I had discovered these plates almost by accident while investigating in my laboratory a more efficient way than opening a window of venting poisonous gases, such as hydrogen cyanide, and so forth, to the outside air without killing my own flesh and blood.
These iron plates at the back of each fireplace, coated with generations of soot, could with a little persistence be easily unscrewed and removed.
I should have brought something to catch the soot—an old quilt or blanket, perhaps—but it was too late now. I needed to listen in on Feely’s conversation with someone I was quite sure had to be the only visitor Buckshaw had received in months. The topic was almost certainly her wedding, whose details were, for some inexplicable reason, being kept from me. I didn’t want to miss a word more than was necessary.
I had heard somewhere that chimney sweeps had used sheets to drape the furniture which, from my viewpoint, couldn’t have been more convenient. Because it was closest to hand, I stripped back her comforter and whipped off the top sheet from Feely’s bed. I would replace it with a fresh one later.
I spread the sheet on the cold hearth, ducked down as if I were passing through a low door, and stood up with my head inside the fireplace.
Ah! Here it was—just above my head. By climbing up onto the grate I could easily get at the screws that held the plate in position. I felt out the slots with my thumbnails.
It is important to remember, when removing cast-iron fittings in chimneys, to be quiet about it, since brick transmits the slightest sound with wonderful efficiency.
The plate came away without a struggle, and I put it down carefully on the sheet.
Next I took the two funnels—a large one of tin and a small one of glass—and shoved the spout of each into opposite ends of the rubber hose.
I slipped the larger funnel into the new opening and then, playing out the rubber hose as if it were a rope, slowly … carefully … inch by inch … foot by foot—lowered away.
After what seemed like forever, the full length of the hose was dangling down the chimney. If my calculations were correct, the large funnel was now about level with the drawing-room fireplace.
I put the small funnel to my ear, just in time to hear Feely say, “I thought perhaps something from Elgar. ‘The Angel’s Farewell.’ It’s very British.”
“Yes, but rather too Catholic, don’t you think?” the stranger’s voice replied. “Based on a poem by the turncoat Newman. It would be tantamount to doing ‘Ave Maria.’ Don’t want to put wrong ideas into the girls’ heads. They’ll all be there, you know. They all adored him.”
I knew instantly that I was eavesdropping on a conversation between Feely and Alberta Moon, the music mistress at St. Agatha’s—Alberta Moon, who the vicar had said would be devastated to hear of Mr. Collicutt’s death. They were not discussing Feely’s wedding, but rather Mr. Collicutt’s funeral.
“Perhaps the Nunc Dimittis,” Feely said. “ ‘Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’ He played it so often at Evensong. I thought we might ask Miss Tanty to sing it as a solo.”
There was a cold silence, made colder and longer by the length of rubber tube through which I was listening.
“No, I think not, Ophelia. Miss Tanty, to be quite plain about it, hated his intestines.”
This was followed by a brittle laugh.
Feely said something which I couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded as if she were upset. I removed the glass funnel from the hose and jammed the end of the rubber tubing directly into my ear.
“… had many a jolly old girl-to-girl with her at the school before she hung up her hatchet,” Miss Moon was saying. “… in the days when we were still managing to be civil to each other.”
I’d forgotten that Miss Tanty had been Miss Moon’s predecessor at St. Agatha’s.
“And as difficult as it may be for you to believe, it is perhaps my bounden duty to inform you that she had what my girls would call ‘a mad pash’ for Crispin.”
Crispin? Aha! She was talking about Mr. Collicutt.
“Oh, don’t look shocked, Ophelia. Of course she was old enough to be his mother but still, as you ought to know by now, one must never underestimate the juices of a soprano.”
To my ears—or rather to my ear, since I was eavesdropping with a rubber tube shoved into just one of them—Miss Moon sounded more angry than devastated.
