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

“Sophisticated, series-launching … It’s a rare pleasure to follow Flavia as she investigates her limited but boundless-feeling world.”

—Entertainment Weekly (A-)

THE MOST AWARD-WINNING BOOK

OF ANY YEAR!

The SWEETNESS at the

BOTTOM of the PIE

THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE FLAVIA DE LUCE SERIES

BY ALAN BRADLEY

WINNER:

Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel

Barry Award for Best First Novel

Agatha Award for Best First Novel

Dilys Winn Award

Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel

Spotted Owl Award for Best Novel

CWA Debut Dagger Award

“If ever there was a sleuth who’s bold, brilliant, and, yes, adorable, it’s Flavia de Luce.”

—USA Today

Acclaim for Alan Bradley and the Flavia de Luce novels

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

“Endlessly entertaining … The author deftly evokes the period, but Flavia’s sparkling narration is the mystery’s chief delight.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Brisk, funny and irrepressible, Flavia is distinctly uncute, and the cozy village setting has enough edges to keep suspicions sharp.”

—Houston Chronicle

“Bradley takes everything you expect and subverts it, delivering a smart, irreverent, unsappy mystery.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“Like its heroine, the novel is spiky, surprising fun.”

—Parade

“Bradley has once again created an engaging, whimsical, twisting tale that rewards readers as much with its style and background as it does with the central investigation.… Compellingly larger than life.”

—Edmonton Journal

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“Alan Bradley’s marvelous book The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a fantastic read, a winner. Flavia walks right off the page and follows me through my day. I can hardly wait for the next book. Bravo!”

—LOUISE PENNY, bestselling author of The Brutal Telling and Bury Your Dead

“A wickedly clever story, a dead-true and original voice, and an English country house in the summer: Alexander McCall Smith meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Please, please, Mr. Bradley, tell me we’ll be seeing Flavia again soon?”

—LAURIE R. KING, bestselling author of God of the Hive

“Utterly charming! Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce proves to be one of the most precocious, resourceful, and, well, just plain dangerous heroines around. Evildoers—and big sisters—beware!”

—LISA GARDNER, bestselling author of Live to Tell

“Impressive as a sleuth and enchanting as a mad scientist, Flavia is most endearing as a little girl who has learned to amuse herself in a big lonely house.”

—MARILYN STASIO, The New York Times Book Review

“Only those who dislike precocious young heroines with extraordinary vocabulary and audacious courage can fail to like this amazingly entertaining book. Expect more from the talented Bradley.”

—Booklist (starred review)

“A delightful new sleuth. A combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes … fearless, cheeky, wildly precocious.”

—The Boston Globe

“An elegant mystery.”

—The Plain Dealer

BY ALAN BRADLEY

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

A Red Herring Without Mustard is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Alan Bradley

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Map by Simon Sullivan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bradley, C. Alan

A red herring without mustard : a Flavia de Luce novel / Alan Bradley.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-440-33986-1

1. Girls—England—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.4.B7324R43 2011

813′.6–dc22

2010042029

www.bantamdell.com

Jacket design: Joe Montgomery

v3.1

For John and Janet Harland

… a cup of ale without a wench, why, alas, ’tis like an egg without salt or a red herring without mustard.

THOMAS LODGE AND ROBERT GREENE

A Looking Glasse, for London and Englande (1592)

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Note to the Reader

Acknowledgments

About the Author

ONE

“YOU FRIGHTEN ME,” THE Gypsy said. “Never have I seen my crystal ball so filled with darkness.”

She cupped her hands around the thing, as if to shield my eyes from the horrors that were swimming in its murky depths. As her fingers gripped the glass, I thought I could feel ice water trickling down inside my gullet.

At the edge of the table, a thin candle flickered, its sickly light glancing off the dangling brass hoops of the Gypsy’s earrings, then flying off to die somewhere in the darkened corners of the tent.

Black hair, black eyes, black dress, red-painted cheeks, red mouth, and a voice that could only have come from smoking half a million cigarettes.

As if to confirm my suspicions, the old woman was suddenly gripped by a fit of violent coughing that rattled her crooked frame and left her gasping horribly for air. It sounded as though a large bird had somehow become entangled in her lungs and was flapping to escape.

“Are you all right?” I asked. “I’ll go for help.”