The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (33 page)

S
END ME AWAY
? I
T
was unthinkable!

I can’t even begin to describe what was ripping through my mind.

It was beyond shock.

I knew in that instant how a cow must feel when it steps into an abattoir and is poleaxed between the eyes by someone it thought was going to feed it.

Simply because I had tampered with my mother’s coffin?

I stared at Father in disbelief. This couldn’t possibly be happening. It was a dream—a nightmare.

“Mind you,” he added, “I should have been greatly surprised if you hadn’t.”

Surprised if I
hadn’t
?

What was the man saying?

What mad Alice in Wonderland world had I been plummeted into? Who was this stranger dressed in my father’s clothing, and why was he talking such nonsense?

Had I died, perhaps, without realizing it, and been propelled into a Hell in which I was to be punished for evermore by this incomprehensible scarecrow who had taken on my Father’s form?

Surprised if I
hadn’t
?

“It was so very like you, Flavia. I must tell you I was expecting you to do something of the sort.”

“Me, sir?” Eyes wide open—mouth hanging agape.

Father shook his head.

“I have told you several times how like your mother you are, and never more than now—at this very instant.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Sorry? Whatever for?”

That old sadness came welling up, and my eyes were suddenly full of tears.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s just it,” Father said gently. “One often doesn’t.”

“No,” I agreed.

As ludicrous as it sounds, Father and I had fallen into conversation. It was something I had experienced only a few times in my life, and it tended to leave me feeling as giddy as if I were walking a rope rigged between two trees in the orchard.

“I wanted to bring her back to life,” I said. “I wanted to give her to you as a gift—so that you wouldn’t be sad.”

In spite of not wanting to, I had blurted it out.

Father removed his spectacles and cleaned them elaborately on his handkerchief.

“There is no need for that,” he said at last, softly. “Your mother
has
been given back to me—in you.”

Now the two of us were near to blubbering, restrained only by the slender thread of fact that we were both de Luces. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I knew my place.

Love at Arm’s Length
: That should have been our family’s motto, rather than the forced witticism of
Dare Lucem
.

“And now,” Father was saying, “we must go on.”

He spoke the words with such determination that they might have been coming from the mouth of Winston Churchill himself. I could imagine his bulldog voice issuing from the wireless speaker in the drawing room:
“We must go on.”

My brain supplied the sounds of cheering hordes in Trafalgar Square. I could almost see the flags waving.

“I have neglected your education,” Father said. “You’ve dabbled in chemistry, of course, but chemistry is not enough.”

Dabbled? Were my ears deceiving me?

Chemistry not enough? Chemistry was everything!

Energy! The universe. And me: Flavia Sabina de Luce.

Chemistry was the only thing with any real existence. Everything else was just bubbles on the broth.

Father had quenched our fledgling conversation with cold water before it ever had a chance to properly take fire.

Dabbled, indeed!

But he was not finished.

“Perhaps because they were older, your sisters have had an unfair advantage. The time has now come to set you straight.”

Numbness was setting in. I could feel it in my face.

“I have discussed matters with your aunt Felicity and we are in complete agreement.”

“Yes, sir?”

I was the prisoner at the bar, gripping the rail with white knuckles, waiting for the judge to drape his head with the black handkerchief and pronounce a sentence of death upon me.

“And may God have mercy on your soul.”

“Your mother’s old school in Canada, Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, has agreed to enroll you in the autumn term.”

There was a sickening silence, and then my stomach did what it does when the uniformed lift attendant in the Army and Navy Store gives you a furtive grin and shoves the lever full over to “Down.”

“But Father—the expense!”

All right, I’ll admit it: I was floundering—inventing excuses.

“Because your mother has left Buckshaw to you, I believe I am correct in saying that the expense should no longer be at issue. There will be many details to be sorted out, of course, but once put properly in order—”

What?

“Your aunt Felicity and I will, of course, act as trustees until such time as—”

I beg your pardon? Buckshaw mine? What kind of cruel joke
is
this?

