But he had already done so.
“I hope they haven’t put me in the same wing of the house as those Communists,” she muttered.
But they had.
They’d given her the room next to Phyllis Wyvern’s.
Aunt Felicity had no sooner stumped off to her quarters than Phyllis Wyvern herself strolled casually into the foyer, script in hand, mouthing words as if she were memorizing some particularly difficult lines.
“My dear vicar.” She smiled as she spotted him lurking just inside the door. “How lovely to see you again.”
“The pleasure belongs to Bishop’s Lacey,” the vicar said. “It is not often that our sequestered little village is honored with a visitation of someone of … ah … such stellar magnitude. I believe the first Queen Elizabeth, in 1578, was the last such. There’s a brass plaque in the church, you know …”
It was easy to see that he’d said precisely the right thing. Phyllis Wyvern fairly purred as she replied.
“I’ve been giving some thought to your proposal …” she said, leaving a long pause, as if to suggest the vicar had asked her hand in marriage.
He went a little pink and smiled like a happy saint.
“… and decided that sooner is better than later. Poor Val is facing a couple of unforeseen difficulties: an injured wrangler, a missing camera, and now, I’m told, a frozen generator. We’re not likely to expose any film for a couple of days yet. I know it’s terribly short notice, but do you think you could arrange something for tomorrow?”
A shadow crossed the vicar’s face.
“Dear me,” he said, “I shouldn’t wish to seem ungrateful, but there are certain difficulties of a … ah … practical nature.”
“Such as?” she asked charmingly.
“Well, to be perfectly frank, the WC in the parish hall has gone for a burton. Which means, of course, that any public function is simply not on. Poor Dick Plews, our plumber, has been laid up with influenza for days now, and not likely to be up and about for quite some time. The poor dear man’s eighty-two, you know, and though he’s usually as chipper as a sparrow, this bitter cold …”
“Perhaps one of our technical people could—”
“Most kind of you, I’m sure, but I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it. Our furnace, too, has been baring its fangs. The Monster in the Basement, we call it. It’s a Deacon and Bromwell, made in 1851, and shown at the Great Exhibition—a great steel octopus of a thing with the temperament of a scorpion. Dick has been having an affair of the heart with the brute since he was no more than a lad at his father’s knee. He coddles it outrageously, but in recent years he’s been reduced to casting replacement parts by hand, and, well, you see …”
I hadn’t noticed him yet, but Father had come from his study and was standing quietly beside a pile of packing cases.
“Perhaps a solution is more closely at hand,” he said, coming forward. “Miss Wyvern, welcome to Buckshaw. I’m Haviland de Luce.”
“Colonel de Luce! What a pleasure to meet you at last! I’ve heard so much about you. I’m greatly indebted to you for so graciously opening your lovely home to us.”
Lovely home? Was she being facetious? I couldn’t tell.
“Not at all,” Father was saying. “We are all of us debtors in one way or another.”
There was an uneasy silence.
“I, for instance,” he went on, “am in the debt of my friend the vicar for fetching my sister and me from the train at Doddingsley. A most hazardous mission over treacherous roads, brought to a happy conclusion by his remarkable driving skills.”
The vicar muttered something about winter tires augmented with snow chains and then subsided to allow Father his time in the spotlight with Phyllis Wyvern.
They were still holding hands and Father was saying:
“Perhaps I may be allowed to offer the use of Buckshaw for your performance? It is, after all, only for an evening, and I’m sure it wouldn’t infringe upon our agreement if the foyer were cleared and set up with chairs for a few hours.”
“Splendid!” the vicar chimed in. “There’s room enough here for every soul in Bishop’s Lacey, man, woman, and child, with room left over for elbows. Come to think of it, it’s even more spacious than the parish hall. How odd that I didn’t think of it before! It’s too late for posters and handbills, but I’ll ask Cynthia to produce some tickets on the hectograph. But first things first. She’ll need to get the ladies of the Calling Circle organized to ring round the village and sign everyone up.”
“And I’ll have a word with our director,” Phyllis Wyvern said, letting go of Father’s hand at last. “I’m sure it will be all right. Val can’t say no to me in certain spheres, and I’ll see to it that this is one of them.”
She smiled charmingly but I noticed that both Father and the vicar looked away.
“Good morning, Flavia,” she said at last, but her acknowledgment of my presence came too late for my liking.
“Good morning, Miss Wyvern,” I said, and walked off coolly towards the drawing room with a kiss-my-nelly look on my face. I’d show her a thing or two about acting!
My eyes must have bugged out of their sockets. Dressed in the green silks she had worn when she played the part of Becky Sharp in the Dramatic Society’s production of Vanity Fair, Feely was standing in front of a small round table, putting down a letter, picking it up, and putting it down again.
She would do this most delicately, then with a jerk of hesitation—and then with a sudden thrust, as if she couldn’t stand the sight of the thing. She was rehearsing her appearance—or at least the appearance of one of her hands—in Cry of the Raven.
“I was chatting with Phyllis,” I said casually, stretching the facts a little. “She and Desmond Duncan are doing a scene from Romeo and Juliet on Saturday night, here in the foyer. For charity.”
“No one will come,” Daffy said sourly. “In the first place, it’s too close to Christmas. In the second, it’s too short notice. In the third, in case they haven’t thought of it, no one’s going anywhere in this weather without snow-shoes and a Saint Bernard.”
“Bet you’re wrong,” I said. “I’ll bet you sixpence the whole village turns out.”
“Done!” Daffy said, spitting on her palm and shaking my hand.
It was the first physical contact I’d had with my sister since the day, months before, that she and Feely had trussed me up and dragged me into the cellars for a candlelight inquisition.
I shrugged and walked to the door. A quick glance before leaving showed me that the hand of Becky Sharp was still mechanically picking up and putting down the letter like a clockwork wraith.
Although there was something pathetic about her actions, I couldn’t, for the life of me, think what it was.
Halfway along the corridor, I became aware of angry voices in the foyer. Naturally, I stopped to listen. I am both blessed and cursed with Harriet’s acute sense of hearing: an almost supernatural sensitivity to sound for which I have sometimes given thanks and sometimes despaired, never knowing until later which it was to be.
I recognized at once that the voices were those of Val Lampman and Phyllis Wyvern.
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you’ve promised,” he was saying. “You’ll simply have to tell them that it’s off.”
“And look like a bloody fool? Think about it, Val. What’s it going to cost?—a couple of hours at a time of day when we’re not working anyway. I’m doing it on my own time, and so is Desmond.”
“That isn’t the point. We’re already behind schedule and things are only going to get worse. Patrick … Bun … and we’ve only been here a day. I simply don’t have the resources to keep shoving shipping crates around so that you can do your Faerie Queene impression.”
“You heartless brute,” she said. Her voice was cold as ice.