a taxicab.

“Besides that, I mean.”

“I should hire a detective,” Daffy said sourly. “Now please go away. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Please, Daff. It’s important.”

She continued to ignore me.

“I’ll give you half of whatever’s in my Post Office savings account.”

I had no intention of doing so, but it was worth a try. Money, to Daffy, meant books, and even though Buckshaw contained more books than the Bishop’s Lacey Free Library, to my sister, it was not enough.

“Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver,” she had once said. “Take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles.”

I could tell by the twitch at the corner of her lips that she was interested in my offer.

“All right—two thirds,” I said. One can always up the ante safely on bad intentions.

“If they were someone,” she said, without looking up from her book, “Burke’s Peerage.”

“And what if they weren’t someone? What if they were merely famous?”

“Who’s Who,” she said, her finger pointing to the bookcases. “That will be three pounds, ten and six, if you please. As soon as the roads are cleared, I’ll personally walk you to the Post Office to see that you don’t welsh on your promise.”

“Thanks, Daff,” I said. “You’re a corker.”

But it was too late. She had already begun her descent into the deeps of Dickens.

I ambled casually over to the bookcases. Who’s Who had rung a bell. Although I had never opened one of them, the shelf of fat red volumes, their dates stretching well back into another century, were part of Buckshaw’s library landscape.

But even as I approached, my heart began to sink. A wide gap at the right of the second shelf showed that a number of volumes were missing.

“Where have the 1930s and ’40s gone?” I asked.

Daffy’s silence provided the answer.

“Come on, Daff. It’s important.”

“How important?” she said without looking up.

“All of it,” I said.

“All of what?”

“My Post Office savings account.”

“All of it?”

“All of it. One hundred percent.” (See note above re bad intentions.)

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

I crossed my heart elaborately and prayed with all my might that I would live as long as old Tom Parr, whose grave we had once seen in Westminster Abbey, and who had lived to a ripe one hundred and fifty-two.

Daffy pointed, languidly.

“Under the chesterfield,” she said.

I dropped to my knees and reached beneath the flowered flounce.

Aha! When my hand reappeared it was gripping the 1946 edition of Who’s Who.

I bore the book off to a corner and opened it on my knees.

The L’s didn’t begin until after nearly six hundred pages, halfway through the book: La Brash, Ladbroke, Lamarsh, Lambton … yes, here it was—Lampman, Lorenzo Angenieux, b. 1866, m. Phyllida Grome, 1909, one d. Phyllida Veronica, b. 1910, one s. Waldemar Anton, b. 1911.

I quickly worked out the system of abbreviations: b. was “born,” m. stood for “married”—s. and d. must mean “son” and “daughter.”

There was much more. It rambled on and on about Lorenzo Lampman’s education (Bishop Laud), his military service (Royal Welch Fusiliers), his clubs (Boodles, Carrington’s, Garrick, White’s, Xenophobe), and his awards (D.S.C., M.M.). He had published a memoir, With Bow and Rifle to the Kalahari, and had died in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, just a year after the birth of his son, Waldemar Anton.

Young Waldemar could only be Val Lampman, which meant that that imp, despite his leprechaun looks, was no more than thirty-nine.

He and Phyllis Wyvern were brother and sister—and she was forty, not fifty-nine!

I’d thought there was something fishy about her age.

I turned quickly to the back of the book—to the W’s—even though Daffy had warned me that Who’s Who wasn’t keen on actors.

No Wyverns listed here except for a Sir Peregrine, the last of his line, who had died in a duel with his hatter in 1772.

I glanced rapidly through some of the other volumes, but they were much the same. In the world of the upper crust, time, it seemed, moved more slowly. When you got right down to it, Who’s Who was not much more than a catalog of the same dry old sticks harrumphing their way, year after year, towards the grave.

“Daff,” I said, taken by a sudden idea. “How did you know I was going to ask about Who’s Who?”

There was a silence that grew longer by the moment.

“Pax vobiscum,” she said suddenly and unexpectedly.

Pax vobiscum? It was the ancient signal of truce among the de Luce sisters—a formula that was usually spoken by me. All I had to do was to give the correct response, “Et cum spiritu tuo,” and for five minutes precisely by the nearest clock, we would be bound by blood to let bygones be bygones. No exceptions; no ands, ifs, or buts; no crossing of fib-fingers behind one’s back. It was a solemn contract.

“Et cum spiritu tuo,” I said.

Daffy closed Bleak House and pulled herself out of her chair. She walked to the fireplace and stood staring down into the warm ashes, her fingertips lightly resting on the mantelpiece.

“I’ve been thinking …” she said, and I was bound by the rules of the truce not to shoot back, “Did it hurt?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she went on, “that since it’s Christmas, it would be nice, just for once, to …”

“Yes, Daff?”

There was something about her posture—something about the way she held herself. For the duration of a lightning flash, and no more, she was Father and then, just as quickly, she was Daffy again. Or had she, for a millionth of a second in between, been the Harriet I had glimpsed in so many old photographs?

It was uncanny. No, more than that—it was unnerving.

As Daffy and I stood there not looking at each other, and before she could speak, there was a light tap at the door. Like an arrow shot from a bow, Daffy flew in an instant back into her overstuffed chair so that when the door slowly opened a moment later, she was already carefully arranged, apparently immersed again in Bleak House.

“May we come in?” Inspector Hewitt asked, his face appearing round the door.

“Of course,” I said, rather pointlessly, since he was already in the room, followed closely by Desmond Duncan.

“Mr. Duncan has kindly agreed to help us establish a fairly precise running time for the balcony scene. Now, then, Flavia, I believe you told me there’s a copy of Shakespeare’s collected works here in the library?”

“There was, but she took it,” Daphne said sourly, without looking up from Dickens.

There was a momentary sinking feeling in my abdomen, partly because Daffy, in spite of my best efforts, had spotted me pinching the book, and partly because I had no recollection of what I had done with the blasted thing. What with all the uproar over Nialla and her baby, I must have put it down somewhere without thinking.

“I’ll go fetch it,” I said, giving myself a mental kick in the backside. Being out of the room for even a few minutes meant that I would miss an important part of Inspector Hewitt’s investigation, of which every moment, from my viewpoint, was precious.

Flavia, you chump! I thought.

“Never mind,” Daffy said, bailing out of her chair and making for the bookcases. “We’ve probably accumulated more than our fair share of Shakespeare over the years. There’s bound to be another copy.”

She ran her forefinger over the spines of the books in the familiar way that book lovers everywhere do.

“Yes, here we are. A single-volume edition of Romeo and Juliet. Rather tatty, but it will have to do.”

She held it out to the Inspector but he shook his head.

“Hand it to Mr. Desmond, please,” he told her.

Ha! I thought. Fingerprints! He’s collecting Daffy’s and Desmond Duncan’s all in one go. How very cunning of you, Inspector!

Desmond Duncan took the book from Daffy and riffled through it, looking for the correct page.

“Rather distinctive print,” he said, “and an old-fashioned typeface.”

He fished a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles from an inner pocket and, with a theatrical flourish, settled them onto his famous nose.

“Not that I am unaccustomed to handling such texts,” he went on, turning back to the front of the book. “It’s just that one doesn’t expect to find them in such an out-of-the-way place. Indeed, if I didn’t know better—”

Famous cinema star or not, I angled round behind him for a better look as he studied the title page.

This is what I read:

An

EXCELLENT

conceited Tragedie

OF Romeo and Iuliet (it said)

As it hath been often (with great applaufe)

plaid publiquely, by the

Right Honourable the L. Hunfdon

his seruants

LONDON,

Printed by Iohn Danter.

1597

At the top of the page, in red ink horizontally and black ink vertically, was inscribed the monogram:

H

H d L

L

I held my breath as I recognized it at once: Father’s and Harriet’s initials intertwined—and in their own handwriting!

Time seemed to stand still.

I glanced at the clock on the mantel and saw that the five-minute truce had expired. In spite of it, I put my arm round Daffy’s shoulders and gave her a sharp, quick hug.

“I’m afraid, Inspector,” Desmond Duncan said at last, “that this particular edition is not sufficient to our purposes. It’s a somewhat different text from that with which I am accustomed to perform. We shall have to rely on my memory.”

And with that, he slipped the book unobtrusively into his jacket pocket.

“Yes, well, then,” Inspector Hewitt said, as if relieved to be over an awkward moment, “perhaps we can work with Mr. Duncan’s undoubtedly perfect recollection of the scene. We’ll check it later against your everyday copy of the book. Agreed?”

We looked at each other and nodded our heads.

“Daphne, I wonder if you’d mind acting as our timer?” the Inspector asked, removing his wristwatch and handing it to her.

I thought she was going to faint from importance. Without a word she took the watch from his hands, climbed up onto the armchair, and perched on its back, letting the watch dangle from her fingers at arm’s length.

“Ready?” the Inspector asked.

Daffy and Desmond Duncan nodded curtly, their faces made serious, prepared for action.

“Begin,” he said.

And Desmond Duncan spoke:

“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon …

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou her maid art far more fair than she …”

The words came pouring out of that golden throat, seeming to tumble over one another in their eagerness and yet, each one of crystal clarity.

“Ay me,” Daffy moaned suddenly, from atop her perch.

“She speaks!” said Romeo, with a look of genuine amazement on his face.

“O, speak again, bright angel!” he urged her,

“For thou art as glorious to this night, being o’er my head,

As is a wingèd messenger of heaven …”

Daffy’s face had suddenly become as radiant as an angel in a painting by van Eyck, and Desmond Duncan, as Romeo, seemed to have been transported by it to another realm.

“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!” Romeo went on, his eyes in eager communion with hers.

“O, that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!”

Was it just me, or was the room becoming warmer?

“O Romeo, Romeo!” Daffy whispered in a new and husky voice. “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

Something had sprung to life between them; something had been created from nothing; something that had not been there before.

The world went blurry around the edges. A shiver shook my shoulders. I was seeing and hearing magic.

Daffy was thirteen. A perfect Juliet.

And Romeo responded.

I hardly dared breathe as their endearments poured like old and familiar honey. It was like snooping on a pair of village lovers.

Inspector Hewitt, too, had fallen under their spell, and I couldn’t help wondering if he was thinking of his own Antigone.

Daffy had all the lines by heart, as if for a thousand and one nights on a West End stage she had delivered them before an enraptured audience. Could this fair creature be my mousy sister?

“Good night, good night!” she breathed at last,

“Parting is such sweet sorrow

That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

And Romeo replied:

“Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast!

Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!”

