Alan Bradley - I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

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.