“I will not have that woman singing a solo at Crispin’s funeral! The would-be lover scorned being allowed to warble over the loved one’s remains? It is simply not on, Ophelia. You may put it out of your head. No, I shall do the honors myself. Purcell, I think. ‘When I Am Laid in Earth,’ from Dido and Aeneas. The very thing. I shall accompany myself and sing from the organ bench, so there shall be no need for you to learn the piece.
“No, no. No need to thank me. I’m sure you have quite enough on your plate these days without— Such a pity about Buckshaw, isn’t it? I saw the sign at the gates. Too shocking. But then we must look on the bright side. A little birdie tells me that you yourself will soon have cause to celebrate. We’re all so happy for you, Ophelia, really we are.
“What’s his name, from up at Culverhouse Farm? Victor? I know that you and Victor will—” It was too much!
I picked up the small glass funnel from the grate and rammed its end back into the hose. I put it to my mouth and shouted into it, “Dieter! It’s Dieter, you stupid old sea cow!”
What had I done? Had I let a moment of anger destroy the de Luces’ last scrap of dignity? Was Saint Tancred, in the church, shaking his wooden head in bloody disbelief that one of his descendants could behave like such a drip?
I put the funnel to my ear again and listened. There was nothing but silence.
And then a door slammed.
A moment later came the sound of heels on the hearth and then the unmistakable grating of fingers on the distant end of my rubber hose.
Strangled by the narrow tube, Feely’s thin voice, like that of an angered elf, came leaking from between my fingers and out the tiny trumpet of the funnel.
“I hate you!” it said.
• TWENTY •
HOW COULD A SINGLE village, nestled miles from anywhere in the English countryside, contain both a Miss Tanty and a Miss Alberta Moon? Mathematically speaking, of course, Providence should have placed them at opposite ends of the country—one at Land’s End and the other at John o’ Groat’s.
I was thinking this as I came down the west staircase, Feely’s bagged sheet full of soot in my hand. I would scatter the stuff somewhere on the Visto, where it would sooner or later be washed away by the rain. I had already found a clean sheet in a cupboard and installed it quite neatly on Feely’s bed. I would wash this one in the laboratory, hang it up to dry in my bedroom, and return it to storage at my leisure. No one would be any the wiser.
Feely was standing at the bottom of the stairs, tapping her foot.
I almost turned and ran, but I did not. Something in me froze my legs. Oh, well, sooner or later, she would find me anyway. There was no real escape. I might as well take my medicine now and get it over with.
As I stepped awkwardly off the last step, Feely came flying at me.
I dropped the sheet, soot and all, and covered my eyes.
She seized me by the shoulders. She was going to crush the breath out of me—break my ribs, like the hulking American wrestlers we had seen in the newsreel at the cinema.
“You were magnificent!” she said, giving me a squeeze.
“Thank you!”
I broke free, not trusting her.
“A few minutes ago, you hated me,” I pointed out.
“That was then—this is now,” Feely said. “I’ve had time to consider it. Perhaps I was a bit hasty.”
I knew that this was as close to an apology as I was likely to receive from Feely in this or any other lifetime.
“ ‘Stupid old sea cow’!” Feely said, shaking her head. “You ought to have seen her face. I thought for a moment she w
as going to have an accident on our carpet.”
My sister could be remarkably crude when she forgot herself.
“You’re welcome,” I said, still basking a bit in Feely’s unexpected thanks and wanting the feeling to last for as long as possible.
With this abrupt ending of hostilities, my brain was suddenly bubbling over with goodwill, simply dying to share with her the news that she might have the blood of a saint flowing in her veins—to tell her about poor little Hannah Richardson, the tomb of Cassandra Cottlestone, and my discovery of Jocelyn Ridley-Smith.
I wanted to hug her, as I had hugged Daffy. I wanted to embrace her bones.
But I could not. It was as if both of us had been born north poles of the same magnet—as if, because of it, we should have been identical but were, in fact, repellent to each other—forever pushed apart by some mysterious but invisible power.
“When’s the funeral?” I asked lamely.
