Alan Bradley - The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches

I wanted to curl up like a salted slug and die.

Aunt Felicity’s voice broke into my agony. “You’ve heard no doubt of MI5 and MI6?”

I managed a nod. Because she could see only the back of my head, she could not possibly know I was crying.

“Well, you need to know that there are MI numbers beyond 19. Indeed, there exists a section with so high a number that not even the Prime Minister is aware of it.”

Now the tube fell silent. What was she telling me?

Far below, the green world circled.

On the ground, you were like a bug in a carpet, believing every crumb to be a castle. But from up here, you had a whole new view of things. You could see far more.

More, perhaps, than you ever wanted to.

I gave a feeble wave to show Aunt Felicity that I was listening and that I had understood her words.

Seeing my hand, she went on: “We de Luces have been entrusted … for more than three hundred years … with some of the greatest secrets of the realm. Some of us have been on the side of good … while others have not.”

What was the old woman saying? Was she mad? Was I alone in the air with a person who should be locked away in Colney Hatch?

And yet—she was flying Blithe Spirit , wasn’t she?

Again I remembered asking Father what Buckshaw looked like from the air, remembered his reply: “Ask your aunt Felicity. She’s flown.”

I had assumed, I suppose, that she had flown with someone else as a passenger. But Father’s words had been literally true.

“Did you hear what I said, Flavia?”

Aunt Felicity reduced the throttle, and the sound of Blithe Spirit ’s engine died away to a whisper. Now there was only the howl of the wind around us as her voice, containing a new urgency, came crackling through the rubber tube.

“We must go down now. There’s no more time. But before we begin our descent, you must understand: From this day forward, much will be expected of you. Much has already been given to you. In many ways, your training has already begun.”

Realization crept slowly into my mind.

My laboratory … the almost magical way in which the gases and glassware had never been exhausted …

Someone had seen to it.

“You must never speak of this to anyone but me—and then only when we are out of doors and absolutely alone.”

That day last summer on the island of the ornamental lake!

“You must never be deflected by unpleasantness,” Aunt Felicity had told me. “I want you to remember that. Although it may not be apparent to others, your duty will become as clear to you as if it were a white line painted down the middle of the road. You must follow it, Flavia.”

“Even when it leads to murder?” I had asked.

“Even when it leads to murder.”

The full impact of her words came crashing upon me now like a breaking wave. My father’s sister had been guiding my life for ages—maybe forever.

It was only with the greatest effort that I managed to grip the sides of the cockpit and twist round in my seat so I was looking Aunt Felicity directly in the eye—or, at least, in the goggles.

Her face was utterly impassive as she stared directly into mine.

Borne up by no more than the rush of the wind, it was as if we were riding the hurricane.

Slowly—but with great deliberation—I raised my right hand and gave her a thumbs-up that might have made Winston Churchill proud.

And Aunt Felicity returned it.

An instant later, she poured on full power and we were diving towards the ground.

As we glided in over Bishop’s Lacey, I could tell by the shadows that it was well past noon, and cars were already being parked on the road on both sides of St. Tancred’s.

Even before our wheels touched like thistledown on the Visto, Tristram Tallis was striding in the distance towards us.

Aunt Felicity cut the ignition and we both scrambled out onto the wing. I had already torn off my helmet and waited until she had removed her own.

For one brief moment we were out of doors and we were alone.

“Pheasant sandwiches,” I blurted suddenly, risking all.

My aunt’s face was as impassive as if it were cut from cold marble. A stone sphinx, perhaps, transported by magic from Egypt.

Tristram Tallis was now halfway to the aircraft. There were just seconds left before he was upon us.

“You’re the Gamekeeper, aren’t you?” I asked.

Aunt Felicity stared at me, her face a mask. I had never been so bold in my life. Had I said too much? Had I gone too far?

And then my aged aunt’s mouth opened just wide enough to allow one small word to escape.

“Yes,” she said.

TWENTY-SIX

AUNT FELICITY AND I spoke not another word as we entered the house from the kitchen garden. To an observer, it might have appeared as if we were a couple of casual acquaintances returning from an afternoon stroll on the lawns of Buckshaw.

Things were beginning to make sense; pieces were falling into place. Aunt Felicity, I knew, had rather a peculiar and unlikely circle of acquaintances. As far as I could deduce, she seemed to have been some kind of Queen Bee at the BBC during the War but had always refused to discuss it.

Had the MI department—the one with a number so high that not even the Prime Minister was aware of its existence—been quartered at Broadcasting House? It was a distinct possibility.

By “the Prime Minister,” she had obviously meant the present Prime Minister. Winston Churchill, the former PM, as everybody knew, still had certain secrets which he kept even from God.

And Tristram Tallis had seemed not at all surprised at our sudden departure in Blithe Spirit . He must have had some prior understanding with my aunt, since, when we landed, he had done no more than inquire pleasantly if “the old girl,” as he put it, had behaved herself.

As Aunt Felicity went silently to her room, I walked slowly through the narrow passage to the front of the house.

The foyer was empty. The last mourners had gone, and the place was now steeped in utter silence. It was the dramatic pause in the moment before the curtain goes up on a different and as yet unknown world.

The scent of flowers hung heavily in the air. What was the word Daffy had once used to describe it? Cloying. Yes, that was it: cloying.

It felt as if your sinuses, your nostrils, and your adenoids, all at the same time, were about to vomit.

Perhaps I was coming down with a cold.

In spite of the fine weather, my laboratory, too, seemed unusually cold. Had I caught a chill during one of my flights in Blithe Spirit ? I shrugged into an old brown bathrobe I kept hanging on the back of the door for just such emergencies and bundled myself as tightly as if I were setting out for the Pole.

I must have looked like a medieval monk or an alchemist fussing over his flasks as I prepared my experiment.

From the bottom drawer of Uncle Tar’s desk, I brought out the oilskin wallet which had contained Harriet’s will, placed it on one of the benches, and lit a Bunsen burner.

I have to admit that I wasn’t yet quite sure what I hoped to discover, but most objects, analyzed both visually and chemically, will eventually give up whatever secrets they hold, however incidental they may at first have seemed.

I began with the outside surface. The wallet was made from a kind of yellowish oilcloth: cotton or linen, perhaps, which had been varnished with several coats of linseed oil and pipe clay.

Aside from a few mottled stains—which I would leave for later analysis—the packet presented no remarkable features. I brought it to my nose and sniffed gently: a brackish odor of oily fungus, as if the wallet had been brought not long ago from the underworld, which I suppose, in a way, it had.