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

There was nothing for it now but to follow my instincts and choose a tunnel: the one on my left.

Here at its eastern extremity, the corridor was not only lower and more narrow, but had fallen into scandalous disrepair. The brick walls and pieces of the roof had crumbled in places, covering parts of the floor with broken rubble.

Careful , I thought. The whole thing might cave in and—

Something slapped my face—something dangling from the roof like a dead white arm. I let out a little yelp and stopped in my tracks.

A root! I had been frightened by a stupid root that had been put down, perhaps by one of the long gone borders which had, in earlier times, shaded the walkways of the Visto.

Even though I ducked under the thing, its slimy finger still managed to caress my face, as if it were dying for want of human company.

I limped along, the light of the torch sweeping wildly in front of me.

Here, on both sides of the tunnel, a dusty assortment of ladders, ropes, pails, watering cans, and galvanized funnels had been left, as if the groundskeepers who had used them had wandered off to war and forgotten to return.

A sudden flash of red brought me to a stop. Someone had written on the wall. I let the light play slowly over the painted letters: H.d.L .

Harriet de Luce! My mother had been here before me—found her way through this same tunnel—stood on these same bricks—painted her initials on the wall.

Something like a shiver overtook me. I was surrounded with Harriet’s presence. How, when I had never known her, could I miss her so deeply?

Then, faintly, from far along the tunnel, there came to my ears the sound of a voice—singing.

“ London Bridge is fallin’ down … my fair lady. ”

“Colin!” I shouted, and suddenly my eyes were brimming. “Colin! It’s me, Flavia.”

I lurched forward, tripping over fallen stones, feeling the ooze in my shoes from the tunnel’s seepage. My hands were raw from clutching at the rough wall for support.

And then, there he was …

“ My fair lady, ” he was singing.

“It’s all right, Colin. You can stop now. Where’s the key?”

He winced at the light, then stared at me with a strange, offended look.

“Untie me first,” he said gruffly.

“No—key first,” I said. “That way you won’t run off with it.”

Colin groaned as he rolled slightly onto his left side. I reached into his pocket—Ugh!—and pulled out an iron key.

As he twisted, I could see that Colin’s wrists were bound firmly behind him and lashed to an iron pipe that rose up vertically before vanishing into the roof.

The poor creature could have been tied up here for days!

“You must be in agony,” I said, and he looked up at me again with such blank puzzlement that I wondered if he knew the meaning of the word.

I struggled with the knots. Colin’s efforts to free himself and the moisture from the seeping walls had shrunken them horribly.

“Do you have a knife?”

Colin shook his head and looked away.

“What? No knife? Come on, Colin—Boy Scouts are born with knives.”

“Took it off me. ‘Might hurt yourself.’ That’s what they said.”

“Never mind, then. Lean forward. I’ll try the key.”

Putting the torch on the ground so that its light reflected from the wall, I attacked the knots with the business end of the key.

Colin groaned, letting out little yelps every time I applied pressure to his bonds. In spite of the clamminess of the tunnel, sweat was dripping from my forehead onto the already saturated rope.

“Hang on,” I told him. “I’ve almost got it.”

The last end pulled through—and he was free.

“Stand up,” I said. “You need to move around.”

He rolled over, unable to get to his feet.

“Grab hold,” I said, offering my hand, but he shook his head.

“You have to get your circulation going,” I told him. “Rub your arms and legs as hard as you can. Here, I’ll help you.”

“It’s no good,” he said. “Can’t do it.”

“Of course you can,” I said, rubbing more briskly. “You need to get some circulation into your toes and fingers.”

His lower lip was trembling and I felt a sudden surge of pity.

“Tell you what. Let’s have a rest.”

Even in the half-light his gratitude was hard to miss.

“Now then,” I said. “Tell me about the blood on the fountain steps.”

Perhaps it wasn’t fair, but I needed to know.

At the word “blood,” Colin shrank back in horror.

“I never done it,” he croaked.

“Never did what, Colin?”

“Never done Brookie. Never shoved that sticker in his nose.”

“He roughed you up, didn’t he? Left you no choice.”

“No,” Colin said, managing somehow to pull himself to his feet. “It weren’t like that. It weren’t like that at all.”

“Tell me what happened,” I said, surprised by my own coolness in what could prove to be a tricky situation.

“We was chums, Brookie an’ me. He told me stories when we wasn’t scrappin’.”

“Stories? What kind of stories?”

“You know, King Arthur, like. ’Ad some right lovely talks, we did. Used to tell me about old Nicodemus Flitch, an’ ’ow ’e could strike a sinner dead whenever ’e took the notion.”

“Was Brookie a Hobbler?” I asked.

“ ’Course not!” Colin scoffed. “But ’e wished ’e was. ’E fancied their ways, ’e used to say.”

So there it was: I should have asked Colin in the first place.

“You were telling me about the sticker,” I said, trying to steer Colin gently back to the moment of Brookie’s death.

“He showed it to me,” Colin said. “Ever so pretty … silver … like pirate treasure. Dug it up behind your ’ouse, Brookie did. Goin’ to make dozens of ’em, ’e said. ‘Enough for a garden party at Buckin’ham Palace.’ ”

I dared not interrupt.

“ ‘Give it ’ere,’ I told ’im. ‘Let’s ’ave a gander. Just for a minute. I’ll give it back.’ But ’e wouldn’t. ‘Might stab yourself,’ ’e said. Laughed at me.

“ ‘ ’Ere, you promised!’ I told ’im. ‘You said we’d go halfers if I carried the dog-thing.’

“I grabbed it … didn’t mean nothin’ by it—just wanted to have a gander, is all. ’E grabbed it back and gave it such a tug! I let go too quick, and—”

His face was sheer horror.

“I never done it,” he said. “I never done it.”

“I understand,” I said. “It was an accident. I’ll do whatever I can to help, but tell me this, Colin—who tied you up?”

He let out such a wail that it nearly froze my blood, even though I already knew the answer.

“It was Tom Bull, wasn’t it?”

Colin’s eyes grew as round as saucers, and he stared over my shoulder. “ ’E’s comin back! ’E said ’e’d be back.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “You’ve been here for ages.”

“Goin’ to do me, Tom Bull is, ’cause I seen what ’e done at the caravan.”

“You saw what he did at the caravan?”

“ ’Eard it, anyhow. ’Eard all the screamin’. Then ’e come out an’ tossed somethin’ in the river. ’E’s goin’ to kill me.”

Colin’s eyes were wide as saucers.

“He won’t kill you,” I told him. “If he were, he’d have done it before now.”

And then I heard the sound behind me in the tunnel.

Colin’s eyes grew even larger, almost starting from their sockets.

“ ’E’s ’ere!”

I whipped round with the torch to see a hulking form scuttling towards us like a giant land crab: so large that it nearly filled the passageway from roof to floor, and from wall to wall; a figure bent over nearly double to negotiate the cramped tunnel.