“Next Tuesday,” Feely said. “After Easter is out of the way.”
Although I was a little surprised to hear my pious sister refer to one of the greatest festivals of the Church as something to be got out of the way, I said nothing. I was learning, at least where Feely was concerned, to hold my tongue.
“Will they be having an open coffin?” I asked.
I was certainly hoping they would. It would be better, I thought, to remember Mr. Collicutt without the gas mask.
“Heavens, no,” Feely said. “The vicar does not approve of open caskets. In fact, he strongly discourages the practice. The Order for the Burial of the Dead emphasizes the resurrection, not the death. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.’ ”
“I expect it puts a bit of a damper on things to have a corpse lying there bang in the middle with a poker face,” I said.
“Flavia!”
“Speaking of poker faces,” I said, “I ran into Miss Tanty in the church.”
I did not mention that there had been blood dripping from the rafters.
“So I am given to understand,” Feely said.
Blast! Was there no privacy in this village?
But who could have told her? Certainly not the vicar, and even more certainly not Adam Sowerby. She didn’t even know the man. Mad Meg, of course, was out of the question.
Feely must have seen the look of puzzlement on my face.
“ ‘The successful organist,’ ” she quoted, “ ‘must have fingers long enough to reach the stops, legs long enough to reach the pedal board, and ears long enough to reach into the lives of every choir member.’ Whanley on the Organ and Its Amenities, chapter thirteen, ‘Management of the Choristers.’
“Actually, I heard it from the lips of Jezebel herself,” she admitted.
“Jezebel?”
I had made a note to pry Miss Tanty’s details out of Feely, but had hardly expected them to come gushing out before I had even, so to speak, fingered the lock.
“Oh, surely you must have noticed,” Feely said. “Those two old harpies, Miss Moon and Miss Tanty, primping and preening, hurling themselves onto the ashes at the feet of poor Mr. Collicutt. It was like watching a Roman chariot race.”
“And the perfumes!” I said, eager to join in the game. “Backfire and Evening in Malden Fenwick.”
“Jealousy,” Feely added, and I wondered for a moment why I didn’t talk to my sister more often.
But our laughter faded quickly, as it often does when it is artificial, and we were left in an embarrassed silence.
“Why would Miss Tanty cry out, ‘Forgive me, O Lord,’ when she saw the blood?”
I was assuming Miss Tanty had told Feely about the blood.
“Because she needs to be the center of attention—even when a saint bleeds.”
“She told me it was a performance,” I said, not volunteering that I had heard this later at Miss Tanty’s house. “She fancies herself a detective and wants to become involved in the case—wants someone to think she may even be the killer.”
“The killer?” Feely snorted. “Horse eggs! She couldn’t see to kill an elephant if it were standing on her toes. And as for being a detective, why, the woman couldn’t find her own bottom if it weren’t buttoned on.”
“God bless her all the same,” I said. It was a formula we used whenever we had gone too far.
“God bless her all the same,” Feely echoed, rather sourly.
“Which leaves Miss Moon,” I suggested subtly.
“Why would Miss Moon kill Mr. Collicutt?” Feely asked. “She doted on him. She brought him bags full of her dreadful homemade saltwater toffee. She even took it upon herself to wash his surplices and handkerchiefs.”
“Really?” I asked, my mind flashing instantly to the white ruffle protruding from the gas mask.
“Of course,” Feely said. “Mrs. Battle has always drawn the line at doing her boarders’ laundry.”
Which gave me an idea.
“Your ears are already long enough to reach into the lives of every choir member,” I said with a grin. “You’re going to make a whizzo organist, Feely!”
“Yes, I expect I am,” she agreed. Then, pointing to the sooty bundle on the floor, she added, “Now clean up this god-awful mess before I tell Father.”
