Alan Bradley - I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

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.