Alan Bradley - I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

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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.”