Alan Bradley - I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

“Revenge,” I said. “And inheritance. Miss Wyvern was trying to tell someone—Desmond, or Bun—maybe it was Aunt Felicity. I couldn’t make it out. She knew they were planning to kill her. Since she kept up paid subscriptions to the Police Gazette and True Crime , News of the World , and so forth, she knew all the signs. She was writing her thoughts on a piece of paper when they interrupted her. She stuffed it into the toe of a boot, which they jammed onto her foot when they changed her costume. A bad mistake on their part.”

Dogger scratched his head.

“I’ll explain it later,” I said. “I’m so drowsy, I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

Dogger held out a hand.

“You may remove the mustard poultice,” he said. “I believe you’re sufficiently warmed. At least for now.”

He held out a silver tray and I handed him the reeking thing.

“Mind the tarnish,” I said, almost as a joke.

It was true, though. The sulfurous fumes would attack sterling silver before you could say “snap!”

“It’s quite all right,” Dogger said. “This one’s coated electroplate.”

I remembered with sudden shame that Father had sent the family silver to auction months ago, and I was instantly sorry for my thoughtless remark.

Without another word, Dogger pulled the quilt up under my chin and tucked me in, then went to the window and closed the curtains.

“Oh, and Dogger—” I said, when he was halfway out the door. “One more small point—Phyllis Wyvern was Val Lampman’s mother.”

“My word!” said Dogger.

• TWENTY-TWO •

“SO YOU SEE, INSPECTOR,” I said, “their idea was to do away with her in the midst of the greatest number of suspects, just as the killers did in Love and Blood . They must have seen the opportunity of shooting a film at Buckshaw as something of a godsend. Val Lampman picked the location himself.”

“Rather like an Agatha Christie,” Inspector Hewitt remarked drily.

“Exactly!”

It was now the fourth day after Christmas—December the twenty-ninth, to be precise.

After I’d spent two days and nights floating in a sweaty dream, awakening only to cough and to suck at soup fed to me on a spoon by Feely, who had insisted on keeping vigil at my bedside night and day, Dr. Darby had given grudging permission for me to be grilled by the Hinley constabulary.

“Two more days of mustard plasters, to be followed by no more than a couple of minutes with His Majesty’s Hounds,” he had said, as if I were a plate of perspiring roast beef—or an exhausted fox.

“I should be most grateful to hear your thoughts on the exchanging of Miss Wyvern’s costume,” the Inspector added. “Purely as a matter of interest, you understand.”

“Oh, that was the easy part!” I told him. “They swapped her Juliet costume for the peasant outfit she’d worn in Dressed for Dying . They’d even brought it with them. Premeditation, I believe you call it. They dressed her up, right down to her original makeup. Marion Trodd wanted it that way. You’ve probably already found Miss Wyvern’s makeup, lipstick, and nail polish in her purse. It was no more than revenge, really.”

The Inspector looked puzzled.

“Val Lampman had originally promised Marion the leading role in Cry of the Raven , but he was made to take it away from her and give it to his mother. He had to, you see. Marion was not aware, of course, that Miss Wyvern was Val’s mother, and he wasn’t about to tell her. It’s all there in Who’s Who and the back numbers of Behind the Screen and Ciné Tit-Bits . There are tons of old film magazines in the cupboard under the stairs.”

Only as I spoke the words did it occur to me to wonder who had bought them, all those years ago.

“Get onto it, Sergeant,” the Inspector said to Detective Sergeant Woolmer, who closed his notepad, turned a little red, and lumbered off in the direction of the foyer.

“Now, then, you were suggesting that Marion Trodd was formerly an actress,” he said when the sergeant had gone. “Is that it?”

“Under the name of Norma Durance, yes. Sergeant Woolmer will find it in Silver Cinema , for 1933. The September issue, I believe. It’s a bit charred, I’m afraid, but in what’s left of it, there’s quite a good photo of her as Dorita in The Little Red Hen. ”

Inspector Hewitt’s Biro had been fairly flying over the page, but he stopped long enough to shoot me a surprised smile.

In spite of looking like a barrage balloon in my woolen nightie and carpet-grade dressing gown, I must have positively preened.

“They were having an affair, of course,” I added casually, and the Inspector’s eyeballs gave an involuntary twitch. I didn’t really understand all that was involved in such a relationship, and I didn’t much care, actually. Once, when I had asked Dogger what was meant by the phrase, he had told me that it described two people who had become the very best of friends, and that was good enough for me.

“Of course,” the Inspector said, in a surprisingly meek voice, scribbling away in his notebook. “Well done.”

Well done? I tried not to simper. This was high praise from a man who had, at our first meeting, sent me off to rustle up some tea.

“You’re very kind,” I said, anxious to make the moment last.

“I am, indeed,” he said. “I’ve found exasperation to be quite useless.”

“So have I,” I said, without knowing fully what I meant. In spite of that, it sounded like an intelligent response.

“Well, thank you, Flavia,” the Inspector said, getting to his feet. “This has been most instructive.”

“I’m always happy to help,” I said, not at all bashfully.

“Of course … I had already come to the same conclusion myself,” he added.

A sudden clamminess gripped me. Come to the same conclusion himself? How could he! How dare he?

“Fingerprints?” I asked coldly.

They must have found the fingerprints of the killers in the murder room.

“Not at all,” he said. “It was the knot. She was strangled with a straightforward length of ciné film to which, after death, an additional bow was added. Two distinct layers and, we believe, by two different persons, one left-handed, the other right. The inner knot—the one that actually killed her—was rather an unusual one—a bowline—often used by sailors and seldom by others. Sergeant Graves has discovered—by noticing his tattoos—that Val Lampman had served for a time in the Royal Navy, a fact that we have since been able to confirm.”

I’d spotted that myself, of course, but hadn’t had the time to follow up.

“Of course!” I said. “The outer knot was purely decorative! Marion Trodd must have added it as a finishing touch after she had swapped the costumes.”

The Inspector closed his notebook.

“There is a knot that is known to florists, who tie it with ribbon onto floral arrangements, as ‘the durance,’ ” he said. “It is, as you say, purely decorative. It was also her signature. I hadn’t spotted the connection until just now, when you were good enough to provide the missing link.”

Maestro, a few triumphant trumpets! Something by Handel, if you please! “Music for the Royal Fireworks”? Yes, that will do nicely.

“Dressed for dying,” I said with a touch of the old drama.

“Dressed for dying.” Inspector Hewitt smiled.

“Do you suppose,” I asked, “that before she became the actress Norma Durance, Miss Trodd might have been employed in a florist’s shop?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “It seems as if, by two very different roads, we’ve both come to the same destination.”