“Time,” Daffy announced abruptly, breaking the spell. She held the wristwatch up for a close inspection. “Ten minutes, thirty-eight seconds. Not bad.”

Desmond Duncan was now regarding her fixedly, not openly staring, but not far from it. He opened his mouth as if to say something, and then at the last second, his mouth had decided to say something else.

“Not bad at all, young lady,” were the words that came out. “In fact, bloody remarkable.”

Daffy slipped heavily down into the seat of the chair and flung her legs over the arm. She turned to an imaginary bookmark in Bleak House and resumed reading.

“Thank you all,” Inspector Hewitt said, jotting the timing into his notebook. “That will do for now.”

It was just as well. Something was weighing heavily on my mind.

• EIGHTEEN •

I KNOCKED LIGHTLY AT Aunt Felicity’s door and, without waiting for an answer, let myself in.

The window was propped open the regulation inch, and Aunt Felicity was lying on her back, tucked to the chin with an afghan, with little more than the cup hook of her nose exposed to the room’s cold air.

I leaned over slowly to examine her. As I did so, one of her ancient turtle eyes came open, and then the other.

“God sakes, girl!” she said, dragging herself up by the elbows into a half-sitting position. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Aunt Felicity,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Was my mouth open?” she mumbled, swimming rapidly back to the surface of reality. “Was I talking in my sleep?”

“No. You were sleeping the sleep of the dead.”

I didn’t realize what I was saying until it was too late.

“Phyllis Wyvern!” she said, and I nodded.

“Well, what is it, girl?” she asked sourly, changing the subject. “You’ve caught me slumbering. An old woman’s rhythmic oxygen needs to be renewed at precise twelve-hour intervals, physical culture enthusiasts be damned. It’s a simple matter of hydrostatics.”

It wasn’t, but I didn’t correct her.

“Aunt Felicity,” I asked, taking the plunge, “do you remember that day last summer beside the ornamental lake? When you told me I must do my duty, even if it led to murder?”

We had been talking of Harriet, and the ways in which I was like her.

Aunt Felicity’s face softened and her hand touched mine.

“I’m glad you’ve not forgotten,” she said softly. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

“I have a confession to make,” I told her.

“Go ahead,” she said. “I enjoy a good blurting out of secrets as much as the next person.”

“I let myself into Phyllis Wyvern’s room,” I said, “to have a look around.”

“Yes?”

“I found a driving license in her purse. In 1929 she was Phyllida Lampman. Phyllida, not Phyllis.”

Aunt Felicity swung her legs heavily off the bed and walked stiffly to the window. For a long time she stood staring, like Father, out into the snow.

“You knew her, didn’t you?” I blurted.

“Whatever makes you think that?” Aunt Felicity asked, without turning round.

“Well, when you arrived, the electrician, Ted, greeted you like an old friend. Val Lampman uses the same crew on every film he makes. And the same cast—even Phyllis Wyvern. Daffy says she’ll allow no one else to direct her, ever since something-or-other happened. Everyone knows everybody else. When I asked you about Ted, you said he’d seen you somewhere during the war—during a blackout. When I pointed out that you couldn’t have seen his face, you said I ought to be painted with six coats of shellac.”

Aunt Felicity drew in a long breath—the sort of breath the queen must draw in before stepping out with the king onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace to face the newsreel cameras and the multitudes.

“Flavia” she said, “you must make me a promise.”

“Anything,” I said, surprised to find that I didn’t have to put on a solemn face. It was already there.

“What I am about to tell you must not be repeated. Not ever. Not even to me.”

“I promise,” I said, crossing my heart.

She gripped my upper arm, hard enough to make me wince. I don’t think she realized she was doing it.

“You must understand that there were those of us who, during the war, were asked to take on tasks of very great importance …”

“Yes?” I asked eagerly.

“I cannot tell you, without breaching the Official Secrets Act, what those tasks entailed and you mustn’t ask me. In later years, one finds oneself running into old colleagues with monotonous regularity, whom one is bound, by law, not to recognize.”

“But Ted called out to you.”

“A shocking blunder on his part. I shall tear a strip off him when we’re alone.”

“And Phyllis Wyvern?”

Aunt Felicity sighed.

“Philly,” she said quietly, “was one of us.”

“One of—you?”

“You must never mention that,” she said, squeezing my arm even harder, “until the day you die. If you do, I shall have to come for you in the night with a carving knife.”

“But, Aunt Felicity, I promised!”

“Yes, so you did,” she admitted, releasing her grip.

“Phyllis Wyvern was one of you,” I prompted.

“And a most valuable one,” she said. “Her fame opened doors that are barred to mere mortals. She was made to play a role that was more deadly than any she had undertaken on stage or screen.”

“How do you know that?” I couldn’t keep from asking.

“I’m sorry, dear. I can’t tell you that.”

“Was Val Lampman one of you, as well? He might well have been, since he was Phyllis Wyvern’s brother.”

Something rose up in Aunt Felicity’s throat, and I thought for a moment that she was going to toss her tea cakes, but what came out was more like the braying of a donkey. Her shoulders shook and her bosoms trembled.

My dear old trout of an aunt was laughing!

“Her brother? Phyllis Wyvern’s brother? Wherever did you get that idea?”

“Her driving license. Lampman.”

“Oh, I see,” Aunt Felicity said, mopping at her eyes with the border of the afghan.

“Phyllis Wyvern’s brother?” she said again, as if repeating the punch line of a joke to another person in the room. “Far from it, dear girl—very far from it indeed. She’s his mother.”

My mouth fell open like a corpse who’s just had her jaw bandage removed.

“His mother? Phyllis Wyvern is Val Lampman’s mother?”

“Surprising, isn’t it. She gave birth to him when she was very young, no more than seventeen, I believe, and Val’s age, to all outer appearances, is rather … indeterminate.”

So that was it! Val Lampman was the “Waldemar” of Who’s Who, but he was Phyllis Wyvern’s son, and not her brother, as I had assumed. I had misinterpreted the entry in Who’s Who. I wanted to blush but I was too excited.

“She’d already had a daughter a year earlier,” Aunt Felicity went on. “Veronica, I believe the girl was called. Poor child. There was some great tragedy there that was never spoken of.

“Phyllida—or Phyllis, as she liked to call herself—had been married for a time to the late and not awfully-much-lamented Lorenzo, who, in spite of his blue blood and the great difference in their ages, was still active as a traveler in wines, or wigs, I’ve forgotten which.”

“Wigs, probably,” I said, “because she was wearing one.”

Aunt Felicity shot me a disgusted look, as if I’d blabbed a secret.

“It fell off,” I explained. “I was trying to keep the shroud the police had thrown over her from messing her hair.”

There fell one of those silences so thick you could have stood a spoon up in it.

“Poor Philly,” Aunt Felicity said, at last. “She suffered terribly at the hands of the Axis agents. Chemicals, I believe. Her hair was her crowning glory. They might as well have chopped out her heart.”

Chemicals? Torture?

Dogger had been tortured, too, in the Far East. It seemed bizarre, the way in which these old atrocities seemed to be coming home to roost in peaceful Bishop’s Lacey.

“Does Father know about these things? About Phyllida Lampman, I mean?”

“She had been directed by Malinovsky in a number of foreign films,” Aunt Felicity went on, staring at her own hands as if they were those of a stranger. “Most notably, of course, in Anna of the Steppes, a role which led, indirectly, to her assignment, and to her later downfall. Although she escaped with her life, she underwent a total breakdown, during which she developed an irrational horror of all Eastern Europeans.”

“Which is why she insisted on always working with the same British ciné crew,” I said.

“Precisely.”

We had seen the re-released version of Anna of the Steppes at the cinema in Hinley, where it was shown—with English subtitles—as Dressed for Dying.

Although it had seemed at first to be just another of those endless yawners about the Russian Revolution, I soon found myself swept into the story, my eyes as dazzled by the stark black-and-white images as if I had stared too long at the sun.

In fact, the unforgettable scene in which Phyllis Wyvern, as Anna, having put on her grandmother’s Russian dress and heavy boots, carefully combed her hair, and applied the scent and makeup brought to her from Paris by her lover, Marcel, lies down with her year-old baby in front of the army of snarling tractors, was still causing me occasional and inexplicable nightmares.

“Miss Wyvern must have been a very brave woman,” I said.

Aunt Felicity returned to the window and looked out as if World War Two were still raging somewhere in the fields to the east of Buckshaw.

“She was more than brave,” she said. “She was British.”

I let the silence linger until it was hanging by a thread. And then I said what I had come to say.

“You must have heard everything that happened. Being in the next room.”

Aunt Felicity looked suddenly drawn, and old, and helpless.

“I should have,” she said. “God knows I should have.”

“You mean you didn’t?”

“I’m an old woman, Flavia. I suffer from the vicissitudes of age. I had a tot of rum at bedtime, and slept with the pillow screwed into my good ear. That poor dear blasted soul ran ciné films all night. I knew why, of course, but even sympathy has its limits.”

Does it? I wondered, or was Aunt Felicity simply deflecting further discussion?

“So you heard nothing,” I said at last.

“I didn’t say I’d heard nothing. I said I hadn’t heard everything.”

I walked across the room and stood beside her at the window. It had grown dark outside, and the snow was still falling as heavily as if the world were coming to a bitter end.

“I got up to use the WC. She was arguing with someone. The noise of the film, you see …”

“Was it a man, or a woman?”

“One couldn’t be sure. Although they were keeping down the volume, it was evident that angry words were being exchanged. Even with an ear to the wall—oh, all right, don’t look so shocked, I’ll admit to clapping an ear to the wall—I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I gave it up and went back to bed, determined to have a word with her in the morning.”

“You hadn’t spoken to her before that?”

“No,” Aunt Felicity said. “There had been no opportunity. One had come across her unexpectedly in the corridor, but as I’ve told you, we were both of us too well trained in the art of seeming total strangers.”

My mind was leapfrogging back and forth over the things that Aunt Felicity had told me. If, for instance, what she said was true, Phyllis Wyvern could not possibly have been arguing with someone when Auntie F got up to use the baffins, because she was already dead. I had heard the toilet flush and I’d been in the death chamber moments later. Before that, someone had had enough time to strangle Phyllis Wyvern, dress her in different clothing (for whatever bizarre reason), and make their escape through one of three doors: the one to the corridor, the one that connected to Flo and Maeve’s bedroom, or—and here I shot a nervous glance over my shoulder—the one that opened into the very room in which I was now standing. Aunt Felicity’s bedroom—the very same Aunt Felicity who had just told me that she was capable of coming for me in the dark with a butcher knife. If what she said was true—if only half of what she hinted at were the ramblings of a woman who had grown suddenly old at the end of the war—she was capable of anything. Who knew what havoc old loyalties and older jealousies could play with two women who had once been friends?

