I stared down for a moment into the lobster-red face of the chemist.
I held the pose just long enough that the astonished Wanless could see what I had done. Then, freeing my hair from the ring with a flick of my head, I stuck out a helping hand and began to haul him up out of the hole.
“Oh, you poor soul,” I cooed, hoping it would sound genuine. “The beastly ring was jammed. I had a very dickens of a time getting it open. How brave of you not to have panicked! If it were me”—I shuddered—“I should have shed a kidney.”
I know…I know. But sometimes it’s necessary.
I steadied his shaking arm as he came scrambling up out of the open hatch like a sailor escaping a sinking submarine.
It was easy enough to see that the man had worked himself up into a tizzy. Claustrophobia, I thought. No point in staring and embarrassing him.
“I’ll just take my prints, then, and be on my way,” I said, in that cheery voice that makes people want to strangle you.
I was simply dying to whistle “Someday My Prints Will Come,” but I thought better of it.
“There are no prints,” Wanless muttered, running his finger round the inside of his collar.
“They didn’t turn out?” I asked. My heart began to sink.
“I expect they did,” he said. “Howland had to charge extra for the expedited service.”
“That’s all right,” I said blithely. “I don’t mind paying. How much will it be?”
“You don’t understand,” the chemist said. “Howland must have dealt with it while I was out. They’ve already been picked up. Picked up and paid for. Less than an hour ago. It’s marked in his receipt book.”
He pointed toward the cellar.
My jaw fell open.
“Picked up by whom, may I ask?” I demanded, stiffening my spine like Aunt Felicity. I’d show this impertinent tradesman a thing or two! “They were my photographs.”
But wait—best not to get too shirty. Perhaps Hob had picked up the snapshots and was lurking somewhere, chortling at the thought of surprising me with the finished prints.
“Ah,” I said, relieved at the idea. “My friend—the little lad…”
Wanless gave me a quizzical look.
“They were signed for by Constable Otter,” he said.
How did Otter know about the prints? I thought. Had Hob told him? Or had he spotted the camera at the riverbank after all and decided to let it lead where it may—as I should have done, in his boots.
I tried not to gulp. I mustn’t panic. If Hob’s aerial photographs showed anything at all—which I wasn’t sure of—I didn’t want them falling into the hands of Constable Otter.
I’ll admit my reasons were selfish ones, but Otter had the full force of the law at his command, while I had only my wits. Would he have been so bold as to open the envelope and have a peep at someone’s private prints? If he was any kind of investigator, he almost certainly would. I had already noted his keenness.
One thing was certain: I needed to find Constable Otter immediately, and to recover the photographs without arousing suspicion.
I have always believed that it’s better to seize the bull by the horns than to be bitten in the backside. At the risk of dragging in too many animals, I would beard the lion in his den.
And, like Daniel in the book of the same name, I would trust in the Almighty to zip the lion’s lips.
·FOURTEEN·
THE VOLESTHORPE CONSTABULARY—A DANK and moss-covered stone guardhouse—was located in the market square. It must once have been used as the village lockup.
One could easily imagine a set of wooden stocks at the door, facing the village green, where the village rowdies and hotheads were left to cool their heels—and their heads—until the alcohol wore off.
Attached to the rear, as an afterthought, were what I took to be the bachelor living quarters of Constable Otter: a wooden lean-to built along the lines of a Quonset hut cut in half and rammed up against the original medieval jail.
The constable’s bicycle, with his rainproof cape lashed to the carrier, was parked out in front under the blue lamp.
The lion was at home.
I threw back my shoulders and straightened my back. “Don’t slouch,” Daffy was always telling me, “otherwise you’ll look like me.”
My sister affected a scholarly slouch of which she was particularly proud. “Bent under the burden of knowledge,” she was fond of saying. “A cripple for culture.”
I took a deep breath, stuck out my chin, stuffed make-believe shoulder pads into my blouse, arranged my features into what I thought Joan Crawford might look like in such a situation, and marched in the door.
Constable Otter looked up from the battered-looking counter at which he was writing.
“Well?” he asked.
“I believe you have my photographs,” I said coldly, holding out my hand, palm up, to receive them.
“Have I, now?” he asked in a teasing tone.
So! It was going to be one of those conversations. A catalog of condescension.
Well, two could play at that game. I was glad I had been alerted so early on.
“Yes,” I said. “You have. The chemist gave them to you—to give to me.”
I moved closer and stuck out my hand again—too close to his face to be ignored.
“Is that what he said?”
Actually, he hadn’t. I was bluffing and he knew it.
We were eye to eye. Which of us would blink first?
“Well?” he asked again.
Maddening.
He pulled them from under the counter, running a finger teasingly along the flap of the envelope, as if he was about to open it and remove the prints. The man was toying with me. I had to do something—and quickly.
“Constable,” I said, “I wish to remind you that those photographs are my personal property. As such, they are protected by several Acts of Parliament. Unless you are seizing them in evidence, you have no right of possession. You are breaching my privacy.”
