Alan Bradley - A Red Herring Without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Novel

The place was unexpectedly bare. On one side was a large fire chamber whose open door revealed a bottom covered with cold ashes and cinders. On its side was mounted what appeared to be a motor-driven blower.

These things hadn’t changed in four or five hundred years, I thought. Aside from the electric fan, there was little difference between this device and the crucibles of the alchemists that filled the pages of several vellum manuscripts in Uncle Tar’s library.

In essence, this furnace was not unlike the gas crucible that Uncle Tar had installed in the laboratory at Buckshaw, but on a much larger scale, of course.

On the brick hearth in front of the furnace, beside a long steel ladle, lay several broken molds: wooden chests that had been filled with sand into which objects had been pressed to make an impression—into which the molten iron had then been poured.

Dogs, by the look of them, I thought. Spaniels indented in the sand to make a pair of doorstops.

Or firedogs.

And I knew then, even though I had not yet had a chance to test them for authenticity, that it was here, in Edward Sampson’s washhouse foundry, that copies of Sally Fox and Shoppo had been cast: the copies that were likely, at this very moment, standing in for the originals on the drawing-room hearth at Buckshaw.

But where were Harriet’s originals? Were they the fire irons I had seen in Miss Mountjoy’s coach house—the antiques warehouse in which Brookie Harewood kept his treasure? Or were they the ones I had seen in the hands of Sampson, the bulldog man, at the back door of Pettibone’s antiques shop? I shuddered at the very thought of it.

Still, I had already accomplished much of what I had come to do. All that remained was to search the Nissen hut for papers. With any luck, a familiar name might well pop up.

At that moment I heard the sound of a motor outside.

I glanced quickly round the room. Save for diving into the cold furnace, there was nowhere to hide. The only alternative was to dash out into the open and make a run for it.

I chose the furnace.

Thoughts of Hansel and Gretel crossed my mind as I pulled the heavy door shut behind me and crouched, trying to make myself as small as possible.

Another dress ruined, I thought—and another sad-eyed lecture from Father.

It was then that I heard the footsteps on the stone floor.

I hardly dared take a breath—the sound of it would be amplified grotesquely by the brick beehive in which I was huddled.

The footsteps paused, as if the person outside were listening.

They moved on … then stopped again.

There was a metallic CLANG as something touched the door just inches from my face. And then, slowly … so slowly that I nearly screamed from suspense … the door swung open.

The first thing I saw was his boots: large, dusty, scarred from work.

Then the leg of his coveralls.

I raised my eyes and looked into his face. “Dieter!”

It was Dieter Schrantz, the laborer from Culverhouse Farm—Bishop’s Lacey’s sole remaining prisoner of war, who had elected to stay in England after the end of hostilities.

“Is it really you?”

I began dusting myself off as I scrambled out of the furnace. Even when I had come out of my crouch and stood up straight, Dieter still towered above me, his blue eyes and blond hair making him seem like nothing so much as a vastly overgrown schoolboy.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, breaking out in a silly grin.

“Am I permitted to ask the same?” Dieter said, taking in the whole room with a sweep of his hand. “Unless this place has become part of Buckshaw, I should say you’re a long way from home.”

I smiled politely at his little joke. Dieter had something of a crush on my sister Feely, but aside from that, he was a decent enough chap.

“I was playing Solitaire Hare and Hounds,” I said, making up rules wildly and talking too fast. “East Finching counts double for a compound name, and Sampson’s scores a triple S—Sampson’s, Salvage, and Scrap—see? I’d get an extra point for having someone with a biblical name, but today’s not a Sunday, so it doesn’t count.”

Dieter nodded gravely. “Very complex, the English rules,” he said. “I have never completely grasped them myself.”

He moved towards the door, but turned to see if I was following.

“Come on,” he said, “I’m going your way. I’ll give you a lift.”

I wasn’t particularly ready to leave, but I knew that my nosing around was at an end. Who, after all, can carry out full-scale snoopage with a six-foot-something ex–prisoner of war dogging one’s every footstep?

I blinked a bit as we stepped out into the sun. On the far side of the path, Dieter’s old gray Ferguson tractor stood tut-tutting to itself, like an elephant that has stumbled by accident upon the elephant’s graveyard: a little shocked, perhaps, to find itself suddenly among the bones of its ancestors.