Or was it enemies?

I needed time to think—time to get away—to collect my thoughts.

“Thank you, Aunt Felicity,” I said. “You must be very tired.”

I could always come back to her later to fill in the blanks.

“You’re such a thoughtful child,” she said.

I gave her a modest smile.

The cupboard under the stairs was little more than a right-angled triangle equipped with a dangling lightbulb. Here, stowed safely away from the eyes of the ciné crew and their cameras, were the magazines that had been cleared away from the library and the drawing room. Back numbers of Country Life pressed down like geological strata upon old issues of The Illustrated London News. Heaped high with issues of Behind the Screen and Cinema Weekly, back numbers of Cinema World were piled in crooked stacks that must have dated back to the days of silent film.

I stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and, taking down the first handful of ciné magazines, began my search.

I flipped through page after page of Ciné Tit-Bits and Silver Cinema, smiling, at first, at the antics of the so-called “movie stars,” most of whom I had never heard of.

Parties, galas, premieres, benefit performances: smiling faces, toothy grins, top hats and sequined dresses, arms around shoulders in exotic motorcars—what vast amounts of time these people had spent having themselves photographed!

It wasn’t difficult to find Phyllis Wyvern. She was everywhere, spanning the years without apparently aging a day. Here she was, for instance, sitting, legs crossed, in a canvas chair with her name painted on the back, studying a script, with a cardigan thrown over her shoulders and a look of intense concentration on her face. Here she was, dancing with a young airman in a dark nightclub that seemed to be located in a church crypt. And here she was again, on the set of Anna of the Steppes, standing with another actress, their faces turned skyward, in front of one of the behemoth tractors as their makeup is retouched by a man in a mustache and a beret.

Could it be?

For a moment I thought that the woman beside Phyllis Wyvern was Marion Trodd. A much younger Marion Trodd, to be sure, but still …

In spite of my excitement I was having difficulty in keeping my eyes focused on the page. The air in the cupboard was becoming stuffy; the bare bulb giving off a surprising amount of heat. That and the fact that I was bone tired was making my head swim.

How long had I been huddled in this cupboard? An hour? Perhaps two? It seemed like days.

I rubbed my eyes with my fists, forcing myself to pay attention to the tiny type in which the caption was printed.

Perhaps there was something after all in Father’s insistence on having all of us outfitted with spectacles. I wore mine only when trying for sympathy, or when I needed to protect my eyes during a hazardous chemical experiment. I thought momentarily of running upstairs to get them, but decided against it.

I shook my head and read the caption again:

Phyllis Wyvern and Norma Durance freshen up between takes. Eyes front for the birdie, girls!

What a disappointment. I must have been mistaken. I had thought for a moment that I was on to something, but the name Norma Durance meant nothing to me.

Unless …

Hadn’t I seen that face a few issues back? Because the woman wasn’t photographed with Phyllis Wyvern I had paid her no attention.

I went back a couple of issues.

Yes! Here it was in Silver Cinema. The actress is in a barnyard, throwing a handful of grain from her gathered-up skirt to a mob of frenzied chickens.

“Pretty Norma Durance ably undertakes the part of Dorita in The Little Red Hen. We hear she’s not working for chicken feed!”

I held the magazine up to the light for a closer look. As I carefully studied the woman’s features, the top edge of the cover pressed for a moment against the lightbulb. In an instant the tinder-dry paper had browned, then blackened—and before I could blink, burst into flame.

It’s wonderful how the mind works in such situations. I remember distinctly that my first thought was “Here’s Flavia, her hands full of fire in a cupboard jam-packed with combustibles.”

It was the kind of thing of which front-page stories in the Times are made.

Smoldering ashes are all that remain of historic country house. Buckshaw in ruins.

And there would be a grisly photo, of course.

I threw down the burning magazine and stamped on it again and again with my feet.

But because of the waterproofing solution that Dogger applied so conscientiously to our footwear—a witches’ brew containing both linseed and castor oils, as well as copal varnish—my shoes burst immediately into flames.

I tore off my cardigan and dropped it onto my feet, stamping and bundling with my hands until the fire was out.

By now, my heart was pounding like a racing engine, and I found myself gasping for air.

Fortunately I had not burned myself. The fire had been quickly extinguished with little trace remaining other than a few black ashes and some lingering smoke.

I checked quickly to be sure that no sparks had lodged among the stacks of paper, then let myself out into the passageway, coughing as I went.

I was pulling on my singed sweater and scraping the toes of my smoking shoes on the floorboards when the kitchen door opened and Dogger appeared.

He looked at me closely without saying a word.

“Unforeseen chemical reaction,” I said.

An air of weariness had fallen upon the foyer. No one paid the slightest attention to me as I passed through. Everywhere, the people of Bishop’s Lacey sat staring blankly off into space, immersed in their own thoughts. In a corner, a card table with two chairs had been set up as an interrogation center, and Sergeant Graves was murmuring away with Miss Cool, the village postmistress and confectioner.

“Dazed” was the word for the rest of them. The earlier air of sharing in a jolly good adventure had worn off, pretense had vanished, and everyone had sagged, exhausted at last, into their real faces.

Buckshaw had been made over into a bomb shelter.

In the farthest corner from the police, the chauffeur, Anthony, sucked on a cigarette that he held concealed in a half-closed hand. He looked up and caught my eye, just as he had done when I’d dislodged the little avalanche of snow.

What was he thinking?

I sauntered casually off towards the west wing to have a look at the grandfather clock that stood in the corridor near Father’s study. It must be getting late.

The hands of the ancient timepiece stood at ten-seventeen! Where could the day have gone?

Even twenty-four hours seemed an eternity when one was cooped up indoors and the days were the shortest of the year, but the death of Phyllis Wyvern under the roofs of Buckshaw had turned time topsy-turvy.

The roofs of Buckshaw! My bucket of birdlime!

Time was running out. If I was going to carry out my plan—my plans!—I’d better get a bustle on. Christmas was nearly upon us. Father Christmas himself would soon be here.

And so would the undertaker.

Poor Phyllis Wyvern. I was going to miss her.

• NINETEEN •

A QUICK JAUNT TO the jakes was all I needed. With that attended to, I could get on with my plans.

The closest convenience was at the top of the kitchen stairs, two doors along from Dogger’s bedroom. When I reached it, I threw open the door and—

My heart stopped.

Naked from the waist up, Val Lampman was sitting on the toilet clumsily trying to wrap one of his muscular arms with surgical lint. They were both horribly scratched and torn. He was as surprised as I was, and as he looked up at me, startled, his eyes became suddenly those of an injured hawk.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

I tried not to stare at the matching anchors tattooed on each of his forearms.

Had he been a sailor?

“What are you looking at?” he demanded in a harsh voice.

“Nothing,” I said. “May I help?”

“No,” he said, momentarily flustered. “Thank you. I was trying to help the lads shift a flat in one of the lorries, and it fell on me. My own fault, really.”

As if he expected me to believe him! Who in their right mind would be moving scenery, bare-armed and bare-chested, in the back of a freezing lorry?

“I’m sorry,” I said, taking the roll of lint from his hands and unreeling a fresh length. “You’ve cut your chest, too. Here, lean forward a bit and I’ll wrap it round.”

My helpfulness allowed me to have a good look at his wounds, which were already lightly scabbed and red along the edges. Not fresh, by any means, but not old, either. They had been inflicted, at a guess, twenty-four hours ago.

And by fingernails, if I were any judge.

Even though I had been cashiered from the Girl Guides for insubordination, I had not forgotten their many useful teachings, including the mnemonic “P-A-D”: Pressure, Antiseptic, Dressing.

“Pad! Pad! Pad!” we used to shout, rolling about on the floor of the parish hall, mauling one another horribly, trussing our victims and ourselves, like fat white mummies, in the endless rolls of bandaging.

“Did you put iodine on these?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that he hadn’t. The telltale reddish brown stains of that tincture were nowhere in evidence.

“Yes,” he lied, and I noticed for the first time, in the refuse container, the blood-encrusted dressings he had just removed.

“It was very kind of you to help moving props,” I said casually. “I don’t expect many directors would do that.”

“It’s not been easy with McNulty injured,” he said. “Still, one does what one can.”

“Mm,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic, hoping he’d tell me more.

But my mind was already racing through the corridors of Buckshaw, up the stairs, back to the Blue Bedroom, back to the body of Phyllis Wyvern, back to her fingernails—

Which had been remarkably clean. There had been no shreds of ripped flesh beneath them—no sign of blood (although her scarlet nail polish might have hidden the stains).

I became suddenly aware that Val Lampman’s eyes were fixed on mine, as intently hypnotic as those of a cat on a cornered mouse. If he’d had a tail, it would have been swishing.

He was reading my thoughts. I was quite sure of it.

I tried not to think of the fact that the police might already have scraped out whatever bits of evidence were under Phyllis Wyvern’s fingernails; tried not to think that whoever had murdered her had taken the time to re-dress her, to paint her nails, and in doing so, to remove, before any of us got there, any matter that may have been lodged beneath them.

I tried not to think—not to think—but it was no good.

His eyes were boring into mine. Surely he had seen something.

“I’d better be getting along,” I said suddenly. “I promised the vicar I’d help with the …”

Although I could feel my heart pounding as it pumped blood into my face, I couldn’t think of a single word to complete the lie.

“… things,” I added weakly.

I had already opened the door and put one foot in the corridor when he seized my arm.

“Wait,” he said.

From the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Dogger entering his room.

“It’s all right, Dogger,” I called out. “I was just showing Mr. Lampman to the WC.”

Lampman let go his grip and I stepped back.

He stood fixedly staring, the bandages on his chest rising and falling with every breath.

I closed the door in his face.

Dogger had already vanished. Good old Dogger. His sense of decorum kept him from intruding in all but the most extreme emergencies. Well, this hadn’t been an emergency.

Or had it? I’d talk to Dogger later, when I’d had time to think things through. It was still too soon.

Had I unmasked Phyllis Wyvern’s killer? Well, perhaps—but also perhaps not.

It seemed quite unlikely that someone as placid-seeming as Val Lampman should strangle his own mother, change her clothing, and apply stage makeup in order to have her looking her best when her body was discovered.

And those injuries on his arms and chest? Mightn’t he simply have got into a tussle with Latshaw, his surly crew chief?

There was no doubt about it. I needed to talk to Dogger.