Otter ought to have known better. I saw a slight haziness come into his eyes, like a scattering of cloud beginning to cross the moon.
I had made him think.
I was still bluffing, of course, but that’s just part of the game and, in my opinion, one of the most enjoyable. She who bluffs last bluffs best.
Taking care not to lay it on too thick, I moved my hand even closer, making it easier for him to give up the envelope.
He began to gnaw, almost invisibly, at his lower lip.
“And did you take these pictures yourself, miss?” he asked, thrusting his face forward in a determined manner.
Of course I had taken them. Hadn’t I removed the film cartridge from Hob’s camera with my own hands?
Does God forgive you when you intentionally pretend to misunderstand? This was probably one of those questions that tormented the ancient saints in their lonely cells in the tiny hours of the night.
Would the Creator actually cast you, forever, into Hell’s deepest coal cellars, merely for using the wits that He gave you?
It seemed most unlikely.
And yet, I didn’t want to perjure myself—at least not officially—by lying aloud.
I would compromise.
“Surely, in your profession, Constable,” I said, “you will recall the case of Nottage v. Jackson (1883), in which Justice Bowen ruled that the prints taken from a negative are to be appropriated to the use of the customer only.”
It wasn’t for nothing that I kept a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, in the eastern upstairs loo at Buckshaw.
Were the constable’s eyes clotting, or was it just my imagination?
“You’re a regular clever clogs, aren’t you?” he said at last.
“No, Constable Otter, I am not,” I replied, holding out my hand again. “But I am a girl who knows her rights. My pictures, if you please.”
And by the jingling Jeremiah, he handed them over, holding the p
acket between his thumb and middle finger as if it had suddenly begun to reek.
I offered up a rapid prayer of thanks to Bernardine of Siena, the patron saint of bluffers and gamblers.
“Thank you,” I said, removing the envelope slowly from his hand, and trying to keep my voice from sounding too shirty.
No need to rush. Keep a cool head, Flavia.
Taking my time, I looked slowly round the barren room, then back to the glaring policeman.
“Quite a nice place you have here, Constable Otter. But I think a few flowers would vastly improve it.”
I left him to work out what I meant.
And then, shooting him a horrible smile that was a half inch short of a grimace, I sailed out the door of the constabulary as grandly as if I were the Queen Elizabeth.
I had made an enemy. I just knew it.
—
I was strolling up the high street, looking for a place to study the snapshots undisturbed. Because of the circus, I supposed, there were little knots of people everywhere, with privacy nowhere in sight.
I was walking past a shop whose window was full of yarn: skeins and balls of yarn of every color imaginable—and a few shades that weren’t. I had just paused for a closer look at an antique colander full of wicked-looking knitting needles, when a voice said:
“Pssst! Flavia.”
I spun round. There was no one there. No one within fifteen or twenty feet of me.
“Pssst! Flavia!”
More urgent this time.
Failing any other choice, I looked up: up into the branches of a plane tree that overhung the pavement. And there, perched like a cocky sparrow, grinning down at me, legs dangling from a limb, was Hob.
“Come on up!” he hissed, making the universal beckoning signs with his hands and fingers.
I made a hasty reconnaissance of the street to make sure no one was watching, then, with a sudden leap, hauled myself up amongst the branches and settled on the limb beside him.
It was like a cool, green cathedral here in the tree. A slight breeze stirred the leaves, providing a welcome refreshment from the hot, tired air of a summer afternoon.
“Oh, good! You got the snapshots,” Hob said, reaching for the envelope. “Let’s have a look and see how they turned out.”
Something in me resisted handing them over, but I realized at once that in spite of Constable Otter, in spite of Nottage v. Jackson, and in spite of Justice Bowen, when it came to Hob’s ownership of these snaps, I hadn’t a chance.
My inner dog-in-the-manger crawled back into its bed of straw.
“Of course!” I said, overcompensating with cheerfulness. “You go first.”
I passed him the envelope and watched impatiently as he slowly lifted the flap, peered into the envelope as if he were applying his eye to a telescope, looked up to grin at me, stuck two fingers into the packet, and pulled the photos halfway out.
I could have strangled him.
And yet, in my heart, I remembered having done things every bit as maddening myself on many occasions. Manufactured mysticism was such a wonderful way of stretching a happy instant to the breaking point; a way of causing a brief moment of sharing to form even a fraction of some new infinity. And I realized now, for the first time, that these brief and fleeting joys were little more than sadness with a mask on.
“Let’s have a dekko,” I said, pretending to grab for the photos, but Hob jerked them away, giggling.
“Bags it me,” he said, settling the matter beyond dispute. It is a fact of life that, among civilized people anywhere in the world, a basic “bags it” trumps everything, including, I suspect, even Judgment Day.
Pretending to be bored, I gazed off into the distance, waiting impatiently for Hob to thumb his way through the prints.
He made a rude noise with his mouth.
“Spoiled,” he said. “All of them.”
“Oh?” I said airily. “Why?”
“The camera moved. They’re blurry.”
