Alan Bradley - A Red Herring Without Mustard - A Flavia de Luce Novel

Only Poseidon had survived, lounging with his net atop a crumbling base, brooding in marble over his broken family, his three-pronged trident like a lightning rod, sticking up towards whatever might be left of the ancient Greek heavens.

“Here’s old Poseidon,” I said, turning to haul Gladys up yet another set of crumbled steps. “His photograph was in Country Life a couple of years ago. Rather splendid, isn’t he?”

Porcelain had come suddenly to a dead stop, her hand covering her mouth, her hollowed-out eyes staring upwards, as wide and as dark as the pit. Then she let out a cry like a small animal.

I followed her gaze, and saw at once the thing that had frozen her in her tracks.

Dangling from Poseidon’s trident, like a scarecrow hung on a coat hook, was a dark figure.

“It’s Brookie Harewood,” I said, even before I saw his face.

NINE

ONE OF THE TRIDENT’S tines had pierced Brookie’s long moleskin coat at the neck, and he swung slightly in the breeze, looking rather casual in his flat cap and scarlet scarf, as if he were enjoying one of the roundabouts at an amusement pier.

For a moment, I thought he might have fallen. Perhaps in an excess of alcoholic high spirits he’d been attempting to scale the statue. Perhaps he had slipped from Poseidon’s head and fallen onto the trident.

That idea was short-lived, however. I saw almost at once that his hands were tied behind his back. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

As I came round full front-on, the sun glinted brightly on something that seemed to be projecting from Brookie’s mouth.

“Stay here,” I told Porcelain, even though I could see that there wasn’t a chance of her moving.

I leaned Gladys against the lower of the three seashell bowls that comprised the fountain, then climbed up her tubular frame until finally I was standing on her seat, from which point I could get a knee up onto the rough stone rim.

The bowl of the thing was filled with a disgusting broth of black water, dead leaves, and mold, the result of a century of neglect, and it smelled to high heaven.

By standing on the rim, I was able to clamber up onto the fountain’s middle bowl, and finally the highest one. I was now level with Brookie’s knees, staring up into his unseeing eyes. His face was a horrid fish-belly white.

He was quite dead, of course.

After the initial shock of realizing that someone I had spoken to just hours before was no longer in the land of the living, I began to feel oddly excited.

I have no fear of the dead. Indeed, in my own limited experience I have found them to produce in me a feeling that is quite the opposite of fear. A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one, and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories. I’d had the good fortune of seeing several of them in my time; in fact, Brookie was my third.

As I teetered on the edge of the sculptured stone seashell, I could see clearly what it was that had glinted in the sun. Projecting from one of Brookie’s nostrils—not his mouth—was an object that first appeared to be a round silver medallion: a flat, perforated disk with a handle attached. On the end of it was suspended a single drop of Brookie’s blood.

The image punched out of the disk was that of a lobster, and engraved on the handle was the de Luce monogram.

D L .

It was a silver lobster pick—one of the set that belonged to Buckshaw.

The last time I’d seen one of these sharp-pointed utensils, Dogger had been rubbing it with silver polish at the kitchen table.

The business end of the thing, I recalled, ended in two little tines that stuck out like the horns on a snail’s head. These prongs, which had been designed to pry the pink meat from the cracks and crevices of a boiled lobster, were now lodged firmly somewhere deep in Brookie Harewood’s brain.

Death by family silver , I thought, before I could turn off that part of my mind.

A little moan from below reminded me that Porcelain was still there.

Her face was nearly as white as Brookie’s, and I saw that she was trembling.

“For God’s sake, Flavia,” she said in a quavering voice, “come down—let’s get out of here. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“It’s Brookie Harewood,” I said, and I think I offered up a silent prayer for the repose of the poacher’s soul.

Protect him, O Lord, and let heaven be bountifully supplied with trout streams .

The thought of trout reminded me of Colin Prout. I’d almost forgotten the boy. Would Colin breathe a sigh of relief when he heard that his tormentor was dead? Or would he grieve?

Brookie’s mother would be in the same quandary. And so, I realized, would almost everyone in Bishop’s Lacey.

I put one foot on Poseidon’s knee and hauled myself up by his muscular elbow. I was now slightly above Brookie and looking down at something that had caught my eye. In the notch between two of the trident’s prongs was a shiny spot the size of a sixpence, as if someone had given the bronze a bit of a polish with a rag.

I memorized the shape of the thing, then began to climb down slowly, taking great care not to touch Brookie’s body.

“Come on,” I said to Porcelain, giving her arm a shake. “Let’s get out of here before they think one of us did it.”

I did not tell her that the back of Brookie’s skull was a bloody mess.

We paused for a moment behind one of the rose hedges which, at this time of year, were in their second bloom. From the direction of the kitchen garden came the sound of Dogger scraping old soil from flowerpots with a trowel. Mrs. Mullet, I knew, had probably gone for the day.

“Stay here,” I whispered, “while I scout things out.”

Porcelain seemed barely to have heard me. White with fright and fatigue, she stood stock-still among the roses like one of Buckshaw’s statues, over which someone, as a joke, had flung an old black dress.

I flitted, invisibly I hoped, across the grass and the graveled drive to the kitchen door. Flattening myself against it, I pressed my ear to the heavy wood.

As I’ve said, I had inherited from Harriet an almost freakish sense of hearing. Any clatter of pots and pans or the hum of conversation would be instantly audible. Mrs. Mullet talked constantly to herself as she worked, and even though I guessed she had gone for the day, one could never be too careful. If Feely and Daffy were planning another ambush, surely their giggles and their tittering would give them away.

But I could hear nothing.

I opened the door and stepped into an empty kitchen.

My first priority was to get Porcelain into the house and stick her safely away in a place where her presence would be unsuspected. That done, I would call the police.

The telephone at Buckshaw was kept out of sight in a small cupboard in the narrow passageway that connected the foyer with the kitchen. As I have said, Father loathed “the instrument,” and all of us at Buckshaw were forbidden to use the thing.

As I tiptoed along the passage, I heard the unmistakeable sound of shoe leather on tiles. It was Father, most likely. Daffy and Feely’s shoes were more feminine, and made a softer, more shuffling sound.

I ducked into the telephone cubicle and quietly pulled the door shut. I would sit on the little Oriental bench in the darkness and wait it out.

In the foyer, the footsteps slowed—and stopped. I held my breath.

After what seemed like two and a half eternities, they moved away, towards the west wing and Father’s study, I thought.