Yes, that was it—we’d sit down together later over a steaming kettle and a pair of teacups, and I’d run fleet-footed through my observations and deductions, and Dogger would marvel at my accomplishments.

But until then, I had other things to do.

It was with a cheery heart that I lugged my pot of birdlime up the narrow stairs. Good thing I’d thought to bring a clothes brush from the pantry to clear away the snow from the chimney pots, and a stiffish wallpaper brush from the little framing room in the picture gallery, to slather the stuff on with.

If the door had been a chore to open earlier, it was now a beast. I put my shoulder against it and shoved, and shoved, and shoved again until at last the creaking snow yielded grudgingly, enough to allow me to squeeze out onto the roof.

The wind struck me at once and I cringed against the cold.

I trudged my way slowly across the snowy wastes to the west wing of the house, knee deep in drifts. Father Christmas would come down the drawing room chimney, as he always had. There was no point in wasting precious body heat and birdlime in painting the others.

With the snow swept away from the collars of the three stacks, it was possible—although not by any means simple—to pull myself up, slipping and sliding, onto each of the towering brick turrets in turn, although I have to admit that I gave no more than a lick and a promise to the smaller pots that connected to the fireplaces in the upper bedrooms. Father Christmas wouldn’t dare come down Father’s chimney, and as for Harriet’s—well, there was no longer any need, was there? Except for leaving myself a couple of narrow glue-free paths in which to maneuver without becoming stuck myself, the application of the stuff was quite straightforward.

When I was finished, I found myself frozen there for a moment on the roof, thinking, motionless in the bitter wind, a lightning-struck weather vane that points forever in the wrong direction.

And then, just as quickly, my spirits were restored. Wasn’t I, after all, within hours of being able to write “Conclusion” to my grand experiment?

As I fought my way back across the snowy wastes, I whistled a few bars of “The Holly and the Ivy” in sly reference to the sticky mess I had just applied to the chimneys of Buckshaw. I even broke into song:

“The rising of the suh-hun and the running of the deer …”

It was time to turn my attention to the Rocket of Honor.

“What are you doing?” Feely demanded, as I descended the last few steps into my laboratory.

Her fists were clenched and her eyes, as they always are when she’s angry, were several shades lighter than their normal blue.

“Who let you in?” I asked. “You’re not allowed in this room without written permission from me.”

“Oh, take your written permission and stick it up the flue.”

Feely could be remarkably coarse when she felt like it.

Still, “stick” and “flue” were uncannily descriptive of what I’d just done on the roof. I’d better be careful, I thought. Perhaps Feely, like Val Lampman, had found a way of peering into my mind.

“Father sent me to fetch you,” she said. “He wants everyone gathered in the foyer at once. He has something to say, and so does Val Lampman.”

She turned and strode off towards the door.

“Feely …” I said.

She stopped and, without looking at me, turned halfway round.

“Well?”

“Daff and I made a Christmas truce. I thought perhaps—”

“Truces expire after five minutes, come hell or high water, as you jolly well know. There’s no such thing as a Christmas truce. Don’t try to suck me into any of your sordid little schemes.”

I could feel my eyes swelling as if they were about to burst.

“Why do you hate me?” I asked suddenly. “Is it because I’m more like Harriet than you are?”

If the room had been cold before, it was now a glacial ice cave.

“Hate you, Flavia?” she said, her voice trembling. “Do you really believe I hate you? Oh, how I wish I did! It would make things so much easier.”

And with that she was gone.

“I’m sorry we’ve all of us been trapped, as it were,” Father was saying, “even though we’ve been trapped together.”

What the dickens did he mean? Was he apologizing for the weather?

“Despite their … ah … polar expedition, the vicar and Mrs. Richardson have done yeoman work in keeping the little ones entertained.”

Good lord! Was Father making a joke? It was unheard of!

Had the stress of the season and the arrival of the moviemakers finally cracked his brain? Had he forgotten that Phyllis Wyvern was lying—no, not lying, but sitting—dead upstairs?

His words were greeted with a polite rustle of laughter from the people of Bishop’s Lacey, who sat rumpled but attentive in their chairs. Clustered in one corner, the ciné crew whispered together uneasily, their faces like masks.

“I am assured,” Father was saying, with a glance at Mrs. Mullet, who stood beaming at the entrance of the kitchen passageway, “that we shall be able to muster up sufficient jam and fresh-baked bread to last until we are released from our … captivity.”

At the word “captivity” Dogger sprang to mind. Where was he?

I swiveled round and spotted him at once. He was standing well off to one side, his dark suit making him nearly invisible against the stained wood paneling. His eyes were black pits.

I squirmed in my chair, hunched and unhunched my shoulders as if to relieve stiffness, and standing up, stretched extravagantly. I sauntered casually over to the wall and leaned against it.

“Dogger,” I whispered excitedly, “they dressed her for dying.”

Dogger’s head turned slowly towards me, his eyes sweeping round the vast room, illuminating as they came until, as they reached mine, they were as the beam of a lighthouse fixed on a rock in the sea.

“I believe you’re right, Miss Flavia,” he said.

With Dogger, there was no need to prattle on. The look that went between us was beyond words. We were riding the same train of thought and—aside from the unfortunate death of Phyllis Wyvern, of course—all was well with the world.

Dogger had obviously noticed, as I had, that—

But there was no time to think. I had missed Father’s concluding remarks. Val Lampman had now taken the spotlight, a tragic figure who was hanging on to a lighting fixture, with the most awful white knuckles, as if to keep from crumbling to the floor.

“… this terrible event,” he was saying in an unsteady voice. “It would be unthinkable to go on without Miss Wyvern, and I have therefore, reluctantly, made the decision to shut down production at once and return to London as soon as we are able.”

A collective sigh went up from the corner in which the ciné crew was gathered, and I saw Marion Trodd lean forward and whisper something to Bun Keats.

“Because we are unable to communicate with the studio,” Val Lampman went on, putting two fingers to his temple as if receiving a message from the planet Mars, “I’m sure you will appreciate that this decision must needs be mine alone. I’ll see that specific instructions are handed out in the morning. In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, I suggest that we spend whatever is left of this rather sad Christmas Eve remembering Miss Wyvern, and what she has meant to each and every one of us.”

It was not Phyllis Wyvern I thought of, though, but Feely. With filming shut down, her chance of stardom was over.

Ages from now—sometime in the misty future—historians sifting through the vaults of Ilium Films would come across a spool of film with images of a letter being placed carefully, again and again, upon a tabletop. What would they make of it? I wondered.

It was pleasant, in a complicated way, to think that those out-of-focus hands, with their long perfect fingers, would be those of my sister. Feely would be all that remained of The Cry of the Raven, the film that died before it was born.

I came back to reality with a start.

Father was summoning Dogger with a single raised eyebrow, and I took the opportunity to escape up the stairs.

I had much to do and there was little time left.

And yet there was. When I got to my bedroom, I saw that it was not yet eleven o’clock.

I had always been told by Mrs. Mullet that Father Christmas did not come either until after midnight, or until everyone in the household was asleep—I’ve forgotten the exact formula. One way or another, it was far too early to check my traps: With half the population of Bishop’s Lacey wandering about at large in the house, the old gentleman would hardly risk coming down the drawing room chimney.

And then this thought came to mind. How could Father Christmas climb down—and back up—so many million chimneys without getting his costume dirty? Why had there never been, on Christmas morning, a filthy black trail on the carpet?

I knew perfectly well from my own experiments that the carbonic products of combustion were messy enough even in the small quantities in which they were encountered in the laboratory, but to think of a full-grown man descending a chimney encrusted with decades of soot while wearing an outfit that was little better than an oversized pipe cleaner was beyond belief. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? Why had such an obviously scientific proof never occurred to me?

Unless there was some invisible elf who followed Father Christmas around with a broom and a dustpan—or a supernatural hoover—things were looking grim indeed.

Outside, a rising wind buffeted at the house, rattling the windowpanes in their ancient frames. Inside, the temperature had fallen to that of a penguin’s feet, and I shivered in spite of myself.

I would tuck up in bed with my notebook and a pencil. Until it was time to venture out onto the roof I would turn my attention to murder.

I wrote at the top of a fresh page Who Killed Phyllis Wyvern? and drew a line under it.

SUSPECTS (ALPHABETICALLY):

Anthony, the chauffeur (I don’t know his surname.)—A lurking sort of person with a hangdog expression, who seems always to be watching me. PW seemed cold towards him, but perhaps this is the way of all film stars to their drivers. Is he resentful? Seemed vaguely familiar when he appeared on our doorstep. Eastern European? Or was it just his uniform? Surely not. Aunt F said PW had an irrational horror of Eastern Europeans and insisted upon always working with the same British film crew. Had Anthony, perhaps, appeared in one of her pictures? Or in a magazine photo? Look into—perhaps even ask him outright.

Crawford, Gil—PW humiliated him in front of the entire village by slapping his face. Although gentle as a lamb nowadays, it’s important to remember that as a commando, Gil was trained to kill in silence—by strangulation with a bit of piano wire!

Duncan, Desmond—No obvious motive other than that PW overshadows him. He’s acted with her for years on stage and in film. Rivalry? Jealousy? Something deeper? Further inquiry needed.

Keats, Bun—PW treats her like dog dirt on the sole of a dancing slipper. Although she should be filled with resentment, she seems not to be. Are there people who thrive on abuse? Or is there fire beneath the ashes? Must ask Dogger about this.

Lampman, Val (Waldemar)—PW’s son. (Hard to believe but Aunt Felicity claims it’s so.) PW threatened to tell DD about Val’s “interesting adventure in Buckinghamshire.” Obvious tension between them (e.g., the benefit performance of Romeo and Juliet). Does he stand to inherit his mother’s estate? Did she have bags and bags of money? How can I find that out? And what about his horribly scratched forearms? The wounds didn’t seem fresh. Another point to talk over with Dogger in the morning.

Latshaw, Ben—Seems something of a troublemaker. But what would he gain by bringing the film’s production to a halt? He had been promoted due to Patrick McNulty’s injury. Could he have been hired by someone at llium Films to do in PW far from the studio? (Mere speculation on my part.)

Trodd, Marion—The horn-rimmed mystery. Hangs round in silence like the smell of a clogged drain. She bears a strong resemblance to the actress Norma Durance. But those were old photos. Should have asked Aunt Felicity about her. N.B.—do later.

I scratched my head with the pencil as I reviewed my notes. I could see at once that they were far from satisfactory.

