Alan Bradley - I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Dr. Darby was speaking in a low voice to Dogger, who shook his head and looked away. In the corner, her face buried in her husband Alf’s shoulder, Mrs. Mullet trembled like an autumn leaf. Behind them, Aunt Felicity was fussing with some clinking object or another in the depths of her alligator handbag.

The vicar stepped back from my bedside and whispered something that sounded like “flowers” into the ear of his wife, Cynthia.

There were others lurking in the shadows, but I could not see them clearly. The room was hot and musty. Someone must have opened up the old fireplace and set a blaze going. The smell of soot and charcoal—and something else—was on the overheated air.

What was it? Gunpowder? Saltpeter?

Or was I back in the stifling cupboard under the stairs, inhaling the fumes of the burning paper?

I coughed painfully, and began to shiver.

Nasturtiums , I thought, after a very long time. Someone has brought me nasturtiums .

Daffy had once told me, in a rather condescending tone, that the name of those smelly flowers meant “nose-twister.” But while I could easily have shot back that the stink was due entirely to the fact that their volatile oil consisted largely of sulfocyanide of allyl (C 4H 6NS), or mustard oil, I did not.

There are times when I am humble.

We had been looking through one of Harriet’s watercolor sketchbooks that day, and had come across a grouping of the pretty flowers, their papery petals a warm rainbow of orange, yellow, red, and pink.

At the bottom of the page was lightly printed in pencil, Nasturtiums, Toronto, 1930 Harriet de Luce .

At the top, obliterating one of the petals, was a heavy black rubber stamp: Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy . And in red pencil, B–.

My heart wanted to leap out of my chest and punch someone in the nose. What barbarian of a teacher had dared to award my dear dead mother a Bath bun—a beta minus?

I drew in a deep, offended breath and choked on the knot in my throat.

“Easy, dear,” said a hollow, echoing voice. “It’s all right now.”

I opened my eyes, squinting against the fierce white light, to find Mrs. Mullet beside me. She stepped quickly to the window and lowered the blind until the sun was no longer shining directly into my eyes.

It took me a couple of moments to locate myself. I was not in my bedroom, but rather on the drawing room divan. I struggled to pull myself up.

“Lie still, dear,” she said. “Dr. Darby’s give you a nice mustard police.”

“What?”

“A plaster, like. You ’ave to keep still.”

“What time is it?” I asked, still dislocated.

“Why, it’s past Christmas, ducks,” she said. “You’ve gone and missed it.”

I wrinkled my nose at the mess of clotted mustard on my chest.

“Don’t touch it, dear. You’ve gone all chesty. Dr. Darby said to leave it on for ’alf an ’our.”

“But why? I’m not sick.”

“You’ve fell off the roof. It’s the same thing. Good job they’d shoveled them drifts into such a bloomin’ great ’eap, else you’d’ve gone straight through to China.”

Roof?

It all came surging back in a tidal wave.

“Val Lampman!” I said. “Marion Trodd! They tried to—”

“Now, then,” Mrs. Mullet said. “You’re not to think of anythin’ but gettin’ better. Dr. Darby thinks you might ’ave cracked a rib, an’ ’e doesn’t want you squirmin’ about.”

She fluffed up my pillow and brushed a strand of damp hair out of my eyes.

“But I can tell you this much,” she added, with a sniff. “They’ve took ’er away with the darbies on ’er wrists. They ’ad to cut ’er loose with tin-snips. You should of seen ’er. Reg’lar pouter, she is. Kept stickin’ to everythin’ she touched—even Constable Linnet, and ’im in ’is clean uniform— and after ’is wife ’ad just washed and ironed it, ’e told me. They’ll more’n likely ’ang ’er by the neck until she’s dead, but you mustn’t let on I told you. You’re not supposed to be gettin’ all worked up.”

“But what about Val Lampman?”

Mrs. Mullet arranged a serious look on her face.

“Fell, same as you. Landed square on Miss Wyvern’s motorcar. Broke ’is neck. But remember, my lips is sealed.”

I was silent for a long time, trying to work out in my mind how to respond to this honestly not unwelcome bit of news. It appeared that Justice had made up her own mind about how to deal with Val Lampman.

My mind was suddenly filled with a series of odd, faded images—of distorted faces swimming in and out of a hazy room in which I was lying helpless.

“Mrs. Hewitt,” I said at last. “Antigone. The Inspector’s wife—is she still here?”

Mrs. Mullet shot me a puzzled look.

“Never ’as been. Not that I knows of.”

“Are you quite sure? She was standing right where you are, just a few minutes ago.”

“Then she must ’ave been a dream, mustn’t she. There’s been no one in ’ere but me and Dogger since last night. And Miss Ophelia. She insisted on sittin’ up with you and moppin’ your face. Oh, and the Colonel, of course, when Dogger found you in the snowbank and carried you in, but that was last night, wasn’t it. ’E’s not been down yet today, poor soul. Worries somethin’ awful, ’e does. I expect ’e’ll ’ave somethin’ to say to you when you’re yourself again.”

“I expect he will.”

Actually, I was quite looking forward to it. Father and I seemed to talk to each other only in the most desperate of circumstances.

Without my hearing it, the door had opened and Dogger was suddenly in the room.

“Now, then,” Mrs. Mullet said. “ ’Ere’s Dogger. I might as well get back to my mutton. They’ve eat us out of ’ouse and ’ome, that lot ’ave. It was never-endin’, like the stream in that there ’ymn.”

She bustled officiously out of the room, giving the doorknob a polish with her apron on the way out.

Dogger waited until the door had closed behind her.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked quietly.

I caught his eye, and for some stupid reason I was suddenly near tears.

I nodded my head, afraid to speak so much as a single word.

“Only foreigners cry,” Father had once told me, and I didn’t want to let down the side by blubbering.

“It was a very near thing,” Dogger said. “I should have been most upset if anything had happened to you.”

Blast it all! Now my eyes were leaking like faucets. I reached for one of the tissues Mrs. Mullet had left beside me and pretended to blow my nose.

“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I didn’t mean to be any trouble. It’s just that I … I was conducting an experiment involving Father Christmas. He didn’t come, did he?”

“We shall see,” Dogger said, handing me another tissue. “You may hawk into this.”

I had hardly noticed that I was coughing.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Dogger asked, his hand off to the right of my head.

“Two,” I said, without looking.

“And now?”

“Four.”

“What’s the atomic number of arsenic?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Very good. And the principal alkaloids in deadly nightshade?”

“That’s easy. Hyoscine and hyoscyamine.”

“Excellent,” Dogger said.

“They were in it together, weren’t they? Marion Trodd and Val Lampman, I mean.”

Dogger nodded. “She could not have overpowered Miss Wyvern alone. Strangulation by cellulose nitrate ciné film would require exceptionally strong hands and arms. It is a most slippery weapon, but with an exceedingly high tensile strength, as you, through your chemical experiments, are undoubtedly aware. A uniquely male weapon, I should say. The motive, though, remains murky.”