• FOUR •
AT THE BOTTOM OF the stairs, I was taken with a sudden but brilliant idea.
Even in summer, taking a bath in the east wing was like a major military campaign. Dogger would have to lug buckets of water from either the kitchen or the west wing to fill the tin hipbath in my bedroom, which would afterwards have to be bailed out, and the bathwater disposed of by dumping it down a WC in the west wing or one of the sinks in my laboratory. Either way, the whole thing was a pain in the porpoise.
Besides, I had never really liked the idea of dirty bathwater being brought into my sanctum sanctorum. It seemed somehow blasphemous.
The solution was simple enough: I would bathe in Harriet’s boudoir.
Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
Harriet’s suite had an antique slipper bathtub, draped with a tall and gauzy white canopy. Like an elderly railway engine, the thing was equipped with any number of interesting taps, knobs, and valves with which one could adjust the velocity and the temperature of the water.
It would make bathing almost fun.
I smiled in anticipation as I walked along the corridor, happy in the thought that my chilled body would soon be immersed to the ears in hot suds.
I stopped and listened at the door—just in case.
Someone inside was singing!
“O for the wings, for the wings of a dove!
Far away, far away, would I rove!
In the wilderness build me a nest …”
I edged the door open and slipped inside.
“Is that you, Bun? Fetch me my robe, will you? It’s on the back of the door. Oh, and while you’re at it, a nice drinksie-winksie would be just what the doctor ordered.”
I stood perfectly still and waited.
“Bun?”
There was a faint, yet detectable note of fear in her voice.
“It’s me, Miss Wyvern … Flavia.”
“For God’s sake, girl, don’t lurk like that. Are you trying to frighten me to death? Come in here where I can see you.”
I showed myself around the half-open door.
Phyllis Wyvern was up to her shoulders in steaming water. Her hair was piled on top of her head like a haystack in the rain. I couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t look at all like the woman I’d seen on the cinema screen. For one thing, she was wearing no makeup. For another, she had wrinkles.
I felt, to be perfectly honest, as if I’d just walked in on a witch in mid-transformation.
“Put the lid down,” she said, pointing to the toilet. “Have a seat and keep me company.”
I obeyed at once.
I hadn’t the heart—the guts, actually—to tell her that Harriet’s boudoir was off-limits. But then, of course, she had no way of knowing that. Dogger had explained the ground rules to Patrick McNulty before she’d arrived. McNulty was now on his way to the hospital in Hinley, and probably hadn’t had time to pass along the message.
Part of me watched the rest of me being in awe of the most famous movie star in the world … the galaxy … the universe!
“What are you staring at?” Phyllis Wyvern asked suddenly. “My puckers?”
For once, I couldn’t think of a diplomatic answer.
I nodded.
“How old do you think I am?” she asked, picking up a long cigarette holder from the edge of the tub. The smoke had been invisible in the steam.
I thought carefully before answering. Too low a number would indicate flattery; too high could result in disaster. The odds were against me. Unless I hit it dead-on, I couldn’t win.
“Thirty-seven,” I said.
She blew out a jet of smoke like a dragon.
“Bless you, Flavia de Luce,” she said. “You’re bang on! Thirty-seven-year-old stuffing in a fifty-nine-year-old sausage casing. But I’ve still got some spice in me.”
She laughed a throaty laugh, and I could see why the world was in love with her.
She plunged a pudding-sized bath sponge into the water, then squeezed it over her head. The water streamed down her face and dribbled off her chin.
“Look! I’m Niagara Falls!” she said, making a silly face.
I couldn’t help myself: I laughed aloud.
And then she stood up.
At that very instant, as if in a scene from one of those two-act comedies the St. Tancred’s Amateur Dramatic Society put on at the parish hall, a loud voice in the outer room said, “What in blue blazes do you think you’re doing?”
It was Feely.
She came storming—there’s no other way to express it—storming into the room.
“You know as well as I do, you, you filthy little swine, that no one is allowed—”
Naked, except for a few soap bubbles, Phyllis Wyvern stood staring at Feely through the swirling steam.
Time, for an instant, was frozen.
I was seized by the mad thought that I’d been suddenly thrust into Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus, but I quickly rejected it: Even though Feely’s expression was rather like the “I’ll-huff-and-I’ll-puff” look on the face of the wind god, Zephyrus, Phyllis Wyvern was no Venus—not by a long chalk.
Feely’s face was turning the color of water in which beets have been boiled.
“I … I …
“I beg your pardon,” she said, and I could have cheered! Even in the rush of that bizarre moment, I couldn’t help thinking that it was the first time in Feely’s life she had ever uttered those words.
Like a courtier withdrawing from the Royal Presence, she backed slowly out of the room.
“Hand me my towel,” commanded the bare-naked queen, and stepped out of the bath.
“Oh, here you are,” Bun Keats said behind me. “The door was open, so I—”
She caught sight of me and shut her mouth abruptly.
“Well, well, well,” said Phyllis Wyvern. “The delinquent Bun condescends at last to grace us with her presence.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Wyvern. I’ve been seeing to the unpacking.”
“ ‘I’m sorry, Miss Wyvern. I’ve been seeing to the unpacking.’ God help us.”
She mimicked her assistant’s voice in the same cruel and cutting way that Daffy had mimicked mine, but in this case, though, the imitation was brilliant. Professional.
I realized at once that a great actress can never be greater than when she’s starring in her own life.
Tears sprang to Bun Keats’s eyes, but she bent over and began picking up soggy towels.
“I don’t think these rooms are part of the agreement, Miss Wyvern,” she said. “I’d already laid out your bath in the north wing.”
“Mop up this mess,” Phyllis Wyvern said, ignoring her. “Use the towels. There’s nothing worse than a wet floor. Someone could slip and break their neck.”
I took the opportunity to make myself scarce.
Outside, the weather had worsened. I watched from the drawing room window as the snow, driven by a merciless north wind, blurred the outlines of the vans and lorries. By late afternoon, the wind had lessened a little and the stuff was now coming straight down in the gathering dark.
I turned from the window to Daffy, who was sunk deep into an armchair, her legs dangling over the arms. She was reading Bleak House again.
“I love books where it’s always raining,” she had once told me. “So much like real life.” I wasn’t sure if this was one of her clever insults, so I did not reply.
“It’s snowing like stink outside,” I said.
“It always snows outside. Never inside,” she said without looking up from her book. “And don’t say ‘stink.’ It’s common.”
“Do you think Father will make it home from London?”
Daffy shrugged. “If he does, he does. If he doesn’t, he can bunk over the night at Aunt Felicity’s. She doesn’t usually charge him more than a couple of quid for bed and breakfast.”