After closing the gate, I climbed onto the hitch between the two rear wheels, and dragged Gladys up behind me. Dieter let in the clutch, and we were off, the Fergie’s tall tires sending up a spray of cinders that fell away behind us like dark fireworks.

We flew like the wind, basking in the September sunlight and drinking in the fresh autumn air, so it was only when we were halfway down the south slope of Denham Rise that the penny dropped.

My posterior was braced firmly against one of the Fergie’s wings and my feet on the clanking hitch. As we sped along, the ground beneath was just a rushing blur of greenish black.

But why, I thought suddenly, would a farmer be so far from home with no trailer rumbling along behind; no plow, no harrow swaying in the rear? It simply made no sense.

I felt my hackles beginning to rise.

“Who sent you?” I shouted above the whistling wind and the roar of the Fergie’s engine.

“What?”

I knew from my own experience that he was stalling for time.

“What?” he said again, as if I hadn’t heard him, which made me suddenly and inexplicably furious.

“It was Father, wasn’t it?”

But even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew that I was wrong. There was no more chance that Father would telephone Dieter than that the Man in the Moon should ring up the rat catcher.

“Inspector Hewitt!”

I was clutching at straws. The Inspector was equipped with his own official transportation, and would never send a civilian on one of his errands.

Dieter shoved up the throttle in its quadrant and the tractor slowed. He pulled off into a small lay-by where a wooden platform was piled with milk containers.

He turned to me, not smiling.

“It was Ophelia,” he said.

“Feely?” I screeched. Had my sister sent Dieter to follow me? All day?

How dare she! How doubly-damned dare she! This was an outrage.

That I should be thwarted—torn away—kidnapped, virtually, from an important investigation—by my own sister made me see red.

Bright red.

Without a word, I jumped down from the tractor’s hitch, lifted Gladys onto the road, and set off walking down the hill, my head held high and my pigtails swaying.

When I got far enough away to remember it, I put one foot onto a pedal and mounted, shoving off shakily, but recovering enough to begin an offended but dignified coasting.

Moments later, I heard the tractor’s engine rev up, but I did not look back.

Dieter pulled alongside, driving precisely to keep pace.

“She was worried about you,” he said. “She wanted me to see that you were all right.”

Feely worried about me? I could hardy believe it. I could count on one finger the times she had treated me decently in the past couple of years.

“To spy on me, you mean,” I shot back.

It was a mean thing to say, but I said it. I quite liked Dieter, but the thought of him being under my sister’s thumb made me livid.

“Come on, hop up,” Dieter said, bringing the tractor to a full stop. “Your bicycle, too.”

“No, thank you very much. We prefer to be alone.”

I began pedaling to get ahead of the tractor. I suppose I could have pulled over and waited, then climbed aboard for a graciously accepted ride into the village.

But by the time I thought of it, I was already halfway up the high street.

I was disappointed not to find Dogger at work in the greenhouse. It was always such a pleasure to slip in, sit quietly down beside him, and fall into easy conversation, like two old gaffers on a bench beside the duck pond.

Second choice, when I wanted information, was Mrs. Mullet, but as I discovered when I stepped into the kitchen, she had already gone home for the day.

I’d have given anything to be able to pump Daffy about the Hobblers, but something kept me from asking any more of her. I still hadn’t taken my revenge for her part in the cellar inquisition, even though I had already twice broken my injured silence to ask her about Poseidon and about Hilda Muir—or Hildemoer, to be more precise—and the pixies.

It seemed to me that you couldn’t possibly win a war in which you were forever going over to the other side for advice. Also, fraternizing—or whatever you call it when sisters do it—with the enemy diluted one’s resolve to kick them in the teeth.

My head was fairly fizzing with information, and there had been little time to sort it all out.

Some of the more interesting points had already begun to come together in my mind, clustering and curdling in much the same way that silver chloride (good old AgCl) forms a sort of chemical cheese when a soluble chloride is added to silver nitrate.

Soluble! That was the word. Would I ever be able to solve this complex tangle of puzzles?

One thing was immediately clear: I needed to know more—much, much more—about the Hobblers, and it was clear that no Hobbler of my immediate acquaintance was going to make my life easier by spilling the beans.