“What do you expect when the camera’s bobbing around on the end of a kite? Let’s have a look.”
Hob handed over the photos with no further interest.
“You have to wait until the string tied to the shutter is already tight. You mustn’t jerk it too hard. I tried to wait until the wind was pulling steadily.”
“Well, there wasn’t much of a wind, as I recall,” I said, thumbing through the photos.
Hob was right. Most of them were no more than hopeless smudges of light and shadow.
All except one.
“Hold on,” I said. “This one’s almost perfect.”
Hob leaned over for a second look.
“It’s looking in the wrong direction,” he said. “I was trying to take a view of the river and the circus.”
“And so you did,” I said, pointing to the foreground. “Look: Here’s our punt on the river. That’s me dabbling my hand over the side.”
I did not draw attention to the dark submerged mass in whose dead mouth my fingers were firmly hooked.
“Pfah!” Hob said. “You can have it. That’s not what I wanted.”
How well I knew the feeling! As a scientist, I’d learned to incorporate unexpected results into my data. There was, for instance, the time I had charged Feely’s hot water bottle with a mixture of naphtha and turpentine, both of which are capable, after a certain delay, of dissolving India rubber. Although Feely had been too embarrassed to report the outcome, I knew by her looks next morning at the breakfast table that I was the prime suspect.
When I retrieved the wreckage later that day from the refuse bin, I found that I had accidentally discovered what I believed to be a previously unknown solvent, a single whiff of which was powerful enough to strip paint from battleships at a distance of six miles.
Spirit of Flavia, I intended to call the stuff, but not until I had got around to writing it up for the chemical journals. So far, I simply hadn’t had the time.
I slipped Hob’s print into my pocket. I would study it later at my leisure under a magnifying glass.
“Did your father find you?” I asked, trying to change the subject and—yes, I admit it—draw attention away from the photographs.
I had almost forgotten that I’d been looking for Hob when I happened upon him.
“No,” Hob said.
“Then you’d better run home,” I told him. “He was asking for you at the Oak and Pheasant.”
Hob sniffed.
“I’m not a boozer, you know.”
“Perhaps he’d looked everywhere else,” I suggested. “Perhaps he thought someone had seen you.”
“He’s checking up on me,” Hob said, examining his fingernails. “He’s afraid I’m hanging round the circus.”
“Like Orlando Whitbread?” I asked. The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Hob’s mouth fell open.
“How could you know that?” he asked. “Are you a witch?”
“Yes, I am,” I told him, enjoying the moment. “I practice a specialized kind of witchcraft called thinking. It’s a very mysterious power. Quite unknown to the average person.”
I wiggled my fingers at him like a nest of little worms, as if casting a spell. “Now then, tell me about Orlando Whitbread before I turn you into a turnip.”
Hob shrugged, unimpressed.
“Orlando played the Widow Twankey in the panto. He pulled a string of sausages out of the horse’s—well, you know. I’m not allowed to say the word.”
“Bottom?” I suggested.
He nodded furiously.
“He made me laugh until I sicked,” he said. “Da had to take me home. I ruined the new jumper I got for Christmas.”
I wrinkled my face in appreciation.
“ ’Cause we had spaghetti for dinner,” he added, trying to outdo himself.
Although, like Mr. Gradgrind in Dickens, I have always had a fondness for facts, this was a little too much sauce even for my liking.
“What a good memory you ha
ve,” I said, trying to be encouraging, but not too encouraging.
It was odd. Although I had never experienced such a thing before, I was suddenly feeling the need to display a certain maturity. I must tread carefully.
“What did Orlando do when he wasn’t pulling sausages out of horses?” I asked. “Did he have a job?”
“He walked by the river,” Hob said. “Talking to himself—or someone invisible. Waving his arms around.”
“Is that all?”
“I guess so.”
It seemed obvious that Orlando must have been either a madman or an actor rehearsing his lines.
“Well, I’d better be on my way, then,” I said.
The day was getting on, and the heat was having its effect. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to put my head on a cool pillow and allow my thoughts to collect themselves.
What a disaster it would be—and how embarrassing—to fall out of a tree from fatigue.
I needed to eat and I needed to sleep.
Murder would simply have to wait.
“Wait,” Hob said, as I began to pick my way down the tree.
“What?” I asked snappishly.
“Nothing,” he said, seemingly hurt. “I just didn’t want you to go.”
I felt like a heel.
I was beginning to feel a headache coming on, and this time it was genuine. I could already feel the invisible octopus wrapping its tentacles round my temples.
I’d barely eaten for hours, I realized. Even in a young person such as myself, the finely tuned chemical factory that is the human body cannot run forever on cheese and pickled onions.
Little has been written about the exhausting effects of a late summer afternoon’s heat, but I intend to do so. Like the weather, everyone knows about it, but no one does anything about it.
I would use myself as a guinea pig. Yes, that was it! With proper microscopic examination of blood samples taken at regular intervals and chemically analyzed at every step, I would show that lack of food in a hot environment and in the presence of mental stress could result in a kind of blood poisoning.