In most criminal investigations—both on the wireless and in my own experience—there are always more suspects than you can shake a stick at, but in this case, the field seemed sparse indeed. While there had been no shortage of grudges against Phyllis Wyvern, there had been no outright hatred: nothing that would even begin to explain her brutal strangling or the bow of motion picture film tied almost gaily round her neck.

In fact, I could still see it: that band of black celluloid at her throat, each of its frames bearing a still image of the actress herself in her peasant blouse, her defiant face shining like the sun against a dramatically darkened sky.

How could I forget it when I had seen it so often in my dreams? It was from that shocking final scene of Anna of the Steppes, alias Dressed for Dying, in which Phyllis Wyvern, as the doomed Anna Sheristikova, lays herself down in front of the advancing tractors.

In my tired mind, I fancied I could hear the sound of their snarling engines, but it was only the wind, as it howled and battered at the house.

Wind … tractors … Dieter … Feely …

When my eyes snapped open it was eight minutes past midnight.

From somewhere in the house came the sound of singing.

“O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie …”

I could see in my mind the reverently upturned faces of the villagers.

I knew instantly that, in spite of everything that had happened, the vicar had decided to observe Christmas. He had asked the men of the village to move our old Broadwood grand piano from the drawing room into the foyer, and Feely was now at the keyboard. I knew it was Feely and not Max Brock, because of the hesitating little sob she was able to extract from the instrument as the melody flew up—and then began to fall.

Because Phyllis Wyvern’s remains were still present in the house, the vicar was allowing only the more subdued carols to be sung.

I leapt out of bed and pulled on a pair of the long, mud-colored cotton stockings that Father insisted I wear outdoors in winter. Although I hated the scraggly things with a passion, I knew how cold it would be on the roof.

That done, I grabbed the powerful torch I had pinched from the pantry and passed as silently as I could into my laboratory, where I shoved a flint igniter into the pocket of my cardigan.

I gently took up the plump Rocket of Honor, cradling it in my arms for a couple of moments and smiling down upon it as lovingly as in a Nativity scene.

Then I made for the narrow staircase.

• TWENTY •

THE ROOF WAS A howling wilderness. A biting wind blew stinging gusts of snow from peak to peak, blasting my face with particles as hard as frozen sand. The weather had worsened since last I had been up here, and it was clear that the storm was far from over.

Now came the real work. Trip after trip I made, back and forth, up and down the stairs between roof and laboratory, lugging pot after pot until at last my fireworks were ranged in rings round the chimney stacks like so many unlit candles on a tiered cake.

Although it was difficult to see in the darkness, I was reluctant to switch on the torch until it became absolutely necessary. No need to attract unwanted attention from the ground, I thought, by creating a wandering will-o’-the-wisp among the dark chimney pots, which now loomed above me—tall, ominous shadows against the snowy sky. The dark clouds, sagging above my head like half-deflated blimps, were almost low enough to reach up and touch.

I had now completed my last trip and Phyllis Wyvern’s Rocket of Honor was cradled heavily in my arms. I could not possibly lug it with me round acres of roof while I completed my preparations, nor could I dump it out here in the open, where it would quickly become wet and useless.

No, I would set the thing up on the east side of one of the chimneys, where it would be sheltered from the stormy blast, ready to launch when the time came.

I trudged my way through what seemed like miles of knee-deep snow, and gave a gasp of relief when I finally spotted my destination: the towering chimney pots of Buckshaw’s west wing. With surprisingly little trouble, I set up the rocket in the midst of my flowerpot fireworks by folding down the legs of the wire tripod I had improvised from a couple of Feely’s clothes hangers.

Just one flick of the igniter and WHOOSH! Up it would climb into the night sky like a blazing comet, before exploding with a BOOM! that would awaken Saint Tancred himself, who had lain sleeping under the altar of the village church for more than five hundred years. In fact, I had added an extra cup of gunpowder to the rocket’s inner chamber to assure that the dozing Saint T would not be left out of the festivities.

The Rocket of Honor, of course, would be the finale to my show of chemical pyrotechnics. First would come the golden rains and the opening buds of red fire, giving way gradually to the bangs and booms of the Bengali Bombardes.

I hugged myself, partly in glee and partly from the cold.

I would begin with the Royal Salute, a genteel but impressive aerial display whose recipe I had found in one of Uncle Tar’s notebooks. It had been formulated originally by the famous Ruggieri brothers for King George II in 1749, and designed to accompany the music that Mr. Handel had composed especially for the Royal Fireworks display.

Since the large wooden building constructed to house the king’s musicians had been set ablaze by the fireworks and gone up in flames, and the sheer number of spectators had caused one of the spans of London Bridge to collapse under their weight into the river Thames, that first performance had not been entirely successful.

Who was to say? My re-creation of a few of those famous explosions might make up, if only a little, for what must have been at the time something of a national embarrassment.

Let the show begin!

I swept away the snow from my waterproof flowerpots and reached into my pocket for the igniter. If the wind let up even for a few seconds, one good spark would be all that was needed—a single spark to set off a display of fire they would still be talking about when I was an old lady, cackling over my chemical cauldrons.

I stepped back for one last look at my lovingly crafted explosives.

Perhaps it was because my eyes had been squeezed half shut against the blowing snow that I had not immediately noticed the second set of footprints stretching back towards the door.

Father Christmas! I thought at once. He’s parked his sleigh, walked across the roof, and gone into the house by the same door I’ve just come out.

But why? Why wouldn’t he have climbed immediately down the chimney, as he had been doing for hundreds of years?

Of course! It was suddenly as plain as a pikestaff. Father Christmas was supernatural, wasn’t he? He’d have known about my glue and steered clear of it! Did supernatural beings even leave traces in the snow?

Why hadn’t I thought of this stupidly simple point sooner and saved myself all the trouble?

But wait! Hadn’t I been up here myself, earlier, to set up my pots of fireworks?

Of course! What a little fool you are, Flavia!

I was looking at my own footprints.

And yet … almost before that thought came to mind, I knew it could not possibly be true. It had been hours since I was last on the roof. With the blowing wind and the drifting snow, my own earlier footprints would surely have been filled in within minutes. Even my fresh-made prints were already losing their sharply defined edges.

A couple of leaps brought me to the trail of tracks, and I could see at a glance, close up, that they led away from the door, not towards it.

Someone besides Flavia and Father Christmas had been up here on the roof.

And quite recently, if I was not mistaken.

Furthermore, if I had read the signs correctly, they were still up here, hiding somewhere in the snowy wastes.

“Run for it, Flavia!” the ancient, instinctive part of my brain was shrieking, and yet I was still hovering—frozen by the moment, reluctant to move even an inch—when a dark figure stepped silently out from behind the chimney pot of Harriet’s boudoir.

It was dressed in a long, old-fashioned leather aviator’s coat that reached halfway down its riding boots, the high collar turned up above the ears. Its eyes were covered with the small, round green lenses of an ancient leather helmet of the sort Harriet had worn in her flying days, and its hands gloved in long, stiff leather gauntlets.

My first thought, of course, was that this specter was my mother, and my blood froze.

Although I had longed, all of my life, to be reunited with Harriet, I did not want it to be like this. Not masked—not on a windswept roof.

I’m afraid I whimpered.

“Who are you?” I managed.

“Your past,” I thought the figure whispered.

Or was it just the wind?

“Who are you?” I demanded again.

The figure took a menacing step towards me.

Then suddenly, somewhere inside my head, a voice was speaking as calmly as the BBC wireless announcer reading out the shipping forecasts for Rockall, the Shetlands, and the Orkneys.

“Keep your head,” it was saying. “You know this person—you simply haven’t realized it yet!”

And it was true. Although I had all the information I needed, I hadn’t put together all of the pieces. This specter was really no more than someone who had dressed themselves up from the film studio’s wardrobe—someone who did not want to be recognized.

“It’s no good, Mr. Lampman,” I said, standing my ground. “I know you murdered your mother.”

Somehow it didn’t seem right to call him “Val.”

“You and your accomplice did her in and rigged her up in the costume she wore in Dressed for Dying—the role you had promised to your—what do you call it?—your mistress.”

It was almost comforting to hear the words of that old formula coming out of my mouth—the final exchange between a cold-blooded killer and the investigator who had cracked the case. It had taken a great deal of poring over the pages of Cinema Secrets and Silver Screen to dig out that final incriminating tidbit. I was proud of myself.

But not for long.

The figure made a sudden lunge, taking me by surprise, almost knocking me backwards into a snowdrift. Only by windmilling my arms and making a blind and off-balance leap backwards was I able to stay on my feet.

With my attacker blocking the way to the staircase, there was no point in making a dash for it. Better to find safety in height, like a cat.

I scrambled, slipping and sliding up onto one of the chimney collars—one that I hadn’t slathered with glue. From up here I could hold on with one arm while kicking the killer in the face, should the need arise.

It didn’t take long.

With a hiss like an infuriated snake, my attacker pulled from one of its large coat pockets a stick which I believe is called by the police a truncheon, or a billy club, and brought the thing crashing down just inches from my feet.

Whack! it went—and whack! again, the blows raining down on the brick ledge of the chimney pot with a series of sharp, sickening sounds, like bones being broken.

I had to leap like a highland dancer to keep my toes from being pulverized.

Behind me, I remembered, on the drawing room chimney, were the fuses for the fireworks—perhaps no more than ten yards away. If only I could reach them … touch the striker to the fuse … summon help … the rest of it would be in the hands of Fate.

But now the gauntlets were grabbing at my ankles, and I was kicking back at them for all I was worth.

This time I was rewarded with the sound and the feel of shoe leather on skull, and the figure reeled back with a hoarse cry of pain, clutching at its face.

Taking advantage of the moment, I edged my way round to the far side of the chimney. From there, I could leap down unseen, I hoped, onto the roof.

I had to risk it. There was no other choice.

I landed more lightly than expected and was already halfway to the drawing room chimney when my attacker spotted me and, with a cry of rage, came charging across the roof, its boots throwing up clods of snow as it came.

Out of breath, I threw myself at the chimney, this one larger than the first, and pulled myself up to safety, my hand already digging into my pocket for the igniter.

The fuses were now just below me at shoe level. With any luck, just one click would do the trick.

I ducked down and squeezed the spring handle.

Click!

And nothing more.

Too late now. My attacker was already clawing at the ledge like a maddened animal, preparing to haul itself up beside me. If that happened I was finished.

I swung at its goggled face with the torch—and missed!

The torch slipped out of my hand and fell, as if in slow motion, tumbling end over end down onto the roof, where it lay half buried in a snowdrift, shooting a crazily angled beam up into my attacker’s eyes, half blinding it.

