The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (32 page)

I
HAVE SOMETIMES WONDERED
what Lena was thinking as she died.

I wonder if she had time to suspect, as she saw me standing there staring up at her, that Harriet had come back from the dead for vengeance.

I hope in a way that she had, and in another way, I hope she hadn’t. I’m trying hard to be a better person, but it doesn’t always work.

I am finding, for instance, that I’m having a great deal of trouble forgiving Harriet for being dead. Even though it was not her fault, and even though she died for her country, I feel deprived, and deprived in a way that I never felt before her body was found. Daffy was right: We deserved better.

It makes no sense, I know, but there it is. The best I can do is to allow myself to hate her for a while. Well, perhaps
not hate, precisely, but to be highly cheesed off with her, as Undine would put it.

And Lena, of course. I deserved better from both of them.

The drive back to Buckshaw was made in utter silence. There had been no lingering in the churchyard to receive condolences as there sometimes is. Because of Lena, and so forth, we had been quickly bundled into the Rolls by Cynthia and the vicar with gripped hands under cover of surplices and furtive pats on the shoulder.

Since most of the congregation were still jockeying for a better view of Lena’s removal—some of them in the churchyard, even though one of the verger’s tarpaulins had been hastily rigged to cover the window and its captive—we had no real difficulty in making our getaway unnoticed.

As Dogger pulled away from the lych-gate, we passed within a few feet of Inspector Hewitt, who was questioning Max Brock, his notebook at the ready. Max, since retiring from the concert stage, was rumored to have taken up writing “true confession” tales for some of the more lurid magazines, and I’ll bet he had gathered plenty of usable detail from the front pew where he had been seated.

The Inspector didn’t give me so much as a passing glance.

It was decided that Undine would ride back to Buckshaw with Adam and Tristram in her mother’s Land Rover. Aunt Felicity had protested, but Father put his foot down. It was the first time he had spoken all day.

“Let the girl go, Felicity,” he said.

I had no idea how much the child had witnessed, and because Dogger had whisked her off so quickly into the
vestry at the very outset of the excitement, there’d been no opportunity for me to find out.

We arrived home to a silent house. Father had given Mrs. Mullet the rest of the day off, and she’d required no persuasion.

“I’ve left meats enough in the ’fridgerator,” she whispered to Dogger. “Puddings and that in the pantry. Make sure they eat.”

Dogger had nodded delicately.

Adam and Tristram pulled up at the front door just seconds behind us with Undine, all three of them engaged in a serious discussion, apparently about dragonflies.

“There are
far
more species in Singapore than in England,” she was telling them, “well over a hundred—but of course I’m including the damselflies.”

Did she know yet about her mother? Surely she must—Aunt Felicity must have told her.

It was going to be difficult for the little girl, growing up without her precious Ibu. Who knows? In time, she might even come to appreciate a few pointers.

Our party broke up in the foyer, each of us going our separate way. Father was the first to leave, climbing slowly up the stairs. I wanted to follow him—to console him—but to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know how.

Perhaps in time I shall learn the antidote for grief. But for now, I would just have to make do with silent pity.

Since I had no interest in damselflies, nor was I hungry, I went directly to my laboratory to feed Esmeralda, who appeared not to have missed me. She fell upon her feed as if I didn’t exist.

It seemed an eternity since I had last been alone with myself.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to read, I didn’t feel like listening to music, and chemistry was out of the question.

I took a wooden match from a box and idly lit the flame of the Bunsen burner. With my elbows on the bench, I stared into the changing flame—yellow, orange, purple, blue—as if, from a great distance, from the outer edge of the universe, I was an onlooker to the birth of galaxies.

There was only me, and nothing more. Nothing else existed.

Light and heat: That was what it was all about.

The secret of the stars.

But when you came right down to it, light
was
energy, and so was heat.

So energy, when you stopped to think about it, was the Grand Panjandrum: the be-all and the end-all, the root of all things.

The flame flickered, as if taunting me. I warmed my hands for a moment and then switched off the gas.

Poof! The end of Creation.

Extinguished by an almost-twelve-year-old girl in pigtails.

Just like that.

It was not much consolation, but it was all that I was likely to get.

I had not heard the door open, nor had I heard Dogger come into the room. I can only suppose he didn’t want to startle me.

“Oh! Dogger,” I said. “I was just sitting here thinking.”

“An uncommonly good pastime, Miss Flavia,” Dogger said. “I often do it myself.”

There was a time when I might have asked Dogger what it was that he thought about: if saving Father’s life and being forced to work in Hellfire Pass on the Death Railway ever crossed his mind.

It wasn’t that I didn’t dare, but rather that I didn’t want to inflict these shadows on his waking soul. Lord knows, he has enough of them already in his dreams.

Until now, I had never even stopped to consider what agonies might be visited upon him by even the sight of railway tracks.

It was a great mercy that, at the time of our family’s greatest distress, Dogger had suffered not so much as a single one of his night terrors. He had been a rock. In future, I would try to keep our conversations interesting and steer clear of railways.

“Dogger,” I asked, “how long does it take a person to bleed to death?”

Dogger cradled his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “On average, the human body contains about a gallon of blood. Slightly less in women than in men.”

I nodded. That seemed about right. “And how long does it take—a woman, say—to bleed to death?”

