Alan Bradley - I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Was this another of his two-edged compliments? I couldn’t really tell, so I responded with a stupid smile.

Flavia the Sphinx , he would be thinking. The inscrutable Flavia de Luce . Or something like that.

“You’d better get some rest,” he said suddenly, making for the door. “I wouldn’t want Dr. Darby holding me responsible for your extended convalescence.”

What a dear man he was, the Inspector! “Extended convalescence,” indeed. It was so like him. No wonder his wife, Antigone, shone like a searchlight when he was by her side. Which reminded me …

“Inspector Hewitt,” I said, “before you go, I want to—”

But he cut me short.

“No need,” he said, making a shooing motion with his hands. “No need at all.”

Blast it all! Was I to be robbed of my apology? But before I could say another word, he went on:

“Oh, by the way, Antigone asked me to compliment you on rather a spectacular display of fireworks. Despite the fact that you appear to have broken almost every single provision of the Explosives Acts of 1875 and 1923, discussion of which we shall leave until the Chief Constable has been coaxed down off the ceiling, she tells me your little show was seen and heard in Hinley. In spite of the snow.”

“In spite of the snow,” Father was saying, with what sounded, incredibly, like a measure of pride in his voice. “A friend of Mrs. Mullet’s reported seeing a distinct reddish glow in the southern sky at East Finching, and someone told Max Brock that the explosions were heard as far away as Malden Fenwick. By that time the snowfall was abating, of course, but still, when you stop to think of it … quite remarkable. A lightning bolt during a snowstorm is not completely unheard of, of course. I rang up my old friend Taffy Codling, who happens to be the Met officer at the Leathcote air base. Taffy tells me that although exceedingly rare, the phenomenon was indeed recorded in the early hours of Christmas morning, just about the time of your … ah … Flavia’s … ah … misadventure.”

I hadn’t heard Father say so many words since he had confided in me at the time of Horace Bonepenny’s murder. And the fact that he had used the telephone to find out about the lightning! Was the world coming off its hinges?

I had been cleaned up and arranged on the divan in the drawing room as if I were one of those Victorian heroines who are always dying of consumption in Daffy’s novels.

Everyone was gathered round me in a circle like the game of Happy Families we had once dragged out of a cupboard when it had been raining for three weeks, and had played endlessly at the dining room table with grim and determined hilarity.

“They think a bolt of lightning touched off your fireworks,” Daffy was saying. “So you can hardly be held responsible, can you? It left a ruddy great hole in the roof, though. Dogger had to organize a bucket brigade of villagers. What a smashing show! Too bad you missed it!”

“Daphne,” Father said, giving her one of those looks he reserves for marginal language.

“Well, it’s true,” Daffy went on. “You should have seen the lot of us standing round, up to our duffs in drifts, gaping like a gang of adenoidal carolers!”

“Daphne …”

The vicar clamped his jaws shut, trying to suppress an angelically silly grin. But before Daffy could offend again, there was a light tapping at the door, and a tentative nose appeared.

“May I come in?”

“Nialla!” I said.

“We’ve just come to say good-bye,” she whispered theatrically, coming fully into the room, a swaddling bundle cradled in her arms. “The film crew’s gone, and Desmond and I are the last ones here. He was going to drive me home in his Bentley, but it seems to have frozen up. Dr. Darby happens to be running up to London for an old boys’ dinner, and he’s offered to drop the baby and me right at our own front door.”

“But isn’t it too soon?” Feely asked, speaking for the first time. “Couldn’t you stay awhile? I’ve hardly had a chance to see the baby, what with all the goings-on.”

She wrinkled her brow in my direction as she said it.

“Too kind, I’m sure,” Nialla said, looking round the room from face to face. “It’s been lovely seeing all of you again, and Dieter, too, but Bun’s put me onto someone who’s working on a new film adaptation of A Christmas Carol . Oh, please don’t grimace at me like that, Daphne—it’s work, and it will keep us fed until the real thing comes along.”

Father shuffled his feet and looked cautiously out from beneath his eyebrows.

“I’ve told Miss Gilfoyle she is welcome to stay as long as she likes, but …”

“… but she must be getting along,” Nialla finished brightly, smiling down at the child in her arms and brushing an imaginary something off its chin.

“He looks a little like Rex Harrison,” I said. “Especially his forehead.”

Nialla blushed prettily, glancing at the vicar, as if for support.

“I hope he has his father’s brains,” she said, “and not mine.”

There was one of those long, uncomfortable silences during which you pray in earnest that no one will make a rude noise.

“Ah, Colonel de Luce, here you are,” said the world-famous voice, and Desmond Duncan made his entrance with as polished and attention-getting a stride as had ever been stridden in front of a ciné camera or a West End audience. “Dogger told me I should find you here. I’ve been awaiting the opportunity to convey to you some remarkably good news.”

In his hand was the copy of Romeo and Juliet he had pocketed in the library.

“ ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news,’ or so, at least, said the apostle Paul, quoting Isaiah, but presumably speaking of his own feet, in his letter to the Romans,” the vicar remarked to no one in particular.

Everyone glanced at once at Desmond Duncan’s Bond Street shoes, but when they realized their mistake, they all stared intently instead at the ceiling.

“This quite unassuming little volume, which has turned up in your library, is, if I am not mistaken, a Shakespeare First Quarto. That it is of great value is beyond question, and I should be guilty of a cruel trespass if I pretended it was not.”

He scanned the cover, removed his glasses, glanced at Father, restored the glasses, and opened the book to the title page.

“John Danter,” he said, in a slow, reverent whisper, holding the book out for inspection.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Father said.

Desmond Duncan drew in a deep breath.

“Unless I miss my bet, Colonel de Luce, you are the possessor of a First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet . Printed in 1597 by John Danter. Pity about the modern inscription, though. You could, perhaps, have it professionally removed.”

“How much?” Aunt Felicity demanded abruptly. “Must be worth a pretty penny.”

“How much?” Desmond Duncan smiled. “A king’s ransom, possibly. I can tell you that, without question, if brought to auction today … a million, perhaps.

“It’s what is known as a ‘Foul Quarto,’ ” he went on, his excitement barely under control. “The text is quite different in places from the one we are accustomed to seeing performed. It was believed to have been created from Shakespeare’s players having to recall their parts from memory. Hence its inaccuracy.”

As if in a trance, Daffy was creeping slowly forward, her hand extended towards the book.

“Are you saying,” she asked, “that Shakespeare himself might have held this very volume in his hands?”

“It’s certainly possible,” Desmond Duncan said. “It needs to be assessed by an expert. Look here: There are inky chicken scratches all the way through—very old, by the look of them. Someone has certainly marked it up.”