I didn’t waste a single instant. I ducked down and flicked the igniter again.

Click! … Click! … Click! … Click! …

Infuriating! I should have coated the fuses with candle wax, but one can’t think of everything. Obviously, they had become damp.

The clutching gloves were coming uncomfortably closer. It was only a matter of time before they managed to seize my ankle and drag me down onto the roof.

With that disturbing thought in mind, I shimmied a little higher up the clay chimney pot, again working my way, as I climbed, fully round to the east side of the structure.

On the roof, my attacker followed me around, perhaps half expecting me to slip and fall. High above its horribly helmeted head, my every breath visible on the cold air, I clung like a limpet to the upper section of the chimney.

A moment passed—and then another.

I became aware of a growing warmness. Had the wind let up, or had summer suddenly come? Perhaps I was running a fever.

I thought of the thousand warnings of Mrs. Mullet.

“Sudden chills fills the ’ills,” she never tired of telling me. “The ’ills meanin’ them little ’ills in the churchyard, of course. Dress up warm, dear, if you want to get your ’undred years birthday letter from the king.”

I clutched my cardigan closed beneath my chin.

Below me, the figure had turned abruptly and was walking off towards the battlements of the west wing. It seemed like a peculiar thing to do, but almost instantly I saw the reason.

At a point on the roof directly above the drawing room, the aerial for our wireless was stretched between a pair of slender vertical bamboo poles.

Seizing the closest pole with its gauntlets, my attacker put a boot against the socketed base and gave a sharp tug. Perhaps more than anything because of the cold, the bamboo snapped off as easily as if it had been a matchstick. It was now attached only to the copper wire. A quick twist of the wrist and that, too, had broken away, leaving my assailant holding a bamboo pole with two wickedly jagged ends. From one of these dangled a white china insulator that had somehow remained attached by a twist of wire.

Again I found myself staring straight down into the upturned face of my assailant. If only I could reach out and rip the goggles from that face—but I couldn’t.

Those mad eyes stared up me through the green goggles in cold dead hatred, and a shiver shook my frame—a kind of shiver I had never known before.

Those eyes, I realized, with a sudden sickening jolt, were not ringed by their usual horn-rimmed glasses. My attacker was not Val Lampman.

“Marion Trodd is killing me!” I heard my own voice screaming, and the realization must have surprised her as much as it surprised me.

It might have been less frightening if she’d said something, but she didn’t. She stood there in the silence of the drifting snow, still glaring up at me with that look of quite impersonal hatred.

And then, as if taking a bow at the end of a play, she lifted the goggles, and slowly removed the flier’s helmet.

“It was you,” I gasped. “You and Val Lampman.”

She made a little hiss of contempt, rather like a snake. Without a word, she extended the pole and, placing it in the middle of my chest, gave a vicious shove.

I let out a cry of pain, but somehow managed to twist my body in the direction of the thrust. At the same time I dragged myself a little higher.

But I might as well have saved the effort. The end of the stick with its dangling insulator was now hovering directly in front of my face. I simply couldn’t allow her to poke me in the eyes, or to catch the corner of my mouth with the wire, like a hooked fish.

Almost without thinking I seized the end of the pole and slammed it hard against the chimney. At the shock, Marion let go of the handle, and the pole fell away silently into the snow.

Now, suddenly infuriated, as if wanting to tear me apart personally with her bare hands, she launched herself directly at me, this time managing to get a firm grip on the bricks of the ledge. She had already pulled herself halfway up when she seemed to lurch, then suddenly stall in midair like a partridge hit on the wing.

A muffled curse came to my ears.

The birdlime! The birdlime! Oh, joy—the birdlime!

I had given the downwind ledge of the drawing room chimney pot an extra slathering of the stuff on the theory that Father Christmas would choose the sheltered side to climb out of his sleigh.

Marion Trodd was tugging away fiercely, trying to rip her hands free of the stuck gloves, but the more she struggled, the more she became entangled with her riding boots and long coat.

I had wondered, idly, while preparing the stuff, if my glue would be weakened by the cold, but it was obvious that it had not. If anything, it had become stronger and stickier, and it was becoming more evident by the minute that only by undressing completely could Marion hope to escape.

I seized the moment and bent to the fuse again:

Click! Click! Click!

Curses and counter-curses! The blasted thing refused to ignite.

In the ghastly silence that followed, as Marion Trodd tried in vain to free herself, her movements becoming ever more restricted, the sound of singing came floating to my ears:

“The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight.”

I don’t know why, but the words bit at my bones.

“Dogger!” I shouted, my voice hoarse and broken in the cold air. “Dogger! Help me!”

But I knew in my heart that with everyone singing about Bethlehem, they couldn’t possibly have heard me. Besides, it was too far from the roof to the foyer—too many of Buckshaw’s bricks and timbers lay between us.

The wind had torn the words from my mouth and whipped them uselessly out and away, across the frozen countryside.

And it was then that I realized there was nothing keeping me from escape. All I had to do was leap clear of Marion Trodd, and run for the stairs.

It was almost certain that she had left the door open. Otherwise, how could she have returned to the house after finishing me off?

She bared her teeth and grimaced as I jumped, but she could not free herself enough to make a grab at me as I sailed over her shoulder. My knees buckled as I landed in a snowdrift.

I wished I had thought of a noble, defiant taunt to hurl into her snarling face, but I did not. Fear and the bitter cold had left me little more than a crouching, shivering bundle.

And then, in an instant, I was on my feet again, running across the roof as if all the hounds of hell were at my heels.

I was in luck. As I had supposed it would be, the door to the stairs stood open. Yellow light poured out onto the snow in a warm and welcoming rectangle.

Six feet to safety, I told myself.

But suddenly a black silhouette filled the doorway, blocking the light—and my escape.

I recognized it at once as Val Lampman.

I slid to a stop and tried to reverse myself, my feet slipping and sliding as if I were on skates.

I fled back across the roof, not daring to look behind me as I reached the drawing room chimney and pulled myself back up onto the first ledge. If Val Lampman was overtaking me, I didn’t want to know about it.

Perhaps I could lure him into the same trap as Marion Trodd. He didn’t yet know about the glue, and I wasn’t about to warn him.

As I scrambled higher up the chimney stack, I could see that he was walking unhurriedly across the roof. Methodically—yes, that was more the word.

It seemed likely that he had sent Marion Trodd to deal with me. She had followed me, slipping onto the roof during one of my up-and-down trips. But when she had not returned, he had come to do the dirty work himself.

He barely glanced at Marion, who was still entangled in the glue, writhing in its grip as ineffectively as a gnat stuck to flypaper.

“Val!” she shrieked. “Get me out of this!”

They were the first words she had spoken since she came onto the roof.

He turned his head—paused—and took an uncertain step towards her.

It was then I realized that the man was driven by Marion Trodd’s need for vengeance. It was at her command that he had been made to strangle his own mother.

If this was love, I wanted nothing to do with it.

At the base of the chimney, not seeming to know which of us to attend to first, he suddenly tripped—stumbled—and fell onto his elbows in the snow!

I almost cheered!

As he got shakily to his feet, I saw that he had tripped over the bamboo pole, which had been lying unseen in a drift.

“Prod her, Val!” Marion screamed hoarsely as he picked the thing up. She had already gone from thinking of her own rescue to demanding my head on a platter.

“Prod her! Knock her down. Do it now, Val! Do it!”

He looked at me—looked at her—his head swiveling, unable to make up his mind.

Then slowly, as if in a hypnotic trance, he picked up the pole and moved to a point directly below where I was clinging tightly to the chimney.

Taking his time about it, he worked the sharp end of the bamboo slowly into the collar of my cardigan, giving it an extra twist to be sure that it was secured.

The sharp tendril of wire was quickly entangled in the wool of my sweater. I could feel it stabbing me between the shoulder blades.

“No!” I managed. “Please!”

One fierce shove and I was falling—landing face-first in the suffocating snow, the breath knocked out of me.

By the time I rolled over, he was already dragging me towards the edge of the roof. My hands clutched uselessly at the air, but there was nothing to hang on to—no possible way of saving myself.

I tried to scramble to my feet but could not get a grip. He was using the pole to keep clear of my hands, my feet, and my teeth, dragging me along through the snow like a gaffed cod.

Now he had hauled me to the very edge of the battlements, and his plan was perfectly clear. He was going to shove me over.

His feet were sliding on the slippery roof as he tried to plant them firmly for that final bit of deadly pole work.

How unfairly things had turned out, it seemed to me. It was downright rotten when you came to think of it. No one deserved to die like this.

And yet Harriet had, hadn’t she?

What had been her last thoughts on that wintery mountain in Tibet? Did her life flash before her eyes, as it is said to do?

Did she have time to think of me?

“Stop it, Flavia!” a voice said inside my head, suddenly and quite distinctly.

“Stop it at once!”

I was so surprised that I obeyed.

But what was I supposed to do?

“Take stock,” the voice said, rather crabbily.

Yes! That was it—take stock.

It was ridiculously easy to do. I had nothing left to lose.

Somehow, in that moment, I managed to twist round enough to free my collar and grab on to the end of the pole. Unexpectedly, it gave me the support I needed to lurch clumsily up onto my feet.

Now we were at the very edge of the precipice, Val Lampman and I, like two tightrope walkers, each of us hanging on for dear life to opposite ends of the same bamboo pole.

He gave the thing a sudden jerk, trying to topple me, but as he did so, his foot slipped on the icy stone gutter. He let go his grip on the pole and his arms flailed wildly at the air as he fought to keep his footing.

But it wasn’t enough to save him.

In utter silence, he fell backwards and was swallowed by the night. The pole tumbled lazily after him, end over end.

From somewhere below came a sickening thump.

I was left teetering on the sloped edge, fighting desperately to keep my balance, but my feet were slipping slowly towards the edge of the battlement, now just inches away.

Desperately, I threw myself down onto my face, trying to dig my fingers into the icy stones.

It was no use.

As my feet shot out into empty space, I made one last frantic grab at a section of weather-worn lead gutter, trying to hook my fingertips onto its lip, but the stuff twisted, crumbled—almost disintegrating in my fingers—and I felt my body sliding … like a limp mannequin … over the precipice.

And then I was falling … endlessly … interminably … seemingly forever … down into darkness.

• TWENTY-ONE •

WHEN I OPENED MY eyes at last, I found myself staring straight up into the falling snow. A kaleidoscope of red and white flakes spun past, growing larger until they landed in horrid, slushy silence on the frozen mask that must have been my face.

Above me, the shadowy blur of the battlements lurched at a crazy angle, towering up into the low, scudding clouds.

