The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (2 page)

T
O BEGIN WITH, IT
was a perfect English morning: one of those dazzling days in early April when a new sun makes it seem suddenly like full-blown summer.

Sunshine broke through the fat white dumplings of the clouds, sending shadows chasing one another playfully across the green fields and up into the gently rolling hills. Somewhere in the woods on the other side of the railway line, a nightingale was singing.

“It’s like a colored plate from Wordsworth,” my sister Daphne said, almost to herself. “Far too picturesque.”

Ophelia, my oldest sister, was a still, pale, silent shadow, lost in her own thoughts.

At the appointed time, which happened to be ten o’clock, we were all of us gathered more or less together on the little railway platform at Buckshaw Halt. I think it was the first time in my life I had ever seen Daffy without a book in her hand.

Father, who stood a bit apart from us, kept glancing every few minutes at his wristwatch and looking along the track, eyes squinting, watching for smoke in the distance.

Directly behind him stood Dogger. How odd it was to see these two men—gentleman and servant—who had been through such ghastly times together, standing dressed in their Sunday best at an abandoned country railway station.

Although Buckshaw Halt had once been used to bring both goods and guests to the great house, and although the rails remained, the station proper, with its weathered bricks, had been boarded up for donkey’s years.

In the past few days, though, it had been hurriedly made ready for Harriet’s homecoming: swept out and tidied up, its broken windowpanes replaced, the tiny flower bed weeded and planted with a small riot of flowers.

Father had been asked to go up to London and ride with her back to Buckshaw, but he had insisted on being at the little station at Buckshaw Halt to meet the train. It was, after all, he had explained to the vicar, the place and manner in which he had first met her all those many years ago when both of them were young.

As we waited, I noticed that Father’s boots had been polished to a high-gloss perfection, from which I deduced that Dogger was currently in a much improved state. There were times when Dogger screamed and whimpered in the night, huddled in the corner of his tiny bedroom, visited by the ghosts of far-off prisons, tormented by the devils of the past. At all other times he was as competent as any human is capable of being, and I sent up thanks that this morning was one of them.

Never had we needed him more.

Here and there on the platform, small, tight knots of villagers, keeping a respectful distance, talked quietly to one another, preserving our privacy. More than a few of them stood huddled closely round Mrs. Mullet, our cook, and her husband, Alf, as if doing so made them, by some magic, part of the immediate household.

As ten o’clock approached, everyone, as if at an arranged signal, fell suddenly quiet, and an unearthly hush settled upon the countryside. It was as though a bell jar had been lowered upon the land and all the world was holding its breath. Even the nightingale in the woods had abruptly ceased its song.

The very air on the station platform was now electric, as it often becomes when a train is approaching but not yet in sight.

People shifted uneasily from foot to foot, and the faint wind of our collective breathing made a soft sigh on the gentle English air.

And then, finally, after what seemed like an eternal stillness, we saw in the distance the smoke from the engine.

Nearer and nearer it came, bringing Harriet—bringing my mother—home.

The breath seemed sucked from my lungs as the gleaming engine panted into the station and squealed to a stop at the edge of the platform.

It was not a long train: not more than an engine and half a dozen carriages, and it sat resting for a few moments in the importance of its own swirling steam. There was an odd little lull.

Then a guard stepped down from the rear carriage and blew three sharp blasts on a whistle.

Doors opened, and the platform was suddenly swarming with men in uniform: military men with a dazzling array of full medals and clipped mustaches.

They formed up quickly into two columns and stood stiffly at attention.

A tall, tanned man I took to be their leader, his chest a wall of decorations and colored ribbons, marched smartly to where Father stood and brought his arm up in a sharp salute that left his hand vibrating like a tuning fork.

Although he seemed in a daze, Father managed a nod.

From the remaining carriages poured a horde of men in black suits and bowler hats carrying walking sticks and furled umbrellas. Among them were a handful of women in severe suits, hats, and gloves; a few, even, were in uniform. One of these, a fit but forbidding woman in RAF colors, looked such a Tartar and had so many stripes on her sleeve that she might have been an Air Vice-Marshal. This little station at Buckshaw Halt, I thought, in all of its long history, had never before been so packed with such an assortment of humanity.

To my surprise, one of the suited women turned out to be Father’s sister, Aunt Felicity. She hugged Feely, hugged Daffy, hugged me, and then without a word took up her station beside Father.

At an order, the two columns marched smartly towards the head of the train, as the large door in the luggage van slid open.

It was difficult, in the bright daylight, to make out anything
in the dim depths of the van’s interior. All I could see at first was what seemed to be a dozen white gloves dancing suspended in the darkness.

And then gently, almost tenderly, a wooden box was handed out to the double column of waiting men, who shouldered it and stood motionless for a moment, like wooden soldiers staring straight ahead into the sunshine.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing.

It was a coffin which, once clear of the shadows of the luggage van, gleamed cruelly in the harsh sunlight.

In it was Harriet.
Harriet
.

My mother.

TWO

W
HAT DID
I
THINK
? How did I feel?

I wish I knew.

Sadness, perhaps, that our hopes were dashed forever? Relief that Harriet had come home at last?