I stuck my forefingers into my ears. I didn’t want to hear it.

Father gently removed them and his hand was surprisingly warm. It was, I think, the first time he had ever voluntarily
touched me, and I wanted to jam them back in so that he could pull them out again.

“Buckshaw?” I managed. “Mine? Do Feely and Daffy know?”

It was probably an uncharitable thought, but it was the first thing that came to mind and I had said it before I could stop myself.

“No,” Father said. “And I suggest that you not tell them—at least for the time being.”

“But why?”

In my heart of hearts, I was already swanking around my kingdom like Henry VIII.

Father’s answer was a very long time in coming, as if his words needed to be fetched back, one by one, from the past.

“Let me put it to you this way,” he said at last. “Why do you never add water to sulfuric acid?”

“Because of the exothermic reaction!” I cried. “The concentrated acid must always be added to the water, rather than the other way around. Otherwise it can play Old Hob with your surroundings!”

Just thinking about it made me boil over with excitement!

“Precisely,” Father said.

Of course I saw instantly what he was driving at. O, how wise a man my father was!

But then, in a flash, the present intruded. The meaning of his words sank in.

I was to leave Buckshaw.

I wanted to fling myself down on the floor and kick and scream, but of course I couldn’t.

It simply wasn’t fair.

“I have done my best for you, Flavia,” Father said. “In spite of the fierce opposition of others, I have tried so damnably hard to leave you alone, which seems to me the most precious gift one can bestow upon a child.”

Realization came flooding in.

How clever I had always thought myself, and yet, without my suspecting it, Father had all along been my co-conspirator.

“We shall miss you, of course,” he said, and then he had to stop, because by now, both of us were gulping like guppies.

Poor dear Father. And, come to think of it, poor dear Flavia.

How alike we were!

When you came right down to it.

It was the morning after the funeral, and Aunt Felicity and I were poling along in the sunshine on the ornamental lake in an ancient punt which Dogger had dug out and brought down from the attic of the coach house.

“Don’t push too vigorously,” Aunt Felicity cautioned, adjusting her ancient parasol. “Dogger warned me that it’s only the paint that’s holding this relic together.”

I grinned. Even if we broke through the bottom of the
boat, we’d only find ourselves up to our knees in sun-warmed water.

“Life’s like that, too,” Aunt Felicity continued. “Too much push, and bang through the bottom one goes. Still, if one doesn’t paddle, one doesn’t get anywhere. Maddening, isn’t it?”

I could hardly believe it: Here I was floating along on an eighteenth-century lake with the Gamekeeper herself, and yet to a spy lurking behind a ruined statue on the Visto, we would look to be no more than a pleasant painting by one of those French impressionists: Monet, perhaps, or Degas.

Light twinkled on the lake and under the hanging willows.

We were like an image on a ciné screen.

After breakfast, I had taken Aunt Felicity to my laboratory and shown her the film I had developed.

She had watched it in silence, and when the last frame had run through the projector, seized the spool of film and thrust it into her pocket.

“Pheasant sandwiches.”

Her mouth formed the words, but not a sound came out.

“The phrase was chosen carefully for its combination of plosives and fricatives: consonants which could be formed in total silence. Innocuous to the casual observer, but a clear warning of danger to an initiate.”

“But who was Harriet warning?”

“Me,” Aunt Felicity said. “It was I who was shooting the film. I had a perfect view of your mother in the camera’s viewfinder and recognized her warning instantly.”

“Against who?” I was about to say, but caught myself just in time to correct it to “Against whom?”

“The late Lena,” Aunt Felicity answered. “She had come down to Buckshaw unexpectedly, as she was wont to do, and had waded across to the Folly without our noticing, perhaps hoping to catch us off guard. Your mother—and it is to her eternal credit that she did so—had already begun, even then, to suspect Lena’s leanings, if I may coin a rather tawdry phrase.”