There was a diffused flash, followed by a deep rumbling, as if mischievous clerks were rolling empty wine barrels in a warehouse.

Another flash—a flash that flared and faded with every pulsing beat of my heart—followed by an earsplitting Crack!

A silence followed—so intense that it hurt my ears. Only gradually did I become aware of the sizzle of the falling snow. And then …

Foom!

Something like a red candle lit up the night with a pallid and unearthly glow.

Foom! Foompf!

Now a green light and a blue joined with the red, as a comet the color of sunflowers climbed the sky and burst high overhead in a dazzling shower amid the falling snow.

The night had suddenly become an inferno of icy fire, its colors blazing with such fierce splendor that it brought hard, glassy tears to my eyes.

Foom! Foom! Faroom!

It seemed to go on forever. I was becoming too weary to watch.

Somewhere, someone was beckoning me—a summons I couldn’t resist.

“Who are you?” I wanted to shout. “Who are you?”

But I had no voice. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.

I closed my eyes upon the starry brilliance, then opened them again almost at once as a great coppery-green comet lifted itself on a tail of glittering yellow sparks and, like some celestial dragon, climbed into the sky and exploded directly overhead with an earth-shattering boom.

Rocket of Honor, I remember thinking, mentally ticking off ingredients on my imagined fingers: antimony … iron filings … potassium chlorate.

I thought for an instant of Phyllis Wyvern, the recipient of my tribute, and how sad it was that nothing of her remained alive but a series of shadowy images on coils of black film.

I thought, too, of Harriet.

And then I slept.

They were all of them gathered round my bed, their faces looming over me as if seen through a fish-eye lens. Carl Pendracka was offering me a stick of Sweet Sixteen chewing gum, while the Misses Puddock held out identical cups of steaming tea. Inspector Hewitt stood with his arm around the shoulders of his wife, Antigone, who wept silently into a dainty piece of lace. At the foot of the bed, Father stood motionless, flanked by my white-faced sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, all three of them looking as if they had just been vomited up from hell.

Dr. Darby was speaking in a low voice to Dogger, who shook his head and looked away. In the corner, her face buried in her husband Alf’s shoulder, Mrs. Mullet trembled like an autumn leaf. Behind them, Aunt Felicity was fussing with some clinking object or another in the depths of her alligator handbag.

The vicar stepped back from my bedside and whispered something that sounded like “flowers” into the ear of his wife, Cynthia.

There were others lurking in the shadows, but I could not see them clearly. The room was hot and musty. Someone must have opened up the old fireplace and set a blaze going. The smell of soot and charcoal—and something else—was on the overheated air.

What was it? Gunpowder? Saltpeter?

Or was I back in the stifling cupboard under the stairs, inhaling the fumes of the burning paper?

I coughed painfully, and began to shiver.

Nasturtiums, I thought, after a very long time. Someone has brought me nasturtiums.

Daffy had once told me, in a rather condescending tone, that the name of those smelly flowers meant “nose-twister.” But while I could easily have shot back that the stink was due entirely to the fact that their volatile oil consisted largely of sulfocyanide of allyl (C₄H₆NS), or mustard oil, I did not.

There are times when I am humble.

We had been looking through one of Harriet’s watercolor sketchbooks that day, and had come across a grouping of the pretty flowers, their papery petals a warm rainbow of orange, yellow, red, and pink.

At the bottom of the page was lightly printed in pencil, Nasturtiums, Toronto, 1930 Harriet de Luce.

At the top, obliterating one of the petals, was a heavy black rubber stamp: Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy. And in red pencil, B–.

My heart wanted to leap out of my chest and punch someone in the nose. What barbarian of a teacher had dared to award my dear dead mother a Bath bun—a beta minus?

I drew in a deep, offended breath and choked on the knot in my throat.

“Easy, dear,” said a hollow, echoing voice. “It’s all right now.”

I opened my eyes, squinting against the fierce white light, to find Mrs. Mullet beside me. She stepped quickly to the window and lowered the blind until the sun was no longer shining directly into my eyes.

It took me a couple of moments to locate myself. I was not in my bedroom, but rather on the drawing room divan. I struggled to pull myself up.

“Lie still, dear,” she said. “Dr. Darby’s give you a nice mustard police.”

“What?”

“A plaster, like. You ’ave to keep still.”

“What time is it?” I asked, still dislocated.

“Why, it’s past Christmas, ducks,” she said. “You’ve gone and missed it.”

I wrinkled my nose at the mess of clotted mustard on my chest.

“Don’t touch it, dear. You’ve gone all chesty. Dr. Darby said to leave it on for ’alf an ’our.”

“But why? I’m not sick.”

“You’ve fell off the roof. It’s the same thing. Good job they’d shoveled them drifts into such a bloomin’ great ’eap, else you’d’ve gone straight through to China.”

Roof?

It all came surging back in a tidal wave.

“Val Lampman!” I said. “Marion Trodd! They tried to—”

“Now, then,” Mrs. Mullet said. “You’re not to think of anythin’ but gettin’ better. Dr. Darby thinks you might ’ave cracked a rib, an’ ’e doesn’t want you squirmin’ about.”

She fluffed up my pillow and brushed a strand of damp hair out of my eyes.

“But I can tell you this much,” she added, with a sniff. “They’ve took ’er away with the darbies on ’er wrists. They ’ad to cut ’er loose with tin-snips. You should of seen ’er. Reg’lar pouter, she is. Kept stickin’ to everythin’ she touched—even Constable Linnet, and ’im in ’is clean uniform—and after ’is wife ’ad just washed and ironed it, ’e told me. They’ll more’n likely ’ang ’er by the neck until she’s dead, but you mustn’t let on I told you. You’re not supposed to be gettin’ all worked up.”

“But what about Val Lampman?”

Mrs. Mullet arranged a serious look on her face.

“Fell, same as you. Landed square on Miss Wyvern’s motorcar. Broke ’is neck. But remember, my lips is sealed.”

I was silent for a long time, trying to work out in my mind how to respond to this honestly not unwelcome bit of news. It appeared that Justice had made up her own mind about how to deal with Val Lampman.

My mind was suddenly filled with a series of odd, faded images—of distorted faces swimming in and out of a hazy room in which I was lying helpless.

“Mrs. Hewitt,” I said at last. “Antigone. The Inspector’s wife—is she still here?”

Mrs. Mullet shot me a puzzled look.

“Never ’as been. Not that I knows of.”

“Are you quite sure? She was standing right where you are, just a few minutes ago.”

“Then she must ’ave been a dream, mustn’t she. There’s been no one in ’ere but me and Dogger since last night. And Miss Ophelia. She insisted on sittin’ up with you and moppin’ your face. Oh, and the Colonel, of course, when Dogger found you in the snowbank and carried you in, but that was last night, wasn’t it. ’E’s not been down yet today, poor soul. Worries somethin’ awful, ’e does. I expect ’e’ll ’ave somethin’ to say to you when you’re yourself again.”

“I expect he will.”

Actually, I was quite looking forward to it. Father and I seemed to talk to each other only in the most desperate of circumstances.

Without my hearing it, the door had opened and Dogger was suddenly in the room.

“Now, then,” Mrs. Mullet said. “ ’Ere’s Dogger. I might as well get back to my mutton. They’ve eat us out of ’ouse and ’ome, that lot ’ave. It was never-endin’, like the stream in that there ’ymn.”

She bustled officiously out of the room, giving the doorknob a polish with her apron on the way out.

Dogger waited until the door had closed behind her.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked quietly.

I caught his eye, and for some stupid reason I was suddenly near tears.

I nodded my head, afraid to speak so much as a single word.

“Only foreigners cry,” Father had once told me, and I didn’t want to let down the side by blubbering.

“It was a very near thing,” Dogger said. “I should have been most upset if anything had happened to you.”

Blast it all! Now my eyes were leaking like faucets. I reached for one of the tissues Mrs. Mullet had left beside me and pretended to blow my nose.

“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I didn’t mean to be any trouble. It’s just that I … I was conducting an experiment involving Father Christmas. He didn’t come, did he?”

“We shall see,” Dogger said, handing me another tissue. “You may hawk into this.”

I had hardly noticed that I was coughing.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Dogger asked, his hand off to the right of my head.

“Two,” I said, without looking.

“And now?”

“Four.”

“What’s the atomic number of arsenic?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Very good. And the principal alkaloids in deadly nightshade?”

“That’s easy. Hyoscine and hyoscyamine.”

“Excellent,” Dogger said.

“They were in it together, weren’t they? Marion Trodd and Val Lampman, I mean.”

Dogger nodded. “She could not have overpowered Miss Wyvern alone. Strangulation by cellulose nitrate ciné film would require exceptionally strong hands and arms. It is a most slippery weapon, but with an exceedingly high tensile strength, as you, through your chemical experiments, are undoubtedly aware. A uniquely male weapon, I should say. The motive, though, remains murky.”

“Revenge,” I said. “And inheritance. Miss Wyvern was trying to tell someone—Desmond, or Bun—maybe it was Aunt Felicity. I couldn’t make it out. She knew they were planning to kill her. Since she kept up paid subscriptions to the Police Gazette and True Crime, News of the World, and so forth, she knew all the signs. She was writing her thoughts on a piece of paper when they interrupted her. She stuffed it into the toe of a boot, which they jammed onto her foot when they changed her costume. A bad mistake on their part.”

Dogger scratched his head.

“I’ll explain it later,” I said. “I’m so drowsy, I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

Dogger held out a hand.

“You may remove the mustard poultice,” he said. “I believe you’re sufficiently warmed. At least for now.”

He held out a silver tray and I handed him the reeking thing.

“Mind the tarnish,” I said, almost as a joke.

It was true, though. The sulfurous fumes would attack sterling silver before you could say “snap!”

“It’s quite all right,” Dogger said. “This one’s coated electroplate.”

I remembered with sudden shame that Father had sent the family silver to auction months ago, and I was instantly sorry for my thoughtless remark.

Without another word, Dogger pulled the quilt up under my chin and tucked me in, then went to the window and closed the curtains.

“Oh, and Dogger—” I said, when he was halfway out the door. “One more small point—Phyllis Wyvern was Val Lampman’s mother.”

“My word!” said Dogger.

• TWENTY-TWO •

“SO YOU SEE, INSPECTOR,” I said, “their idea was to do away with her in the midst of the greatest number of suspects, just as the killers did in Love and Blood. They must have seen the opportunity of shooting a film at Buckshaw as something of a godsend. Val Lampman picked the location himself.”

“Rather like an Agatha Christie,” Inspector Hewitt remarked drily.

