Like a time traveler who had just awakened to find himself in a strange household in an unexpected century, Father had looked up at me from his albums.
“Thank you, Flavia,” he had said after an unnerving pause. “I shall keep it in mind.”
Daffy, as always, was draped over a chair in the library, with Bleak House open on her knees.
“Don’t you ever get tired of that book?” I asked.
“Certainly not!” she snapped. “It’s so like my own dismal life that I can’t tell the difference between reading and not reading.”
“Then why bother?” I asked.
“Bug off,” she said. “Go haunt someone else.”
I decided to try a different approach.
“You’ve got black bags under your eyes,” I said. “Were you reading late last night, or does your conscience keep you awake over the despicable way you treat your little sister?”
“Despicable” was a word I’d been dying to use in a sentence ever since I’d heard Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife, fling it at Miss Cool, the village postmistress, in reference to the Royal Mail.
“Sucks to you,” Daffy said. “Who could sleep with all that caterwauling going on?”
“I didn’t hear any caterwauling.”
“That’s because your so-called super-sensitive hearing has blown a fuse. You’re probably beginning to display the hereditary de Luce deafness. It skips from youngest daughter to youngest daughter and generally sets in before the age of twelve.”
“Piffle!” I said. “There was no caterwauling. It was all in your head.”
Daffy’s left earlobe began twitching as it does when she’s upset. I could see that I had hit a nerve.
“It’s not in my head!” she shouted, throwing down her book and jumping to her feet. “It’s that damned Wyvern woman. She runs old films all night—over and over until you could scream. If I have to listen to that voice of hers saying ‘I shall never forget Hawkhover Castle’ one more time as that cheesy music swells up, I’m going to vomit swamp water.”
“I thought you liked her—those magazines …”
Curses! I’d almost given myself away. I wasn’t supposed to know about what was in Daffy’s bottom drawer.
But I needn’t have worried. She was too agitated to spot my slipup.
“I like her on paper, but not in person. She stares at me as if I’m some kind of freak.”
“Perhaps you are,” I offered helpfully.
“Get stuffed,” she said. “Since you’re such great pals with Lady Phyllis, you can tell her next time you see her to keep the noise down. Tell her Buckshaw’s not some slimy cinema in Slough, or wherever it is she comes from.”
“I’ll do that,” I said, turning on my heel and walking out of the room. For some odd reason I was beginning to feel sorry for Phyllis Wyvern.
In the foyer, Dogger was atop a tall orchard ladder, hanging a branch of holly from one of the archways.
“Mind the ilicin,” I called up to him. “Don’t lick your fingers.”
It was a joke, of course. There was once thought to be enough of the glycoside in a couple of handfuls of the red berries to be fatal, but handling the leaves was actually as safe as houses.
Dogger raised an elbow and looked down at me through the crook of his arm.
“Thank you, Miss Flavia,” he said. “I shall be most careful.”
Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning. That’s what I was doing when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
A gust of snow blew into my face as I opened the door. I wiped my eyes, and only partly in disbelief, for there in the forecourt stood the Cottesmore bus, tendrils of steam rising ominously from its radiator cap. Its driver, Ernie, stood before me, digging at his dentures with a brass toothpick.
“Step down! Step down! Mind your feet!” he called back over his shoulder to the column of people who were climbing down from the bus’s open door.
“Your actors,” he said, “have arrived.”
They came trooping past him and into the foyer like tourists flocking into the National Gallery at opening time—there must have been about thirty in alclass="underline" coats, scarves, galoshes, hand luggage, and gaily wrapped parcels. They were going to be here, I remembered, for Christmas.
One last straggler was having difficulty with the steps. Ernie made a move to help her, but she brushed away his offered arm.
“I can manage,” she said brusquely.
That voice!
“Nialla!” I shouted. And indeed it was.
Nialla Gilfoyle had been the assistant to Rupert Porson, the traveling puppeteer who had come to a rather grisly end in St. Tancred’s parish hall. I hadn’t seen her since the summer, when she had gone off from Bishop’s Lacey in something of a huff.
But all of that seemed to have been forgotten. Here she was on the front steps of Buckshaw in a green coat and a joyful hat trimmed with red berries.
“Come on, then, give me a hug,” she said, opening her arms wide.
“You smell like Christmas,” I said, noticing for the first time the large protuberance that stood between us.
“Eight months!” she said, taking a step back and throwing open her winter coat. “Have a gander.”
“A gander at Mother Goose?” I asked, and she laughed appreciatively. Nialla had played the part of Mother Goose in the late Rupert’s puppet show, and I hoped my little joke would not stir up unhappy memories.
“Mother Goose no more,” she said. “Just plain old Nialla Gilfoyle (Miss). Jobbing actress, comedy, tragedy, pantomime. Apply Withers Agency, London. Telegraph WITHAG.”
“But the puppet show—”
“Sold up,” she said, “lock, stock, and barrel to a lovely chap from Bournemouth. Fetched me enough to rent a flat, where Junior here can have a roof over his or her head as the case may be, come January, when he or she finally decides to make his or her grand entrance.”
“And you’re starring in this?” I asked, waving my hand to take in the theatrical hubbub in the foyer.
“Hardly starring. I’ve undertaken the less-than-demanding role of Anthea Flighting, pregnant daughter—in a nice way, of course—of Boaz Hazlewood—that’s Desmond Duncan.”
“I thought he was a bachelor. Doesn’t he court Phyllis Wyvern?”
“He is, and he does—but he has a past.”
“Ah,” I said. “I see.” Although I didn’t.
“Let me look at you,” she said, grasping my shoulders and retracting her head. “You’ve grown … and you’ve got a little color in your cheeks.”
“It’s the cold,” I said.
“Speaking of which,” she said with a laugh, “let’s go inside before the acorn on my belly button freezes and falls off.”
“Miss Nialla,” Dogger said as I closed the door behind us. “It’s a pleasure to have you back at Buckshaw.”
“Thank you, Dogger,” she said, taking his hand. “I’ve never forgotten your kindness.”
“The little one will be along soon,” he said. “In January?”
“Spot on, Dogger. You’ve got a good eye. January twenty-fifth, according to my panel doctor. He said it wouldn’t hurt me to sign on for this lark as long as I gave up the ciggies, got plenty of sleep, ate well, and kept my feet up whenever I’m not actually in front of the camera.”
She gave me a wink.
“Very good advice,” Dogger said. “Very good advice, indeed. I hope you were comfortable on the bus?”
“Well, it is a bit of a jolter, but it was the only transportation Ilium Films could lay on to get us from the station in Doddingsley. Thank God the thing’s such a hulking old bulldog. It managed to hang on to the roads in spite of the snow.”
By now, Marion Trodd had shepherded the others away to the upper levels, leaving the foyer empty except for the three of us.