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

I let my eyes meet hers, then drift away, as if I hadn’t seen her. I looked to her right—to her left—and finally above her, letting my mouth fall open slackly.

I scratched my head, and then, I’m afraid, my bottom.

“I’m coming, Gladys,” I shouted. “It’s only a squirrel.”

And with that, I made off across the bridge, muttering away to myself like the mad daughter of an eccentric squire.

Damn ! I thought. I hadn’t had a chance to examine the police diggings.

Still, my day had been remarkably productive. In my pocket was the silver de Luce lobster pick that I was quite sure had been used to put an end to Brookie Harewood, and cradled in my skirt, the crystal ball that was almost certainly the object with which Fenella had been bashed. After all, if it wasn’t, then why would it have been tossed into the river?

An idea began to take shape.

Of course I would hand over these weapons at once to Inspector Hewitt—I had planned to do so all along, for various reasons.

But first, I wondered, was it possible to retrieve fingerprints from an object that had been immersed for days in running water?

TWENTY-THREE

I HAD CLIMBED NO more than a dozen stairs when Father’s voice, from somewhere below me in the foyer, said, “Flavia—”

Thwarted!

I stopped, turned, and came down one step out of respect. He was standing at the entrance to the west wing.

“My study, please.”

He turned and was gone.

I trudged down the steps and trailed along behind him, making a point of hanging well back.

“Close the door,” he said, and sat down at his desk.

This was serious. Father usually delivered his little lectures while standing at the window, gazing out into the grounds.

I perched on the edge of a chair, and tried to look attentive.

“I’ve had a call from Nurse Hammond on the—” He pointed in the general direction of the telephone, but could not bring himself to say the word. “… instrument. She tells me that you took Dr. Kissing out into the rain.”

The hag! I’d done no such thing.

“He wasn’t in the rain,” I protested. “He was sitting under an umbrella on the lawn, and he was already outside when I got there.”

“It makes no difference,” Father said, holding up a hand like a policeman directing traffic.

“But—”

“He’s an old man, Flavia. He’s not to be bothered with nonsensical intrusions upon his privacy.”

“But—”

“This gadding about the countryside must stop,” he said. “You’re making a confounded nuisance of yourself.”

A nuisance! Well!

I could have spat on his carpet.

“I’ve given this a great deal of thought recently,” he said, “and come to the conclusion that you have far too much time on your hands.”

“But—”

“Part of that is my own fault, I’ll admit. You’ve not been provided with sufficient supervision and, as a result, your interests have become rather—unhealthy.”

“Unhealthy?”

“Consequently,” Father plowed on, “I’ve decided that you need to be more among people—more in the company of your peers.”

What was he talking about? On the one hand I was wandering about the village excessively, and now, on the other, I was in need of human companionship. It sounded like something you might say about a rogue sheepdog.

But before I could protest, Father took off his glasses, very deliberately folded their black, spidery arms across the lenses, and put them away in their hard-shelled case. It was a sign that the conversation was nearing its end.

“The vicar tells me that the choir is in need of several extra voices, and I’ve assured him that you’d be happy to pitch in. They’ve laid on an extra practice this evening at six-thirty sharp.”

I was so astonished I couldn’t think of a single word to say.

Later, I thought of one.

“Don’t dawdle,” Feely said, as we marched across the fields towards the church. She had been summoned to sit in, as she sometimes did, for Mr. Collicutt.

“Where’s old Cockie, then,” I had asked, and waited for the inevitable explosion. Feely, I think, was half in love with the handsome young man who had recently been appointed organist at St. Tancreds. She had even gone so far as to join the choir because of the superior view of his bobbing blond curls afforded by a seat in the chancel.

But Feely wasn’t biting—in fact, she was strangely subdued.

“He’s adjudicating the music festival in Hinley,” she said, almost as if I’d asked a civil question.

“Do, re, mi, fa, so-what?” I sang loudly, and intentionally off-key.

“Save it for the sinners,” Feely said pleasantly, and walked on in silence.

Half a dozen boys in Scout uniforms, all members of St. Tancred’s choir, were shoving one another about in the churchyard, playing a rough game of football with someone’s hat. One of them was Colin Prout.

Feely stuck her first and last fingers into her mouth and let out a surprisingly piercing and unladylike whistle. The game broke up at once.

“Inside,” Feely ordered. “Hymns before horseplay.”

Since its scoutmaster and several of the boys were also members of the choir, the Scout troop would not meet until after choir practice.

There were a couple of anonymous groans and whispers, but the boys obeyed her. Colin tried to scuttle past, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

“Hoy, Colin,” I said, stepping in front of him to block his way. “I didn’t know you were a Scout.”

He put his head down, jammed his hands into the pockets of his shorts, and sidestepped me. I followed him into the church.

The older members of the choir had already taken their places, chatting away to one another as they awaited the arrival of the organist, the men on one side of the chancel, the women facing them, on the other.

Miss Cool, who was both Bishop’s Lacey’s postmistress and its confectioner, shot me a beaming smile, and the Misses Puddock, Lavinia and Aurelia, who owned the St. Nicholas Tea Room, gave me identical twiddles of their fingers.

“Good evening, choir,” Feely said. It was a tradition that dated back into the mists of Christian history.

“Good evening, Miss de Luce,” they responded, automatically.

Feely took her seat on the organ bench, and with no more than a “Hymn number three hundred and eighty-three,” barked out over her shoulder, launched into the opening bars of “We Plow the Fields and Gather,” leaving me scrambling to find the page in the hymn-book.

“ We plow the fields and scatter, ” we sang,

“ the good seed on the land ,

but it is fed and watered

by God’s almighty hand;

He sends the snow in winter ,

the warmth to swell the grain ,

the breezes and the sunshine ,

and soft refreshing rain. ”

As I sang, I thought of Brookie’s body dangling from Poseidon’s trident in the downpour. There had been nothing soft or refreshing about that particular storm—in fact, it had been one hell of a cloudburst.

I looked across the chancel at Colin. He was singing with intense concentration, his eyes closed, his face upturned to the day’s last light which was now seeping in through the darkening stained-glass windows. I’d deal with him later.

“ He only is the Maker

of all things near and far;

He paints the wayside flower ,

He lights the evening star;

the winds and waves obey Him— ”