“Exactly!”

It was now the fourth day after Christmas—December the twenty-ninth, to be precise.

After I’d spent two days and nights floating in a sweaty dream, awakening only to cough and to suck at soup fed to me on a spoon by Feely, who had insisted on keeping vigil at my bedside night and day, Dr. Darby had given grudging permission for me to be grilled by the Hinley constabulary.

“Two more days of mustard plasters, to be followed by no more than a couple of minutes with His Majesty’s Hounds,” he had said, as if I were a plate of perspiring roast beef—or an exhausted fox.

“I should be most grateful to hear your thoughts on the exchanging of Miss Wyvern’s costume,” the Inspector added. “Purely as a matter of interest, you understand.”

“Oh, that was the easy part!” I told him. “They swapped her Juliet costume for the peasant outfit she’d worn in Dressed for Dying. They’d even brought it with them. Premeditation, I believe you call it. They dressed her up, right down to her original makeup. Marion Trodd wanted it that way. You’ve probably already found Miss Wyvern’s makeup, lipstick, and nail polish in her purse. It was no more than revenge, really.”

The Inspector looked puzzled.

“Val Lampman had originally promised Marion the leading role in Cry of the Raven, but he was made to take it away from her and give it to his mother. He had to, you see. Marion was not aware, of course, that Miss Wyvern was Val’s mother, and he wasn’t about to tell her. It’s all there in Who’s Who and the back numbers of Behind the Screen and Ciné Tit-Bits. There are tons of old film magazines in the cupboard under the stairs.”

Only as I spoke the words did it occur to me to wonder who had bought them, all those years ago.

“Get onto it, Sergeant,” the Inspector said to Detective Sergeant Woolmer, who closed his notepad, turned a little red, and lumbered off in the direction of the foyer.

“Now, then, you were suggesting that Marion Trodd was formerly an actress,” he said when the sergeant had gone. “Is that it?”

“Under the name of Norma Durance, yes. Sergeant Woolmer will find it in Silver Cinema, for 1933. The September issue, I believe. It’s a bit charred, I’m afraid, but in what’s left of it, there’s quite a good photo of her as Dorita in The Little Red Hen.”

Inspector Hewitt’s Biro had been fairly flying over the page, but he stopped long enough to shoot me a surprised smile.

In spite of looking like a barrage balloon in my woolen nightie and carpet-grade dressing gown, I must have positively preened.

“They were having an affair, of course,” I added casually, and the Inspector’s eyeballs gave an involuntary twitch. I didn’t really understand all that was involved in such a relationship, and I didn’t much care, actually. Once, when I had asked Dogger what was meant by the phrase, he had told me that it described two people who had become the very best of friends, and that was good enough for me.

“Of course,” the Inspector said, in a surprisingly meek voice, scribbling away in his notebook. “Well done.”

Well done? I tried not to simper. This was high praise from a man who had, at our first meeting, sent me off to rustle up some tea.

“You’re very kind,” I said, anxious to make the moment last.

“I am, indeed,” he said. “I’ve found exasperation to be quite useless.”

“So have I,” I said, without knowing fully what I meant. In spite of that, it sounded like an intelligent response.

“Well, thank you, Flavia,” the Inspector said, getting to his feet. “This has been most instructive.”

“I’m always happy to help,” I said, not at all bashfully.

“Of course … I had already come to the same conclusion myself,” he added.

A sudden clamminess gripped me. Come to the same conclusion himself? How could he! How dare he?

“Fingerprints?” I asked coldly.

They must have found the fingerprints of the killers in the murder room.

“Not at all,” he said. “It was the knot. She was strangled with a straightforward length of ciné film to which, after death, an additional bow was added. Two distinct layers and, we believe, by two different persons, one left-handed, the other right. The inner knot—the one that actually killed her—was rather an unusual one—a bowline—often used by sailors and seldom by others. Sergeant Graves has discovered—by noticing his tattoos—that Val Lampman had served for a time in the Royal Navy, a fact that we have since been able to confirm.”

I’d spotted that myself, of course, but hadn’t had the time to follow up.

“Of course!” I said. “The outer knot was purely decorative! Marion Trodd must have added it as a finishing touch after she had swapped the costumes.”

The Inspector closed his notebook.

“There is a knot that is known to florists, who tie it with ribbon onto floral arrangements, as ‘the durance,’ ” he said. “It is, as you say, purely decorative. It was also her signature. I hadn’t spotted the connection until just now, when you were good enough to provide the missing link.”

Maestro, a few triumphant trumpets! Something by Handel, if you please! “Music for the Royal Fireworks”? Yes, that will do nicely.

“Dressed for dying,” I said with a touch of the old drama.

“Dressed for dying.” Inspector Hewitt smiled.

“Do you suppose,” I asked, “that before she became the actress Norma Durance, Miss Trodd might have been employed in a florist’s shop?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “It seems as if, by two very different roads, we’ve both come to the same destination.”

Was this another of his two-edged compliments? I couldn’t really tell, so I responded with a stupid smile.

Flavia the Sphinx, he would be thinking. The inscrutable Flavia de Luce. Or something like that.

“You’d better get some rest,” he said suddenly, making for the door. “I wouldn’t want Dr. Darby holding me responsible for your extended convalescence.”

What a dear man he was, the Inspector! “Extended convalescence,” indeed. It was so like him. No wonder his wife, Antigone, shone like a searchlight when he was by her side. Which reminded me …

“Inspector Hewitt,” I said, “before you go, I want to—”

But he cut me short.

“No need,” he said, making a shooing motion with his hands. “No need at all.”

Blast it all! Was I to be robbed of my apology? But before I could say another word, he went on:

“Oh, by the way, Antigone asked me to compliment you on rather a spectacular display of fireworks. Despite the fact that you appear to have broken almost every single provision of the Explosives Acts of 1875 and 1923, discussion of which we shall leave until the Chief Constable has been coaxed down off the ceiling, she tells me your little show was seen and heard in Hinley. In spite of the snow.”

“In spite of the snow,” Father was saying, with what sounded, incredibly, like a measure of pride in his voice. “A friend of Mrs. Mullet’s reported seeing a distinct reddish glow in the southern sky at East Finching, and someone told Max Brock that the explosions were heard as far away as Malden Fenwick. By that time the snowfall was abating, of course, but still, when you stop to think of it … quite remarkable. A lightning bolt during a snowstorm is not completely unheard of, of course. I rang up my old friend Taffy Codling, who happens to be the Met officer at the Leathcote air base. Taffy tells me that although exceedingly rare, the phenomenon was indeed recorded in the early hours of Christmas morning, just about the time of your … ah … Flavia’s … ah … misadventure.”

I hadn’t heard Father say so many words since he had confided in me at the time of Horace Bonepenny’s murder. And the fact that he had used the telephone to find out about the lightning! Was the world coming off its hinges?

I had been cleaned up and arranged on the divan in the drawing room as if I were one of those Victorian heroines who are always dying of consumption in Daffy’s novels.

Everyone was gathered round me in a circle like the game of Happy Families we had once dragged out of a cupboard when it had been raining for three weeks, and had played endlessly at the dining room table with grim and determined hilarity.

“They think a bolt of lightning touched off your fireworks,” Daffy was saying. “So you can hardly be held responsible, can you? It left a ruddy great hole in the roof, though. Dogger had to organize a bucket brigade of villagers. What a smashing show! Too bad you missed it!”

“Daphne,” Father said, giving her one of those looks he reserves for marginal language.

“Well, it’s true,” Daffy went on. “You should have seen the lot of us standing round, up to our duffs in drifts, gaping like a gang of adenoidal carolers!”

“Daphne …”

The vicar clamped his jaws shut, trying to suppress an angelically silly grin. But before Daffy could offend again, there was a light tapping at the door, and a tentative nose appeared.

“May I come in?”

“Nialla!” I said.

“We’ve just come to say good-bye,” she whispered theatrically, coming fully into the room, a swaddling bundle cradled in her arms. “The film crew’s gone, and Desmond and I are the last ones here. He was going to drive me home in his Bentley, but it seems to have frozen up. Dr. Darby happens to be running up to London for an old boys’ dinner, and he’s offered to drop the baby and me right at our own front door.”

“But isn’t it too soon?” Feely asked, speaking for the first time. “Couldn’t you stay awhile? I’ve hardly had a chance to see the baby, what with all the goings-on.”

She wrinkled her brow in my direction as she said it.

“Too kind, I’m sure,” Nialla said, looking round the room from face to face. “It’s been lovely seeing all of you again, and Dieter, too, but Bun’s put me onto someone who’s working on a new film adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Oh, please don’t grimace at me like that, Daphne—it’s work, and it will keep us fed until the real thing comes along.”

Father shuffled his feet and looked cautiously out from beneath his eyebrows.

“I’ve told Miss Gilfoyle she is welcome to stay as long as she likes, but …”

“… but she must be getting along,” Nialla finished brightly, smiling down at the child in her arms and brushing an imaginary something off its chin.

“He looks a little like Rex Harrison,” I said. “Especially his forehead.”

Nialla blushed prettily, glancing at the vicar, as if for support.

“I hope he has his father’s brains,” she said, “and not mine.”

There was one of those long, uncomfortable silences during which you pray in earnest that no one will make a rude noise.

“Ah, Colonel de Luce, here you are,” said the world-famous voice, and Desmond Duncan made his entrance with as polished and attention-getting a stride as had ever been stridden in front of a ciné camera or a West End audience. “Dogger told me I should find you here. I’ve been awaiting the opportunity to convey to you some remarkably good news.”

In his hand was the copy of Romeo and Juliet he had pocketed in the library.

“ ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news,’ or so, at least, said the apostle Paul, quoting Isaiah, but presumably speaking of his own feet, in his letter to the Romans,” the vicar remarked to no one in particular.

Everyone glanced at once at Desmond Duncan’s Bond Street shoes, but when they realized their mistake, they all stared intently instead at the ceiling.

“This quite unassuming little volume, which has turned up in your library, is, if I am not mistaken, a Shakespeare First Quarto. That it is of great value is beyond question, and I should be guilty of a cruel trespass if I pretended it was not.”

He scanned the cover, removed his glasses, glanced at Father, restored the glasses, and opened the book to the title page.

“John Danter,” he said, in a slow, reverent whisper, holding the book out for inspection.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Father said.

Desmond Duncan drew in a deep breath.

“Unless I miss my bet, Colonel de Luce, you are the possessor of a First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet. Printed in 1597 by John Danter. Pity about the modern inscription, though. You could, perhaps, have it professionally removed.”