Mrs. Battle’s boardinghouse, an ancient structure of warped, weathered clapboards and peeling paint, stood in a rutted yard on the south side of the road, halfway between St. Tancred’s and the Thirteen Drakes. In earlier times it had been a public house, the Adam and Eve, its name and the words “Ales & Stouts” still faintly visible in faded letters above the door. The whole place sagged in the middle like a serpent and had a general air of dampness.
I knocked and waited.
Nothing happened and I knocked again.
Still nothing.
Perhaps, I thought, as with the butcher’s shop in Nether-Wolsey, the owner was in the garden.
I strolled casually round the back as if I were a rather dopey tourist who had lost her way.
The area behind the house was like an archaeological dig: heaps of sand like giant hedgehogs, their backs bristling with shovels. Everywhere were untidy piles of boards and bags of cement. Everywhere broken rocks were strewn about as if in a temper tantrum by a baby giant.
The home of George Battle’s stonemasonry business.
I peeped into a dim shed which stood to one side. More cement, a wooden box of trowels, an old-fashioned sloping desk with accounting books and inkwells, a row of pegs upon which hung various pieces of black rubber rainwear, an electric ring and enamel teakettle, and a blanket flung into the corner which might once have been lain upon by a long-dead dog.
No point in snooping too much, I thought. Someone might be watching from a back window of the house.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my cardigan, looked up at the sky as if carelessly checking the weather, and sauntered, whistling, back round to the front door.
I knocked again … and again. A regular volley of knocks.
After what seemed like an hour, heavy footsteps came lumbering toward the door and a lace curtain fluttered in one of the side windows.
An eye peered out and then withdrew.
After another painfully long moment, the cracked china doorknob turned slowly through a few degrees and the door swung inward to reveal a long tunnel of darkness that led away almost to infinity, ending in a small scrap of distant daylight somewhere at the back of the house.
“Well?”
The voice came from somewhere in the gloom.
“Mrs. Battle?” I said. “I’m Flavia de Luce, from Buckshaw. May I come in?”
Ask and ye shall receive, I had been told to believe, but it didn’t work. It’s difficult for the average person to refuse such a direct request, but Mrs. Battle was obviously not an average person.
“Why?” she demanded.
“It’s about Mr. Collicutt,” I said. “Actually, it’s rather private. I’d prefer to discuss it indoors where we can’t be overheard.”
Step two: Insinuate that your message is both secret and juicy.
“Well …” she said, wavering.
“I don’t want anyone to see me here,” I said, lowering my voice and looking back over both shoulders as if checking for eavesdroppers.
“Come,” she commanded, and a fleshy hand from the shadows behind the door beckoned me into the gloom.
After the bright light of the outdoors it took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did, I found myself face-to-face with the lady of the house. Or at least half face-to-face. The other half was still hidden in shadows behind the door.
Although I had seen Mrs. Battle now and then about the village, it had always been at something of a distance, and I had never actually spoken to the woman. Up close, she was larger than I remembered, and more red-faced.
“Well?”
“Actually …” I said, using the word a second time.
The word “actually,” like its cousin “frankly,” should, by itself, be a tip-off to most people that what is to follow is a blatant lie—but it isn’t.
“Actually …” I said again, “it’s about my sister Feely. Ophelia, I mean.”
“Yes?”
The eye widened a little in the gloom. So far, so good. I had rehearsed the entire conversation in my mind as I pedaled to the village from Buckshaw.
I shifted from foot to foot, glancing uneasily about the dark-paneled hallway as if in fear of being overheard.
“She’s … she’s getting married, you see, and there are certain letters …”
Daffy had once read us a French novel in which this was the plot.
I held my breath and strained to make my face red, although my effort was probably wasted in the darkness.
“Mr. Collicutt—” I began to explain.
“Letters, is it?” Mrs. Battle said. “I see. And you want them back.”
Just like that!
I bit my lip and nodded my head.
“For your sister.”
I nodded again, trying to remember how to look desolate.
“Very sweet,” she said. “Very touching. You must love her.”
I brushed away an imaginary tear and wiped my finger elaborately on my skirt.