“Complete exsanguination,” Dogger said, “may take place in little more than a minute. It depends, of course, upon the size and health of the individual and upon which vessels were severed. Were you thinking of Miss Lena?”

I couldn’t hide it.

“Yes,” I told him.

“I can assure you that she died very quickly.”

“Would she have been in pain?”

“Initially, yes,” Dogger replied. “But that would have been followed quite quickly by unconsciousness and then death.”

“Thank you, Dogger,” I told him. “I needed to know.”

“I understand,” Dogger said. “I thought you might.”

“How’s Father getting on?” I asked. It had occurred to me suddenly that Father was due the same consideration that Dogger was.

“He’s bearing up,” Dogger replied.

“Is that all?”

“Yes. He has asked to see you at 1900 hours.”

“All of us?”

“No, Miss Flavia. Only you.”

A sense of dread seized me.

Father had waited until after the funeral to punish me for opening Harriet’s coffin. I had foolishly expected that having her long-lost will dropped into his hands would somehow make him happy, but he had given not the slightest sign that his troubles had been eased.

In fact, now that I thought about it, he had seemed even more troubled, more silent today than he had ever been before, and it frightened me.

How could we possibly go on? With Harriet dead and buried, Father no longer had the slightest shred of hope. He appeared to have given up.

“What are we going to do, Dogger?”

It seemed a reasonable question. After all he had been through, surely Dogger knew something of hopeless situations.

“We shall wait upon tomorrow,” he said.

“But—what if tomorrow is worse than today?”

“Then we shall wait upon the day
after
tomorrow.”

“And so forth?” I asked.

“And so forth,” Dogger said.

It was comforting to have an answer, even one I didn’t understand. I must have looked skeptical.

It was still early; 1900 was hours in the future. It might as well have been nineteen hundred years.

What was I going to do until I was summoned?

The answer came to me in a flash, as it so often does when you’re at your wit’s end.

Ordinarily, I might have sat waiting, biting my nails, counting the hours, and working myself up into a lather. But not today—no, not today.

This time I would seize control before control had a chance to seize me. I would not wait until 1900 hours. Why should I? I was sick and tired of being a pawn.

Besides, there was a lot to be said for getting it over with. Since half of punishment is in the waiting, I could, simply by showing up early, reduce my sentence by half. I was not looking forward to confessing my sins to Father, but it had to be done, like it or not. Best get it over with.

I marched down the stairs, and if what was in my heart was not a species of happiness, it was not far off.

I tapped lightly on the door of Father’s study. There was no answer.

I put my ear to the door panel, but the hollow roar of an
empty room told me that he was not inside. It was unlikely that he had gone upstairs; after all, hadn’t Dogger just been talking to him?

A quick trip round the west wing showed that he was not in the drawing room, where Feely was at the piano, staring in silence at a piece of sheet music; nor was he in the library, where Daffy sat cross-legged on the floor leafing through a pulpit-sized Bible.

“Shut the door when you leave,” she said without looking up.

I had just passed Father’s study when I heard a sound that stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was a sound I had heard often enough on the weekly episodes of Philip Odell, the private detective on the wireless, and one that I recognized instantly: the sound of a revolver being cocked. It had come from the firearms museum.

My blood turned to ice.

Foolhardy as it may seem—I can hardly believe now that I did it—I threw open the door and stepped inside.

Father was standing in front of an open glass case, and in his hand lay as nasty-looking a weapon as you would ever care to see.

I had peeked at it often enough in its case to remember that the tag identified it as an 1898 Rast & Gasser service revolver, made in Vienna for the Austro-Hungarian Army. Although the thing held eight 8mm cartridges, you could easily tell by looking at it that one would be enough.

Malevolent
is the word Daffy would have used to describe the gun.

My mind was seething. What could I possibly say?

“You wanted to see me?” I asked. It was the only thing I could think of.

Father looked up in surprise—almost guiltily, and yet, as if from a dream. “Oh, Flavia … yes … I … but not until later. Surely it can’t be 1900 hours already?”

“No, sir,” I said. “It isn’t. But I thought I’d come early so as not to keep you waiting.”

Father ignored my twisted logic. It clearly didn’t make any sense, but Father didn’t seem to notice. Slowly, as if it were made of cut glass, he returned the pistol to its case and ran an opened hand across his brow.

“Badgers,” he said. “I was thinking of frightening off a few of the little blighters. They’re making such a frightful shambles of the west lawn.”

My heart broke a little for my father. Even
I
could have come up with a better excuse than that. Whatever was he thinking? What must be going through his mind?

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” he began, referring to the fact that I had come early, but before he could say another word, I broke in.

“I want to tell you how sorry I am about the will. I didn’t mean any harm. I didn’t intend to be disrespectful.”

No need to tell him about my failed scheme for Harriet’s resurrection. The less said about that, the better.

Yes, Father need never know.

“Sir Peregrine felt it his duty to inform me that your mother’s coffin had been tampered with.”

Blast the man! Had the Home Office no discretion? No heart?

“Yes, sir,” I said, steeling myself.

I waited for the blow to fall. Whatever punishment Father had planned, this would clearly be the end of Flavia de Luce.

Here it comes
, I thought:
They’re going to either cast me into Wormwood Scrubs or throw me into the Isle of Dogs Home for Delinquent Girls
.

I watched as he raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger.

When his words came, they were words not of anger, but of infinite sadness.

“I am going to have to send you away,” he said.

THIRTY