It should have been dull black, her coffin. It should have had frosty silver fittings, with covered urns and cherubs with downcast eyes.

But it did not. It was of rich oak, polished to such an obscene brilliance that it hurt my eyes. I found that I could not look at the thing.

Oddly enough, the scene which popped into my mind was that one at the end of Mrs. Nesbit’s novel
The Railway Children
, in which Bobbie, on the station platform, flings herself into the arms of her wrongfully imprisoned daddy.

But there was to be no such tender ending for me, or, for that matter, for Father or Feely or Daffy, either. No, there was to be no such happy conclusion.

I glanced quickly at Father, as if he might give me a clue, but he, too, stood frozen in his own private glacier, beyond all grief and beyond all expression, as the coffin was draped with a Union Jack.

Alf Mullet snapped a sharp salute and held it for a very long time.

Daffy gave my ribs a dig with her elbow and pointed with the faintest inclination of her chin.

At the south end of the platform, a rather stout old gentleman in a dark suit was standing apart from the others. I recognized him instantly.

As the bearers moved slowly away from the train, bent under their sad burden, he removed his black hat in respect and lowered it to his side.

It was Winston Churchill.

Whatever could have brought the former Prime Minister to Bishop’s Lacey?

He stood there alone, watching in the deadly hush as my mother was carried to the open doors of a motor hearse, which had appeared in uncanny silence as if from nowhere.

Churchill watched as the coffin, preceded by an officer with a drawn sword, was borne gently past Father, past Feely, past Daffy, and past me, then placed himself shoulder to shoulder with Father.

“She was England, damn it,” he growled.

As if awakening from a dream, Father’s eyes lifted, came to rest, and focused on Churchill’s face.

After a very long time, he said, “She was more than that, Prime Minister.”

Churchill nodded and seized Father’s elbow. “We can ill afford to lose a de Luce, Haviland,” he said quietly.

What did he mean by that?

For a moment, they stood there together in the old sunshine, these two seemingly defeated men, brothers in something far beyond me: something I could not even begin to imagine.

Then, having shaken hands with Father, with Feely, with Daffy, and even with Aunt Felicity, Mr. Churchill came over to where I was standing, a little apart from the others.

“And have you, also, acquired a taste for pheasant sandwiches, young lady?”

Those words! Those exact words!

I had heard them before! No—not
heard
them—
seen
them!

The roots of my hair were suddenly standing on tiptoe.

Churchill’s blue eyes were piercing, as if he were staring into my soul.

What did he mean? What on earth was he suggesting? What was he expecting me to say?

I’m afraid I blushed. It was all I could manage.

Mr. Churchill stared intently into my face, taking my hand and giving it a gentle squeeze with his remarkably long fingers.

“Yes,” he said at last, almost as if to himself, “yes, I do believe you have.”

And with that, he turned and walked away from me along the platform, acknowledging, with solemn nods to the left and to the right, the recognition of the villagers as he slowly made his way through them to his waiting car.

Although he had been out of office for ages, there was still a remarkable air of greatness about this plump little
man with his bulldog face and the startling stare of his great blue eyes.

Daffy was already whispering in my ear. “What did he say?” she asked.

“He said that he was sorry,” I lied. I didn’t know why, but I knew that it was the thing to do. “Just that he was sorry.”

Daffy gave me that squinty evil look of hers.

How could it be, I wondered, that with our mother lying dead under our very noses, two sisters could be almost at each other’s throats over a simple fib? It seemed ridiculous, but it was happening. I can only suppose that that’s the way life is.

And
death.

What I
did
know for certain was that I needed to get home, that I needed to be locked in the silence of my own room.

Father was busy shaking hands with all the people who wanted to give him their condolences. The very air was alive with the reptilian hissing of their Ss and the little animal squeals of their Ys.

“Sorry, Colonel de Luce … sorry … sorry,” they were telling him, over and over again, each in his or her own turn. It’s a wonder Father didn’t go mad on the spot.

Could no one think of anything original to say?

Daffy once told me that there are approximately half a million words in the English language. With so many to choose from, you’d think that just one person, at least, could find something more original than that stupid word “sorry.”

That’s what I was thinking when a tall man in a coat too
long and much too heavy for such a lovely day detached himself from the crowd on the platform and made directly for me.

“Miss de Luce?” he asked, in a surprisingly gentle voice.

I was not accustomed to being addressed as “Miss de Luce.” It was a name usually reserved for Daffy or Feely—or for Aunt Felicity.

“I am Flavia de Luce,” I said. “And you are?”

It was a response Dogger had taught me to give automatically when spoken to by strangers. I glanced over and saw Dogger hovering solicitously at Father’s side.

“A friend,” the man said. “Just a friend—of the family. I need to talk to you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, taking a step backwards. “I’m—”

“Please. It’s
vitally
important.”

Vitally
? Anyone who used the word “vitally” in everyday conversation could hardly be a villain.

“Well …” I said, wavering.

“Tell your father that the Gamekeeper is in jeopardy. He’ll understand. I must speak to him. Tell him that the Nide is under—”