TWENTY-ONE

I AWAKENED TO THE roar of water on the roof tiles and in the drains—the sound of Buckshaw in the rain.

Even before I opened my eyes, I could hear that the whole house had come alive in a way that it never did in dry weather—a deep, wet breathing in and out—as if, after a mad dash down the centuries, the tired old place had just thrown itself across the finish line.

There would be little winds in the corridors, I knew, and sudden cold drafts would spring up in out-of-the-way corners. In spite of its size, Buckshaw had all the comfort of a submarine.

I wrapped myself in my blanket and stumped to the window. Outside, the stuff was coming straight down, as if it were lines drawn with pencil and a ruler. It was not the kind of rain that was going to pass away quickly—we were in for hours of it.

Father acknowledged my presence at the breakfast table with a curt nod. At least he didn’t try to make chipper conversation, I thought, and for that I offered up a little prayer of thanksgiving.

Feely and Daffy, as usual, were busily pretending that I didn’t exist.

Rainy days cast a darker than usual pall over our morning meal, and today was no exception.

Our September breakfast menu had been in force for almost two weeks now, and the base of my tongue shrank back a little as Mrs. Mullet brought to the table what I thought of as our daily ration of T.O.A.D.

Toast

Oatmeal

Apple Juice

Dates

The dates, stewed and served with cold clotted cream, were another of Mrs. Mullet’s culinary atrocities. They looked and tasted like something that had been stolen from a coffin in a midnight churchyard.

“Pass the dead man’s,” Daffy would say, without looking up from her book, and Father would fix her with a flickering glare until the latest philatelic journal dragged his attention back to its pages—a time span of, usually, no more than about two and three-quarter seconds.

But today Daffy said nothing, her arm reaching out robotically and shoveling a few spoonfuls of the vile mess into her bowl.

Feely wasn’t down yet, so I made a relatively easy escape.

“May I be excused, please?” I asked, and Father grunted.

Seconds later I was in the hall closet, fishing out my bright yellow waterproof.

“When cycling in the rain,” Dogger had told me, “being visible is more important than keeping dry.”

“You mean that I can always dry out, but I can’t be brought back to life when I’m impaled on the horns of a Daimler,” I said, partly joking.

“Precisely,” Dogger had said with a perfect tiny smile, and gone back to waxing Father’s boots.

It was still coming down like lances as I made a dash for the greenhouse, where I had left Gladys. Gladys didn’t much like the rain, since it made her skirts muddy, but she never complained.

I had plotted my course to Rook’s End with great care, avoiding both the Gully and the house of the dreaded Mrs. Bull.

As I pedaled along the road towards Bishop’s Lacey in my yellow mackintosh, I remembered what Dogger had said about visibility. In spite of the mist that hung like tatters of gray laundry over the soaked fields, I could probably be seen for miles. And yet, in another sense, because I was only eleven years old, I was wrapped in the best cloak of invisibility in the world.

I thought of the time Mrs. Mullet had taken me to see The Invisible Man. We had gone on the bus to Hinley to replace an Easter dress that I had ruined during a particularly interesting—but failed—experiment involving both sulfuric and hydrochloric acids.

After a sickening hour in Fashions by Eleanor, a shop in the high street whose windows were bandaged over with paper banners in dreadful shades of pink and aqua—“Latest Easter Frocks for Young Misses!” “New From London!” “Just in Time for Easter!”—Mrs. Mullet had taken pity on me and suggested a visit to a nearby A.B.C. tea shop.

There we had sat, for three quarters of an hour at a table in the window, watching people stroll by on the pavement outside. Mrs. M had become quite chatty and, forgetting perhaps that I wasn’t her friend Mrs. Waller, had let slip several things that, although they were not important at the time, would probably come in handy when I was older.

After the tea and the pastries, with most of the afternoon still ahead of us (“You was a real trouper about the frock, dear—in spite of them two witches with their tapes and pins!”), Mrs. M had decided to treat me to the cinema she had spotted in the narrow street beside the tea shop.

Because Mrs. Mullet had seen it years before, she talked all the way through The Invisible Man, nudging me in the ribs as she explained it to me minute by minute.

“ ’E can see them, like, but they can’t see ’im.”

Although I was amused at the mad scientist’s idea of injecting a powerful bleach to render himself invisible, what truly shocked me was the way he treated his laboratory equipment.