Alan Bradley - The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches

“No,” he said, suddenly and sadly—perhaps even a little reluctantly. “No, no … I am not.”

“Then who is?”

Much as I loved the old gentleman, I was becoming impatient with his diversions.

Dr. Kissing, almost unaware he was doing so, covered his lips with his right forefinger—and then his left.

His voice, when it came, was suddenly old, suddenly tired, and for the first time since I had met him, I feared for his life.

“That you must find out for yourself, Flavia,” he said, his voice as faint and far away as if it were no more than an echo of the wind.

“ That , too, you must find out for yourself.”

TWENTY-FOUR

DIETER MET ME JUST to the east of the ornamental lake. He was wearing what looked like a borrowed black suit, which was very slightly too small for him.

“Everybody has been looking for you,” he informed me.

“Sorry,” I told him. “I needed to go for a long walk. Who’s everybody?”

“Your father, your aunt Felicity, Ophelia, and Daphne—” Dieter always insisted on calling my sisters by their proper names. “Mrs. Mullet, also.”

I have to admit that that was pretty well everybody, although I was secretly pleased that Dogger hadn’t been asking my whereabouts.

“How did you know which direction to come looking for me?”

“Mr. Tallis and Mr. Sowerby told me they had seen you walking off towards the Palings.”

“Mr. Tallis and Mr. Sowerby are a pair of bloody village gossips!”

Dieter laughed. With Dieter, I could be myself without fear of being corrected, punished, or ratted upon.

“What did you think of Blithe Spirit ? Tristram took me up for a ride this morning. Aren’t you jealous?”

A pilot in the Luftwaffe, Dieter had been brought down during the War not far from Bishop’s Lacey and, as a prisoner of war, had been put to work on Ingleby’s farm. When the War ended, he had chosen to stay in England, and now, six years later, was engaged to be married to my sister Feely. It’s a funny old world when you stop to think about it.

“She’s a beautiful craft,” he admitted. “But no, I am not jealous. I have had my time in the air.”

“How’s Feely bearing up?” I asked. I had scarcely given her a moment’s thought.

“She doesn’t eat, she doesn’t sleep. She thinks only of the music at your mother’s funeral.”

“Poor you,” I said, meaning it as a joke.

“I wish you would have a word with her, Flavia. I should take it as a great favor.”

Me? Have a word with Feely? What a preposterous idea!

“She respects you. She is forever talking about ‘my brilliant little sister.’ ”

“Ha!” I said. I was not at my most articulate when I was stupefied.

Respect me ? I couldn’t believe it. Feely would rather eat frogs in clotted cream than listen to anything I might have to say.

Still, I didn’t want to miss an opportunity.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “I should have thought you’d want to comfort her on your own.”

“It is not comforting she needs,” Dieter said, “but a female shoulder. Do you know what I mean?”

Well, a female shoulder was a female shoulder. There was no great mystery about that.

I nodded. “But it won’t be easy,” I couldn’t resist adding.

“No,” Dieter agreed. “I think she feels the loss of your mother more keenly than—”

“Than Daffy and I do?” I cut in.

Dieter did not deny it. “She has more memories than you and Daphne,” he said. “She has more of your mother to mourn.”

Dieter had hit the nail on the head. It was one of the things I resented most about my sister—although when you stopped to analyze it, the jealousy was entirely on my part, not hers.

“Poor Feely,” I said, and left it at that.

“She’ll be better after we’re married,” Dieter said. “When she is able to get away from Buckshaw. There are so many ghosts here.”

Ghosts? I’d never thought of it in that way. Any truly self-respecting ghost would rather die than haunt the halls of Buckshaw.

Which set me to wondering: When the dead die, do they come back to life? Is that what resurrection is all about—the death of the dead?

Although I had failed in my attempt to restore Harriet to the arms of her family, I could hardly be blamed. The men from the Home Office had interrupted my experiment, and I knew that I would never have another chance. Harriet would now be laid to rest and that would be that.

How sad it was that we should never get to know each other.

It was more than sad—it was a damned shame.

We paused at the corner of the redbrick wall which marked the corner of the kitchen garden.

“Cheer up,” I said, realizing even as I spoke the words, that I had said a similar thing to Daffy. “How are the teaching plans coming along?”

More than anything in life, other than perhaps the hand of my sister, Dieter wanted to teach English literature to the English. He was a lifelong devotee of the Brontë sisters and was positively champing at the bit to be able to share his enthusiasm in a proper classroom.

He brightened at once. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked.

I nearly laughed in his face. Of all the billions of people who have ever trod the face of planet Earth, none of them—not a single blessed one!—has ever been as much a master of the zipped lip as Flavia de Luce.

I crossed my heart and my lips and showed him the two-fingered bunny-ear sign.

“In blood,” I vowed. It was an oath known to very few.

“Your father has put in a word for me at Greyminster. I am to begin my teaching duties there in the autumn.”

I threw my arms around him. I couldn’t help myself. I had known that Dieter had been away on some mysterious interview during the Easter holidays but had heard no more about it.

“Yaroo!” I shouted. “That’s spiffing! Congratulations, Dieter!”

“Keep it under your hat—is that how you say it? We didn’t want to announce it until we’ve got through the funeral.”

I didn’t fail to notice the word “we.”

I gave him another hug. “Hullo, Mr. Chips,” I said. “Fear not. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Dieter shot me one of his gorgeous grins and offered me his arm. “Shall we go in?” he asked. “I shall inform them that you have been found.”

In spite of the lovely weather, there was a coldness inside the house which I could not easily explain. It was as if the world had suddenly entered a new ice age: a change that had caught everybody by surprise and left them, every single one, in a kind of chilly lethargy.

In the foyer, the last straggling mourners stared at one another in a kind of antishock, as if they had abruptly lost the ability to recognize their neighbors.

There was an uneasy hush, broken only by the scuffling of shoes on the black-and-white marble and the suppressed sobs and sniffling of a woman I had never seen before in my life.

I think we all of us were realizing that the time of Harriet’s funeral was drawing near.

It was going to be a bloody awful afternoon.

I found Feely in the drawing room, seated at the piano, her face white and her eyes the red of raw meat. Her fingers were moving over the keys but no sound was coming from the instrument. It was as if she hadn’t the strength to summon music from the thing. I stood for a moment or two at the door, trying to guess by watching her fingers what silent melody she might be playing.

The very least I could do was to begin the conversation on a civil note.

“I’m sorry, Feely,” I said at last. “I know how difficult this must be for you.”

Her head came slowly round and her swollen eyes settled unsteadily on me.