Val Lampman laughed.
“The Glass Heart. Page ninety-three, if I’m not mistaken. You never forget a line, do you, old girl?”
Incredibly, she laughed.
“Come on, Val, be a sport. Show them you’ve got more in your heart than meat.”
“Sorry, old love,” he said. “No can do this time.”
There was a silence, and I wished I could see their faces, but I couldn’t move without giving away my presence.
“Supposing,” Phyllis Wyvern said in little more than a whisper, “that I told Desmond about that interesting adventure of yours in Buckinghamshire?”
“You wouldn’t dare!” he hissed. “Come off it, Phyllis—you wouldn’t dare!”
“Would I not?”
I could tell that she’d got on her high horse again.
“Damn you,” he said. “Damn you and damn you and damn you!”
There was another silence—even longer this time, and then Val Lampman suddenly said:
“All right, then. You shall have your little show. It won’t make much difference to my plans.”
“Thank you, Val. I knew you’d come round to my way of thinking. You always do. Now shall we go upstairs and join the others? They’ll be getting impatient.”
I heard the sound of their footsteps going up the stairs. I’d give it a few more seconds, I thought, just to be certain they were gone.
But before I could move, someone stepped out from the shadows into the middle of the corridor.
Bun Keats!
She had not seen me. Her back was turned, and she was peeking round the corner into the foyer. It was evident that she’d been eavesdropping on the conversation I’d just happened to overhear.
If she turned round, she’d be almost face-to-face with me.
I held my breath.
After what seemed like an eternity, she walked slowly through into the foyer and vanished from sight.
Again I waited until I heard her footsteps fade away.
“It’s a pity, isn’t it,” a voice said almost at my shoulder, “when people don’t get along?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I spun round and there was Marion Trodd, with a quizzical—or was it a rueful—half-smile on her face. In spite of her smart tailored suit, her dark horn-rimmed glasses gave her the look of a tribal princess who had rubbed ashes round her empty black eyes in preparation for a jungle sacrifice.
She’d been there all along. And to think that I hadn’t heard or seen her!
The two of us stood motionless, staring at each other in the dim corridor, not knowing quite what to say.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’ve just remembered something.”
It was true. What I’d remembered was this: While I was not in the least afraid of the dead, there were those among the living who gave me the creeping hooly-goolies, and Marion Trodd was one of them.
I turned and walked quickly away, before something horrid could rise up out of the carpet and suck me down into the weave.
• SEVEN •
FATHER WAS SITTING AT the kitchen table listening to Aunt Felicity. This, more than anything, brought home to me how much—and how rapidly—our little world had been shrunk.
I slipped silently, or so I thought, into the pantry and helped myself to a piece of Christmas cake.
“This has gone on long enough, Haviland. It’s been ten years now, and I’ve looked on in silence as your situation declined, hoping that you’d one day come to your senses …”
This was laughably untrue. Aunt Felicity never missed an opportunity to dig in a critical oar.
“… but all in vain. It’s unhealthy for the children to go on living under such barbaric conditions.”
Children? Did she think of us as children?
“The time has come, Haviland,” she went on, “to stop this incessant moping about and find yourself a wife—and preferably a rich one. It is positively indecent for a tribe of girls to be raised by a man. They become savages. It’s a well-known fact that they don’t develop properly.”
“Lissy …”
“Flavia, you may step out,” Aunt Felicity called, and I shuffled into the kitchen, a little shamefaced at having been caught snooping.
“See what I mean?” she said, darkly, pointing at me with a finger whose nail was the red of exhausted blood.
“I was getting Dogger a piece of Christmas cake,” I said, hoping to make her feel dreadful. “He’s been working so hard … and he often doesn’t take enough to eat.”
I took one of Dogger’s black jackets from behind the door and threw it over my shoulders.
“And now if you’ll excuse me …” I said, and went out the kitchen door.
The cold air nipped at my cheeks and knees and knuckles as I trotted through the falling flakes. The narrow path that someone had shoveled was already beginning to fill in.
Dogger, in overalls, was in the greenhouse, trimming sprigs of holly and mistletoe.
“Brrrrr!” I said. “It’s cold.”
Since he wasn’t in the habit of responding to chitchat, he said nothing.
The Christmas tree Dogger had promised was nowhere in sight, but I fought down my disappointment. He probably hadn’t had time.
“I’ve brought you some cake,” I said, breaking off half and handing it to him.
“Thank you, Miss Flavia. The kettle is just coming to the boil. Will you join me for tea?”
Sure enough: On a potting bench at the back of the greenhouse, a battered tin kettle on a hot plate was shooting out excited jets of steam from lid and spout.
“Let’s rouse Gladys,” I said, and as Dogger filled two refreshingly grubby teacups, I lifted my trusty bicycle from the corner where she had been stowed, and carefully unwound the protective sacking in which, after a thorough oiling, Dogger had wrapped her for the winter.
“You’re looking quite fit,” I told her, making a little joke. Gladys was a BSA Keep-Fit that had once belonged to Harriet.
“Quite fit,” Dogger said. “In spite of her hibernation.”
I propped up Gladys on her kickstand beside us and gave her bell a couple of jangles. It was good to hear her cheery voice in winter.
We sat in companionable silence for a while, and then I said, “She’s quite beautiful, isn’t she—for her age?”
“Gladys? … Or Miss Wyvern?”
“Well, both, but I meant Miss Wyvern,” I said, happy that Dogger had made the leap with me. “Do you think Father will marry her?”
Dogger took a sip of tea, put down his cup, and picked up a sprig of mistletoe. He held it up by the stem as if weighing it, then put it down again.
“Not if he doesn’t want to.”
“I thought we weren’t having decorations,” I said. “The director didn’t want the trouble of removing them when they begin filming.”
“Miss Wyvern has decided otherwise. She’s asked me to provide a suitably sized Christmas tree in the foyer for her performance on Saturday night.”
I felt my eyes widening.
“To remind her of the trees she had in childhood. She said that her parents always put up a tree.”
“And she asked you for holly? And mistletoe?”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full, sir.” Dogger smiled.
I hugged myself, and not just from the cold. Even the smallest of jokes on Dogger’s lips warmed my heart—perhaps made me too bold.
“Did your parents?” I asked. “Used to put up a tree, I mean? The holly and the ivy and the mistletoe, and all that?”
Dogger did not answer straight away. The faintest of shadows seemed to drift across his face.
“In that part of India in which I was a child,” he said at last, “mistletoe and holly were not easily to be had. I believe I remember decorating a mango tree for Christmas.”
“A mango tree! India! I didn’t know you lived in India!”
Dogger was silent for a long time.
“But that was long ago,” he said at last, as if returning from a dream. “As you know, Miss Flavia, my memory is not what it once was.”