It took me a moment, but I nodded to show that I understood.

But why hadn’t Harriet simply called out, “Hullo! Here’s Lena!” or some such thing? Why had she chosen to mouth a coded warning to Aunt Felicity alone?

I recalled Lena’s words: “We were quite chummy, your mother and I—at least when we ran into each other outside of a family setting.”

Outside
of a family setting, she had said. Perhaps
inside
of one they were at loggerheads. It was a situation I had no difficulty in understanding.

Families were deep waters indeed, and I still had much to learn about what luces lurked beneath the surface of my own.

Now, floating lazily on the lake with Aunt Felicity, surrounded by the reality, those black-and-white images from another time—filmed at this very location—seemed as distant as a half-forgotten dream.

“Who was the man in the window?” I asked.

It was one of the strands of the puzzle I had been unable to unwind to my satisfaction.

“Tristram Tallis,” Aunt Felicity said.

“I thought as much. But why was he dressed in an American uniform?”

“A very perceptive observation,” Aunt Felicity said, “since he was in view for mere fractions of a second.”

“Well, actually it was Dogger who spotted that,” I admitted.

“You showed Dogger the film?” She pounced upon my words like a leopard upon its prey.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I didn’t know it was important—I mean, I didn’t know what it meant.”

I still didn’t, but I was hoping to find out.

“Was it wrong of me?”

Aunt Felicity did not answer my question. “It is essential,” she said, “to know at all times who knows what. Keep Kipling in mind.”

“Kipling was a goddamn Tory and a jingoist to boot,” I said, hoping to seem wise beyond my years.

“Pfah!” Aunt Felicity said, surprising me by spitting over the side of the boat. “You picked up that nonsense from Lena, or at least from Undine.”

I admitted I had.

“Kipling was no Tory, nor was he a jingoist. He was a spy in the service of Queen Victoria, and a damned good one at that. He as much as said so, but no one recognized it. They thought he was prattling on for children. Perfect camouflage that, you’ll have to admit.”

She sat up straight in the punt, and for a moment I had the uncanny feeling that I was in the presence of a queen.

She raised her voice an octave and in a royal accent began to recite:

“As a member of the Nide, you will need to keep those words always in the forefront of your mind.”

“Was Lena a member of the Nide?” I asked.

“Lena was the enemy!” Aunt Felicity hissed. “One of the dark de Luces. The Black Ones, we called them in my youth. We were told horror stories about them, and even made up a few of our own.”

“She killed my mother, didn’t she?”

It was the question whose answer I dreaded, but I needed to know.

“I have every reason to believe she did,” Aunt Felicity said, “but we shall never be sure of it. When she died, the truth died with her. There was only one other person on that final trek in Tibet, and he unfortunately—”

“Terence Alfriston Tardiman, bachelor, of 3A Campden Gardens, Notting Hill Gate, London, W8, aged thirty-seven,” I rattled off, my words tumbling over one another in the mad race to get out. “The man under the train!”

Aunt Felicity’s eyes narrowed as if she were squinting at me through tobacco smoke, and I was reminded for an instant of Dr. Kissing.

“Sowerby has been indiscreet,” she said. “I shall have to call him to account.”

“Please don’t be hard on Adam,” I said. “He’s more or less my partner—ever since that business with the Heart of Lucifer.”

“I am aware of that,” Aunt Felicity said, “but he must be
corrected notwithstanding. The Nide must not be jeopardized by loose lips. Lives may be lost—and one of them may be yours. Do you understand, Flavia?”

“Yes, Aunt Felicity. Adam had been following Tardiman for five days, and not for the first time, either.”

I let my usual silence fall, hoping to open Aunt Felicity’s floodgates, but it did not work. She was even foxier than I was.

“Was Tardiman one of the Nide?” I asked. “One of us?”

How proud I was to be able to say that!

“There are certain questions you must learn not to put to me,” Aunt Felicity said. “Not, at least, so far as they concern the living.”